Techmeme
January 21, 2025, 9:35 AM

Top News

Bobby Allyn / NPR:
Donald Trump signs an EO pausing the TikTok ban for 75 days to give ByteDance more time to reach a deal and aims to protect TikTok's providers from liability  —  President Trump signed an executive order on Monday seeking to hit pause on a law banning TikTok and to provide a liability shield …
Washington Post:
Legal experts and lawmakers: Trump's EO halting the TikTok ban may not protect companies that host or distribute the app, as Trump cannot overturn Congress' law  —  Measure directs Justice Department to not enforce the law for 75 days while administration determines “the appropriate course forward.”
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Card game Marvel Snap, published by ByteDance's Nuverse, is back online in the US; developer Second Dinner plans to find a new publisher to avoid future bans  —  Marvel Snap is back online in the US after access was cut off Saturday night due to the law that banned TikTok and other ByteDance-owned apps.
Wall Street Journal:
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Trump signs an EO renaming the US Digital Service as the US DOGE Service, directing agency heads to form “DOGE Teams” of at least four employees within 30 days  —  The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an advisory commission spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk recommending deep cuts …
New York Times:
Sources: Elon Musk is likely to get a West Wing office, putting him close to Donald Trump, after Musk had for many days been asking about his level of access  —  The world's richest man had been expected to be situated in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, but a West Wing office would give him closer access to President Trump.
David Shepardson / Reuters:
Trump revokes Biden's 2023 executive order that sought to reduce the risks that AI poses to consumers, workers, and national security, fulfilling a GOP pledge  —  U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday revoked a 2023 executive order signed by Joe Biden that sought to reduce the risks …
James Hunt / The Block:
MicroStrategy bought 11,000 bitcoin for ~$1.1B, an average of $101,191, between January 13 and 20, taking its holding to 461,000, worth $48B+, or 2%+ of supply  —  - MicroStrategy has purchased another 11,000 BTC for approximately $1.1 billion at an average price of $101,191 per bitcoin.
Noah Smith / Noahpinion:
How purchasing Trump's memecoin, of which he reportedly holds $50B+ at January 19 prices, could be used to buy favors without actually transferring him funds  —  Crypto is, in fact, about sending people money.  —  Financial disclosure: I hold a modest amount of BTC and ETH.
Politico:
CoinGecko: Trump's memecoin, with a ~$7.5B market cap, is around the 28th 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.
Matt Novak / Gizmodo:
During a speech after Donald Trump's inauguration, Elon Musk delivered what many saw as two “Nazi salutes”; Musk posted a three-minute video of his speech to X  —  The billionaire Tesla CEO has a history of racist comments. … Elon Musk gave what appeared to be Nazi salutes …
More: The Guardian, Wired, Rolling Stone, The Hill, Time, BusinessLIVE, New York Times, New York Post, The Independent, Joe.My.God., Boing Boing, Suggest, Le Monde, Business Today, Metro.co.uk, Interesting Engineering, Hollywood in Toto, Al Jazeera, 9News, Raw Story, WUSA, The Mirror, New York Daily News, AS USA, Newsweek, Times of India, The Forward, Hindustan Times, The Daily Beast, NZ Herald, The Economic Times, The Wrap, Jerusalem Post, The Atlantic, Deadline, The Daily Caller, and New Republic
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.

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More News

Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post:

Earlier Picks

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: