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March 17, 2025, 6:40 PM
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Top News

Lauren Thomas / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Alphabet is in advanced talks to acquire cybersecurity startup Wiz for ~$30B; Alphabet was close to a $23B deal for Wiz last summer before talks ended  —  A deal worth some $30 billion could come together soon, after talks fizzled last summer  —  Google parent Alphabet …
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Mistral debuts Mistral Small 3.1, a 24B-parameter multimodal and multilingual open-source model it says outperforms Gemma 3 and GPT-4o-mini and runs on 32GB RAM  —  French artificial-intelligence startup Mistral AI unveiled a new open-source model today that the company says outperforms similar offerings …
New York Times:
HR service Rippling sues Deel, accusing its rival of hiring a mole in its Dublin office to comb through trade secrets, uncovered via a “honeypot” Slack channel  —  A lawsuit by Rippling accuses a top competitor, Deel, of placing a mole in its ranks — which it uncovered via a “honeypot” trap on Slack.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Users report that Gemini 2.0 Flash is very good at removing watermarks from images; many models allow this but some, like Claude 3.7 Sonnet and GPT-4o, do not  —  Users on social media have discovered a controversial use case for Google's new Gemini AI model: removing watermarks from images …
Max A. Cherney / Reuters:
Sources: Intel's new CEO Lip-Bu Tan has considered restructuring Intel's AI approach and cutting staff to address a slow and bloated middle management layer  —  Intel's incoming CEO Lip-Bu Tan has considered significant changes to its chip manufacturing methods and artificial intelligence strategies ahead …
Zhiye Liu / Tom's Hardware:
Qualcomm unveils the Snapdragon G3 Gen 3, G2 Gen 2, and G1 Gen 2 for gaming handhelds, saying the G3 Gen 3 offers a CPU 30% faster than the previous generation  —  Snapdragon G3 Gen 3, Snapdragon G2 Gen 2, and Snapdragon G1 Gen 2 enter the ring.  —  Qualcomm expanded its Snapdragon G series …
Hugh Son / CNBC:
Walmart's OnePay says Klarna will replace Affirm to offer buy-now-pay-later to US shoppers later in 2025, and OnePay can buy a Klarna stake; AFRM drops 10%+  —  Swedish fintech firm Klarna will be the exclusive provider of buy now, pay later loans for Walmart, taking a coveted partnership away from rival Affirm, CNBC has learned.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Discord launches a Social SDK to let developers offer friends lists, cross-platform messaging, voice, and more, with console and mobile support “coming soon”  —  An easier way to connect with Discord friends. … Discord is launching a way for developers to directly integrate …
Stephen Morris / Financial Times:
Alphabet spins off laser-based internet company Taara from its X “moonshot” incubator; Taara, which raised new funding, has its origins in Loon, closed in 2021  —  Taara start-up aims to compete with Elon Musk's Starlink to connect remote areas to the internet using light beams
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Open letter: ~100 EU companies urge EU lawmakers to take “radical action” to shrink the reliance on foreign infrastructure by fostering a so-called “Euro stack”  —  A broad coalition drawn from across the ranks of Europe's tech industry is calling for “radical action” …

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:40 PM ET, March 17, 2025.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

David Roeder / Chicago Sun Times:
Around 20% of Chicago Sun-Times staff, or 30 employees, took buyouts and have resigned, including most of the editorial board; 5 WBEZ workers also took buyouts

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:
RFE/RL sues USAGM and its officials Kari Lake and Victor Morales, arguing they acted unlawfully and unconstitutionally in blocking funds allocated by Congress

Danielle Kaye / New York Times:
The US DOJ charges film director Carl Erik Rinsch for allegedly defrauding a “streaming platform” for $11M; an arbitrator ruled in May that he owed Netflix ~$9M

More News

Daryna Antoniuk / The Record:
Telegram's Pavel Durov has left France, reportedly after a judge authorized him to leave the country for “several weeks”; the investigation is ongoing
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
AI slop, shared by thousands of prolific accounts, is brute forcing virality, and platforms like Meta embrace it; some AI videos get 350M+ views
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Roblox open sources Cube 3D, the first version of its AI foundation model for generating 3D objects, trained on licensed and public datasets and its own data
Paige Smith / Bloomberg:
Robinhood partners with Kalshi to launch a prediction markets hub in the US for retail traders, starting with bets on the federal funds rate and March Madness

Earlier Picks

Sidhartha Shukla / Bloomberg:
Crypto exchange OKX says it has “temporarily” suspended its DEX aggregator services, used to launder the $1.5B Bybit hack, after reported EU scrutiny under MiCA
Nick Robins-Early / The Guardian:
How Elon Musk targeted 18F, as former employees say the GSA group focused on increasing bureaucratic efficiency through tech, similar to what DOGE claims to do
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