mindbento

A group of 18 former European heads of state call on the EC to break up Google's advertising tech business, claiming it erodes Europe's media landscape (Edith Hancock/Wall Street Journal)

Source: Meta plans to break up its civil rights team, which helped develop tech to address racial and other disparities in how Meta distributed ads on its apps (Kalley Huang/The Information)

Perplexity acquires Read.cv, a social media platform for professionals; Read.cv will shut down and let users export their profiles, posts, and more until May 16 (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Digital Currency Group agrees to settle and pay $38.5M in civil penalties to the US SEC over charges that it misled investors via crypto lender Genesis Global (Sarah Wynn/The Block)

Bluesky 2024 moderation report: Bluesky gained 23M+ users, its moderation team grew to ~100, and its moderation service received 6.48M reports, up 17x from 2023 (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

The FTC says Genshin Impact maker Cognosphere will pay $20M to settle claims that it deceived players about the cost of winning prizes and mishandled kids' data (Bloomberg)

During her confirmation hearing for secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem says addressing foreign disinformation campaigns were outside the CISA's remit (Jonathan Greig/The Record)

The US FTC releases a report saying Microsoft's $13B investment in OpenAI raises concerns that the company could extend its cloud computing dominance into AI (Bloomberg)

Q&A with Marc Andreessen on his political evolution from a "normie Democrat" to a Donald Trump supporter, and what he and others expect from the administration (Ross Douthat/New York Times)

Some US congressional leaders who championed the TikTok law now want to delay the ban from going into effect, showing how much politics has shifted on the issue (NBC News)

After SCOTUS upheld the TikTok law, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appeals to Donald Trump in a TikTok video to find a solution that keeps the app available in the US (Lauren Feiner/The Verge)

A look at efforts by Meta, YouTube, Snap, X, and Substack to attract TikTok's 170M US creators and users; Substack is offering a $25K "TikTok Liberation Prize" (The Hollywood Reporter)

Google has begun requiring users to turn on JavaScript to use Google Search, to "better protect" the service against malicious activity, such as bots and spam (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

The US sanctions a China-based cybersecurity company involved in the Salt Typhoon hacks and a Shanghai-based hacker involved in the recent US Treasury breach (Caitlin Webber/Reuters)

Sources: Shield AI, maker of software for autonomous aircraft and drones, is raising ~$200M from Palantir and others at a $5B valuation, up from $2.8B in 2024 (Tabby Kinder/Financial Times)

Donald Trump says he will "be making the decision" about TikTok and confirms he talked with Chinese President Xi Jinping about the app (CNN)

Instabase, which lets companies process unstructured data from different document types, raised a $100M Series D led by Qatar's sovereign wealth fund (Paul Sawers/TechCrunch)

SCOTUS upholds the TikTok divest-or-ban law, says free speech rights must yield to concerns that Chinese control of the app creates a national-security risk (Greg Stohr/Bloomberg)

Sources: Chinese hackers breached US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's computer and accessed fewer than 50 unclassified files; two deputies were also hacked (Bloomberg)

Lenovo acquires enterprise storage startup Infinidat and plans to turn it into its Israel development center; Infinidat raised $350M from TPG and others (Assaf Gilead/Globes Online)

Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd will return to the company as CEO in mid-March, replacing current CEO Lidiane Jones, who is departing for "personal reasons" (Dana Wollman/Bloomberg)

PitchBook: investors put $74.6B into US startups in Q4 2024, up from an average of $42B in the prior nine quarters, with $32B invested across just five deals (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)

EU expands its X probe, asking for internal docs about X's recommendation algorithm, following complaints from German politicians about boosting the far right (Financial Times)

An in-depth look at the UK's AI Safety Institute, whose researchers test AI systems for risks and for capabilities that might become dangerous in the future (Billy Perrigo/Time)

In a first, Samsung will pay 50%-100% of executive bonuses in stock starting January 2026, linking compensation to share performance amid chipmaking struggles (Yoolim Lee/Bloomberg)

Sources: Instagram and YouTube gear up to welcome TikTok users; two Meta employees say execs discussed resource allocation on January 15 to handle TikTok users (New York Times)

A look at Pump.Fun, a service for launching memecoins that has generated $350M+ in revenue via a 1% trading fee in the 12 months since its launch in Jan. 2024 (Joel Khalili/Wired)

Researchers fear TikTok is softening Taiwanese youth's stance on China with pro-China content; a report says 22% of Taiwan's population uses TikTok or Douyin (Kathrin Hille/Financial Times)

A survey of US teens aged 13-17 found 26% used ChatGPT for schoolwork in 2024, up from 13% in 2023, while 79% had heard of it, up from 67% in 2023 (Pew Research Center)

Job listings show Xiaohongshu is rushing to hire English-speaking moderators to help manage the unexpected influx of English videos and posts on the platform (Zeyi Yang/Wired)

Apple launches its dedicated Apple Store app in India, allowing customers to purchase products, receive personalized shopping recommendations, and more (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)

Robotics company Symbotic agrees to take control of Walmart's automation business for $200M in cash and up to $350M in "additional contingent consideration" (Brian Heater/TechCrunch)

Crypto wallet Phantom raised a $150M Series C co-led by Sequoia Capital and Paradigm at a $3B valuation, more than double its $1.2B valuation in January 2022 (Bloomberg)

Sources: Meta's Community Notes won't apply to paid ads, but will be enabled for organic content, which includes brands' and influencers' unpromoted posts (Patrick Coffee/Wall Street Journal)

The US FTC refers a complaint against Snap to the DOJ, alleging Snapchat's My AI chatbot poses "risks and harms to young users"; SNAP closed down 5% (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC)

A US official says the Biden administration won't force TikTok to go dark in the country on January 19 and will leave it up to Trump to implement the law (ABC News)

Sources: Mira Murati's AI startup has poached about 10 researchers and engineers, including former OpenAI Head of Special Projects Jonathan Lachman, from rivals (Zoë Schiffer/Wired)

Sources: Trump plans an EO to elevate crypto to a national imperative or priority and create a crypto advisory council to advocate for industry priorities (Bloomberg)

Capital One two-day outage leaves customers in free-fall

FCC to telcos: By law you must secure your networks from foreign spies. Get on it

Biden signs sweeping cybersecurity order, just in time for Trump to gut it

China to probe US chip subsidies as export curbs rattle allies

Fortinet: FortiGate config leaks are genuine but misleading

Clock ticking for TikTok as US Supreme Court upholds ban

EU demands a peek under the hood of X's recommendation algorithms

Six vulnerabilities in ubiquitous rsync tool announced and fixed in a day

Germany unleashes AMD-powered Hunter supercomputer

Copilot invades Microsoft 365 Personal and Family for an extra three bucks a month

Apple solves broken news alerts by turning off the AI

IBM swoops in to rescue UK Emergency Services Network after Motorola shown the door

Medusa ransomware group claims attack on UK's Gateshead Council

Brit government contractor CloudKubed enters administration

Tech support fill-in given no budget, no help, no training, and no empathy for his plight

Microsoft eggheads say AI can never be made secure – after testing Redmond's own products

AWS adds 32-vCPU option and an easier on-ramp to its cloudy desktops

SpaceX resets ‘Days Since Starship Exploded’ counter to zero

Just as your LLM once again goes off the rails, Cisco, Nvidia are at the door smiling

GM parks claims that driver location data was given to insurers, pushing up premiums

‘Lumon Takes Grand Central’

iOS 18.3 Beta 3 Has Several Changes to Apple Intelligence Notification Summaries

Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Con Might Double as a Mouse

‘He Was Not Interested in Answers Because He Understood That Questions Are the Drive That Make Us Who We Are’

Severance Balloon Generator

David Lynch Dies at 78

Bob Uecker, Mr. Baseball, Dies at 90

L.A. Fires: We Can't Let Insurance Companies Exploit the Disaster

Swedish Exports of Ball Bearings

How do playing cards work? No one knows

Investigating an "Evil" RJ45 Dongle

So You Want to Build Your Own Data Center

Show HN: Compile C to Not Gates

Branchless UTF-8 Encoding

Let's Map Halal Restaurants on OpenStreetMap (OSM)

Brits still associate working-class accents with criminals – study warns of bias

Mathematics of the daily word game Waffle

Hands-On Graphics Without X11

Brood War Korean Translations

Keeling Labs (YC W23) Is Hiring an ML Engineer for Grid-Scale Energy Storage

Dr. TVAM – Inverse Rendering for Tomographic Volumetric Additive Manufacturing

French modernists were alarmed, inspired by newspaper's voracious dynamism

Selling the Collective: On Kevin Killian's "Selected Amazon Reviews"

Show HN: GUI for editing Mermaid class diagrams

Ask HN: Google forcibly enabled Gemini in our Corp Org. How to disable?

Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline

Skyvern Browser Agent 2.0: How We Reached State of the Art in Evals

Project Mini Rack – compact and portable homelabs

Ozempic and Wegovy are selected for Medicare's price negotiations

GM banned from sharing driving and location data with insurance companies

Show HN: Interactive game teaching dark patterns in UX design

GM parks claims driver location data was given to insurers, pushing up premiums

Sources Say Intel Is an Acquisition Target

Zig: What to Expect from Release Month

Apple denies App Store profit margin is 75% – claims to have no clue

The Derelict (2015)

Fern (YC W23) Is Hiring an AI Engineer in NYC

Scaling to users requires Synapse Pro

Show HN: I built a credit-based system API

Ask HN: How can I realistically change careers?

The Family Bass - Music with an NES

Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

Trusting clients is probably a security flaw

Issues with Color Spaces and Perceptual Brightness

Thoughts on a Month with Devin

Let's talk about AI and end-to-end encryption

Kokoro TTS – A lightweight (82M params) text-to-speech model

General Motors Is Banned from Selling Driving Behavior Data for 5 Years

NY Assembly Bill: Criminal background checks for (nearly all) 3D printers

Bypassing disk encryption on systems with automatic TPM2 unlock

Ask HN: How can X suspend paid accounts without explanation?

Is the world becoming uninsurable?

Firebase bill is usually $50, but I was surprised to see a $70k bill in one day

ChatGPT’s head of product will testify in the US government’s case against Google

Netradyne snags $90M at $1.35B valuation to expand smart dashcams for commercial fleets

Perplexity acquires Read.cv, a social media platform for professionals

TikTok ban: How to download your videos and data

AI startup Character AI tests games on the web

Bluesky saw 17x increase in moderation reports in 2024 after rapid growth

ChatGPT’s newest feature lets users assign it traits like ‘chatty’ and ‘Gen Z’

TikTok CEO responds to Trump, thanks him for trying to solve US ban

SpaceX and Blue Origin must investigate this week’s big rocket tests, FAA says

OpenAI is trying to extend human life, with help from a longevity startup

Amazon bought more renewable power last year than any other company

As TikTok faces a US shutdown, here are some alternative apps to check out

Big Tech expands its reach with new startup acquisitions and investments

Google begins requiring JavaScript for Google Search

Treasury sanctions Salt Typhoon hacking group behind breaches of major US telecom firms

Malware stole internal PowerSchool passwords from engineer’s hacked computer

Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd to reclaim CEO position in March

Instagram Reels adds new features as TikTok is banned in the US

Instagram Reels rolls out new features for U.S. users as TikTok is banned

Trump comments on TikTok ban: ‘stay tuned’

Trump comments on TikTok ban

Trump spoke to China’s President Xi about TikTok just ahead of Supreme Court ruling

Rivian finalizes $6.6B loan for its Georgia factory

Instabase raises $100M to help companies process unstructured document data

Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban

Ken Howery: The tech mogul at the center of Trump’s Greenland ambition

Europe orders Elon Musk’s X to submit documents on its recommendation algorithms

Nord Security founders launch Nexos.ai to help enterprises take AI projects from pilot to production

Apple brings Store app to Indian market

FAA had to divert flights because of SpaceX Starship explosion

SpaceX catches Starship booster a second time, loses ship to an ‘anomaly’ in space

Datasette Public Office Hours, Friday Jan 17th 2025

AT&T pulls its 5G internet service in NY over new affordable internet law

Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd returns as CEO amid a dating app decline

Nintendo omits original Donkey Kong Country Returns team from the remaster’s credits

Automakers sue to block Biden’s ‘flawed’ automatic emergency braking rule

Castlevania: Nocturne’s second season is another soft-spoken knockout

SpaceX’s fiery Starship explosion put on a fantastic show but delayed and diverted flights

The Supreme Court ruled on TikTok — and nobody knows what comes next

TikTok CEO flatters Trump ahead of US ban deadline

Nvidia CEO will be one of the few tech bigwigs to skip Trump’s inauguration

Samsung’s priciest Care Plus plan now includes unlimited $0 screen repairs

Here’s how to play the Switch 2 early

Microsoft triples down on AI

It’s perfectly fine to ignore your smartwatch this January

Prime members can save $50 on the Amazon Kindle Colorsoft

A giant battery power plant is on fire in California

Lawmakers press Meta, Apple, Google, and others on massive Trump donations

Some of the Switch’s 2 first accessories are all about Mario Kart

Instagram will show your friends what Reels you’ve liked

The Ring Battery Doorbell Pro, one of our favorite video doorbells, is cheaper than ever

Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban law

Cash App fined $255 million in back-to-back settlements

Maybe giant gaming handhelds are where it’s at

Nintendo’s Switch 2 is here — sort of

6 TikTok creators on where they’ll go if the app is banned

Google rejects EU fact-checking commitments for Search and YouTube

Sony cancels an unannounced live service God of War game

SpaceX catches Starship booster for a second time but loses the spacecraft

Instabase Secures $100M in Series D Amid Valuation Reset

OpenAI Partners with Retro Biosciences to Engineer Stem Cell Proteins with AI

FTC Flags Snap’s AI Chatbot for Potential Harm, Refers Case to DOJ

The need for a strategic fact reserve

Scheduled Tasks in LangGraph

Cloud CISO Perspectives: Talk cyber in business terms to win allies

What’s new with Google Cloud

GKE delivers breakthrough Horizontal Pod Autoscaler performance

The EU’s DORA regulation has arrived. Google Cloud is ready to help

Healthtech Dealmakers See Fresh M&A Momentum, But VC Investors Remain Cautious

Ultimate NotebookLM Guide (Google's AI Note-Taking App)

OpenAI has created an AI model for longevity science

The Download: how to save social media, and “leftover” embryos

We need to protect the protocol that runs Bluesky

Deciding the fate of “leftover” embryos

🚨🚨 BATTLETOADS: YES I WILL BEAT TURBO TUNNEL 🚨🚨

Leetcode Or Die

The $12BN company 99% of VCs totally missed! 💰

Eran Zinman, Co-Founder & Co-CEO @Monday.com: Going Upmarket, International and Multi-Product |E1247

Why ChatGPT did AI a disservice ⚠️

Digital twins of cities to expand under plans from new Dutch startup Scenexus

This robot worm digs for geothermal energy in your backyard

Biden trumps Donald with cybersecurity executive order

It’s DORA day as operational resilience rules add to Brussels’ blizzard of bank tech regs

MOD's missing "secret" cloud

Mark blames Sheryl

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