Techmeme
March 21, 2025, 11:30 AM

Top News

Paris Martineau / The Information:
Source: US Senators Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham plan to introduce a bipartisan bill with wide support that would make Section 230 expire on January 1, 2027  —  In June 1995, two young congressmen reached across the aisle to introduce legislation that would become the defining legal protection …
Alex Reisner / The Atlantic:
A look at LibGen, one of the largest online pirate libraries, with 7.5M+ books and 81M+ research papers, allegedly used by Meta and OpenAI to train AI models  —  Meta pirated millions of books to train its AI.  Search through them here.  —  When employees at meta started developing …
More: The Atlantic, Sherwood News, Music Ally, The Overspill, The Canberra Times, Marcus on AI, Lou In Progress, ARTnews, Music Technology Policy, Twisted Dreams, Ellipsus, south downs founding father …, and The Daddy Complex
Forums: r/Piracy, r/books, and r/technology
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang walks back his January 2025 comments casting doubt on useful quantum computing within 15 years, which triggered a quantum stock sell-off  —  Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Thursday walked back comments he made in January, when he cast doubt on whether useful quantum computers …
Bloomberg:
European Central Bank Chief Economist Philip Lane says Europe needs a digital euro to avoid rising stablecoin risks and reduce reliance on US payment firms  —  Europe needs a digital currency to safeguard against threats from new forms of money like stablecoins, and reduce reliance …
Gary Rivlin / Bloomberg:
A book excerpt from AI Valley details the 2024 mass defection of staff at Inflection AI, which seemed to be thriving but faced scaling challenges, to Microsoft  —  An excerpt from AI Valley tells the story of why the staff at Inflection AI, which seemed to be thriving, defected en masse to Microsoft in 2024.
Cheyenne Ligon / CoinDesk:
The US SEC says proof-of-work crypto mining doesn't trigger federal securities laws and mining operators do not need to register their transactions with the SEC  —  In a staff statement published Thursday, the SEC said that both solo mining and mining pool operations would fail the first prong of the Howey Test.
Kara Fellows / CBS News:
Google says it uncovered and eliminated 10K+ illegitimate Google Maps listings, including for fake businesses, and sues the alleged scammers behind the fraud  —  Google says it uncovered thousands of illegitimate listings, including for fake businesses, on Google Maps and has announced …
Wired:
Interviews with 50+ current and ex-staffers reveal Google's two-year race to catch up with OpenAI, including through layoffs and lowering some guardrails  —  The search giant should've been first to the chatbot revolution.  It wasn't.  So it punched back with late nights, layoffs—and lowering some guardrails.
The Guardian:
Researchers unveil Aardvark, an AI weather prediction system that they say uses thousands of times less compute and is tens of times faster than current methods  —  Researchers say Aardvark Weather uses thousands of times less computing power and is much faster than current systems

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Generate videos with Veo 3 in Google Gemini  —  Create high-quality, 8-second videos with Veo 3, our state-of-the-art AI video generator.  Try it with a Google AI Pro plan or get the highest access with the Ultra plan.
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI safety, robotics, stablecoins, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 50 topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
Zoho:
Introducing document delivery and authentication via WhatsApp in Zoho Sign  —  Let's be real: How many of us still send out SMSs in our daily lives?  In many countries, the number is vanishingly small.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Lenny's Podcast:
How 80,000 companies build with AI: products as organisms, the death of org charts, and why agents will outnumber employees by 2026 | Asha Sharma (CVP of AI Platform at Microsoft)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Great Chat:
Are startups a young person's game?
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Tech Brew Ride Home:
The First Wrongful Death Lawsuit Against OpenAI
Tech news headlines every day. 15 minutes and you're up to date. From Tech Brew, Morning Brew's tech hub.
Subscribe to Tech Brew Ride Home.
Big Technology Podcast:
The Hidden Science Behind Brain-Computer Interfaces -- With Sally Adee
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
Why Henry Blodget is Building Another Media Company
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Acquired:
Alphabet Inc.
Learn the playbooks that built the world's greatest companies - and how you can apply them as a founder, operator, or investor.
Subscribe to Acquired.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 11:30 AM ET, March 21, 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.

More News

Counterpoint Research:
Abner Li / 9to5Google:

Earlier Picks

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Bloomberg: