Techmeme
February 9, 2025, 6:10 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Source: TikTok CEO Shou Chew proposed to senior White House officials a US-based joint venture between US investors and TikTok that would oversee data security  —  Vance tapped to help oversee negotiations, with companies including Oracle and Amazon signaling interest while TikTok officials hope to avoid a sale
More: The Information and SiliconANGLE
Bluesky: @bobbyallynX: @jchengwsjLinkedIn: Jessica Toonkel
Mariella Moon / Engadget:
TikTok advises its US Android users to sideload the app through APKs on its website; its app still isn't back in Apple's App Store and Google Play in the US  —  The social media app is still not available on Apple App Store and Google Play.  —  If you need to download and install TikTok in the US …
Shelly Banjo / Bloomberg:
Nitasha Tiku / Washington Post:
How DeepSeek's R1 accelerated the rollout of chatbots showing their “thinking” process; an expert says seeing a chatbot's inner monologue can trigger empathy  —  How Chinese start-up DeepSeek triggered a rush to launch chatbots that “reason.”  —  Chinese start-up DeepSeek …
New York Times:
Chainalysis: just under 700K wallets recorded gains on $TRUMP, 810K+ have lost money, and $6.6B has been secured in cashed-out profits, mostly by early buyers  —  Some traders made tens of millions off a new cryptocurrency launched by President Trump and his sons.  Many others lost out.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Christie's plans to hold its first AI art auction beginning February 20; critics say the sale elevates AI tools trained on artists' works without their consent  —  Fine art auction house, Christie's, has sold AI-generated art before.  But soon, it plans to hold its first show dedicated solely …
Antonio Regalado / MIT Technology Review:
Meta shares work on a system that uses a magnetic scanner and a deep neural network to analyze brain signals and identify which keys people pressed while typing  —  Back in 2017, Facebook unveiled plans for a brain-reading hat that you could use to text just by thinking.
Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
Edison: despite Spotify's video push, only two of the top 10 US podcasts post videos on Spotify; 37 of the top 50 podcasts regularly post videos on YouTube  —  Popular programs like New Heights and Club Shay Shay have yet to put their videos on the streaming service  —  Hello, and welcome back to Soundbite.
Bloomberg:
Crypto.com and Kalshi launched sports wagers around the Super Bowl in 50 US states, shocking the sports betting industry and infuriating state regulators  —  Crypto.com and Kalshi have made an end-run around state regulators to allow wagers on the NFL championship, the biggest betting day in American sports.
Viola Zhou / Rest of World:
DeepSeek recruiting recent graduates from China's top universities reflects a growing trend among the country's top AI talent to pursue opportunities at home  —  Young Chinese engineers focus on homegrown innovation, drawn by fewer visa hurdles and the chance to build a future on their own terms.
More: MarketWatchBluesky: @nmopinions, @violazhou, and @chrmanning
Benj Edwards / Ars Technica:
A look at WikiTok, a site that lets users vertically swipe through an endless stream of random Wikipedia article stubs without algorithmically tracking the user  —  On Wednesday, a New York-based app developer named Isaac Gemal debuted a new site called WikiTok, where users can vertically swipe through …

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Shakeel Hashim / Transformer:
New York Times:
Jay Peters / The Verge: