Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

Ziff Davis agrees to sell its Connectivity division, including Ookla and Downdetector, to Accenture for $1.2B in cash, to focus on enthusiast websites like IGN (Kritika Lamba/Reuters)

Techmeme

Google launches Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite, which it says delivers "enhanced performance" at a fraction of the cost of larger models and outperforms 2.5 Flash (The Keyword)

Techmeme

X is testing a standalone X Chat iOS app with 1,000 users via Apple's TestFlight, a shift away from Elon Musk's plan to make X an "everything app" (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

Techmeme

Audible launches a cheaper, $8.99/month streaming tier in the US, vs. $14.95/month for its premium plan, to rival Spotify; the plan includes ad-free podcasts (Ashley Carman/Bloomberg)

Techmeme

Israel-based Fig Security, which makes tools for companies to monitor their security stack, raised $38M in seed and Series A funding (Ram Iyer/TechCrunch)

Techmeme

Global venture investment hit a record $189B in February, up close to 780% YoY, amid the AI boom; 83% of the month's total went to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Waymo (Gené Teare/Crunchbase News)

Techmeme

Apple says the M5 MacBook Pro starts at $1,699 for the 14" model, up $100, and the M5 Pro and Max models start at $2,199 and $2,699, respectively, both up $200 (Engadget)

Techmeme

Apple unveils the M5 MacBook Air in 13" and 15" sizes, boosting its starting price by $100 to $1,099 and doubling base storage to 512GB, shipping from March 11 (Zac Hall/9to5Mac)

Techmeme

Apple updates the $1,599+ Studio Display and unveils a $3,299+ 27" 5K Studio Display XDR, with a 120Hz refresh rate, a mini-LED backlight, and up to 2,000 nits (Apple)

Techmeme

Apple unveils the M5 Pro and M5 Max, offering a new Apple-designed Fusion Architecture, a next-generation up-to-40-core GPU with Neural Accelerators, and more (Apple)

Techmeme

Apple refreshes the 14" and 16" MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max: up to 4x faster LLM prompt processing, up to 2x faster SSD speeds, and 1TB/2TB base storage (Apple)

Techmeme

A UK trial by the National Grid, Nvidia, and others finds AI data centers can operate without using peak power continuously, adjusting consumption when asked (Eamon Farhat/Bloomberg)

Techmeme

Elliott injects $1B into Pinterest to fund stock buybacks, buying convertible senior notes with an initial conversion price of $22.72 per share, a 30% premium (Nicholas G. Miller/Wall Street Journal)

Techmeme

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's and Trump's actions against Anthropic have serious legal issues, and its designation exceeds what the statute authorizes (Lawfare)

Techmeme

Grow Therapy, which connects patients with therapists covered by their insurance, raised a $150M Series D at a $3B valuation and hits $1B+ in annual revenue (Rebecca Torrence/Bloomberg)

Techmeme

Iranian cryptoasset outflows reached ~$10.3M between February 28 and March 2 amid US and Israeli airstrikes; in 2025, Iran's crypto ecosystem was worth $7.78B+ (Chainalysis)

Techmeme

Sources: in the EU, US criticism over censorship has been met with disbelief and anger, and some Big Tech lobbyists acknowledge US accusations are overstated (Financial Times)

Techmeme

Google unveils Home updates to fix a long list of annoyances and idiosyncrasies, and debuts Live Search to let Gemini analyze and describe live camera feeds (Thomas Ricker/The Verge)

Techmeme

Sources: Samsung Foundry has frequently delayed the timeline for its plant in Taylor, Texas, with its mass production plans moving from early 2026 to early 2027 (Lee Jae-Lim/Korea Joongang Daily)

Techmeme

Investigation: Sama data annotators in Nairobi say they view private videos from Ray-Ban Meta glasses, like bathroom visits; ex-Meta staff say faces are blurred (SvD)

Techmeme