An FCC veteran who has praised Elon Musks SpaceX, Brendan Carr has outlined plans to remove regulations conservatives consider overbearing or outdated.

The videogame company has denied the allegations and said the new protections were planned before a short sellers report.

Lisa Morgan, Freelance WriterNovember 18, 20247 Min ReadYAY Media AS via Alamy StockBusiness competitiveness is driving organizations deeper into the cloud where they can take advantage of more services. Leading organizations are realizing economic benefits ranging from cost savings and deeper insights to successful innovations. Artificial intelligence is driving an increase in cloud usage.We anticipate a continued growth of a few significant cloud trends for 2025, with the rise of GenAI being a major driver, says John Samuel, global CIO and EVP at CGS (Computer Generated Solutions), a global IT and outsourcing provider. Cloud providers are heavily investing in GenAI technologies, collaborating with chip manufacturers to enhance performance and scalability. This partnership enables cloud platforms to power a growing ecosystem of downstream SaaS providers that are building solutions to allow easier adoption of AI-based solutions. As a result, GenAI is becoming a key enabler for adopting advanced AI capabilities across industries, with cloud acting as the backbone.Mike Stawchansky, chief technology officer at financial services software applications provider Finastra, warns that privacy concerns and contractual ambiguity around the rights to utilize customer data for GenAI will become more of an issue. Customers want the insights and efficiencies GenAI can deliver but may not be willing to grant more extensive access to their data.Related:Capacity issues are becoming more frequent as organizations grapple with the resource-heavy workloads that AI-powered technologies bring. Further, expansion into other cloud regions may hold businesses back as different regions present their own unique compliance and data residency challenges, says Stawchansky in an email interview. GenAI is going to continue to put pressure on businesses to be better, faster, and more efficient. Early adopters are seeing gains, so those who have not yet begun to experiment with the technology risk falling behind.Cloud security will also become more of an issue, however. Security teams will begin to harness AI assistance to automate response processes for cloud-based exposure and threat detection.The volume of exposures and threats, combined with varying experience levels in SecOps teams, means that effective remediation relies on the ability to guide team members with prescriptive remediation procedures using AI. This will see mainstream adoption in 25, says Or Shoshani, co-founder and chief executive officer at real-time cloud security company Stream.Security. Enterprises have done little to evolve their detection and response capabilities to meet the unique aspects of the cloud environment. They are relying on processes and technology designed for securing on-prem infrastructures and its insufficient. Its a combination of lack of awareness of the problem, in addition to inertia.Related:Following are some more cloud trends to watch in 2025:1. Multi- and hybrid clouds will become more commonCloud providers recognize that customers prefer to leverage multiple cloud platforms for flexibility, risk mitigation, and performance optimization. In response, they are enabling inter-cloud operability, which enables users to perform analytics and utilize data across cloud providers without moving their data, according to CGS Samuel.Enterprises [and] small- to medium-sized businesses appear well-prepared for upcoming cloud trends like GenAI adoption and multi-cloud strategies. Cloud providers are responding by enabling technologies that reduce on-premises infrastructure needs, making it easier for companies to offload workloads to the cloud, Samuel says.Faiz Khan, founder & CEO at multi-cloud SaaS and managed service provider Wanclouds, says the major public cloud providers eliminated data transfer fees over the last year, making it easier to migrate data from one public cloud provider to another.Related:"By adopting a multi-cloud approach, you can train your distributed AI workloads and models across multiple environments. For instance, there could be a benefit to using Azure's computing power to train one AI model and AWS for another. Or you could keep your legacy cloud workloads on one public cloud and then your AI workloads on a separate public cloud, says Khan in an email interview. This approach enables enterprises to tailor their cloud environment to the needs of each AI application. It's also become a lot cheaper to migrate these applications across public clouds if the environment or needs change.However, time and cost can slow adoption. Businesses need sufficient time to research and implement new cloud solutions, and the confidence that the shift will deliver the cost optimization they expect. Balancing immediate costs with long-term cloud benefits is an important consideration.2. CISOs will need better cloud monitoringSOC and the SecOps teams will need to integrate cloud context into their day-to-day detection and response operations in 2025 to effectively detect and respond to exposures and threats in real time.Most SecOps teams are still relying on alert-based tools designed for on prem environments that are missing information related to exposure and attack path across all elements of the cloud infrastructure, saysStream.SecuritysShoshani. This results in an inability to identify real threats and massive amounts of time [to investigate] false positives.3. Cloud spending will increaseWanclouds Khan says most organizations will increase their cloud spending substantially in 2025.Like other aspects of IT, AI will be the force behind most of the trends occurring in the cloud in 2025. AI is going to drive a big spending boom in the cloud next year. Organizations need to increase the amount of cloud resources they have to be able to handle the compute GenAI model training requires, says Khan. Furthermore, we're also seeing IT teams now spending on new AI tools and features that can be utilized to improve and automate cloud management."4. Landing zones will gain more tractionLanding zones provide a standardized framework for cloud adoption. They are becoming more prominent as they address scalability and security concerns.Cloud providers are putting together templates for various industry verticals, such as finance and healthcare, that will allow customers to build solutions for regulatory environments much faster, saysFinastrasStawchansky. Most enterprises will be some way along their cloud-adoption and migration roadmaps today. Its just a question of how well-equipped they are for scaling their capabilities, especially as they seek to operationalize resource-heavy technologies, such as LLMs and GenAI. Having structured ways to approach scaling resources, while efficiently harnessing this technology will be crucial for ensuring ROI.5. Cybersecurity resilience will use digital twins for ransomware war gamesCyber recovery rehearsals will reach a new level of sophistication as organizations aim for ever faster recovery times in todays hybrid and multi-cloud environments.Cyber criminals are now using AI to increase the frequency, speed and scale of their attacks. In response, organizations will also use AI -- but this time, to fight back, says Matt Waxman, SVP and GM of data protection at secure multi-cloud data management company Veritas Technologies. As we know, the key to success is all in the preparation, so much of this work is going to be done in advance, using AI to predict the best response when ransomware inevitably hits.Organizations will play out ransomware wargames using cloud-based digital twins in AI-powered simulations of every possible attack scenario across entire infrastructures -- from edge to core to cloud.Plans are one thing, but an organization cant claim resilience without proving that those plans have been pressure tested. More than a nice-to-have, these advanced rehearsals will soon become mandated by regulation, says Waxman.6. Cyberspace will extend to outer spaceSatellite connectivity is growing, though Waxman says space-based computing may get a nudge in 2025.As humans return to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years aboard NASAs Artemis II, technology visionaries will be re-inspired to explore the possibilities of space-based computing, says Waxman. Datacenters in space present many benefits. For example, the unique environmental conditions mean that much less energy is required to spin disks or cool racks. However, there are also obvious challenges, such as transmission latency, which makes storage in space more effective for data that only needs accessed occasionally, like backup data.Spurred by the promise of datacenters freed from atmospheric constraints, in 2025, visionaries will begin to set their minds to overcoming the barriers to computing in space, he says.About the AuthorLisa MorganFreelance WriterLisa Morgan is a freelance writer who covers business and IT strategy and emergingtechnology for InformationWeek. She has contributed articles, reports, and other types of content to many technology, business, and mainstream publications and sites including tech pubs, The Washington Post and The Economist Intelligence Unit. Frequent areas of coverage include AI, analytics, cloud, cybersecurity, mobility, software development, and emerging cultural issues affecting the C-suite.See more from Lisa MorganNever Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.SIGN-UPYou May Also LikeWebinarsMore WebinarsReportsMore Reports

Matt Herpich, CEO, Conduit PowerNovember 18, 20243 Min ReadAleksia via Alamy StockWe operate as a lean technology startup in the traditionally conservative energy industry. We have to. Going up against $100 billion behemoths requires agility and operational efficiency so we can make smart, quick decisions in the moment and move at the speed of the market. Technology -- specifically digital transformation in the cloud -- has enabled this bold business model, allowing us to bridge the budget gap and compete against much larger competitors that have been in business for decades.But simply declaring youre going to operate in the cloud isnt likely to lead to success. What we set out to do hadnt been done before, but we were lucky enough to be working with two industry leaders that helped us make the right technology decisions during a relatively fast implementation cycle -- the impact of which proved valuable to operations, employee productivity, and morale, especially in a market as competitive as the energy sector.Pioneering Cloud SolutionOur core mission is to build power plants for companies that want to co-locate power generation near where they need it -- for data centers, new industry, and other places that have rapidly growing electricity needs. The ability to remotely operate modern control room systems is mission critical, allowing us to meet resilience, compliance and security requirements of our customers without having to deploy people on-site at every customer plant. Data fuels our remote management capabilities, providing operators fingertip access to all kinds of information about our customers on-site grids, including generation, usage and asset health data, which is fed to a central control center near Houston, Texas.Related:Building a vast wide-area network with high-performance fiber would cost tens of millions of dollars. Some of our well-funded competitors have done this, building massive IT infrastructures across customer sites at a scale that rivals the worlds biggest tech companies. We took a different path, working with Hitachi Energy and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to create a cloud-based network management solution. Moving to the cloud led to a six-month deployment timeline and cost a third of the budget required to build a similar on-premises deployment.Our cloud strategy allows our operators to monitor and control grid assets distributed across the state from a central location and provides fast response, redundancy, disaster recovery, and security services -- all the capabilities youd expect from one of the major players in our field. By working closely with our partners, we can do this without the big budget of our competitors nor hiring or training additional personnelRelated:Keeping Families Together During a DisasterMoving to the cloud provided immediate value. Only months after migrating to the cloud, Hurricane Beryl struck the Texas coastline and disrupted power throughout the state. Our customers needed their power plants up and running at optimal capacity to mitigate the outages.Normally, we would have had to send our operators hundreds of miles on site to oversee plant recoveries -- a costly and time-consuming prospect. However, our cloud-native strategy allowed our operators to simply log on from home where they could maintain operators from a web-based dashboard. Not only did we keep our customers up and running, but we also didnt have to disrupt our workers families during the federally declared disaster.The Cloud Delivers Operational FlexibilityOperating in the energy industry as a lean startup is much easier when you leverage the power of cloud technology to create operational efficiencies, provide stellar experiences to customers and make fast, data-informed decisions that put us one step ahead of larger competitors. Through the cloud, we are able to grow our IT capabilities in line with business growth objectives. While we currently operate plants that generate less than 100 megawatts (MW) of power, well be able to scale our SCADA and network management operations to meet the needs of any sized plant in the future. Well be able to meet this demand without having to over-provision resources in advance or invest millions of dollars in an on-premises data center. And that flexibility is worth its weight in gold.Related:About the AuthorMatt HerpichCEO, Conduit PowerMatt Herpich is CEO of Conduit Power. He previously served as head of finance and operations for Arcadia Powers Texas Energy Services business unit. He came to Arcadia through the acquisition of Real Simple Energy, a Texas-based retail power brokerage, of which he was co-founder. Matt earned a BS in Electrical Engineering from Yale and an MS in Information Technology (big data focus) from Carnegie Mellon.See more from Matt HerpichNever Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.SIGN-UPYou May Also LikeWebinarsMore WebinarsReportsMore Reports

Scientists may have found another reason to prioritise dental hygieneskynesher/Getty ImagesMounting evidence suggests that the microbes in our mouths could be putting us at risk of certain cancers, as well as affecting our prognosis if we do develop them, but the relationship isnt straightforward.Second only to the gut, the mouth is home to a diverse microbial community, with more than 700 species of bacteria alone colonising our teeth, tongues and soft tissues.Over the past decade, research has increasingly linked gum disease

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. The rise of Bluesky, and the splintering of social You may have read that it was a big week for Bluesky. If youre not familiar, Bluesky is, essentially, a Twitter clone that publishes short-form status updates. Last Wednesday, The Verge reported it had crossed 15 million users. Its just ticked over 19 million now, and is the number one app in Apples app store. Meanwhile, Threads, Metas answer to Twitter, reportedly signed up 15 million people in November alone. Both apps are surging in usage. Many of these new users were seemingly fleeing X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, in reaction to Elon Musks support of Donald Trump, and his moves to elevate right-leaning content on the platform. But theres a deeper trend at play here. Were seeing a long-term shift away from massive centralized social networks. Read the full story. Mat Honan This story is from The Debrief, our newly-launched newsletter written by our editor-in-chief Mat Honan. Its his weekly take on the real stories behind the biggest news in techwith some links to stories we love and the occasional recommendation thrown in for good measure. Sign up to get it every Friday! Why the term women of childbearing age is problematic Jessica Hamzelou Every journalist has favorite topics. Mine include the quest to delay or reverse human aging, and new technologies for reproductive health and fertility. So when I saw trailers for The Substance, a film centered on one middle-aged womans attempt to reexperience youth, I had to watch it. I wont spoil the movie for anyone who hasnt seen it yet (although I should warn that it is not for the squeamish). But a key premise of the film involves harmful attitudes toward female aging. Hey, did you know that a womans fertility starts to decrease by the age of 25? a powerful male character asks early in the film. At 50, it just stops, he later adds. He never explains what stops, exactly, but to the viewer the message is pretty clear: If youre a woman, your worth is tied to your fertility. Once your fertile window is over, so are you. The insidious idea that womens bodies are, above all else, vessels for growing children has plenty of negative consequences for us all. But it also sets back scientific research and health policy. Read Jesss story to learn how. This story is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Reviews weekly biotech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday. The must-reads Ive combed the internet to find you todays most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Trump plans to loosen US rules for self-driving cars No prizes for guessing who might be behind that idea. (Bloomberg$)+Elon Musk is ramping up his legal fight against OpenAI and Microsoft.(WSJ$)+Trump has appointed the FCCs Brendan Carr to lead the agency.(NPR)+Robotaxis are here. Its time to decide what to do about them. (MIT Technology Review)2 How Bluesky is handling its explosive growthIt has just 20 employees, and theyre working round the clock to deal with bugs, outages and moderation issues. (NYT$)+Just joined Bluesky? Heres how to use it.(The Verge)+How to fix the internet.(MIT Technology Review) 3 Biden agreed to some small but significant AI limits with Xi Jinping I think we can all get behind the idea that nuclear weapons should be exclusively controlled by humans. (Politico)+Biden has lifted a ban on Ukraine using long-raise missiles to strike inside Russia.(BBC)4 Big Tech is trying to sink the US online child safety billAnd, as it stands, its lobbying efforts look very likely to succeed. (WSJ$)5 Amazon has launched a rival to Temu and Shein Nothing on Haul costs more than $20. (BBC)+Welcome to the slop era of online shopping. (The Atlantic$)6 The Mike Tyson-Jake Paul fight on Netflix was plagued by glitchesDespite that, 60 million households still tuned in. (Deadline)7 AI models can work together faster in their own languageLinking different models together could help tackle thorny problems individual ones cant solve. (New Scientist$)8 Tech companies are training their AI on movie subtitlesA database called OpenSubtitles provides a rare glimpse into what goes into these systems. (The Atlantic$)9 McDonalds is trying to bring back NFTsRemember those? (Gizmodo)10 A lot of people are confusing Starlink satellites with UFOs Guess itll take us a while for us to get used to seeing them. (Ars Technica)Quote of the day F*** you, Elon Musk. Brazils first lady, Janja Lula da Silva, makes her views clear during a speech calling for tougher social media regulation ahead of the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro,Reutersreports.The big story Alina Chan tweeted life into the idea that the virus came from a lab COURTESY PHOTO June 2021 Alina Chan started asking questions in March 2020. She was chatting with friends on Facebook about the virus then spreading out of China. She thought it was strange that no one had found any infected animal. She wondered why no one was admitting another possibility, which to her seemed very obvious: the outbreak might have been due to a lab accident.Chan is a postdoc in a gene therapy lab at the Broad Institute, a prestigious research institute affiliated with both Harvard and MIT. Throughout 2020, Chan relentlessly stoked scientific argument, and wasnt afraid to pit her brain against the best virologists in the world. Her persistence even helped change some researchers minds.Read the full story.Antonio Regalado We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.) + WhyQuincy Joneswas the best of the best. + Thesehandy appsare a great way to save articles to read later on (Pocket is my own personal favorite.)+ How to resurrect aghost riverin the Bronx.+ Look after yourstainless steel pans, and your stainless steel pans will look after you.

You may have read thatit was a big week for Bluesky. If youre not familiar, Bluesky is, essentially, a Twitter clone that publishes short-form status updates. It gained more than 2 million users this week. On Wednesday,The Vergereportedit had crossed 15 million users. By Thursday, it was at 16 million. By Friday?17 million and counting. It was thenumber one appin Apples app store. Meanwhile, Threads, Metas answer to Twitter, put up even bigger numbers. The companys Adam Mosserireported that 15 million peoplehad signed up in November alone. Both apps are surging in usage. Many of these new users were seemingly fleeing X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. On the day after the election, more than115,000 people deactivated their X accounts, according to Similarweb data. Thats a step far past not logging on. It means giving up your username and social graph. Its nuking your account versus just ignoring it. Much of that migration is likely a reaction to Elon Musks support of Donald Trump, and his moves to elevate right-leaning content on the platform. Since Musk took over, X has reinstated a lot of previously banned accounts, very many of which are on the far right. It also tweaked its algorithm to make sure Musks own posts, which are often pro-Trump, get an extra level of promotion and prominence,according toKate Conger and Ryan Macs new bookCharacter Limit. There are two points I want to make here. The first is that tech and politics are just entirely enmeshed at this point. Thats due to the extreme extent to which tech has captured culture and the economy. Everything is a tech story now, including and especially politics. The second point is about what I see as a more long-term shift away from centralization. Whats more interesting to me than people fleeing a service because they dont like its politics is the emergence of unique experiences and cultures across all three of these services, as well as other, smaller competitors. Last year,we put Twitter killers on our list of 10 breakthrough technologies. But the breakthrough technology wasnt the rise of one service or the decline of another. It was decentralization. At the time, I wrote: Decentralized, or federated, social media allows for communication across independently hosted servers or platforms, using networking protocols such as ActivityPub, AT Protocol, or Nostr. It offers more granular moderation, more security against the whims of a corporate master or government censor, and the opportunity to control your social graph. Its even possible to move from one server to another and follow the same people. In the long run, massive, centralized social networks will prove to be an aberration. We are going to use different networks for different things. For example, Bluesky is great for breaking news because it does not deprioritize links and defaults to a social graph that shows updates from the people you follow in chronological order. (It also has a Discover feed and you can set up others for algorithmic discoverymore on that in a momentbut the default is the classic Twitter-esque timeline.) Threads, which has a more algorithmically defined experience, is great for surfacing interesting conversations from the past few days. I routinely find interesting comments and posts from two or three days before I logged on. At the same time, this makes it pretty lousy at any kind of real time experienceseemingly intentionallyand essentially hides that standard timeline of updates from people you follow in favor of an algorithmically-generated for you feed. Im going to go out on a limb here and say that while these are quite different, neither is inherently better. They offer distinct takes on product direction. And that ability to offer different experiences is a good thing. I think this is one area where Bluesky has a real advantage. Bluesky lets people bend the experience to their own will. You arent locked into the default following and discover experiences. You canroll your own custom feed, and follow custom feeds created by other people. (And Threads isnow testing something similar.) That customization means my experience on Bluesky may look nothing like yours. This is possible because Bluesky is a service running on top of the AT Protocol, an open protocol thats accessible to anyone and everyone. The entire idea is that social networking is too important for any one company or person to control it. So it is set up to allow anyone to run their own network using that protocol. And thats going to lead to a wide range of outcomes. Take moderation, as an example. The moderation philosophy of the AT Protocol is essentially that everyone is entitled to speech but not to reach. That means it isnt banning content at the protocol level, but that individual services can set up their own rules. Bluesky hasits own community guidelines. But those guidelines would not necessarily apply to other services running on the protocol. Furthermore, individuals can also moderate what types of posts they want to see. It lets peopleset up and choose different levels of what they want to allow. That, combined with the ability to roll your own feeds, combined with the ability of different services to run on top of the same protocol, sets up a very fragmented future. And thats just Bluesky. Theres also Nostr, which leans toward the crypto and tech crowds, at least for now. And Mastodon, which tends to have clusters of communities on various servers. All of them are growing. The era of the centralized, canonical feed is coming to an end. Whats coming next is going to be more dispersed, more fractured, more specialized. It will take place across these decentralized services, and also WhatsApp channels, Discord servers, and other smaller slices of Big Social. Thats going to be challenging. It will cause entirely new problems. But its also an incredible opportunity for individuals to take more control of their own experiences. If someone forwarded you this edition of The Debrief, you cansubscribe here. I appreciate your feedback on this newsletter. Drop me a line atmat.honan@technologyreview.comwith any and all thoughts. And of course, I love tips. Now read the rest of The Debrief The News TSMC halts advanced chip shipments for Chinese clients. It comes after some of its chips were found inside a Huawei AI processor. Google DeepMind has come up with a new way to peer inside AIs thought process. An AI lab out of Chicago is building tools to help creators prevent their work from being used in training data. Lina Khan may be on the way out, but shes going out with a bang: The FTC is preparing to investigate Microsofts cloud business. The Chat Every week Ill talk to one of MIT Technology Reviews reporters or editors to find out more about what theyve been working on. For today, I spoke with Casey Crownhart, senior climate reporter, about her coverage of the COP29 UN climate conference. Mat: COP29 is happening right now in Azerbaijan, do you have a sense of the mood? Casey: The vibes are weird in Baku this week, in part because of the US election. The US has been a strong leader in international climate talks in recent years, and an incoming Trump administration will certainly mean a big change. And the main goal of these talksreaching a climate finance agreementis a little daunting. Developing countries need something like $1 trillion dollars annually to cope with climate change. Thats a huge jump from the current target, so there are questions about how this agreement will shake out. Mat: Azerbaijan seems like a weird choice to host. I read one account from the conference saying you could smell the oil in the air. Why there? Casey: Azerbaijans economy is super reliant on fossil fuels, which definitely makes it an ironic spot for international climate negotiations. Theres a whole complicated process of picking the COP host each yearfive regions rotate hosting, and the countries in that region have to all agree on a pick when its their turn. Russia apparently vetoed most of the other choices in the Eastern European group this year, and the region settled on Azerbaijan as one of the only viable options. Mat: You write that if Trump pulls out of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, it would be like riding away on a rocket. Why would that be so much worse than dropping out of Paris? Casey: Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement once already, and it was relatively easy for Biden to rejoin when he came into office. If, during his second term, Trump were to go a step further and pull out of the UNFCCC, its not just an agreement hes walking away from, its the whole negotiating framework. So the statement would be much bigger. Theres also the question of reversibility. Its not clear if Trump can actually withdraw from the UNFCCC on his own, and its also not clear what it would take to rejoin it. When the US joined in the 90s, the Senate had to agree, so getting back in might not be as simple as a future president signing something. Mat: What from COP29 are you optimistic about? Casey: Tough to find a glimmer of hope in all this, but if there is one, Id say Im optimistic that well see some countries step up, including the UK and China. The UK announced a new emissions target at the talks already, and itll be really interesting to see what role China plays at COP29 and moving forward. The Recommendation Once upon a time I was a gadget blogger. Its fun writing about gadgets! I miss it! Especially because at some point your phone became the only device you need. But! My beloved wife bought me a Whoop fitness tracker for my birthday. Its an always-on device that you wear around your wrist. Ive been Oura-curious for some time, but frankly I am a little bit terrified of rings. I spent a number of months going to a hand rehab clinic after a bike accident, and while I was there first learned about degloving and how commonly it happens to people because a ring gets caught on something. Just thought Id put that in your head too. Anyway! The whoop is a fabric bracelet with a little monitor on it. It tracks your movement, your heart rate, your sleep, and a lot more. Theres no screen, so its very low profile and unobtrusive. It is, however, pretty spendy: The device is free but the plan costs $239 annually.

This post originally appeared in the Insider Today newsletter.You can sign up for Business Insider's daily newsletter here.Welcome back! The fast-moving, big business of weight-loss drugs is already shifting to its next stage. Here's a rundown of five upcoming pills and injections to keep an eye on.In today's big story, Microsoft's massive bet on AI with Copilot has yet to live up to the hype, potentially raising alarms for everyone else investing in the space.What's on deck:Markets: You can still bet on politics even though the election is over.Tech: Why the Trump-Musk relationship is unlike anything we've ever seen in US politics.Business: Spirit Airlines has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, but tells customers it'll keep flying.But first, is this thing even worth it?If this was forwarded to you, The big storyA Copilot conundrum Microsoft; Chelsea Jia Feng/BI Microsoft's challenges with its flagship AI product could be another red flag for an industry with high hopes for the tech.Business Insider's Ashley Stewart, our resident Microsoft expert, has a deep dive on Copilot coming up short on the big expectations laid out for it when it launched over a year ago.CEO Satya Nadella didn't hold back initially, describing Copilot as something that would "fundamentally transform our relationship with technology" when it was unveiled.But internally and among clients, that doesn't always feel like the case. One Microsoft executive told Ashley that Copilot offers useful results about 10% of the time."The rest of the time it's: Why do we even try?" they said.It's an unsettling realization considering the stakes of AI. Many companies and arguably the entire US stock market are banking on generative AI being revolutionary. And while Microsoft's bet on AI dwarfs almost everyone else's, its hangup with the tech is something a company of any size can relate to: Is this stuff worth it?It's also not the only challenge the generative AI space is navigating.Reports about OpenAI's newest AI model struggling to show big improvements raised questions about the tech hitting a performance wall. CEO Sam Altman appeared to address it with a cryptic tweet: "there is no wall."Still, it's feeding concerns about the timeline for artificial general intelligence. AGI is the concept that autonomous computer systems outperform humans at most economically valuable work, but it appears harder to achieve than previously anticipated, writes BI's Alistair Barr. Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI The counterargument is straightforward: It's still the early innings.Microsoft is adamant its Copilot investment is already paying off. Jared Spataro, a vice president of marketing for Microsoft 365, pointed Ashley to Copilot success stories like Lumen Technologies, which projects $50 million in annual savings from its sales team's use of Copilot.Some customers aren't necessarily worried either, as they continue to plow money into AI. A Flexera survey found OpenAI ranked fourth among vendors that IT leaders plan to spend the most with next year.But tech players won't have forever to figure things out. Earlier this year, analysts at Barclays highlighted an under-the-radar risk to AI bets: the depreciation costs related to AI chips. As firms look to stock up on GPUs, they run the risk of the tech no longer being relevant as new iterations emerge.And then there's the possibility of internal drama. Ashley previously reported on the pay disparity at Microsoft between AI-focused employees and everyone else."AI is great and it might be the future, but when are you going to focus on your billpayers?" one employee told Ashley.News briefTop headlinesMeet the top four candidates Trump is considering for Secretary of the Treasury.Biden authorizes Ukraine to use powerful ATACMS to strike inside Russia. The move is a significant shift in US policy.Trump, Musk, and new cabinet picks celebrate election victory with surprise appearance at UFC.3 things in markets Getty Images; Chelsea Jia Feng/BI A lawsuit about trade secrets has a corner of Wall Street's data industry enthralled. Yipit, a Carlyle-backed provider of credit-card data, filed a lawsuit accusing two former salespeople of stealing intellectual property to use in their new roles at rival MScience. The suit has the attention of the young, fiercely competitive industry that sells non-traditional data to investors looking for an edge.Just because the election is over doesn't mean you need to stop betting on politics. Who will be the Republican nominee in 2028? Will Matt Gaetz be confirmed as attorney general? Will Trump create a national Bitcoin reserve? The prediction markets have plenty of political outcomes to scratch your gambling itch.It's giving the year 2000 for one legendary investor. Rob Arnott compared the current market to the dot-com peak in 2000. Arnott told BI why a bear market could be forthcoming in the next couple of years thanks to high valuations and AI optimism that is largely priced in.3 things in tech ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images; Chelsea Jia Feng/BI Elon Musk's incredible hold on US politics. Politics and money have always been intertwined, but the current relationship between the world's richest man and the president-elect is unprecedented. The result is Musk acting almost as a shadow president.A potential Trump trade plan beneficiary: US semiconductor jobs. If Trump's proposed trade plan is enacted, the American semiconductor industry could see hiring growth. Industry experts told BI that tariffs on foreign-made chips could help level the playing field for US chipmakers, which have faced tough competition from their global counterparts.The OpenAI mafia swells its ranks. Nearly two dozen former employees have left the AI juggernaut and founded startups of their own. The latest defectors include OpenAI cofounder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and former chief technology officer Mira Murati. See what they're up to now.3 things in business iStock; Rebecca Zisser/BI Four ways Trump's housing plans could hurt homebuyers and three ways it could help. Trump promised to make housing more affordable in part by deporting millions of immigrants, slashing construction regulations, and building houses on federal land. Here's how experts think that would actually pan out.Spirit Airlines has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The budget airline has struggled since a planned merger with JetBlue was called off in March. In an open letter to customers, it said people can continue to book tickets and fly as normal as it undergoes financial restructuring.Walmart might be just fine under Trump's proposed trade plan. Target, not so much. As America's grocery king, Walmart US makes nearly 60% of its revenue from groceries, which are predominantly domestic. But Target often relies on imported merchandise, such as apparel and beauty. Walmart also has another key advantage: scale.In other newsDisney CEO Bob Iger is moving to cement his legacy by undoing his biggest mistake.Shoppers and businesses are stockpiling to avoid potential price hikes before Trump takes office.What's happening todayG20 summit begins in Rio de Janeiro.The Insider Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Grace Lett, editor, in Chicago. Ella Hopkins, associate editor, in London. Hallam Bullock, senior editor, in London. Amanda Yen, fellow, in New York.Milan Sehmbi, fellow, in London.

TwinMind, founded by former Google X employees, builds an AI assistant to better understand you.The founders believe memory is key and something that rival products like OpenAI's ChatGPT lack.The startup says it's raised over $2.5 million and was most recently valued at $30 million.A startup formed from a handful of former Googlers specifically Google X, the skunkworks lab that explores sci-fi moonshot ideas is coming out of stealth.Named TwinMind, its app functions as an AI assistant that lives in your smartphone and always listens. Its founders like to compare it to Jarvis, the AI designed by Marvel's Tony Stark: it's constantly learning what you're doing and talking about and then using that information to better understand you.TwinMind founder CEO Daniel George said the company raised over $2.5 million this year from two rounds, the latest giving TwinMind a $30 million post-money valuation. Notable investors to date include Oracle chief AI scientist Dan Roth, Rocketship VC founding partner Anand Rajaraman, and Michael Liou, an early investor in Robinhood and Zapier.TwinMind is emerging into a competitive market filled with chatbots galore. George told Business Insider he believes the idea of an AI assistant that learns and retains information about users will help set TwinMind apart.While other AI assistants and chatbots, such as Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT, are improving at memory, it's still not something they're very good at."If you had your own Jarvis, why would you Google? Why would you ask ChatGPT?" George told BI. "None of these other tools capture you. None of them understand you. They don't understand what's happening in your life."TwinMind works like this: It runs in the background of your phone and continually listens. It stores audio in the short term and transcribes it to text, which goes into TwinMind's memory bank. Then, users can open the app and see a readout of their day, broken down into key moments.You can also ask it questions. Because TwinMind is learning about you, what you've done, and the people you've spent your day with, it aims to pull all that information in, allowing you to talk to TwinMind in a way that feels more natural and without having to add heaps of context.The startup is also rolling out a web browser extension, which (with permission) will see what users are browsing online and capture it in memory. With integrations with calendars and Gmail, users can also ask TwinMind to draft emails. That's something you can already do with other chatbots, of course, but TwinMind's edge here is drawing on all that memory it holds of the user."You just go in there and, say, write your marketing email. And it knows everything about me, who my co-founders are, what my company is, what we have done before," said George. "Imagine Grammarly, but instead of correcting grammar, it actually writes it based on all the memories and context."Wolverine originsAt Google X, George was the first machine learning scientist on Wolverine, a hearing wearable project first reported on by Business Insider in 2021. That project has since spun out into a startup named Iyo.When ChatGPT launched in late 2022, George was working at JPMorgan with TwinMind cofounder and CTO Sunny Tang, a Google X alum.He says the two watched as colleagues started using the AI chatbot in meetings. The pair hacked together a crude chatbot of their own that would transcribe meetings and answer questions about what was being said. The idea evolved into the startup ThirdEar. Then they changed the name to TwinMind since someone else had the ThirdEar domain name, and George says the team also felt the name didn't reflect the visual elements they were building, such as the Chrome extension.TwinMind does most of its processing locally on the phone and will connect to the cloud if it needs to answer a question or if the user wants an improved AI. TwinMind offers a free app version with a $20-a-month tier for users who want access to more advanced large language models.Naturally, it raises some questions about privacy. George said that because TwinMind does not capture images and only transcribes the audio, it falls under the same category of assistants as Siri or Alexa.Perhaps the more impressive feat here will be on the hardware side."The main innovation is figuring out how to get this thing running all day, in your pocket, without draining your battery, [and with] all the Apple walled garden stuff," George said.He said they figured it out and claims the TwinMind app can run for 12 hours in the background non-stop before running out the battery.The team has just opened its seed round, and George said they're looking to raise at least $5 million. The company is also telling potential investors about its future plans, which include making the switch between phone and desktop more seamless so that TwinMind feels more embedded in users' lives.George said more than 2,000 early testers have already provided feedback, and the team is launching the app this week on Product Hunt. It will first be available for iPhone and as a Chrome extension, with Android and Mac apps to follow next year."We are sure that in a couple of years, everyone is going to have a personalized AI companion that knows their whole life and has access to all of the world's knowledge on the internet," George told BI. "And that would be the way people access information. Not through Google."

This story originally appeared in Kids Today, Voxs newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions.Lynne Randall doesnt buy all the toys that show up at her house. They just kind of happen.Theres the play kitchen her 3-year-old son inherited from his cousins. Theres the random stuff her mother-in-law buys online, all of it plastic and made up of countless tiny pieces. Theres the kid-sized workbench Randall got that from her local Buy Nothing group, where neighbors can offload used items (and pick up more).The sheer volume of stuff her son has to play with is overwhelming, Randall told Vox. The day we talked, she and her family were having guests at their Pacific Northwest home, so she was attempting to declutter, finding all the parts and putting food in the toy kitchen and putting the tools in the workbench. But it was always a losing battle.Shelves overflowing with cars and blocks and action figures can be just as stressful for kids as they are for parents.Its a familiar refrain among parents: One reader told Vox recently that her family was absolutely drowning in toys. And while adults have been complaining about kids junk for generations (please see my fathers fruitless search for my brothers one-inch-long toy wrench in Los Angeles International Airport circa 1992), many millennial and Gen X parents have the sense that something is different now that kids have more toys than in past decades, and that they seem to arrive in ways Randall describes as unintentional. Historical data on the average number of toys per kid is surprisingly hard to come by, but there is evidence that Americans toy glut is increasing and its not just a problem for affluent households. US toy sales jumped from $22.3 billion in 2019 to $26 billion in 2020, and then to $30.1 billion in 2021, as parents struggled to entertain their kids at home during the pandemic. Sales dipped slightly in 2023, perhaps because of inflation, but remain solidly above 2019 levels. I dont think well ever go back, Juli Lennett, a vice president and industry adviser for toys at the market research firm Circana, told me.Shelves overflowing with cars and blocks and action figures can be just as stressful for kids as they are for parents. Sometimes kids dont play with anything, because theres just too many options, said Sarah Davis, a parenting coach and co-author of the book Modern Manners for Moms and Dads. Meanwhile, an overemphasis on acquiring new toys can foster materialism, which is linked with anxiety and depression. Stemming the tide of clutter is easier said than done, since toys often come from grandparents or other loved ones, or even from parties at school. But experts say there are certain characteristics that kids favorite toys share. And by focusing on those, grown-ups may be able not only to save money and space, but also to help kids have more fun.Still, I get the struggle. Recently, I was taking a shower when I noticed a pink plastic rat in the drain.Why kids have so many toysIn the early 2000s, a team led by archaeologist Jeanne E. Arnold counted up the possessions of 32 self-identified middle-class families. The average family in their sample had 139 toys visibly on display, with untold numbers out of sight in closets or under beds, the authors wrote in a 2012 book about the research. One girls room contained 165 Beanie Babies, 22 Barbie dolls, 36 human/animal figurines, and one miniature castle. Spilling out of childrens bedrooms and into living rooms, dining rooms, kitchens, and parents bedrooms, the playthings of Americas kids are ubiquitous in middle-class homes, the authors wrote.That problem has only worsened, with several factors contributing to the overflow. Unlike most other categories of products, childrens playthings have actually gotten cheaper over the last 30 years, Business Insiders Katie Notopoulos reported. A toy that cost $20 in 1993 would retail for just $4.68 today, in part because of lower production costs as manufacturing moved overseas. Those rock-bottom prices make it easier for grown-ups to buy kids that extra doll or car or guinea pig in a shark suit. But Americans arent just buying more toys than they used to, theyre also buying them differently. Toys R Us filed for bankruptcy in 2017 and has all but disappeared from the shopping landscape, and other brick-and-mortar toy stores, from small to large, have shuttered in recent years. Meanwhile, shopping has also become more seamless, thanks to Amazon and other e-commerce platforms. In the 1990s, my parents had to drive to Toys R Us to get my brother a squishy, blood-shot rubber eyeball; I can purchase a similar eyeball and get it delivered by the end of the week. Online shopping also offers a convenient way for far-flung extended family members to send kids more toys. We ask for clothes and college fund money, and despite that, sometimes toys still come in, Randall told me.Even secondhand shopping has leveled up, from yard sales and flea markets to Facebook groups and sites like Mercari that let parents snag some lightly used Legos without leaving the couch.In the 1990s, my parents had to drive to Toys R Us to get my brother a squishy, blood-shot rubber eyeball; I can purchase a similar eyeball and get it delivered by the end of the week.The rise of YouTube over the last 20 years has also changed toy purchasing, with influencers advertising toys and releasing their own lines. Unboxing videos, in which kids or adults film themselves taking toys out of packages, have become a cultural staple, even inspiring the popular Netflix kids show Gabbys Dollhouse (which now has its own branded toys). There are simply more avenues for toy advertising and quasi-advertising today than in decades past, and thanks to features like TikTok Shop more and easier ways to buy them.Changing childhood cultural norms may also be having an effect. More schools are asking parents to distribute small toys instead of cupcakes at childrens birthday parties, in an effort to cut down on sugar, parents tell me. The result is what Davis, the parenting coach, calls the plastic graveyard all these plastic toys that are just showing up from birthday parties and classroom parties in lieu of candy.How many is too many toys?After an initial burst of excitement, a lot of those new toys arent seeing much playtime, experts say.Kids often really only play with a subset of toys, and the other ones are not really that relevant, sociologist Allison Pugh told Vox in an email. In a 2017 study, University of Toledo researchers found that toddlers played longer and more creatively when presented with just four toys than when they had 16 options to choose from (though thats still a far cry from the 100-plus toys many kids actually own). The benefit of having fewer choices is something a lot of early educators understand. If you go into a preschool classroom, theyll have like, three tables set up, and each table will have a specific group of toys, Davis said. Its not too much. Its not overwhelming.Kids favorite toys, meanwhile, tend to be those imbued with social meaning, Pugh said. Kids use toys to connect to other kids sometimes just by owning the same exact thing, sometimes by playing with it together, sometimes by accruing and sharing specialized knowledge about that toy.Playing with others can give meaning even to objects that arent intended as toys at all: My kids once developed an elaborate series of stories about a bunch of rocks that they found, Pugh said.The social aspect of toys isnt always so cute kids can be bullied or feel inferior if they dont have the same toys other kids have, and social comparisons can be painful for children whose parents cant afford new purchases. And while wealthier families may be able to afford pricier toys, lower-income parents sometimes feel so much pressure to buy popular items that theyll go without basic necessities to do so, Pugh has found. But thinking about toys as social objects is also a reminder that playing is what makes a toy a toy if nobody plays with it, its just part of the plastic graveyard. Kids might gravitate at first to the toys with the most bells and whistles like, for example, these cursed electronic stuffies that emit bloodcurdling screams when thrown.Playing is what makes a toy a toy if nobody plays with it, its just part of the plastic graveyard.But toys that do too much often lack stickiness, or the ability to hold kids attention for a long period of time, said Sudha Swaminathan, director of the Center for Early Childhood Education at Eastern Connecticut State University. The stickiest toys are usually simple and open-ended, she said, like blocks or basic animal figures.The toys that kids return to again and again are the ones that require attention, imagination, and creativity, Davis said. For her kids, thats magnetic blocks. For Randalls son, its a set of wooden train tracks left over from her own childhood. I guess I just didnt need to get any modern toys, she said.Realistically, kids are going to ask for toys they saw on YouTube, on the playground, or at a friends house. Theyre going to come home with vials of mysterious green goo that end up in the freezer (maybe this is just my kid). Parents do not control what their kids want, or even always what they get, and it can seem like that control is ebbing further every day.The adults in kids lives can, however, decide when to say yes and when we have to say no. And when all else fails and the clutter gets overwhelming, we can sneak out in the dead of night, while theyre sleeping, as Randall puts it, and get rid of that junk.Youve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More: