Techmeme
May 21, 2025, 11:55 AM

Top News

Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Epic Games says Fortnite for iPadOS and iOS is back on the US App Store, and on the Epic Games Store and AltStore in the EU; Apple kicked it off in August 2020  —  After a nearly five-year hiatus, Fortnite is back on the App Store for iPhone and iPad users in the United States.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft files an amicus brief supporting Epic Games' App Store fight and blames Apple for delaying the Xbox mobile gaming store, first announced in May 2024  —  Microsoft has filed support for Epic Games' fight with Apple, as it wants to launch new Xbox mobile improvements.
Eleanor Olcott / Financial Times:
Reuters:
Distributed Denial of Secrets: the TeleMessage hacker stole messages from 60+ US government users covering about one day ending on May 4, including travel plans  —  A hacker who breached the communications service used by former Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz earlier …
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Google's I/O keynote was both scary and chill, a fever dream of sizzle reels selling how AI changes everything, even search, and can give users superpowers  —  At its annual developer conference, the company seeks to reassure everyone that AI is for everyday utility — but the great disruption to the web continues
Michael L Hicks / Android Central:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Victoria Song / The Verge:
MIT Technology Review:
Analysis: AI's energy consumption is exploding, with data centers' electricity use doubling from 2017 to 2023, accounting for 4.4% of all US energy consumption  —  The emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn't tracking and consider where it's heading next.
William Langley / Financial Times:
Inside China's “stolen iPhone building”: electronics traders in Shenzhen describe how even remotely locked stolen iPhones can be stripped and sold for a profit  —  We track the roaring trade of mobiles grabbed in London and New York, then sold on a single district in Shenzhen
Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:
Volvo expands its Google partnership to integrate Gemini across its model lineup, the first automaker to do so, hoping to ease its drivers' “cognitive load”  —  Gemini can ease a driver's “cognitive load” so they can keep their eyes on the road, the automaker says.
CoinDesk:
The US SEC sues Unicoin and its executives, alleging they broke securities laws by raising $100M+ for crypto tokens falsely claimed to be backed by real estate  —  The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued crypto company Unicoin and three executives on Tuesday night on fraud charges …
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Maine AG filing: Coinbase says its recent data breach impacted 69,461 individuals; stolen data included government IDs, account info, and personal identifiers  —  Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange with over 100 million customers, revealed that a recent data breach in which cybercriminals stole customer …
Kevin Collier / NBC News:
Matthew Lane, a 19-year-old from Massachusetts, pleads guilty to hacking two US companies and extorting them for ransoms; a source says one firm is PowerSchool  —  The Massachusetts man agreed to plead guilty to obtaining information from a protected computer and aggravated identity theft.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
CNBC:
Google announces new video and image generation models Veo 3 and Imagen 4, new AI filmmaking tool Flow, and expanded access to music generation model Lyria 2  —  Google on Tuesday announced Veo 3, an AI video generator that can also create and incorporate audio.
Emilia David / VentureBeat:
Laura Onita / Financial Times:
UK retailer M&S says it expects a £300M operating profit hit from an April cyberattack and disruption to continue until July 2025; its market cap is down ~£750M  —  UK retailer discloses that breach came via supplier and warns online operations will be disrupted until July
Keach Hagey / Wired:
Book excerpt: a profile of AI-obsessed autodidact Eliezer Yudkowsky, who introduced the DeepMind founders to Peter Thiel and inspired DeepMind's Shane Legg  —  The AI doomer and the AI boomer both created each other's monsters. … Like Sam Altman, Peter Thiel had long been obsessed …
Forums: r/artificial
Bloomberg:
AI model ranking project LMArena spins off from UC Berkeley and raises a $100M seed led by a16z and UC Investments, sources say at a $600M valuation  —  An effort that began at UC Berkeley as a way to rank AI models has raised $100 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz.
Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:
Filed, which uses AI to automate tax professionals' low-value tasks, raised $17.2M across seed and preseed led by Northzone, Day One Ventures, and others  —  Tax software startup Filed Inc. said today it has raised $17.2 million in funding to try and fix what it says is the accounting …
More: FinSMEs

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More News

Colin Lecher / The Markup:
Tobias Mann / The Register:

Earlier Picks

CNBC:
Charles Szumski / Euractiv:
Igor Bonifacic / Engadget: