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February 7, 2025, 12:00 PM
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Top News

Joseph Menn / Washington Post:
Sources: in a secret January order, UK security officials demanded that Apple create a backdoor to access all cloud content any Apple user globally has uploaded  —  Security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a back door allowing them to retrieve all the content …
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
WBD took $300M in gaming writedowns in 2024; current and former staff blame a lack of a strong, cohesive vision during former games chief David Haddad's tenure  —  Last year, Warner Bros. Discovery took $300 million in losses on gaming.  The near future is rife with additional challenges.
Ashley Belanger / Ars Technica:
Kadrey v. Meta: unsealed emails show Meta allegedly torrented 81.7TB+ of data across multiple shadow libraries through the site Anna's Archive, for AI training  —  Newly unsealed emails allegedly provide the “most damning evidence” yet against Meta in a copyright case raised by book authors alleging …
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Microsoft warns that attackers are using static ASP.NET machine keys found online to inject malware into ViewState, which controls web form state during reloads  —  Microsoft warns that attackers are deploying malware in ViewState code injection attacks using static ASP.  NET machine keys found online.
Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Amazon expects to boost its capex to $100B in 2025, largely driven by AI and up from 2024's ~$83B, in what Andy Jassy calls a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity
Amazon.com, Inc.:
Amazon reports Q4 revenue up 10% YoY to $187.8B, vs. $187.3B est., net income up 89% YoY to $20B, and operating income up 61% YoY to $21.2B
Wired:
Sources: DOGE is pushing to develop GSAi, a custom generative AI chatbot for the US GSA to boost productivity, analyze contract and procurement data, and more  —  The chatbot is part of Elon Musk and President Donald Trump's ambitions to use AI and other technologies to cut costs and modernize the US government.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple plans to unveil its long-awaited overhaul of the iPhone SE as early as next week, opting to reveal it on its website instead of at a launch event  —  - Revamped SE model is set to be unveiled in the coming days  — Apple plans flurry of 2025 products, including smart home hub
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Google edited Gemini's response in a Super Bowl commercial to remove an incorrect statistic about Gouda cheese, regurgitated from seeming SEO-optimized blogs  —  Gemini's response no longer says that Gouda makes up '50 to 60 percent of the world's cheese consumption.'
More: PR Daily, The Guardian, and BBC
Bluesky: @val415.  X: @jdischler, @natejhake, @natejhake, and @emroth08
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI updates o3-mini's chain of thought to help free and paid ChatGPT users “understand how the model thinks”, in response to DeepSeek and other competitors  —  In response to pressure from rivals including Chinese AI company DeepSeek, OpenAI is changing the way its newest AI model …
Reuters:
Sources: Ilya Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence is in talks to raise funding at a valuation of $20B+, up from a $5B valuation from its September funding round  —  Safe Superintelligence, an artificial intelligence startup co-founded by OpenAI's former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever last year …
More: TechCrunch
Katherine Long / Wall Street Journal:
DOGE staff member Marko Elez resigns after being linked to racist X posts; the 25-year-old was embedded in the US Treasury and previously worked at SpaceX and X  —  A staffer for Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency whose access to U.S. Treasury payment systems was approved …
Marina Temkin / TechCrunch:
In a meeting with GOP lawmakers, Donald Trump proposed taxing carried interest as ordinary income, a policy that could sharply increase the tax bill for VCs  —  On Thursday, President Trump asked Republican lawmakers to end tax breaks on carried interest.  —  The tax break allows private equity …
Stephen Nellis / Reuters:
Mistral partnered with Cerebras to help its Le Chat app respond to user questions at 1,000 words per second, making Le Chat the world's fastest AI assistant  —  Cerebras Systems, an artificial intelligence chip firm backed by UAE tech conglomerate G42, said on Thursday it has partnered …

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:00 PM ET, February 7, 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.

From Mediagazer

Ashley Capoot / CNBC:
Disney and OpenAI sign a three-year deal to bring 200+ Disney characters to Sora; Disney will make a $1B investment in OpenAI and become a major OpenAI customer

Max Tani / Semafor:
Sources: WaPo's top standards editor decried “frustrating” errors in its new AI-generated personalized podcasts, announced this week for users of its mobile app

Peter Kafka / Business Insider:
The value of WBD's cable networks including CNN is a key number for Netflix and Paramount bidders; Ellison says they're worth ~$2.5B, while analysts say ~$10B

More News

Earlier Picks

Zaheer Kachwala / Reuters:
Take-Two reports Q3 net bookings up 3% YoY to $1.37B, vs. $1.39B est., and reiterates GTA VI is set to launch in the fall of 2025; TTWO jumps 6%+ after hours
Sharon Goldman / Fortune:
Sources: OpenAI co-founder John Schulman is joining former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati's stealth startup; he left Anthropic after joining the startup in August 2024
Julaiza Alvarez / Bloomberg:
Pinterest reports Q4 revenue up 18% YoY to $1.15B, vs. $1.14B est., MAUs up 11% YoY to 553M, and forecasts Q1 revenue will top est.; PINS jumps 15%+
Paul Sawers / TechCrunch:
GitHub announces updates for Copilot, including Vision for Copilot being able to generate interfaces, code, and alt text from a screenshot, photo, or a diagram
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