January 19Iva Toguri1419 Hundred Years' War: The siege of Rouen ended with English troops capturing the city from Norman French forces.1909 A deed was recorded for David Hanbury to sell Island No.2 in northern California to his brother John for $10 ($339.00 in 2023).1977 Iva Toguri (pictured), convicted of treason for broadcasting Japanese propaganda, was granted a full pardon by U.S. president Gerald Ford.1996 A tank barge and a tug grounded on a beach in Rhode Island, causing a spill of an estimated 828,000 U.S. gallons (3.13million litres) of home heating oil.2006 In the deadliest aviation accident in Slovak history, an Antonov An-24 operated by the Slovak Air Force crashed in northern Hungary, killing 42 of the 43 people on board.Giuseppe Millico (b.1737)Sophie Taeuber-Arp (b.1889)Choor Singh (b.1911)Sarah Burke (d.2012)More anniversaries: January 18January 19January 20ArchiveBy emailList of days of the yearAbout

Welcome toIndie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If youre a developer and would like your app featured, getin contact.PostPocket is a simple tool, aiming to help users keep track of various links, posts, articles, videos, or anything from across the internet. It allows you to save everything in one centralized place. The app also has categorization, allowing you to keep all of your links sorted. The app is available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.Why PostPocketObviously, many social media platforms have their own bookmarking features, allowing users to save posts they like for later. Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube all have their own version of a bookmarking feature.However, some platforms make it easier than others. Instagram, for example, requires you to crawl through a couple of menus to find your saved posts. Additionally, with all of the varying Twitter alternatives on the market, you might come across a post on one platform that you want to save, but cant. Threads doesnt offer a bookmarks feature, so it can be hard to find something later, especially if youre liking a ton of posts.With all of that being said, theres obviously a lot of fragmentation when it comes to saving things to view later, especially within apps. PostPocket aims to simplify things a bit.How it worksPostPocket integrates within the share sheet of iOS, allowing you to quickly hit the share button in any app, then with just the tap of a button you can start adding it to PostPocket.Once youre in PostPocket (from within the share sheet), you can just save the post as is, or you can choose to apply a category, tag, or custom title in the moment. Categories give you an easy way to sort from within PostPocket, and tags allow for additional granularity within a category. PostPocket offers a ton to help keep your varying links organized. All of your data is also stored on iCloud, allowing it to easily sync across all Apple devices. That also means all of your links are kept private.PostPocket is available for free on the App Store in a limited capacity, and you can purchase PostPocket+ for just $8.99 lifetime. Theres also a monthly plan for $0.99/month, if that interests you. PostPocket+ is ad free, enables tags, and allows you to import/export your data.Follow Michael:X/Twitter,Bluesky,InstagramAdd 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

The future might be now, but that doesn't mean you're in it.A leaked memo from media giant Dotdash Meredith (the owner of titles including People, Food & Wine, Better Homes & Gardens, and Investopedia) has revealed that the company "America's largest digital and print publisher," according to its own PR fluff will be laying off 143 people, approximately 4percent of its workforce. This comes on the heels of a smaller layoff in November of 2024, where 53 media workers lost their jobs at the company.The layoffs wouldn't be so notable in a scarred and barren post-COVID media landscape, save for Dotdash's massive "strategic partnership" with OpenAI in the spring of 2024. The deal is set to lavish Dotdash with at least $16 million in annual revenue, or at least until the AI bubble bursts. In exchange, OpenAI gets to plug "trusted content" articles written by humans,presumably, though Meredith was involved in a hazy dalliance with an AI company prior to its acquisition by Dotdash from the media corp's 40-plus brands into its model, prioritizing answers that send users back to its content wherever possible."As part of the agreement, OpenAI will display content and links attributed to Dotdash Meredith in relevant ChatGPT responses," reads a Dotdash press release announcing the deal. "OpenAI will also collaborate with Dotdash Meredith to create new AI products and features for its readers and use historical and ongoing DDM content to enhance its model's performance.""This partnership delivers the best, most relevant content right to the heart of ChatGPT," it continued, using apreferred term among those who see journalism as an amorphous product called "content."For its trouble, Dotdash will see a vague "technological investment" into its targeted ad-platform D/Cipher, which will enable the AI platform to spam slop to "something like 30 million more URLs or somewhere in that neighborhood," according to Joey Levin, CEO of IAC Inc, the parent company overseeing Dotdash Meredith.When asked to follow up on what this means for web users and how D/Cipher will be deployed across the open web, Dotdash Chief Innovation Officer Jon Roberts said, rather disconcertingly: "Thats our special sauce. Were not ready to talk about it yet."In light of this huge round of layoffs and ChatGPT's untrustworthy performance, we must ask the question and not for the first time who does this "special sauce" serve?Certainly not the 176 media workers who are now out of the job, nor for users who are inundated with mountains of AI schlok at every turn.The answer? Stakeholders! Who doesn't love to see those guys winning?In the three fiscal quarters since announcing the partnership, IAC's licensing revenue has skyrocketed, as the OpenAI money furnace floods the media conglomerate in "If you look at Q3 of 2024... licensing revenue was up about $4.1 million year-over-year," said Christopher Halpin, who holds the mouthful title of EVP, CFO & COO of IAC Inc. "The lion's share of that would be driven by the OpenAI license." (Not coincidentally, Q3 2024 was the company's strongest financial quarter since Q3 of 2021.)In the face of a growing AI-pocalypse which workers and consumers are powerless to stop, corporations like IAC have some pretty important questions to answer. How does OpenAI recoup its costs in this scenario? What happens to your licensing revenue stream when or if the well runs dry? How many more layoffs does Dotdash plan to reward their workforce with in exchange for their "help" training OpenAI's LLMs? And who will be left holding the bag when the whole bubble bursts the media workers who've made the company what it is today, or C-Suite terminators who hoard 3-letter titles like ChatGPT hoards personal data?Share This Article

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called TikToks threat to go dark tomorrow a stunt, and said there is no reason that TikTok or any other companies should take any actions under the ban before the Trump administration is sworn in Monday morning, several news outlets are reporting.It is a stunt, and we see no reason for TikTok or other companies to take actions in the next few days before the Trump Administration takes office on Monday, MSNBC quotes Jean-Pierre as saying. We have laid out our position clearly and straightforwardly: actions to implement this law will fall to the next administration.So TikTok and other companies should take up any concerns with them.The statement comes one day after TikTok threatened to go offline if the Biden administration doesnt offer reassurance that companies like Apple and Google wont be held liable for defying the ban, which the Supreme Court upheld yesterday. Company CEO Shou Chew also appealed to Donald Trump, saying the company is grateful for his support of the platform. Trump said that a 90-day extension is something that will be most likely done during an interview with Meet The Press moderator Kristen Welker for NBC News. That followed reporting earlier this week that the incoming President plans to issue an executive order doing so. Given that the bans deadline is up before hes sworn in, its not clear whether Trump can actually extend it. He can choose not to enforce the ban, just as Biden says he will, but that still leaves Apple and Google to decide if Trumps word is worth the legal risk that would come with defying the ban by leaving the app available for download.

In BriefPosted:12:48 PM PST January 18, 2025Image Credits:Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto / Getty ImagesFTC says partnerships like Microsoft-OpenAI raise antitrust concernsThe Federal Trade Commission said in a staff report issued Friday that there are potential competitive issues in partnerships between big tech companies and generative AI developers specifically, Microsofts backing of OpenAI and Amazon and Alphabet/Googles partnerships with Anthropic.The FTCs report sheds light on how partnerships by big tech firms can create lock-in, deprive start-ups of key AI inputs, and reveal sensitive information that can undermine fair competition, said FTC Chair Lina Khan in a statement. (President-elect Donald Trump plans to replace Khan as chair.)The report focuses on Microsoft, Amazon, and Googles roles as cloud service providers working with OpenAI and Anthropic; among other things, it suggests that these partnerships could affect access to computing resources and engineering talent, increase switching costs for companies working with AI developers, and might give cloud providers unique access to sensitive information.Microsofts deputy general counsel Rima Alaily told Bloomberg that the companys partnership with OpenAI has enabled one of the most successful AI startups in the world and spurred a wave of unprecedented technology investment and innovation in the industry.Topics

This site, in the heart of Cornwall village, was once occupied by an early 19th century Federal style residence, built by the wealthy Pierce family in town. The Pierces large home was acquired by John E. Calhoun (1859-1940), a successful New York businessman, who retreated to his fathers hometown for summers away from the city. In 1911, a fire destroyed the home, which was wood-frame construction. This event mobilized Mr. Calhoun, who was untrained but interested in architecture, to begin planning a new summer residence, but of fireproof construction. Calhoun is said to have designed (and funded) the towns library just years before, and modeled his home in line with the Colonial-era residences in the village, just larger and of brick. From the 1950s through the 1990s, the house was occupied by the headmaster and administration of the local Marvelwood School, but was re-established as a private home, a use that remains today.

Tick-tock for TikTokAnadolu via Getty ImagesSo here we arethe long-running TikTok ban saga finally enters what could be its end-zone just hours from now. All 170 million U.S. users will be questioning what happens next, and what they can expect when they wake up Sunday morning.While we originally expected the app to continue working for existing users post a ban coming into effect, that now seems not to be the case. TikTok has essentially warned that it will go dark in the U.S., given that service providers underpinning the platform wont be able to continue doing so lawfully.The inside track from TikTok appears to be that you will be directed to a website with a message and explanation from the platform, and perhaps an option to download your data. Although for all 100-million-plus users to do that all at once might stretch the ecosystem, so be ready for some chaos and delays. Theres no confirmation on timing. It could be midnight or some time shortly afterwards. Theres still a chance a last minute deal will let it run until the change of administration next week.Many users have asked whether a VPN will resolve the issue as has been the case with state-wide porn shut-outs across the U.S., where users turn to VPNs to pretend theyre somewhere else. That seems unlikely to work here, given the platform itself is going dark as opposed to being blocked. But well know more on Sunday.MORE FOR YOUIts critical that you do two things before the ban comes into effect. First make sure your account has been secured, which will help you restore it if and when it comes back. You can find details on doing that here. And second, dont fall for any lures coming at you by email or message or social media post, promising to restore yoiur account or provide a workaround. They will be dangerous scams.Most expect some form of fudge if not tomorrow then early next week, with the new Trump administration giving TikTok a pass for 60-90 days, time for the situation to resolve. That could still mean 24-72 hours of darkness though, so just make sure youre prepared. With unfortunate timing, TikTok is now under fire in Europe, with a new privacy lawsuit claiming it unlawfully sends data to China. TikTok tells me it strongly denies the claim and I dont expect it to make any difference in the U.S.Your app wont disappear from your phone tomorrow and you dont need to delete it. But it wont work if the platform goes dark until it is restored and it wont be available in any of the app stores. The risk of an app with no access to security updates running on 170 million phones does seem to have passed with the latest turn of events, which is good, but for millions of users this new dark reality could be worse.Above all, dont do anything rash. And keep your fingers crossed.

In context: Intel Core Ultra 200 desktop processors failed to impress some reviewers (including us) when they launched last October as the company's new flagship Arrow Lake-S lineup. While they performed adequately in compute tests, gaming was a mixed bag, with the chips being outperformed in multiple titles by the previous Raptor Lake generation. Fixes do nothing Update (Jan 18): We have yet to test Intel's claimed fixes for its Arrow Lake chips, however Tom's Hardware was quick to run a few gaming benchmarks on the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K. In short, the updates fail to address the underwhelming gaming performance for such a high-end chip.In some cases, performance even decreased after the updates, while previous-gen Raptor Lake Refresh chips benefited more from the required OS update, further widening the gap. Ultimately, we can't justify how Intel is trying to spin this story beyond what can be proven and making false promises does more harm than good.The original story follows below:Intel quickly investigated the situation, and by December, it had a good idea of what was causing the performance hiccups. It turned out to be a combination of power plan problems, anti-cheat settings, and other random issues though the biggest was a missing Performance & Power Management (PPM) package.The first series of fixes landed before the holidays in a mandatory Windows 11 update alongside some publisher patches. But Intel said we'd have to wait until CES in January for the second wave a crucial BIOS update to really unlock the Ultra 200's untapped potential. Well, that update just dropped, and according to Intel's internal tests, it's put the performance woes to bed in a big way.There are some sizable gaming gains in Intel's numbers. For instance, in Cyberpunk: 2077, Intel claims the fixes could net a staggering 26% increase in frames per second on patched Ultra 200 systems, as reported by PC World. Meanwhile, Far Cry 6 could see up to 16% more FPS.However, the performance hikes don't stop at games. Intel also ran the popular 3DMark TimeSpy synthetic benchmark and said patched Ultra 200 systems could see their overall scores skyrocket by up to 97%. // Related StoriesWe'll have to run some tests ourselves before we can corroborate Intel's lofty numbers. But all the software and BIOS fixes are available now, so if you've got an underperforming Arrow Lake build, it's time to load up those updates. Just make sure you're running the latest Windows version and check in with your system or motherboard manufacturer for that all-important BIOS update.Now that the desktop Ultra 200 has (hopefully) been dealt with, Intel can turn its attention to ensuring a smooth, high-performance release for its new Core H and HX laptop CPUs aimed at gamers and creators. Those chips are expected to start shipping soon, so we hope Intel can ensure a smooth release this time.Masthead credit: Madness727

When we think of the best PS5 games, best Xbox series X games, or best Switch games, we tend to go to the big blockbuster titles. These experiences take teams of dozens or perhaps hundreds of developers years to craft. As great as those are, and there are plenty of upcoming video games that fit that description, there are also solo developers who manage to build their own passion projects all on their own. These indie games tend to be smaller in scale but pack in more unique mechanics, experimental art and writing, and a level of personality and charm that is only possible when one person is in complete control. Making a game by yourself is incredibly hard, and yet weve seen more and more people release amazing games with little to no outside help. Here are our picks for the best games made by just one person.Recommended VideosRelatedEditors Recommendations

The platform has provided a surge in discovery and revenue for companies that may not be able to replicate it elsewhere.