Techmeme
February 3, 2025, 7:00 PM

Top News

Financial Times:
Analysis: Meta has invested $80B+ in AR and VR since 2014 when it bought Oculus, and is on track to top $100B in 2025  —  Tech group reveals it put $19.9bn into its Reality Labs division, which develops its smart glasses and headsets, last year  —  Meta's total investment in virtual …
Bloomberg:
Trump signs an executive action to form a sovereign wealth fund; Commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick says it may 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:
Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent orders the CFPB to stop all rulemaking, communications, litigation, and other activities; in November, Musk called to “Delete CFPB”  —  Search by Topic  —  Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has shut down a wide variety of operations inside …
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 …
Rochelle Raveendran / CBC News:
In the wake of US tariffs on Canadian goods, the premier of Ontario Doug Ford says he's “ripping up” the province's CA$100M Starlink contract  —  Musk part of President Donald Trump's team that wants to destroy families, Ford says  —  Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford is …
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.
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 …
Bloomberg:
The Seoul High Court upholds an earlier decision clearing Samsung Executive Chairman Jay Y. Lee of fraud and stock-rigging, marking a major victory for Samsung  —  - Seoul court upholds Jay Y. Lee's earlier victory on appeal  — The Samsung scion can now focus on turning around the firm
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
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:

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More News

Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Monique Mulima / Bloomberg:
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:

Earlier Picks

Noam Scheiber / New York Times:
Hayden Field / CNBC: