Techmeme
February 26, 2025, 2:50 PM

Top News

Wes Davis / The Verge:
Amazon unveils Alexa+, a generative AI update with vision capabilities and more, in preview in March 2025 for $20 per month or free to Prime subscribers  —  Arriving more than a year after it was first announced, Alexa is finally catching up to Google's Gemini.
Bloomberg:
Amazon's Panos Panay demoed Alexa+ in a flowing ongoing conversation and says it can book concert tickets, make restaurant reservations, and text a babysitter  —  Amazon.com Inc. has rebooted Alexa with artificial intelligence.  —  The rollout is the biggest overhaul of the voice-activated …
The Verge:
Hadriana Lowenkron / Bloomberg:
Trump says “Apple should get rid of DEI rules, not just make adjustments to them” in a Truth Social post, after Apple investors rejected a proposal to end DEI  —  - Investors turned down outside proposal to scrap DEI efforts  — Trump escalates campaign against diversity hiring practices
Joseph Menn / Washington Post:
Letter: US DNI Tulsi Gabbard calls the UK's order for Apple to add an iCloud backdoor an “egregious” violation of Americans' rights and plans a legal review  —  British order demanding access to encrypted storage on Apple devices opens up “a serious vulnerability for cyber exploitation,” she said.
Jeremy Gan / Engadget:
Google redesigns Results About You, its tool for requesting the removal of Search results with personal info, adding a new hub and the ability to update results  —  You can also address outdated search results now.  —  Google has been offering the Results About You tool since 2022 and updated it once in 2023.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
YouTube says it now has 1B+ monthly viewers for podcast content worldwide; users watched 400M+ hours of podcasts monthly on living room devices in 2024  —  Podcasts started as an audio-only phenomenon. … According to the Google-owned video giant, YouTube now has more than 1 billion monthly viewers for podcast content worldwide.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google says it received FDA clearance for the Pixel Watch 3's Loss of Pulse Detection feature, available in the EU and rolling out in the US at the end of March  —  Loss of Pulse Detection was announced last August as the Pixel Watch 3's latest safety feature, and it has finally been approved …
Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:
How the hackers behind the $1.5B Bybit crypto heist used UI manipulation of employee devices and social engineering to gain control of ETH multisig cold wallets  —  The cryptocurrency industry and those responsible for securing it are still in shock following Friday's heist, likely by North Korea …
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Framework Desktop hands-on: the tiny 4.5-liter gaming desktop looks cool, good frame rates at 1440p thanks to its AMD Ryzen AI Max CPU, expandable I/O, and more  —  Is this neat thing a new sub-category or a one-off? … Framework's mission is to “fix consumer electronics, one category at a time” …
Anissa Gardizy / The Information:
Sources: Meta is in talks to build a new data center campus for AI that could cost over $200B, based on the number of chips and the amount of power for the site  —  Meta Platforms is in talks to build a new data center campus for its artificial intelligence endeavors that would dwarf anything …
Financial Times:
Survey: 92% of UK undergrad students use AI to help them with their studies, up from 66% a year ago, raising questions about how universities assess their work  —  Rapid spread of technology raises questions about how to assess undergraduate work  —  The number of UK undergraduate students …
More: Engadget, HEPI, and HEPI
Bluesky: @eicathomefinnLinkedIn: Prof Fazal Malik and David GrundyForums: Slashdot
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: in July 2024, Microsoft told top GOP officials that Chinese hackers had accessed the RNC email system for months; the RNC chose not to alert the FBI  —  The previously unreported intrusion came as the Trump campaign was hacked by Iranian operatives
Noah Shachtman / Wired:
A profile of Vladislav Klyushin, a Russian tech executive involved in a $93M insider trading scheme and released by the US in a 2024 prisoner swap with Russia  —  In the epic US-Russian prisoner swap last summer, Vladimir Putin brought home an assassin, spies, and another prized ally …
Ina Fried / Axios:
Access Now: 54 countries imposed internet shutdowns at least 296 times in 2024, led by Myanmar, displacing India from the top spot for the first time since 2018  —  - “As internet access becomes consistently weaponized, restricted, and precarious, we are seeing pervasive patterns …

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Earlier Picks

Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
Charles Rollet / TechCrunch:
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
New York Times: