Techmeme
May 15, 2025, 10:10 PM

Top News

Niket Nishant / Reuters:
Coinbase says hackers accessed a “small subset” of users' data, but not credentials, expects to incur $180M to $400M in costs, and refuses to pay a $20M ransom  —  Coinbase (COIN.O) forecast a hit between $180 million and $400 million from a cyber attack that breached account data of a …
Bloomberg:
Source: hackers bribed enough Coinbase customer service representatives to achieve effectively on-demand access to Coinbase customer information since January  —  On the long list of crypto companies that have been hacked, there are plenty of examples of financial losses that are much more painful …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Following Grok's “white genocide in South Africa” responses on X, xAI says an “unauthorized modification” was made to the Grok response bot's prompt on May 14  —  xAI blamed an “unauthorized modification” for a bug in its AI-powered Grok chatbot that caused Grok to repeatedly refer to …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Meta has delayed the rollout of its Behemoth LLM, internally slated for an April release, to fall or later after struggling to improve its capabilities  —  The company's struggle to improve the capabilities of latest AI model mirrors issues at some top AI companies
Bloomberg:
More: Bloomberg, CNBC, MacRumors, CNBC, 9to5Mac, Bloomberg Podcasts on YouTube, Entrepreneur, Yahoo Finance, Financial Times, Times of India, Financial Times, Deccan Herald, CBS News, CNET, India Press Information Bureau, Channel NewsAsia, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, The Hill, The Week, RetailWire, Scroll.in, The Hindu BusinessLine, Newsmax, The Daily Beast, Investor's Business Daily, Moneycontrol, Livemint, TechRadar, CNBC, Times of India, Fortune, Livemint, Daring Fireball, Breitbart, Wall Street Pit, The Mac Observer, NDTV, Deadline, ZeroHedge News, SiliconANGLE, WinBuzzer, ANI News, Fox Business, iClarified, Techstrong IT, Moneycontrol, Times of India, Neowin, USA Today, iPhone in Canada, Mobile World Live, SupplyChainBrain, Investing.com, NDTV, Capital Brief, BBC, Wall Street Journal, Asia Financial, Times of India, Barron's Online, Spyglass, New York Times, The Information, Tom's Hardware, Forbes, TechCrunch, Fortune India, South China Morning Post, Yahoo Finance, Moneycontrol, Times of India, The Indian Express, Fortune, Outlook Business, Axios, The Economic Times, Business Standard, AppleInsider, Benzinga, and CNBC-TV18
Issie Lapowsky / Vanity Fair:
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Apple rolls out CarPlay Ultra, the next generation of CarPlay, in new and existing Aston Martins in North America after months of delays, before a wider rollout  —  After months of delays, Apple today officially announced the launch of next-gen CarPlay, now with a new brand name of ‘CarPlay Ultra’.
New York Times:
Coinbase says it is working with the US SEC to resolve an investigation into whether it misstated its user numbers by reporting 100M+ “verified users” in 2021  —  The inquiry continued even after the commission dropped a lawsuit accusing Coinbase of illegally marketing digital currencies to the public.
Barbara Moens / Financial Times:
The EU provisionally finds that TikTok breached the DSA by failing to offer a publicly searchable ad library, and could fine it up to 6% of its global revenue  —  Ad transparency investigation is one of several ongoing European cases against social media platform
Zach Vallese / CNBC:
YouTube launches a weekly top podcast shows chart, tracking podcasts in the US and updated every Wednesday; The Joe Rogan Experience currently tops the chart  —  YouTube is solidifying its place in podcasts.  —  The company on Thursday announced the launch of a weekly top podcast shows chart, rivaling those from Spotify and Apple.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Filing: Anthropic apologizes after one of its expert witnesses cited a fake article hallucinated by Claude in the company's legal battle with music publishers  —  A lawyer representing Anthropic admitted to using an erroneous citation created by the company's Claude AI chatbot …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Threads now lets users add up to five links to their profile bios and rolls out analytics tools to track clicks on profile links and links shared in posts  —  Instagram Threads is taking on Linktree and other “link-in-bio” solutions by introducing a way for creators to use their Threads profile …
Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Take-Two reports Q4 net bookings up 17% YoY to $1.58B, vs. $1.55B est., net revenue up 13% YoY to $1.58B, and forecasts FY 2026 net bookings below expectations  —  Bookings, a measure of sales, grew 17% to $1.58 billion in the fourth quarter ended March 31, surpassing Wall Street projections of $1.55 billion.
ProPublica:
How the US conducted a monthslong campaign to push The Gambia and at least four other developing nations to license Starlink; diplomats call the events alarming  —  The State Department has intervened on behalf of Musk's satellite internet company in five developing nations.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Windsurf launches SWE-1, its first family of software engineering AI models, claiming its largest model matches Claude 3.5 Sonnet, GPT-4.1, and Gemini 2.5 Pro  —  On Thursday, Windsurf, a startup that develops popular AI tools for software engineers, announced the launch of its first family …
Joe Tidy / BBC:
Hacking group DragonForce says it stole UK retailer Co-op's customer data but couldn't deploy ransomware because Co-op quickly shut down its systems, unlike M&S  —  Co-op narrowly averted being locked out of its computer systems during the cyber attack that saw customer data stolen …
Zach Vallese / CNBC:
YouTube unveils Peak Points, a pilot Gemini feature for targeting ads after viewers are most engaged with a video, aiming for more impressions and a higher CTR  —  YouTube on Wednesday announced a new tool that will allow advertisers to use Google's Gemini AI model to target ads to viewers when they are most engaged with a video.
Jon Victor / The Information:
Sources: Cohere, which has raised $1B+, was on pace to generate just $70M in revenue annually as of February 2025, after projecting ~$450M in revenue in 2024  —  The conversational intelligence boom sparked by OpenAI unleashed a flood of venture capital dollars for the sector …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Sources: Microsoft stops production of its Surface Laptop Studio 2 and plans to mark the device's end of life in June, with no plans for a successor  —  The Surface Laptop Studio 2 is no longer being manufactured and there's no replacement in sight. … Microsoft has been quietly killing off …

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Earlier Picks

Jay Peters / The Verge:
Bloomberg:
Johnny Ryan / Irish Council for Civil Liberties: