The Dutch government has reached a deal with Nvidia to supply hardware and expertise for the construction of an AI facility in the Netherlands.The facility will centre around an AI supercomputer aimed at accelerating research and development, as the country pushes to further digitalise its economy, according to a statement made Thursday.The Dutch Minister for Economic Affairs Dirk Beljaarts is currently in Silicon Valley, where he is meeting with executives at Nvidia. The worlds second most valuable company, Nvidia is a world leader in graphics processing units (GPUs) for artificial intelligence applications.Before a shovel can go into the ground, we need to be sure that the required knowledge and hardware is available, said Minister Beljaarts. Today the Netherlands has taken an important step together with Nvidia. This brings the construction of a Dutch AI facility a lot closer.Price increase next week - Book NowThe ministry didnt provide a timeline or specific details for the AI facility. Nvidia declined our request for comment.The Netherlands, which ranked in the top 10 most digitised countries globally last year, is pushing to position itself as a leader in AI. In January last year, the government ringfenced over 200mn to boost local investment in the technology.Asia and the US have taken the lead [in AI] and Europe will have to catch up, said the former economic affairs minister Micky Adriaansens at the time.Key priorities of the governments strategy include fostering AI talent, building infrastructure, ensuring safe applications, and enabling cooperation through entities like the Dutch AI Coalition. Last year, the Benelux nation also embarked on building its own safer large language model (LLM), called GPT-NL.To execute its plans, the Netherlands is going to need more computing power to train AI machines. Aside from Nvidia, Beljaarts is also meeting with chipmaker AMD. The Minister is also in California to strengthen relations between Dutch and American technology companies more broadly, the government said. Story by Sin Geschwindt Sin is a climate and energy reporter at TNW. From nuclear fusion to escooters, he covers the length and breadth of Europe's clean tech ecos (show all) Sin is a climate and energy reporter at TNW. From nuclear fusion to escooters, he covers the length and breadth of Europe's clean tech ecosystem. He's happiest sourcing a scoop, investigating the impact of emerging technologies, and even putting them to the test. Sin has five years journalism experience and holds a dual degree in media and environmental science from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Get the TNW newsletterGet the most important tech news in your inbox each week.Also tagged with

Following the abrupt discontinuation of Apple Pay Later over the summer, Apple has been rolling out support for multiple third-party pay over time alternatives. The latest Apple Pay addition: Synchrony.Pay Later with Apple Pay includes three separate optionsApple Pay already offered two different pay later options:But as noted by MacRumors, today Apple has rolled out support for a third provider.Synchrony has been added to the list of Pay with installments providers in the US. This means youll be able to split certain Apple Pay purchases into multiple installments, similar to what Apple Pay Later offered.Apple describes the feature this way, with a key qualifier:You can pay with installments and rewards using eligible debit and credit cards when you check out with Apple Pay online and in apps, on iPhone and iPad. Some cards from participating banks might not support these features. Contact your bank for more information. When checking out with Apple Pay, you can tap Change Payment Method to find the available Pay Later options for your purchase, including Synchrony where available.Do you use Apple Pays pay over time options? Whats your experience been like? Let us know in the comments.Best iPhone accessoriesAdd 9to5Mac to your Google News feed. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.Youre reading 9to5Mac experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Dont know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

TikToks US saga is almost at an end, and its last major source of hopea Supreme Court interventionnow looks unlikely to pan out. Thus, a January 19 ban in the US is looking more realistic than ever. Heres the latest.Supreme Court appears unlikely to stop TikTok banToday, the US Supreme Court heard more than two hours of arguments concerning TikToks impending ban.The general consensus from observers? The ban appears likely to be upheld.While the Supreme Court has not yet issued a ruling, the hearing provided plenty of data that indicates the ban wont be stopped by the countrys highest court of law.Sam Baker writes at Axios:Most of the justices homed in Friday on one central point: The law would allow TikTok to keep operating if it used an algorithm other than ByteDances. And ByteDance, as a Chinese company, doesnt have First Amendment rights.Ann Marimow writes at The Washington Post:a majority of justices seemed to embrace Congresss national security concerns about the ability of the Chinese government to harvest the sensitive data of millions of American users and to potentially use that information to blackmail young Americans or turn them into spies.If the TikTok ban is allowed to proceed, then as TikToks legal representative, Noel Francisco, said during the hearing, the app will go dark in the US on January 19.What happens then is anyones guess.President-elect Trump has indicated that he wants to stop the ban, so its possible after his January 20 inauguration well see movement on that front.But if nothing else changes, TikToks time in the US could be coming to an end soon.Whats your take on the TikTok ban? Let us know in the comments.Best iPhone accessoriesAdd 9to5Mac to your Google News feed. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.Youre reading 9to5Mac experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Dont know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

Better LateJeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin is preparing to launch its New Glenn rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida just after midnight on Sunday.It's been a long time coming: the company has been working on the 320-foot rocket, which shares similar proportions and stats with SpaceX's Falcon 9 workhorse, for well over a decade.But whether it can truly compete with the likes of SpaceX remains an open question. Over that time, the Elon Musk-led company has seized the opportunity to cement itself as the space company and NASA contractor to beat.The mission was originally slated for a January 10 launch, but the date slipped to Sunday almost immediately.So far, the Bezos-led company has launched a much smaller reusable suborbital launch vehicle called New Shepard, which has been sending wealthy space tourists to the Earth's upper atmosphere since July 2021.If successful, New Glenn could offer SpaceX some much-needed competition as US space exploration efforts continue to grow in scope and scale but a failure could represent even more egg on Bezos' face.Stiff CompetitionDespite a lengthy development time and plenty of setbacks, the multi-stage rocket is no slouch. The New Glenn can produce roughly twice as much thrust at liftoff than Falcon 9, but falls short of the Falcon Heavy variant. It's 90 feet taller and 11 feet wider in diameter than a Falcon 9.As part of its NG-1 mission this weekend, Blue Origin is hoping to launch a payload dubbed the "Bue Ring Pathfinder" into orbit, a testbed for the company's Blue Ring spacecraft platform designed to support orbital operations.A lot is at stake for the company and we're not just talking about the longstanding feud between Musk and Bezos.SpaceX is currently firmly in the driver's seat, and NASA's incoming administrator is deeply in the pocketof the firm. Musk's close relationship with president-elect Donald Trump could also make it difficult for Blue Origin to secure important governmental contracts."This is our first flight and weve prepared rigorously for it," Blue Origin's New Glenn senior VP Jarrett Jones told the Orlando Sentinel. "But no amount of ground testing or mission simulations are a replacement for flying this rocket.""Its time to fly," he added. "No matter what happens, well learn, refine, and apply that knowledge to our next launch."Share This Article

How does it just keep getting worse?Fuelling the FireInstead of mourning the devastating destruction and death that's befallen the city of Los Angeles due to raging wildfires this week, Elon Musk has taken to his far-right hate speech incubator X to blame the fires on wait for it diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.In other words, Musk is using unabashedly racist lies to pin the climate change-fueled disaster on minorities."They prioritized DEI over saving lives and homes," Musk tweeted. He was responding to a post by the anti-LGBTQ+ hate account Libs of TikTok, which claimed that the LA Fire Department ensured its employees were "racially diverse enough" something that was then contorted into racistvitriol in Musk's twisted mind.It's an appalling and unsurprising development, highlighting Musk's well-documented descent into sociopathic and extremist thinking, inspired by the right-wing cadre he's surrounded himself with on his social media platform.Racist AnticsWe won't waste our time to tell you how incredibly bigoted and misled Musk's claim is. As Jezebel points out, severe budget cuts have led to a terrifying shortage of firefighters in LA, motivated by diverting funds to the police department. Worse yet, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has forced imprisoned prisonersto battle the blazes for as little as $5.80 per day an atrocious glimpse of a climate change-fueled dystopia in which there are countless reasonable things to blame besides mild diversity efforts.Other users on Musk's X spread fear-mongering claims about "looters in LA" in the aftermath of the devastating fire, accompanied by AI-generated slop.It's far from the first time Musk has spewed racist lies to rail against DEI practices. Last year, civil rights groups were horrified after he endorsed a tweet suggesting Black students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have lower IQs and shouldn't become pilots.Musk has also baselessly claimed that "DEI is just another word for racism."In short, blaming the devastating wildfires, which have taken the lives of at least ten people, on racially diverse hiring practices is only the latest sign that Musk has completely lost the plot.And considering Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also announced new measures to increase hate speech on Facebook, we should expect more hurtful conspiracy theories to run rampant on social media.Share This Article

And Zuckerberg personally approved the piracy, according to these documents.Free LoadersNewly unredacted court documents allege that Meta, formerly Facebook, knowingly used pirated books obtained from the online archive Library Genesis to train its AI models, Wired reports.Submitted in an ongoing lawsuit filed against the platform by a group of authors including Ta-Nehisi Coates and comedian Sarah Silverman, the documents were finally released in full after a judge shot down Meta's attempts to keep portions of them sealed.The judge argued, perWired, that Meta fought for the redactions merely to "avoid negative publicity," citing a damning internal quote from one of its employees."If there is media coverage suggesting we have used a dataset we know to be pirated, such as LibGen, this may undermine our negotiating position with regulators on these issues," the employee wrote.Lie-braryLibrary Genesis, or LibGen, is a "shadow library" that provides free access to millions of books, academic articles, and magazines.That a multibillion-dollar corporation like Meta would tap into its store of pirated content is the latest sign of the impunity that tech companies have operated with to train their large language models, vacuuming up copyrighted content en masse with seemingly no regard for the law or even the decency, as one of the world's most valuable companies, to buy a single copy of each volume it was using to power its AI.Meta and other AI leaders argue that using books and other data scraped from the web constitutes "fair use," but it will ultimately be up to legal battles like this one to determine if that is the case.Fair use or not, some of the exchanges exposed in the newly unredacted documents suggest that Meta employees knew that what they were doing was legally and ethically dicey.With a grinning emoji, one engineer wrote: "Torrenting from a [Meta-owned] corporate laptop doesn't feel right," as quoted by Wired.And it goes all the way to the top. A cited memo allegedly shows that after employee discussions about using LibGen were escalated to "MZ" Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg the AI team was "approved to use" material from the database.High SeasThe plaintiffs argue that this shatters any plausibility that Meta may try to maintain."Meta has treated the so-called 'public availability' of shadow datasets as a get-out-of-jail-free card, notwithstanding that internal Meta records show every relevant decision-maker at Meta, up to and including its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, knew LibGen was 'a dataset we know to be pirated,'" they wrote in the most recent motion.Moreover, the authors point to testimony from a Meta corporative representative as an admission that the company also helped disseminate thepirated books by "seeding" their corresponding torrents, or uploading portions of the material so that other users could download them.More on AI: Facebook Caught Hosting AI-Powered HitlerShare This Article

Time zones: GMT (UTC +0), CET (UTC +1), EET (UTC +2)As a Support Engineer at Quaderno, you'll work on solving technical issues reported by our customers, as well as developing tools for increasing efficiency in the resolution of errors. Your work will impact the stability and quality of our web applications as well as our customers happiness. You would be a vital link between the Customer Success and Engineering teams, working closely with both.Your day-to-day responsibilities will include:Troubleshooting support tickets through analysis of logs, databases, and code.Explaining technical concepts in a clear, didactic way to non-technical users.Escalating complex cases to the engineering team and providing them with detailed context, possible origins, and options for resolution.Designing and developing internal tools that facilitate our daily work.Continually analyzing common problems and patterns to see where process improvements can be made.Indicators that this could be a good role for you:You have solid knowledge of Ruby on Rails and SQL databases.You have 2+ years of experience in a similar role, supporting and troubleshooting web applications, systems and software in general.You can break down complex technical problems and transform them into easy-to-understand explanations for customers.You demonstrate a customer-centric approach and thrive in a support environment.You feel that our values resonate with yours, and you see how they can act as guidance for your day-to-day work.You're able to work autonomously and stay self-motivated. Previous experience working in a remote team is a bonus.You are fluent in written and spoken English.Bonus points: you ideally have experience in fintech, taxes or payment processing.Bonus points: you ideally have experience with PHP and/or WordPress plugins. Related Jobs See more Back-End Programming jobs

Grok, the AI-powered assistant that debuted on the social platform X, is now available as a standalone app.Elon Musk's startup xAI has launched Grok 2, the second iteration of its AI model, as a dedicated iOS app, allowing users to access its features without needing an X subscription.Users can log in using their email address, Apple account or other supported platforms. The app provides tools for answering questions and generating images, while also offering a tiered subscription plan for advanced features.This release is xAI's first significant step away from its exclusive partnership with X (formerly Twitter), marking a bigger push to compete more directly with AI rivals, from Google Gemini to Meta AI and Claude.ai. By far the most popular is OpenAI's ChatGPT, which in November saw its number of visitors double, to 3.9 billion, according to Similarweb.The app has drawn attention for its conversational, humorous tone. According to its App Store description, Grok also prioritizes privacy, in an effort to manage user data interactions securely.Launched in November 2023, Grok was integrated into X and made available to paying subscribers. In December 2024, a free version became available with limited usage, such as 10 daily inquiries.X CEO Musk has positioned the assistant as a direct rival to prominent chatbots but with a distinct personality. At launch, he posted on X that Grok would be "funny" and "politically neutral."

Two years ago, at the United Nations COP27 climate conference in Egypt, UN Secretary-General Antnio Guterres warned that global leaders needed toaddress greenhouse gas emissions to keep air temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the year 2100.It's only the start of 2025, and we've already crossed that threshold.According to climate scientists at the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, global temperatures reached the highest levels on record in 2024, rising 1.6 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and making the year the hottest since recordkeeping began in 1850. That's a 2.88 degrees Fahrenheit rise globally.According to a Copernicus report released Friday, the global average temperature for the year was 15.10 degrees Celsius (59.18 degrees Fahrenheit). "This is equivalent to 1.6 degrees Celsius above an estimate of the 1850-1900 temperature designated to be the pre-industrial level," the report says.The annual report came out the same week that Los Angeles residents faced catastrophic wildfires that leveled more than 9,000 buildings and killed at least 10 people. Globally, the climate crisis has intensified the severity and frequency of natural disasters, including drought, hurricanes and flooding.Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which contributed to the report, noted that the temperature rise is a significant contributor to global climate-related disasters."These high global temperatures, coupled with record global atmospheric water vapour levels in 2024, meant unprecedented heatwaves and heavy rainfall events, causing misery for millions of people," Burgess said in a statement.Other highlights from the report:For the period of 2015 to 2024, every year was one of the 10 warmest years on record, according to Copernicus. On July 22, 2024, the daily global average temperature broke a record, reaching 17.16 degrees Celsius, or 62.89 degrees Fahrenheit. All continental regions except Antarctica and Australasia had their warmest-ever years.Scientists have attributed this type of climate change to human causes, particularly carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. Increasedhome energy use and the massive amounts of energy that AI technology requireshaven't made the task of reducing reliance on fossil fuels any easier.

It might be too cold outside to golf now, but Apple Arcade subscribers can tee off from iconic PGA Tour courses like Pebble Beach Golf Links on Feb. 6.Apple Arcade is filled with familiar and classic games, alongside exclusive titles, that you can play for $7 per month (7, AU$10). You can find many of these games in the App Store, but they have paywalls and ads that might hinder your gaming experience. Using an Apple Arcade subscription, you can play each game without paywalls and ads, a feature usually denoted by "Plus" in the game's name.Here are all the games Apple is adding to its game service in February. You can also check out the games Apple recently added to the service, including the original Final Fantasy.PGA Tour Pro GolfDeveloper: HypGames Inc. AppleThis is Apple Arcade's first officially licensed PGA Tour game, and it offers a golf experience for fans of the sport and newcomers alike. You can play at legendary real-world courses, like the Links at Spanish Bay, upgrade your clubs and equipment to give yourself an edge and face off against others in head-to-head mode. Or you can just take in the scenery and imagine it's spring despite it being winter.Doodle Jump 2 PlusDeveloper: Lima Sky AppleCute characters, silly monsters and fun challenges await you in this sequel to the popular platforming game. You'll traverse a sleepy world full of sheep, a disco planet where the monsters boogie all night long and more wacky environments as you strive to become the new Doodle Jump King.My Dear Farm PlusDeveloper: HyperBeard Inc. AppleTending a farm doesn't have to be a chore in this cozy farm-sim adventure. Grow your crops, decorate your farm, customize your character and sell your wares at the market to the local townsfolk. And if you just want to relax with your pet on the farm and enjoy the fruits -- and vegetables -- of your labor, you can do that, too! You can access these games in Apple Arcade on Feb. 6, but there are plenty of other games to play on the service now for $7 per month or $50 annually. You can also try Apple Arcade for free for one month with your first sign-up, or you can get a three-month free trial when you buy a new Apple device. To access Apple Arcade, open the App Store on your iOS or iPadOS device and tap the joystick in the menu bar. Watch this: What to Expect From Apple in 2025 04:23