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.
New York Times: Cybersecurity experts say the Trump administration's removal of security guardrails has given US adversaries more room to operate in the disinformation space — America's adversaries have more room to operate, at least in the disinformation space, cybersecurity experts say.
Tripp Mickle / New York Times: The Trump administration's restrictions on AI chip exports by Nvidia, AMD, and Intel to China could help turn Huawei into a global chip-making powerhouse — New restrictions on semiconductor exports to China are scrambling sales and fueling concerns that the Chinese tech giant will become a chip-making powerhouse.
Steve Lohr / New York Times: Experts say two federal judges declaring Google a monopoly within a year signals a judicial shift toward addressing anticompetitive behavior in digital markets — Within a year, two federal judges declared the tech giant a monopoly in search and ad technology. The tide may be turning for antitrust.
Meaghan Tobin / New York Times: In a notice last week, China said it would exempt advanced chips from its US tariffs; experts say the move shows China won't let a trade war impact chip supply — President Trump has threatened tariffs on Taiwan and the chip industry. China has signaled it will not let the trade war keep it from the technology it needs.
New York Times: FTC v. Meta: in opening arguments, FTC lawyers accuse Meta of a “buy-or-bury strategy” to cement a social networking monopoly by buying Instagram and WhatsApp — The tech giant went to court on Monday in an antitrust trial focused on its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.
New York Times: How private prison company Geo Group built a lucrative side business making digital tools like smart watches and tracking apps to help ICE surveil immigrants — After a Honduran immigrant arrived in the United States in 2022, officials ordered him to use a government-issued app as part of an immigration surveillance program.
New York Times: Legal expert: Meta's FTC antitrust trial, where Mark Zuckerberg could take the stand as early as today, is set to be more grueling than Congressional hearings — Meta's chief has grown accustomed to tough questioning in courts and hearings, but an antitrust trial starting Monday could be more grueling, experts said.
Meaghan Tobin / New York Times: ByteDance, which spent an estimated $11B in 2024 on infrastructure for AI, is using data from ~1B users of its apps as the linchpin of its growing AI business — A set of popular apps helped China's ByteDance develop a key component of advanced artificial intelligence: information on how a billion people use the internet.
Tripp Mickle / New York Times: Sources: Tim Cook approved doubling Apple's AI chips budget in 2023 after John Giannandrea sought more GPUs, but CFO Luca Maestri cut the increase to under half — Even before President Trump's tariffs threatened to upend Apple's manufacturing business in China, the company's struggle …
Cecilia Kang / New York Times: Tech CEOs who spent big on Trump's inauguration have yet to see the investment pay off; Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are down 22% since January 20 — With inauguration donations and Mar-a-Lago visits, leaders of the biggest tech companies sought favor with the president …
David Yaffe-Bellany / New York Times: Bitcoin is down 10%+ to ~$76K after President Trump's global tariffs, far below its record price of nearly $110K on Trump's inauguration on January 20, 2025 — The rapid drop shows that cryptocurrencies, which the president has promoted, are subject to the same market gyrations as any other risky asset.
New York Times: A look at the US market for humanoids in homes and businesses; PitchBook says investors have poured $7.2B into 50+ startups since 2015, including $1.6B in 2024 — By getting its humanoids into people's homes, 1X hopes to gather enormous amounts of data that can show these robots how to handle …
Jessica Testa / New York Times: Spotify rolls out new ad tools, including an AI tool in the US and Canada to generate scripts and voiceovers, and pitches itself to advertisers as “nutritional” — After finally achieving profitability, the streaming platform wants to be a healthy alternative to “doom scrolling.”
Nicole Sperling / New York Times: In a new strategy, Amazon plans to release 14 to 16 movies per year in theaters, rivaling other major studios, with most running for 45 days before streaming — The streaming giant is planning to release at least 14 movies a year in theaters around the country, rivaling other major studios.
Megan Specia / New York Times: How some UK parents created a “Smartphone Free Childhood” pledge, signed by 124K+ people, after the UK government watered down a bill banning phones in schools — In Britain, amid growing evidence of harm to young people from extreme content online, a “Smartphone Free Childhood” campaign is going viral.
Michael J. de la Merced / New York Times: Isomorphic Labs, a DeepMind spinoff focusing on drug discovery, raised $600M led by Thrive to research treatments, including for cancer and immune disorders — The company, which uses artificial intelligence to develop new treatments, now counts the venture capital firm Thrive Capital as a backer.
New York Times: An analysis finds 170+ violent vigilante attacks since 2023 by US “pedophile hunters”, whose online content has been amplified by websites like Kick and Locals — With the rise of loosely moderated social media platforms, a fringe vigilante movement is experiencing a dangerous evolution.
New York Times: US tech companies are racing to establish more and bigger offshore campuses in India, fully staffed with highly skilled professionals in cities like Bengaluru — An abundance of motivated young professionals is luring American businesses to base their global operations in Indian cities.
Ana Swanson / New York Times: The US adds export restrictions to 80 entities, primarily targeting Chinese companies, including server maker Nettrix and customers of Nvidia, Intel, and AMD — The additions included companies that are customers of Intel and Nvidia, and one firm that was the focus of a New York Times investigation last year.
Kate Morgan / New York Times: Scientists are using AI to speed up drug repurposing, expanding the treatment possibilities for people with rare diseases and few options — Joseph Coates, left, owes his life to an A.I. model developed by Dr. David Fajgenbaum and the rest of his team.Hannah Yoon for The New York Times
New York Times: A profile of longtime Elon Musk loyalist Steve Davis, who effectively runs DOGE after SpaceX, Boring Company, and X stints, based on interviews with 22 sources — Elon Musk declared last month that the federal government was engaged in “utterly insane” activity, claiming without evidence …
New York Times: Since Xi Jinping met DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng last month, Chinese officials are rushing to use the AI model, including in courthouses and in hospitals — Government bodies nationwide have been eager to show they are using DeepSeek's A.I. technology since the company's founder met with Xi Jinping, China's leader.
New York Times: HR service Rippling sues Deel, accusing its rival of hiring a mole in its Dublin office to comb through trade secrets, uncovered via a “honeypot” Slack channel — A lawsuit by Rippling accuses a top competitor, Deel, of placing a mole in its ranks — which it uncovered via a “honeypot” trap on Slack.
Michael Levenson / New York Times: Carl Lundstrom, who financed file sharing service the Pirate Bay, died in a plane crash in Slovenia; at its peak, the Pirate Bay had an estimated 20M+ users — Mr. Lundstrom was a supporter of far-right causes and, at one point, an unsuccessful candidate for office.
Matthew Goldstein / New York Times: A profile of Caroline Crenshaw, the lone Democratic SEC Commissioner, who is offering dissenting views as the regulator rolls back Biden-era crypto enforcement — Caroline Crenshaw, the lone Democratic commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commission, is offering dissenting views …
New York Times: Trump's call to scrap the “horrible” CHIPS Act causes concern among Republican lawmakers, who sought and received White House reassurances over the program — The president's attack on the key tenet of the Biden administration's industrial policy has set off concerns that he may claw back its funding.
David Yaffe-Bellany / New York Times: Source: Bybit hackers planted malicious code to manipulate transactions by compromising a developer's computer at crypto wallet provider Safe, used by Bybit — On the night of Feb. 21, Ben Zhou, the chief executive of the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, logged on to his computer to approve what appeared to be a routine transaction.
Cecilia Kang / New York Times: US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick unveils an overhaul of Biden's $42B broadband grant to “take a tech-neutral approach”, a move that could benefit Starlink — Under new rules from President Trump's Commerce Department, a $42 billion high-speed internet effort will no longer favor fiber-optic cable.
Mike Isaac / New York Times: Digg founder Kevin Rose and Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian buy Digg for an undisclosed sum from Money Group, aiming to focus on “connection and humanity” online — Two decades after creating Digg, a community-focused social message board, Kevin Rose is reviving the site and teaming up with a founder of Reddit.
Ezra Klein / New York Times: Q&A with ex-White House AI adviser Ben Buchanan on the Biden administration, AGI, OpenAI's Deep Research, the US labor market, China, hacks, AI labs, and more — This is an edited transcript of an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the conversation by following …
Cade Metz / New York Times: Reinforcement learning pioneers Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton win the 2024 Turing Award; their work played a vital role in the rise of AI, including ChatGPT — Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton developed reinforcement learning, a technique vital to chatbots like ChatGPT.
Kevin Roose / New York Times: A look at Vibecoding, a term popularized by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy for a trend where AI lets nontechnical hobbyists build bespoke apps for themselves — A photo illustration shows a vertical circuit board full of dials and knobs of various designs and sizes. Fingers are turning two of them.
Nicole Sperling / New York Times: A profile of London-based Mubi, a niche movie streaming service with 400 employees boosted by hit film The Substance, turning it into a real Hollywood player — Early on in “The Substance,” the body horror film starring Demi Moore that has been nominated for five Academy Awards …
Hannah Beech / New York Times: Sources: no major players behind online scam centers in Myanmar were taken down in the recent China-led raids, and the construction of new centers continues — A China-led crackdown on online fraud rescued thousands from Myanmar this month. But this massive business of grift keeps growing.
Ellen Barry / New York Times: The American Psychological Association warns the US FTC that AI chatbots “masquerading” as therapists could drive vulnerable people to harm themselves or others — The nation's largest association of psychologists this month warned federal regulators that A.I. chatbots …
David Yaffe-Bellany / New York Times: Even as Trump embraces crypto, attracting millions of new investors, the Bybit hack and memecoins show how crypto remains the wild West of the financial world — Hours after Coinbase said the S.E.C. was dropping a lawsuit against it, another major cryptocurrency exchange reported a potentially record-setting theft.
Erin Griffith / New York Times: Many SV startups are using AI to boost productivity in research, coding, and more, reducing reliance on VC money for hiring, fueling “tiny team” success stories — Tech start-ups typically raised huge sums to hire armies of workers and grow fast.
Steve Lohr / New York Times: Software engineers, academics, and others say AI coding tools will likely prompt an evolution rather than extinction, pushing developers to learn new skills — A.I. tools from Microsoft and other companies are helping write code, placing software engineers at the forefront of the technology's potential to disrupt the work force.
Madeline Coleman / New York Times: A look at “sim racing”, Formula One world champion Max Verstappen's passion for the competitive esport, and his efforts to get sim drivers into physical racing — Race teams always look up and down the motorsports ladder to identify rising stars.
New York Times: Sources: banks sold ~$4.7B of X's debt on February 13, more than the $3B they originally intended to sell, leaving ~$1B of X debt on their balance sheets — The social media company is attracting investor interest because of Elon Musk's close ties to President Trump and a recent jump in revenue.
Ken Bensinger / New York Times: Elon Musk and right-wing influencers redefine “doxxing” to include reporting on government employees; free speech advocates say they aim to intimidate the press — Right-wing influencers are criticizing journalists who have published public information about government employees.
New York Times: After the Los Angeles fires, over 1M people donated $250M+ via GoFundMe, or $20M more than the service collected for all natural disasters worldwide in 2024 — Donations on the crowdfunding site to people and fire relief efforts have exceeded those for all natural disasters worldwide last year.
Scott Cacciola / New York Times: Some users are wearing the Apple Watch on their ankles to get around problems, like skin conditions; some believe health metrics are more accurate on the ankle — In pursuit of tracking fitness goals in a comfortable manner, a growing number of people are relocating their watches (and causing some confusion along the way).
Zachary Small / New York Times: An interview with The Sims designer Will Wright on the dollhouse game turning 25, the game's mechanics, infusing it with chaos, ants, The Sims Online, and more — Will Wright kindly requests that admirers stop describing him as a god. — “I don't think God would concern himself with taking …
Noam Scheiber / New York Times: A profile of Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski, whose overblown statements about AI replacing humans point to a future that tech companies are working toward — Ask typical corporate executives about their goals in adopting artificial intelligence, and they will most likely make vague pronouncements …
Kevin Roose / New York Times: In its current form, OpenAI's Operator is more of an intriguing demo than a product useful for most people, but it points to a future of powerful AI agents — In the past week, OpenAI's Operator has done the following things for me: — Ordered me a new ice cream scoop on Amazon.
Michael J. de la Merced / New York Times: Kalshi plans to let users buy into its prediction markets directly from brokerages, says it now has 908 active contracts, up from 691 on Election Day — The platform, which recently hired Donald Trump Jr. as an adviser, is seeking to tap Wall Street to expand its potential customer base.
Paul Sonne / New York Times: Experts say the Kremlin's throttling of YouTube is driving Russians to state-controlled platforms; Google data shows Russian traffic to YouTube is down ~66% YoY — The Kremlin is trying to cripple YouTube in Russia, internet experts say, pushing some people to state-controlled domestic alternatives.
William J. Broad / New York Times: A profile of incoming White House OSTP director Michael Kratsios, who lacks a STEM degree and led the American AI Initiative during President Trump's first term — Michael Kratsios, who served in the White House and Defense Department in the first Trump administration, is a policy specialist on artificial intelligence.