Techmeme
April 18, 2025, 9:10 PM

Top News

The Verge:
Nintendo says Switch 2 preorders will start in the US on April 24, with the price staying at the initially announced $450; prices of accessories will go up  —  The company delayed its original preorder date in the US. … Nintendo has announced a new date for when Switch 2 preorders will kick off in the US; April 24th.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: the EU planned to penalize Meta and Apple on April 15 but delayed the announcement, avoiding conflict with the Trump administration before trade talks  —  Officials postponed an announcement initially planned for this week  —  The European Union recently delayed penalizing Apple …
Stephen Nellis / Reuters:
Memo: CEO Lip-Bu Tan flattens Intel's leadership team, with important semiconductor groups reporting directly to him, and names Sachin Katti as CTO and AI chief  —  Intel's (INTC.O) new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, is flattening the semiconductor giant's leadership team, with important chip groups reporting directly …
Vince Quill / Cointelegraph:
Oregon sues Coinbase, alleging the exchange is selling unregistered securities; Coinbase CLO Paul Grewal says it's a “copycat case” of SEC's now-dropped lawsuit  —  While winning legal victories at the federal level, the crypto industry still faces regulatory hurdles at the state level in the United States.
Erin Woo / The Information:
A look at Google's efforts to improve Search with AI; sources: its leaders have struggled to articulate a vision for how they want Search features to evolve  —  Next week, a federal judge will start the process of determining how to fix Google's search engine, which he ruled last summer was an illegal monopoly.
Douglas Gillison / Reuters:
A US judge temporarily halts mass firings at the US CFPB after the agency fired between 1,400 and 1,500 workers, eliminating as much as 90% of its workforce  —  A federal judge on Friday halted the mass firings carried out Thursday afternoon at the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau …
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
OpenAI says its new o3 and o4-mini AI models hallucinate more often than its previous reasoning and traditional models, and the company doesn't know why  —  OpenAI's recently launched o3 and o4-mini AI models are state-of-the-art in many respects.  However, the new models still hallucinate …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
ChatGPT users are figuring out the location of photos using o3's image-analyzing capabilities paired with its web search functionality, raising privacy concerns  —  There's a somewhat concerning new trend going viral: people are using ChatGPT to figure out the location shown in pictures.
Steve Lohr / New York Times:
Experts say two federal judges declaring Google a monopoly within a year signals a judicial shift toward addressing anticompetitive behavior in digital markets  —  Within a year, two federal judges declared the tech giant a monopoly in search and ad technology.  The tide may be turning for antitrust.
Bloomberg:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
US consumers are flocking to Chinese shopping apps DHgate and Taobao, which let them buy direct from manufacturers, as Shein and Temu prices rise amid tariffs  —  The Chinese e-commerce marketplace app DHgate, which is now the No. 2 free iPhone app in the U.S., isn't the only one that's oddly benefiting …
Matthew Gault / 404 Media:
A Nevada judge rules that “tower dumps”, the law enforcement practice of grabbing vast troves of private personal data from cell towers, is unconstitutional  —  This article was produced in collaboration with Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records.
IDC:
China's Q1 2025 smartphone shipments grew 3.3% YoY to 71.6M units; Xiaomi led with 18.6% market share, Apple was the only foreign brand in top 5 with 13.7%  —  Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, China's smartphone market shipped 71.6 million units in 1Q25, a 3.3% year-on-year (YoY) increase.

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More News

The Information:

Earlier Picks

Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac:
Ryan Whitwam / Ars Technica:
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: