Techmeme
January 19, 2025, 12:00 PM

Top News

Avery Lotz / Axios:
Donald Trump says he will sign an EO on Monday to delay enforcing the TikTok ban and argues for a TikTok JV with 50% US ownership  —  President-elect Trump said he will sign an executive order Monday to delay enforcing the U.S. ban on TikTok, just hours after the popular app went dark,
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
In a rare move, Apple publishes a statement and a document listing all ByteDance apps inaccessible in the US alongside TikTok, including Lemon8 and Lark  —  Amid the TikTok shutdown, in a rare move, Apple published a statement and a support document listing all affected apps that are inaccessible …
Richard Lawler / The Verge:
Card game Marvel Snap, published by ByteDance-owned Nuverse, cuts off access for US gamers, as the TikTok divest-or-ban law impacts other ByteDance-linked apps  —  The divest-or-ban law aimed at TikTok is also taking down other ByteDance-linked apps, including the popular card game Marvel Snap.
NBC News:
ByteDance's TikTok and CapCut suspend service in the US, telling users “Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok”  —  Users reported being unable to access TikTok Saturday after a pop-up message from the company came up on their screens saying “a law banning TikTok has been enacted.”
More: Wired, BleepingComputer, The Hill, TechCrunch, USA Today, The Information, The Hacker News, CNN, The Verge, Gizmodo, Forbes, Financial Times, The i Paper, UPI, Mediaite, TechCrunch, New York Post, NPR, Financial Times, Scripps News, Politico, Salon, Yahoo Finance, ZeroHedge News, Khaama Press, @realDonaldTrump …, Shacknews, Android Central, The Hollywood Reporter, Washington Examiner, 9to5Google, Bloomberg, Reuters, 9to5Mac, and Just Jared
Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:
TikTok is not available for download in the App Store and Play Store in the US, as the app halts service in the country to comply with the divest-or-ban law  —  Apple and Google removed TikTok from their app stores Saturday night, complying with a law requiring China's ByteDance to divest …
Hayden Field / CNBC:
Ana Faguy / BBC:
Politico:
Congressional leaders seem flummoxed by the growing popularity of Chinese-owned apps Xiaohongshu and Lemon8, an unintended consequence of the TikTok ban  —  The Chinese apps RedNote and Lemon8 have exploded in popularity as TikTok faces an imminent ban and the Supreme Court upheld the law forcing its sale.
Financial Times:
Nitish Pahwa / Slate:
The messy TikTok saga in the US over the past five years has shown that lawmakers are as spineless and skittish as everyone suspects them to be  —  Well, that escalated slowly over the course of four years.  —  It is 2020.  The United States government threatens to forbid access …
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
Will Oremus / Washington Post:
Axios:
Sources: a breakthrough in AI super-agents for complex human tasks may be announced soon; Sam Altman set up a closed-door briefing for US officials on Jan. 30  —  - Build from scratch: Imagine telling your agent, “Build me new payment software.” … - Make sense of chaos …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Apple is unlikely to acquire Sonos, but Amazon, Spotify, Roku, Samsung and others might consider the idea, with Amazon being the most natural fit  —  The woes of speaker maker Sonos have raised the prospect of a takeover, but who might want to buy it?  Also: iPhone SE inventory shrinks ahead …
Sam Reynolds / CoinDesk:
Coinbase and Binance plan to list the TRUMP token, with Binance opening trading on Jan. 19; CoinGecko: $TRUMP is trading on Bitget, Kraken, and other exchanges  —  The ‘official’ memecoin of the second Donald Trump administration will be listed on major cryptocurrency exchanges including Coinbase …
Axios:
Andrew Hayward / Decrypt:
Forbes:
Collate, which is developing tech to automate paperwork for life science companies, emerges from stealth with a $30M seed led by Redpoint at a $100M+ valuation  —  Surbhi Sarna sold her last startup, nVision Medical, for $275 million.  Now she's leaving a partner role at Y Combinator to launch Collate …
Matthew Green / A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering:
A close look at some privacy implications of AI interfacing with messaging apps and other E2EE systems, Apple's approach to “Private Cloud Compute”, and more  —  Recently I came across a fantastic new paper by a group of NYU and Cornell researchers entitled “How to think about end-to-end encryption and AI.”

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Earlier Picks

Zack Abrams / The Block: