Donald Trump pardoned the creator of the worlds first dark-web drug market, who is now a libertarian cause clbre in some parts of the crypto community.

The exit will cut a huge chunk from the World Health Organizations budget, but the short-term financial gain for the US could come at the cost of disease outbreaks flaring up across the world.

Ross Ulbricht was serving a life sentence for creating a site in a shady corner of the internet to sell heroin, cocaine and other illicit substances.

OpenAI spent $1.76 million on government lobbying in 2024 and $510,000 in the last three months of the year alone, according to a new disclosure filed on Tuesdaya significant jump from 2023, when the company spent just $260,000 on Capitol Hill. The company also disclosed a new in-house lobbyist, Meghan Dorn, who worked for five years for Senator Lindsey Graham and started at OpenAI in October. The filing also shows activity related to two new pieces of legislation in the final months of the year: the Houses AI Advancement and Reliability Act, which would set up a government center for AI research, and the Senates Future of Artificial Intelligence Innovation Act, which would create shared benchmark tests for AI models.OpenAI did not respond to questions about its lobbying efforts.But perhaps more important, the disclosure is a clear signal of the companys arrival as a political player, as its first year of serious lobbying ends and Republican control of Washington begins. While OpenAIs lobbying spending is still dwarfed by its peersMeta tops the list of Big Tech spenders, with more than $24 million in 2024the uptick comes as it and other AI companies have helped redraw the shape of AI policy.For the past few years, AI policy has been something like a whack-a-mole response to the risks posed by deepfakes and misinformation. But over the last year, AI companies have started to position the success of the technology as pivotal to national security and American competitiveness, arguing that the government must therefore support the industrys growth. As a result, OpenAI and others now seem poised to gain access to cheaper energy, lucrative national security contracts, and a more lax regulatory environment thats unconcerned with the minutiae of AI safety.While the big players seem more or less aligned on this grand narrative, messy divides on other issues are still threatening to break through the harmony on display at President Trumps inauguration this week.AI regulation really began in earnest after ChatGPT launched in November 2022. At that point, a lot of the conversation was about responsibility, says Liana Keesing, campaigns manager for technology reform at Issue One, a democracy nonprofit that tracks Big Techs influence.Companies were asked what theyd do about sexually abusive deepfake images and election disinformation. Sam Altman did a very good job coming in and painting himself early as a supporter of that process, Keesing says.OpenAI started its official lobbying effort around October 2023, hiring Chan Parka onetime Senate Judiciary Committee counsel and Microsoft lobbyistto lead the effort. Lawmakers, particularly then Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, were vocal about wanting to curb these particular harms; OpenAI hired Schumers former legal counsel, Reginald Babin, as a lobbyist, according to data from OpenSecrets. This past summer, the company hired the veteran political operative Chris Lehane as its head of global policy.OpenAIs previous disclosures confirm that the companys lobbyists subsequently focused much of last year on legislation like the No Fakes Act and the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act. The bills did not materialize into law. But as the year went on, the regulatory goals of AI companies began to change. One of the biggest shifts that weve seen, Keesing says, is that theyve really started to focus on energy.In September, Altman, along with leaders from Nvidia, Anthropic, and Google, visited the White House and pitched the vision that US competitiveness in AI will depend on subsidized energy infrastructure to train the best models. Altman proposed to the Biden administration the construction of multiple five-gigawatt data centers, which would each consume as much electricity as New York City.Around the same time, companies like Meta and Microsoft started to say that nuclear energy will provide the path forward for AI, announcing deals aimed at firing up new nuclear power plants.It seems likely OpenAIs policy team was already planning for this particular shift. In April, the company hired lobbyist Matthew Rimkunas, who worked for Bill Gatess sustainable energy effort Breakthrough Energies and, before that, spent 16 years working for Senator Graham; the South Carolina Republican serves on the Senate subcommittee that manages nuclear safety.This new AI energy race is inseparable from the positioning of AI as essential for national security and US competitiveness with China. OpenAI laid out its position in a blog post in October, writing, AI is a transformational technology that can be used to strengthen democratic values or to undermine them. Thats why we believe democracies should continue to take the lead in AI development. Then in December, the company went a step further and reversed its policy against working with the military, announcing it would develop AI models with the defense-tech company Anduril to help take down drones around military bases.That same month, Sam Altman said during an interview with The Free Press that the Biden administration was not that effective in shepherding AI: The things that I think should have been the administrations priorities, and I hope will be the next administrations priorities, are building out massive AI infrastructure in the US, having a supply chain in the US, things like that.That characterization glosses over the CHIPS Act, a $52 billion stimulus to the domestic chips industry that is, at least on paper, aligned with Altmans vision. (It also preceded an executive order Biden issued just last week, to lease federal land to host the type of gigawatt-scale data centers that Altman had been asking for.)Intentionally or not, Altmans posture aligned him with the growing camaraderie between President Trump and Silicon Valley. Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sundar Pichai all sat directly behind Trumps family at the inauguration on Monday, and Altman also attended. Many of them had also made sizable donations to Trumps inaugural fund, with Altman personally throwing in $1 million.Its easy to view the inauguration as evidence that these tech leaders are aligned with each other, and with other players in Trumps orbit. But there are still some key dividing lines that will be worth watching. Notably, theres the clash over H-1B visas, which allow many noncitizen AI researchers to work in the US. Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy (who is, as of this week, no longer a part of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency) have been pushing for that visa program to be expanded. This sparked backlash from some allies of the Trump administration, perhaps most loudly Steve Bannon.Another fault line is the battle between open- and closed-source AI. Google and OpenAI prevent anyone from knowing exactly whats in their most powerful models, often arguing that this keeps them from being used improperly by bad actors. Musk has sued OpenAI and Microsoft over the issue, alleging that closed-source models are antithetical to OpenAIs hybrid nonprofit structure. Meta, whose Llama model is open-source, recently sided with Musk in that lawsuit. Venture capitalist and Trump ally Marc Andreessen echoed these criticisms of OpenAI on X just hours after the inauguration. (Andreessen has also said that making AI models open-source makes overbearing regulations unnecessary.)Finally, there are the battles over bias and free speech. The vastly different approaches that social media companies have taken to moderating contentincluding Metas recent announcement that it would end its US fact-checking programraise questions about whether the way AI models are moderated will continue to splinter too. Musk has lamented what he calls the wokeness of many leading models, and Andreessen said on Tuesday that Chinese LLMs are much less censored than American LLMs (though thats not quite true, given that many Chinese AI models have government-mandated censorship in place that forbids particular topics). Altman has been more equivocal: No two people are ever going to agree that one system is perfectly unbiased, he told The Free Press.Its only the start of a new era in Washington, but the White House has been busy. It has repealed many executive orders signed by President Biden, including the landmark order on AI that imposed rules for government use of the technology (while it appears to have kept Bidens order on leasing land for more data centers). Altman is busy as well. OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank reportedly plan to spend up to $500 billion on a joint venture for new data centers; the project was announced by President Trump, with Altman standing alongside. And according to Axios, Altman will also be part of a closed-door briefing with government officials on January 30, reportedly about OpenAIs development of a powerful new AI agent.

In a likely attempt to satisfy current shareholders and deal with increased content production and licensing costs, Netflix is increasing pricing for most of its plans, worldwide.Netflix is increasing prices for subscriptions in 2025.Users can expect to pay even more for their Netflix subscriptions in 2025, as Netflix has raised prices across the board. Virtually every Netflix plan, from the low-cost ad-supported subscription option to the premium plan, will see a substantial increase in pricing. The change applies to multiple countries, as well, directly impacting a large number of consumers.The company's cheapest ad-supported plan will increase to $7.99 per month, up from the previous $6.99. The standard ad-free plan, meanwhile, will go from a monthly price of $15.49 to $17.99. The price of the premium tier will be a whole $2 higher $24.99, instead of the usual $22.99. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Amazon is ramping up its deals on Apple this week, with fresh price drops on AirPods, AirTags, MacBooks and more. We've rounded up the best offers to save you money in 2025.Save up to $300 on Apple devices at Amazon - Image credit: Apple, Amazon.A single AirTag is down to $22.99 at Amazon this Tuesday, along with a steep discount on an upgraded 14-inch MacBook Pro with 1TB of storage and the 14C CPU/20C GPU M4 Pro chip.We're following the deals (and dozens more) in our Apple Price Guide, with top offers from the sale handpicked by our team and broken down by category below. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

January 22: Little New Year in northern China (2025); Day of Unity of UkraineCetshwayo565 Eutychius of Constantinople was arrested after he refused Byzantine emperor JustinianI's order to adopt the tenets of the Aphthartodocetae, a sect of non-Chalcedonian Christians.1273 MuhammadII became Sultan of Granada after his father's death in a riding accident.1879 Anglo-Zulu War: The Zulu forces of King Cetshwayo (pictured) achieved a decisive victory at the Battle of Isandlwana.1973 The U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in Roe v. Wade struck down laws restricting abortion during the first two trimesters of pregnancy.2006 Evo Morales was inaugurated as President of Bolivia, becoming the country's first indigenous president.2012 Croatia held a referendum in which it voted to become a member of the European Union.Christian Ramsay (d.1839)Vito Cascio Ferro (b.1862)S.Vithiananthan (d.1989)Ursula K. Le Guin (d.2018)More anniversaries: January 21January 22January 23ArchiveBy emailList of days of the yearAbout

The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii recorded the highest annual jump in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels since its records began in 1958. Alexandros Maragos via Getty ImagesEarth has broken another greenhouse gas emissions record: The levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere above Hawaii made an unprecedent jump in 2024, according to a new analysis by the Met Office, the United Kingdoms national climate and weather service.Between 2023 and 2024, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose by 3.58 parts per million (ppm), to reach a total of 427 ppmthe largest increase between calendar years, as measured by Hawaiis Mauna Loa Observatory, since records began 67 years ago.Scientists say that a safe concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide is 350 ppm and that keeping this number below 430 ppm is essential for limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, as directed in the Paris Agreement.The new numbers signal that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are not only risingtheyre doing so faster than ever, as the scientists involved in the analysis write in Carbon Brief.Were still going in the wrong direction, says Richard Betts, a climate scientist at the Met Office who worked on the analysis, to New Scientists Michael Le Page.The Mauna Loa Observatory is one of the longest-running carbon dioxide monitors in the world. While its data reveal trends in global atmospheric carbon dioxideover long time periods, the scientists note that its year-to-year measurements can fluctuate as a result of localized phenomena, such as fires. Case in point: Satellites calculated the annual rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide to be 2.9 ppm over the same perioda lower number than Mauna Loa recorded, but still the second largest jump on record, after 2015 to 2016. The Mauna Loa atmospheric baseline observatory in Hawaii Susan Cobb / NOAA ResearchScientists suggest the rise is the result of a year filled with major wildfires, record-breaking fossil fuel emissions and ongoing deforestation. Wildfires alone released billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmospherea study published in October found that carbon emissions from forest fires increased by 60 percent globally between 2001 and 2023. An El Nio event was also in progress for part of the year, bringing warmer and drier weather to an already warming planet.These trends are not compatible with any of the pathways set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit), the team writes in Carbon Brief. In fact, 2024 was the first calendar year warm enough to cross that threshold. Though a single year above that marker does not mean the world breached the Paris Agreement, many top climate scientists predict temperatures will rise to at least 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.The Met Office analysis also forecasts a further rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations for 2025. You could regard [these findings] as another nail in the coffin of 1.5C, says Betts to New Scientist. Thats now vanishingly unlikely.Still, scientists say the work underscores the need to take climate action. Countries have agreed to the 1.5C global warming limit not out of convenience but out of necessity to limit harm and suffering of people, Joeri Rogelj, director of research at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment who was not involved in the analysis, says in a statement. Even if we are on track to surpass 1.5C, these reasons dont change and only make a stronger case for focused action on reducing greenhouse gas pollution.Betts offers some hope to the Guardians Damian Carrington: Even if it looks like we wont meet the ambitious Paris goal of 1.5C, it is still worth making every effort to limit the rise. 1.5C is not a cliff-edge after which all is lost. There are lots of solutions already available without any new inventions. This must be extra motivation to work even harder.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Climate Change, Fossil Fuels, Global Warming, New Research, Weather, Wildfire

Konvoy's latest report shows that funding for gaming-related startups was curiously low in Q4 2024, as were VC deals.Read More

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn MorePerplexity has launched an aggressive bid to capture the enterprise AI search market, unveiling Sonar, an API service that outperforms offerings from Google, OpenAI and Anthropic on key benchmarks while also undercutting their prices.The move signals a significant shift in the AI landscape, as Perplexity now valued at $9 billion directly challenges larger competitors by making its real-time, web-connected search capabilities available to developers and enterprises.The companys dual-tier strategy offering both a lightweight Sonar service and a more robust Sonar Pro version targets different segments of the growing AI integration market.Perplexitys Sonar Pro outperforms major AI competitors in the SimpleQA benchmark, which measures response accuracy. (Credit: Perplexity)Sonars real-time advantage: Bringing fresh data to enterprisesZoom has already integrated Sonar into its AI Companion 2.0 product, allowing users to access real-time information without leaving video conferences a capability that could reshape how businesses conduct remote meetings and research.The pricing structure appears to be designed to disrupt the market. Sonars base tier costs $5 per 1,000 searches plus minimal token fees, while Sonar Pro, despite higher token costs, offers doubled citation density and multi-search capabilities for complex queries.What sets Sonar apart is its real-time web connection, a feature absent in many competing APIs that rely solely on training data. This approach could prove particularly valuable for enterprises requiring current information, although it may face challenges in applications requiring deterministic outputs.Perplexitys two-tier API offering shows the feature differences between Sonar Pro (left) and the base Sonar service (right), with Pro featuring enhanced citation capability and support for complex queries. (Credit: Perplexity)Disruptive pricing: Affordable AI search for the enterprise marketThe launch comes at a pivotal moment in the AI industry, when companies are increasingly seeking ways to integrate AI search capabilities into their products. With recent benchmarks showing Sonar Pro achieving an 85.8 F-score on the SimpleQA benchmark significantly outperforming GPT-4o and Claude Perplexity appears positioned to capitalize on growing enterprise demand for accurate, citation-backed AI responses.The timing of this launch comes as Perplexity demonstrates significant market momentum, having just secured a $500 million funding round led by Institutional Venture Partners, which valued the company at $9 billion. This strategy could prove particularly effective as enterprises increasingly prioritize AI tools that provide verifiable, current information over black-box solutions.For technical decision makers, Sonars launch represents a new option in the AI toolkit, particularly for applications requiring real-time information access and citation tracking. However, the true test will be whether Perplexity can maintain its performance edge and pricing advantage as larger competitors inevitably adjust their strategies.Daily insights on business use cases with VB DailyIf you want to impress your boss, VB Daily has you covered. We give you the inside scoop on what companies are doing with generative AI, from regulatory shifts to practical deployments, so you can share insights for maximum ROI.Read our Privacy PolicyThanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here.An error occured.