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April 16, 2025, 1:25 AM
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Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Meta offered $450M in late March to settle the FTC's antitrust case and raised its offer to ~$1B as the trial neared; the FTC had demanded $30B  —  The FTC wanted $30 billion to drop its case.  Zuckerberg offered much less and hoped Trump would back him up.
Bloomberg:
Email: Mark Zuckerberg considered spinning off Instagram in 2018 as he increasingly became concerned that its success was hurting the Facebook social network  —  Mark Zuckerberg considered spinning off Instagram into a separate company in 2018 as he increasingly became concerned that the photo …
Bloomberg:
FTC v. Meta: Mark Zuckerberg testified about his acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, including a 2012 email exchange rationalizing the apps' acquisition  —  - Meta CEO asked in email if deal may ‘neutralize a competitor’  — FTC claims acquisitions created a social networking monopoly
Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Mark Zuckerberg's $1B Instagram and $19B WhatsApp deals, central to the FTC's antitrust case, were mocked at the time, and the trial hinges on hypotheticals
The Verge:
Sources: OpenAI is in the early stages of building its own X-like social network, focused on ChatGPT image generation, and is asking some outsiders for feedback  —  Is Sam Altman ready to up his rivalry with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg? … OpenAI is working on its own X-like social network …
More: The Guardian, TechCrunch, Business Today, Moneycontrol, Decrypt, New York Magazine, CNBC, Financial Express, Digit, Lowyat.NET, The Crypto Times, Marcus on AI, Spyglass, The Indian Express, The Information, Social Media Today, BGR, Dexerto, Windows Central, Mashable, Gizmodo, CoinGape, Tom's Guide, Livemint, PYMNTS.com, Android Authority, VentureBeat, Fast Company, ZeroHedge News, Business Insider, Engadget, iPhone in Canada Blog, Türkiye Today, Neowin, MakeUseOf, Interesting Engineering, PCMag, Techstrong.ai, MacRumors, WinBuzzer, and Cointelegraph
Bluesky: @hypervisible, @mantzarlis.com, @jerthorp, @ernie.tedium.co, @carnage4life, @prietschka, @snmrrw, @lorak, @garymarcus, @caseynewton, @vortexegg.com, and @karlbode.com.  Mastodon: @ben@werd.social.  Threads: @the_coach_life
X: @jam3scampbell, @vxunderground, @simonmxtthews, @birdyword, @btibor91, @amir, @raywongy, @zacbowden, @morqon, @andrewcurran_, @bindureddy, @steph_palazzolo, @jukanlosreve, @davewiner, @scottnover, @sirodoht, @danielnewmanuv, @billym2k, @kyliebytes, @banklesshq, @scobleizer, @katienotopoulos, @kyliebytes, @altryne, @krzysztof_lysy, @alexeheath, @restoreorderusa, @garymarcus, @pitdesi, @briansolis, @phantom, @polymarket, @nickadobos, @amitisinvesting, @turnernovak, and @rihardjarc.  LinkedIn: Alison McCauley
Forums: Hacker News, r/europe, r/BetterOffline, r/KanagawaWave, r/worldnews, r/unitedkingdom, r/StockMarket, r/artificial, r/singularity, r/ChatGPT, r/technology, Slashdot, and MacRumors Forums
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David DiMolfetta / Nextgov/FCW:
Mitre, the nonprofit research organization behind the CVE program, says the US government funding needed to develop and operate CVE will expire on April 16  —  The U.S. government funding needed for non-profit research giant MITRE to develop, operate and maintain its flagship Common Vulnerabilities …
CNBC:
Filing: Nvidia says it will record a $5.5B charge after the US said it would require a license to export the H20 chips to China; NVDA drops 6%+ after hours  —  Nvidia said on Tuesday that it will take a quarterly charge of about $5.5 billion tied to exporting H20 graphics processing units to China and other destinations.
Reuters:
Figma confidentially files for a US IPO; the company was valued at $12.5B in a May 2024 tender offer  —  Cloud-based designer platform Figma on Tuesday confidentially filed for an initial public offering in the United States, more than a year after a $20 billion deal to be acquired by Adobe (ADBE.O) hit regulatory roadblocks.
Mohar Chatterjee / Politico:
Sources: the US DOD's Defense Digital Service is effectively shutting down as nearly all staff are resigning, saying they were sidelined by DOGE's efforts  —  Employees of a defense tech unit say they were sidelined by DOGE.  “Either we die quickly or we die slowly,” says the director.
Jenna McLaughlin / NPR:
Whistleblower: at NLRB, DOGE staff disabled monitoring tools, deleted logs, one worked on “NxGenBdoorExtract”; one DOGE account tried to log in via a Russian IP  —  In the first days of March, a team of advisers from President Trump's new Department of Government Efficiency initiative arrived …
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Google rolls out its text-to-video AI model Veo 2 to Gemini Advanced subscribers and makes its Whisk Animate tool available for Google One AI Premium users  —  A new Whisk Animate tool is coming to Google One AI Premium users, as well. … Google is letting Gemini Advanced subscribers try out Veo 2 …
Ben Sherry / Inc:
Anthropic's Claude adds Research, capable of searching the web and internal documents to give comprehensive answers, in beta for Max, Team, Enterprise plans  —  The integration should make Claude even more effective as a virtual assistant.  Plus, there's a new ‘Research’ mode.
Reuters:
Chinese state media: police in Harbin accuse the NSA of launching “advanced” cyberattacks during the Asian Winter Games in February 2025 and name three agents  —  Chinese police in the northeastern city of Harbin have accused the United States National Security Agency (NSA) …
Igor Bonifacic / Engadget:
4chan is down after an apparent hack late on April 14; an Imgur post seems to show a hacker gained shell access to 4chan's hosting server and doxxed some users  —  More like 404chan, amirite?  —  4chan, the controversial forum known for birthing early meme culture and Gamergate, is down, following an apparent hack.
PYMNTS.com:
Cape Town-based Stitch, which provides an online payments suite to enterprises, raised a $55M Series B led by QED Investors, bringing its total funding to $107M  —  South Africa-based payments infrastructure company Stitch raised $55 million in a Series B funding round to expand its offerings for enterprise merchants.
Debaroti Adhikary / Moneycontrol:
Indian food delivery and quick commerce platform Swiggy launches Pyng, an online marketplace to let users find verified professionals like financial advisors  —  The app will help connect customers to verified professions including health & wellness experts, financial advisors …

