Taking the Science out of NASA White House may seek to slash NASAs science budget by 50 percent "It would be nothing short of an extinction-level event for space science." Eric Berger Mar 7, 2025 8:54 am | 45 This is a montage of New Horizons images of Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io, taken during the spacecraft's Jupiter flyby in early 2007. The Io image shows a major eruption in progress on Io's night side, at the northern volcano Tvashtar. Incandescent lava glows red beneath a 330km-high volcanic plume. Credit: NASA This is a montage of New Horizons images of Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io, taken during the spacecraft's Jupiter flyby in early 2007. The Io image shows a major eruption in progress on Io's night side, at the northern volcano Tvashtar. Incandescent lava glows red beneath a 330km-high volcanic plume. Credit: NASA Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreAlthough the Trump administration will not publicly release its budget request for at least a few more weeks, senior agency officials are starting to be briefed on the president's priorities.This includes NASA. As expected, the president's plan for the space agency includes some significant shakeups, including a desire to move elements of NASA headquarters to field centers around the country. However, in perhaps the most drastic change, the White House seeks to massively cut funding for science programs at the space agency.Multiple people familiar with the White House proposal said cuts to NASA's "Science Mission Directorate" could be as high as 50 percent. These sources emphasized that no decisions are final, and there are some scenarios in which the cuts to NASA's science programs would be less. But the intent is to slash science.The associate administrator who runs NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Nicola Fox, appeared in Houston on Thursday for a news conference about a lunar landing. Afterward, Ars asked her about the implications of cutting science funding in half."We haven't had any information yet about the budget, and I hate planning something on rumors and speculation," Fox said. "You know, we will continue to do great science. We'll continue to have a balanced science portfolio, for sure. And you know, we'll be grateful for what we get, and we'll do great stuff with it."An extinction-level eventHowever, as word of these potential cuts spread through the scientific community this week, they have set off alarm bells and generated a response that indicated otherwise."If this is implemented, it would be nothing short of an extinction-level event for space science and exploration in the United States," said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy for The Planetary Society. "Losing this much money, this fast, has no precedence in NASA's history. It would force terrible decisions, including turning off scores of active, productive, irreplaceable missions, halting nearly all new mission development, and decimating the country's space science workforce."In many ways, NASA's science directorate is the crown jewel of the space agency. Nearly all of the most significant achievements over the last 25 years have been delivered by the science programs: Ingenuity flying on Mars, New Horizons swooping by Pluto, images from the James Webb Space Telescope, the discovery of thousands of exoplanets, the return of samples from asteroids and comets, Cassini's discovery of water plumes on Enceladus, a continuous robotic presence on Mars, and so much more. Even the recent lunar landings by Firefly and Intuitive Machines were funded by NASA's science directorate.Of NASA's roughly $25 billion budget, however, only about 30 percent is allocated to science. For fiscal year 2024, this amounted to $7.4 billion. This spending was broken down into approximately $2.7 billion for planetary science, $2.2 billion for Earth science, $1.5 billion for astrophysics, and $800 million for heliophysics. NASA science funding since 1980. Credit: Casey Dreier/The Planetary Society NASA science funding since 1980. Credit: Casey Dreier/The Planetary Society The proposed cuts are being driven by Russell Vought, the recently confirmed director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, which sets budget and policy priorities for a presidential administration. In some sense, the budgetary decisions should not come as a surprise, as they are consistent with what Vought proposed in a "shadow" budget for fiscal-year 2023as part of his Center for Renewing America."The budget also proposes a 50 percent reduction in NASA Science programs and spending, reducing their misguided Carbon Reduction System spending and Global Climate Change programs," Vought's organization wrote in its report published in December 2022.Zeroing out Earth science?Despite Vought's desire, however, NASA is expressly charged with studying our planet.The congressional act that created NASA in 1958 calls for the space agency to expand human knowledge about Earth's atmosphere and space, and the agency's Earth observation satellites have substantially increased our understanding of this planet's weather, changing climate, and land use.Even if NASA's Earth science budget were taken to zero, cutting the overall science budget in half would still dramatically reduce funding in planetary science as well as other research areas. Scientists told Ars that NASA would be forced to make difficult decisions, likely including shutting off extended missions such as the Voyager and Curiosity probes on Mars, and possibly even the Hubble Space Telescope. It might be possible to save missions in later stages of development, such as the Dragonfly probe to Saturn's moon Titan, and the NEO Surveyor mission to search for hazardous asteroids. But it would be impossible to start meaningful new missions to explore the Solar System, potentially setting back planetary exploration a decade.The cuts also seem at odds with the administration's stated goal of commercializing space, that is, allowing the agency to buy more services where they are available from the private sector. Instead, the heaviest cutssources said that NASA may face an approximately 25 percent budget cut, overallwould fall on the agency directorate, Science, least able to buy commercial services."There are no commercial or private options for exploratory space science," Dreier said. "No private individuals or companies are currently able or willing to independently pursue boundary-pushing, breakthrough science missions like Europa Clipper, James Webb Space Telescope, or the Parker Solar Probe. This is a unique capability and responsibility of our public space agency. There is no private space science sector of our economy waiting to fill the gap."Such a budget, scientists fear, would cede the future of exploration in our Solar System to China, which last year revealed a long-term exploration plan to compete with and potentially surpass its competitors, including NASA and the United States.The president's proposal for NASA's budget is just a starting point for negotiations with Congress, of course. The president establishes budget priorities, but Congress actually sets funding levels and authorizes spending. However, to date, the US Congress has shown little appetite to oppose President Trump's policy priorities. Moreover, a lot of NASA's key science centers are located in Democrat-leaning states such as California, Maryland, and New York, which do not hold power in Congress.Eric BergerSenior Space EditorEric BergerSenior Space Editor Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston. 45 Comments

John Edwards, Technology Journalist & AuthorMarch 7, 20255 Min Readhirun laowisit via Alamy Stock PhotoAn AI governance platform ensures that AI systems are developed responsibly and transparently. "It helps mitigate risks, such as data privacy breaches, model inaccuracies, and drift, and build trust with stakeholders," says Jen Clark, director of advisory/technical enablement services at business consulting firm Eisner Advisory Group, in an email interview.AI governance should extend an enterprise's overall data governance commitment by reducing AI bias and increasing transparency, says Dorotea Baljevic, principal consultant, manufacturing and digital engineering, with technology research and advisory firm ISG. "AI governance covers much more than the AI system itself to include the necessary roles, processes, and operating models needed to enact AI," she notes in an online interview.AI automates and speeds decision-making. Yet there remains a need to create some type of audit trail that shows the decisions being made and allows decision reversals, if necessary, says Kyle Jones, senior manager of solutions architecture at AWS, in an email interview. "A reliable AI governance platform needs to meet the needs of the business today and can be updated and changed as time goes on so that results continue to meet business needs."Platform AttributesRelated:AI governance platforms are similar to their counterparts in engineering operations, and cybersecurity best practices, including continuous monitoring, alerting, and automated escalations, all supported by a robust incident management process, Clark says. "What sets AI governance apart is the integration of automation to manage the models themselves, often referred to as machine learning ops or MLOps." This includes automation to validate, deploy, monitor, and maintain models.An effective AI governance platform includes four fundamental components: data governance, technical controls, ethical guidelines and reporting mechanisms, says Beena Ammanath, executive director of the Global Deloitte AI Institute. "Data governance is necessary for ensuring that data within an organization is accurate, consistent, secure and used responsibly," she explains in an online interview.Technical controls are essential for tasks such as testing and validating GenAI models to ensure their performance and reliability, Ammanath says. "Ethical and responsible AI use guidelines are critical, covering aspects such as bias, fairness, and accountability to promote trust across the organization and with key stakeholders." Additionally, reporting controls should be put in place to support thorough documentation and the transparent disclosure of GenAI systems.Related:Team BuildingThere's no one-size-fits-all framework for AI governance. "Rather than applying universal standards, organizations should focus on developing AI governance strategies that align with their industry, scale, and goals," Ammanath advises. "Each enterprise and each industry has unique objectives, risk tolerances, and operational complexities, making it essential to build a governance model tailored to fit specific needs, leveraging context aware approaches.""AI governance requires a multi-disciplinary or interdisciplinary approach and may involve non-traditional partners such as data science and AI teams, technology teams for the infrastructure, business teams who will use the system or data, governance and risk and compliance teams -- even researchers and customers," Baljevic says.Clark advises working across stakeholder groups. "Technology and business leaders, as well as practitioners -- from ML engineers to IT to functional leads -- should be included in the overall plan, especially for high-risk use case deployments," she says. "From there, it's easier to divide and tackle the plan, either by building custom workflows within your cloud provider's ML/AI toolkit or by purchasing a solution and integrating it into an existing governance program."Related:Avoiding MistakesThe biggest mistake when implementing AI governance is treating it as a static, one-time implementation instead of an ongoing, adaptive process, Ammanath says. "AI technologies, regulations, and societal expectations evolve rapidly, and failing to design a flexible, scalable framework can result in outdated practices, increased risks, and loss of trust." Additionally, failing to implement comprehensive controls and to continuously adapt to evolving marketplace threats can result in significant vulnerabilities that undermine the security and integrity of AI operations.The biggest mistake enterprises make is focusing on specific models rather than workflows. "Models are constantly changing and improving," Jones notes. "There's not, and will never be, a single 'best' model." Instead, he advises enterprises to focus on workflows that can be effectively automated.Parting ThoughtsThis is an exciting time in technology, with the potential to fundamentally change everything enterprises are doing, Jones says. "IT people should focus on business problems that can be automated, starting small and scaling out," he advises. Use existing IT knowledge in areas such as abstraction, microservices, and loose coupling, all of which AI can amplify. "Start with projects that deliver business value to earn the right to move forward into more IT-centric improvements that reduce overall costs."About the AuthorJohn EdwardsTechnology Journalist & AuthorJohn Edwards is a veteran business technology journalist. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and numerous business and technology publications, including Computerworld, CFO Magazine, IBM Data Management Magazine, RFID Journal, and Electronic Design. He has also written columns for The Economist's Business Intelligence Unit and PricewaterhouseCoopers' Communications Direct. John has authored several books on business technology topics. His work began appearing online as early as 1983. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, he wrote daily news and feature articles for both the CompuServe and Prodigy online services. His "Behind the Screens" commentaries made him the world's first known professional blogger.See more from John EdwardsWebinarsMore WebinarsReportsMore ReportsNever Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.SIGN-UPYou May Also Like

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 short, strange history of gene de-extinction This week saw the release of some fascinating news about some very furry rodentsso-called woolly micecreated as part of an experiment to explore how we might one day resurrect the woolly mammoth. The idea of bringing back extinct species has gained traction thanks to advances in sequencing of ancient DNA. This ancient genetic data is deepening our understanding of the pastfor instance, by shedding light on interactions among prehistoric humans. But researchers are becoming more ambitious. Rather than just reading ancient DNA, they want to use itby inserting it into living organisms. Because this idea is so new and attracting so much attention, I decided it would be useful to create a record of previous attempts to add extinct DNA to living organisms. And since the technology doesnt have a name, lets give it one: chronogenics. Read the full story. Antonio Regalado This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Reviews weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. If youre interested in de-extinction, why not check out: + How much would you pay to see a woolly mammoth? We spoke to Sara Ord, director of species restoration at Colossal, the worlds first de-extinction company, about its big ambitions. + Colossal is also a de-extinction company, which is trying to resurrect the dodo. Read the full story.+ DNA that was frozen for 2 million years has been sequenced. The ancient DNA fragments come from a Greenland ecosystem where mastodons roamed among flowering plants. It may hold clues to how to survive a warming climate. The must-reads Ive combed the internet to find you todays most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Ukraine is worried the US could sever its vital Starlink connection Its satellite internet is vital to Ukraines drone operations. (WP $)+ Thankfully, there are alternative providers. (Wired $)+ Ukraine is due to start a fresh round of war-ending negotiations next week. (FT $)+ Meet the radio-obsessed civilian shaping Ukraines drone defense. (MIT Technology Review)2 Israels military has trained a powerful AI model on intercepted Palestinian data The ChatGPT-like tool can answer queries about the people its monitoring. (The Guardian)3 Donald Trump has suspended tariffs on Canada and MexicoUntil April 2, at least. (Reuters) + Its the second time Trump has rolled back import taxes in as many days. (BBC)+ How Trumps tariffs could drive up the cost of batteries, EVs, and more. (MIT Technology Review)4 Can someone check on NASAs Athena lunar lander? While we know it reached the moon, it appears to have toppled over. (NYT $)+ If it remains in an incorrect position, it may be unable to complete its mission. (CNN)+ Its engineers arent sure exactly where it is on the moon, either. (NBC News)5 Shutting down 2G is easier said than doneMillions of vulnerable people around the world still rely on it to communicate. (Rest of World) 6 The hunt for the worlds oldest functional computer codeNew Scientist $) 7 Robots are set to compete with humans in a Beijing half marathonMy moneys on the flesh and blood competitors. (Insider $) + Researchers taught robots to run. Now theyre teaching them to walk. (MIT Technology Review)8 Where did it all go wrong for Skype?The Verge) 9 Dating is out, matchmaking is in Why swipe when a platform can do the hard work for you? (Wired $)+ Forget dating apps: Heres how the nets newest matchmakers help you find love. (MIT Technology Review)10 Apps are back, baby! Its like the original smartphone app boom all over again. (Bloomberg $)Quote of the day You can only get so much juice out of every lemon. Carl-Benedikt Frey, a professor of AI and work at Oxford Universitys Internet Institute, explains why pushing AI as a means of merely increasing productivity wont always work, the Financial Times reports. The big story The cost of building the perfect wave June 2024 For nearly as long as surfing has existed, surfers have been obsessed with the search for the perfect wave. While this hunt has taken surfers from tropical coastlines to icebergs, these days that search may take place closer to home. That is, at least, the vision presented by developers and boosters in the growing industry of surf pools, spurred by advances in wave-generating technology that have finally created artificial waves surfers actually want to ride. But theres a problem: some of these pools are in drought-ridden areas, and face fierce local opposition. At the core of these fights is a question thats also at the heart of the sport: What is the cost of finding, or now creating, the perfect waveand who will have to bear it? Read the full story. Eileen Guo 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 skeet 'em at me.)+ Planning a holiday? These handy accessories could make your journey a whole lot easier (beach powder optional)+ How to avoid making common mistakes.+ The latest food trend is dry-aged fishtasty.+ Its Friday, so lets enjoy a bit of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.

2025-03-07T14:43:59Z Read in app President Vladimir Putin at the 2022 Russian AI Journey conference. Pavel Bednyakov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? Russia has touted its leading LLM, GigaChat MAX, as part of a national AI strategy.But the model is "unremarkable" and lags behind US and Chinese offerings, AI experts told BI.While the war in Ukraine has stunted development, Moscow may still be developing military AI.Russian President Vladimir Putin wants his country to compete in the global race to build AI, besting models coming out of China and the US. But its flagship large language model, or LLM, isn't even the best at speaking Russian.On the Russian-language version of LLM Arena where users go to compare and rank the answers of different LLMs GigaChat MAX comes joint-eighth at the time of writing, behind various versions of Claude, DeepSeek, and ChatGPT.YandexGPT 4 Pro, an LLM developed by the Russian search engine Yandex, is even lower, at joint 18th.On the English-language version, neither appears in the ranking of more than 170 LLMs.GigaChat MAX was developed by Russia's state-majority-owned Sberbank. When its latest iteration launched in November, its Moscow-based lead developer, Evgeny Kosarev, said on LinkedIn that it was "close to GPT4o in quality on Russian and English."But experts have told Business Insider that, despite Putin emphasizing AI development as a crucial avenue for Russian foreign policy,A spokesperson for Yandex told BI that its latest model, launched on February 25th, is on par with state-of-the-art models on a number of measures.A spokesperson for GigaChat MAX did not respond to a request for comment.An 'unremarkable' modelFor now,On "benchmarks" standardized tests for AI effectiveness the models' scores "are much lower," he said, adding that they don't surpass any of the cutting-edge, or "frontier," models, and don't involve any particular innovation.Ben Dubow, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and CTO of data-analysis firm Omelas, added that GigaChat MAX lacked an edge in many ways.While it handles math well, in the Russian language it is far behind most leading Western and Chinese LLMs on some benchmarks, Dubow wrote in The Moscow Times in January.He said that leading LLMs developed in the US were a year ahead of GigaChat MAX's current level on the industry-standard "Massive Multitask Language Understanding," or MMLU, which tests an LLM's general knowledge and problem-solving ability in text-based answers across a huge range of subjects.Dubow also told BI that most AIs are being held to more advanced benchmarks, with MMLU "almost considered pass at this point.""Besting American and Chinese models on Russian language prompts is a top priority for the Russian government's AI strategy, but MAX has not achieved that," Dubow said.The war in Ukraine is holding Russia's AI development backRussian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly emphasized the importance of AI, including at a December conference where he touted GigaChat MAX and said Russia was ready to assist other nations with developing AI.Samuel Bendett, a specialist in Russian military technology at the Center for Strategic and International Studies,But per a global AI ranking produced by UK media startup Tortoise Media, Russia is the only one out of the five "great power" countries the US, China, France, the UK, and Russia not at the top of the list. Russia is ranked 31st.Bendett named several factors holding Moscow's AI sector back.Russia's private sector is too small to foster real competition, with almost everything government-supported, Sberbank CEO German Gref listens to Putin at the 2022 AI Journey conference. Pavel Bednyakov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP Although Sberbank is increasingly casting itself as a technology company, "there is no equivalent to OpenAI and Microsoft or Google or Huawei or Alibaba," he continued.Additionally, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has isolated it from both global expertise and collaboration, as well as access to tech like microchips necessary to train and run complex AI models efficiently."The story of the Russian AI industry is, in a lot of ways, Putin's expansionism undermining Russia's global standing," said Dubow.2014 when Russia annexed Crimea was a transformative year for AI in the West and China.Meanwhile, 2022, the year Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, was the year ChatGPT launched, sparking the generative AI boom.Thea major brain drain from Russia, according to Dubow.Bendett added that Russia lacks "hundreds of thousands" of high-tech researchers, although he said that he believed many of the "tech refugees" who left Russia to avoid the draft have started to trickle back.Putin acknowledged the problems last year, blaming "unfriendly countries" for the roadblocks and vowing to increase the number of people graduating in AI technology to more than 15,000 a year by 2030, Russia's TASS news agency reported, citing government documents.The report said just 3,000 graduated in 2022.By comparison, the US had more than 73,000 graduates in AI-related fields in 2023, the majority of whom were international talent, according to the Center for Security and Emerging Technology.Serhii Kupriienko, CEO of Swarmer, a Ukrainian startup specializing in AI-based systems, told BI that over the next decade, the US and China's LLMs will help them scale their economies "exponentially" by boosting productivity across various sectors, creating jobs in AI, and speeding up innovation.Meanwhile, Russia's struggles with AI mean its likeliest path forward is to "be subordinate to China and rely on what China's producing," Dubow said.The 'holy grail for AI' could boost Russia's militaryThe Kremlin's repeated public statements on AI and the ongoing war in Ukraine have led some analysts to conclude Russia may be secretly developing a dual-use LLM with military applications.In 2022, a Russian official announced the creation of a department for developing AI within the defense ministry."Russia envisions AI as a transformative tool for its military," Saratoga Foundation military analysts Timothy Thomas and Glen Howard wrote in a February review of Russian writings on military AI.Vitaliy Goncharuk, who chaired Ukraine's AI Committee between 2019 and 2022, believes Russia may be training its AI on the vast amounts of battlefield data being generated in Ukraine. Both Russia's and Ukraine's militaries are sitting on vast repositories of data that could be used to train military AI. Elena Tita/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images Telegram posts and channels, drone footage, satellite imagery, sound sensors, civilian reports, and hacked material from Ukraine's Delta cloud-based management system which feeds Ukrainian commanders with battlefield data all provide ample material, Goncharuk said.AI developed on this would not only help Russia improve its precision in identifying targets but also help it plan its decision-making and real-time front-line operations, Goncharuk said. It could even predict Ukraine's future decision-making and future battlefield operations, he added.Ukraine, too, has gathered vast quantities of battlefield data from three years of war something that is "truly the holy grail of training your AI models and systems on battlefield target recognition and selection," BendettIt would be difficult to imagine Russia not quietly also using this data, he added."They constantly hint at that," he said.Editor's note: This article was updated after publication to include a comment from Yandex.

This post originally appeared in the Business Insider Today newsletter.You can sign up for Business Insider's daily newsletter here.Happy Friday! If you're grabbing an Uber or Lyft this weekend and a Tesla shows up, do yourself a favor and don't bring up Elon Musk. Whether you love him or hate him, chances are your driver doesn't want to talk about it. (And if you insist on doing it, they'll probably just say what they think will get them the best tip.)In today's big story, tariffs against Canada and Mexico have been mostly delayed by a month in yet another turnaround in the ongoing trade war.What's on deckMarkets: One betting market has the odds of a US recession at 32%.Tech: Microsoft is talking up a massive quantum-computing breakthrough. Amazon execs aren't buying it.Business: Some senators want to take a closer look at X's advertising tactics.But first, another postponement.If this was forwarded to you, The big storyTariffs? What tariffs? Getty Images; Jenny Chang-Rodriguez/BI So, about those tariffsTwo days after implementing a 25% tax on Mexican and Canadian goods, President Donald Trump is pulling a U-turn.The president announced a one-month pause on tariffs for both countries' imports that fall under an agreement called USMCA. If you're a bit rusty on your global trade regulations, USMCA was the trade deal that Trump negotiated between the US, Canada, and Mexico to replace NAFTA.The trade pact covers most goods, making Trump's announcement almost equivalent to the monthlong pause on tariffs he initiated in February.The offer didn't extend to the other target of Trump's tariffs, China, which has issued retaliatory tariffs.There's long been speculation that Trump's tariffs were merely a negotiation tactic to get better trade terms from other countries. And the president's willingness to issue another reprieve from his trade taxes could be proof of that.But the market's willingness to accept the ongoing uncertainty might only extend so far. Investors are already on edge as fears of a potential recession start to bubble up.Stocks rebounded on Wednesday after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick hinted a resolution to the tariff situation could be coming. But despite the official announcement on Thursday, stocks finished down considerably. The S&P 500 closed 1.78% lower, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.61%.Trump's flip-flopping may not pay off in the long term. That's according to supply chain and conflict resolution scholars, who said his tariff tensions are eroding the US's relationships with its allies. Tyler Le/BI Things aren't likely to calm down in the meantime.The February jobs report comes out this morning. It will help inform the Federal Reserve's decision on interest rates on March 19, which is less than two weeks away.And the fight over tariffs is far from over. Canada and Mexico's postponement is only until April 2. That also coincides with the kickoff of more tariffs. This time they're targeting foreign agricultural goods and other products. Trump also mentioned South Korea, India, and the European Union over what he said were unfair trade relations.There's no shortage of experts weighing in on what it all means. If you want to sound smart about the Trump tariffs, here are some of the best thinkers to follow.News briefSBF's crisis manager quit after the crypto scammer's surprise Tucker Carlson interview.Top NY Times editor Joe Kahn says the paper is adding readers in red states and still has room to grow.Deloitte and Accenture workers worry about losing their jobs as DOGE focuses on consulting contracts.It's the end of a wild era for Yeezy and Adidas.Salesforce cuts diversity hiring goals, joining Meta and Google in scaling back DEI initiatives.Broadcom just proved Nvidia will be looking over its shoulder for a while longer.Trump, once a crypto skeptic, establishes a bitcoin reserve.Sorry, American firms, the AI trade has moved to China.3 things in marketing1. Economists and betting markets agree: Odds of a recession are rising. The chance of a US recession jumped to 32% on Thursday on Polymarket, up 23% from late February. Wall Street economists say the reason is Trump-shaped the administration's unpredictable policy moves could shake consumer confidence to the core.2. Inside "Project Voyage," Goldman Sachs' grand plan to thin its ranks, cut costs. In addition to moving the bank's annual culling of underperformers up the calendar, CEO David Solomon plans to relocate employees from New York City to lower-cost areas like Dallas and Salt Lake City, people familiar with the program told BI. One former employee said Project Voyage is a multi-year plan, and you can expect these divisions to be the most impacted.3. How much do investment bankers really make? As Wall Street waits to see if a dealmaking rebound will fully materialize this year, recruiting firm Prospect Rock Partners heard from over 900 investment bankers on how much they earned in 2024. Check out some of the survey's highlights.3 things in tech1. The petition to standardize closed captions. BI's Katie Notopoulos has a bone to pick with streaming services: Captions are too hard to figure out. Every streamer has a different interface, posing a challenge for the 63% of Americans under 30 who prefer subtitles. Maybe you're swiping up, but what if it's actually down? Perhaps you accidentally click the dreaded "Play from the Beginning" button in the process. She thinks it's all too much, and it's also an accessibility issue.2. Amazon calls BS on Microsoft's quantum-computing claims. In an email to CEO Andy Jassy, Amazon's head of quantum tech expressed doubts that Microsoft's Majorana 1 quantum computing chip could do all it was hyped up to do, according to a copy of the email obtained by BI. Industry experts said tech companies might be generating more hype than substance in their attempts to outdo each other in the field.3. The shortcut for cheap AI. Distillation using one model to improve another has more potential today than ever, thanks to the plethora of open-source models that can serve as "teachers." While some developers celebrate the concept, the big AI companies behind foundation models need to justify and protect their pricey offerings.3 things in business1. These senators want an investigation into Elon Musk's X. Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Richard Blumenthal, Adam Schiff, and Chris Van Hollen are calling for a DOJ probe into X. Specifically, they want to know if X is leveraging Musk's political status to pressure companies into advertising on the social media platform, referencing an article from The Wall Street Journal article last month. Read the letters they sent to the DOJ and the FTC.2. Playing dress up with an AI twist. Fashion app Doji uses AI to help users virtually try on clothes, and early beta testers are loving it. One fan is none other than Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, who's also backing it through his venture capital firm Seven Seven Six.3. Social Security employees can't read news sites at work anymore. As the Trump administration continues restructuring the Social Security Administration, a recent agency-wide email announced new browsing restrictions for employees' work computers. Restrictions prohibit workers from checking the news, online shopping, and visiting sports sites. According to the email, the goal is to limit risk and protect sensitive information.In other newsI tried ChatGPT's new Deep Research. It was worth the extra wait of up to 30 minutes for its reports.A Las Vegas bar, a wedding venue, and a Swedish hotel: How retired Boeing 747s are being turned into tourist attractions.US-made Patriot missiles have protected Kyiv. Europe doesn't have an easy replacement.Kentucky's bourbon makers are up in arms about Canada yanking their bottles off shelves.VC Kelly Barton balances investing with winning IRONMAN world championships. Here's why she says her passion makes her a better investor.'Reacher' spinoff 'Neagley' will be out by the end of 2025 'with a bit of luck,' author Lee Child said.Software engineers at Google, Microsoft, and more share their best tips for landing a coding job in tech.DOGE cuts have pushed layoffs to the highest level since the pandemic. Robert Alexander/Getty Images BI Anadolu/Anadolu via Getty Images What's happening todayThe Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the February jobs report.Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will address the 18th annual U.S. Monetary Policy Forum.President Trump speaks at the White House Crypto Summit.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, associate editor, in New York. Elizabeth Casolo, fellow, in Chicago.

By 2017, the true crime podcasting space might have already seemed crowded but perhaps what it was missing was full body chills. That was the year Ashley Flowers and her pal Brit Prawat launched their true crime podcast Crime Junkie into an arena that already included pioneers like Serial (2014), Generation Why (2012), and My Favorite Murder (2016). The casual way Flowers narrated crimes to her friend, who responded with dramatic gasps and her trademark exclamation (Full. Body. Chills.), resonated and their breezy takes on everything from local Indiana cold cases to high-profile murders (they think Scott Petersons innocent) drew in legions of listeners so many, in fact, that Flowers was able to quickly quit her day job and turn her attention to podcasting, full time.Over the years, that dedication has paid endless dividends. Crime Junkie rapidly shot to the top of the podcast charts and never left; last year it was Apples second most-popular podcast beating out Joe Rogan. Its success enabled Flowers to launch her own expanded podcast network, Audiochuck, publish a bestselling thriller novel, and rake in a staggering $45 million a year. Bloomberg recently reported Flowerss revenue, along with news of an investment of $40 million from the Chernin Group, a venture capital firm thats funded cultural cornerstones like Tumblr and entertainment projects like Reese Witherspoons production company. That likely means the skys the limit for Flowers and Audiochuck, which according to Bloomberg was valued at $250 million. But with great opportunity comes great scrutiny and scrutiny hasnt always done Crime Junkie many favors.Theres no question that Crime Junkie is a juggernaut. But because its a juggernaut, it inevitably plays an outsized role in the broader conversation around true crime itself. So far, it sits uneasily within larger debates about responsible content creation, fan engagement, the rights of victims families, and the ultimate question of whether true crime is journalism or entertainment.Before 2016, Ashley Flowers wasnt an investigator her only interaction with the world of criminal justice was as a volunteer with her local Crime Stoppers branch, where she served on the board of directors. But that year, Flowers, then a 27-year-old startup worker, proposed a true crime radio segment to air on a local Indianapolis station in order to promote the Crime Stoppers organization. After about a year of doing the local segment, Flowerss lifelong bestie Prawat suggested she listen to Serial. Soon, Flowers had decided to expand her radio gig to a true crime podcast.It really started as a way to get the Crime Stoppers name out there, and it has grown into so much more and allowed for the platform to bring attention to a lot of really amazing nonprofits, Flowers said in a 2019 radio interview. Thats a slightly different narrative than the one she gave the New York Times in 2022. In that version, she said, I never saw this as a hobby. A telltale sign that she meant business: Instead of signing with an established podcast network, as most true crime podcasters do, Flowers launched Crime Junkie under her own studio, named Audiochuck after her dog. (Every Audiochuck podcast ends with a callout to Chuck, followed by an approving doggie yowl, presumably from the pup himself.)If Flowers was always gunning for success and independence through Crime Junkie, she found it fast. Crime Junkies growth from the outset was phenomenal; its listeners had an incredible zeal for the show. For fans of talky comedy true crime podcasts like My Favorite Murder, Crime Junkie offered a slightly more serious mode of delivery: Ashley got right down to narrating the story, with Brit chiming in to ask leading questions the way a listener might. Was it highly scripted and occasionally awkward? Sure. Did audiences care? Not a whit.2022 seemed to be a breakout year. Flowers gained new mass media attention when the New York Times covered the launch of her show The Deck, which she hosts. (The show focuses on the cold cases so far gone that law enforcement puts them on the backs of playing card decks that they distribute to prisons, hoping to find answers among inmates). That year, per the Times, the Crime Junkie fan club had tens of thousands of subscribers; that same year, Crime Junkie entered the No. 2 spot among top-ranked podcasts, behind Joe Rogan and ahead of The Daily, and has stayed there ever since, refusing to be dislodged. The shows massive popularity with women undoubtedly has a hand in its staying power; Edison Research has reported ever since 2022 that Crime Junkie reaches more women than any other podcast. While total listenership is hard to quantify, the stats are staggering: as of this year, Crime Junkie has racked up 500 million streams on Spotify alone, while the Audiochuck network boasts jaw-dropping stats of over 2.6 billion total downloads.Along the way, Flowers has launched multiple additional podcast series, most notably The Deck. Shes also brought multiple series to the network, including three series from journalist Delia DAmbra and Anatomy of Murder, co-hosted by former prosecutor and Investigation Discovery host Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi. In addition to Flowers writing her debut novel, All Good People Here a second novel arrives in May she and Prawat regularly tour the country, performing the show for sold-out audiences. The pair will soon play Radio City.On top of all this, Audiochuck recently announced that it would be moving into film and TV, which gives it the potential to expand an already massive platform even further. But whether that expansion is a net good for true crime itself depends on who you ask. The answer lies in whether Audiochuck is ultimately about serving journalism, entertainment, or an unholy mix of both.For Crime Junkie, accolades and controversies go hand in handIn 2019, journalist Adam Wren put together a longform profile of Flowers for Indianapolis Monthly dubbed The Problem with Crime Junkie. In it, he wrote scathingly about a live show performance in which Flowers and Prawat heavily implied the guilt of the victims father, even though he was provably innocent.The man who was indicted by a grand jury on 22 felony counts, including the murder of another child, is not the little girls father. Any armchair detective could tell you that straight away.But these two dont.Indeed, charges of irresponsible and unethical handling of cases have dogged Crime Junkie ever since its inception. Case in point the shows treatment of the Scott Peterson case, which was its second episode (a multi-parter) and among its most popular. It seems like the sole source for that Crime Junkie episode was them watching the A&E documentary series about the Peterson case, which was heavily biased and left out a lot of incriminating information pointing to his guilt, Robin Warder, host of long-running podcast The Trail Went Cold, told me. And they probably did not do any additional research. Warder also points to the shows conspiratorial take on the Kendrick Johnson case, a death he explains is generally understood to be a tragic accident. This can definitely be an issue when your show has a larger audience than anyone.Still, Warder is quick to acknowledge that many of these concerns are much, much larger than Crime Junkie itself. The true crime podcasting community has long struggled with ethical considerations and questions about how to pay respect to victims and their families while balancing the need for scrutiny of the criminal justice system. Then theres the fact that, well, this is entertainment. Flowers and Prawat have never identified as journalists, though they have hired and worked with journalists in the past.That lack of journalism training became a major source of controversy for the show fairly early in its run. As Wren reported, Cathy Frye, a journalist formerly of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, inadvertently ran across a Crime Junkie episode in which she claimed Flowers had thoroughly plagiarized her reporting on a 2002 murder. In a since-deleted Facebook comment, Frye alleged that not only did Flowers replicate details, story structure, and fail to give attribution, the podcast cheapened her award-winning reporting, turning it into entertainment. After Fryes post, multiple podcasters, including Warder, went on to allege that Flowers was routinely stealing their content, without giving them credit nor directing any of her massive listenership toward their shows. This 2019 dust-up wound up not only catching the attention of mainstream media, but prompted a community-wide conversation about plagiarism, both in true crime and podcasting writ large. The plagiarism scandal was beneficial at helping change the industry and making people recognize the issue, Warder acknowledged. In the end, Flowers made a habit that continues to this day of extensively listing her sources though Warder claimed that she never actually apologized to him or other podcasters who accused her of theft. Another major criticism of Flowers involves her podcast, Red Ball, which was meant to be a deep dive into the notorious unsolved Burger Chef murders. Instead, as Wren profiled, a lead investigator on the case wound up being reprimanded for giving Flowers and Crime Junkie unauthorized access to the case files a move that ultimately led to Red Ball being truncated. Other podcasters have since claimed that the debacle left the Indiana State Police unwilling to work with other media outlets, to the detriment of solving cases. (Audiochuck was unavailable for comment.)Last year, Charlene Shunick, whose sister Mickey was murdered in 2012, blasted Crime Junkie for releasing a paywalled episode about the crime. While Flowers did remove the episode, Shunick told me she wasnt happy with the response she received from the company. In an email exchange provided to Vox, Shunick reached out to thank the podcast for removing the episode and encourage Crime Junkie producers to undergo ethics training. She also wanted to know why her familys pleas for privacy in a closed case hadnt been respected. After a note assuring her that Audiochuck was taking [her] message to heart, her next question about what the company would do differently in the future received no response.Shunick told me that other victims family members had shared similar stories with her about their own interactions with the show. I dont think its absurd to expect to be asked for permission to tell our life stories, she said.In my opinion, it doesnt really seem like Crime Junkie cares about the family members of the people whose stories they profit off of.Still, while these criticisms arise, other families have nothing but praise for Flowers and her dedication to advocacy and using her platform to promote actual crime-solving. Crime Junkie has also focused more heavily on unsolved cold cases and missing persons cases as its grown more popular, sometimes despite complaints from fans. Flowers herself has donated money to criminal justice groups, DNA testing funds, and other investigative non-profits. She also founded her own cold-case fund, Season of Justice, which has proven to be remarkably effective at creating movement and even solving cases. The organization claims to have generated 20 SOJ Solves since its inception.Warder himself is quick to note what a difference Crime Junkies massive platform has made in solving cases both because its enabled Flowerss financial philanthropy and because its gotten listeners involved. Years ago, he said, I covered this murder case on The Trail Went Cold, and it wound up being solved and an innocent man was exonerated because the right listener just happened to be listening to a Crime Junkie episode about it and took action.Warder speculated that Crime Junkie listeners may not explore the community outside of the realm of Audiochuck. While there are ample examples of Crime Junkie listeners asking for and receiving recs for other podcasts, it is true that Crime Junkie, and the Audiochuck network, can seem like its own isolated archipelago in the true crime ocean. Perhaps the bigger question is: Does that matter? If youre on an island of true crime, who cares if that island is your version of a five-star resort? If all of this is ultimately about entertainment, then by any standard, Crime Junkie is a roaring success. But if true crime strives to enlighten as well as entertain, then Crime Junkie may still have lots of room to grow.See More:

The Great Gatsby is 100 years old this year, which feels right in a way. After all those years as a perennial mainstay of the American high school English curriculum, all those Gatsby-themed flapper parties, all those valiant but ham-fisted attempts to adapt it, we know the beats of it well: the parties, the glamour, the green lights, and the beautiful clothes. It might as well be a hundred. On the other hand, there are parts of Gatsby that feel so fresh and modern that they could have been written yesterday. In our own moment, as the worlds richest man takes a hatchet to the federal government for sport, one of Gatsbys most celebrated lines about the very wealthy feels resoundingly true: They were careless people They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. Theres something reassuring about knowing that Gatsby is the book weve chosen to put in classrooms and movie theaters, to make it one of those culture touchstones that everyone more or less knows at least a little. But Gatsby did not become an immediate institution in American life, and we dont know it as well as we think we do. Gatsby is a much more complicated book than its pop culture footprint suggests. Its big enough to survive all those turgid high school essays about color symbolism and the American dream, all those drinking parties with girls in backwards headbands, all those mediocre movies and bad plays. Heres the story of how The Great Gatsby has endured and why we keep misreading it. How F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a masterpiece and became a legendAs laid out by Matthew J. Bruccoli in the definitive Fitzgerald biography, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, F. Scott Fitzgerald set out to fulfill his promise as one of the most promising novelists of his generation with The Great Gatsby in 1925.His second book, 1922s The Beautiful and Damned, had been considered a letdown. Readers agreed it was beautifully written, but felt nonetheless that it didnt quite live up to the standard set in his acclaimed debut, This Side of Paradise. Critics began to wonder if Fitzgerald wasnt a man with a gift for expression without very many ideas to express. To write The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald drew upon his own experience as the rejected poor suitor to multiple rich girls. He was from a middle-class family, but the fancy boarding school education that led him to Princeton had him rubbing elbows with the wealthy. In college Fitzgerald dated a society debutante, whose father warned him that poor boys shouldnt think of marrying rich girls. When he courted his eventual wife Zelda, also a debutante from money, he was an unemployed and unpublished writer. Zelda refused to marry him until he had a source of income, and Fitzgerald responded by building his own legend as a handsome, romantic, hard-living celebrity novelist, gallivanting from party to party across New York City.Zelda Sayre and F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Sayre home in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1919. Bettmann Archive via Getty ImagesThese events provide the loose skeleton of the plot of The Great Gatsby: Poor young James Gatz falls in love with the glamorous socialite Daisy, but doesnt have enough money to marry her. Gatz spends the next five years pursuing various illicit money-making schemes until he is as wealthy as an emperor, transforming himself into the mythical figure of Jay Gatsby, a man he hopes will be rich and polished enough to win Daisys hand. What Gatsby doesnt understand is that Daisys old-money breeding demands more than just vulgar, splashy wealth.That last element of the story comes from Fitzgeralds own ambivalence about wealth and what it did to people, and what he really thought about the old-money families he lived so closely beside. I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich, and it has colored my entire life and works.I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich, and it has colored my entire life and works, Fitzgerald observed in 1938. He himself ran through his money as fast as he possibly could; he was well-paid for his work, but his debts piled higher and higher, and he kept having to write commercial short stories he thought were bad in order to maintain his extravagant lifestyle. Bruccoli reads Fitzgeralds inability to manage his finances as an expression of his contempt for both money and those who had it: If he could waste it, Bruccoli writes, then it didnt own him. If that was Fitzgeralds thought, the idea didnt exactly work out. The inevitable result, Bruccoli concludes, was that he was in bondage to it after all because he had to earn the money he was squandering.Gatsbys attitudes toward wealth are similarly ambivalent. Money is what generates Gatsbys famous glitz and glamour, the parties full of jazz and cocktails and fireworks that sound so fun that people keep trying to replicate them a hundred years later. It is what makes Daisy, Gatsbys lost love, so alluring: that her voice is full of money. Yet money is also what corrupts Daisy, what makes it possible for her to accidentally kill a poor woman and drive away from the accident without stopping. Money, in this novel, makes people careless.Gatsby is a fraught, vexed book, all the more lovely because it is so ambivalent. When it came out in 1925, it was considered a masterpiece. T.S. Eliot called Gatsby the first step American fiction has taken since Henry James. It made Fitzgeralds reputation. It also arguably ruined his life. He spent the next nine years working to write a book that could be its equal, descending ever more inexorably into alcoholism as he did. He would publish two more novels 1934s Tender Is the Night and the posthumous The Love of the Last Tycoon in 1940 but neither of them would be as celebrated as The Great Gatsby. As the Depression continued, Fitzgerald came to be dismissed as a relic of the boom time, a chronicler of the rich whose moment was long gone and whose continued alcoholism was all too apt a fate. As Fitzgeralds star faded, so too did Gatsbys reputation. In the last month of his life, before he died in 1940 at the age of 44, Fitzgerald sold only seven copies of the book and made $13.13 in royalties.Gatsby comes to the classroom A first edition of The Great Gatsby at the London International Antiquarian Book Fair in 2013. Oli Scarff/Getty ImagesLike many great artists, Fitzgerald enjoyed a critical reappraisal almost as soon as he was dead. His publishers packaged the incomplete Love of the Last Tycoon with a reprint of The Great Gatsby, a canny move that reminded the literary world just how great Fitzgerald was at his best and primed the larger public to remember his name. It took World War II for Gatsby to become an institution, when the US government began shipping small paperback editions of popular novels out to the troops for morale. Gatsby was one of the books chosen for the program, with 155,000 copies distributed across the armed services. Now, the book was not just well-regarded but also inescapable. It would take decades more, however, before Gatsby reached the place where most people meet it today: the classroom.For a long time, American high school English classes didnt teach much American literature. All the great stuff was by Europeans, the thinking went, and American literature was so simple and straightforward that it simply wasnt worth teaching. The increased patriotism of World War II got more American novels into the classroom, but even then, they tended to be the authors of the so-called American Renaissance of the early 19th century: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau. Over the course of the midcentury, however, American schools became invested in new criticism, a form of literary analysis that focuses on analyzing prose at the level of the sentence and the symbol rather than focusing on the social context in which a book was written. Schools also became more interested in giving their students books that felt newer and more relatable; perhaps even books written in the 20th century. The Great Gatsby presented itself as a solution to a number of these problems.Gatsby is short and its sentences are straightforward and easy to read, making it less intimidating for teen readers than a brick like Moby-Dick. Its central theme is the inaccessibility of the American dream, which makes it nicely relevant to an American literature unit. And it is riddled with the kind of color symbolism that high school teachers love to point out: the green light that represents both lost love and money; the white dresses that suggest Daisys apparent purity; the looming blue eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, watching over everything like God in an advertisement. It is in many ways a perfect pedagogical text.By 1993, The Great Gatsby was one of the top 10 most assigned books in high school English classes across the US, and it remains a mainstay of the high school curriculum. Yet as time accumulates between us and Fitzgerald, his prose becomes harder for students to read, and some of the pure pleasures of Gatsby can disappear. Its hard to graduate high school without having encountered Gatsby in some form or other, but if your sole focus as a student reader is on tracking every time the words red, white, and blue appear in the text, you might have less time to focus on the idea that wealth and class corrupt their owners. What students know most of all about The Great Gatsby now is that it certainly says something about the impossibility of the American dream, without necessarily knowing how scathing Fitzgeralds treatment of that dream is an ironic problem in our own era of broligarchs who love to move fast and break our things. Seeing beyond Gatsbys glitz Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan as Gatsby and Daisy in Baz Luhrmanns Great Gatsby (2013). Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.If many of us are missing the point of Gatsby when we sit in our English classrooms, most attempts to adapt the canonical book for the stage and screen also falter. Most Gatsby adaptations and in fact, much of our culture is most interested in the part of the novel about partying in a flapper outfit: the glamour of the soirees, the kick of the cocktails, the silhouette of Gatsby in his tailored suits and Daisy dancing the Charleston with marceled curls. We tend to ignore what happens to Daisy and Gatsby after the glamour has been torn away from them, when they become shabby. Since Gatsby entered the public domain in 2021, New York has hosted multiple theatrical adaptations. Both The Great Gatsby, a glitzy musical, and The Gatsby Experience, a Sleep-No-More-style immersive experience, played all of the love stories with a schmaltzy sentimentality that asks the audience to break its heart for not only Gatsby and Daisy but also for cynical, dubiously heterosexual Nick and Jordan. Then theres Baz Luhrmanns 2013 film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, which stages Gatsby as a hectic and hedonistic swirl of parties and violence. Jack Claytons 1974 adaptation, starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, comes closest to finding the balance, pitting dingy 70s grays and a naturalistic camera against Redford at his most shiningly charismatic as Gatsby. Even Clayton, though, is defeated by the storys sensational and highly symbolic ending, which defeats all attempts to shoot it straightforwardly. The Gatsby adaptation that has moved me most, the one that is the best argument of Gatsbys relevance, is the Elevator Repair Service Companys Gatz, which played its final New York performance at the Public Theater last fall. Only Gatz seems to understand why weve kept reading Gatsby for so long, or at the very least, the best reason we have for continuing to read Gatsby for so long: because it is simply a very beautiful book.Gatz strips away all of Gatsbys spectacle. It takes place in an anonymous 90s office with cigarette stains on the faux-wood paneling and cardboard bankers boxes littering the floor. One worker, unable to get his computer to boot up, happens upon an old copy of Gatsby stuffed in the back of a desk and begins to read.It is more beautiful than pink linen suits, more beautiful than Lana Del Rey singing a sad song, more beautiful than a stage full of chorus girls in sequins and beads.Over the course of the next eight hours, Gatzs Nick reads the whole of Great Gatsby out loud, as his office brings the story to life around him. The desks get pushed together and pulled apart to become cars, tea tables, dance floors. Drunken revelers strew old paperwork around the place when they get rowdy. And Gatsby well, Gatsby is as unglamorous as James Gatz was before he ever put on a white linen suit: a middle-aged middle manager with a bald spot in bad khakis. Across this unprepossessing set, from these unassuming figures, Fitzgeralds language rolls out in great golden tides, so beautiful as to overwhelm you. It is more beautiful than pink linen suits, more beautiful than Lana Del Rey singing a sad song, more beautiful than a stage full of chorus girls in sequins and beads. The gift Gatz gives you is simply to force you to sit still long enough for them to show you how beautiful The Great Gatsby is.Gatsby has survived this long because of a series of accidents: because a paperback edition fit well into the pockets of soldiers during WWII, because it meshes nicely with the educational goals of the standard 11th-grade English syllabus, because its fun to film and stage all those Jazz Age party sequences. But Gatsby makes the best argument for its own continued relevance when we strip those circumstances and accidents away and allow the text, shining as bright as the green light at the end of Daisys dock, to show us all what it can do.See More:

GTA 6 could cost much more than a regular game, another expert predicts, so you better start saving for Rockstar Games' next big open-world adventure now here's all we knowTech13:28, 07 Mar 2025GTA 6 is still coming this year (apparently)(Image: Rockstar)Grand Theft Auto 6 is pretty much nailed on to be this year's biggest entertainment release (if it does launch in 2025), but with Rockstar Games keeping quiet, there's still so much we don't know.Fans think they've found a developer that 'confirmed' that the game is still on track for this year, while even John Cena is poking fun at the studio's radio silence.With the weight of the gaming industry on its collective shoulders as studios try to avoid releasing games too close to it, and fans combing over a trailer that's almost 18 months old, we've put together everything we know about the game so far. Here's all we know about GTA 6 so far.Rockstar could headline one of the best years in gaming(Image: Rockstar)While GTA 5 had three playable protagonists, GTA 6 is expected to star Lucia, the series' first female protagonist in 25 years, and her partner who some believe to be named Jason.The game will be set in the state of Leonida, a Florida-like region that includes swampy regions and the all-important Vice City, similar to the Los Santos region and San Andreas in GTA 5.It marks Rockstar's first release since 2018's Red Dead Redemption 2 since the poorly-received GTA Trilogy remasters were developed by Grove Street Games and Video Games Deluxe.It's the first new GTA game since 2013's GTA 5, not including regular updates to GTA Online in the 12 years that have followed.GTA 6 may be the most anticipated game of all timeJust like you, we wish we knew, but we do know that, as things stand, the studio is aiming for 2025.Publisher Take-Two Interactive will launch Borderlands 4 in September, which has some fans expecting GTA 6 to drop in October or November. That would help the publisher space out its own releases.For now, though, Take-Two's earnings call has merely confirmed that GTA 6 is expected for this calendar year but there's every chance it ends up slipping.It's been a long time since GTA 6 got its first reveal via a stunning trailer which you can see above, and that's still the last time Rockstar has said anything about the game publicly.That was December 2023, with the company going an entire calendar year and change with no further updates, so what's next?One former Rockstar developer has suggested that Rockstar are likely 'geeking out' over fan anticipation, though.Mike York, who worked at Rockstar New England as an animator for six years, contributed to both GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2.Here's hoping we get a new trailer soon(Image: Rockstar)"All the developers over there are geeking out about it, trust me," he explains."When I was over there I would have little conversations with people and be like, Did you hear this person found this mystery? And theyd go, Oh yeah!"Speaking about the delay between trailers, York suggests this is very intentional on Rockstar's part, saying "The more they're silent the better it is". He also said that while the trailer could be released at any time, Rockstar is probably enjoying the marketing without necessarily doing anything to feed the fire."They could easily release the trailer date and be like, Hey this is when the trailer's coming out, but they don't do it. And they don't do it on purpose because it's a really, really good marketing tactic. If you think about it, it creates these really cool theories."All of this is to say, expect whatever Rockstar's next move to be to be a significant one.How much would you pay for a trip to Vice City?(Image: Rockstar)We've heard before how Take-Two and Rockstar pricing the game higher could help 'save' the games industry, and while some have said it's unlikely, another analyst has said it's not as crazy as it sounds.Earlier this week, one analyst suggested the game could cost $100 (around 80), with added incentive offered by GTA Online currency.We think the company has plans to sell the game at a previously unheard-of price point, and suspect that management can offer consumers an incentive to pay $100 or more per unit by rewarding them with a large amount of in-game currency to be spent in GTA Online, Michael Pachter's research note suggested.Imagine this on a high-end PC(Image: Rockstar)As things stand, GTA 6 is only confirmed for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S consoles. While that'll definitely disappoint PC players, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has hinted it could come to PC just like the studio's other titles have."With regard to others in our line-up, we don't always go across all platforms simultaneously. Historically, Rockstar has started with some platforms and then historically moved to other platforms," he told IGN.We have seen PC become a much more and more important part of what used to be a console business, and I wouldn't be surprised to see that trend continue, he added. Of course, there will be a new console generation.Article continues belowThankfully, PC gamers can at least enjoy the GTA 5 Enhanced Edition as a free upgrade to the last game.For more on GTA, be sure to check out the news that Rockstar has acquired a new studio, or the latest map 'leak' that dwarfs GTA 5's Los Santos.For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is getting a full reveal in a matter of weeks, but some of the company's older consoles will no longer get repairs which may worry collectorsTech11:25, 07 Mar 2025Repairs for 3DS consoles are being phased out(Image: Bloomberg via Getty Images)The Nintendo Switch 2 has been revealed, but the console's launch lineup, pricing, and all-important release date remain a mystery until April 2. That's when the company will hold a special Nintendo Direct focused on the system.While we've heard so much about the Switch 2 regardless, however, with the most recent suggestions being that it'll have a dual-screen attachment a la the DS, and it that might be available in Russia despite the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.The company might be looking forward, but that does mean it's time to cut loose some of its older systems, with Nintendo announcing some of its older handhelds are going the way of the Dodo.Keep your 3DS safe!(Image: Getty Images)Fear not, Switch customers Nintendo's current console isn't being visited by the reaper just yet, but there's bad news for anyone still playing their 3DS, at least in Japan.Earlier this week, a Nintendo statement said "as we have run out of parts necessary for repairs, we have stopped accepting repairs for the new Nintendo 3DS LL and Nintendo 2DS systems" (machine translated).It had previously given warning last February, but now support is winding down more quickly. While it only applies to Japan for now, it's a safe bet parts are in short supply across the globe.It's perhaps a little unsurprising given the console launched all the way back in 2011, and no new games have been released for it since 2021.Prior to the Switch 2's full reveal, Nintendo also confirmed it's no longer running its 'My Nintendo Gold Points' program, too.The Switch 2 is expected to require the company's full focus, with suggestions it's ramping up production to avoid stock issues. That could help the system blow past the first console, and the PS5's initial sales in its first quarter, according to one expert.Article continues belowFor the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.

Take a ride on Koraidon (Honda)The Pokmon Company has revealed a bizarre collaboration with Honda, featuring the legendary star of Pokmon Scarlet.Pokmon is one of the highest-grossing media franchises in the world, so naturally it has spawned a mountain of weird collaborations over the years.Whether its clothing team-ups with Levi, the upcoming collaboration with Wallace and Gromits Aardman Animation, or that Pikachu-themed song by Katy Perry, Pokmon is a prime source of cross-media oddities, as it cements its transmedia dominance.However, a company collaboration we didnt have on our bingo cards was Honda. After the Japanese car company teased a Pokmon motorbike last week, it has now revealed a life-sized bike based on Pokmon Scarlet cover star Koraidon.The bike is sadly just a concept, but it is on display at the Honda Welcome Plaza Aoyama in Tokyo, from today until Sunday, March 9.As such, images of the bike have emerged online and it looks really impressive. The model is described as an almost life-size reproduction of Koraidon in both weight and size. Its on display in Japan (Honda)While the model on display is stationary, it uses proprietary self-balancing technology to enable Honda Koraidon to walk on all four legs. The model Koraidon also has changing legs, neck, and facial movements which can be adjusted, along with its sprint speed, according to a description on the Honda website.More TrendingIn the game, Koraidon is a legendary pokmon which you can ride just like a motorbike and its surprising just how much Hondas design looks like it. As usual for Pokmon, Scarlet and Violet are almost identical but the equivalent of Koraidon in Violet is the creature Miraidon, who works in a similar way.Miraidon has already been turned into a motorbike, but one created by Toyota rather than Honda. It was shown off in a similar manner last year, but its unclear if either bike will ever be shown anywhere outside of Japan at this point it seems unlikely though.As for the future of Pokmon, beyond motorbike replicas, the next major game is set to be Pokmon Legends Z-A later this year. A new game, titled Pokmon Champions, was also recently announced during the latest Pokmon Presents. Miraidon was brought to life via Toyota (Toyota/The Pokemon Company)Emailgamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below,follow us on Twitter, andsign-up to our newsletter.To submit Inbox letters and Readers Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use ourSubmit Stuff page here.For more stories like this,check our Gaming page.GameCentralSign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content.This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy