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April 15, 2025, 8:45 PM
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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:
Email: Mark Zuckerberg considered spinning off Instagram in 2018 as he increasingly became concerned that its success was hurting the Facebook social network  —  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:
Mark Zuckerberg's $1B Instagram and $19B WhatsApp deals, central to the FTC's antitrust case, were mocked at the time, and the trial hinges on hypotheticals
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:
Figma confidentially files for a US IPO; the company was valued at $12.5B in a May 2024 tender offer  —  Cloud-based designer platform Figma on Tuesday confidentially filed for an initial public offering in the United States, more than a year after a $20 billion deal to be acquired by Adobe (ADBE.O) hit regulatory roadblocks.
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 …
Mohar Chatterjee / Politico:
Sources: the US DOD's Defense Digital Service is effectively shutting down as nearly all staff are resigning, saying they were sidelined by DOGE's efforts  —  Employees of a defense tech unit say they were sidelined by DOGE.  “Either we die quickly or we die slowly,” says the director.
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
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.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
Anthropic says Claude now integrates with Google Workspace for access to Gmail, Calendar, and Google Docs, coming first to Max, Team, Enterprise, and Pro plans
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 …
Igor Bonifacic / Engadget:
4chan is down after an apparent hack late on April 14; an Imgur post seems to show a hacker gained shell access to 4chan's hosting server and doxxed some users  —  More like 404chan, amirite?  —  4chan, the controversial forum known for birthing early meme culture and Gamergate, is down, following an apparent hack.

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:45 PM ET, April 15, 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

Pew Research Center:
A survey of US adults finds 77% say press freedom is “extremely or very important”, but only 33% say the media is “completely free” to report the news in the US

Nicholas Riccardi / Associated Press:
The stripped-down festivities at the WHCD reflected the somber tone in Washington, with White House journalists using the event to celebrate the First Amendment

Brian Steinberg / Variety:
In the final segment of “60 Minutes”, Scott Pelley said Paramount “began to supervise our content in new ways” before executive producer Bill Owens' departure

More News

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
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Nvidia unveils its RTX 5060 family, including the RTX 5060 Ti with 4,608 CUDA cores for $379 with 8GB of VRAM or $429 for 16GB of VRAM, launching on April 16

Earlier Picks

Financial Times:
FCC Chair Brendan Carr says “allied western democracies” need to focus on China and those “concerned about Starlink” should be more fearful of a Chinese version
Bloomberg:
An interview with eFishery CEO Gibran Huzaifah and 20+ sources detail how Gibran's “fake-it-till-you-make-it” deceptions spiraled, losing investors $300M+
Wall Street Journal:
Nvidia's $500B US spending plan follows a familiar pattern of companies trying to please President Trump and offers few details on what AI gear would be US-made
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