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AI Summary

  • Iran is experiencing one of its longest internet shutdowns as government authorities clamp down on ongoing protests, reflecting heightened security measures and censorship.
  • The Trump administration has imposed a 25% tariff on Nvidia's H200 AI chips intended for export to China, intensifying the technology trade tensions between the U.S. and China.
  • OpenAI continues to expand its influence and investment in the tech industry, recently participating in a significant $250 million funding round for Merge Labs, a startup focused on brain-computer interface technology.
  • Wikimedia Foundation has announced new collaborations with major tech companies, including Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft, to provide broader access to its content through AI partnerships as it commemorates its 25th anniversary.
  • YouTube is enhancing its parental controls feature, allowing parents to oversee and limit access to ‘Shorts’ content for teen accounts, marking a critical shift towards increased safety for younger users on the platform.

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Engadget

  • How to claim Verizon's $20 credit for Wednesday's service outage an hour ago by Andre Revilla
    Technology & Electronics, Finance, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Andre Revilla

    Verizon is offering a very small mea culpa after Wednesday's massive outage, which drew more than 1.5 million reports on Downdetector and lasted hours. The carrier posted on X that it will offer a $20 credit, but customers must redeem it in the myVerizon app. "This credit isn’t meant to make up for what happened. No credit really can," the company wrote. "But it’s a way of acknowledging your time and showing that this matters to us." Incensed customers have largely replied with incredulity, both at the miniscule amount, and that it isn't being applied automatically. Engadget has reached out to Verizon

  • ASUS has stopped producing the NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB, saying they've reached 'end of life' 2 hours ago by Igor Bonifacic
    Information Technology, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Igor Bonifacic

    YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed is reporting that NVIDIA has “effectively” discontinued the RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB due to the ongoing memory crunch. In its most recent video, the channel states ASUS “explicitly” told it the RTX 5070 Ti is “currently facing a supply shortage.” As a result, the company has “placed the model into end of life status,” and no longer plans to produce it. Hardware Unboxed also spoke to retailers in Australia, who told the channel the 5070 Ti is “no longer available to purchase from partners and distributors,” adding they expect that to be the case

  • Heist game Relooted gets a release date 2 hours ago by Matt Tate
    Video Games, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Matt Tate

    The intriguing Africanfuturist heist game, Relooted, is out on February 10. Developed by independent South African studio Nyamakop, the game focuses on a ragtag crew from Johannesburg that liberates real-life African artifacts from a series of fictionalized Western museums. Relooted is best described as a 2.5d side-scrolling action platformer with stealth and puzzle elements. You have to carefully plan each heist with your fellow teammates, knowing where to place each crew member and how you’re going to get in and out in one piece. Once you’ve grabbed the artifact you’re looking for in each mission, an alarm will sound and you have

  • The Animal Crossing: New Horizons 3.0 expansion has arrived earlier than expected 2 hours ago by Matt Tate
    Media, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Matt Tate

    For a number of very obvious reasons, we don’t want to roll back the clock to early 2020. No thank you. But if there was a feel-good lockdown story, it was the perfectly timed arrival of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which allowed friends who could no longer meet up IRL to do so virtually on their carefully pruned islands. The game will almost certainly never be as popular as it was back then again, but Nintendo is hoping a good chunk of lapsed islanders will return for its latest DLC drop, which arrived on January 14, a day earlier than planned.

  • Wikimedia announces AI partners including Meta and Microsoft 3 hours ago by Andre Revilla
    Software, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Andre Revilla

    As part of Wikipedia's 25th anniversary, parent company Wikimedia announced a slew of partnerships with AI-focused companies like Amazon, Meta, Perplexity, Microsoft and others. The deals are meant to alleviate some of the cost associated with AI chatbots accessing Wikipedia content in enormous volumes by giving the tech companies streamlined access. As noted by The Verge, the timeline on these deals is a little squirrely. The Wikipedia foundation says that several companies became enterprise partners "over the past year," while listing Amazon, Google and Meta as "existing" partners. It appears today is the first time they have been officially announced. The organization


The Verge

  • Democrats push FTC to investigate Trump Mobile an hour ago by Dominic Preston
    Gadgets, Mobile, News, Phones, Policy, Politics, Regulation, Tech

    Elizabeth Warren and other Democrat lawmakers have written an open letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking for an investigation into alleged "false advertising and deceptive practices" from Trump Mobile. The company first announced its T1 Phone more than six months ago, but is yet to ship a single phone to buyers. The letter is signed by 11 Democrats, led by Senator Warren and Congressman Robert Garcia. It references Trump Mobile's since-deleted "Made in America" branding; the fact that it's been taking $100 deposits for the phone without anything to show for it; and a social media ad which, as

  • Here are the best AirPods deals you can get right now an hour ago by Sheena Vasani
    Apple, Deals, Gadgets, Headphones, Tech, Verge Shopping

    The latest AirPods Pro have received a modest discount. | Photo: Chris Welch / The Verge If you know where to look, you can often score deals on Apple’s ever-expanding AirPods lineup. Both the AirPods Max and AirPods 4 (with and without ANC) now consistently receive discounts, as do the newer AirPods Pro 3. And while recent shopping events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday delivered some of the steepest discounts we’ve seen, there are still good deals to be found on every model in January. Below, we’ve rounded up the best deals currently available on each set of AirPods, including both

  • Amazon is buying copper harvested by bacteria for its data centers an hour ago by Stevie Bonifield
    Amazon, News, Science, Tech

    Amazon's data centers will reportedly utilize copper from a mine in Arizona that's leaching metal from ores using microorganisms, the Wall Street Journal reports. Amazon Web Services will be the first customer for Nuton Technologies, which developed the "bioleaching" technology. AWS will also be providing "cloud-based data and analytics support," helping to optimize Nuton's mining process. Nuton's bioleaching method uses naturally-occurring microorganisms to extract copper from low-grade ore that would otherwise be too expensive to mine, while also using less water and producing less carbon emissions than traditional mining methods. This … Read the full story at The Verge.

  • Pijama wants to bring more indie films to a global audience an hour ago by Charles Pulliam-Moore
    Entertainment, Film, News, Streaming

    Ema. | Image: Fábula Every year, countless independent films without distribution deals make their debuts on the festival circuit only to disappear into the ether before the general public has had a chance to see them. Pijama, a new VOD streaming service, is trying to change that. Created by filmmakers (and brothers) Juan de Dio and Pablo Larraín - whose past work includes Spencer and Jackie - Pijama aims to give artists a new way to get their indie projects seen by much larger audiences without the help of traditional studios. For a flat $100 fee, Pijama will host, encode, and stream

  • An OpenAI safety research lead departed for Anthropic an hour ago by Hayden Field
    AI, Anthropic

    One of the most controversial issues in the AI industry over the past year was what to do when a user displays signs of mental health struggles in a chatbot conversation. OpenAI's head of that type of safety research, Andrea Vallone, has now joined Anthropic. "Over the past year, I led OpenAI's research on a question with almost no established precedents: how should models respond when confronted with signs of emotional over-reliance or early indications of mental health distress?" Vallone wrote in a LinkedIn post a couple of months ago. Vallone, who spent three years at OpenAI and built out the "model


Wired


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