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February 26, 2025, 1:40 PM
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| Wes Davis / The Verge: |
Amazon unveils Alexa+, a generative AI update with vision capabilities and more, in preview in March 2025 for $20 per month or free to Prime subscribers — Arriving more than a year after it was first announced, Alexa is finally catching up to Google's Gemini.
More: About Amazon, About Amazon, Business Insider, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Wired, TechCrunch, Forbes, ZDNET, Android Authority, VICE, Wall Street Journal, Android Police, BBC, Thurrott, Quartz, Agence France-Presse, PCWorld, New York Times, Mirror, Investor's Business Daily, 9to5Google, PCMag, The Ambient, Engadget, Moneycontrol, CNBC, TechRadar, Yahoo Finance, TechEBlog, AFTVnews, Neowin, The Decoder, Reuters, Liliputing, SlashGear, Patently Apple, CNN, Tom's Guide, iPhone in Canada Blog, Mashable, iClarified, Cord Cutters News, and The Shortcut
Bluesky: @tomwarren.co.uk. X: @markgurman, @panos_panay, @ajassy, @mgsiegler, @markgurman, @edludlow, @raywongy, @drbarnard, @joannastern, @joannastern, @markgurman, @joannastern, @mattswider, and @maxwinebach. Forums: Slashdot
| Bloomberg: |
Amazon's Panos Panay demoed Alexa+ in a flowing ongoing conversation and says it can book concert tickets, make restaurant reservations, and text a babysitter — Amazon.com Inc. has rebooted Alexa with artificial intelligence. — The rollout is the biggest overhaul of the voice-activated …
More: Engadget, TechCrunch, Axios, ZDNET, 9to5Mac, The Sun, Inc, About Amazon, Yahoo Finance, San Francisco Business Times, iClarified, TechRadar, WinBuzzer, PhoneArena, and Reuters
Bluesky: @quinnypig.com. X: @mgsiegler, @panos_panay, @mattswider, @mattswider, @kantrowitz, @caro_milanesi, and @maxwinebach
| Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: |
Amazon says Alexa+ is “model agnostic”, using Amazon Nova models and Anthropic's models, and picks the “best” AI model for a task, drawing on Amazon Bedrock — Amazon says that Alexa+, the new and improved Alexa unveiled on Wednesday, is powered by a “model agnostic” … | The Verge: |
A live blog of Amazon's Alexa event — Amazon's set to announce a big update to Alexa. … Amazon is set to announce new Alexa features beginning at 10AM ET this morning — and we hope a few devices accompany them. There isn't a way to watch the event remotely, but our team is here in person …
More: The Verge, ZDNET, GeekWire, ZDNET, The Verge, 9to5Toys, Engadget, TechRadar, TechCrunch, Tom's Guide, and Business Insider
| Hadriana Lowenkron / Bloomberg: |
Trump says “Apple should get rid of DEI rules, not just make adjustments to them” in a Truth Social post, after Apple investors rejected a proposal to end DEI — - Investors turned down outside proposal to scrap DEI efforts — Trump escalates campaign against diversity hiring practices| Carly Page / TechCrunch: |
Lasso: 20,000+ once-public GitHub repositories from Microsoft, AWS, Google, IBM, Tencent, and 16,000+ other companies are still accessible via Copilot — Security researchers are warning that data exposed to the internet, even for a moment, can linger in online generative AI chatbots …
More: Moneycontrol, Ghacks, and TechIssuesToday.com
| Reuters: |
Sources: DeepSeek, which planned to release R2 in May 2025, now wants R2 out as soon as possible; DeepSeek owner High-Flyer built a 10K A100 GPU cluster in 2021 — DeepSeek is looking to press home its advantage. — The Chinese startup triggered a $1 trillion-plus sell-off …
More: BGR, Analytics India Magazine, WinBuzzer, TechNode, Ubergizmo, and Capacity Media. Forums: Slashdot
| The Verge: |
A survey of 2,000 US adults finds 42% say that search engines like Google are becoming less useful, 60% view the state of social media negatively, and more — - Platform Shifts — Defining Connection — Content Matters (Especially in Communities) — Brands Matter.AI May Complicate| Sean Hollister / The Verge: |
Framework Desktop hands-on: the tiny 4.5-liter gaming desktop looks cool, good frame rates at 1440p thanks to its AMD Ryzen AI Max CPU, expandable I/O, and more — Is this neat thing a new sub-category or a one-off? … Framework's mission is to “fix consumer electronics, one category at a time” …
More: Gizchina.com, Android Headlines, TechCrunch, PCMag, and Press Start. Mastodon: @seanhollister@mastodon.world
| Andrew E. Freedman / Tom's Hardware: |
| Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: |
How the hackers behind the $1.5B Bybit crypto heist used UI manipulation of employee devices and social engineering to gain control of ETH multisig cold wallets — The cryptocurrency industry and those responsible for securing it are still in shock following Friday's heist, likely by North Korea …
More: BBC, BleepingComputer, The Trail of Bits Blog, Check Point Research, MEDIANAMA, and The Crypto Times
Bluesky: @Edent.mastodon.social … and @patrickhowelloneill.com
Forums: r/Buttcoin, Slashdot, and Ars OpenForum
| Anissa Gardizy / The Information: |
Sources: Meta is in talks to build a new data center campus for AI that could cost over $200B, based on the number of chips and the amount of power for the site — Meta Platforms is in talks to build a new data center campus for its artificial intelligence endeavors that would dwarf anything … | Faris Mokhtar / Bloomberg: |
Indonesia says Apple signed a deal to invest in Indonesia and will issue it a permit, paving the way for resuming iPhone 16 sales after a five-month tussle — The agreement was announced by Minister for Industry Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita in a media briefing in Jakarta on Wednesday, as reported by Bloomberg Technoz.
More: TechCrunch, iPhone in Canada Blog, Seeking Alpha, Hindustan Times, Nikkei Asia, Reuters, Phandroid, and Mobile World Live. Bluesky: @mgsiegler.com
| Todd Spangler / Variety: |
YouTube says it now has 1B+ monthly viewers for podcast content worldwide; users watched 400M+ hours of podcasts monthly on living room devices in 2024 — Podcasts started as an audio-only phenomenon. … According to the Google-owned video giant, YouTube now has more than 1 billion monthly viewers for podcast content worldwide.| Joseph Menn / Washington Post: |
Letter: US DNI Tulsi Gabbard calls the UK's order for Apple to add an iCloud backdoor an “egregious” violation of Americans' rights and plans a legal review — British order demanding access to encrypted storage on Apple devices opens up “a serious vulnerability for cyber exploitation,” she said.
More: 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, Director of National Intelligence, and The Daily Wire. Forums: Slashdot
| Financial Times: |
Survey: 92% of UK undergrad students use AI to help them with their studies, up from 66% a year ago, raising questions about how universities assess their work — Rapid spread of technology raises questions about how to assess undergraduate work — The number of UK undergraduate students … | CJ Haddad / CNBC: |
AppLovin's stock falls 10%+ after two short sellers released reports questioning the integrity of the company's AI-powered AXON ad software — Shares of AppLovin tumbled 13% Wednesday as two short-seller reports cast doubt on the integrity of the company's AI-powered AXON advertising software …
More: Bloomberg, Fuzzy Panda Research, Benzinga, and Investor's Business Daily
| Parmy Olson / Bloomberg: |
Apple removing ADP in the UK is a pyrrhic victory for Apple, and UK users' muted response suggests they may not care about privacy as much as the company thinks — If the tech giant hopes that killing encryption will cause public upset and deter other governments, it's probably wrong.| Jonathan Randles / Bloomberg: |
Court records: FTX paid nearly $948M to 12+ firms working on its bankruptcy, one of the costliest Chapter 11 cases in US history; users are set to get back 118% — - Lack of records, corporate controls sent adviser fees higher — Most creditors poised to get back 118% of what they were owed| Jeremy Gan / Engadget: |
Google redesigns Results About You, its tool for requesting the removal of Search results with personal info, adding a new hub and the ability to update results — You can also address outdated search results now. — Google has been offering the Results About You tool since 2022 and updated it once in 2023.
More: The Keyword, How-To Geek, TechCrunch, Android Authority, The Verge, BetaNews, MakeUseOf, Mashable, and Search Engine Journal
| Reuters: |
Alibaba releases Wan 2.1, a family of open-source AI models for generating images and videos, available globally on Alibaba Cloud's ModelScope and Hugging Face — Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba (9988.HK) said on Wednesday its video- and image-generating artificial intelligence model Wan 2.1 …
More: Engadget, BGR, PetaPixel, South China Morning Post, WinBuzzer, CNBC, Benzinga, The Information, and Tech in Asia
| New York Times: |
Apple says it is working to fix an issue after users said its automatic dictation system was transcribing the word “racist” as “Trump”, before correcting itself — The company said it was working to fix the problem after iPhone users began reporting the issue.
More: The Guardian, BBC, Sky News, Wall Street Journal, MacRumors, New York Post, Australian Financial Review, Variety, PCMag, NBC News, CNN, Metro.co.uk, Associated Press, The Root, Quartz, Gizmodo, PinkNews, Mashable, The Standard, TechRadar, Fox News, Creative Bloq, Business Standard, iPhone in Canada Blog, Mashable India, The Independent, Raw Story, Telegraph, Mirror, Fox News, TechIssuesToday.com, Cult of Mac, The Economic Times, Financial Times, New York Daily News, The Verge, Infowars, Business Today, Axios, iDeviceHelp on YouTube, International Business Times, iClarified, Deadline, Engadget, Macworld, Daily Mail, Benzinga, 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, Hindustan Times, inkl, Times Now, PhotoNews Pakistan, The Express Tribune, TMZ.com, RedState, TMZ.com, and Fox News
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Threads: @carnage4life and @crumbler
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Forums: r/VaushV, r/Fuckthealtright, r/applesucks, r/iphone, r/politics, r/MarchAgainstNazis, r/apple, r/Conservative, and MacRumors Forums
| Julia Alexander / Posting Nexus: |
Patreon's 2025 creator economy report shows the future may be direct-to-fan instead of direct-to-consumer, but the hurdles in place are more seismic than ever — The future may be direct-to-fan instead of direct-to-consumer, but the hurdles in place are more seismic than ever — Beware all studies.| Sean Hollister / The Verge: |
Valve's Steam Deck, launched in 2022, has been dominating the handheld PC gaming market, with about 50% market share in 2024, according to IDC — Asus ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, MSI Claw: The Steam Deck is bigger than them combined. … Today is the third anniversary of Valve's Steam Deck …
More: PC Gamer, Metro.co.uk, Gameranx, The Shortcut, Push Square, TelecomLead, GamingBolt, TechSpot, and Pocket-lint
Bluesky: @tomwarren.co.uk. X: @genepark, @loganopiano, @playeressence, @stealth40k, @rodimus_j, and @carygolomb
Forums: r/TwoBestFriendsPlay, r/pcgaming, r/Games, r/gaming, r/SteamDeck, and r/Steam
| Ellen Barry / New York Times: |
The American Psychological Association warns the US FTC that AI chatbots “masquerading” as therapists could drive vulnerable people to harm themselves or others — The nation's largest association of psychologists this month warned federal regulators that A.I. chatbots … | Charles Rollet / TechCrunch: |
After backlash, YC deletes a demo video from X and LinkedIn of Optifye.AI, a startup it backs that is building AI performance monitoring for factory workers — A demo from Optifye.AI, a member of Y Combinator's current cohort, sparked a social media backlash that ended up with YC deleting it off its socials.
More: 404 Media, Gizmodo, StrictlyVC, Ritik Gulabrani on YouTube, Gazetteer SF, The San Francisco Standard, and San Francisco Business Times
Bluesky: @carnage4life, @samleecole, and @jasonkoebler
X: @neverhimself, @nexuist, @mashcr0ft, @adamlerman5, @litcapital, @growing_daniel, @vcbrags, @archiexzzz, and @miranda_nover
Forums: Hacker News, Hacker News, and r/technology
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