Jessica Testa / New York Times: Spotify rolls out new ad tools, including an AI tool in the US and Canada to generate scripts and voiceovers, and pitches itself to advertisers as “nutritional” — After finally achieving profitability, the streaming platform wants to be a healthy alternative to “doom scrolling.”
Nicole Sperling / New York Times: In a new strategy, Amazon plans to release 14 to 16 movies per year in theaters, rivaling other major studios, with most running for 45 days before streaming — The streaming giant is planning to release at least 14 movies a year in theaters around the country, rivaling other major studios.
Megan Specia / New York Times: How some UK parents created a “Smartphone Free Childhood” pledge, signed by 124K+ people, after the UK government watered down a bill banning phones in schools — In Britain, amid growing evidence of harm to young people from extreme content online, a “Smartphone Free Childhood” campaign is going viral.
Michael J. de la Merced / New York Times: Isomorphic Labs, a DeepMind spinoff focusing on drug discovery, raised $600M led by Thrive to research treatments, including for cancer and immune disorders — The company, which uses artificial intelligence to develop new treatments, now counts the venture capital firm Thrive Capital as a backer.
New York Times: An analysis finds 170+ violent vigilante attacks since 2023 by US “pedophile hunters”, whose online content has been amplified by websites like Kick and Locals — With the rise of loosely moderated social media platforms, a fringe vigilante movement is experiencing a dangerous evolution.
New York Times: US tech companies are racing to establish more and bigger offshore campuses in India, fully staffed with highly skilled professionals in cities like Bengaluru — An abundance of motivated young professionals is luring American businesses to base their global operations in Indian cities.
Ana Swanson / New York Times: The US adds export restrictions to 80 entities, primarily targeting Chinese companies, including server maker Nettrix and customers of Nvidia, Intel, and AMD — The additions included companies that are customers of Intel and Nvidia, and one firm that was the focus of a New York Times investigation last year.
Kate Morgan / New York Times: Scientists are using AI to speed up drug repurposing, expanding the treatment possibilities for people with rare diseases and few options — Joseph Coates, left, owes his life to an A.I. model developed by Dr. David Fajgenbaum and the rest of his team.Hannah Yoon for The New York Times
New York Times: A profile of longtime Elon Musk loyalist Steve Davis, who effectively runs DOGE after SpaceX, Boring Company, and X stints, based on interviews with 22 sources — Elon Musk declared last month that the federal government was engaged in “utterly insane” activity, claiming without evidence …
New York Times: Since Xi Jinping met DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng last month, Chinese officials are rushing to use the AI model, including in courthouses and in hospitals — Government bodies nationwide have been eager to show they are using DeepSeek's A.I. technology since the company's founder met with Xi Jinping, China's leader.
New York Times: HR service Rippling sues Deel, accusing its rival of hiring a mole in its Dublin office to comb through trade secrets, uncovered via a “honeypot” Slack channel — A lawsuit by Rippling accuses a top competitor, Deel, of placing a mole in its ranks — which it uncovered via a “honeypot” trap on Slack.
Michael Levenson / New York Times: Carl Lundstrom, who financed file sharing service the Pirate Bay, died in a plane crash in Slovenia; at its peak, the Pirate Bay had an estimated 20M+ users — Mr. Lundstrom was a supporter of far-right causes and, at one point, an unsuccessful candidate for office.
Matthew Goldstein / New York Times: A profile of Caroline Crenshaw, the lone Democratic SEC Commissioner, who is offering dissenting views as the regulator rolls back Biden-era crypto enforcement — Caroline Crenshaw, the lone Democratic commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commission, is offering dissenting views …
New York Times: Trump's call to scrap the “horrible” CHIPS Act causes concern among Republican lawmakers, who sought and received White House reassurances over the program — The president's attack on the key tenet of the Biden administration's industrial policy has set off concerns that he may claw back its funding.
David Yaffe-Bellany / New York Times: Source: Bybit hackers planted malicious code to manipulate transactions by compromising a developer's computer at crypto wallet provider Safe, used by Bybit — On the night of Feb. 21, Ben Zhou, the chief executive of the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, logged on to his computer to approve what appeared to be a routine transaction.
Cecilia Kang / New York Times: US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick unveils an overhaul of Biden's $42B broadband grant to “take a tech-neutral approach”, a move that could benefit Starlink — Under new rules from President Trump's Commerce Department, a $42 billion high-speed internet effort will no longer favor fiber-optic cable.
Mike Isaac / New York Times: Digg founder Kevin Rose and Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian buy Digg for an undisclosed sum from Money Group, aiming to focus on “connection and humanity” online — Two decades after creating Digg, a community-focused social message board, Kevin Rose is reviving the site and teaming up with a founder of Reddit.
Ezra Klein / New York Times: Q&A with ex-White House AI adviser Ben Buchanan on the Biden administration, AGI, OpenAI's Deep Research, the US labor market, China, hacks, AI labs, and more — This is an edited transcript of an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the conversation by following …
Cade Metz / New York Times: Reinforcement learning pioneers Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton win the 2024 Turing Award; their work played a vital role in the rise of AI, including ChatGPT — Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton developed reinforcement learning, a technique vital to chatbots like ChatGPT.
Kevin Roose / New York Times: A look at Vibecoding, a term popularized by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy for a trend where AI lets nontechnical hobbyists build bespoke apps for themselves — A photo illustration shows a vertical circuit board full of dials and knobs of various designs and sizes. Fingers are turning two of them.
Nicole Sperling / New York Times: A profile of London-based Mubi, a niche movie streaming service with 400 employees boosted by hit film The Substance, turning it into a real Hollywood player — Early on in “The Substance,” the body horror film starring Demi Moore that has been nominated for five Academy Awards …
Hannah Beech / New York Times: Sources: no major players behind online scam centers in Myanmar were taken down in the recent China-led raids, and the construction of new centers continues — A China-led crackdown on online fraud rescued thousands from Myanmar this month. But this massive business of grift keeps growing.
Ellen Barry / New York Times: The American Psychological Association warns the US FTC that AI chatbots “masquerading” as therapists could drive vulnerable people to harm themselves or others — The nation's largest association of psychologists this month warned federal regulators that A.I. chatbots …
David Yaffe-Bellany / New York Times: Even as Trump embraces crypto, attracting millions of new investors, the Bybit hack and memecoins show how crypto remains the wild West of the financial world — Hours after Coinbase said the S.E.C. was dropping a lawsuit against it, another major cryptocurrency exchange reported a potentially record-setting theft.
Erin Griffith / New York Times: Many SV startups are using AI to boost productivity in research, coding, and more, reducing reliance on VC money for hiring, fueling “tiny team” success stories — Tech start-ups typically raised huge sums to hire armies of workers and grow fast.
Steve Lohr / New York Times: Software engineers, academics, and others say AI coding tools will likely prompt an evolution rather than extinction, pushing developers to learn new skills — A.I. tools from Microsoft and other companies are helping write code, placing software engineers at the forefront of the technology's potential to disrupt the work force.
Madeline Coleman / New York Times: A look at “sim racing”, Formula One world champion Max Verstappen's passion for the competitive esport, and his efforts to get sim drivers into physical racing — Race teams always look up and down the motorsports ladder to identify rising stars.
New York Times: Sources: banks sold ~$4.7B of X's debt on February 13, more than the $3B they originally intended to sell, leaving ~$1B of X debt on their balance sheets — The social media company is attracting investor interest because of Elon Musk's close ties to President Trump and a recent jump in revenue.
Ken Bensinger / New York Times: Elon Musk and right-wing influencers redefine “doxxing” to include reporting on government employees; free speech advocates say they aim to intimidate the press — Right-wing influencers are criticizing journalists who have published public information about government employees.
New York Times: After the Los Angeles fires, over 1M people donated $250M+ via GoFundMe, or $20M more than the service collected for all natural disasters worldwide in 2024 — Donations on the crowdfunding site to people and fire relief efforts have exceeded those for all natural disasters worldwide last year.
Scott Cacciola / New York Times: Some users are wearing the Apple Watch on their ankles to get around problems, like skin conditions; some believe health metrics are more accurate on the ankle — In pursuit of tracking fitness goals in a comfortable manner, a growing number of people are relocating their watches (and causing some confusion along the way).
Zachary Small / New York Times: An interview with The Sims designer Will Wright on the dollhouse game turning 25, the game's mechanics, infusing it with chaos, ants, The Sims Online, and more — Will Wright kindly requests that admirers stop describing him as a god. — “I don't think God would concern himself with taking …
Noam Scheiber / New York Times: A profile of Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski, whose overblown statements about AI replacing humans point to a future that tech companies are working toward — Ask typical corporate executives about their goals in adopting artificial intelligence, and they will most likely make vague pronouncements …
Kevin Roose / New York Times: In its current form, OpenAI's Operator is more of an intriguing demo than a product useful for most people, but it points to a future of powerful AI agents — In the past week, OpenAI's Operator has done the following things for me: — Ordered me a new ice cream scoop on Amazon.
Michael J. de la Merced / New York Times: Kalshi plans to let users buy into its prediction markets directly from brokerages, says it now has 908 active contracts, up from 691 on Election Day — The platform, which recently hired Donald Trump Jr. as an adviser, is seeking to tap Wall Street to expand its potential customer base.
Paul Sonne / New York Times: Experts say the Kremlin's throttling of YouTube is driving Russians to state-controlled platforms; Google data shows Russian traffic to YouTube is down ~66% YoY — The Kremlin is trying to cripple YouTube in Russia, internet experts say, pushing some people to state-controlled domestic alternatives.
William J. Broad / New York Times: A profile of incoming White House OSTP director Michael Kratsios, who lacks a STEM degree and led the American AI Initiative during President Trump's first term — Michael Kratsios, who served in the White House and Defense Department in the first Trump administration, is a policy specialist on artificial intelligence.
David Streitfeld / New York Times: An interview with Bill Gates on his memoir, “Source Code: My Beginnings”, social media, crypto, AI, billionaires, tax, Trump, his parents, Microsoft, and more — The older he gets, the more Bill Gates is surprised by what the world dishes up. — Take billionaires.
New York Times: Meta executives say DeepSeek's breakthrough shows that upstarts now have a chance to innovate and compete with AI giants and vindicates the open-source strategy — The Silicon Valley giant was criticized for giving away its core A.I. technology two years ago for anyone to use. Now that bet is having an impact.
Kevin Roose / New York Times: DeepSeek challenges the “bigger is better” narrative underpinning the AI arms race in recent years and suggests we may see more investment into smaller startups — A new A.I. model, released by a scrappy Chinese upstart, has rocked Silicon Valley and upended several fundamental assumptions about A.I. progress.
New York Times: A look at the surveillance tech that could power Trump's immigration crackdown; a review of 15K+ contracts shows ICE and USCIS spent $7.8B on tech since 2020 — Border enforcement agencies have spent billions assembling surveillance tools to track and find people.
New York Times: Some crypto executives worry Trump's memecoin undercut the industry's credibility at the very moment crypto is seeking a prominent place in mainstream finance — The president's promotion of a speculative digital coin left some crypto investors feeling blindsided, while others saw it as a gimmick …
New York Times: Elon Musk's first moves suggest DOGE will be closer to an IT project than the sweeping operation to slash $2T+ from the federal budget that he once predicted — The rebranding of a former White House digital office into the new Department of Government Efficiency signals its potential limits, budget experts said.
New York Times: Instagram and Facebook removed posts from two abortion pill providers; Instagram also suspended accounts; Meta confirmed and restored some of the accounts — Some posts related to obtaining abortion pills were recently hidden on Instagram and Facebook and some accounts were suspended, before being later restored.
Kevin Roose / New York Times: CAIS and Scale AI release “Humanity's Last Exam”, a new evaluation that they claim is the hardest-ever AI test, consisting of ~3,000 multiple-choice questions — If you're looking for a new reason to be nervous about artificial intelligence, try this: Some of the smartest humans …
New York Times: A profile of Chinese AI lab DeepSeek, which says its new open-source DeepSeek-V3 model rivals US models while using fewer AI chips to train, costing just $6M — The company built a cheaper, competitive chatbot with fewer high-end computer chips than U.S. behemoths like Google and OpenAI, showing the limits of chip export control.
New York Times: How Ross Ulbricht's allies, including crypto investors, libertarian politicians, and his mother Lyn Ulbricht, persuaded Trump to pardon the Silk Road founder — Libertarian and crypto allies of Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a life sentence for distributing drugs on his Silk Road website …
New York Times: Sources: Elon Musk is set to get a West Wing office, putting him close to Trump, after Musk had for many days been asking about his level of access — The world's richest man had been expected to be situated in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, but a West Wing office would give him closer access to President Trump.
Julian E. Barnes / New York Times: A look at the CIA's AI use, including a chatbot that lets analysts talk to virtual versions of foreign presidents and prime ministers to predict their behaviors — The spy agency is trying to give its teams better tools and make it easier for the private sector to develop technology for their secretive work.
Kevin Roose / New York Times: As the TikTok eulogies pour in from some creators, very few Americans seem concerned that one of the nation's most popular social media apps will disappear — So this may be the way TikTok ends: not with a bang, but with a whimper. — Over the past few weeks, as the Jan. 19 deadline loomed …