Techmeme
May 15, 2025, 2:50 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:
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’.
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.
Johnny Ryan / Irish Council for Civil Liberties:
The Belgian Court of Appeal rules that the Transparency & Consent Framework, used by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, X, and the ad industry, is illegal across Europe  —  Landmark court decision against “TCF” consent pop ups on 80% of the internet  —  Google, Microsoft, Amazon, X …
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
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.
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 …
New York Times:
Sources: under the Trump administration, the SEC continues investigating whether Coinbase 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.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI launches the “Safety evaluations hub”, a webpage showing how its models score on tests for harmful content generation, jailbreaks, and hallucinations  —  OpenAI is moving to publish the results of its internal AI model safety evaluations more regularly in what the outfit …
More: CNBC, OpenAI, Tech in Asia, and Tom's Guide
Bluesky: @sal19X: @haydenfield and @openai
Forums: Hacker News and r/technews
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
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 …
Bloomberg:
Docs: Microsoft's recent layoffs of 6,000 workers hit software engineers the hardest, making up 40%+ of the ~2,000 positions cut in its home state of Washington  —  In Microsoft's home state of Washington, software engineering was by far the largest single job category to receive layoff notices …
Reuters:
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
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Pinterest apologizes for a recent wave of mass account bans, saying “an internal error led to over-enforcement”  —  Pinterest has now publicly apologized for the wave of moderation issues that have swept across the social network over the past few weeks, leading to account bans …
More: The Verge
Madeline Renbarger / Newcomer:
Akido Labs, which makes AI assistants for doctors to improve patient treatment efficiency, raised a $60M Series B led by Oak HC/FT  —  Oak HC/FT is leading the Series B round … Prashant Samant, Jared Goodner, Sanjit Mahanti, and Hugh Gordon began their healthcare collaborations at USC over a decade ago …

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Earlier Picks

Steve Lohr / New York Times:
Newley Purnell / Bloomberg:
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch:
Jeremy Kahn / Fortune:
Paresh Dave / Wired:
Juli Clover / MacRumors: