~techmeme | Bookmarks (1035)

Emily Mason / Bloomberg: Circle unveils a network designed to link financial institutions and enable real-time settlement of cross-border payments, starting with USDC and EURC in May  —  Powerbeats Pro 2 Review: Best Workout Earbuds Still Lag on Audio Quality  —  Beats' newest exercise headphones are improved, but they face stiffer competition than ever.

Kevin Beaumont / DoublePulsar: Microsoft has improved Recall, but biometrics are only required for setup and users can open it with just a PIN, and sensitive data filtering is unreliable  —  Last year, Microsoft announced Recall, a feature which screenshots your PC every few seconds, OCRs the screenshots and produces …

Erin Woo / The Information: Judge Questions Chrome Divestiture Idea  —  The judge overseeing a hearing to determine how to fix Google's search monopoly on Monday questioned the government's proposal that Google be forced to divest the Chrome browser while signaling support for requiring Google to share some search data with rivals …

Natalie Lung / Bloomberg: Airbnb now shows the full cost of a stay, excluding taxes, in search results by default; a Biden-era FTC rule on “junk fees” is set to go into effect on May 12  —  Powerbeats Pro 2 Review: Best Workout Earbuds Still Lag on Audio Quality  —  Beats' newest exercise headphones are improved …

New York Times: After Meta blocked news on its platforms in Canada, misleading content from right-wing pages like Canada Proud filled the gap ahead of the federal election  —  Hyperpartisan and misleading content from popular right-wing pages such as Canada Proud is thriving on Facebook as the election nears.

NDTV: Google settles an Android TV case with India's competition regulator, will offer standalone licenses for Play Store and Play Services for Android TVs in India  —  This is the first case that has been settled under the amended Competition Act, wherein the settlement and committment provisions were introduced in 2023.

Annie Palmer / CNBC: The US FTC sues Uber, claiming the company charged for Uber One without consent, made it difficult to cancel, and failed to deliver promised savings  —  The Federal Trade Commission on Monday sued Uber, accusing the ride-hailing and delivery company of deceptive billing and cancellation practices tied to its subscription service.

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Report: over a thousand international students have had US immigration statuses terminated in 2025; a Caltech ML professor says it's harming the talent pipeline  —  An AI doctoral student in California had their SEVIS record — the digital proof of their valid student visa — terminated, putting their immigration status at risk.

Mia Sato / The Verge: Meta is testing using AI tools in the US to detect teen Instagram users, even if they've lied about their birthday, and place them under Teen Account settings  —  On Instagram, AI tools will detect underage users and automatically change their account settings.

Ben Thompson / Stratechery: Q&A with Dan Kim and Hassan Khan, former officials at the CHIPS Program Office, on subsidizing supply versus coercing demand, the program's future, and more  —  An interview with Dan Kim and Hassan Khan about their work distributing CHIPS program money, and why they are optimistic about U.S. industrial policy going forward.

Ethan Mollick / One Useful Thing: Models like o3 and Gemini 2.5 Pro feel like “Jagged AGI”: unreliable, even at some mundane tasks, but still offering superhuman capabilities in many areas  —  New models and new thresholds  —  Amid today's AI boom, it's disconcerting that we still don't know how to measure how smart …

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: Paul Graham likened Palantir's ICE work to “infrastructure of the police state”; a Palantir exec said Paul's view is like Google's when it killed Project Maven  —  One of the founders of startup accelerator Y Combinator offered unsparing criticism this weekend …

Ionut Ilascu / BleepingComputer: In a clever attack, hackers were able to send phishing emails that appeared to come from “no-reply@google.com”, after a similar attack on PayPal users in March  —  In a rather clever attack, hackers leveraged a weakness that allowed them to send a fake email that seemed delivered …

Knight First Amendment Institute: A deep dive into AI as a normal technology vs. a humanlike intelligence and how major public policy based on controlling superintelligence may make things worse  —  An alternative to the vision of AI as a potential superintelligence  —  We articulate a vision of artificial intelligence (AI) as normal technology.

Ruth Reader / Politico: After lobbying US Congress to shelve the Senate-passed KOSA bill in 2024, Meta has now made headway in lobbying for an app store age-verification bill  —  The Facebook founder is lobbying Congress to leave his firm alone — and making headway.  —  To protect kids online …

Financial Times: A look at the race to turn brainwaves into fluent speech, as researchers at universities in California and companies use brain implants and AI to make advances  —  Californian researchers and groups such as Precision Neuroscience use implants and AI to make advances in ‘voice prosthesis’

Christopher Grimes / Financial Times: The success of A Minecraft Movie, set to hit $700M in ticket sales globally this weekend, signals Hollywood's breakthrough in adapting video games into films  —  While superhero franchises flag, ‘A Minecraft Movie’ shows the industry has finally cracked the formula for translating popular games into films

Krishnapriya V.S. / The India Forum: India's Open Network for Digital Commerce has struggled to break the near-duopoly of Zomato and Swiggy in online food delivery after cutting back on discounts  —  A near-duopoly of Zomato and Swiggy controls almost 95% of India's digital platform-based food delivery market …

Mark Bergen / Bloomberg: How YouTube is adapting to the AI era; a VP expects that in five years, every video uploaded to YouTube could be dubbed automatically into every spoken language  —  The video giant, turning 20, tries to keep the content spigot flowing while appeasing its army of broadcasters and copyright holders.

Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: Assort Health, which is developing voice AI agents for healthcare to manage patient phone calls, raised a $22M Series A co-led by First Round and Chemistry  —  Assort Health cofounders Jeff Liu and Jon Wang.  —  Assort Health  —  Jon Wang and Jeff Liu met dozens of prospective cofounders—until they met each other.

Katie Fehrenbacher / Axios: Crux, a financing software provider for clean energy companies, raised a $50M Series B led by Lowercarbon Capital, taking its total funding to more than $77M  —  Crux, a clean economy financing software provider, raised a $50 million Series B round to expand its capital platforms, CEO Alfred Johnson tells Axios.

CTech: Plano, Texas-based Tapcheck, which works with companies to let workers access their earnings before payday, raised a $25M Series A extension and $200M in debt  —  Hilton, Taco Bell, and McDonald's among companies using the fintech's on-demand pay service.  —  Tapcheck  —  Funding  —  Fintech

Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: Revel, which builds software for controlling critical hardware like rockets, emerges from stealth with $30M in funding, including a ~$23M Series A led by Thrive  —  Revel founder Scott Morton.  —  Revel  —  Scott Morton's heart rate spiked at the same time, every time.

Ben Weiss / Fortune: Coinbase faces pump-and-dump accusations after its subsidiary Base launched a “content coin” on Zora; Coinbase clarifies that Base will never sell the tokens  —  Jesse Pollak is the creator of Base, a new blockchain from Coinbase.  —  Winni Wintermeyer for Fortune