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Techmeme
March 9, 2025, 11:20 PM

Top News

Craig S. Smith / Forbes:
A look at Manus, which its Chinese creators claim is the world's first fully autonomous AI agent, as some say it might be China's second DeepSeek moment  —  One recent evening in Shenzhen, a group of software engineers gathered in a dimly lit co-working space, furiously typing as they monitored the performance of a new AI system.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Some early users of Manus say the agentic AI is no panacea, with long waits, errors, unsatisfying answers, and endless loops often plaguing the experience  —  Manus, an “agentic” AI platform that launched in preview last week, is generating more hype than a Taylor Swift concert.
More: The Decoder
Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer:
Tarlogic researchers find an undocumented “backdoor” in Chinese manufacturer Espressif's ESP32 microchip used in 1B+ devices for WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity  —  The ubiquitous ESP32 microchip made by Chinese manufacturer Espressif and used by over 1 billion units as of 2023 contains …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple planned to announce a smart home hub in March but it has been postponed since the device relies on the delayed Siri capabilities  —  Also: The company continues to explore different glasses ideas, and the latest iOS beta software adds a Vision Pro app and new AI capabilities.
Naomi Nix / Washington Post:
SEC whistleblower complaint: an ex-executive who is launching a book alleges Facebook built a censorship system for the CCP in a bid to enter China in the 2010s  —  Meta went to extreme lengths, including developing a censorship system, in a failed attempt to bring Facebook to millions …
Sun Yu / Financial Times:
Asset managers and investors say wealthy Chinese investors are using SPVs to quietly funnel tens of millions of dollars into Musk's xAI, Neuralink, and SpaceX  —  Asset managers have been promoting tech mogul's ties to Donald Trump to lure capital to xAI, Neuralink and SpaceX
Richard MacManus / Cybercultural:
A look back at GeoCities, launched in 1994 as Beverly Hills Internet, which allowed people who had no technical knowledge of HTML to build web pages  —  GeoCities, known throughout most of 1995 as Beverly Hills Internet, was one of the first commercial internet services to make it easy …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf: current AI development paradigms won't yield outside-the-box problem-solving that leads to true scientific breakthroughs  —  AI company founders have a reputation for making bold claims about the technology's potential to reshape fields, particularly the sciences.
Thomas Germain / BBC:
A look at YouTube's hidden world: most of the videos on the platform capture everyday life and have rarely been seen, with the median video having just 41 views  —  There's a secret side of YouTube, just beyond the guiding hand of the algorithm - and it's nothing like what you know.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Janko Roettgers / Fast Company:
How focusing on West Africa helped music streamer Audiomack grow alongside industry giants like Spotify; 50% of its 40M monthly listeners are from Africa  —  By focusing on rising stars from West Africa, Audiomack has been able to grow alongside much larger streaming music services.  —  Kendrick Lamar.
David Yaffe-Bellany / New York Times:
Source: Bybit hackers planted malicious code to manipulate transactions by compromising a developer's computer at crypto wallet provider Safe, used by Bybit  —  On the night of Feb. 21, Ben Zhou, the chief executive of the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, logged on to his computer to approve what appeared to be a routine transaction.

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Earlier Picks

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: