Techmeme
April 15, 2025, 7:45 PM

Top News

The Verge:
Sources: OpenAI is in the early stages of building its own X-like social network, focused on ChatGPT image generation, and is asking some outsiders for feedback  —  Is Sam Altman ready to up his rivalry with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg? … OpenAI is working on its own X-like social network …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Meta offered $450M in late March to settle the FTC's antitrust case and raised its offer to ~$1B as the trial neared; the FTC had demanded $30B  —  The FTC wanted $30 billion to drop its case.  Zuckerberg offered much less and hoped Trump would back him up.
Bloomberg:
A 2018 email from Mark Zuckerberg explored spinning off Instagram; he testified his thinking at the time took into account where politics seemed to be going  —  Mark Zuckerberg considered spinning off Instagram into a separate company in 2018 as he increasingly became concerned that the photo …
Bloomberg:
FTC v. Meta: Mark Zuckerberg testified about his acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, including a 2012 email exchange rationalizing the apps' acquisition  —  - Meta CEO asked in email if deal may ‘neutralize a competitor’  — FTC claims acquisitions created a social networking monopoly
Mike Isaac / New York Times:
CNBC:
Filing: Nvidia says it will record a $5.5B charge after the US said it would require a license to export the H20 chips to China; NVDA drops 6%+ after hours  —  Nvidia said on Tuesday that it will take a quarterly charge of about $5.5 billion tied to exporting H20 graphics processing units to China and other destinations.
David DiMolfetta / Nextgov/FCW:
Mitre, the nonprofit research organization behind the CVE program, says the US government funding needed to develop and operate CVE will expire on April 16  —  The U.S. government funding needed for non-profit research giant MITRE to develop, operate and maintain its flagship Common Vulnerabilities …
Reuters:
Chinese state media: police in Harbin accuse the NSA of launching “advanced” cyberattacks during the Asian Winter Games in February 2025 and name three agents  —  Chinese police in the northeastern city of Harbin have accused the United States National Security Agency (NSA) …
Emma Roth / The Verge:
Google rolls out its text-to-video AI model Veo 2 to Gemini Advanced subscribers and makes its Whisk Animate tool available for Google One AI Premium users  —  A new Whisk Animate tool is coming to Google One AI Premium users, as well. … Google is letting Gemini Advanced subscribers try out Veo 2 …
Jenna McLaughlin / NPR:
Whistleblower: at NLRB, DOGE staff disabled monitoring tools, deleted logs, one worked on “NxGenBdoorExtract”; one DOGE account tried to log in via a Russian IP  —  In the first days of March, a team of advisers from President Trump's new Department of Government Efficiency initiative arrived …
Mohar Chatterjee / Politico:
Ben Sherry / Inc:
Anthropic's Claude adds Research, capable of searching the web and internal documents to give comprehensive answers, in beta for Max, Team, Enterprise plans  —  The integration should make Claude even more effective as a virtual assistant.  Plus, there's a new ‘Research’ mode.
Bloomberg:
Sources: activist investor Elliott has built a position worth $1.5B+ in HPE, making it one of the company's top five shareholders; HPE is down ~30% in 2025  —  Elliott Investment Management has built a large position worth more than $1.5 billion in Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., according to people familiar with the matter.
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google rolls out a Play services update, including an Android security feature to auto-reboot phones and tablets that are “locked for three consecutive days”  —  With the latest Google Play services update, Android is rolling out a new security feature that automatically restarts …
Takashi Mochizuki / Bloomberg:
Japan's FTC orders Google to stop alleged abuse of its market power over local smartphone manufacturers, ahead of high-stakes US trade negotiations this week  —  Japan's Fair Trade Commission ordered Alphabet Inc.'s Google to stop alleged abuse of its market power over local smartphone manufacturers …
David Pierce / The Verge:
Notion releases Notion Mail, a lightweight Gmail client to help users schedule meetings and organize and draft emails, available as a free macOS and web app  —  The new app looks like Notion, it works like Gmail, and it has a lot of ideas about how AI can help you tame your inbox.

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Igor Bonifacic / Engadget:
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