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April 29, 2025, 7:15 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 a shift to become “AI-first”  —  The company is going to be ‘AI-first,’ says its CEO. … Duolingo will “gradually stop using contractors …
Joey Roulette / Reuters:
Amazon launches 27 satellites for its Project Kuiper broadband internet program, the first batch of 3,236 satellites 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 …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources detail a growing rift between Sam Altman and Satya Nadella, whose partnership began after a 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
Zvi Mowshowitz / Don't Worry About the Vase:
A deep dive on 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 carried out a ransomware attack on UK retailer M&S, which employs 64K+ in 1,400 stores, that caused huge disruption starting April 22  —  Ongoing outages at British retail giant Marks & Spencer are caused by a ransomware attack believed to be conducted …

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From Mediagazer

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Sources: Disney is laying off several hundred employees globally across multiple teams, including TV and film

Max Tani / Semafor:
Sources: in May 2024, Business Insider sent some staff a recommended reading list that included seemingly AI-generated books that did not appear to exist

Naman Ramachandran / Variety:
Marc Maron plans to end WTF With Marc Maron podcast in the fall; the groundbreaking podcast helped define the medium with 1,600+ episodes after its 2009 launch

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
Josh Richman / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Open letter: the EFF and top security experts urge the Trump administration to end its probe of ex-CISA chief Chris Krebs, calling it political and harmful

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 were effective at changing minds in over 1,000 posts, 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
More: The Verge, Engadget, and Gizmodo
Bluesky: @jasonkoebler, @emanuelmaiberg, and @josephcox.  Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to.  Forums: Slashdot
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