Techmeme
February 17, 2025, 8:45 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
President Xi meets Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, and others, signaling Beijing's support for the long-marginalized private sector  —  - Meeting signals a more supportive stance toward private firms  — Xi promises relief from excessive fines, level playing field
Reuters:
South Korea's data protection authority says DeepSeek app downloads have been suspended in the country after DeepSeek failed to follow its personal data rules  —  South Korea's data protection authority on Monday said it had temporarily suspended the domestic service of Chinese AI app DeepSeek since Saturday.
Matt Binder / disruptionist:
X shows error messages when trying to share Signal's Signal.me links in DMs, posts, and profile pages, and a warning page if users click on already posted links  —  Signal has been a primary method of communication for federal workers looking to blow the whistle on DOGE.
Namanyay Goel / N's Blog:
New junior developers are reliant on Copilot, Claude, and other AI tools, meaning foundational coding knowledge is missing, potentially creating future problems  —  100k+ views 70+ votes 50+ votes  —  Something's been bugging me about how new devs and I need to talk about it.
Max Tani / Semafor:
Documents: the NYT greenlights using select internal and external AI tools for editorial and product staff, including from OpenAI, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft  —  The Scoop  —  The New York Times is greenlighting the use of AI for its product and editorial staff, saying that internal tools …
Financial Times:
Surj, the sporting arm of Saudi Arabia's PIF, plans to invest $1B in DAZN and a new joint venture with the sports streamer; source: Surj will take a <5% stake  —  Surj Sports Investment will take stake in DAZN and help fund a Middle East broadcasting joint venture
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:
Mistral debuts Mistral Saba, a 24B-parameter custom-trained model for Arabic language and culture, via its API; Saba bests Mistral Small 3 for Arabic content  —  The next frontier for large language models (LLMs), one of the key technologies underpinning the boom in generative AI tools, might be geographical.

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Featured Podcasts

Decoder with Nilay Patel:
Ring's Jamie Siminoff thinks AI can reduce crime
A show from the Verge about big ideas - and other problems.
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Grit:
Synthetic Data and the Future of AI | Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
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Lenny's Podcast:
The Godmother of AI on jobs, robots & why world models are next | Dr. Fei-Fei Li
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
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Big Technology Podcast:
Inside The AI Bubble: Debt, Depreciation, and Losses — With Gil Luria
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Hard Fork:
Data Centers in Space + A.I. Policy on the Right + A Gemini History Mystery
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
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Great Chat:
Turns out, there's still a line (don't mock the pope)
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
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More News

David Barnett / The Guardian:

Earlier Picks

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: