Techmeme
February 6, 2025, 4:30 AM

Top News

Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:
Email: Google eliminates its goal of hiring more employees from historically underrepresented groups and is reviewing some DEI programs after Donald Trump's EOs  —  Search giant is eliminating goals to hire more minority employees and reviewing DEI programs, part of a pullback across Silicon Valley
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
AI researchers at Stanford and the University of Washington claim they trained an AI reasoning model, called s1, for under $50 in cloud compute credits  —  AI researchers at Stanford and the University of Washington were able to train an AI “reasoning” model for under $50 in cloud compute credits …
Greg Bensinger / Reuters:
Amazon announces an Alexa-focused event on February 26 in New York; sources say the company will preview its long-delayed Alexa generative AI revamp  —  Amazon (AMZN.O) is set to release its long-awaited - and delayed - Alexa generative artificial intelligence voice service …
Politico:
The Senate Commerce Committee approves the Kids Off Social Media Act to ban under-13s from social media, clearing the way for consideration by the Senate  —  The Senate Commerce Committee approved legislation Wednesday to ban children under 13 from social media.
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Kaspersky researchers found apps in Google's Play Store and Apple's App Store that use OCR to steal crypto wallet recovery phrases from images on users' devices  —  Android and iOS apps on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store contain a malicious software development kit (SDK) …
Max A. Cherney / Reuters:
Arm reports Q3 revenue up 19% YoY to $983M, vs. $946.7M est., royalty revenue up 23% YoY to $580M, and lowers is FY revenue guidance; ARM drops 5%+  —  Chip tech provider Arm Holdings (O9Ty.F), said on Wednesday it will no longer meet the top end of its previous full-year guidance …
Karissa Bell / Engadget:
Reddit banned r/WhitePeopleTwitter for 72 hours due to “a prevalence of violent content”, after Elon Musk said on February 3 that its users had “broken the law”  —  The company said it was due to a “prevalence of violent content.”  —  Reddit has temporarily banned …
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Qualcomm reports Q1 revenue up 17% YoY to $11.67B, vs. $10.93B est., handsets revenue up 13% to $7.57B, net income up 15% to $3.18B, issues a strong Q2 guidance  —  Qualcomm reported better-than-expected fiscal first-quarter results on Wednesday and issued strong guidance for the current period.
404 Media:
Sources: DOGE staff were ordered to stop using Slack while it moves from the OMB to the Executive Office of the President, which is not subject to FOIA  —  Employees at Elon Musk's agency have been told: “OMB is asking us to stop generating new slack messages starting now.”
MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC:
White House crypto czar David Sacks says stablecoin laws could be done in the next six months, after lawmakers unveiled a bill to create a regulatory framework  —  As David Sacks, the newly appointed White House AI and crypto czar, collaborates with lawmakers on potential regulations for digital assets …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
XOi, whose software lets field technicians get info about the machines they need to fix, raised $230M from KKR and buys its rival Specifx for an undisclosed sum  —  Field service engineers may not be the first group of customers that come to mind when you think about lucrative opportunities in B2B technology.
More: XOi
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Google adds Gemini 2.0 Flash, 2.0 Flash-Lite, and 2.0 Pro Experimental to Gemini's API, and 2.0 Pro Experimental and 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental to its apps  —  Gemini 2.0 AI updates include cheaper access for developers, and AI that can use other Google apps like YouTube.

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Rafe Uddin / Financial Times: