A group of 23 Democratic US senators sent a letter Friday to the top federal regulator overseeing prediction markets, urging the agency to avoid weighing in on pending court cases over the legality of offerings on the platforms tied to “sports, war, and other prohibited events.”Prediction markets, which sell contracts tied to the outcome of real-world developments, have exploded in popularity over the past year, attracting an increasingly mainstream fanbase eager to wager on everything from geopolitical conflicts to fashion choices to the Super Bowl. As they expanded, the platforms have become a magnet for ethical and legal controversies. On…
For Elon Musk, the US Justice Department’s release of 3 million additional files related to criminal investigations of Jeffrey Epstein last month was immediately embarrassing. Attention in particular fell on emails Musk sent the financier several years after he pleaded guilty to solicitation of prostitution and of procurement of minors…
The largest western AI labs are taking a break from sniping at one another to partner on a new accelerator program for European startups building applications on top of their models. Paris-based incubator Station F will run the program, named F/ai.On Tuesday, Station F announced it had partnered with Meta,…
Leah Feiger: Talking about him. Yeah. Absolutely.Brian Barrett: Yeah. It’s just this web. It fills out this web.Leah Feiger: Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, these are the tech titans.Brian Barrett: Yeah. Up until as recently as 2019, I think some of these people were actively in touch.Leah…
After a prolonged slump, Apple’s business is suddenly thriving again in China. The tech giant said in its latest earnings report last week that revenue from the country rose 38 percent year over year in the last quarter, primarily driven by surging demand for iPhones. The rebound came after Apple’s…
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…
Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company SpaceX is acquiring his AI startup xAI, the centibillionaire announced on Monday. In a blog post, Musk said the acquisition was warranted because global electricity demand for AI cannot be met with “terrestrial solutions,” and Silicon Valley will soon need to build data centers…
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…
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…
It’s 2XP Friday for Competitive Wordle players, so get ready to double your winnings . . . or your losses. This could be the day that decides whether you are a January Wordle champion, or loser. It’s almost the weekend, and it’s almost February, so dust off your thinking caps…
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…
Spotlight
It’s Wordle Wednesday, which means we have an extra riddle to solve…
I hope everyone had a nice holiday Monday, but now we’re back…
Since Donald Trump returned to the White House last January, the biggest…
Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Wordlers! I hope you have a…
