Techmeme
January 9, 2025, 3:00 PM

Top News

Ashley Capoot / CNBC:
Google and Microsoft donate $1M to Trump's inauguration; Google says the donation, a YouTube livestream, and a homepage event link align with past inaugurations  —  Google donated $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration fund, becoming the latest major tech company to try …
Jaiveer Singh Shekhawat / Reuters:
Frank McCourt's Project Liberty says it made a formal bid to ByteDance to buy TikTok's US assets and keep the app alive without its current algorithm  —  Entrepreneur and former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt's Project Liberty and its consortium of partners in The People's Bid …
Financial Times:
Sources: Musk is probing how he and his right-wing allies can go beyond aggressive X posts to destabilize the UK Labour government and remove Keir Starmer as PM  —  Technology billionaire interested in building support for another political party, notably Reform UK
Financial Times:
Analysis: Elon Musk's UK obsession is driven by a few X accounts; an ex-Twitter exec says Musk may be the first tech leader to be radicalized by his own product  —  Tech billionaire's posts about grooming gangs scandal have elevated issue  —  Elon Musk's recent obsession with UK politics …
Carly Page / TechCrunch:
Ivanti warns that threat actors exploited a critical-rated zero-day in its widely used Connect Secure VPN tool to compromise its corporate customers' networks  —  U.S. software giant Ivanti has warned that a zero-day vulnerability in its widely-used enterprise VPN appliance has been exploited …
Richard Lawler / The Verge:
Apple says it “has never used Siri data to build marketing profiles” and never sold it for advertising or other purposes, after paying $95M to settle a lawsuit  —  A Siri lawsuit settlement over privacy issues has dredged up old rumors about iPhone ad targeting …
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Amazon launches Amazon Retail Ad Service to let companies show ads in search results, product pages, and other areas of their own websites, initially in the US  —  Amazon has turned into an online ad juggernaut in recent years, with brands paying big bucks for premium placement on the retailer's websites.
Lillian Rizzo / CNBC:
Disney says it has an estimated 157M global MAUs watching ad-supported content across its streaming services Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, including 112M US users  —  Disney said Wednesday it has an estimated 157 million global monthly active users watching ad-supported content across its streaming platforms — Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+.
Colby Hall / Mediaite:
GOP Senator Markwayne Mullin says Mark Zuckerberg met with Trump the day before announcing that Meta would replace fact-checking with Community Notes  —  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with President-elect Donald Trump the day before announcing his social media platforms would end …
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
Vince Dioquino / Decrypt:
Filing: the Northern District Court of California gives the US government final approval to sell 69,370 BTC, worth $6.5B, seized in its Silk Road investigation  —  The ruling does not ensure immediate liquidation of the seized Bitcoin, as federal asset forfeiture requires several administrative processes.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
xAI is testing a standalone iOS app for its chatbot Grok in several countries, like the US, Australia, and India; Grok was available only to X users until now  —  Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, is testing out a standalone iOS app for its chatbot, Grok, which was available only to X users until now.
Stephen Totilo / Game File:
December court filing: Activision revealed that Call of Duty: Black Ops III cost $450M+ to make, Modern Warfare cost $640M+, and Black Ops Cold War cost $700M+  —  The biggest development budgets ever disclosed by a game company, buried in a court filing (but found by Game File), along with updated sales figures.

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Try Gemini 3 Pro  —  Google's newest and most intelligent AI model that helps you bring any idea to life
Shopify:
Transform ML Experimentation with Tangle  —  Save months of compute time with Tangle, built by Shopify.  Try this open-source platform to simplify ML workflows, ensure reproducibility, and seamlessly share with collaborators.
Zoho:
Introducing Zoho Spend: A unified platform for the next gen finance teams.  —  Effective business spend management is a direct lever for profitability.  When organizations gain visibility into where money flows …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Invest Like the Best:
Gavin Baker - Nvidia v. Google, Scaling Laws, and the Economics of AI
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Pat Grady & Alfred Lin from Sequoia
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.
Big Technology Podcast:
AI Device Wars Heat Up, RIP Metaverse?, Netflix Acquires Warner Brothers
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
The Social Radars:
Blake Scholl, Founder & CEO of Boom Supersonic
Come be a fly on the wall as Y Combinator's Jessica Livingston and Carolynn Levy talk to some of the most successful founders in Silicon Valley about how they did it.
Subscribe to The Social Radars.
Grit:
The Pull to Build: Joubin Mirzadegan on Grit and Starting Roadrunner
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 3:00 PM ET, January 9, 2025.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks

Mari Yamaguchi / Associated Press:
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Richard Lawler / The Verge:
Cheyenne Ligon / CoinDesk: