Google has decided to invest another billion into Anthropic, four sources told the Financial Times, bringing its total sunk cost to more than three billion dollars. Both companies have declined to comment. Google uses Anthropics Claude AI models on Vertex AI, an AI-powered development platform.Amazon has also invested four billion into Anthropic to integrate its Claude AI models into the next generation of Alexa speakers. Other sources say Anthropic is also in talks with Lightspeed Venture Partners to raise another two billion. This investment would make Anthropic worth 60 billion. Even so, investors dont believe that Anthropic or its rivals will be profitable soon due to the extreme costs of developing AI models.Google invented transformers, a type of neural network that became a backbone technology for AI models, back in 2017. Despite some success with models like Gemini, Imagen, Chirp, Veo and more, Google doesnt have as significant a foothold in the generative AI market.Having so many big tech companies backing AI start-ups alarmed the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which investigated Google parent Alphabets first $2.3 billion investment in Anthropic. However, as the Financial Times notes, FTC commissioner Lina Khan, who had a reputation as an aggressive antitrust enforcer, has since stepped down from her post at the head of the agency as the Trump regime took power, which could mean similar deals might not receive the same scrutiny in the future.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-is-investing-another-billion-dollars-in-anthropic-145548826.html?src=rss

At an exclusive VP roundtable during CES, I learned more about Samsungs plans SmartThings - including how devices like the Samsung Galaxy Ring might fit in

A Meta VP has teased big improvements for the home cinema experience on Quest.

Five months after announcing that it hit $200 million in annualized revenue, Abnormal Security has hired a CFO.

Meta rarely invests in startups, but it works with Databricks on the Llama open-source models that Meta trains.

Featuring work by Rodeo FX, Image Engine, ILP and more.The post All the Dune: Prophecy VFX breakdowns in one place appeared first on befores & afters.

President Donald Trumps administration moved Tuesday to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off.The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal governments diversity and inclusion programs that could touch on everything from antibias training to funding for minority farmers and homeowners. Trump has called the programs discrimination and insisted on restoring strictly merit-based hiring.The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by President Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. Its using one of the key tools utilized by the Biden administration to promote DEI programs across the private sectorpushing their use by federal contractorsto now eradicate them.The Office of Personnel Management in a Tuesday memo directed agencies to place DEI office staffers on paid leave by 5 p.m. Wednesday and take down all public DEI-focused web pages by the same deadline. Several federal departments had removed the web pages even before the memorandum. Agencies must also cancel any DEI-related training and end any related contracts, and federal workers are being asked to report to Trumps Office of Personnel Management if they suspect any DEI-related program has been renamed to obfuscate its purpose within 10 days or face adverse consequences.By Thursday, federal agencies are directed to compile a list of federal DEI offices and workers as of Election Day. By next Friday, they are expected to develop a plan to execute a reduction-in-force action against those federal workers.The memo was first reported by CBS News.The move comes after Mondays executive order accused former President Joe Biden of forcing discrimination programs into virtually all aspects of the federal government through diversity, equity and inclusion programs, known as DEI.That step is the first salvo in an aggressive campaign to upend DEI efforts nationwide, including leveraging the Justice Department and other agencies to investigate private companies pursuing training and hiring practices that conservative critics consider discriminatory against nonminority groups such as white men.The executive order picks up where Trumps first administration left off: One of Trumps final acts during his first term was an executive order banning federal agency contractors and recipients of federal funding from conducting antibias training that addressed concepts like systemic racism. Biden promptly rescinded that order on his first day in office and issued a pair of executive ordersnow rescindedoutlining a plan to promote DEI throughout the federal government.While many changes may take months or even years to implement, Trumps new anti-DEI agenda is more aggressive than his first and comes amid far more amenable terrain in the corporate world. Prominent companies from Walmart to Facebook have already scaled back or ended some of their diversity practices in response to Trumps election and conservative-backed lawsuits against them.Heres a look at some of the policies and programs that Trump will aim to dismantle:Diversity offices, training, and accountabilityTrumps order will immediately gut Bidens wide-ranging effort to embed diversity and inclusion practices in the federal workforce, the nations largest at about 2.4 million people.Biden had mandated all agencies to develop a diversity plan, issue yearly progress reports, and contribute data for a government-wide dashboard to track demographic trends in hiring and promotions. The administration also set up a Chief Diversity Officers Council to oversee the implementation of the DEI plan. The government released its first DEI progress report in 2022 that included demographic data for the federal workforce, which is about 60% white and 55% male overall, and more than 75% white and more than 60% male at the senior executive level.Trumps executive order will toss out equity plans developed by federal agencies and terminate any roles or offices dedicated to promoting diversity. It will include eliminating initiatives such as DEI-related training or diversity goals in performance reviews.Federal grant and benefits programsTrumps order paves the way for an aggressive but bureaucratically complicated overhaul of billions of dollars in federal spending that conservative activists claim unfairly carve out preference for racial minorities and women.The order does not specify which programs it will target but mandates a government-wide review to ensure that contracts and grants are compliant with the Trump administrations anti-DEI stance. It also proposes that the federal government settle ongoing lawsuits against federal programs that benefit historically underserved communities, including some that date back decades.Trumps executive order is a seismic shift and a complete change in the focus and direction of the federal government, said Dan Lennington, deputy council for the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which has pursued several lawsuits against federal programs. The institute recently released an influential report listing dozens of programs the Trump administration should consider dismantling, such as credits for minority farmers or emergency relief assistance for majority-Black neighborhoods.He acknowledged that unwinding some entrenched programs may be difficult. For example, the Treasury Department implements housing and other assistance programs through block grants to states that have their own methods for implementing diversity criteria.Pay equity and hiring practicesIts not clear whether the Trump administration will target every initiative that stemmed from Bidens DEI executive order.For example, the Biden administration banned federal agencies from asking about an applicants salary history when setting compensation, a practice many civil rights activists say perpetuates pay disparities for women and people of color.It took three years for the Biden administration to issue the final regulations, and Trump would have to embark on a similar rulemaking process, including a notice and comment period, to rescind it, said Chiraag Bains, former deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under Biden and now a nonresident senior fellow with Brookings Metro.Noreen Farrell, executive director of gender rights group Equal Rights Advocates, said that she was hopeful that the Trump administration will not go out of its way to undo the rule, which she said has proved popular in some state and cities that have enacted similar policies.And Bidens DEI plan encompassed some initiatives with bipartisan support, said Bains. For example, he tasked the Chief Diversity Officers Executive Council with expanding federal employment opportunities for those with criminal records. That initiative stems from the Fair Chance Act, which Trump signed into law in 2019 and bans federal agencies and contractors from asking about an applicants criminal history before a conditional job offer is made.Bains said thats what Bidens DEI policies were about: ensuring that the federal government was structured to include historically marginalized communities, not institute reverse discrimination against white men.Despite the sweeping language of Trumps order, Farrell said, the reality of implementing such massive structural changes is far more complex.Federal agencies have deeply embedded policies and procedures that cant simply be switched off overnight, she added.Alexandra Olson and Zeke Miller, Associated Press

President Donald Trumps expansive executive order aimed at boosting oil and gas drilling, mining, and logging in Alaska is being cheered by state political leaders who see new fossil fuel development as critical to Alaskas economic future and criticized by environmental groups that see the proposals as worrying in the face of a warming climate.The order, signed on Trumps first day in office Monday, is consistent with a wish list submitted by Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy shortly after Trumps election. It seeks, among other things, to open to oil and gas drilling an area of the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge considered sacred to the Indigenous Gwichin, undo limits imposed by the Biden administration on drilling activity in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska on the North Slope and reverse restrictions on logging and road-building in a temperate rainforest that provides habitat for wolves, bears and salmon.In many ways, the order seeks to revert to policies that were in place during Trumps first term.But Trump just cant wave a magic wand and make these things happen, said Cooper Freeman, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity. Environmental laws and rules must be followed in attempts to unravel existing policies, and legal challenges to Trumps plans are virtually certain, he said.Were ready and looking forward to the fight of our lives to keep Alaska great, wild and abundant, Freeman said.Whats planned for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?The order seeks to reverse a Biden administration decision canceling seven leases issued as part of the first-ever oil and gas lease sale in the refuges coastal plain. Major oil companies didnt participate in the sale, held in early 2021 in the waning days of Trumps first term. The leases went to a state corporation. Two small companies that also won leases in that sale had earlier given them up.Trumps order calls for the Interior secretary to initiate additional leasing and issue all permits and easements necessary for oil and gas exploration and development to occur. Gwichin leaders oppose drilling on the coastal plain, citing its importance to a caribou herd they rely upon. Leaders of the Iupiaq community of Kaktovik, which is within the refuge, support drilling and have expressed hope their voices will be heard in the Trump administration after being frustrated by former President Joe Biden.This comes weeks after a second lease sale, mandated by a 2017 federal law, yielded no bids. The law required that two lease sales be offered by the end of 2024. The state earlier this month sued the Interior Department and federal officials, alleging among other things that the terms of the recent sale were too restrictive.What do Alaska political leaders say?Alaska leaders cheered Trumps order, which was titled, Unleashing Alaskas Extraordinary Resource Potential.It is morning again in Alaska, Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan declared.President Trump delivered on his first day in office! Dunleavy said on social media. This is why elections matter.Alaska has a history of fighting perceived overreach by the federal government that affects the states ability to develop its natural resources. State leaders complained during the Biden administration that efforts to further develop oil, gas, and minerals were being unfairly hampered, though they also scored a major win with the approval in 2023 of a large oil project known as Willow in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Environmentalists are fighting that approval in court.Dunleavy has repeatedly argued that development of Alaskas vast resources are critical for its future, and hes billed the underground storage of carbon and carbon offset programs as a way to diversify revenues while continuing to develop oil, gas, and coal and pursue timber programs.The state faces economic challenges: oil production, long its lifeblood, is a fraction of what it once was, in part due to aging fields, and for more than a decade, more people have left Alaska than have moved here.What happens now?Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the conservation group Center for Western Priorities, called Trumps order an everything, everywhere, all-at-once order that seeks to undo measures that in some cases it took the Biden administration years to enact.The length of time it would take the Interior Department to accomplish everything in that executive order is at least one terms worth, maybe two. And even then, you would need the science on your side when it all comes back. And we know in the case of Alaska specifically, the science is not on the side of unlimited drilling, he said, pointing to climate concerns and the warming Arctic.Communities have experienced the impacts of climate change, including thinning sea ice, coastal erosion, and thawing permafrost that undermines infrastructure.Erik Grafe, an attorney with the group Earthjustice, called the Arctic the worst place to be expanding oil and gas development. No place is good because we need to be contracting and moving to a green economy and addressing the climate crisis.Becky Bohrer, Associated Press

The Michigan-based Boss Hammer Co. makes tools specifically for contractors. By being familiar with what contractors do day-in, day out, company founder Dan Raymond spied an opportunity to speed at least two tasks: Nailing roofs on, and nailing button-cap nails to house wrap. He subsequently invented this thing:This Boss Magnetic Cap can be friction-fit over the hammer's head. A magnet holds the nail in place, allowing you to drive it with one hand while the other holds more nails for re-loading:While it won't hold framing nails, you can simply pop the cap off and do those the old-fashioned way.Runs $13.

The MT1 is a funky micro EV pickup designed by Yves Behar. It's supposed to go into production this year, with a $50,000 price tag. Manufacturer Telo Trucks has now partnered with solar EV manufacturer Aptera. Aptera-built solar panels will reportedly be offered as an option on the MT1. Buyers will be offered three options: A roof-mounted solar panel, a solar panel tonneau cover and a solar panel camper shell. It sounds awesomethe ability to have a truck that can haul stuff, powered by the sunbut a closer examination of the stats reveals that we're still in the baby-steps portion of this energy direction. Aptera says their solar panels "generate up to 200 watts each at peak sunlight, delivering 1-2 kWh per day based on location and season." The MT1 requires 200-300 Wh per mile, meaning each panel would add just 3.3 to ten miles of range.The other thing worth noting is that Telo Trucks hasn't even revealed the vehicle's payload capacity. That's a rather important stat for the pickup owner that has selected an open-bed vehicle for ease of hauling; this signals that the MT1 is aimed at the adventure crowd rather than green-minded contractors.At press time the company hadn't announced the price of the solar panels.