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February 26, 2025, 3:20 PM
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WeSmirchTop 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.
More: About Amazon, About Amazon, Android Police, Business Insider, Gizmodo, About Amazon, TechCrunch, eWeek, Windows Central, How-To Geek, Wired, PYMNTS.com, MacRumors, Washington Post, Forbes, TechCrunch, ZDNET, Android Authority, VICE, Wall Street Journal, CNBC, BBC, Thurrott, Quartz, Agence France-Presse, PCWorld, New York Times, Mirror, Investor's Business Daily, Engadget, The Ambient, Moneycontrol, 9to5Google, PCMag, USA Today, Bloomberg, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, Telegraph, Constellation Research, Pocket-lint, Techstrong.ai, Android Headlines, TechSpot, TechEBlog, AFTVnews, Liliputing, Neowin, The Decoder, Yahoo Finance, Reuters, SlashGear, iClarified, CNN, MacDailyNews, Mashable, Patently Apple, iPhone in Canada Blog, and The Shortcut
Bluesky: @tomwarren.co.uk. X: @markgurman, @panos_panay, @markgurman, @drbarnard, @edludlow, @joannastern, @ajassy, @joannastern, @raywongy, @markgurman, @joannastern, @mgsiegler, @mattswider, and @maxwinebach
LinkedIn: Amit Singla, Michael Giannangeli, Damian McCabe, and Sumit Agarwal
Forums: r/singularity and Slashdot
| 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 …
More: Engadget, TechCrunch, Axios, ZDNET, 9to5Mac, Inc, Reuters, Fortune, The Sun, About Amazon, Yahoo Finance, San Francisco Business Times, TechRadar, iClarified, PhoneArena, Tom's Guide, WinBuzzer, and Cord Cutters News
Bluesky: @quinnypig.com. X: @mattswider, @mgsiegler, @panos_panay, @mattswider, @kantrowitz, @caro_milanesi, and @maxwinebach
| Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: |
Amazon says Alexa+ is “model agnostic”, using Amazon Nova models and Anthropic's models, and picks the “best” AI model for a task, drawing on Amazon Bedrock — Amazon says that Alexa+, the new and improved Alexa unveiled on Wednesday, is powered by a “model agnostic” … | The Verge: |
More: The Verge, ZDNET, GeekWire, TechRadar, The Verge, ZDNET, 9to5Toys, Engadget, TechCrunch, Tom's Guide, and Business Insider
| 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
More: AppleInsider, Gizmodo, MacRumors, Reuters, BBC, The Hill, New York Post, Forbes, iPhone in Canada Blog, CBS News, 9to5Mac, The Wrap, Channel NewsAsia, Quartz, Engadget, Time, The Japan Times, PhoneArena, Fast Company, and Irish Independent
X: @magaresource and @trumpdailyposts
Forums: r/apple, r/technology, and MacRumors Forums
| 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.
More: AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, Telegraph, Financial Times, BBC, The Record, Director of National Intelligence, and The Daily Wire. Forums: Slashdot
| Reuters: |
Alibaba releases Wan 2.1, a family of open-source AI models for generating images and videos, available globally on Alibaba Cloud's ModelScope and Hugging Face — Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba (9988.HK) said on Wednesday its video- and image-generating artificial intelligence model Wan 2.1 …
More: Engadget, BGR, South China Morning Post, WinBuzzer, CNBC, Benzinga, PetaPixel, The Information, and Tech in Asia
| Reuters: |
Sources: DeepSeek, which planned to release R2 in May 2025, now wants R2 out as soon as possible; DeepSeek owner High-Flyer built a 10K A100 GPU cluster in 2021 — DeepSeek is looking to press home its advantage. — The Chinese startup triggered a $1 trillion-plus sell-off …
More: BGR, Analytics India Magazine, WinBuzzer, TechNode, Ubergizmo, and Capacity Media. Forums: Slashdot
| 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.| Faris Mokhtar / Bloomberg: |
Indonesia says Apple signed a deal to invest in Indonesia and will issue it a permit, paving the way for resuming iPhone 16 sales after a five-month tussle — The agreement was announced by Minister for Industry Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita in a media briefing in Jakarta on Wednesday, as reported by Bloomberg Technoz.
More: iPhone in Canada Blog, Seeking Alpha, TechCrunch, Hindustan Times, Nikkei Asia, Phandroid, Reuters, and Mobile World Live. Bluesky: @mgsiegler.com
| 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 …
More: The Keyword, Android Police, Android Authority, The Verge, TechCrunch, Mashable, MobiHealthNews, Tom's Guide, PhoneArena, Android Central, and Droid Life
Forums: r/AppleWatch, r/GooglePixel, and r/Android
| 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.| Jonathan Randles / Bloomberg: |
Court records: FTX paid nearly $948M to 12+ firms working on its bankruptcy, one of the costliest Chapter 11 cases in US history; users are set to get back 118% — - Lack of records, corporate controls sent adviser fees higher — Most creditors poised to get back 118% of what they were owed| Carly Page / TechCrunch: |
Lasso: 20,000+ once-public GitHub repositories from Microsoft, AWS, Google, IBM, Tencent, and 16,000+ other companies are still accessible via Copilot — Security researchers are warning that data exposed to the internet, even for a moment, can linger in online generative AI chatbots …
More: Moneycontrol, Ghacks, and TechIssuesToday.com
| 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 …
More: BBC, The Trail of Bits Blog, BleepingComputer, The Crypto Times, Check Point Research, MEDIANAMA, and The Crypto Times
Bluesky: @Edent.mastodon.social … and @patrickhowelloneill.com
Forums: r/Buttcoin and Slashdot
| The Verge: |
A survey of 2,000 US adults finds 42% say that search engines like Google are becoming less useful, 60% view the state of social media negatively, and more — - Platform Shifts — Defining Connection — Content Matters (Especially in Communities) — Brands Matter.AI May Complicate| Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: |
Microsoft says it completed a multi-year project, the EU Data Boundary for the Microsoft Cloud, to let Europe-based cloud customers store and process data in EU — Microsoft says that it has completed a multi-year project to allow Europe-based customers using its cloud services to store and process data in the EU.
More: Microsoft and Microsoft Learn
| 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” …
More: PCWorld, How-To Geek, 9to5Linux, Gizchina.com, Android Headlines, TechCrunch, GamingOnLinux, PCMag, Press Start, Tom's Hardware, and Ars Technica. Mastodon: @seanhollister@mastodon.world
| CJ Haddad / CNBC: |
AppLovin's stock falls 10%+ after two short sellers released reports questioning the integrity of the company's AI-powered AXON ad software — Shares of AppLovin tumbled 16% Wednesday as two short seller reports cast doubt on the integrity of the company's artificial intelligence-powered … | 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 … | 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 … | Jacklyn Wille / Bloomberg Law: |
A US federal judge dismisses a lawsuit against TikTok and YouTube over “choking challenge” videos, saying the case failed on its merits and citing Section 230 — Mothers who sued TikTok and YouTube over “choking challenge” videos that allegedly led to their children's deaths failed …
More: Bloomberg Law and Technology & …
| Bloomberg: |
A profile of Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, who led the company from trailing eBay and Apple in online sales to becoming the world's second-largest e-commerce firm — The world's largest retailer has built an Apple-esque corporate campus in Bentonville, is selling Gucci online and is playing nice with Trump.| 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 …
Bluesky: @noahshachtman, @wired.com, @noahshachtman, @wired.com, @katie-drummond, @noahshachtman, and @noahshachtman
Forums: r/geopolitics and r/TrueReddit
| Nikkei Asia: |
China's aggressive expansion into mature chips, expected to account for 28% of the market in 2025, is driving prices down to previously unthinkable levels — TAIPEI — A “China shock” is coming for the chip industry as the country's aggressive expansion in older semiconductors …
More: Tom's Hardware, New York Times, Appuals, TechNode, The National Interest, Bloomberg, and Financial Times
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