Techmeme
April 14, 2025, 11:00 AM

Top News

New York Times:
FTC v. Meta: in opening arguments, FTC lawyers accuse Meta of a “buy-or-bury strategy” to cement a social networking monopoly by buying Instagram and WhatsApp  —  The tech giant went to court on Monday in an antitrust trial focused on its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.
New York Times:
Legal expert: Meta's FTC antitrust trial, where Mark Zuckerberg could take the stand as early as today, is set to be more grueling than Congressional hearings  —  Meta's chief has grown accustomed to tough questioning in courts and hearings, but an antitrust trial starting Monday could be more grueling, experts said.
Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:
Sony hikes PlayStation 5 prices in Europe, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, citing a “challenging economic environment”; the PS5 Pro remains the same price  —  Sony hiked the price of its flagship PlayStation 5 console in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, citing a “challenging economic environment” behind its move.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Nvidia starts making its Blackwell chips at TSMC's Phoenix plant and says it aims to make up to $500B of AI infrastructure in the US in the next four years  —  Nvidia said on Monday that it has commissioned more than a million square feet of manufacturing space to build and test AI chips …
Nikkei Asia:
Sources: Apple asked suppliers in India, Vietnam, and Thailand to ramp up production earlier in 2025; Indian factory utilization rates are already at the limit  —  TAIPEI — Apple is ramping up production of key products in India and Vietnam to take advantage of a 90-day grace period on U.S. tariffs …
Reuters:
Keith Bradsher / New York Times:
Financial Times:
Dominic Preston / The Verge:
Zaheer Kachwala / Reuters:
Intel says it will sell a 51% stake in Altera to Silver Lake, valuing the programmable chip unit at $8.7B; Intel bought Altera for $15B in 2015  —  Intel said on Monday it would sell a 51% stake in Altera to private equity firm Silver Lake, valuing the programmable chip unit at $8.75 billion.
New York Times:
How private prison company Geo Group built a lucrative side business making digital tools like smart watches and tracking apps to help ICE surveil immigrants  —  After a Honduran immigrant arrived in the United States in 2022, officials ordered him to use a government-issued app as part of an immigration surveillance program.
Counterpoint Research:
Global smartphone sales grew 3% YoY in Q1 2025; Apple took the top spot, its first ever for Q1, with a 19% share, and Vivo was the fastest growing brand  —  - The global smartphone market continued its growth trajectory in Q1 2025.  Smartphone sell-through grew 3% YoY during the quarter …
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
A look at “slopsquatting”, a supply chain attack where threat actors make malicious packages on indexes using AI-hallucinated names resembling popular libraries  —  A new class of supply chain attacks named ‘slopsquatting’ has emerged from the increased use of generative AI tools …
The Keyword:
Google details DolphinGemma, a new 400M-parameter LLM to decode dolphin communication by analyzing the vocalizations of wild Atlantic spotted dolphins  —  DolphinGemma, a large language model developed by Google, is helping scientists study how dolphins communicate — and hopefully find out what they're saying, too.

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Featured Podcasts

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Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
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Earlier Picks

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: