Techmeme
April 9, 2025, 10:50 AM

Top News

Elisabeth Buchwald / CNN:
The White House says that tariffs on China are set to rise to 104% at 12:01am ET on April 9 after China missed Trump's deadline to remove its reciprocal tariffs  —  President Donald Trump is set to impose an astounding 104% in levies across all Chinese imports on Wednesday …
More: Fortune, Financial Times, Cryptopolitan, The White House, The Hill, Reuters, Mirror, CryptoPotato, Bloomberg, Trak.in, Android Authority, AppleInsider, Tech in Asia, Benzinga, CNBC, NPR, Variety, Associated Press, Sky News, CoinGape, Australian Financial Review, Watcher Guru, Yahoo Finance, VICE, The Verge, crypto.news, WISH-TV, Bitcoin News, The Crypto Times, Crypto Briefing, and Business Today
Threads: @aaron.rupar and @kolchak
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says that President Trump “believes” the US has the labor, workforce, and resources to build iPhones in the US  —  Trump's massive 104% tariffs on China are set to go into effect at midnight tonight, a move that will have a major impact on Apple and its supply chain.
Karthikeyan Sundaram / Bloomberg:
White House document: the US will tax imports of items priced up to $800 at 90% of their value, up from a prior plan of a 30% levy, targeting Chinese retailers  —  The escalating trade war between the US and China saw President Donald Trump raise tariffs even further on small parcels that were until now exempt from taxes.
Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge:
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Cloud Next: Google unveils Ironwood, its seventh-generation TPU and the first for inference, coming later in 2025 in a 256-chip cluster or a 9,216-chip cluster  —  During its Cloud Next conference this week, Google unveiled the latest generation of its TPU AI accelerator chip.
Will Canny / CoinDesk:
Ripple agrees to acquire prime brokerage Hidden Road for $1.25B; Hidden Road plans to use Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin as collateral across its platform  —  Among other things, the deal is expected to strengthen Ripple's stablecoin ambitions.  —  What to know:
Reuters:
At an NRCC event, President Trump says he told TSMC it would pay a tax of up to 100% if it didn't build US plants; in March, TSMC said it would invest $100B  —  President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he told the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which has pledged to build new factories …
Georgia Butler / DatacenterDynamics:
Microsoft backs out of its October 2024 plan to invest $1B in three Ohio data center campuses, the latest in a series of its data center project cancellations  —  Another data center project bites the dust  —  Microsoft has backed out of plans to build data centers in Licking County, Ohio.
Vikram Dodd / The Guardian:
Statewatch and FOI documents: the UK government is developing a “murder prediction” tool that uses personal data of those known to police to find likely killers  —  Exclusive: Algorithms allegedly being used to study data of thousands of people, in project critics say is ‘chilling and dystopian’
Isabelle Bousquette / Wall Street Journal:
How Google used new AI techniques to enhance 90%+ of The Wizard of Oz, released in 1939, to show on the Las Vegas Sphere's giant screen from August 28, 2025  —  Google invented new techniques to enhance resolution and generated new character performances to bring the 1939 film to the giant screen
The Information:
Source: Instagram is working on an iPad app, and Adam Mosseri told staff to be willing to assume more “risk” to take advantage of a TikTok US ban or disruption  —  Meta Platforms has put the turmoil around TikTok to good use.  Amid a barrage of headlines about the White House's efforts …
Wall Street Journal:
X's merger with xAI before Trump's tariffs caps a yearslong turnaround push; sources say X's revenue fell from ~$4.6B in 2022 to $3B in 2023 and ~$2.6B in 2024  —  xAI merger capped social-media company's yearslong turnaround push  —  A crowd of investors gathered at Morgan Stanley's …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google rolls out Loss of Pulse Detection to the Pixel Watch 3 in the US after getting FDA clearance in February 2025; the feature rolled out in Europe in 2024  —  Following the April 2025 OTA update and Scam Detection yesterday, Google is now rolling out Loss of Pulse Detection in the US.

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The Verge:
Abner Li / 9to5Google: