Tech Meme

New York Times: How Ross Ulbricht’s allies, including crypto investors, libertarian politicians, and his mother, Lyn Ulbricht, persuaded Trump to pardon the Silk Road founder  —  Libertarian and crypto allies of Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a life sentence for distributing drugs on his Silk Road website … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Jonathan Briskman / Sensor Tower: State of Mobile 2025: in 2024, app downloads on iOS and Google Play dropped ~1% YoY to 136B, while revenue from IAP, paid apps, and games rose 13% YoY to $150B  —  The mobile market is stronger than ever as we enter 2025, with a recovering mobile gaming market adding to the rapid growth seen in non-gaming. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: An Indian tribunal suspends restrictions preventing WhatsApp from sharing user data with Meta for ads, temporarily lifting a five-year ban imposed by the CCI  —  An Indian tribunal on Thursday suspended restrictions that would have barred WhatsApp from sharing user data with its parent company Meta … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times: Neko Health, a startup co-founded by Daniel Ek that offers AI-based full-body scans, raised a $260M Series B led by Lightspeed, sources say at a $1.7B valuation  —  Spotify founder’s body-scanning start-up valued at $1.7bn in new funding round  —  Daniel Ek’s body-scanning start-up Neko Health … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Andy Chalk / PC Gamer: A GDC survey of 3K+ developers finds 80% are currently making PC games, up from 66% in 2024, versus 38% for the PlayStation 5 and 34% for the Xbox Series X/S  —  Interest in PC game development is higher than ever.  —  It’s kind of funny to look back on all the times PC gaming has been declared dead … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Naomi Nix / Washington Post: An interview with Pinterest CEO Bill Ready on why his company is backing US state laws to restrict cellphone use in classrooms  —  The photo-sharing app is backing state laws that restrict cellphone use in classrooms amid a political reckoning over youth safety online. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times: Neko Health, a startup co-founded by Daniel Ek that offers AI-based full-body scans, has raised $260M led by Lightspeed, sources say at a $1.7B valuation  —  Spotify founder’s body-scanning start-up valued at $1.7bn in new funding round  —  Daniel Ek’s body-scanning start-up Neko Health … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Song Jung-a / Financial Times: SK Hynix’s Q4 operating profit grew over 20x YoY to ~$5.6B, beating Samsung’s for first time, with HBM chips accounting for 40% of its total DRAM chip revenue  —  South Korean chipmaker expects sales of high-bandwidth memory products to more than double this year Lees verder op Tech Meme

Reuters: Saudi digital security firm Elm Company agrees to acquire business services firm Thiqah from Saudi Arabia’s PIF, which is also Elm’s majority owner, for $906M  —  Saudi Arabian digital security firm Elm Company (7203.SE) said on Wednesday that it had agreed to acquire business services firm Thiqah … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Sensor Tower: consumer spending in 2024 on AI apps like ChatGPT, Gemini, and ByteDance’s Doubao grew more than 200% YoY to nearly $1.1B  —  Demand for generative AI help drive consumer spending on apps to $150 billion globally in 2024, up 13% from the prior year. Lees verder op Tech Meme