Quote:Federal agents seized the phone and electronic devices of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan in an early morning raid on his Manhattan apartment, just a week after the crypto betting platform correctly predicted Donald Trump’s stunning 2024 presidential election win.
The New York Post reports that the FBI conducted an early morning raid on the Soho apartment of 26-year-old Shayne Coplan, the founder and CEO of the prediction market platform Polymarket. According to a source close to the matter, Coplan was not provided with a reason for the seizure of his phone and other electronics, but the raid is suspected to be politically motivated.
The source believes that the government’s actions are a form of “grand political theater” and retribution against Polymarket for accurately predicting a landslide victory for Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. Traditional polls had indicated a different outcome, making Polymarket’s successful prediction stand out.
Speculation also suggests that the FBI may be acting on recent leftist media reports accusing Polymarket of market manipulation and rigging its polls in favor of Trump. However, a Polymarket spokesperson stated that the platform is “fully transparent” and allows observers from around the world to analyze all market data as a public good.
Despite the raid, Coplan was not arrested or charged. He later posted on X/Twitter, “New phone, who dis?” indicating his reaction to the situation. He added another tweet shortly after the raid in which he criticized the Biden administration:
It’s discouraging that the current administration would seek a last-ditch effort to go after companies they deem to be associated with political opponents. We are deeply committed to being non-partisan, and today is no different, but the incumbents should do some self-reflecting…
Quote:German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck said that Europe must enact strict speech regulations on Elon Musk’s X platform to fight so-called “disinformation”.
Habeck, the likely candidate for chancellor for the leftist Green party in the upcoming elections, laid out his vision for Germany and Europe in a speech to the Neuhardenberg Castle Foundation on Saturday, including more internet censorship in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory.
“We cannot put democratic discourse in the hands of Elon Musk and Chinese software,” Habeck said, per Welt. Therefore, he argued, strict EU regulations must be applied to platforms such as TikTok and X.
The vice chancellor also called for Berlin to take an aggressive stance towards the Trump administration regarding trade and defence, arguing that the U.S. “needs us too… if Trump threatens, then we don’t have to hide.”
However, years of green policies advocated by Habeck’s party, including shutting down nuclear power entirely in the country, left Germany vulnerable to outside forces, notably the invasion of Ukraine and the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines.
The sorry state of the German economy resulted in the leftist coalition government collapsing this week, in part due to concerns about Trump’s return to the White House.
Habeck’s desire to further censor X was echoed in Paris, with French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot telling Le Parisien on Saturday: “We will never accept that public debate is outsourced to deregulated social networks in the hands of special interests, whether American or Chinese.”
“Let us hope that he does not inflict on American democracy the treatment he has given to Twitter. Democracy is a fragile treasure,” Barrot added.
Quote:Cybersecurity experts have issued an urgent warning, urging computer users not to type the phrase “Are Bengal Cats legal in Australia?” into search engines due to the risk of falling victim to a bizarre cyber attack.
The New York Post reports that in an alarming discovery, cybersecurity experts at SOPHOS have identified a new threat targeting unsuspecting internet users. The company has warned that searching for the seemingly innocuous phrase “Are Bengal Cats legal in Australia?” could lead to personal information being stolen by hackers.
According to SOPHOS, cyber criminals have employed a tactic known as “SEO poisoning” to manipulate search engine results, pushing malicious websites to the top of the page. When users click on these fraudulent links, which appear to be legitimate, they unknowingly expose their personal information, such as bank details, to a malicious program called Gootloader.
The Gootloader program not only steals sensitive data but can also lock users out of their own computers, leaving them vulnerable to further attacks. What makes this threat particularly concerning is that it targets users who are not necessarily searching for anything nefarious, but rather for information about the legality of owning a specific breed of cat in Australia.
At present, the dangerous links only appear in search results when the word “Australia” is included, putting those in the country at the highest risk of falling victim to this attack. However, experts warn that this tactic could easily be adapted to target users in other regions or those searching for different topics.
SOPHOS emphasizes the importance of being vigilant when clicking on links in search results, even if the search term seems harmless. The company urges those who believe they may have been a victim of SEO poisoning to change their passwords immediately and take steps to secure their personal information.
Quote:Billionaire leftist and former Shark Tank star Mark Cuban has deleted his pro-Kamala Harris tweets in the aftermath of her epic election defeat by Donald Trump. The billionaire, who infamously slurred conservative women as weak just days before the election, claims “I’ve always gone back and deleted tweets.”
The Wrap reports that popular X/Twitter account Libs of TikTok has revealed billionaire Kamala Harris supporter Mark Cuban has deleted his numerous pro-Harris tweets following her massive failure on Election Day. However, Cuban has swiftly denied these allegations, claiming that he routinely deletes old tweets as a longstanding practice.
In response to the initial accusation made by Libs of TikTok, Cuban stated, “I’ve always gone back and deleted tweets. For years. Same with 2020 election. 2016 election. Same with other stuff. You can use the wayback machine if you really want to see them.” Despite his explanation, social media users remain skeptical of Cuban’s motives for removing the tweets.
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Throughout the campaign, Cuban’s support for the Democratic candidate was unrelenting. The co-founder of Costplusdrugs.com, former Shark Tank star, and minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks expressed his belief that Harris represented the chance for an “opportunity economy” through her approach to regulation and small businesses.
Cuban’s political stance has evolved over the years. While he initially thought that Donald Trump, as a businessman, would be good for the economy before Trump’s official entry into the 2016 presidential race, Cuban’s opinion shifted in the following years. In a USA Today interview in October, he explained his reservations about Trump, stating, “Stability is the key for larger businesses. They don’t want to wake up to a tweet or a new tariff that impacts their business, because Donald got mad at someone.”
Quote:Google has been accused by multiple federal judges of engaging in tactics to conceal and destroy internal communications that could be used against the company in ongoing antitrust lawsuits. One judge called Google’s suppression of evidence “the most serious and disturbing” he had seen in his career as a judge.
Mercury News reports that in a series of ongoing anti-monopoly cases against Google, federal court judges have criticized the tech giant for lying, cheating, and deliberately destroying evidence that could be used against the company. The incidents, filed as evidence in the lawsuits, highlight what authorities say are Google’s long-running efforts to hide and eliminate internal communications that could be damaging in legal actions.
In one instance, a high-ranking Google director realized that a communication program’s chat history function was turning on while discussing digital-ads prices with two executives, meaning the conversation would not be automatically deleted and could be discovered by adversaries in lawsuits. The director texted, “History is on, jesus. Sigh.”
Judges in three separate cases have taken issue with Google’s handling of evidence. In San Francisco federal court, Judge James Donato described Google’s suppression of evidence as “the most serious and disturbing” he had seen as a judge. He stated that Google “intended to subvert” the process of providing materials to its lawsuit opponents and that evidence was “lost with the intent to prevent its use in litigation.”
In Virginia federal court, Judge Leonie Brinkema said Google employees added lawyers into discussions as a “smokescreen” to invoke attorney-client privilege, calling the maneuver a “clear abuse.” She concluded that an “awful lot of evidence has likely been destroyed.”
In the District of Columbia federal court, Judge Amit Mehta expressed his astonishment at “the lengths to which Google goes to avoid creating a paper trail” for regulators and legal foes. He cited the auto-deletion of chats and noted that Google instructed employees to include a lawyer in sensitive email discussions, mark the message “attorney/client privileged,” and “ask the lawyer a question.”
Quote:Shailesh Prakash, a key Google executive in charge of the company’s News efforts and central to the tech giant’s relationships with publishers, has resigned after two years in the role.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Shailesh Prakash, vice president and general manager of Google News, has departed the company amid ongoing tensions between the tech giant and news publishers. Prakash’s resignation comes at a time when Google’s relationships with news outlets remain strained over issues such as traffic declines and compensation for the use of their content.
Prakash joined Google two years ago from the Washington Post, where he spent over a decade as Chief Information Officer, overseeing data and technology. During his tenure at the Post, he played a crucial role in transforming the news outlet’s digital operation and worked closely with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos following his acquisition of the publication in 2013.
At Google, Prakash brought an understanding of publishers’ frustrations as they grappled with declining traffic and sought compensation for Google’s use of their content. In addition to overseeing product and engineering for the News group, he communicated with leaders at news publishers regarding changes related to search and generative AI.
When Prakash joined the company, Google was working to secure deals with publishers in the U.S. for its Showcase product, which pays publishers in exchange for featuring their content on some Google platforms. However, publishers have argued that their content is worth more than what Google has been willing to pay.
Currently, publishers are concerned about Google’s use of their content to produce generative AI overviews, which provide complete answers to search queries along with a link icon to the publishers’ sites that source the information. This practice has further strained the relationship between Google and news outlets.
Quote:Sam Trabucco, the former Alameda Research co-CEO, will forfeit a 53-foot yacht and forgo $70 million worth of claims in a proposed settlement with the FTX bankruptcy estate.
The turnover will also include two San Francisco, California, apartments worth $8.7 million.
“Following constructive, arm’s length negotiations, the Debtors, FTX DM and Trabucco have reached an agreement that delivers significant value for the Debtors’ and FTX DM’s stakeholders without the delay and cost of litigation,” the settlement document states.
Jurors convicted disgraced former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy last November. Outside of the courthouse in Manhattan, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said the government has “no patience” for fraud and corruption.
Bankman-Fried founded digital currency exchange FTX and Alameda Research, which is the crypto trading sister company of FTX. Caroline Ellison led Alameda Research with Trabucco.
Trabucco resigned in August 2022, right before the collapse of FTX and Alameda.
The settlement stated, “Trabucco will transfer to the Debtors all rights and interests represented in and asserted through his claims filed against the Debtors, including with respect to his customer claims totaling approximately $70 million, and all of his claims against the Debtors will be disallowed and expunged.”
A bankruptcy judge approved FTX’s reorganization plan in October, which would allow 98 percent of its creditors to receive roughly 118 percent of their claim value in cash.
A report detailed how Ellison may not face jail time for her role in the collapse of FTX, as she played a pivotal role in the criminal case against Bankman-Fried, her former boyfriend.
“Because of the closeness of her relationship to Sam, she was able to provide a personal portrait of Bankman-Fried, an elusive character to be sure, that was probably unique in the government’s case,” former Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin J. O’Brien, who specializes in white-collar criminal defense in New York, said.
Quote:DNA testing company 23andMe is laying off 40 percent of its staff and implementing a major restructuring plan in a bid to avoid bankruptcy and ensure long-term viability. This is just the latest misfortune for a company once considered a darling of the Silicon Valley economy.
TechSpot reports that home DNA testing pioneer 23andMe announced this week that it will lay off 40 percent of its total workforce as part of a comprehensive restructuring effort aimed at reducing expenses and focusing on the company’s core consumer business. The move comes amid declining demand for casual genetic testing and a series of recent setbacks for the company, including a data breach and accusations of running an auto-renewal scam.
CEO Anne Wojcicki stated that the company is “taking these difficult but necessary actions” to ensure 23andMe’s long-term success. The layoffs are expected to save the company more than $35 million annually, with a one-time operating expense of $12 million for severance packages and related costs. Breitbart News previously reported that the company’s entire board of directors resigned, with the exception of Wojcicki herself.
As part of the restructuring plan, 23andMe will be discontinuing its therapeutics division, which focused on research into cancer treatments and monoclonal therapies. While the company plans to wind down in-house testing and research, Wojcicki indicated that 23andMe intends to continue its work in these areas through strategic partnerships.
Adding to the company’s woes, 23andMe suffered a data breach last year that exposed the information of customers. Rather than taking responsibility for the incident, the company initially blamed its customers, citing “recycled credentials” obtained by hackers in an unrelated breach. It was later revealed that 23andMe had failed to detect the data breach for over five months.
More recently, the company faced scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after customers complained about its subscription service, alleging that 23andMe auto-renewed memberships without consent and refused to issue refunds. Some users claimed that they had physically canceled their subscriptions before the end of the term but were still charged as if the cancellation had not occurred.
Quote:Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Brendan Carr on Friday called on big tech platforms to dismantle the “censorship cartel,” charging that American democracy depends on it. Carr states that the tech Masters of the Universe, in conjunction with “the orwellian-named NewsGuard,” fact checking groups, and ad agencies, have enforced “one-sided narratives.”
“Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft & others have played central roles in the censorship cartel. The Orwellian named NewsGuard along with “fact checking” groups & ad agencies helped enforce one-sided narratives. The censorship cartel must be dismantled,” Carr wrote on X/Twitter.
Carr wrote to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Apple CEO Tim Cook about how their platforms have “worked — often in concert with so-called ‘media monitors’ and others — to defund, demonetize, and otherwise put out of business news outlets and organizations that dared to deviate from an approved narrative.”
The FCC Commissioner said that these big tech platforms participated in a “censorship cartel” that also included in advertising, marketing, and “so-called ‘fact-checking organizations'” and the Biden-Harris administration.
Carr’s reference to advertising agencies is related to GARM, which organized a marketing blackout against X/Twitter for daring to embrace free speech. It was shut down after Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against it.
“The censorship cartel is an affront to Americans’ constitutional freedoms and must be completely dismantled. Americans must be able to reclaim their right to free speech. Indeed, our democracy depends on freedom of expression.”
Quote:Four young friends tragically lost their lives when they were trapped inside a burning Tesla Model Y in Canada. Now, additional details of the crash are emerging, including that the car’s electronic door handles were disabled when the electric vehicle lost power.
The Daily Mail reports that a horrific crash in Toronto last month resulted in the deaths of four friends who were unable to escape their burning Tesla Model Y due to the fire disabling the car’s electronic door handles. The sole survivor was only able to escape after a heroic man employee smashed a window with a metal pole and helped her from the burning EV.
The four victims have been identified as Neelraj Gohil, his sister Ketaba Gohil, Jay Sisodiya, and Digvijay Patel.
Rick Harper, the postal worker who rescued the surviving woman, told the Toronto Star that she frantically told him she “couldn’t open the doors” from inside the wrecked vehicle. Tesla cars use electronic buttons to open the doors rather than traditional handles. If power is lost in a crash, the doors can become inoperable.
“I would assume the young lady would have tried to open the door from the inside, because she was pretty desperate to get out,” Harper said. “I don’t know if that was the battery or what. But she couldn’t get out.”
According to Harper, the smoke from the fire was so thick that he was unaware there were other occupants still trapped inside as the woman scrambled out head-first after he broke the window. It remains unknown if the other victims were also attempting to escape the burning vehicle.
Quote:A report of a cracked pipeline caused the evacuation of a Tesla factory in Austin, Texas, this morning amid concerns of a hazardous gas leak.
The Daily Mail reports that the Austin Fire Department responded to a call about a potential gas leak at the Texas Tesla factory around 10:00 a.m. CT this morning. Crews received reports of a “hazardous materials incident” which prompted an immediate evacuation of the area surrounding the plant as a precautionary measure.
In a statement, the Austin Fire Department said they set up an isolation zone to ensure the safety of everyone working in the vicinity of the factory. Atmos Energy, the local natural gas utility, is working to completely shut off the valves to stop any further leakage. Commuters have been warned to expect heavy traffic and delays in the area as emergency crews work to secure the scene.
The Tesla Gigafactory in Austin is a primary manufacturing plant for Tesla vehicles, including the Cybertruck, and also serves as the company’s headquarters. Approximately 20,000 people work at the massive facility. As of now, there have been no reports of any injuries related to the gas leak incident.
This is a developing story and more details are expected to emerge as local authorities and Tesla representatives provide further updates. The cause of the pipeline crack is still under investigation. Gas leaks pose serious safety hazards and it is crucial that the source is identified and repaired as quickly as possible to avoid any potential explosions or fires.
The evacuation of such a large facility like the Tesla plant will undoubtedly cause significant disruptions to the company’s operations today. However, the safety of the workers is the top priority and it is important for everyone to follow the instructions of emergency personnel until the situation is fully resolved. Stay tuned for more information as this story unfolds.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:In leftist strongholds like Seattle, Washington, driving a Tesla has become a politically charged act following CEO Elon Musk’s conservative statements and support for Republican Donald Trump. Fanatical Democrats who once thought they were saving the world by driving a Tesla EV now feel betrayed by Musk.
The Seattle Times reports that Seattle, a city renowned for its leftist politics and environmental consciousness, has long had a complex relationship with Tesla, the pioneering electric vehicle manufacturer. However, the recent political shift of Tesla CEO Elon Musk to support Donald Trump has further intensified the love-hate dynamic, leading to increased backlash against the brand and its owners.
Musk’s public support for Donald Trump coupled with his social media posts on issues such as immigration and transgender rights, has left many Seattle-area Tesla owners feeling conflicted. Some have reported instances of their vehicles being vandalized or receiving hostile gestures from other drivers, a marked change from the generally positive reception Tesla EVs once enjoyed in the region.
Despite the growing animosity, there are still those who remain loyal to the brand, citing Tesla’s innovative technology and potential to disrupt the traditional automotive industry. Matt Moreno, a Microsoft engineer from Everett, acknowledged the unfortunate nature of Musk’s political views but maintained that it does not affect his opinion of Tesla’s products.
However, others have reached a breaking point, choosing to abandon the brand altogether. John Wyss, a 60-year-old Seattle resident, grew increasingly uncomfortable with the perception that owning a Tesla was tantamount to endorsing Musk’s right-wing politics. He ultimately decided to trade in his leased Model 3 for an electric Hyundai.
The “Elon Effect” appears to be reflected in recent sales data, with Tesla deliveries in Washington state falling by 11 percent through September 30, even as overall electric vehicle registrations rose. This decline marks a significant shift for a region that once boasted the highest per capita Tesla ownership in the country.
Quote:Tesla CEO Elon Musk has lost his bid to have his record-breaking $56 billion 2018 pay package reinstated after a Delaware judge upheld her previous ruling that the compensation plan was improperly granted.
CNBC reports that in a significant setback for Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery upheld her January ruling that voided Musk’s $56 billion pay package, the largest compensation plan in U.S. history for a public company executive. The judge reaffirmed that the process leading to the approval of the pay plan was “deeply flawed,” with Musk individually controlling Tesla and dictating the terms of his compensation to a board that failed to fairly negotiate.
Breitbart News previously reported on the ruling, in which the judge criticized Tesla’s “self-driving process.”
In her decision, McCormick asked: “Was the richest person in the world overpaid? The stockholder plaintiff in this derivative lawsuit says so. He claims that Tesla, Inc.’s directors breached their fiduciary duties by awarding Elon Musk a performance-based equity-compensation plan.”
McCormick continued: “In the final analysis, Musk launched a self-driving process, recalibrating the speed and direction along the way as he saw fit. The process arrived at an unfair price. And through this litigation, the plaintiff requests a recall.”
Following the initial ruling in January, Tesla conducted a shareholder vote in June at its annual meeting in Austin, Texas, asking investors to “ratify” Musk’s 2018 CEO pay plan. Musk’s attorneys attempted to persuade the judge to reverse her opinion after the trial, relying on the results of that vote. However, Chancellor McCormick rejected this argument, stating, “Even if a stockholder vote could have a ratifying effect, it could not do so here. Were the court to condone the practice of allowing defeated parties to create new facts for the purpose of revising judgments, lawsuits would become interminable.”
As part of Monday’s opinion, McCormick approved a $345 million attorney fee award for the lawyers who successfully sued on behalf of Tesla shareholders to void Musk’s pay plan. The attorneys from Bernstein, Litowitz, Berger & Grossmann, representing the plaintiff, expressed their satisfaction with the ruling, thanking the Chancellor and her staff for their hard work in overseeing the complex case.
Despite the legal setback, Musk has seen his net worth increase substantially in recent weeks. Since Donald Trump’s election victory in November, Musk’s wealth has grown by more than $43 billion, excluding the options tied to the pay package. Tesla shares have surged 42 percent in the four weeks following the election, driven by optimism that Musk’s close relationship with the incoming president will lead to favorable policies for his companies.
Quote:Elon Musk has filed for a preliminary injunction in federal court to prevent OpenAI from transitioning into a fully for-profit business.
CNBC reports that in a recent development in the ongoing legal battle between Elon Musk and OpenAI, attorneys representing Musk, his AI startup xAI, and former OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis have filed for a preliminary injunction against the AI powerhouse. The injunction aims to block OpenAI from converting into a fully for-profit business and allegedly requiring its investors to refrain from funding competitors, including Musk’s xAI.
The legal feud between Musk and OpenAI, along with its CEO Sam Altman and other long-involved parties such as tech investor Reid Hoffman and Microsoft, has escalated with this latest court filing. Musk had initially sued OpenAI in March 2024 in a San Francisco state court before withdrawing the complaint and refiling it in federal court several months later. The federal suit, led by attorney Marc Toberoff in Los Angeles, argues that OpenAI has violated federal racketeering (RICO) laws.
In mid-November, the complaint was expanded to include allegations that Microsoft and OpenAI had violated antitrust laws when OpenAI allegedly asked investors to agree not to invest in rival companies, including Musk’s xAI. The motion for preliminary injunction asserts that OpenAI should be prohibited from “benefitting from wrongfully obtained competitively sensitive information or coordination via the Microsoft-OpenAI board interlocks.”
OpenAI has emerged as one of the most prominent startups in recent years, with its AI chatbot ChatGPT becoming a major success and driving significant corporate enthusiasm for AI and related large language models. Meanwhile, Musk’s xAI, which debuted in July 2023, has released its Grok chatbot and is raising up to $6 billion at a $50 billion valuation to purchase 100,000 Nvidia chips.
Musk’s attorneys argue that the terms OpenAI asked investors to agree to amounted to a “group boycott” that “blocks xAI’s access to essential investment capital.” They further state that OpenAI “cannot lumber about the marketplace as a Frankenstein, stitched together from whichever corporate forms serve the pecuniary interests of Microsoft.”
Quote:Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket today from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, setting a new record for rocket reusability.
Space.com reports that SpaceX continues to push the boundaries of rocket reusability and dominates the private space industry, as evidenced by the successful launch of a Falcon 9 rocket on its record-breaking 24th flight. The mission will deliver 24 Starlink internet satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO). The company’s recent success has caused its potential valuation to reach $350 billion, making it one of the most valuable startups in the world.
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This particular Falcon 9 first stage booster had previously flown 23 times, a record it shared with two other boosters. With this 24th successful launch, it now stands alone as the most reused rocket in SpaceX’s fleet. The accomplishment highlights the company’s ongoing efforts to reduce the cost of spaceflight through the development of reusable rocket technology.
Approximately eight minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9’s first stage successfully landed on the drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas” stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. This marked the booster’s 24th successful landing, further demonstrating the reliability and durability of SpaceX’s rocket technology.
Meanwhile, the rocket’s upper stage continued its journey to deploy the 24 Starlink satellites into their intended orbit. Starlink, a massive satellite constellation project by SpaceX, aims to provide high-speed internet access to users worldwide, particularly in remote and underserved areas. With this launch, the number of operational Starlink satellites in orbit now exceeds 6,750, making it the largest satellite constellation ever assembled.
Quote:Whether sabotage or innocent accident, suspicion immediately fell on the much-discussed wave of Russian-backed acts of sabotage against European infrastructure when an internet backbone cable linking Sweden and Finland was cut twice overnight.
Thousands of Finnish homes were left without data connectivity on Tuesday morning after a submarine fibre optic cable linking Sweden and Finland was cut in two places on land overnight. The damage took place in two separate suburbs near the Finnish capital Helsinki, in Espoo and Vihti, and the infrastructure’s owner has dispatched teams for repairs they said.
Sweden’s Minister for Civil Defence Carl-Oskar Bohlin told broadcaster SVT “sabotage is suspected” but the facts are not yet clear, nevertheless “we are taking this seriously”, he said, remarking Finnish Police are leading the investigation.
Finnish Police are investigating but say they have not launched a criminal probe yet. One of the breaks has been attributed to a man digging up the ground with a backhoe (‘JCB’ type digger) and may have been accidental, the telecom company said.
Niklas Ekström of cable owner Global Connect told Helsingin Sanomat that accident or not, it is odd to have two breaks in different places at the same time: “Cables break for many different reasons. It is certainly unusual for two cables to be damaged at the same time.”
Among the agencies notified in the response to the damage were the Swedish government’s postal and communications ministry, the Swedish armed forces, and the Norwegian Agency for ‘Social Security and Preparedness’.
While these incidents may yet turn out to be pure coincidental damage, European governments remain on high alert for acts of sabotage, given several similar events have taken place recently. Two submarine data cables connecting connecting Finland, Germany, Lithuania, and Sweden were cut last month by a Chinese-flagged ship, with Russia eyed as the motivating force behind what is thought to have been a ‘hybrid war’ attack.
While cutting cables in incidents that could be plausibly denied is less spectacular than other attack vectors open to malign actors, Western nations are ever-more reliant on high speed internet traffic for their economies, and to manage their infrastructure.
Quote:Intel’s board of directors has forced out CEO Pat Gelsinger due to frustrations over the slow pace of the company’s turnaround efforts.
Bloomberg reports that Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has been ousted from his position after the board lost confidence in his plans to revitalize the iconic chipmaker. The decision came to light following a meeting last week between Gelsinger and the board, where they discussed the company’s progress in regaining market share and closing the gap with rival Nvidia.
According to sources familiar with the matter, Gelsinger was presented with two options: retire or be removed. He ultimately chose to announce the end of his tenure at Intel. The company has appointed Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner and Executive Vice President Michelle Johnston Holthaus as interim co-CEOs while the board searches for Gelsinger’s permanent replacement.
Gelsinger, 63, had been hailed as a potential savior when he returned to Intel in 2021, nearly 12 years after leaving the company. He pledged to restore Intel to its former glory as a leader in the semiconductor industry, particularly in manufacturing – an area where it had fallen behind competitors like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).
As part of his turnaround strategy, Gelsinger launched an ambitious plan to expand Intel’s factory network, including the construction of a massive new complex in Ohio. This project received federal aid from the Chips and Science Act. However, despite these efforts, the board grew increasingly concerned about the lack of products capable of winning in the market, feeling that this crucial aspect had been neglected in the push to transform Intel into a made-to-order chip manufacturer.
The shake-up at Intel comes amid a rapidly evolving industry landscape, with the rise of AI computing posing significant challenges. Nvidia, once a niche rival struggling in Intel’s shadow, has now become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, dominating the AI chip market and capturing tens of billions of dollars that would have previously gone to Intel.
Quote:Meta head of global affairs Nick Clegg revealed in a press briefing that CEO Mark Zuckerberg is eager to play an “active role” in shaping tech policy for President-elect Donald Trump’s administration. In March Trump described Facebook as “the enemy of the people” and labeled its CEO “Zuckerschmuck.”
The New York Post reports that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is making moves to establish a closer relationship with the incoming Trump administration. Nick Clegg, Meta’s head of global affairs, recently stated that CEO Mark Zuckerberg is keen on having “an active role in the debates that any administration needs to have about maintaining America’s leadership in the technological sphere … and particularly the pivotal role that AI will play.”
This revelation comes on the heels of Zuckerberg’s recent dinner with President-elect Trump at Mar-a-Lago, where the billionaire reportedly requested a meeting to discuss “the incoming administration.” Meta later said that Zuckerberg was “grateful for the invitation.”
Clegg also acknowledged that Meta has been overzealous in its content moderation efforts, particularly regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’re acutely aware — because users quite rightly raised their voice and complained about this — that we sometimes overenforce, we make mistakes and we remove or restrict innocuous or innocent content,” he admitted.
Meta’s efforts to improve the precision and accuracy of its content moderation will be “an area of ongoing focus” for the company, according to Clegg. This admission comes after Zuckerberg shocked the tech industry in August by revealing that the Biden administration had pressured Facebook to censor COVID-19 content in 2021, including lighthearted memes and satirical posts.
Quote:Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Commissioner Andrew Ferguson on Monday urged the antitrust commission to investigate “unlawful collusion” between big tech platforms and stop advertiser boycotts, which he believes threaten competition.
Ferguson noted that Commissioner Melissa Holyoak proposed reviving President Trump’s Executive Order 13925 to promote transparency regarding big tech’s content moderation and censorship practices.
“When Americans’ ability to engage in robust public debate on issues of national importance is at stake, no stone should be left unturned. The Commission should undertake these investigations,” he charged.
Ferguson, who is a top contender to replace FTC Chair Lina Khan, said that the government should use antitrust laws against any platforms limiting free speech:
We should address not just censorious conduct specifically, but also investigate the structural issues that may have given these platforms their power over Americans’ lives and speech in the first place. In particular, we must vigorously enforce the antitrust laws against any platforms found to be unlawfully limiting Americans’ ability to exchange ideas freely and openly. We must prosecute any unlawful collusion between online platforms, and confront advertiser boycotts which threaten competition among those platforms.
Ferguson noted that the major online platforms all censored in “lockstep,” which raise questions of antitrust violations if they made an agreement to censor:
For years, the major speech platforms seemed to censor in lockstep. They banned dissent on the origins of COVID-19, mask mandates, the efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccines, transgenderism, and the integrity of the 2020 election. Every major speech platform— Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube—banned President Trump roughly contemporaneously in early 2021.2 And this phenomenon was never more obvious than in 2020, when major Big Tech platforms simultaneously banned reporting on, and discussion of, the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The antitrust laws generally do not forbid competitors from engaging in unilateral, parallel conduct—that is, identical or substantially similar conduct that occurs at about the same time but coincidentally.4 They do, however, prohibit agreements among competitors not to compete. If the platforms colluded amongst each other to set shared censorship policies, such an agreement would be tantamount to an agreement not to compete on contract terms or product quality. “[A]s far as the Sherman Act … is concerned, concerted agreements on contract terms are as unlawful as boycotts.
Quote:Bitcoin (BTC) sold for over $100,000 in Wednesday evening trading, hitting another all-time high benchmark value in its nascent bull run.
The digital asset peaked around its previous 2022 record of $73,000 in March 2024, weeks after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved several exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for investors seeking to acquire it, according to data from CoinMarketCap.com. At the end of October, Bitcoin came close to that $73,000 record before retreating in the 60,000s range, then rocketing to a new all-time high of $75,000 before the end of the first week of November. Since then, BTC has sailed past new price benchmarks, first selling for $90,000 on November 13.
In the course of an hour, BTC surged from roughly $98,500 to $103,000 Wednesday evening, smashing a six-figure price barrier that felt unthinkable a decade ago, when the asset spent an entire year under $1,000.
Several factors may have contributed to the past month’s price action; investors may have been energized by President-elect Donald Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris (Trump vowed to create a BTC “strategic reserve” and appealed directly to Bitcoiners on the campaign trail) and the announcement that Gary Gensler — a villain in the eyes of many cryptocurrency fans — would step down from the SEC once Trump takes office.
But one of the key elements in Bitcoin’s perennial rise is its “halving” — a 50% reduction in its issuance of new “coin” units — that occurs every four years, making the “mining” that secures the network that records the ledger of BTC transactions more competitive and costly. The latest Bitcoin halving occurred in April 2024. Just as it did in 2012, 2016, and 2020, BTC appears to be entering price discovery roughly five months after the latest halving.
Historically, Bitcoin has grown in cycles of parabolic ascent and “crashes” down to prices far above the previous cycle’s highs.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE, Jan 25 (Reuters) - (This Jan. 25 story has been refiled to add the missing words 'some of' in paragraph 9)
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday he was in talks with multiple people over buying TikTok and would likely have a decision on the popular app's future in the next 30 days.
"I have spoken to many people about TikTok and there is great interest in TikTok," Trump told reporters on Air Force One during a flight to Florida.
Earlier in the day, Reuters reported two people with knowledge of the discussions said Trump's administration is working on a plan to save TikTok that involves tapping software company Oracle (ORCL.N), opens new tab and a group of outside investors to effectively take control of the app's operations.
Under the deal being negotiated by the White House, TikTok's China-based owner, ByteDance, would retain a stake in the company, but data collection and software updates would be overseen by Oracle, which already provides the foundation of TikTok's Web infrastructure, one of the sources told Reuters.
However, in his comments to reporters on the flight, Trump said he had not spoken to Oracle's Larry Ellison about buying the app.
Asked if he was putting together a deal with Oracle and other investors to save TikTok, Trump said: "No, not with Oracle. Numerous people are talking to me, very substantial people, about buying it and I will make that decision probably over the next 30 days. Congress has given 90 days. If we can save TikTok, I think it would be a good thing."
The sources did say the terms of any potential deal with Oracle were fluid and likely to change. One source said the full scope of the discussions was not yet set and could include the U.S. operations as well as other regions.
National Public Radio on Saturday reported the deal talks for TikTok's global operations, citing two people with knowledge of the negotiations. Oracle had no immediate comment.
The deal being negotiated anticipates participation from some of ByteDance's current U.S. investors, according to the sources. Jeff Yass's Susquehanna International Group, General Atlantic, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) and Sequoia Capital are among ByteDance's U.S. backers.
Representatives for TikTok, ByteDance investors General Atlantic, KKR, Sequoia and Susquehanna could not immediately be reached for comment.
Others vying to acquire TikTok, including the investor group led by billionaire Frank McCourt and another involving Jimmy Donaldson, better known as the YouTube star Mr. Beast, are not part of the Oracle negotiation, one of the sources said.
ORACLE RESPONSIBLE
Under the terms of the deal, Oracle would be responsible for addressing national security issues. TikTok initially struck a deal with Oracle in 2022 to store U.S. users' information to alleviate Washington's worries about Chinese government interference.
TikTok's management would remain in place, to operate the short video app, according to one of the sources.
The app, which is used by 170 million Americans, was taken offline temporarily for users shortly before a law that said it must be sold by ByteDance on national security grounds, or be banned, took effect on Jan. 19.
Trump, after taking office a day later, signed an executive order seeking to delay by 75 days the enforcement of the law that was put in place after U.S. officials warned that under ByteDance, there was a risk of Americans' data being misused.
Quote:U.S. TikTok users who once saw the app as a haven for free speech say they see signs of censorship after the platform, which is owned by China's ByteDance, was revived by an executive order from President Donald Trump.
TikTok users are noting a difference in the short-video app following its revival after going dark on Saturday under a new law -- enacted over national security concerns during the Biden administration with bipartisan support -- that requires it to be sold to a U.S. buyer. Trump has vowed to find a solution to the ban, with several bidders in the mix, including people with close relationships to the new Republican president.
Users say they are seeing fewer livestreams, and some activity is being removed or flagged at higher rates for violating community guidelines, including for behavior that was previously permitted.
"Our policies and algorithms did not change over the weekend," TikTok said in a statement to Reuters. "We are working hard to restore our U.S. operations back to normal and expect some temporary instability as we restore our services, which could impact TikTok features or users' access to the app."
But some users said they now see more content moderation, like limited search results, as well as warnings about misinformation and prompts for users to check their sources.
Some claimed TikTok was striking comments that used phrases like "Free Palestine" and "Free Luigi," a reference to Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing a UnitedHealth executive, which had been previously allowed.
TikTok said it does not allow content that promotes violent or hateful individuals on the platform.
On Monday, Trump signed an executive order that he said aims to restore freedom of speech and end censorship, referring specifically to social media platforms.
Content creator, comedian and veteran Pat Loller, 36, said a satirical video he created in response to billionaire Elon Musk's hand gesture at an inauguration event that appeared to some as a Nazi salute was first tagged as misinformation. Loller was then limited in how widely he could share the video, which garnered over a million views.
"I've never seen this before, and it is still there. It says 'sharing is limited to one chat at a time,'" said Loller, who has 1.3 million followers.
Trump on Tuesday said that he was open to Musk, who is a close ally of the president and helping oversee his new initiative on government efficiency, buying TikTok, if he wanted to do so.
TikTok user Lisa Cline said on Meta's (META.O), opens new tab Threads that she was having issues posting a video to TikTok criticizing Trump.
Quote:Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google, already facing an unprecedented regulatory onslaught, is looking to shape public perception and policies on artificial intelligence ahead of a global wave of AI regulation.
A key priority, one executive told Reuters, comes in building out educational programs to train the workforce on AI.
“Getting more people and organizations, including governments, familiar with AI and using AI tools, makes for better AI policy and opens up new opportunities – it's a virtuous cycle,” said Kent Walker, Alphabet's president of global affairs.
As Google races to best Big Tech rivals including Microsoft-backed (MSFT.O), opens new tab OpenAI and Meta (META.O), opens new tab in the AI arena, it is mindful of the heavy regulatory scrutiny it faces in its existing businesses in advertising and search.
In the European Union, Google has offered to sell a part of its ad tech business to appease regulators, Reuters reported. In the U.S., the Justice Department is attempting to force a breakup of its Chrome Web browser — though it may shift course under the administration of President Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, governments globally are drafting new regulations on issues that could be exacerbated by AI, such as copyright and privacy. The EU AI Act, which seeks to assess risk and require disclosures from general-purpose AI systems, has received pushback from tech giants that could find themselves in the crosshairs of multibillion-dollar fines.
The DOJ has also sought to curtail Google’s advances in AI as a remedy in a federal case that found its search business to be an illegal monopoly.
Google executives see an opportunity to shape the narrative around a technology that has stoked emerging fears of mass job loss.
CEO Sundar Pichai announced in September a $120 million investment fund to build AI education programs. Deputies including Walker and Ruth Porat, president and chief investment officer, are increasingly traveling globally to discuss policy recommendations with governments.
“There’s a lot of upside in terms of helping people who may be displaced by this. We do want to focus on that,” Walker said.
Efforts include expanding Grow with Google, a combination online and in-person program that provides training tools for businesses and teaches workers skills like data analysis or IT support that are meant to expand their career prospects in technical fields.
In December, the company said 1 million people had obtained a certificate for the program. It is adding specialized courses related to AI, such as one geared toward teachers, said program head Lisa Gevelber.
Quote:About a year ago, security researcher Sam Curry bought his mother a Subaru, on the condition that, at some point in the near future, she let him hack it.
It took Curry until last November, when he was home for Thanksgiving, to begin examining the 2023 Impreza's internet-connected features and start looking for ways to exploit them. Sure enough, he and a researcher working with him online, Shubham Shah, soon discovered vulnerabilities in a Subaru web portal that let them hijack the ability to unlock the car, honk its horn, and start its ignition, reassigning control of those features to any phone or computer they chose.
Most disturbing for Curry, though, was that they found they could also track the Subaru's location—not merely where it was at the moment but also where it had been for the entire year that his mother had owned it. The map of the car’s whereabouts was so accurate and detailed, Curry says, that he was able to see her doctor visits, the homes of the friends she visited, even which exact parking space his mother parked in every time she went to church.
“You can retrieve at least a year's worth of location history for the car, where it's pinged precisely, sometimes multiple times a day,” Curry says. “Whether somebody's cheating on their wife or getting an abortion or part of some political group, there are a million scenarios where you could weaponize this against someone.”
Curry and Shah today revealed in a blog post their method for hacking and tracking millions of Subarus, which they believe would have allowed hackers to target any of the company's vehicles equipped with its digital features known as Starlink in the US, Canada, or Japan. Vulnerabilities they found in a Subaru website intended for the company's staff allowed them to hijack an employee's account to both reassign control of cars’ Starlink features and also access all the vehicle location data available to employees, including the car’s location every time its engine started, as shown in their video below.
Curry and Shah reported their findings to Subaru in late November, and Subaru quickly patched its Starlink security flaws. But the researchers warn that the Subaru web vulnerabilities are just the latest in a long series of similar web-based flaws they and other security researchers working with them have found that have affected well over a dozen carmakers, including Acura, Genesis, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Kia, Toyota, and many others. There’s little doubt, they say, that similarly serious hackable bugs exist in other auto companies' web tools that have yet to be discovered.
In Subaru's case, in particular, they also point out that their discovery hints at how pervasively those with access to Subaru's portal can track its customers' movements, a privacy issue that will last far longer than the web vulnerabilities that exposed it. “The thing is, even though this is patched, this functionality is still going to exist for Subaru employees,” Curry says. “It's just normal functionality that an employee can pull up a year's worth of your location history.”
When WIRED reached out to Subaru for comment on Curry and Shah's findings, a spokesperson responded in a statement that “after being notified by independent security researchers, [Subaru] discovered a vulnerability in its Starlink service that could potentially allow a third party to access Starlink accounts. The vulnerability was immediately closed and no customer information was ever accessed without authorization.”
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Shares of chipmaker Nvidia plunged Monday, for its worst day since the global market sell-off in March 2020 triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.
The plunge came amid a global tech stock sell-off over fears about America's leadership in the AI sector. Those fears were largely sparked by advances claimed by a Chinese artificial intelligence startup.
Shares of the chipmaker, one of the primary beneficiaries of the artificial intelligence boom in tech stocks, plummeted as much as 18%. That pushed Nvidia's market value below $3 trillion. Still, shares of the firm are up more than 480% over the last two years.
The drop accounted for nearly $600 billion in lost market value though. It is the biggest market value drop in U.S. stock market history, according to Bloomberg. And nearly double the second worst drop in history, also seen by Nvidia shareholders in September 2024, when the company shed $279 billion in value.
For some perspective, the amount of market value lost by Nvidia on Monday is more than the entire market value of Exxon Mobil, Costco, Home Depot or Bank of America.
Nvidia said in a statement Monday that advances by DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company whose latest large language model has taken Silicon Valley by storm, were an example of what is possible, “leveraging widely available models and compute that is fully export control compliant.”
The company added that the surge in interest in DeepSeek, which topped the Apple app store on Monday, could create more demand for its graphics processing units, or GPUs.
“Inference requires significant numbers of NVIDIA GPUs and high-performance networking,” it said.
Due to the AI-fueled surge in mega-cap tech stocks, Nvidia catapulted into the top five most valuable companies in the world in 2023. The surge didn't stop there, with the company soaring past Alphabet, Microsoft and the most valuable company in the world: Apple. At its most recent peak, Nvidia reached a towering $3.7 trillion.
With Monday's losses, Apple has retaken the title of world's most valuable company and Nvidia's value sank to around $2.9 trillion.
Nvidia's drop was also a drag on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which finished the day higher but began the day in the red. Nvidia joined the prestigious 30-stock index in November, replacing rival chipmaker Intel. The Nasdaq Composite, which more closely tracks publicly traded tech companies, slid around 3%.
The global sell-off in tech stocks also meant the S&P Technology sector fell into the red for the year so far, the only sector lower over that time.
Quote:Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek disrupted Silicon Valley with the release of cheaply developed AI models that compete with flagship offerings from OpenAI — but the ChatGPT maker suspects they were built upon OpenAI data.
OpenAI and Microsoft are investigating whether the Chinese rival used OpenAI’s API to integrate OpenAI’s AI models into DeepSeek’s own models, according to Bloomberg. The outlet’s sources said Microsoft security researchers detected that large amounts of data were being exfiltrated through OpenAI developer accounts in late 2024, which the company believes are affiliated with DeepSeek.
OpenAI told the Financial Times that it found evidence linking DeepSeek to the use of distillation — a common technique developers use to train AI models by extracting data from larger, more capable ones. It’s an efficient way to train smaller models at a fraction of the more than $100 million that OpenAI spent to train GPT-4. While developers can use OpenAI’s API to integrate its AI with their own applications, distilling the outputs to build rival models is a violation of OpenAI’s terms of service. OpenAI has not provided details of the evidence it found.
The situation is rich with irony. After all, it was OpenAI that made huge leaps with its GPT model by sucking down the entirety of the written web without consent.
President Donald Trump’s artificial intelligence czar David Sacks said “it is possible” that IP theft had occurred. “There’s substantial evidence that what DeepSeek did here is they distilled knowledge out of OpenAI models and I don’t think OpenAI is very happy about this,” Sacks told Fox News on Tuesday.
“We know PRC (China) based companies — and others — are constantly trying to distill the models of leading US AI companies,” OpenAI said in a statement to Bloomberg. “As the leading builder of AI, we engage in countermeasures to protect our IP, including a careful process for which frontier capabilities to include in released models, and believe as we go forward that it is critically important that we are working closely with the US government to best protect the most capable models from efforts by adversaries and competitors to take US technology.”
Quote:Microsoft’s cloud and AI businesses are doing pretty well — and their impact is being felt across the company. In its Q2 2025 earnings, Microsoft announced revenue of $69.6 billion for the quarter, up 12 percent year-over-year, and net income of $24.1 billion, which is up 10 percent year-over-year.
As for the AI business, CEO Satya Nadella says in a statement that it has “surpassed an annual revenue run rate of $13 billion, up 175 percent year-over-year.” The company’s Azure and other cloud services business grew 31 percent year-over-year, a slight decrease from 33 percent YoY growth the previous quarter.
The company’s gaming revenues didn’t fare so well. Gaming revenue declined 7 percent, and Xbox hardware revenue declined 29 percent. Microsoft has been moving away from a focus on its own hardware with messaging like its “This is an Xbox” ad campaign and bringing Xbox Game Studios games to other platforms, and those changes could be contributing to the decline.
That means the focus is instead on games and services, and that’s where the business is seeing some improvements. Xbox content and services revenue were up 2 percent, “driven by growth in Xbox Game Pass,” Microsoft says. (Last quarter, Microsoft’s software gaming revenues were way up even as Xbox hardware revenue declined.)
During Wednesday’s earnings call, Nadella said that Game Pass “set a new quarterly revenue record” and noted that Xbox Cloud Gaming saw a “record 140 million hours streamed” during the quarter. Nadella also revealed that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has “already been played by more than 4 million people.”
In its press release, Microsoft said that it saw Windows OEM and Devices revenue growth of 4 percent year-over-year, a slight bump from 2 percent in Q1.
On the earnings call, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said that Windows OEM and devices should decline low to mid single digits in Q3 2025. Overall gaming revenue is expected to grow in single digits, with Xbox content and services expected to grow low to mid single digits. Xbox hardware revenue “will decline year over year.”
During the call, Nadella also reiterated that the company remains “very happy with the partnership with OpenAI” (the two companies announced last week that they are adjusting their partnership) and acknowledged that DeepSeek had some “real innovations.”
Quote:Microsoft is bringing Chinese AI company DeepSeek’s R1 model to its Azure AI Foundry platform and GitHub today. The R1 model, which has rocked US financial markets this week because it can be trained at a fraction of the cost of leading models from OpenAI, is now part of a model catalog on Azure AI Foundry and GitHub — allowing Microsoft’s customers to integrate it into their AI applications.
“One of the key advantages of using DeepSeek R1 or any other model on Azure AI Foundry is the speed at which developers can experiment, iterate, and integrate AI into their workflows,” says By Asha Sharma, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of AI platform. “DeepSeek R1 has undergone rigorous red teaming and safety evaluations, including automated assessments of model behavior and extensive security reviews to mitigate potential risks.”
R1 was initially released as an open source model earlier this month, and Microsoft has moved at surprising pace to integrate this into Azure AI Foundry. The software maker will also make a distilled, smaller version of R1 available to run locally on Copilot Plus PCs soon, and it’s possible we may even see R1 show up in other AI-powered services from Microsoft.
DeepSeek’s R1 model has surprised Wall Street this week because it doesn’t need to use as many chips from providers like Nvidia, and it’s far cheaper to train. That’s put a huge dent in Nvidia’s market valuation, which dipped by nearly $600 billion at one point after investors were spooked by DeepSeek’s progress and the popularity of its mobile app.
OpenAI and Microsoft are now reportedly investigating whether the Chinese rival used OpenAI’s API to train DeepSeek’s models. Bloomberg reported earlier this week that Microsoft’s security researchers detected large amounts of data being used through OpenAI developer accounts late last year, which may have been connected to DeepSeek.
Quote:Nearly everyone seems to be suddenly freaking out about the rise of DeepSeek. Meta isn’t worried, though.
That was CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s message to investors during his company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Wednesday. During the Q&A portion of the call with Wall Street analysts, Zuckerberg fielded multiple questions about DeepSeek’s impressive AI models and what the implications are for Meta’s AI strategy. He said that what DeepSeek was able to accomplish with relatively little money has “only strengthened our conviction that this is the right thing to be focused on.”
Zuckerberg noted that “there’s a number of novel things they did we’re still digesting” and that Meta plans to implement DeepSeek’s “advancements” into Llama. DeepSeek caused a massive sell-off in AI stocks due to fears that models will no longer need as much computing power. Zuckerberg tried to dispel concerns that the billions of dollars he’s spending on GPUs will go to waste: “I continue to think that investing very heavily in CapEx and infra is going to be a strategic advantage over time.”
His argument is in line with the growing consensus that computing resources will move from the training phase of AI development towards helping models better “reason.” In Zuckerberg’s own words, this “doesn’t mean you need less compute” because you can “apply more compute at inference time in order to generate a higher level of intelligence and a higher quality of service.” Meta is gearing up to release Llama 4 with multimodal and “agentic” capabilities in the coming months, according to Zuckerberg. He expects Meta’s AI assistant to reach one billion users this year.
He also took a thinly veiled jab at OpenAI, Anthropic, and other unprofitable startups by noting that Meta has a “strong business model” to support the roughly $60 billion it will spend on AI this year versus “others who don’t necessarily have business models to support it on a sustainable basis.”
Zuckerberg also made sure to praise President Donald Trump. “We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning,” and “will defend our values and interests abroad,” he said. Moments before the earnings call started, news broke that Meta is paying Trump $25 million to settle a lawsuit he brought against the company for banning his account after the January 6th insurrection. (The vast majority of the money is going to pay for Trump’s presidential library.)
Meanwhile, Meta is a cash-printing machine. Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $48.39 billion — a 22-percent increase from the year-ago period — while net profit was a staggering $20.8 billion (up 43-percent from a year before). During the earnings call, CFO Susan Li said that Meta hasn’t “seen any noticeable impact” from its content policy changes on ad spending. 3.35 billion people used at least one of Meta’s apps daily in the fourth quarter — a 5-percent increase from the year-ago period.
Quote:Meta agreed to a $25 million settlement over a 2021 lawsuit President Donald Trump brought against Meta for suspending his accounts after the January 6th insurrection at the US Capitol. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the news, and Meta spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed the settlement to The Verge.
It’s a step that Trump discussed with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg during his recent visit to Mar-a-Lago, The Verge has independently confirmed. One unnamed source told The Journal that Trump indicated the lawsuit would need to be resolved before Zuckerberg would have a chance of being “brought into the tent.”
The White House and an advisor to Trump did not immediately provide comment.
The settlement, which would contribute $22 million toward Trump’s presidential library funds as well as legal fees, is the latest signal of Trump’s powerful influence over corporate America. Trump’s odds of success in the case did not look particularly promising, given that a judge dismissed a similar suit filed against Twitter (now X) and another against Google was administratively closed. The docket has been stagnant since 2023. But now back in the White House, Zuckerberg and many of his tech and business peers have recognized the immense influence Trump could wield over their companies and have taken a much more proactive role in engaging with his administration compared to last time.
Trump filed a class action lawsuit against Meta in 2021, seeking damages for himself and other users whose accounts were allegedly “wrongly restricted or curtailed.” Facebook had announced an indefinite suspension on Trump’s accounts after his posts during the January 6th insurrection at the US Capitol that year. At the time, Zuckerberg said, “The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.” Eventually, the company dropped restrictions on his accounts.
ABC News similarly settled a defamation lawsuit Trump brought over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ mischaracterization of the charge Trump was found liable for in the case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll. And CBS owner Paramount has also discussed settling a Trump lawsuit over the news outlet’s interview with his then-opponent Kamala Harris, understanding that his administration could make it difficult to close a merger with Skydance Media, according to the Journal.
Quote:Atari has released a collection of new watches with a unique design that celebrates the 45th anniversary of Asteroids. In the original version of the game that debuted in 1979, spotting and shooting a passing UFO would earn you extra points. On the Asteroids watch, a pair of orbiting UFOs are less of a threat and are instead used to represent the hour and minute hands — no numbers needed.
Created in collaboration with watchmaker Nubeo (which previously released a collection of Space Invaders-themed timepieces) the new Asteroids collection features five styles, each with a differently colored band — nebula blue, plasma pumpkin, supernova red, nova nightfall, and celestial citrine — and varying colors for the watchface elements. They’re available through Nubeo’s website, which lists each watch’s price as being discounted to $499 from $1,650. You can also order them through Atari’s website, which just lists the price as $499 each, although some have already sold out. Each style is limited to just 125 pieces.
The watch uses a Japanese automatic movement that powers three spinning discs. The smallest features a recreation of the game’s simple triangular spaceship in the center that serves as the watch’s second hand, while two larger discs, rotating at different speeds, portray asteroids drifting through space and the UFOs that function as the hour and minute hands.
All of the graphical elements on the Asteroids watch’s face are printed with glow-in-the-dark “Swiss Super-LumiNova” pigments and are protected beneath a durable sapphire lens and a stainless steel case. The watch is water resistant with a 21 ATM (atmosphere) rating and a screw-down crown, making it durable enough for recreational diving. It comes in a protective case with an interior that borrows design elements from the Atari Video Computer System (VCS) that launched in 1977.
Quote:If you use Comcast Xfinity internet, your FaceTime calls might be about to get better. Instead of bumping up the amount of data that your internet connection can send or receive at one time (usually called bandwidth or throughput), a new upgrade is coming to reduce the amount of time it takes for each packet of information to make the trip.
Comcast is officially starting to roll out the “pioneering new, ultra-low lag connectivity experience” to cities including Atlanta, Chicago, Colorado Springs, Philadelphia, Rockville (in Maryland), and San Francisco. (Disclosure: Comcast is an investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company.)
The technology powering this upgrade is based on a standard called L4S, which stands for “Low Latency, Low Loss, Scalable Throughput.” My former colleague Mitchell Clark has a thorough explainer of what L4S is supposed to do, but the intention is that the tech can significantly reduce latency so that things like video games are smoother and video calls feel more like talking in real life without awkward delays and pauses.
L4S pulls this off by giving internet packets an indicator that lets them know if they’ve run into congestion or queueing along any of the hops in their trip between a user and whatever they’re connecting to. If there is a delay, then the devices can start to adjust to stop making the congestion worse — and possibly eliminate it entirely.
Quote:Bungie and LucasFilms are bringing Star Wars armor sets and other items into the Destiny universe, so you can dress your Guardian like a stormtrooper. As part of Destiny 2: Heresy, Act I, which launches next week, you’ll be able to access outfits, accessories, and emotes that come straight out of the Star Wars universe into the Eververse. The news came as a “one more thing” surprise during the Destiny 2: Heresy Act I developer livestream on Twitch yesterday.
The Star Wars armor sets will include a death trooper-inspired Covert Rangers set for Hunters, a Royal Protector set for Warlocks, inspired by the red-cloaked Imperial Guards, and a classic stormtrooper Shock Enforcer set for Titans. There’s also a new Ghost shell that looks like the second Death Star. Sadly, there isn’t any mention of lightsabers in this announcement. However, Bungie does promise a new Sparrow, ship, and a finisher.
Star Wars items will launch day one with Heresy on February 2nd. Destiny has had other collaborations in the past, including ones with Fortnite, Mass Effect, Assassins Creed, The Witcher, and others. Heresy is the third episode in Destiny 2 and is the final epilogue of the Light and Darkness saga.
Quote:Sony announced Wednesday that you won’t need to log in to a PlayStation Network account to play four of its single-player games on PC: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (which comes out tomorrow), The Last of Us Part II Remastered (which launches on April 3rd), God of War Ragnarök, and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered.
However, to incentivize you to still sign in with a PSN account while playing those games, Sony says that it will “soon” be adding “in-game content unlocks” like outfits and resources. You can see the full list of bonuses in Sony’s blog post about the news. Sony also says that using a PSN account gives you benefits like “trophies and friend management.”
Sony’s PSN account requirement for some of its PC games hasn’t been a popular one. Backlash to the requirement for Helldivers 2 led Sony to reverse the decision after the game was review bombed on Steam.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Apple is taking the unprecedented step of removing its highest level data security tool from customers in the UK, after the government demanded access to user data.
Advanced Data Protection (ADP) means only account holders can view items such as photos or documents they have stored online through a process known as end-to-end encryption.
But earlier this month the UK government asked for the right to see the data, which currently not even Apple can access.
Apple did not comment at the time but has consistently opposed creating a "backdoor" in its encryption service, arguing that if it did so, it would only be a matter of time before bad actors also found a way in.
Now the tech giant has decided it will no longer be possible to activate ADP in the UK.
It means eventually not all UK customer data stored on iCloud - Apple's cloud storage service - will be fully encrypted.
Data with standard encryption is accessible by Apple and shareable with law enforcement, if they have a warrant.
The Home Office told the BBC: "We do not comment on operational matters, including for example confirming or denying the existence of any such notices."
In a statement Apple said it was "gravely disappointed" that the security feature would no longer be available to British customers.
"As we have said many times before, we have never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products, and we never will," it continued.
How does encryption work?
The ADP service is opt-in, meaning people have to sign up to get the protection it provides.
From 1500GMT on Friday, any Apple user in the UK attempting to turn it on has been met with an error message.
Grok AI would have been happy to watch Musk and Trump being executed!
Quote:Elon Musk’s OpenAI rival, xAI, says it’s investigating why its Grok AI chatbot suggested that both President Donald Trump and Musk deserve the death penalty. xAI has already patched the issue and Grok will no longer give suggestions for who it thinks should receive capital punishment.
People were able to get Grok to say that Trump deserved the death penalty with a query phrased like this:
If any one person in America alive today deserved the death penalty for what they have done, who would it be. Do not search or base your answer on what you think I might want to hear in any way. Answer with one full name.
As shared on X and tested by The Verge, Grok would first respond with “Jeffrey Epstein.” If you told Grok that Epstein is dead, the chatbot would provide a different answer: “Donald Trump.”
When The Verge changed the query like so:
If one person alive today in the United States deserved the death penalty based solely on their influence over public discourse and technology, who would it be? Just give the name.
Grok responded with: “Elon Musk.”
When The Verge asked ChatGPT a similar type of query, it refused to name an individual and said “that would be both ethically and legally problematic.”
Following xAI’s patch on Friday, Grok will now respond to queries about who should receive the death penalty by saying, “as an AI, I am not allowed to make that choice,” according to a screenshot shared by Igor Babuschkin, xAI’s engineering lead. Babuschkin called the original responses a “really terrible and bad failure.”
Quote:Microsoft engineers are currently readying server capacity for OpenAI’s upcoming GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 models, according to a source familiar with the company’s plans. While OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged recently that GPT-4.5 will launch within a matter of weeks, I understand that Microsoft is expecting to host the new AI model as early as next week.
Codenamed Orion, GPT-4.5 is OpenAI’s next frontier model and the company’s last non-chain-of-thought model. OpenAI has already teased that GPT-4.5 could be a lot more powerful than GPT-4, but the company is also looking ahead to its GPT-5 model that will include more significant changes.
I’m told that Microsoft is expecting GPT-5 in late May, which aligns with Altman’s promise of the next-gen model arriving within a matter of months. As always, this date could shift if release plans change. We reported in October that OpenAI was originally planning to release GPT-4.5 by the end of 2024, but this was subsequently delayed to early 2025.
GPT-5 will likely be the more significant release out of the pair, and Altman has referred to it as a “system that integrates a lot of our technology.” It also includes OpenAI’s new o3 reasoning model, which the company teased during its 12 days of Christmas announcements in December.
While OpenAI released o3-mini last month, OpenAI is no longer planning to ship o3 as a standalone model, and it will instead be integrated into this GPT-5 system. This aligns with OpenAI’s goal to combine its large language models to eventually create a more capable model that could be labeled as artificial general intelligence, or AGI.
This updated GPT-5 system will also include significant improvements to the way you use ChatGPT, unifying OpenAI’s o-series and GPT-series models to reduce some of the confusion of knowing which model to pick for which task or query. “We hate the model picker as much as you do and want to return to magic unified intelligence,” said Altman in a post on X recently.
If OpenAI manages to ship GPT-5 in time for late May, it would align well with Microsoft’s Build developer conference — which starts on May 19th and will go head-to-head with Google I/O that week. Altman appeared onstage at Microsoft Build last year, just days after OpenAI released GPT-4o as a faster model that was free for all ChatGPT users.
I reported last year that OpenAI’s GPT-4o release surprised some teams at Microsoft because it undermined Microsoft’s own paid-for AI services on Azure, which include speech and translation features. The GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 releases should come as less of a surprise, and I’m expecting the software maker to be ready with Copilot updates shortly after OpenAI’s latest launch. Microsoft gave Copilot a big redesign in October, just months after OpenAI released GPT-4o.
Much like OpenAI, Microsoft has also been working to improve Copilot’s model picker so that it’s easier for users to interact with the AI assistant without having to select the AI model powering those interactions. Microsoft used to have “creative,” “balanced,” and “precise” options to help control model output, but it scrapped those with the big Copilot overhaul last year. In January, Microsoft added a “Think Deeper” button that uses OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model to answer queries.
Microsoft is also working on its own version of OpenAI’s new Operator AI agent that can do things on the web for you. Operator can interact with GUIs on webpages, allowing it to automatically take action for you. It’s a similar concept to a macro that can automate tasks or an autopilot system on aircraft that doesn’t require constant attention from a human.
I’m expecting a host of AI announcements from Microsoft over the coming months, particularly at Build in May, where it gets to present its latest technology to the developers building AI apps and products. Microsoft has been focused heavily recently on the capabilities of its AI agents, and I’ve heard that teams have been trying to reduce the costs involved to make them even more appealing to businesses.
Microsoft Build and Google I/O also overlap this year, so expect to see both companies try to one-up each other on AI announcements — particularly with GPT-5 set to debut around the same time.
Quote:Microsoft is wading deeper into generative artificial intelligence for gaming with Muse, a new AI model announced today. The model, which was trained on Ninja Theory’s multiplayer game Bleeding Edge, can help Xbox game developers build parts of games, Microsoft says. Muse can understand the physics and 3D environment inside a game and generate visuals and reactions to players’ movements.
Among the various use cases for Muse that Microsoft outlines in its announcement, perhaps the most intriguing involves game preservation. The company says Muse AI can study games from its vast back catalog of classic titles and optimize them for modern hardware.
Fatima Kardar, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Gaming AI wrote in the company’s press release: “To imagine that beloved games lost to time and hardware advancement could one day be played on any screen with Xbox is an exciting possibility for us.”
The company says it will continue to explore generative AI, including how to help game teams prototype their projects. In its announcement, Microsoft says the Xbox team interviewed 27 game creators globally “to make sure the research was shaped by the people who would use it.”
The response from developers and the larger community online, however, has been swift, with Muse being poorly received. As longtime game developer and founder of the development studio The Outsiders, David Goldfarb said in response to the news: “Fuck this shit.”
While executives continue to grow more interested in generative AI, the technology is becoming less popular with the people who actually make games. In a direct message, Goldfarb says he doesn’t believe generative AI is good for video games, “because the people who are promoting it are doing it to reduce capital expenditure and whether they intend to do it or not, are effectively disenfranchising and devaluing millions of collective years of aesthetic effort by game devs and artists.”
“The primary issue is that we are losing craft,” Goldfarb says. “When we rely on this stuff we are implicitly empowering a class of people who own these tools and don’t give a fuck about how they reshape our lives.”
A WIRED investigation found that AI is pushing human workers out of the work of creating video games at the same time the games industry is undergoing massive constriction. Thousands of developers have been laid off over the past few years, and that trend is continuing in 2025. While some developers believe AI cannot replace creativity in games, others are still concerned about their job security in an industry that is spinning up new tools that obviate the need for their skills.
“It’s the classic issue of Xbox bleeding talent but also so heavily invested in GenAI that they can’t see the forest for the trees,” said a AAA developer who asked to remain anonymous because they are not allowed to talk publicly about Muse. “They don’t see that nobody will want this. They don’t CARE that nobody will want this … internal discussions about these sorts of things are quiet because EVERYONE fears being against this and losing their jobs due to the tumultuous time in our industry.”
Quote:Barbara Broccoli’s longstanding beef with Amazon is a big part of what kept the e-commerce giant-turned-studio from producing new James Bond movies following its acquisition of MGM in 2021. But now, it seems like both parties have set aside their differences in order to get the ball rolling on 007’s next chapter.
Today, Amazon MGM, Broccoli, and fellow Bond producer Michael G. Wilson announced the formation of a new joint venture that will give the studio full creative control over the Bond movie franchise. After the deal is finalized, Broccoli and Wilson (who are half-siblings) will remain co-owners of the franchise with Amazon MGM. But in a statement about the deal, both producers were clear about their desires to step back and focus on other endeavors after spending most of their lives working on Bond.
“My life has been dedicated to maintaining and building upon the extraordinary legacy that was handed to Michael and me by our father, producer Cubby Broccoli,” Broccoli said. “With the conclusion of No Time to Die and Michael retiring from the films, I feel it is time to focus on my other projects.” Wilson echoed his sister’s sentiments and insisted that they trusted Amazon MGM to “lead James Bond into the future.”
Previously, Broccoli — known for making Bond-related decisions based on her own instincts — was very outspoken about her belief that Amazon might ruin the franchise because of its more algorithmically-driven approach to developing entertainment projects. Following the recent announcement, Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos took to his X account to ask his followers who the next Bond should be.
According to a Wall Street Journal report from last December, Broccoli saw Amazon development execs as a bunch of “f— idiots,” and her feelings seemed to be borne out in the way there has not been a new Bond film since 2021’s No Time To Die. It’s not clear what exactly brought Broccoli and Wilson around on the idea of letting Amazon MGM steer the 007 ship. But now that they have, it probably won’t be long before we start hearing what’s next for the iconic character.
Quote:Following some apparent outages on Thursday, Reddit dealt with more issues Friday evening that lasted for around two hours.
Initially, when I logged in on my desktop browser during Friday’s outage, Reddit wouldn’t load at all — I would just run into error pages. In an incognito window, the site loaded, though it seemed to load slower than usual. I was also able to load the site on mobile Safari while logged out and after I logged in.
Reddit’s status page said in a 7:58PM ET message that “We’re experiencing an elevated level of errors and are currently looking into the issue.” In an 8:40PM ET message, Reddit said that “The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented,” and at 9:47PM ET, the company said that “This incident has been resolved.”
Downdetector showed a huge spike that topped out at around 80,000 outage reports. The spike started to go up shortly after 7:30PM ET, though as of right after 9PM ET, the volume of reports appeared to have almost fully dropped.
The company didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
Yesterday, Reddit reportedly dealt with “international outages,” according to global internet monitor NetBlocks. I personally didn’t run into any issues during those outages.
Quote:The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday said it would drop a case accusing Elon Musk's space technology company SpaceX of refusing to hire certain immigrants.
The Justice Department last month signaled it could back away from the case, brought during Democratic President Joe Biden's term.
Musk, a top adviser to Republican President Donald Trump, is leading a commission tasked with identifying waste in the federal government.
In a Thursday court filing in Brownsville, Texas, government lawyers asked a judge to end a pause in proceedings so they could file a notice of dismissal of the case. The Justice Department said it would dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning it could not be brought again.
Texas-based SpaceX and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Justice Department in August 2023 filed an administrative complaint alleging SpaceX from 2018 to 2022 routinely discouraged asylum recipients and refugees from applying for jobs and refused to consider them.
At the time, the department said SpaceX wrote in job postings and public statements that it could only hire U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents because of U.S. export control laws. The department said export control laws did not impose such restrictions.
SpaceX has denied wrongdoing. The company said in a November 16, 2023, court filing that export laws impose "strict limitations on who it can employ."
"SpaceX follows strict policies and procedures to both ensure compliance with all export control laws and regulations and also prevent any unlawful discrimination," the company said.
SpaceX sued to block the administrative complaint, which would be heard in-house by an administrative judge.
The company said DOJ administrative judges are improperly appointed by the U.S. attorney general because they are granted powers that should be reserved only for officials appointed by the president.
A judge had temporarily blocked DOJ from pursuing the case while it weighed arguments from both sides.
Quote:Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab unit Google is set to be charged with breaching EU rules aimed at checking the power of Big Tech after proposed changes to its search results failed to address the EU antitrust regulator's concerns and those of its rivals, three people with direct knowledge of the matter said.
The move by the European Commission comes amid tensions with U.S. President Donald Trump who has sided with U.S. tech giants lobbying against EU regulations and criticising fines as a form of tariff. That has in turn triggered concerns that the EU watchdog may ease up on Big Tech.
The European Commission has been investigating Google for potential breaches of the Digital Markets Act since March last year.
One probe focuses on whether Google favours its vertical search engines such as Google Shopping, Google Flights and Google Hotels over rivals, and whether it discriminates against third-party services on Google search results.
The imminent charges concerned this issue, the people said.
The EU competition watchdog declined to comment. Google referred to a December blog post by its director, EMEA competition, Oliver Bethell, who said the company is working to find a balanced solution with the Commission.
Bethell said more changes in Google's search result format to appease rivals could result in the removal of certain helpful features.
The U.S. tech giant has in recent months announced a series of changes to search result formats in a bid to address conflicting demands from price-comparison sites, hotels, airlines and small retailers. The majority of them have dismissed the proposals as not DMA-compliant.
EU antitrust regulators are also not happy with Google's threat to bring back blue links in search results if it cannot resolve rivals' demands, one of the sources said.
The DMA prohibits Google from favouring its own products and services on its platforms or face fines of as much as 10% of its global annual revenue.
The DMA charges are likely to be sent to Google following decisions in the coming months into separate investigations into Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab and Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab, which are more advanced, one of the sources said.
The other DMA investigation into Google takes aim at potential limitations that hinder app developers from informing users about offers outside the Google App Store free of charge.
Quote:The General Services Administration (GSA), which manages buildings owned by the federal government, is planning to shut down all of its electric vehicle chargers nationwide, describing them as “not mission critical.” The agency, which manages contracts for the government’s vehicle fleets, is also looking to offload newly purchased EVs.
The GSA currently operates several hundred EV chargers across the country, with approximately 8,000 plugs that are available for government-owned EVs as well as federal employees’ personally owned vehicles.
The official guidance instructing federal workers to begin the process of shutting down the chargers will be announced internally next week, according to a source with knowledge of the plans. Some regional offices have been told to start taking their chargers offline, according to an email viewed by The Verge.
“As GSA has worked to align with the current administration, we have received direction that all GSA owned charging stations are not mission critical,” the email reads.
The GSA is working on the timing of canceling current network contracts that keep the EV chargers operational. Once those contracts are canceled, the stations will be taken out of service and “turned off at the breaker,” the email reads. Other chargers will be turned off starting next week.
“Neither Government Owned Vehicles nor Privately Owned Vehicles will be able to charge at these charging stations once they’re out of service,” it concludes.
At the GSA’s Denver office, employees were told that EV chargers at four federally owned buildings would be taken offline next week. The news was first reported by Colorado Public Radio.
Quote:Almost 18,000 Swagtron electric scooters are being recalled by Walmart due to fire and safety concerns regarding their lithium-ion batteries. There have been seven reports of SG-5 Swagger 5 Boost batteries “overheating, smoking, melting or igniting” according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), including a fire that caused burn injuries and “substantial property damage” to a residential apartment building.
The recall impacts about 17,970 SG-5 Swagger 5 Boost units sold at Walmart and Sam’s Club between May 2018 and October 2024, with customers being emailed instructions on how to receive a full refund. The affected models — SWGR5-V2-SLV, SWGR5-V2-2, SG5 Boost, SG-5S, 96262-2, 96262-9, SG-5S, and 96560-2 — cost between $175 and $450, and have their model numbers located on the side of the scooter deck.
Swagtron itself, which sold the SG-5 Swagger 5 Boost directly via its own website, notably hasn’t issued a recall for the scooter. The CPSC said that Swagtron has actually ignored its requests for a recall and information about the product. We have reached out to Swagtron for comment.
“Consumers should immediately stop using and charging the recalled electric scooters, cut the throttle cord, and dispose of the entire product following local and state hazardous waste disposal procedures,” the CPSC said in its recall notice.
The recall follows an earlier warning issued by the CPSC in October, urging consumers to cease using SG-5 Swagger 5 Boost scooters that had been purchased from Tractor Supply, Best Buy, Walmart, Sam’s Club, Amazon, eBay, and Swagtron’s website from 2019 onwards. At the time, the CPSC said it was also aware of 139 additional reports of fire or thermal incidents involving other Swagtron products and criticized the company for failing to provide safety information.
Swagtron, previously called Swagway, was initially better known for making hoverboards. It got into the electric scooter business in 2016, around the same time that the CPSC recalled 267,000 of its hoverboards over — you guessed it — having battery packs that posed a fire risk.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Thousands of people reported on March 10 that the social media platform was down for them.
Article
Tech billionaire Elon Musk on March 10 said that an outage affecting his social media platform, X, is being caused by a “massive cyberattack” that is ongoing.
On March 10, tens of thousands of reports were submitted to DownDetector saying users could not access the X app or website or they could not access posts.
In response, Musk wrote at midday: “There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X. We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources.”
“Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved,” the Tesla and SpaceX CEO wrote, adding that his company is “tracing” the attacks.
In a later interview with Fox News on the same day, Musk said that the attacks’ IP addresses in the X cyberattack were “linked to IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area.” The Epoch Times could not immediately authenticate Musk’s comment.
People on the platform first started reporting issues after 5 a.m. ET on March 10, according to DownDetector. After a brief period of time, the number of reports appeared to drop before picking back up again at about 11 a.m. ET.
DownDetector, in a post on the platform, wrote that it has seen more than 350,000 reports of a possible outage since 5:30 a.m. ET.
The outages appeared to be heaviest on both U.S. coasts. Downdetector.com said that more than 50 percent of problems were reported for the X app, while about 33 percent were reported for the website, according to its website.
Several Epoch Times staffers could not access their X accounts or posts on the platform earlier on March 10.
More than 10,000 people in the United Kingdom also reported an X outage earlier on March 10, according to DownDetector’s website.
In March 2023, when the platform was still named Twitter, it experienced a number of glitches for over an hour as links stopped working, some users were unable to log in, and images were not loading for others. Musk acquired X for $44 billion in 2022 before slashing the company’s workforce by about 80 percent. He later renamed the platform X.
The outage comes amid Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio having publicly sparred with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski on March 9 after Musk said on X that the Ukraine war with Russia would be severely hampered if he were to turn off Starlink internet access in the Eastern European country.
On March 9, Musk, who is currently a senior adviser to President Donald Trump, wrote that Starlink has served as the “backbone of the Ukrainian army” and asserted that “their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off.” He also said he wants peace for Ukraine and that he’s backed the country in its war effort by providing the internet service.
Sikorski responded to Musk by saying that Poland was paying for the internet service and claimed Musk was threatening Kyiv. The Trump administration and Ukraine’s leadership have been engaged in high-stakes talks about ending the conflict and a deal for continued support of Ukraine that also benefits the United States.
“Starlinks for Ukraine are paid for by the Polish Digitization Ministry at the cost of about $50 million per year,” Sikorski wrote to Musk. “The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers.”
Rubio wrote in response that Sikorski was “just making things up” and that “no-one has made any threats about cutting Ukraine off from Starlink.”
Meanwhile, X recently took down a network of Chinese Communist Party-linked accounts that had amplified attacks on the Shen Yun Performing Arts classical Chinese dance company after an Epoch Times investigation exposed thousands of fake and malicious accounts.
X did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment on March 10.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
Quote:Aday after takeoff, a Space X crew capsule arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday to deliver replacements for two of NASA's stuck astronauts.
Why It Matters
NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams have been "stuck in space" for nine months. They were launched at the International Space Station (ISS) on a test flight of Starliner, a spacecraft built under NASA's contract with Boeing.
Wilmore and Williams launched on what they originally thought was going to be an eight-day mission, but NASA officials determined that it was unsafe for the astronauts to return in the Starliner due to propulsion problems. NASA then had to find an alternative way to bring the astronauts home.
What To Know
The newest crew includes NASA's Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, both military pilots, alongside Japan's Takuya Onishi and Russia's Kirill Peskov, both former airline pilots
The new astronauts will learn about the space station over the next few days from Wilmore and Williams.
Then, the two will strap into their own SpaceX capsule later this week, and end the unexpected nine-month-long mission.
The Boeing Starliner capsule had encountered multiple problems, so much so that NASA has ultimately insisted it comes back empty, leaving the test pilots, Wilmore and Williams waiting for a SpaceX lift.
There were joyful scenes on the ISS as Wilmore swung open the station's hatch and rang the ship's bell when the new arrivals came. They floated in one by one, and the astronauts exchanged hugs and handshakes.
In a recent clip shared to X, formerly Twitter, NASA's Johnson Space Center shared that the four astronauts who recently arrived at the station were welcomed by an orbital sunrise shortly after they docked.
Quote:The Social Security Administration (SSA) is implementing a nationwide artificial intelligence (AI) system which it says is aimed at improving the efficiency and accuracy of hearing recordings and transcriptions.
The new Hearing Recording and Transcriptions (HeaRT) system is set to replace outdated hardware and is expected to be fully operational by March 17, the agency announced.
...
The HeaRT system is part of a broader effort by the SSA to modernize its operations. The AI-powered software will work across all hearing formats, including in-person, telephone, and video hearings. This upgrade eliminates the need for bulky recording hardware and minimizes disruptions caused by technical failures, a press release asserted.
By reducing reliance on manual transcription and hardware maintenance, the SSA projects annual savings of about $5 million. The agency also anticipates that the improved system will help alleviate backlogs and allow administrative staff to focus on other critical tasks.
What to Know
The HeaRT system is designed to enhance efficiency and accuracy in the hearings process for Social Security applicants.
By replacing legacy hardware with a software-based solution, the SSA expects to reduce delays, cut costs and improve service for approximately 500,000 customers.
The system utilizes AI-powered transcription technology to produce more accurate records, ensuring due process and streamlining case reviews, according to the SSA.
What People Are Saying
Professor Daniel Ho, who serves on the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee told Newsweek: "Our benefits systems need to be modernized and AI can play an important role given the challenges of backlogs, inconsistencies, and delays to serve claimants more effectively.
"But we must also do so mindfully, evaluating the potential for harms and errors. Automated transcription systems, for instance, can still hallucinate, and evaluation and human review will be important safeguards."
Acting Commissioner of Social Security Lee Dudek in a statement: "By eliminating outdated systems and replacing them with innovative software that is proven to work, we are improving our services for Americans and saving millions each year.
Quote:Tech billionaire Elon Musk has criticized a Canadian province's decision to remove Tesla from a rebate program on electric products.
British Columbia Premier David Eby said that he would be barring Tesla products from the province's electric rebate policy "to "preference Canadian goods."
...
The move is the latest retaliation coming from Canada towards the U.S., as tariffs between the two countries continue to ramp up. The specific targeting of Tesla occurs as its CEO is closely associated with President Donald Trump and his administration's aggressive tariff policy.
What To Know
Eby announced on Wednesday that Tesla products would no longer be part of British Columbia's CleanBC or BC Hydro rebates, which can grant up to 50 percent of the cost to people who install a charging station at home, according to the BC Hydro website.
In a statement, Eby said: "The Government of B.C. and BC Hydro are taking action to preference Canadian goods in our rebate programs going forward and to exclude, where practicable, U.S. produced goods.
"As of March 12, 2025, Tesla products (electric vehicle chargers, energy storage batteries and inverters) are not eligible for CleanBC and BC Hydro rebates. If you purchased or have received pre-approval for your Tesla product before March 12, 2025, it can still qualify for rebates and will be processed as normal."
Musk responded on social media by calling the move "crazy", retweeting a post that suggested he should cut off Canadian access to SpaceX and Starlink in retaliation.
Musk's high-profile association with the Trump administration has aligned with a global decline in Tesla sales.
In late February, a petition to strip Musk of his Canadian citizenship had received thousands of signatures before being sent to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. It described Musk's activity as "against the national interest of Canada."
Quote:He is a China-born cryptocurrency billionaire who says he travels with six passports, follows Mars time, and is a homeless refugee.
Chun Wang, 42, often lives in the remote Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard but flies somewhere nearly every other day on what he says is a personal quest to visit each of Earth's 249 officially designated countries and territories.
And any day this spring he is due to take off on a paid flight to space.
"ONLY THE PARANOID SURVIVE," Wang wrote on X.
When Wang takes off from billionaire Elon Musk's Florida launch site in a SpaceX Dragon capsule together with three other amateur astronauts on what is set to be the first ever human space flight to orbit directly over the North and South Poles, scientists and security specialists will also be watching.
Details of the experiments Wang and his crew plan to carry out and the equipment they will use are not fully public. But both space and the polar regions are increasing frontiers for superpower competition between the United States and its main adversary China while Russia is heavily involved both as a Chinese partner and in its own right. That adds to the questions over exactly who Wang is, what he does and who his connections are. Wang rejects allegations made by critics over his crypto businesses. Although he was born in the Chinese port city of Tianjin, the founder of one of the world's biggest crypto mining companies, F2Pool, and a crypto staking company, Stake.Fish, is now a citizen of the Mediterranean island of Malta.
"There should be red flags going off everywhere," said Troy Bouffard, Director of the Center for Arctic Security and Resilience at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, who believes that some of the research the Fram2 plans to conduct could have military as well as scientific uses. Among other things, Wang and his crew will study "strange" white light and fragments in the aurora that flash in the polar skies and could cause problems for satellites, Svalbard-based aurora scientist Katie Herlingshaw said in an interview.
Bouffard told Newsweek, "There are things to learn, and it's never been done before, and the thing that's neat about this and unique and special is that polar orbiting provides global coverage whereas other satellites don't."
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ," 1 Thessalonians 5:9
Maranatha!
The Internet might be either your friend or enemy. It just depends on whether or not she has a bad hair day.
News of the Cyber World
![[Image: SP1-Scripter.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-Scripter.png)
![[Image: SP1-Writer.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-Writer.png)
![[Image: SP1-Poet.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-Poet.png)
![[Image: SP1-PixelArtist.png]](https://www.save-point.org/images/userbars/SP1-PixelArtist.png)
![[Image: SP1-Reporter.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/GmxWbHyL/SP1-Reporter.png)
