Techmeme
February 4, 2025, 12:10 PM

Top News

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 …
Elizabeth Lopatto / The Verge:
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.”
Wired:
Sources: Marko Elez, a 25-year-old Elon Musk-linked engineer, has admin privileges over Treasury Department code that controls Social Security payments and more  —  The Bureau of the Fiscal Service is a sleepy part of the Treasury Department.  It's also where, sources say …
Caleb Ecarma / Musk Watch:
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple debuts Invites, an app to help plan events like birthdays, graduations, and more, with Image Playground and Writing Tools tie-ins, for iCloud+ subscribers  —  Apple today announced the launch of a new app called “Invites,” which is designed to allow users to plan events like birthday parties …
Josh Xiao / Bloomberg:
China's State Administration for Market Regulation says it will probe Google for alleged antitrust violations, moments after Trump put tariffs on Chinese goods  —  China announced an investigation into Google and imposed new tariffs on a range of US products moments after President Donald Trump slapped …
Dominic Preston / The Verge:
Opera launches Opera Air, a free browser focused on mindfulness and mental well-being, including break reminders and ambient soundscapes, for Windows and macOS  —  Opera Air offers break reminders, ambient soundscapes, and breathing exercises, all in your browser.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
ByteDance researchers demo OmniHuman-1, an AI system that is “easily heads and shoulders above previous deepfake techniques”, if ByteDance's clips are accurate  —  Researchers from TikTok owner ByteDance have demoed a new AI system, OmniHuman-1, that can generate perhaps the most realistic deepfake videos to date.
More: The DecoderForums: Hacker News
Bloomberg:
Nintendo reports Q3 revenue down ~33% YoY to ~$2.8B, net profit down ~33% YoY to ~$831M, both below est, 4.8M Switch sales, and cuts Switch and profit forecasts  —  The Kyoto-based company now expects ¥280 billion ($1.8 billion) in operating income in the fiscal year to March, slashing more than a fifth from its prior forecast.
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

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
App Spotlight: Clean Contacts Pro for Zoho CRM  —  App Spotlight brings you hand-picked solutions that enhance your Zoho apps and tools.  Visit Zoho Marketplace to explore all of our apps, integrations …
IDrive:
IDrive Autonomy: low-cost L2+ driver assistance with AI  —  L2+ driver assistance with a scalable AI stack built for automotive companies and laying the foundation for the autonomous future.

Featured Podcasts

Grit:
The AI Race Has a Leaderboard | Arena CEO Anastasios Angelopoulos
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
Lenny's Podcast:
Why companies are becoming a series of loops | Anish Acharya (a16z)
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:
GPT-6 & OpenAI's Comeback, Hugging Face Attack Debate, Ballmer's Scandalous Legacy
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 A.I. Mob That Attacked Hugging Face + METR's Ajeya Cotra
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.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Data Centers, Elon Musk, and the New Politics of Tech, with David Weigel
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
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 12:10 PM ET, February 4, 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

Anne Steele / Wall Street Journal:
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Ben Bergman / Business Insider:

Earlier Picks

Brody Ford / Bloomberg:
Bloomberg:
Cristina Criddle / Financial Times:
Umar Shakir / The Verge:
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Andrew Orr / AppleInsider:
Samantha Subin / CNBC:
CBC News: