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February 20, 2025, 5:10 PM
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Top News

Kate Rooney / CNBC:
OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap says the startup hit 400M weekly active users in February 2025, up 33% from 300M in December 2024, and 2M paying enterprise customers  —  OpenAI appears to be growing quickly despite increasing competition.  —  The San Francisco-based tech company …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Amazon plans to discontinue its Appstore for Android and its Coins program on August 20, 2025, but keep its Appstore on its devices like Fire TV and Fire Tablet  —  Amazon will discontinue its app store for Android on August 20 this year.  The company sent a notice to developers indicating …
Matt Novak / Gizmodo:
Elon Musk says he will “fix” Community Notes as they are “increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media”, after disagreeing with notes about Ukraine  —  The billionaire has a history of manipulating X to fit his far-right worldview.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Amazon plans to end support for its videoconferencing tool Chime on February 20, 2026; report: Amazon is adopting Zoom as its standard app for internal meetings  —  Amazon Chime, the tech giant's underwhelming alternative to Zoom and Google Meet, is shutting down for good.
Wired:
Investigation: Google's Display & Video 360 ad platform openly serves up sensitive information about Americans, despite Google's rules against such practices  —  Google enables marketers to target people with serious illnesses and crushing debt—against its policies …
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Global Witness: ahead of Germany's election, TikTok's and X's For You feeds show a substantial far-right bias; 78% of TikTok's recommendations supported the AfD  —  Recommendation algorithms operated by social media giants TikTok and X have shown evidence of substantial far-right political bias …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Spotify begins accepting AI-narrated audiobooks recorded using ElevenLabs' software; Spotify already allows AI-recorded audiobooks, with several restrictions  —  A new ElevenLabs partnership aims to help authors bring AI-narrated audiobooks to Spotify listeners.
Ryan Christoffel / 9to5Mac:
Kuo: all iPhone 17 models will have Apple's in-house Wi-Fi chips, enhancing connectivity and cutting costs; only the slim iPhone 17 will have the C1 modem chip  —  Apple just launched its brand new C1 modem yesterday with the iPhone 16e.  But there's another new Apple-designed chip coming soon …
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
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 WaPo reported that US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to cut military spending; PLTR is up 40%+ in 2025  —  - Spending shift would affect 8% of US defense spending  — AI-focused Palantir has become major government contractor
Emily Birnbaum / Bloomberg:
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson announces an inquiry into “Big Tech censorship”, which he says is “un-American” and “potentially illegal”  —  - FTC Chair Ferguson invites public comment about tech platforms  — Conservatives claim ideas, affiliations have been censored
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.
Nikkei Asia:
Tokyo-based Sakana AI details its AI CUDA Engineer, which it says can speed up AI training and inference 10x to 100x by “breeding” more efficient instructions  —  TOKYO — Tokyo-based startup Sakana AI says it has developed a system capable of accelerating artificial intelligence development …
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.
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Twitch plans to implement a 100-hour storage cap for Highlights and Uploads from April 19, automatically deleting content from streamers who exceed the limit  —  Streamers who have exceeded this limit will have their content automatically deleted until it meets the threshold.
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 …
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.

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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

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
Bloomberg:
Alibaba reports Q3 revenue up 8% YoY to ~$38.6B, the fastest growth in over a year and above ~$38B est., and a ~$6.7B net income, as AI boosts its business

Earlier Picks

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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