Saturday, May 17, 2025

A look at EA's attempts to shut down "anti-DEI" mods for The Sims 4, including one that changes LGBT and Black NPCs to straight and white (Alana Yzola/Wired)

Alana Yzola / Wired:
A look at EA's attempts to shut down “anti-DEI” mods for The Sims 4, including one that changes LGBT and Black NPCs to straight and white  —  The download automatically changed Black NPCs to white, trans NPCs to cis-gendered, and gay NPCs to straight.  And it's just the beginning.



What to expect at Google I/O 2025: an updated Gemini Ultra model, updates for Android 16, Project Astra AI assistant, and Project Mariner AI agents, and more (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
What to expect at Google I/O 2025: an updated Gemini Ultra model, updates for Android 16, Project Astra AI assistant, and Project Mariner AI agents, and more  —  Google I/O, Google's biggest developer conference of the year, is nearly upon us.  —  Scheduled for May 20 to 21 …



Jensen Huang says Nvidia's next chip for China will not be from the Hopper series following US restrictions on Hopper H20 chip sales to China (Wen-Yee Lee/Reuters)

Wen-Yee Lee / Reuters:
Jensen Huang says Nvidia's next chip for China will not be from the Hopper series following US restrictions on Hopper H20 chip sales to China  —  Nvidia is evaluating how to address the China market after the U.S. government placed limits on sales of its Hopper H20 chip there but will not put …



Sources: White House and lawmakers are scrutinizing Apple's plan to use Alibaba's AI on iPhones in China, over concerns about data sharing, censorship, and more (Tripp Mickle/New York Times)

Tripp Mickle / New York Times:
Sources: White House and lawmakers are scrutinizing Apple's plan to use Alibaba's AI on iPhones in China, over concerns about data sharing, censorship, and more  —  The Trump administration and congressional officials have raised concerns about a deal to put a Chinese company's artificial intelligence on iPhones.



Friday, May 16, 2025

Sources: ByteDance expects 2025 revenue to grow 20% YoY to $186B vs. 29% growth in 2024, driven by TikTok's global expansion; ByteDance has 4B MAUs across apps (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
Sources: ByteDance expects 2025 revenue to grow 20% YoY to $186B vs. 29% growth in 2024, driven by TikTok's global expansion; ByteDance has 4B MAUs across apps  —  TikTok's owner expects sales to increase to roughly $186 billion from $155 billion in 2024, people familiar with its finances said.



Charter Is in Talks to Combine with Rival Cox Communications (Michelle F Davis/Bloomberg)

Michelle F Davis / Bloomberg:
Charter Is in Talks to Combine with Rival Cox Communications … The companies are discussing a cash and stock transaction that would value Cox at more than $30 billion including debt, according to the people.  The Cox family would be the largest shareholder in the combined company with a stake …



Epic Games says Fortnite on iOS will be offline worldwide "until Apple unblocks it" after Apple rejected its latest submission to the US App Store (Dominic Preston/The Verge)

Dominic Preston / The Verge:
Epic Games says Fortnite on iOS will be offline worldwide “until Apple unblocks it” after Apple rejected its latest submission to the US App Store  —  Epic says that the game is ‘offline’ on iPhones everywhere after Apple rejected its App Store resubmission.



Sources: the US State Department ordered embassies to push back against foreign influence campaigns, as officials worry anti-US views are taking root worldwide (New York Times)

New York Times : Sources: the US State Department ordered embassies to push back against foreign influence campaigns, as officials worry ...