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Tech

AI Summary

  • Runpod, an AI cloud startup, has achieved a remarkable $120 million in annual recurring revenue, showcasing a successful rise from humble beginnings that started with a Reddit post.
  • The California Attorney General has issued a cease-and-desist order to Elon Musk's xAI over concerns regarding nonconsensual deepfake images, heightening scrutiny around AI-generated content and its potential risks.
  • ClickHouse, a competitor to established data platforms like Snowflake and Databricks, has secured a $400 million funding round, pushing its valuation to $15 billion and indicating strong investor confidence in the data management sector.
  • OpenAI is set to introduce targeted advertising within ChatGPT, allowing users to see sponsored content linked to their interactions while assuring that these ads will not affect the quality of responses the AI provides.
  • The tech industry's rush into the healthcare sector continues to accelerate, as investments flow into AI-driven drug development startups, with significant partnerships forming between major players like Chai Discovery and Eli Lilly, igniting competition in AI healthcare solutions.

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Engadget

  • The best VPN service for 2026 an hour ago by Sam Chapman
    Technology & Electronics, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Sam Chapman

    As frustrating as it is that governments and businesses are running roughshod over our online freedoms, at least we have plenty of good VPNs to choose from to keep us protected online. There are so many fast, intelligently designed, full-featured and affordable services on the market that the biggest problem is picking one. For any use case, you can bet at least two providers will be neck-and-neck for first place. On the other hand, the VPN world is still the Wild West in some ways. It's easy enough to slap a cheap VPN together that the market is flooded with low-quality

  • X is fully online after going down for most of the morning 2 hours ago by Karissa Bell
    Media, Arts & Entertainment, Social & Online Media, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Karissa Bell

    X seems to be working again after struggling with an outage that took the service offline and made it slow to load for much of the morning. According to X’s developer platform page, there is an ongoing incident related to streaming endpoints that’s caused increased errors. The incident started at 7:39AM PT, according to the page. That roughly coincides with a spike in reports at Down Detector. The issues seemed to be somewhat intermittent. At some points, X’s website loaded partially and only showed older posts. At other times, the app and website failed to load at all. As of 9:30AM PT,

  • Google is appealing the ruling from its search antitrust case to avoid sharing data with rivals 2 hours ago by Ian Carlos Campbell
    Company Legal & Law Matters, Business, Technology & Electronics, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Ian Carlos Campbell

    Google has filed its appeal to the Department of Justice’s antitrust case that ended with a federal judge ruling that the company was maintaining a monopoly with its search business. While the company goes through the appeals process, it’s also asking that implementation of the remedies from the case, which include a requirement that Google share search data with its competitors, also be paused. “As we have long said, the Court’s August 2024 ruling ignored the reality that people use Google because they want to, not because they’re forced to,” Google said in a statement. “The decision failed to account for

  • Get up to 78 percent off ExpressVPN two-year plans 4 hours ago by Andre Revilla
    Internet & Networking Technology, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Andre Revilla

    If you're looking to up your privacy game on the internet in the new year, you can do so for a little less than usual thanks to ExpressVPN's latest deal. Its two-year plans are up to 78 percent off right now: the Advanced tier is on sale for $101 for two years, plus four additional free months. That works out to $3.59 per month during the promotional period. We’ve consistently liked ExpressVPN because it’s fast, easy to use and widely available across a large global server network. In fact, it's our current pick for best premium VPN. One of the biggest

  • CyberGhost VPN review: Despite its flaws, the value is hard to beat 4 hours ago by Sam Chapman
    Internet & Networking Technology, Technology & Electronics, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Sam Chapman

    CyberGhost is the middle child of the Kape Technologies VPN portfolio, but in quality, it's much closer to ExpressVPN than Private Internet Access. I mainly put it on my best VPN list because it's so cheap, but I wouldn't have done that if it didn't earn its place in other ways — affordable crap is still crap, after all. My universal impression of CyberGhost is a VPN that's not perfect but is always genuinely working to make itself better. It makes decisions based on what will help its users, not to set itself apart in a crowded market. This makes it


The Verge

  • Google is appealing a judge’s search monopoly ruling an hour ago by Lauren Feiner
    Antitrust, Google, News, Policy, Tech

    Google is appealing a federal court's decision ruling it an illegal online search monopolist. The company filed a notice to appeal on Friday, requesting a pause on the court-ordered remedies meant to restore competition to the online search market. "As we have long said, the Court's August 2024 ruling ignored the reality that people use Google because they want to, not because they're forced to," Google's vice president of regulatory affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland said in a blog post. "The decision failed to account for the rapid pace of innovation and intense competition we face from established players and well-funded start-ups. And

  • Trump and Mid-Atlantic governors want tech companies to pay for new power plants 3 hours ago by Justine Calma
    AI, Climate, Energy, Environment, News, Policy, Science

    An Amazon Web Services data center in Ashburn, Virginia, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025. | Photo: Getty Images The Trump administration and a bipartisan group of governors are pressuring the PJM Interconnection, the biggest electricity market in the US, to hold a power auction meant to spur a massive buildout of new power plants. Together, they're "urging" PJM to hold an "emergency" auction for companies to procure electricity over 15-year contracts. The unusually long length of the contracts would ostensibly make it easier to build out new infrastructure by guaranteeing revenue and discouraging speculative requests to connect to the grid by

  • Fortnite blocks creators from selling prize wheel spins 4 hours ago by Jay Peters
    Entertainment, Fortnite, Gaming, News

    A prize wheel in Steal The Brainrot. Epic Games is making a big change to the rules for Fortnite creators just days after allowing them to publish experiences with in-game transactions. Beginning January 20th, experiences - which Epic Games calls "islands" - will not be able to offer in-island transactions as "a 'spin' or 'increased luck' for a prize wheel," according to an Epic staffer on Reddit. Epic is adding the rule after Steal The Brainrot, one of the biggest non-Epic games available to play in Fortnite, implemented a prize wheel that let players pay V-Bucks (Fortnite's in-game currency) for spins and

  • Google brings its AI videomaker to Workspace users 4 hours ago by Emma Roth
    AI, Apps, Google, News, Tech

    An AI-generated scene created by Flow. Google is expanding access to its AI videomaking tool. Launched last May, Flow was initially only available to Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers, but now, those with Business, Enterprise, and Education Workspace plans can access it, too. Flow uses Google's AI video generation model Veo 3.1 to generate eight-second clips based on a text prompt or images. You can stitch together the clips to create longer scenes, as well as access a bunch of other tools that allow you to change the lighting, adjust the "camera" angle, and insert or remove objects in scenes.

  • The two things AMD subtly revealed at CES that actually excite me 4 hours ago by Sean Hollister
    AMD, CES, Gaming, PC Gaming, Report, Tech

    As we predicted, the world's biggest consumer electronics show was a bit of a bust for gamers this year! CES 2026 brought us several neat gamepads, but barely any handhelds and no new desktop GPUs - not from Nvidia, not from Intel, and not from AMD. But if you dig deep, AMD said two things at this year's show that are worthy of attention. Did you catch that the company's about to make socketed mobile chips again? Or that its answer to Intel is to lower the price of its monster Strix Halo silicon? Publicly, AMD barely acknowledged consumers at the Consumer


Wired


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