Techmeme
December 12, 2025, 1:01 PM

Top News

Reuters:
President Trump signs an executive order aimed at preempting a growing number of state AI laws, saying “we want to have one central source of approval”  —  U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order on artificial intelligence that will attempt to preempt …
Igor Bonifacic / Engadget:
In his EO, Trump orders US AG Pam Bondi to create an “AI Litigation Task Force” that meets regularly with David Sacks to challenge “inconsistent” state AI laws  —  The administration will also attempt to prevent states with “onerous” AI laws from accessing broadband funding.
More: NPR, CNN, Florida Politics, Tech in Asia, and Benzinga
Bluesky: @mabinogi62 and @kenbazinetForums: r/NPR
Reuters:
Reddit files a lawsuit against Australia to overturn its social media ban for under-16s, saying it “infringes the implied freedom of political communication”  —  Message board website Reddit (RDDT.N) on Friday filed a lawsuit asking the High Court to overturn Australia's social media ban …
Lucas Ropek / TechCrunch:
Sam Altman's Tools for Humanity updates World to make it a “super app” with encrypted chat integration and a Venmo-like tool for sending and requesting crypto  —  World, the biometric ID verification project co-founded by Sam Altman, released the newest version of its app today …
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Tim Sweeney: the Ninth Circuit's decision on the Epic v. Apple contempt ruling appeal “completely shuts down” App Store rules letting Apple collect “junk fees”  —  In an interview, Epic Games' CEO says that an appeals court ruling in its case against Apple is ‘really awesome for all developers.’
Bloomberg:
Alex Heath / Sources:
An interview with Nikita Bier, who wants to lure journalists back to X with a rebuilt recommendation algorithm with no keyword suppression or manual downranking  —  Product chief Nikita Bier on journalists who left: “We have to earn their trust.”  Also: Fidji Simo on OpenAI's Code Red, and a new episode of ACCESS.
Carmen Arroyo / Bloomberg:
Sources: X reported $752M in Q3 revenue, up 17% YoY, a net loss of $577.4M, and EBITDA of ~$454M, up 16%; revenue for the first nine months of 2025 was $2B+  —  Sales at Elon Musk's X jumped during the third quarter, but the social network is still dealing with significant costs …
Ben Weiss / Fortune:
YouTube launches an option for US-based creators to receive payouts in PayPal's stablecoin, PYUSD  —  Big Tech continues to tiptoe into crypto.  The latest example is a move by YouTube to let creators on the video platform choose to receive payouts in PayPal's stablecoin.
Brody Ford / Bloomberg:
Sources: Oracle pushed back the completion dates for some data centers it is building for OpenAI from 2027 to 2028, largely due to labor and material shortages  —  Oracle Corp. has pushed back the completion dates for some of the data centers it's developing for the artificial intelligence …
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Kirsty Needham / Reuters:
Papua New Guinea says Google will build three subsea cables for the country, a $120M effort funded by Australia, amid China boosting its influence in the region  —  Papua New Guinea said on Friday that Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google will build three subsea cables, funded by Australia under …
More: Tech in Asia

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