Techmeme
January 2, 2025, 8:20 AM

Top News

Washington Post:
Sources: Chinese government hackers breached the US Treasury Department's OFAC, which administers economic sanctions, and two other Treasury offices  —  Treasury's sanctions office hacked by Chinese government, officials say A troubling series of breaches of U.S. firms and agencies …
Matt Simons / Courthouse News Service:
A US judge blocks parts of California's SB 976, a law to protect kids from social media, citing 1A concerns, but allows a ban on “addictive feeds” for minors  —  Parts of the law will still take effect Wednesday.  — A federal judge on Tuesday barred the state of California …
Connie Loizos / TechCrunch:
Q&A with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev about the company's aggressive plans for 2025, including competing with prediction markets like Kalshi  —  Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has a lot to celebrate this holiday season.  After a bumpy few years following Robinhood's 2021 IPO …
Samantha Cole / 404 Media:
Pornhub now blocks users in 17 US states, including almost all of the South, after blocking Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina due to age verification laws  —  As of today, three more states join the list of 17 that can't access Pornhub because of age verification laws.
Wall Street Journal:
As Beijing pushes for self-sufficiency in the $80B+ per year car chip business, sources say the use of homemade chips in Chinese cars has risen to around 15%  —  U.S. objects to rival's push for self-sufficiency in $80 billion business and opens trade probe
John Herrman / New York Magazine:
Meta saying it expects AI characters to populate its apps is its friendly rebrand of an effective but alienating effort to automate social interactions  —  Why AI friends are coming to Facebook and Instagram.  —  Among Meta's many resolutions for the new year — making augmented reality …
Bloomberg:
Alibaba sells its Sun Art Retail stake to PE firm DCP for ~$1.6B, after paying ~$3.6B in 2020 to double the stake to 70%+, as it focuses on its online business  —  - The e-commerce firm may be taking a big loss from the deal … China's e-commerce pioneer expects gross proceeds of up to HK$12.3 billion …
Gerrit De Vynck / Washington Post:
Elon Musk got new support for his OpenAI lawsuit in filings last week, including from tech advocacy group Encode, backed by AI researchers like Geoffrey Hinton  —  The billionaire is attempting to block the ChatGPT maker's transition into a for-profit company.  His own start-up xAI competes with OpenAI.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
OpenAI missed its goal to launch Media Manager, an opt-out tool for creators, by 2025; sources: the tool was rarely viewed as an important launch internally  —  Back in May, OpenAI said it was developing a tool to let creators specify how they want their works to be included in — or excluded from — its AI training data.
Kerry Flynn / Axios:
Rembrand, which offers AI tools to add product placements in social media videos, raised a $23M Series A and plans to expand to CTV content and add a free tier  —  Exit Content Preview … The startup began with YouTube and expanded to LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram.

Sponsor Posts

Microsoft:
6 AI Trends to Watch in 2025  —  Explore insight from Microsoft on key AI advancements that will shape our work and daily lives in the coming year.
Genesys:
The Levels of Experience Orchestration  —  What's your vision for the future of customer experience?  See how AI can transform your business - and take you to the next level.
Zoho:
A recap of Zoho Office Integrator in 2024  —  Wishing you all a very happy and prosperous new year!  Here's a quick overview of all the enhancements and capabilities we've added to Zoho Office Integrator this year …
Techmeme Leaderboards:
Discover the top reporters on AI, VR, policy, and much more  —  We've analyzed Techmeme's news crawl to identify the most influential and prolific writers on 48 news topics.  Download reports immediately for just $100.
Techmeme Ride Home:
Fri. 01/03 - Turns Out, Siri WAS Listening To You!
The day's tech news, every day at 5pm ET. Fifteen minutes and you're up to date.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:20 AM ET, January 2, 2025.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks

New York Times:
Raquel Coronell Uribe / NBC News: