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February 19, 2025, 12:05 PM
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Top News

Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple unveils the $599+ iPhone 16e with a 6.1" display, A18, 48MP camera, Apple Intelligence, and Apple-designed 5G cellular modem, the C1, shipping February 28  —  Apple has officially taken the wraps off of the all-new iPhone 16e.  The device features an all-new design paired with the A18 chip inside …
Zac Hall / 9to5Mac:
Apple unveils its first-ever in-house cellular modem, the C1, to replace Qualcomm modem chips, saying it is “the most power-efficient modem ever on an iPhone”  —  After years of development, Apple has unveiled what it calls C1, its first-ever in-house cellular modem.
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Signal updates its app with phishing protections after Google warned Russia-linked hackers are using fake QR codes for group invites to trick Ukrainian soldiers  —  Google warns that hackers tied to Russia are tricking Ukrainian soldiers with fake QR codes for Signal group invites that let spies steal their messages.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft unveils the Majorana 1, its first quantum processor that uses the Majorana particle instead of electrons, that can potentially fit a million qubits  —  Microsoft has spent 17 years researching a new material and architecture for quantum computing.
VentureBeat:
Sources: Chinese game publisher NetEase has been directed to divest its overseas holdings, starting with hit game Marvel Rivals, which laid off its Seattle team  —  Chinese game publisher NetEase raised fears with recent moves that it is unloading as much as all of its overseas holdings …
Brody Ford / Bloomberg:
HP plans to acquire assets from Humane for $116M, wind down Humane's Ai Pin business, and add Humane's team, including its founders, as an AI-focused division  —  - Humane's Ai pin business to be wound down after rocky launch  — New unit at HP will focus on implementation of AI in devices
Aaron Souppouris / Engadget:
Humane says Ai Pin's online features will stop working at 12PM PT on February 28, when it will delete all customer data, and it will refund some newer customers
Bloomberg:
Sources: Niantic is in talks to sell its video games unit to Saudi Arabia-owned Scopely for ~$3.5B; the deal would include Pokémon Go and its other mobile games  —  A deal could be announced in coming weeks.  The price being discussed is about $3.5 billion, according to one of the people.
Katie Roof / Bloomberg:
Sources: X is in talks to raise funds at a $44B valuation, matching the price Elon Musk paid for Twitter in 2022, as his proximity to Trump alters X's prospects  —  - Valuation is the same as Musk's 2022 Twitter acquisition  — Billionaire has recently tapped private markets for big sums
Danny Nelson / CoinDesk:
Source: in text messages, Libra co-creator Hayden Davis bragged he could “control” Argentine President Javier Milei by making payments to Milei's sister, Karina  —  A key player behind the Libra token bragged about buying access to Argentine President Javier Milei's inner circle months …
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft announces Muse AI, a first-of-its-kind generative AI model that can generate a game environment based on visuals, players' controller actions, or both  —  Microsoft Research and Xbox game studio Ninja Theory have partnered to create a new AI model for gaming.
Emilia David / VentureBeat:
OpenAI researchers build the SWE-Lancer benchmark and find that real-world freelance software engineering work remains challenging for frontier language models  —  Large language models (LLMs) may have changed software development, but enterprises will need to think twice …
Ina Fried / Axios:
Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati unveils AI startup Thinking Machines Lab, which she's leading as CEO, with Barret Zoph as CTO and John Schulman as chief scientist  —  - “Instead of focusing solely on making fully autonomous AI systems, we are excited to build multimodal systems that work …
Erik Larson / Bloomberg:
TMTG and Rumble sue a Brazilian Supreme Court Justice in Florida for allegedly illegally suppressing the US social media activity of conservative Brazilians  —  - Suit targets a supreme court justice who has clashed with Musk  — Brazilian judge has long attacked ‘fake news,’ disinformation
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
French privacy startup Murena unveils the €539 Murena Pixel Tablet, running its open-source, forked /e/OS, after releasing a “deGoogled” smartphone in 2022  —  Murena, the French privacy firm that's forked Android to deliver so-called deGoogled smartphones, has repeated the trick with a tablet.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Baseten, which helps companies launch open-source or customized AI models, raised $75M led by IVP and Spark Capital at a $825M valuation and claims 100+ clients  —  Baseten, a startup that runs artificial intelligence models for clients on their cloud infrastructure, has raised $75 million in funding, the company said Wednesday.
Kate Rooney / CNBC:
Cambridge, MA-based OpenEvidence, which offers an AI chatbot to help physicians, raised $75M from Sequoia at a $1B valuation, its first outside funding round  —  AI startup OpenEvidence is raising a fresh round of capital from Sequoia to scale its chatbot for doctors.
Krystal Hu / Reuters:
Lambda, which offers cloud services and computers to train AI, raised a $480M Series D, sources say at a $2.5B valuation, taking its total funding to $863M  —  Lambda, a cloud computing firm specializing in providing hardware and services to power artificial intelligence development …
Reuters:
President Trump says tariffs on semiconductors would start at “25% or higher” and that he planned to provide some time for chip makers to set up US factories  —  U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he intends to impose auto tariffs “in the neighborhood of 25%” …

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From Mediagazer

New York Times:
Sources: the White House plans to ask Congress to rescind $1.1B in federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR, PBS, and others

Dominick Mastrangelo / The Hill:
The AP says its journalists were barred from an Oval Office event featuring Trump and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele in defiance of a court injunction

Financial Times:
CNN CEO Mark Thompson says the company plans to roll out a “suite” of digital subscription services, including at least one in 2025, to combat TV's decline

More News

Earlier Picks

Bloomberg:
Internal documents, emails, and federal data suggest Indian IT giant TCS has used L-1A manager visas in ways that raise concerns about undercutting US workers
Kevin Purdy / Ars Technica:
Asus ROG Flow Z13 review: the ~$2,300 convertible tablet's integrated GPU in its AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 chip offers performance comparable to a GeForce RTX 4060
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google Play Books for iOS now lets users complete their e-book or audiobook purchase on the Google Play website, under Apple's “reader apps” exception
Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Intel's stock closed up 16.1% days after a February 15 report that Broadcom and TSMC are potentially weighing independent deals that could split the chipmaker
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