Techmeme
April 29, 2025, 8:30 AM

Top News

Will Oremus / Washington Post:
The US House passes the Take It Down Act to criminalize posting nonconsensual intimate imagery, including deepfakes, and require online platforms to remove them  —  Trump is expected to sign into law a bill that would force online platforms to quickly take down nonconsensual intimate images.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Alibaba debuts its Qwen3 family of open-weight “hybrid” AI reasoning models, including Qwen3-235B-A22B, with 235B total parameters and 22B activated parameters  —  Chinese tech company Alibaba on Monday released Qwen3, a family of AI models the company claims matches …
Reece Rogers / Wired:
OpenAI starts rolling out product recommendations in ChatGPT, including Plus, Pro, Free, and logged-out users, with buy buttons that link to merchants' websites  —  OpenAI is launching a shopping experience inside of ChatGPT, complete with product picks and buy buttons.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn says the company will “gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle”, as part of an announcement to be “AI-first”  —  The company is going to be ‘AI-first,’ says its CEO. … Duolingo will “gradually stop using contractors …
Zvi Mowshowitz / Don't Worry About the Vase:
A deep dive into GPT-4o's tendency to give sycophantic responses, an issue Sam Altman promised to fix and that may be caused by OpenAI optimizing for engagement  —  GPT-4o tells you what it thinks you want to hear.  —  The results of this were rather ugly.  You get extreme sycophancy.  Absurd praise.
Joey Roulette / Reuters:
Amazon launches 27 satellites for its Project Kuiper broadband internet program, the first batch of 3,236 satellites that it plans to send into low-Earth orbit  —  The first 27 satellites for Amazon's Kuiper broadband internet constellation were launched into space from Florida on Monday …
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
Sources: Scattered Spider conducted a ransomware attack on UK retailer M&S, which employs 64,000 in 1,400+ stores, causing widespread disruption from April 22  —  Ongoing outages at British retail giant Marks & Spencer are caused by a ransomware attack believed to be conducted …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources detail tensions between Sam Altman and Satya Nadella, whose partnership began after a summer 2018 meeting; Microsoft can block OpenAI's for-profit move  —  The OpenAI and Microsoft CEOs helped each other become power players in generative AI but are now preparing for independent futures
Josh Richman / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Open letter: the EFF and top security experts urge the Trump administration to end its “political retribution” investigation into ex-CISA Director Chris Krebs  —  Political Retribution for Telling the Truth Weakens the Entire Infosec Community and Threatens Our Democracy; Letter Remains Open for Further Sign-Ons

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Featured Podcasts

The Upstarts Podcast:
The Accidental YC Founder Solving AI's GPU Crisis | SF Compute's Evan Conrad
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
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Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Benchmark Breakfast #1 | Jack and Ev
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
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Cheeky Pint:
Why Sam Altman is against a single superintelligence
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
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Great Chat:
The case for AI optimism
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
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Sources:
Tobi Lütke on the AI agent revolution and future of Shopify
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
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Big Technology Podcast:
This AI Expert Argues We're Underestimating AI's Productivity Impact — With Ethan Mollick
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
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More News

Anna Nicolaou / Financial Times:

Earlier Picks

Prakhar Khanna / ZDNET:
CNBC:
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media:
More: The Verge, Engadget, and Gizmodo
Bluesky: @jasonkoebler, @emanuelmaiberg, and @josephcox.  Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to.  Forums: Slashdot
The Citizen Lab: