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January 16, 2025, 12:35 PM
Mediagazer memeorandum WeSmirch
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Top News

Jay Peters / The Verge:
Nintendo teases the Switch 2, featuring a new kickstand design and backward compatibility for physical and digital games, with more details on April 2, 2025  —  The console looks a lot like the original, but it's bigger.  In the video, the Joy-Con controllers are black with colored accents, and they attach to the console magnetically.
NBC News:
An official says the Biden administration is “exploring options” to implement the law without causing TikTok to go dark for US users on January 19  —  Barring action by the Supreme Court, a ban in the U.S. on the popular app is set to begin on Sunday.
New York Times:
Sources: TikTok CEO Shou Chew plans to attend Trump's inauguration after being invited to sit on the dais, joining Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk at the event  —  Shou Chew will join tech moguls like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk at President-elect Donald J. Trump's inauguration as the fate of the app hangs in the balance.
Washington Post:
Sources: Donald Trump is considering issuing an executive order once in office that would suspend enforcement of the TikTok sale-or-ban law for 60 to 90 days
Reuters:
Source: over 700K new users joined Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, in just two days; Sensor Tower: the app's US downloads were up more than 200% YoY this week  —  New users have piled in to Chinese social media app RedNote just days before a proposed U.S. ban on the popular social media app TikTok …
The Information:
Sources: RedNote staff is scrambling to hide US users' posts from Chinese users after China raised concerns about politically sensitive English-language posts
Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:
UK's Ofcom imposes robust age checks on porn sites, which could include photo ID matching, facial age estimation technology, and credit card checks  —  Ofcom sets out new rules that could include photo ID matching and credit card verification  —  The UK media regulator will make it harder …
Lindsay Whitehurst / Associated Press:
During oral arguments, SCOTUS seemed open to a Texas law requiring age checks to view online porn, but could send the case back to a lower court
Carly Page / TechCrunch:
US school districts hit by PowerSchool's December breach say hackers accessed “all” historical student and teacher data; PowerSchool has 50M+ US student records  —  U.S. school districts affected by the recent cyberattack on edtech giant PowerSchool have told TechCrunch that hackers accessed …
Sara Fischer / Axios:
Letter: Google told EU it will not add fact checks to search results and YouTube videos or use them in ranking or removing content, despite new EU requirements  —  - The code would require Google to incorporate fact-check results alongside Google's search results and YouTube videos.
Reed Albergotti / Semafor:
An interview with Replit CEO Amjad Masad, who says the company's revenue grew 5x over the past six months after releasing a new AI coding tool called Agent  —  THE SCENE  —  Replit has had a turbulent year, but CEO Amjad Masad's sonorous voice was almost zen-like as he spoke to me on Monday …
Reuters:
NOYB files complaints against AliExpress, Shein, TikTok, Xiaomi, Temu, and WeChat over claims they are unlawfully sending EU user data to China  —  TikTok, Shein, Xiaomi (1810.HK) and three other Chinese companies were named in a privacy complaint filed on Thursday by Austrian advocacy group Noyb …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
AI researcher François Chollet and Zapier co-founder Mike Knoop launch Ndea, an AI research and science lab focused on “developing and operationalizing AGI”  —  François Chollet, an influential AI researcher, is launching a new startup that aims to build frontier AI systems with novel designs.
William Langley / Financial Times:
Canalys: China smartphone shipments rose 4% YoY to 285M units in 2024, with Vivo up 11% to a 17% market share, Huawei up 37% to 16%, and Apple down 17% to 15%  —  US tech giant faces competition on mainland as it struggles to introduce AI features on its flagship product
Paresh Dave / Wired:
Four current Meta employees, citing internal discussions, say the actual number of full-time staff who will have to relocate from California to Texas is limited  —  Mark Zuckerberg said content moderation teams in California will relocate to Texas to help reduce bias.
Daniel Kuhn / The Block:
BitMEX is fined an additional $100M for US Bank Secrecy Act violations between 2015 and 2020; it pleaded guilty in July 2024 and previously agreed to pay $110M  —  - BitMEX has been slapped with an additional $100 million fine for Bank Secrecy Act violations between 2015 and 2020.
Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
Netradyne, which provides AI-enabled dashcams to fleet owners like Amazon, raised a $90M Series D led by Point72 at a pre-money valuation of $1.25B  —  Distracted driving is a leading cause of car crashes — and rising auto insurance premiums, which are expected to increase in 2025.
More: Axios

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From Mediagazer

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Sources: Disney is laying off several hundred employees globally across multiple teams, including TV and film

Max Tani / Semafor:
Sources: in May 2024, Business Insider sent some staff a recommended reading list that included seemingly AI-generated books that did not appear to exist

Andy Meek / Forbes:
An interview with Henry Blodget on BI's layoffs, media market changes in the past five years, why the future is direct distribution and subscriptions, and more

More News

Eric Geller / Wired:
Joe Biden plans to issue a cybersecurity EO to improve the way the government monitors its networks, buys software, uses AI, and punishes foreign hackers

Earlier Picks

Omkar Godbole / CoinDesk:
Jio Platforms partners with Polygon Labs to integrate Web3 and blockchain services into Jio's apps and services; Jio Platforms has over 450M users in India
Karen Freifeld / Reuters:
The US Commerce Department adds 25 China-based companies, including Alibaba-backed LLM developer Zhipu AI and chip designer Sophgo, to its restricted trade list
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