Techmeme: A look at YouTube's hidden world: most of the videos on the platform capture everyday life and have rarely been seen, with the median video having just 41 views (Thomas Germain/BBC)

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March 9, 2025, 11:20 AM

Top News

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:

Tarlogic researchers find an undocumented “backdoor” in Chinese manufacturer Espressif's ESP32 microchip used in 1B+ devices for WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity — The ubiquitous ESP32 microchip made by Chinese manufacturer Espressif and used by over 1 billion units as of 2023 contains …

More: Tarlogic Security and CHERIoT Platform

Bluesky: @msmagicdishes, @elucidating, @dragostech, @bitterseeds, @pamacious, @shuntingyard, @ud3x, @rmarshall, and @kevincollier

Mastodon: @haitchfive@oldbytes.space, @hacks4pancakes@infosec …, and @trevorflowers@machines.social. X: @herrmann1001

Forums: Hacker News, Hacker News, r/Intelligence, r/BambuLab, r/TheRaceTo10Million, r/cybersecurity, r/cybersecurity, r/ReverseEngineering, r/meshtastic, r/hacking, r/embedded, r/technology, Beehaw, Lobsters, Lobsters, and Slashdot

Naomi Nix / Washington Post:

In an SEC whistleblower complaint ahead of an upcoming book, Sarah Wynn-Williams alleges Facebook built a censorship system for the CPP in a bid to enter China — Meta went to extreme lengths, including developing a censorship system, in a failed attempt to bring Facebook to millions …

More: Newsmax

Thomas Germain / BBC:

A look at YouTube's hidden world: most of the videos on the platform capture everyday life and have rarely been seen, with the median video having just 41 views — There's a secret side of YouTube, just beyond the guiding hand of the algorithm - and it's nothing like what you know.

Bluesky: @thomasgermain, @antisomniac, and @mausellmoli

Mastodon: @ethanz@social.coop and @FSonder@mastodon.ie. Threads: @tomgermain. Forums: r/Longreads

Todd Spangler / Variety:

A look at YouTube's origins, growth, and domination as the platform turns 20, including an interview with CEO Neal Mohan, who is nearing 10 years at the company

Mastodon: @ricmac@mastodon.social. X: @brianros1, @egkeller, @ytadvertisers, @nealmohan, @seanseaevans, @xpangler, @simonowens, @nealmohan, @variety, @eff, and @xpangler

LinkedIn: Eric Barradas and Abhinav Rastogi

See also Mediagazer

Richard MacManus / Cybercultural:

A look back at GeoCities, launched in 1994 as Beverly Hills Internet, which allowed people who had no technical knowledge of HTML to build web pages — GeoCities, known throughout most of 1995 as Beverly Hills Internet, was one of the first commercial internet services to make it easy …

Forums: Hacker News

Margi Murphy / Bloomberg:

Wikipedia editors and administrators detail the turmoil over maintaining neutrality on pages about the Israel-Hamas war and other conflicts in the Middle East — Shadow edit campaigns and political disputes have created headaches for overwhelmed editors and administrators.

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

A US federal judge allows the Kadrey v. Meta case, in which authors allege Meta violated IP rights by using their books to train Llama models, to move forward — A federal judge is allowing an AI-related copyright lawsuit against Meta to move forward, although he dismissed part of the suit.

More: CourtListener, WebProNews, Cryptopolitan, MLex, CourtListener, and Bloomberg Law

X: @jason_kint, @kcesq, @jason_kint, @jason_kint, and @mjbommar. Forums: Beehaw

Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:

Zoom researchers detail a “Chain of Draft” method to let LLMs accurately solve reasoning problems with as little as 7.6% of the tokens used by current methods — A team of researchers at Zoom Communications has developed a breakthrough technique that could dramatically reduce …

More: arXiv, Silei Xu on GitHub, Robotics News, and The Decoder

Bluesky: @michabbb. Forums: r/LocalLLaMA

Kerry Flynn / Axios:

NYC-based Firsthand, whose tools let marketers and publishers engage consumers through AI agents on their own sites or other sites, raised a $26M Series A — - The New York-based startup previously raised $6.6 million in seed funding, led by Radical Ventures.

More: Tech in Asia and FinSMEs

David Yaffe-Bellany / New York Times:

Source: Bybit hackers planted malicious code to manipulate transactions by compromising a developer's computer at crypto wallet provider Safe, used by Bybit — On the night of Feb. 21, Ben Zhou, the chief executive of the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, logged on to his computer to approve what appeared to be a routine transaction.

More: The Daily Hodl. Bluesky: @evil-genius and @frichetten.com

X: @safe, @schorlukas, @safe, @talbeerysec, and @talbeerysec. LinkedIn: Grant Geyer

Wall Street Journal:

After the ~$1.5B hack, Bybit borrowed about $280M in ether from crypto industry peers to help process 350,000 customer withdrawal requests over 10 hours

Fortune:

Sources describe the collapse of fintech middleman Synapse that left ~$200M in customer money frozen, with entities blaming each other for shoddy recordkeeping — In 2022, after her family had a series of health scares, Kayla Morris sold her house. She cleared $280,000, representing 15 years of her life savings.

More: Fintech Business Weekly. X: @fortunemagazine. Forums: Slashdot

Bloomberg:

As Japan copes with a labor shortage, its market for service robots, which assist people with tasks like waiting tables, is expected to almost triple by 2030 — As Japan copes with a labor shortage, the service robot market is expected to triple in the next five years.

More: Interesting Engineering, South China Morning Post on YouTube, The European Business Review, Reuters on YouTube, South China Morning Post, South China Morning Post, Reuters, and Bloomberg

X: @erica_yokoyama, @_alice_evans, and @bloombergtv

LinkedIn: Momoka Yokoyama, Ross Dawson, and Ed Johnson. Forums: Hacker News

Wall Street Journal:

Sources detail how crypto flooded Trump with cash, including $50M+ in donations from at least eight execs, and how he is doing much of what the industry wants — The president had called cryptocurrency a ‘scam’ but during his campaign last year he was persuaded of its value, especially as an investment for the Trump family

More: Wall Street Journal, The Economic Times, Fortune, and New York Times

X: @jdawsey1, @atrupar, @rebeccaballhaus, and @rebeccaballhaus. Forums: r/politics

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:20 AM ET, March 9, 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

Sara Fischer / Axios:

60 Minutes' CECOT segment, pulled by Bari Weiss, was mistakenly aired in Canada via an app owned by Global Television, which airs 60 Minutes in the country

Ali Watkins / New York Times:

Channel 4 says Jimmy Kimmel will share a message on Christmas Day as part of its Alternative Christmas Message show, emphasizing the importance of free speech

Reuters:

Israel's cabinet votes to shut down popular national radio station Army Radio, saying it has become a platform for views that “attack” its armed forces

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More News

Bloomberg:

Starting September 1, schools in Beijing will offer at least eight hours of AI classes per academic year for primary and secondary students

More: Hindustan Times. Mastodon: @bgrinter@mastodon.sdf.org

Reuters:

Sources detail the nearly 10-hour-long tech meltdown of the European Central Bank's main payment system on February 27 due to a piece of malfunctioning hardware

LinkedIn: John O.

Ashley Capoot / CNBC:

Freed, which offers an AI scribe that automates clinical notetaking in real time and is used by 17K+ clinicians, raised a $30M Series A led by Sequoia Capital

More: citybiz, Built In San Francisco, Freed, Freed, HIT Consultant, Tech Startups, and VC News Daily

David Heaney / UploadVR:

Meta will recommend using Unity and Unreal's built-in OpenXR support, after developers said Meta's Unity and Unreal integrations blocked other PC VR headsets

More: Meta. X: @kentbye, @fredemmott, @heaney555, and @cixliv. Forums: r/OculusQuest

Wall Street Journal:

Sources: activist investor Mantle Ridge has built a $1B+ stake in Cognizant and believes the tech services firm, which has a $41B+ market cap, is undervalued

More: The Economic Times, Reuters, and Bloomberg

Earlier Picks

Julie Bort / TechCrunch:

CoreWeave's S-1 reveals its three co-founders own less than 3% of Class A shares after cashing out ~$488M, but still control ~80% of votes via Class B shares

Bluesky: @kellblog, @quinnypig.com, and @silversalty

Aditya Kalra / Reuters:

The CCI will review the antitrust case filed by an Indian distributors' federation over alleged deep discounting practices by Zomato, Swiggy, and Zepto

More: Trak.in, Inc42 Media, and India Dispatch

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Crogl, whose AI agent helps cybersecurity researchers analyze daily network alerts to find and fix security incidents, raised a $25M Series A and a $5M seed

More: SiliconANGLE and FinSMEs

Bluesky: @benalterman.com. X: @menloventures and @croglai

LinkedIn: David Dorsey, Baris Aksoy, Tim Tully, and Crogl, Inc.

Josh Sisco / Bloomberg:

The FTC told a US district judge it is still determining who Amazon's competitors are for its 2023 antitrust lawsuit and the list could include Walmart and eBay

More: Wall Street Journal and GeekWire

Bluesky: @bloomberg.com. Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to

Jody Godoy / Reuters:

Filings: the US DOJ drops a bid to force Google to sell its AI investments to boost search competition but still seeks a court order requiring it to sell Chrome