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From Mediagazer

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Arkansas PBS severs ties with the PBS network, the first state public TV system to do so since Congress cut CPB funds, citing the annual $2M+ membership cost

Pamela McClintock / The Hollywood Reporter:
Disney's Zootopia 2 surpasses $1B at the global box office, the fastest PG-rated film to do so after just 17 days in release

Trip Gabriel / New York Times:
R. Bruce Dold, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at the Chicago Tribune, where he became editor-in-chief and publisher, is dead at 70

More News

Earlier Picks

David Pierce / The Verge:
Notion releases Notion Mail, a lightweight Gmail client to help users schedule meetings and organize and draft emails, available as a free macOS and web app
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Nvidia unveils its RTX 5060 family, including the RTX 5060 Ti with 4,608 CUDA cores for $379 with 8GB of VRAM or $429 for 16GB of VRAM, launching on April 16
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google rolls out a Play services update, including an Android security feature to auto-reboot phones and tablets that are “locked for three consecutive days”
Financial Times:
FCC Chair Brendan Carr says “allied western democracies” need to focus on China and those “concerned about Starlink” should be more fearful of a Chinese version
Takashi Mochizuki / Bloomberg:
Japan's FTC orders Google to stop alleged abuse of its market power over local smartphone manufacturers, ahead of high-stakes US trade negotiations this week
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