Techmeme
April 13, 2025, 8:50 PM

Top News

Financial Times:
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says consumer electronics exempt from tariffs may be included in semiconductor tariffs likely coming in “a month or two”  —  US president says products given reprieve will fall under separate regime  —  Donald Trump signalled on Sunday …
Keith Bradsher / New York Times:
China has suspended exports of a wide range of rare earth minerals and magnets that are crucial for making semiconductors, robots, drones, cars, and more  —  Beijing has suspended exports of certain rare earth minerals and magnets that are crucial for the world's car, semiconductor and aerospace industries.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is working on a lighter and cheaper Vision Pro and a Mac-tethered model with ultra-low latency; iPadOS 19 overhaul will make it more like macOS  —  Also: company prepares more macOS-like features for iPadOS 19.  —  Apple is readying two new Vision Pro headsets, but glasses have become a bigger goal in the long run.
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
A look at slopsquatting, a supply chain attack where threat actors create malicious packages on indexes using AI-hallucinated names resembling popular libraries  —  A new class of supply chain attacks named ‘slopsquatting’ has emerged from the increased use of generative AI tools for coding …
Martine Paris / Forbes:
Sam Altman says ChatGPT users had doubled in the past few weeks and that “10% of the world uses our systems”, which would peg the number closer to 800M users  —  Martine Paris is a San Francisco-based reporter covering trends in AI  —  OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman might …
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Sankalp Phartiyal / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple produced $22B worth of iPhones in India in the 12 months ended March 2025, up nearly 60% YoY, and now makes 20% of its iPhones in the country  —  The Cupertino, California-headquartered company now makes 20%, or one in five, of its prized iPhones in the South Asian country …
Richard A. Webster / ProPublica:
A 2024 Louisiana parole law cedes much of the parole board's power to TIGER, an algorithm with immutable risk scores, blocking thousands from early release  —  A Louisiana law cedes much of the power of the parole board to an algorithm that bars thousands of prisoners from a shot at early release.
Ben Jiang / South China Morning Post:
Alibaba's AI assistant Quark surpassed ByteDance's Doubao to become China's most popular AI app in March, with ~150M and ~100M MAUs globally, respectively  —  Quark's rapid ascent comes as Alibaba has transformed the app from a cloud storage and search service into an ‘AI super assistant’
More: Tech in Asia
Politico:
A French law requiring adult sites to run age checks and block users under 18 became applicable to sites based in France and outside of the EU on April 11  —  A new law requires porn sites to check the age of users in France.  —  This article is also available in: French
David Yaffe-Bellany / New York Times:
Lawmakers who benefited from crypto super PACs are advancing crypto priorities in Congress, like the Genius Act, which establishes rules for stablecoin issuers  —  At the end of a three-hour hearing last month, Senator Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona, sided with a group of Republicans in a hotly contested debate.

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James O'Donnell / MIT Technology Review:
Washington Post: