~techmeme | Bookmarks (1030)

New York Times: Videos on TikTok, Instagram, and other apps urging US consumers to buy directly from Chinese factories are surging in popularity, racking up millions of views  —  Videos on the social media app, filmed at factories in China, urge viewers to buy luxury goods directly, as tariffs drive up prices.

Reece Rogers / Wired: Q&A with Margaret Mitchell, an AI ethics researcher at Hugging Face, on a dataset called SHADES designed to test AI models for bias in languages beyond English  —  Margaret Mitchell, an AI ethics researcher at Hugging Face, tells WIRED about a new dataset designed to test AI models for bias in multiple languages.

Victoria Song / The Verge: Hands-on with Cluely's “cheat on everything” tool: the AI can't intuit what the user needs despite being given prior context and takes long to give a response  —  Tech evangelists have been yammering about “working smarter, not harder” for years.

Bloomberg: Hackers have been using hijacked online brokerage accounts in Japan to drive up penny stocks globally in an illicit $700M trading spree since February 2025  —  Criminals target Japanese online trading accounts to drive up penny stocks  —  Criminals are hijacking online brokerage accounts …

Larry Dignan / Constellation Research: Microsoft's 2025 Work Trend Index report, based on a survey of 31,000 people, argues that “Frontier Firms” utilizing agentic AI as digital workers are emerging  —  As enterprises adopt AI agents and digital workers, companies' success may depend on the human-agent ratio and how workflows are managed.

Connor Sephton / Decrypt: Hex crypto project founder Richard Heart says he has “defeated the SEC completely” after the regulator abandoned its securities fraud lawsuit against him  —  The HEX founder is still listed as one of Europe's most wanted fugitives, and stands accused of tax evasion and assault.

European Commission: The European Commission says that Meta's Facebook Marketplace should no longer be designated under the DMA, citing fewer than 10,000 business users in 2024  —  Today, the European Commission found that Apple breached its anti-steering obligation under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) …

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Report: Bluesky restricted access to 72 accounts in Turkey at the government's request; the accounts are available on third-party apps using the AT Protocol  —  Government censorship has found its way to Bluesky, but there's currently a loophole thanks to how the social network is structured.

Naomi Nix / Washington Post: Meta's Oversight Board rules that two posts disparaging trans women aren't hate speech, in the first major test since Meta weakened its policies in January  —  Meta's top public policy officials issued an unexpected warning last year to the company's Oversight Board: Two upcoming cases …

Umar Shakir / The Verge: Perplexity's iOS app enables support for the company's conversational AI voice assistant, letting users ask the chatbot to write emails, set reminders, and more  —  The Perplexity bot is now available on both iPhones and Android devices, allowing you to ask it to set reminders, send messages, and more.

RT Watson / The Block: Interfax: Russia's Central Bank and Finance Ministry plan to launch a crypto exchange for “highly qualified investors” under an experimental legal regime  —  - Russia's Central Bank and Finance Ministry will launch a crypto exchange for “highly qualified investors,” according to Russian news agency Interfax.

Stephanie Lai / Bloomberg: Trump signs an EO to boost AI education and workforce training, and establishes an AI education task force led by White House OSTP Director Michael Kratsios  —  President Donald Trump signed an executive action to boost artificial intelligence education and workforce training …

Natalie Lung / Bloomberg: Lyft plans to dispatch licensed taxis for the first time to US riders who have opted in, beginning in St. Louis on May 5; Uber has long let users hail taxis  —  The rollout will begin in St. Louis on May 5 for riders who have opted in to taxis as an alternative to gig drivers in rideshare vehicles.

Dylan Butts / CNBC: SK Hynix reports Q1 revenue up 42% YoY to ~$12.4B, vs. ~$12.1B est, and operating profit up 158% YoY to ~$5.2B, vs. ~$4.6B est., on demand for its HBM chips  —  South Korea's SK Hynix on Thursday topped quarterly revenue and operating profit estimates, as demand for its high bandwidth memory offerings used …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Sources: OpenAI aims to debut its next “open” model, which will be “text in, text out” and possibly let developers turn “reasoning” on and off, in early summer  —  Toward the end of March, OpenAI announced its intention to release its first “open” language model since GPT‑2 sometime this year.

Kashish Tandon / Reuters: Flipkart plans to shift its holding company from Singapore to India as Walmart aims to take it public; Flipkart moved the entity to Singapore in 2011  —  Flipkart will shift its holding company from Singapore to India, the e-commerce company said on Tuesday, as its parent Walmart aims to take the 17-year-old company public.

Nilay Patel / The Verge: Q&A with Verizon consumer CEO Sowmyanarayan Sampath on why net neutrality “has gone literally nowhere”, owning Yahoo, FCC probes over DEI, and more  —  Today, I'm talking with Verizon consumer CEO Sowmyanarayan Sampath, who goes by “Sampath.”

Marianna Giusti / Financial Times: Crypto casinos rival traditional betting groups in scale despite being illegal in most countries, with $81.4B in gross gaming revenue in 2024, up 5x since 2022  —  Platforms now rival traditional betting groups in scale despite their services being illegal in most countries

Kate Knibbs / Wired: Bluesky starts rolling out blue check verification, initially limiting verification to select organizations and its moderation team  —  Bluesky's new verification process launches today.  It mixes the old-school, Twitter-style blue check bestowed by the platform with a more decentralized option for trusted organizations.

Charles Rollet / TechCrunch: A Columbia student suspended over a tool to cheat on job interviews says he's raised a $5.3M seed for Cluely, which offers an AI tool to “cheat on everything”  —  On Sunday, 21-year-old Chungin ‘Roy’ Lee announced he's raised $5.3 million in seed funding from Abstract Ventures …

Julian Mark / Washington Post: The US v. Google remedies trial opens with the DOJ arguing that Google should be forced to divest Chrome, and Google calling the proposed remedies “extreme”  —  The remedies trial opens in Washington with the government pushing to break up the company through measures that Google lawyers deem “extreme.”

Emily Mason / Bloomberg: Circle unveils a network designed to link financial institutions and enable real-time settlement of cross-border payments, starting with USDC and EURC in May  —  Powerbeats Pro 2 Review: Best Workout Earbuds Still Lag on Audio Quality  —  Beats' newest exercise headphones are improved, but they face stiffer competition than ever.

Kevin Beaumont / DoublePulsar: Microsoft has improved Recall, but biometrics are only required for setup and users can open it with just a PIN, and sensitive data filtering is unreliable  —  Last year, Microsoft announced Recall, a feature which screenshots your PC every few seconds, OCRs the screenshots and produces …

Erin Woo / The Information: Judge Questions Chrome Divestiture Idea  —  The judge overseeing a hearing to determine how to fix Google's search monopoly on Monday questioned the government's proposal that Google be forced to divest the Chrome browser while signaling support for requiring Google to share some search data with rivals …