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February 20, 2025, 6:35 PM
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Kate Rooney / CNBC:
OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap says the startup hit 400M weekly active users in February 2025, up 33% from 300M in December 2024, and 2M paying enterprise customers  —  OpenAI appears to be growing quickly despite increasing competition.  —  The San Francisco-based tech company …
Emily Birnbaum / Bloomberg:
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson announces an inquiry into “Big Tech censorship”, which he says is “un-American” and “potentially illegal”  —  - FTC Chair Ferguson invites public comment about tech platforms  — Conservatives claim ideas, affiliations have been censored
Bloomberg:
Alibaba reports Q3 revenue up 8% YoY to ~$38.6B, the fastest growth in over a year and above ~$38B est., and a ~$6.7B net income, as AI boosts its business  —  - Revenue beats estimates thanks to strong growth in cloud arm  — Alibaba is staging a comeback as AI initiatives bear fruit
Dominic Preston / The Verge:
Oppo launches the Find N5, the world's thinnest foldable at 8.93mm closed and 4.21mm open, with IPX6, X8, and X9 ratings, in Europe and Asia for ~$1,870  —  Oppo's Find N5 is the thinnest book-style foldable yet, and it's launching worldwide — but it's another foldable the US just won't get.
Sarah Wynn / The Block:
The US SEC announces the Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit to protect investors from bad actors in crypto and AI, replacing the Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit  —  - The agency announced the new unit on Thursday, calling it the Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit, or CETU.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Amazon plans to discontinue its Appstore for Android and its Coins program on August 20, 2025, but keep its Appstore on its devices like Fire TV and Fire Tablet  —  Amazon will discontinue its app store for Android on August 20 this year.  The company sent a notice to developers indicating …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Amazon plans to end support for its videoconferencing tool Chime on February 20, 2026; report: Amazon is adopting Zoom as its standard app for internal meetings  —  Amazon Chime, the tech giant's underwhelming alternative to Zoom and Google Meet, is shutting down for good.
Matt Novak / Gizmodo:
Elon Musk says he will “fix” Community Notes as they are “increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media”, after disagreeing with notes about Ukraine  —  The billionaire has a history of manipulating X to fit his far-right worldview.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Twitch plans to implement a 100-hour storage cap for Highlights and Uploads from April 19, automatically deleting content from streamers who exceed the limit  —  Streamers who have exceeded this limit will have their content automatically deleted until it meets the threshold.
New York Times:
Sources: the Trump administration targets officials fighting foreign interference in US elections, focused on those combating cyberattacks and false content  —  The Trump administration has reassigned or forced out several dozen government employees who had been working to fight foreign interference …
More: Default.  Bluesky: @noupside, @lawfare, and @daphnek.  Mastodon: @metacurity@infosec.exchange
Forums: r/technology and r/politics
Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
YouTube plans to add a “premium lite” tier, a source says for the US, Australia, Germany, and Thailand, offering podcasts without ads and music videos with ads  —  - The service will continue to put ads in music videos  — The tier will launch in areas that include the US, Australia
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Spotify begins accepting AI-narrated audiobooks recorded using ElevenLabs' software; Spotify already allows AI-recorded audiobooks, with several restrictions  —  A new ElevenLabs partnership aims to help authors bring AI-narrated audiobooks to Spotify listeners.
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
CISA and the FBI: attackers deploying Ghost ransomware breached victims from multiple industry sectors across 70+ countries, including critical infrastructure  —  CISA and the FBI said attackers deploying Ghost ransomware have breached victims from multiple industry sectors across over 70 countries …
Ryan Christoffel / 9to5Mac:
Kuo: all iPhone 17 models will have Apple's in-house Wi-Fi chips, enhancing connectivity and cutting costs; only the slim iPhone 17 will have the C1 modem chip  —  Apple just launched its brand new C1 modem yesterday with the iPhone 16e.  But there's another new Apple-designed chip coming soon …
Wired:
Investigation: Google's Display & Video 360 ad platform openly serves up sensitive information about Americans, despite Google's rules against such practices  —  Google enables marketers to target people with serious illnesses and crushing debt—against its policies …
Lizette Chapman / Bloomberg:
Palantir's stock fell 10% on February 19 after WaPo reported that US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to cut military spending; PLTR is up 40%+ in 2025  —  - Spending shift would affect 8% of US defense spending  — AI-focused Palantir has become major government contractor
Nikkei Asia:
Tokyo-based Sakana AI details its AI CUDA Engineer, which it says can speed up AI training and inference 10x to 100x by “breeding” more efficient instructions  —  TOKYO — Tokyo-based startup Sakana AI says it has developed a system capable of accelerating artificial intelligence development …
Pew Research Center:
US survey: views of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk tilt negative; Democrats and Republicans view Zuckerberg unfavorably; Musk is polarizing along party lines  —  Americans' views of two prominent tech executives - Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg - tilt more negative than positive.
Ben Lang / Road to VR:
Meta announces a $50M creator fund for Horizon Worlds; CTO Andrew Bosworth reportedly told staff that 2025 is a make-or-break year for Meta's XR ambitions  —  Meta today announced a $50 million fund to incentivize the creation of new and improved content in Horizon Worlds, the company's first-party social gaming platform.
RT Watson / The Block:
Nansen: 86% of traders lost $251M in total on the Solana memecoin Libra that Argentine President Milei promoted, while the remaining traders profited $180M  —  - Citing onchain data, Nansen Research said that through Tuesday, 86% of traders lost a total of $251 million on the LIBRA token …

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From Mediagazer

Isabella Simonetti / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Vanity Fair and Olivia Nuzzi have agreed to part ways following new allegations about her affair with RFK Jr. and her behavior while reporting on him

Alexandra Steigrad / New York Post:
Sources: Forbes has cut ties with dozens of contributing writers; one exec said Forbes needs to ensure the contributor model is “financially sound”

Liam Scott / Columbia Journalism Review:
A look at the First Amendment Watch's SLAPP Back Initiative, a US SLAPP tracker; in 2024, 69 of 500 cases involved the media, of which 46 were dismissed

More News

Earlier Picks

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Global Witness: ahead of Germany's election, TikTok's and X's For You feeds show a substantial far-right bias; 78% of TikTok's recommendations supported the AfD
Kim Zetter / Wired:
Source: 19-year-old Edward Coristine and Kyle Schutt, both DOGE engineers, are now on staff at the CISA; Coristine was briefly an intern for Neuralink
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft announces Muse AI, a first-of-its-kind generative AI model that can generate a game environment based on visuals, players' controller actions, or both
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