Techmeme
May 16, 2025, 10:30 AM

Top News

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
After Grok's “white genocide in South Africa” X replies, xAI says “an unauthorized modification was made to Grok response bot's prompt” at 3:15 AM PST on May 14  —  xAI blamed an “unauthorized modification” for a bug in its AI-powered Grok chatbot that caused Grok …
Dominic Preston / The Verge:
Epic Games says that Apple rejected its latest Fortnite submission to the US App Store and the game on iOS will be “offline worldwide until Apple unblocks it”  —  Epic says that the game is ‘offline’ on iPhones everywhere after Apple rejected its App Store resubmission.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Meta has delayed rolling out its Behemoth LLM, internally slated for an April release, to fall or later, after struggling to improve its capabilities  —  The company's struggle to improve the capabilities of latest AI model mirrors issues at some top AI companies
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Sony's Haven Studios founder Jade Raymond leaves the company; sources: some developers were worried about its first game's external test reception and progress  —  Her company, Haven Studios, is developing an online shooter title called Fairgames … PlayStation leadership didn't give Haven staff …
Reuters:
Charter announces plans to merge with Cox Communications in a deal that values Cox at $34.5B including debt and unites two of the biggest US cable providers  —  Charter Communications (CHTR.O) said on Friday it would merge with Cox Communications in a deal that would value its privately held rival …
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Court filing: Anthropic apologizes for one of its expert witnesses citing an article hallucinated by Claude in the company's legal battle with music publishers  —  A lawyer representing Anthropic admitted to using an erroneous citation created by the company's Claude AI chatbot …
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Windsurf launches SWE-1, its first family of software engineering AI models, claiming its largest model rivals Claude 3.5 Sonnet, GPT-4.1, and Gemini 2.5 Pro  —  On Thursday, Windsurf, a startup that develops popular AI tools for software engineers, announced the launch of its first family …
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Take-Two reports Q4 net bookings up 17% YoY to $1.58B, vs. $1.55B est., net revenue up 13% YoY to $1.58B, and forecasts FY 2026 net bookings below expectations  —  Bookings, a measure of sales, grew 17% to $1.58 billion in the fourth quarter ended March 31, surpassing Wall Street projections of $1.55 billion.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Sources: Microsoft has stopped production of its Surface Laptop Studio 2 and plans to mark the device as end of life in June, with no apparent successor plans  —  The Surface Laptop Studio 2 is no longer being manufactured and there's no replacement in sight.
Bloomberg:
Source: Coinbase's hackers had bribed enough customer service representatives to achieve effectively on-demand access to customer info in the past five months  —  On the long list of crypto companies that have been hacked, there are plenty of examples of financial losses that are much more painful …
Niket Nishant / Reuters:
Wall Street Journal:
Analysis: since January, 36+ staff and associates of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Palmer Luckey got federal roles that oversee their companies  —  See how allies of four tech titans are staffing the agencies meant to regulate them, raising ethics flags and securing billions
Camille Bromley / Columbia Journalism Review:
Q&A with Wired's Steven Levy on the evolving relationship between the tech industry and the press, media outlets' licensing deals with AI companies, and more  —  “What you find when you get into a place is always more interesting than any preconception you have.”
New York Times:
Coinbase says it is working with the US SEC to close an investigation into whether it misstated its numbers by noting 100M+ “verified users” in its 2021 IPO doc  —  The inquiry continued even after the commission dropped a lawsuit accusing Coinbase of illegally marketing digital currencies to the public.
Zach Vallese / CNBC:

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More News

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Earlier Picks

Jon Victor / The Information:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Bloomberg: