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April 29, 2025, 9:00 AM
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Top News

Will Oremus / Washington Post:
The US House passes the Take It Down Act to criminalize posting nonconsensual intimate imagery, including deepfakes, and require online platforms to remove them  —  Trump is expected to sign into law a bill that would force online platforms to quickly take down nonconsensual intimate images.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Alibaba debuts its Qwen3 family of open-weight “hybrid” AI reasoning models, including Qwen3-235B-A22B, with 235B total parameters and 22B activated parameters  —  Chinese tech company Alibaba on Monday released Qwen3, a family of AI models the company claims matches …
Reece Rogers / Wired:
OpenAI starts rolling out product recommendations in ChatGPT, including Plus, Pro, Free, and logged-out users, with buy buttons that link to merchants' websites  —  OpenAI is launching a shopping experience inside of ChatGPT, complete with product picks and buy buttons.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch:
OpenAI says users made 1B+ web searches in ChatGPT last week, adds trending searches, and lets WhatsApp users chat 1-800-ChatGPT for up-to-date search results
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn says the company will “gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle”, as part of an announcement to be “AI-first”  —  The company is going to be ‘AI-first,’ says its CEO. … Duolingo will “gradually stop using contractors …
Punchbowl News:
Source: Amazon plans to soon show how much President Trump's tariffs are adding to the price of each product, right next to its total listed price  —  Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers  —  Schatz moves quickly to lock up whip race  —  Gaming out reconciliation
Joey Roulette / Reuters:
Amazon launches 27 satellites for its Project Kuiper broadband internet program, the first batch of 3,236 satellites that it plans to send into low-Earth orbit  —  The first 27 satellites for Amazon's Kuiper broadband internet constellation were launched into space from Florida on Monday …
Zvi Mowshowitz / Don't Worry About the Vase:
A deep dive into GPT-4o's tendency to give sycophantic responses, an issue Sam Altman promised to fix and that may be caused by OpenAI optimizing for engagement  —  GPT-4o tells you what it thinks you want to hear.  —  The results of this were rather ugly.  You get extreme sycophancy.  Absurd praise.
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
Sources: Scattered Spider conducted a ransomware attack on UK retailer M&S, which employs 64,000 in 1,400+ stores, causing widespread disruption from April 22  —  Ongoing outages at British retail giant Marks & Spencer are caused by a ransomware attack believed to be conducted …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources detail tensions between Sam Altman and Satya Nadella, whose partnership began after a summer 2018 meeting; Microsoft can block OpenAI's for-profit move  —  The OpenAI and Microsoft CEOs helped each other become power players in generative AI but are now preparing for independent futures
Josh Richman / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Open letter: the EFF and top security experts urge the Trump administration to end its “political retribution” investigation into ex-CISA Director Chris Krebs  —  Political Retribution for Telling the Truth Weakens the Entire Infosec Community and Threatens Our Democracy; Letter Remains Open for Further Sign-Ons

Sponsor Posts

Google:
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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
Zoho:
Zoho Books now enables direct VAT filing with EmaraTax  —  We're excited to announce that Zoho Books is now recognised as a Digital Tax Integrator by the Federal Tax Authority, enabling direct VAT return filing from within your favorite accounting software.
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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 9:00 AM ET, April 29, 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

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
Sources: Disney+ will exclusively stream every season of CoComelon starting in 2027, paying tens of millions of dollars annually to take it away from Netflix

Kate Knibbs / Wired:
The Freedom of the Press Foundation, a shareholder in Paramount, is threatening legal action against the company if it settles with President Trump

Politico:
A look at California's revamped Google journalism deal after Gov. Newsom dialed back state support and Google dropped its 2025 contribution from $15M to $10M

More News

Anna Nicolaou / Financial Times:
Spotify reports Q1 revenue up 15% YoY to €4.2B, subscribers up 12% YoY to 268M, above its 265M guidance, MAUs up 10% YoY to 678M, and a €509M operating income

Earlier Picks

Prakhar Khanna / ZDNET:
Nothing announces the $279 CMF Phone 2 Pro, with a 6.77" 120Hz AMOLED display and three rear cameras, including a 50MP telephoto lens, plus three new earbuds
CNBC:
Temu adds “import charges” of between 130% and 150% “due to recent changes in global trade rules and tariffs”; Shein also hikes prices but without explicit fees
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
Researchers say bots on Reddit posing as rape victims and more in 1,700+ comments were effective at changing minds, in an unauthorized AI persuasion experiment
Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media:
Kickstarter introduces a Tariff Manager tool that lets creators add extra charges for backers on projects that were already fully funded, to address US tariffs
More: The Verge, Engadget, and Gizmodo
Bluesky: @jasonkoebler, @emanuelmaiberg, and @josephcox.  Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to.  Forums: Slashdot
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