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Hustle culture may be the norm at tech companies in the AI era, but the work will stop tomorrow at publishing platform makers Medium. Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine is giving its employees permission to take the day off to participate in tomorrow’s nationwide general strike protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Activists behind the general strike are calling for “no work, no school, and no shopping” amid a push to defund ICE, which has escalated raids in U.S. cities, killing several people including two U.S. citizens earlier this month in Minneapolis. In a Slack message shared today with…
If you ask Yann LeCun, Silicon Valley has a groupthink problem. Since leaving Meta in November, the researcher and AI luminary has taken aim at the orthodox view that large language models (LLMs) will get us to artificial general intelligence (AGI), the threshold where computers match or exceed human smarts. Everyone, he declared in a recent interview, has been “LLM-pilled.”On January 21, San Francisco–based startup Logical Intelligence appointed LeCun to its board. Building on a theory conceived by LeCun two decades prior, the startup claims to have developed a different form of AI, better equipped to learn, reason, and self-correct.Logical…
On a Wednesday afternoon in early January, Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, was sitting in a sprawling suite on the 57th floor of the Aria hotel in Las Vegas. Dressed in a neat navy cardigan and clean white sneakers, he lounged on a sofa set against a dramatic vista of the neon city and the desert beyond, framed by floor-to-ceiling windows. Bier was in Vegas for the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show, one of the most influential annual tech conferences on Earth, where he was meeting with advertising clients and evangelizing the work he’s done to enhance user-experience on the…
Fintech firm Marquis told customers that it plans to seek compensation from its firewall provider after blaming the company for a breach that allowed hackers to steal its customers’ personal and financial data. In a memo shared with customers this week and seen by TechCrunch, Marquis said it believes that its August 2025 ransomware attack happened because the company’s firewall service provider SonicWall had its own data breach that exposed critical security information about its customers’ firewalls. That earlier breach of SonicWall allowed hackers to obtain credentials needed to launch a ransomware attack against Marquis, the memo said. Marquis said…
At first glance, the scuffle in the video seems shocking. A New York City school principal, waving a bat, stops masked ICE agents from trying to enter the building behind her, and instead of violence, the encounter erupts with cheers from onlookers. “Let me show you why they call me bat girl,” she says to them. In other clips like it, a server flings a bowl of hot noodles at two officers dining at a Chinese restaurant, and a shop owner flexes her Fourth Amendment rights. None of the encounters end in bloodshed.The videos, equal parts tense and bombastic, are…
After blaming a recent outage on a U.S. power failure at one of its data centers, TikTok told advertisers they may notice “features or ads missing from campaigns,” according to an email reviewed by ADWEEK. “We’re working to restore our services following a power outage at a U.S. data center,” it continued. TikTok added that the outage may leave advertisers experiencing “technical issues with monetization features in TikTok Ads Manager or through partners using TikTok APls.” The platform’s rollout of its new joint venture in the United States, TikTok USDS, led by Oracle and a cadre of politically connected investors, seems…
After years of negotiations and false starts, Waymo is now allowed to operate a robotaxi service to and from the San Francisco International Airport (SFO). The Alphabet-owned company said in a blog post Thursday it will begin offering access to SFO to a select number of riders before offering it to all customers in the coming months. Pickups and drop-offs will occur at the SFO Rental Car Center, which is accessible via AirTrain. Waymo said it plans to serve additional airport locations in the future. Waymo’s SFO win comes as the company faces criticism and concerns about safety in some…
Even now that the data is secured, Margolis and Thacker argue that it raises questions about how many people inside companies that make AI toys have access to the data they collect, how their access is monitored, and how well their credentials are protected. “There are cascading privacy implications from this,” says Margolis. ”All it takes is one employee to have a bad password, and then we’re back to the same place we started, where it’s all exposed to the public internet.”Margolis adds that this sort of sensitive information about a child’s thoughts and feelings could be used for horrific…
After teasing its seventh Super Bowl appearance earlier this month, Oikos released the full version of its 2026 Big Game spot today, giving viewers a complete look at the streaming-only ad that will run on Peacock during Super Bowl 60.The ad, titled “The Big Hill,” stars NFL running back Derrick Henry and actor-comedian Kathryn Hahn navigating San Francisco’s steep streets as a visual metaphor for strength. The full cut expands on the teaser’s core idea, leaning into both physical exertion and comedic relief as Hahn and Henry confront increasingly absurd uphill challenges.The spot reinforces Oikos’ long-running brand platform, “Stronger Makes…
After rapidly hitting the top of the App Store in October, OpenAI’s video-generation app Sora is now struggling. New data suggests the app is seeing declines in both app downloads and consumer spending, as the early hype about the AI video social network wears off. Powered by OpenAI’s video generation model Sora 2, the iOS version topped 100,000 installs on day one, despite being an invite-only experience. It soon hit the No. 1 spot on the U.S. App Store, and it reached the 1 million downloads milestone faster than ChatGPT. At the time, Sora’s app was iOS-only and still required…
Jensen Huang sure seems to be having a lot of fun in China this week. The Nvidia CEO has been spotted going for a leisurely bike ride and browsing a fresh fruit stand in Shanghai, as well as enjoying beef hot pot at a humble restaurant in Shenzhen.The carefree tour is not just good optics. Huang has real reason to be feeling upbeat: His long-running lobbying campaign in Washington has, in effect, finally paid off. While Huang was gallivanting around China, multiple news outlets reported that Beijing had approved the sale of hundreds of thousands of powerful Nvidia H200 AI…
When a Coke mascot chooses Pepsi, it’s almost un-bearable.Today, Pepsi Zero Sugar unveiled its Super Bowl 60 commercial, “The Choice,” a 30-second ad airing in the second quarter in which a certain cola-loving bear takes the Pepsi Challenge and ultimately chooses a Pepsi product over Coke Zero Sugar.The revelation triggers an existential crisis for the polar bear and sends it on a journey of self-discovery, ultimately ending in a callback to a meme-able kiss cam moment during a Coldplay concert last year.Academy Award-winning filmmaker Taika Waititi directs the ad—which is set to Queen’s “I Want to Break Free”—and also makes…
As AI races into classrooms worldwide, Google is finding that the toughest lessons on how the tech can actually scale are emerging not from Silicon Valley, but from India’s schools. India has become a proving ground for Google’s education AI amid intensifying competition from rivals, including OpenAI and Microsoft. With more than a billion internet users, the country now accounts for the highest global usage of Gemini for learning, according to Chris Phillips, Google’s vice president and general manager for education, within an education system shaped by state-level curricula, strong government involvement, and uneven access to devices and connectivity. Phillips…
Last year, the Trump administration and members of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) forcibly took over the US Institute of Peace (USIP), an independent nonprofit. Since then, the organization’s fired board and employees have been fighting to regain control of the USIP building in Washington, DC and for the reinstatement of their jobs in a drawn-out court battle.Now, in a letter sent to the Department of Justice (DOJ), representatives for the USIP’s fired board and employees argue that the administration is violating a court-issued stay by making physical changes to the building and, to their understanding, moving ahead…
In 2025, Novartis created a stir during Super Bowl 59 by using Hailee Steinfeld and the female anatomy to draw attention to breast cancer. This year, the brand is back in the Big Game, and it’s getting cheeky in a new way.For its second year in the Super Bowl, Novartis, a global innovative medicines company and the official pharmaceutical partner of the NFL, is showcasing NFL tight ends and their … you know … “tight ends” in the name of prostate cancer. The campaign, “Relax, It’s a Blood Test,” features several NFL tight ends, including George Kittle (San Francisco 49ers), Colby…
Google announced on Thursday that Google Maps users can now access Gemini hands-free while walking and cycling. The update comes a few months after Google Maps rolled out its Gemini-powered hands-free, conversational driving experience. The announcement marks Google’s ongoing efforts to plug Gemini into more parts of people’s everyday lives, while shifting Google Maps from static directions to real-time, conversational navigation. When you’re walking around and navigating with Maps, you can now ask Gemini questions like “Tell me more about the neighborhood I’m in,” “What are some must-see attractions?” or “Are there cafes with a bathroom along my route?” Google…