Techmeme
January 20, 2025, 2:10 PM

Top News

Politico:
CoinGecko: Trump's memecoin, with a $9B+ market cap, is around the 25th most valuable cryptocurrency; some in crypto call Official Trump a “horrible look”  —  Trump's memecoin has taken off since debuting late Friday night.  Not everyone in crypto is thrilled.
Alan Suderman / Associated Press:
Bitcoin passed $108K hours ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration, after topping $100K for the first time in December 2024 before falling to ~$90K  —  The price of bitcoin surged to over $109,000 early Monday, just hours ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration …
Tim Copeland / The Block:
A memecoin named Official Barron Trump hit a $460M market cap before falling 95%; a Pump.fun user behind it has debuted other unofficial coins called “official”  —  - A memecoin called Official Barron Trump rose to a $460 million market cap on speculation that it might have been launched by Barron Trump himself.
Axios:
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
Chinese AI lab DeepSeek debuts DeepSeek-R1, an MIT-licensed model that does well with math, code, and reasoning tasks, alongside other open and distilled models  —  DeepSeek are the Chinese AI lab who dropped the best currently available open weights LLM on Christmas day, DeepSeek v3.
Wall Street Journal:
China suggests it is willing to work with Donald Trump to keep TikTok operating in the US, after previously saying that it would block any forced sale of TikTok  —  Founder of app's parent, Beijing-based ByteDance, met with Elon Musk last year  —  SINGAPORE—China suggested it was willing …
Wes Davis / The Verge:
More: Wired, NBC News, Ars Technica, Search Engine Land, Reuters, Daring Fireball, Passionfruit, 9to5Mac, NBC Bay Area, The Verge, New York Times, RTÉ, MEDIANAMA, Cautious Optimism, The Colorado Sun, Joe.My.God., Africanews, Punchbowl News, Yeni Şafak, Android Headlines, TechSpot, 9to5Mac, Tech Wire Asia, Interesting Engineering, Nairametrics, Pajhwok Afghan News, Digital Music News, Wired, Information Age, Yahoo Finance, Armenpress, The Standard, Cryptopolitan, SiliconANGLE, Howie Town, ANI News, Engadget, Financial Times, New Yorker, Bloomberg, The Hollywood Reporter, The Boston Globe, Politico, Mediaite, Washington Post, and CNBC
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Avery Lotz / Axios:
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
CBS News:
Source: DOGE co-lead Vivek Ramaswamy will leave the task force, as he plans a campaign for Ohio governor; sources: Musk associates undercut Ramaswamy for weeks  —  Vivek Ramaswamy, President-elect Donald Trump's choice to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
X rolls out a dedicated video tab in the US in the app's bottom bar, letting users vertically scroll through short videos, after launching a TV app in 2024  —  Social network X is trying to capitalize on the removal of ByteDance apps like TikTok and Lemon8 from U.S. app stores by launching a dedicated vertical video feed.
Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
The European Commission says Facebook, X, YouTube, and others agreed to an updated code of conduct, first set up in May 2016, over hate speech under the DSA  —  Meta's (META.O) Facebook, Elon Musk's X, Google's (GOOGL.O) YouTube and other tech companies have agreed to do more to tackle online …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Bluesky launches video custom feeds for TikTok-style vertical videos in its mobile app, saying “we had to get in on the video action, too”  —  It is the product shipping time for all social networks with TikTok's services in the restoration phase, and the app still unavailable in the App Store and the Play Store.
Megan Sauer / CNBC:
An interview with Jeff Atwood, co-founder of Stack Overflow, which was acquired by Prosus for $1.8B in 2021, on his plans to donate half his net worth and more  —  Plenty of wealthy people plan to donate most of their fortunes to philanthropic causes.  Jeff Atwood says he'll actually do it within the next five years.
Julian E. Barnes / New York Times:
A look at the CIA's AI use, including a chatbot that lets analysts talk to virtual versions of foreign presidents and prime ministers to predict their behaviors  —  The spy agency is trying to give its teams better tools and make it easier for the private sector to develop technology for their secretive work.
Forums: r/artificial

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