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March 21, 2025, 4:30 PM
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Paris Martineau / The Information:
Source: US Senators Dick Durbin and Lindsey Graham plan to introduce a bipartisan bill with wide support that would make Section 230 expire on January 1, 2027  —  In June 1995, two young congressmen reached across the aisle to introduce legislation that would become the defining legal protection …
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Yahoo strikes a deal to sell TechCrunch to media investment firm Regent, which acquired PCWorld publisher Foundry earlier this week  —  Yahoo on Friday said it has struck a deal to sell TechCrunch, the 20-year-old tech journalism site, to Regent, a media investment firm.
Kylie Robison / The Verge:
Perplexity proposes to buy TikTok, says it wants to open source the algorithm and that it is “singularly positioned to rebuild” it “without creating a monopoly”  —  The AI search startup laid out its bid for buying, and rebuilding, TikTok.
Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk:
The US Treasury's sanctions watchdog removes Tornado Cash from its global blacklist, after a federal appeals court ruled against the sanctions in November 2024  —  The U.S. Treasury Department's sanctions watchdog removed Tornado Cash from its global blacklist Friday.
Bloomberg:
Sources: Coinbase is in advanced talks to buy Deribit, the largest bitcoin and ether options trading platform, which was reportedly valued at $4B-$5B in January  —  The companies have notified regulators in Dubai about the discussions as Deribit holds a license there, which would be taken over by any acquirer, some of the people said.
The Cloudflare Blog:
Cloudflare announces AI Labyrinth, which uses AI-generated content to confuse and waste the resources of AI Crawlers and bots that ignore “no crawl” directives  —  Today, we're excited to announce AI Labyrinth, a new mitigation approach that uses AI-generated content to slow down …
Wired:
Interviews with 50+ current and ex-staffers reveal Google's two-year race to catch up with OpenAI, including through layoffs and lowering some guardrails  —  The search giant should've been first to the chatbot revolution.  It wasn't.  So it punched back with late nights, layoffs—and lowering some guardrails.
Bruna Horvath / NBC News:
Lyft says it plans to roll out robotaxis in partnership with May Mobility in Atlanta, starting summer 2025  —  Robotaxis using self-driving technology can already be found on the streets of at least four U.S. cities and even more abroad.  —  Lyft is about to enter the increasingly competitive world of robotaxis.
Alex Reisner / The Atlantic:
A look at LibGen, one of the largest online pirate libraries, with 7.5M+ books and 81M+ research papers, allegedly used by Meta and OpenAI to train AI models  —  Meta pirated millions of books to train its AI.  Search through them here.  —  When employees at meta started developing …
More: The Atlantic, Sherwood News, Music Ally, The Canberra Times, The Overspill, Schneier on Security, Marcus on AI, Lou In Progress, and ARTnews
Bluesky: @bcmerchant, @joemenn, @katchowrites, @jdslack, @mitpress, @benskipper, @dougjohnstone, @naomiclifford, @heydebigale, @mcusolito, @amitkatwala, @paulphillips44, @bethreadscrime.com, @markriedl, @kristiankiehling, @mattsteinglass, @www.johnbleasdale.com, @Firlefanz.writing …, @ajwestauthor, @annafeatherstone, @joachim123, @kint, @garymarcus, @raxkingisdead, @laurarbelin, @boxbrown, @dlknowles, @authormsbev, @moonalice.com, @maris, @melissagiragrant.com, @katienotopoulos, @ketanjoshi.co, @joebankswriter, and @michaellivingston.com
Mastodon: @remixtures@tldr.nettime.org, @timnitGebru@dair …, @ErikJonker@mastodon.social, @lizmonster@universeodon.com, @ravenbait@mastodon.scot, @JediSoth@chirp.enworld.org, @jwilker@wandering.shop, @michael_w_busch …, @harrymccracken@mastodon …, @rr4idic@mastodon.online, @invicticide@mastodon …, @susankayequinn@wandering.shop, @thecommongreen@mastodon.scot, and @beep@follow.ethanmarcotte.com
Threads: @bostonjoan, @wurdsmyth, @nwbrownboi, @nwbrownboi, @nwbrownboi, @nwbrownboi, @jscalzi, and @karaswisher
X: @bradthor, @garymarcus, @mininghistory, @neilturkewitz, @jason_kint, @jason_kint, @garymarcus, @jason_kint, and @elamin88
LinkedIn: Zaki Khalid, Lorenzo Thione, Eamon Costello, Alison Croggon, Fiona Moore, Melanie Dusseau, and Chris Chapman
Forums: r/Piracy, r/books, and r/technology
See also Mediagazer
Gary Rivlin / Bloomberg:
A book excerpt from AI Valley details the 2024 mass defection of staff at Inflection AI, which seemed to be thriving but faced scaling challenges, to Microsoft  —  An excerpt from AI Valley tells the story of why the staff at Inflection AI, which seemed to be thriving, defected en masse to Microsoft in 2024.
More: Spyglass
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Meta is testing a “Write with Meta AI” prompt on Instagram that gives users AI-generated suggestions to help write comments under other users' posts  —  In recent years, Meta has introduced many AI features and capabilities to its apps, even going so far as experimenting …
Kara Fellows / CBS News:
Google says it uncovered and eliminated 10K+ illegitimate Google Maps listings, including for fake businesses, and sues the alleged scammers behind the fraud  —  Google says it uncovered thousands of illegitimate listings, including for fake businesses, on Google Maps and has announced …
Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang walks back his January 2025 comments casting doubt on useful quantum computing within 15 years, which triggered a quantum stock sell-off  —  Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Thursday walked back comments he made in January, when he cast doubt on whether useful quantum computers …

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:30 PM ET, March 21, 2025.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

Bloomberg:
Sources: WBD begins exclusive talks with Netflix to sell its film and TV studios and HBO Max; Netflix is offering a $5B breakup fee if the deal isn't approved

The Guardian:
Ireland, Spain, Slovenia, and the Netherlands exit Eurovision after Israel received an all-clear to compete; the BBC and Germany's SWR plan to participate

James Faris / Business Insider:
Kalshi strikes a deal with CNBC that will integrate Kalshi's prediction data into CNBC's channel, site, and app starting in 2026, days after striking a CNN deal

More News

Earlier Picks

Counterpoint Research:
Shipments of India-manufactured smartphones grew 6% YoY in 2024, with Samsung and Apple accounting for ~94% of exports; Samsung's India exports grew 13% YoY
Cheyenne Ligon / CoinDesk:
The US SEC says proof-of-work crypto mining doesn't trigger federal securities laws and mining operators do not need to register their transactions with the SEC
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Anthropic adds web search to Claude 3.7 Sonnet, available now in preview for paid US Claude users, with support for free users and more countries coming soon
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI adds gpt-4o-mini-tts, a text-to-speech model that it says delivers more nuanced and realistic-sounding speech, and two speech-to-text models to its API
Bloomberg:
Huawei unveils the Pura X foldable phone that opens to an unconventional 16:10 6.3" display, its first flagship with HarmonyOS 5, launching in China for ~$1,036
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