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February 20, 2025, 12:25 PM
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Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Amazon plans to discontinue its Appstore for Android and its Coins digital currency, used to purchase games and apps, on August 20, 2025  —  Amazon will discontinue its app store for Android on August 20 this year.  The company sent a notice to developers indicating that they will no longer be able to submit new apps to the store.
Wired:
Investigation: Google's Display & Video 360 ad platform lets users target Americans' sensitive personal data, despite Google's rules against such practices  —  Google enables marketers to target people with serious illnesses and crushing debt—against its policies—as well as the makers …
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
CISA and the FBI: attackers deploying Ghost ransomware breached victims from multiple industry sectors across 70+ countries, including critical infrastructure  —  CISA and the FBI said attackers deploying Ghost ransomware have breached victims from multiple industry sectors across over 70 countries …
Lizette Chapman / Bloomberg:
Palantir's stock fell 10% on February 19 after the WaPo reported US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to cut military spending; PLTR is up 50%+ in 2025  —  - Spending shift would affect 8% of US defense spending  — AI-focused Palantir has become major government contractor
Nikkei Asia:
Tokyo-based Sakana AI details its AI CUDA Engineer, which it says can speed up AI training and inference by 10x to 100x by “breeding” efficient instructions  —  TOKYO — Tokyo-based startup Sakana AI says it has developed a system capable of accelerating artificial intelligence development …
Sarah Wynn / The Block:
The US SEC announces the Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit to protect investors from bad actors in crypto and AI, replacing the Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit  —  - The agency announced the new unit on Thursday, calling it the Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit, or CETU.
Pew Research Center:
US survey: views of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk tilt negative; Democrats and Republicans view Zuckerberg unfavorably; Musk is polarizing along party lines  —  Americans' views of two prominent tech executives - Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg - tilt more negative than positive.
Kim Zetter / Wired:
Source: 19-year-old Edward Coristine and Kyle Schutt, both DOGE engineers, are now on staff at the CISA; Coristine was briefly an intern for Neuralink  —  DOGE technologists Edward Coristine—the 19-year-old known online as “Big Balls”—and Kyle Schutt are now listed as staff at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Suzanne Vranica / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: top X executives hinted to Interpublic and other ad firms that not spending on X could lead to legal woes, due to X's lawsuit against some advertisers  —  Interpublic recently signed an advertising agreement with the platform; other agencies are also in negotiations
Ben Schoon / 9to5Google:
Google is removing Gemini support from the main Google app on iOS, pushing users to download the standalone Gemini app that launched in November 2024  —  Google is informing iOS users that it will be removing Gemini support from the main Google app as it pushes users over to the full Gemini app.
RT Watson / The Block:
Nansen: 86% of traders lost $251M in total on the Solana memecoin Libra that Argentine President Milei promoted, while the remaining traders profited $180M  —  - Citing onchain data, Nansen Research said that through Tuesday, 86% of traders lost a total of $251 million on the LIBRA token …
Andy Chalk / PC Gamer:
Valve releases a Team Fortress 2 SDK with the game's client and server code, letting users build new Team Fortress 2-based games licensed for non-commercial use  —  Valve has also released major updates to all Source-engine multiplayer games adding 64-bit support, scalable HUDS, “and a lot of other improvements.”
Dominic Preston / The Verge:
Oppo launches the Find N5, the world's thinnest foldable at 8.93mm closed and 4.21mm open, with IPX6, X8, and X9 ratings, in Europe and Asia for ~$1,870  —  Oppo's Find N5 is the thinnest book-style foldable yet, and it's launching worldwide — but it's another foldable the US just won't get.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Nvidia launches Signs, a new AI platform to teach American Sign Language and create a validated dataset for sign language learners and ASL app developers  —  Nvidia has unveiled a new AI platform for teaching people how to use American Sign Language to help bridge communication gaps.
More: CNN, Axios, and Quartz
Emily Birnbaum / Bloomberg:
Meta says Mark Zuckerberg went to the US Capitol on February 19 to lobby Senators on AI and talk about issues like US tech leadership  —  Zuckerberg met with senators one day after his personal charity announced it was ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Alexander Saeedy / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: a US grand jury is investigating criminal misconduct at fintech Synapse, where up to $96M in user funds went missing, and has questioned an executive  —  Former executive testifies before New York grand jury investigating fraud and other possible felonies

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From Mediagazer

Reuters:
Independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta plans to shut down after 30+ years, following pressure from Russian authorities and the persecution of its reporters

Bruce Gil / Gizmodo:
Fan fiction site AO3 says it will be offline for two to four weeks after a security incident; it hosts over 18M works and has 11M registered users

Selome Hailu / Variety:
Sources: Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine lays off about 30 employees, roughly 50% of its staff, as it focuses on film and TV projects and its book club brand

More News

Earlier Picks

Dwarkesh Patel / Dwarkesh Podcast:
Q&A with Satya Nadella on Microsoft's AGI plan, the quantum breakthrough with Majorana 1, how Muse will change gaming, AI's legal barriers, AI safety, and more
Jon Keegan / Sherwood News:
Perplexity open sources R1 1776, a version of the DeepSeek R1 model that Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas says was “post-trained to remove the China censorship”
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft announces Muse AI, a first-of-its-kind generative AI model that can generate a game environment based on visuals, players' controller actions, or both
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