Today, Meta went to trial in the state of New Mexico for allegedly failing to protect minors from sexual exploitation on its apps, including Facebook and Instagram. The state claims that Meta violated New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act by implementing design features and algorithms that created dangerous conditions for users. Now, more than two years after the case was filed, opening arguments have begun in Santa Fe.It’s a big week for Meta in court: A landmark social media trial kicks off in California today as well, the nation’s first legal test of social media addiction. That case is part of…
More Than 880 employees and contractors working for Google signed a petition this week calling on the company to disclose and cancel any contracts it may have with US immigration authorities. In the letter unveiled on Friday, the workers said they are “vehemently opposed” to Google’s dealings with the Department…
Since the middle of last year, there have been at least three major AI “acqui-hires” in Silicon Valley. Meta invested more than $14 billion in Scale AI and brought on its CEO, Alexandr Wang; Google spent a cool $2.4 billion to license Windsurf’s technology and fold its cofounders and research…
Peter Thiel—the billionaire venture capitalist, PayPal, and Palantir cofounder, and outspoken commentator on all matters relating to the “Antichrist”—appears at least 2,200 times in the latest batch of files released by the Department of Justice related to convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.The tranche of records demonstrate how…
“I had very little correspondence with Epstein and declined repeated invitations to go to his island or fly on his ‘Lolita Express,’ but was well aware that some email correspondence with him could be misinterpreted and used by detractors to smear my name,” Musk said in a post on X…
Mistral AI has released a new family of AI models that it claims will clear the path to seamless conversation between people speaking different languages.On Wednesday, the Paris-based AI lab released two new speech-to-text models: Voxtral Mini Transcribe V2 and Voxtral Realtime. The former is built to transcribe audio files…
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is asking companies to provide information about “commercial Big Data and Ad Tech” products that would “directly support investigations activities,” according to a request for information posted on Friday in the Federal Register, the US government’s official journal for agency notices, rulemaking, and other public…
TikTok is currently experiencing a widespread service outage in the US, causing disruptions for millions of users only a few days after the company officially transferred control of its American business to a group of majority-US investors.The technical issues led many TikTok users to speculate about whether the app’s new…
On cue, the room fell silent. A man seated to my left at a long wooden table began to scratch at a piece of paper with a coloring pencil. To my right, another guy picked up a book. Across the way, someone buried themselves in a puzzle. We had gathered…
Dan Peguine, a tech entrepreneur and marketing consultant based in Lisbon, lets a precocious, lobster-themed AI assistant called Moltbot run much of his life.Peguine, a self-professed early adopter and trendspotter, discovered Moltbot several weeks ago—back then it was Clawdbot—after discussing a vibe-coding side project with friends on WhatsApp. He installed…
There’s a particular kind of sci-fi nerd who equates fusion tech with utopia. If we could only harness the engine of the stars, it would uncork near limitless energy and neatly sweep away a whole mess of humanity’s problems. But how would that work exactly? What would the transition look…
Well, it’s happened. A robotaxi hit a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica, California. It’s not the first case of an autonomous vehicle striking a pedestrian, and it won’t be the last. In this case, a car from Google’s sibling company Waymo was involved in the accident.Waymo is…
As Meta heads to trial in the state of New Mexico for allegedly failing to protect minors from sexual exploitation, the company is making an aggressive push to have certain information excluded from the court proceedings.The company has petitioned the judge to exclude certain research studies and articles around social…
Updated Jan. 28 with more details of what’s in the release, and what’s not. Plus a feature that has come to light since the release of iOS 26.2.1.Apple’s latest iPhone update is not, as had been predicted, iOS 26.3 — though you can read here why I thought it had…
The big AI companies promised us that 2025 would be “the year of the AI agents.” It turned out to be the year of talking about AI agents, and kicking the can for that transformational moment to 2026 or maybe later. But what if the answer to the question “When…
Spotlight
If someone ever makes an HBO Max series about the AI industry,…
Updated Jan. 18 with more details of the phones affected and further…
Unless they’re all-time greats, it can be easy to forget about many…
Since Donald Trump returned to the White House last January, the biggest…
