Techmeme
February 3, 2025, 9:00 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Donald Trump signs an executive action to direct officials to create a US sovereign wealth fund and says that it could be used to facilitate a sale of TikTok US  —  - Fund could be used as US facilitates TikTok sale, Lutnick says  — Bessent says fund will be created in the next 12 months
Evan Weinberger / Bloomberg Law:
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent orders the CFPB to stop activities, like rulemaking, communications, and litigation; in November, Musk said to “Delete CFPB”  —  Search by Topic  —  Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has shut down a wide variety of operations inside …
CBC News:
Ontario Premier Doug Ford pauses retaliatory measures like “ripping up” the province's CA$100M Starlink contract, after Donald Trump delays US tariffs on Canada  —  Retaliatory measures included ‘ripping up’ Starlink contract, taking American booze of LCBO shelves
Makena Kelly / Wired:
Sources: Thomas Shedd, GSA's new Technology Transformation Services director and Elon Musk ally, told GSA workers the agency will pursue an “AI-first strategy”  —  Sources say the former Tesla engineer now in charge of the Technology Transformation Services wants an agency that operates like a “startup software company.”
Musk Watch:
An OPM staffer believes a server Musk's associates installed, with access to federal staff info like SSNs, has not undergone a Privacy Impact Assessment  —  The Musk-connected political hires include two recent high school graduates  —  Several of Elon Musk's associates installed at the Office …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
The first ever native iPhone porn app, Hot Tub, arrives in the EU via the alternative app store AltStore PAL, which was made possible by the DMA  —  A native pornography app for iOS is coming to the EU via the approved alternative app store AltStore PAL, made possible by Europe's Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Andrew Orr / AppleInsider:
Counterpoint: iPhone 15 led global smartphone sales in 2024, followed by iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 15 Pro, Galaxy A15 5G; global smartphone revenue grew 5% YoY  —  Apple's iPhone 15 led global sales in 2024, with Pro models close behind, as premium device demand drove a revenue rebound.
Bloomberg:
A US appeals court panel appeared skeptical of Google's bid to overturn a 2023 jury verdict that declared the Play Store an illegal monopoly in the Epic case  —  - Jury ruled Google violated antitrust law by restricting apps  — Google argues case shouldn't have been decided by jury
Ben Bergman / Business Insider:
Dick Kramlich, who co-founded NEA in 1977, died on February 1 at age 89; he was an early investor in Apple and led investments in Juniper Networks and others  —  - Richard “Dick” Kramlich made one of the earliest investments in Apple.  — He cofounded NEA in 1977, which now has nearly $26 billion in assets under management.
Cristina Criddle / Financial Times:
Anthropic details Constitutional Classifiers, a system that aims to guard AI models against jailbreaks, monitoring both inputs and outputs for harmful content  —  Leading tech groups including Microsoft and Meta also invest in similar safety systems  —  Artificial intelligence start …
Umar Shakir / The Verge:
Ethan Mollick / One Useful Thing:
OpenAI's Deep Research hands-on: very good at nuanced, complex research, and the first narrow agent to do sophisticated and likely economically valuable work  —  The first narrow agents are here  —  A hint to the future arrived quietly over the weekend.  For a long time …
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

Sponsor Posts

ElevenLabs:
ElevenAgents by ElevenLabs  —  You know us for voice.  Now meet ElevenAgents — featuring Expressive Mode, our most human-sounding AI voice technology in 70+ languages with ultra-low latency.  Hear it for yourself.
Intel:
5G's most deployed platform  —  Powering live networks with built-in Inference across Core and RAN.  That's the power of Intel Inside®
Zoho:
Introducing intelligent document processing with Zoho RPA  —  Documents are a major bottleneck at many organizations.  Invoices, contracts, forms, ID cards, receipts: They all arrive in different shapes and sizes …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Grit:
How Kevin Mandia Built the Most Trusted Name in Cybersecurity
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
Anthropic's $1B to $19B growth run: how Claude became the fastest-growing AI product in history | Amol Avasare
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI buys TBPN, SpaceX's $2 Trillion IPO?, Iran Disables Amazon Infrastructure
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.
Hard Fork:
The Future of Addictive Design + Going Deep at DeepMind + HatGPT
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Great Chat:
Go touch some grass (but don't tweet about it)
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Ryan Roslansky: Turning AI Anxiety into Skills for the Future of Work
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

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

Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Financial Times:
More: Bloomberg and XR Today
Threads: @cjgultekin_X: @tanarrowz and @scobleizerLinkedIn: David Gene Oh
Noam Scheiber / New York Times:
Hayden Field / CNBC: