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Sources: Apple suggests podcasters join its subscription program to be on its Podcast "browse" carousel; 5 of the first 7 podcasts last week were participants (Max Tani/Semafor)

Dan Lynch, founder of Interop, a computer networking equipment exhibition that helped accelerate TCP/IP adoption and internet commercialization, dies at age 82 (Katie Hafner/New York Times)

A profile of YC's Garry Tan, whose combative online persona has sparked controversies as he tries to shift SF politics from idealistic progressivism to centrism (Heather Knight/New York Times)

Demis Hassabis says the AI hype caused by a surge of money is clouding research; CB Insights: VCs invested $42.5B in 2,500 AI startup equity rounds in 2023 (John Thornhill/Financial Times)

Survey of Americans aged 12+: 47% of have listened to a podcast in the last month, up 12% YoY, 76% listened to online audio in the past month, and more (Podnews)

Discord plans to start showing gaming ads from next week, called Sponsored Quests and offering rewards for in-game tasks; users can turn them off in settings (Wall Street Journal)

A look at Steven Mnuchin's TikTok plans; sources say his proposal to buy TikTok without its export-blocked algorithm and rebuild it from scratch is far-fetched (Washington Post)

IEEE stops accepting papers with the "Lenna image", featuring a 1972 Playboy model, after complaints that it makes some women feel unwelcome in computer science (Benj Edwards/Ars Technica)

Filings from 2023 list Jacob Vespers as OpenAI Startup Fund's manager; OpenAI says "Vespers does not exist" and the docs are "fabricated", without elaborating (Darius Rafieyan/Business Insider)

Google informs users in the US that Google Podcasts is shutting down April 2 and recommends exporting podcast subscriptions to YouTube Music (Bill Toulas/BleepingComputer)

A profile of DeepMind's Demis Hassabis, who was just knighted, as some wonder if he can navigate Google's bureaucracy and turn AI research into great products (Alex Kantrowitz/Big Technology)

A researcher finds that X is testing a feature that lets users create or join communities focused on "adult content" or other "not safe for work" material (Kurt Wagner/Bloomberg)

Amazon launches iOS and Android apps for Amazon One, which let users sign up for the palm-scanning service by using generative AI to analyze palm vein structure (Emma Roth/The Verge)

Data observability service Observe raised a $115M Series B led by Sutter Hill Ventures with participation from Snowflake, sources say at a $400M-$500M valuation (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

Modern Warfare 3 Season 3 release date, maps, and everything we know

NY-based Hume, which is building a conversational AI that it claims can interpret emotions based on people's voices, raised a $50M Series B at a $219M valuation (Rashi Shrivastava/Forbes)

US investors, like General Atlantic and Sequoia, are facing increased pressure from state and federal lawmakers about their investments in Chinese companies (Lauren Hirsch/New York Times)

Adobe announces Custom Models, to let businesses customize Firefly models, and Firefly Services, a set of 20+ generative and creative APIs, tools, and services (Frederic Lardinois/TechCrunch)

Global Screening Services, which is developing a sanctions-screening service to help financial institutions comply with regulations, raised a $47M Series A2 (Paul Sawers/TechCrunch)

The US and the UK sanction a Wuhan-based company linked to the Chinese state-backed hacking group APT31 for targeting critical infrastructure organizations (Sergiu Gatlan/BleepingComputer)

Sources: Chinese social media startup Xiaohongshu reported its first profit with $500M in net profit on $3.7B revenue in 2023, and reached 312M MAUs, up 20% YoY (Financial Times)

Chinese state media: at the China Development Forum, Tim Cook said Apple will launch Vision Pro in China this year, first official non-US launch confirmation (Reuters)

Analysis: Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, and Mark Zuckerberg lead a group of insiders selling their company stocks in Q1, a sign that the tech bull run may be peaking (Financial Times)

Despite X's push to attract creators, its strategy remains unclear, as some creators cite concerns about the state of X's ad business and inconsistent payments (Alexa Corse/Wall Street Journal)

Filmmakers, critics, and users detail why Prime Video failed in Africa; Amazon laid off staff and scaled back operations on the continent in January 2024 (Jesusegun Alagbe/Rest of World)