Three years after being caught off guard by ChatGPT, Gemini appears to have everything it needs to take down OpenAI and everyone else.
The ChatGPT creator lost out when Apple and Google announced a deal for Gemini to power Siri, but a source told the Financial Times that the company made “a conscious decision to not become the custom model provider for Apple,” instead prioritizing its own AI hardware with ex-Apple designer Jony Ive.
Nia DaCosta’s 28 Years Later sequel turns the franchise on its head with a story about spirituality in the end times.
Fourth-quarter profit was up 35 percent for the advanced chipmaker that boasts Nvidia, AMD, and Apple as clients. It has now posted year-over-year growth in every quarter for the last two years, hitting a new record in Q4.
Planet-heating carbon and methane pollution had actually fallen by around 20 percent over the past decade, but ticked back up again in 2025 as the Trump administration slashed environmental regulations.
The US Environmental Protection Agency also announced this week that it plans to stop calculating the economic benefits of improved health from cleaning up air pollution.
New US dietary guidelines promote more protein and beef tallow, potentially moving Americans further away from a low-carbon diet.
Rahman has reported on a dizzying number of new features coming to Android over the past 10 years — we’ve covered many of his findings! — but he’s leaving Android Authority for something new, he announced today. Wishing him all the best!
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With the renewed “multi-year partnership,” A24 films will come first to HBO and HBO Max after leaving theaters. The two sides initially announced a deal in 2023.
The AI industry employee shake-up continues. The three staffers, who had left for ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s own AI startup, are now back at OpenAI. Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of Applications, wrote on X that she was “excited to welcome Barret Zoph, Luke Metz, and Sam Schoenholz back” and that the decision “has been in the works for several weeks.”
[X (formerly Twitter)]
That’s me on The Vergecast, debating the finer points of our CES 2026 Best in Show: the Lego Smart Brick. Why is it smart, and is it an affront to the imagination? Spoiler: my wife isn’t convinced! And did David make the pew-pew sounds when he was a kid? Tune in.
Mira Murati, its founder and CEO (as well as ex-CTO of OpenAI), announced that the AI startup has “parted ways with Barret Zoph,” its co-founder and CTO, who is also an ex-OpenAI employee. Murati said that Soumith Chintala will take over as Thinking Machines Lab’s finance chief.
[X (formerly Twitter)]
The studio, Camouflaj, hasn’t been “completely laid off,” as one Arkham series fan page reported; Camouflaj experienced layoffs but is not shutting down, Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton tells The Verge. The team is now “just a handful of employees” working on “the new user experience for upcoming hardware,” former Meta employees tell Aftermath.
Update: Added Aftermath’s reporting.
The new red-purple hue will be available on January 28th, adding a more vibrant alternative to the original “Graphite” version we reviewed last month. However, it looks like the “Fig” color will only be an option for the more expensive $679.99 64GB version of the Scribe Colorsoft.
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When I wrote about Nike’s “neuroscience-based” Mind 001 and 002 shoes, I thought they looked uncomfortable. The 22 nodes in each shoe are meant to stimulate your foot’s pressure points and relax your mind, and those nodes “hurt,” according to shoe reviewer Chris Chase at WearTesters.
They might be a particularly bad match for Chase, who has arthritis in the balls of his feet. Still, the discomfort and general gimmicky vibe is a pass from Chase (and me).
The Atlantic reached out to a number of top investors in Elon Musk’s AI company in response to the flood of nonconsensual deepfakes generated by Grok on X. They said nothing. Other companies that provide infrastructure to xAI — Nvidia, Google, Apple, Oracle, and AMD — also kept quiet.
While Grok has infuriated policymakers around the world, the list of investigations has grown slowly, with the latest addition being California AG Rob Bonta. Meanwhile, Grok continues to undress women, despite reports claiming otherwise.
[The Atlantic]
Two days after Nick Benson asked for donated dashcams in order to document the behavior of federal immigration agents flooding his city, Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by federal agent Jonathan Ross.
”It was immediately clear that ICE was lying about it,” Benson told 404 Media. Donations have jumped since then, and Benson distributes the cameras to local community organizers and whoever wants them.
With the launch, any user can start a community on “on nearly any topic,” according to TechCrunch. That would solve one of my biggest issues with the platform when I tested it last year. The public beta rollout is live now, Digg says.
Update: Digg posted about the beta.
[TechCrunch]
”Did you decide in the middle of the hearing to officially abandon the FCC’s independence? Or had that decision already been made by you and President Trump prior to the hearing?” Rep. Rob Menendez (D-NJ) asked. Carr said he’s “pleased that the FCC website reflects my views.”
Real people died while Trump treated war like a meme stock.
That’s according to Nothing CEO Carl Pei, who, in a big post on X, also said that:
Memory is fast becoming one of the most expensive smartphone components and potentially the single largest cost driver in the bill of materials by year-end, with estimates suggesting that memory modules which cost less than $20 a year ago could exceed $100 by year-end for top-tier models.
Well, they’re not kids anymore, but things are not looking good for the cast of Euphoria in the new season 3 trailer, which sees just about everyone involved in some kind of criminal enterprise or... content creation. The series returns to HBO on April 12th.
