Techmeme
April 4, 2025, 11:23 AM

Top News

Emma Roth / The Verge:
Nintendo delays preorders for the Switch 2 from April 9, 2025 due to concerns about Trump's tariffs but the June 5 launch date remains unchanged  —  Nintendo says preorders will no longer start on April 9th, but the console's June 5th release date is unchanged.
Washington Post:
US officials say NSA director and Cyber Command head Timothy Haugh was fired on April 3, along with his civilian deputy Wendy Noble and at least five aides  —  The director of the NSA, the powerful wiretapping and cyber espionage service, was fired Thursday, according to U.S. officials.  —  just now
Annmarie Hordern / Bloomberg:
President Trump reiterates he's open to tariff relief for China if it approves the sale of TikTok's US operations; the app faces an April 5 divestment deadline  —  President Donald Trump said he was open to reducing his tariffs if other nations were able to offer something “phenomenal,” …
Reuters:
China places export restrictions on key rare earth elements as part of its response to President Trump's tariffs and an extra 34% retaliatory tariff on US goods  —  China placed some rare earth elements under export restrictions on Friday as part of its sweeping response …
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
OpenAI makes ChatGPT Plus free for college students in the US and Canada until the end of May 2025, intensifying competition with Anthropic in higher education  —  OpenAI has made its premium ChatGPT Plus subscription free for all college students in the United States and Canada through the end of May …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Midjourney debuts V7 in alpha, its first new AI image model in nearly a year with a “totally different architecture”, a week after OpenAI's new image generator  —  Midjourney, one of the first AI-based image generators on the web, has released its first new AI image model in nearly a year.
Qianer Liu / The Information:
Sources: Intel and TSMC have reached a preliminary agreement to form a joint venture that will operate Intel's chipmaking facilities; TSMC will take a 20% stake  —  Intel's financial crisis may be over—with support from its biggest rival.  —  Executives from Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor …
Foreign Affairs:
By embracing Trump, Big Tech risks losing access to Europe, pushing Europe to build its own companies and platforms as Chinese companies try to expand to Europe  —  How Silicon Valley Got Entangled in Geopolitics—and Lost  —  Technology companies such as Alphabet, Meta, and OpenAI need to wake up to an unpleasant reality.
Adam Satariano / New York Times:
Sources: the EU is preparing to penalize X this summer for breaking the DSA, including via product change demands and a fine that a source says could be $1B+  —  European regulators are considering fining X more than $1 billion, after weighing the risks of further antagonizing Mr. Musk and President Trump.
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Amazon is testing a “Buy for Me” button powered by agentic AI that will let users purchase products from third-party websites without leaving Amazon's app  —  Amazon wants to use agentic AI to provide third-party websites with your payment information and shipping details.

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Google:
Gemini 2.5 Pro: Our most intelligent AI model  —  Gemini 2.5 Pro (experimental) is now available, with thinking capabilities, enhanced performance, and improved accuracy.  Try it at no cost in the Gemini app.
UiPath:
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
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More News

Katie Roof / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Umar Shakir / The Verge:
Euractiv:
Matthias Bastian / The Decoder:
Taylor Lorenz / User Mag:
Jay Peters / The Verge: