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Whether you’re worried about the open network at your local coffee shop or want to get around geo-restrictions when you’re traveling, NordVPN can help. A virtual private network (VPN) is like a protective tunnel, keeping your data safe from prying eyes. VPNs aren’t perfect protection (you need to trust your VPN provider), but they’re always going to be better than nothing when you’re using a public hotspot. They also make it easy to continue to watch your favorite shows even when you’re on vacation. If you want to learn more about how to protect yourself online, see our guide to…
This week has been another revolving door of hires and promotions at brands, from marketing reshuffles to high-profile appointments.We’re rounding up the U.S. and global marketing leadership moves you should know about for the week ending Jan. 16.– The Walt Disney Company announced that it is creating a new enterprise marketing and brand organization to be led by Asad Ayaz as its first-ever chief marketing and brand officer.– Coca-Cola has expanded the remit of its top marketer, Manolo Arroyo. From March, he’ll take on the role of executive vp and chief marketing and customer commercial officer. The soda giant has also introduced a…
Earlier this week, the California attorney general’s office announced that it was investigating xAI over reports that the startup’s chatbot, Grok, was being used to create nonconsensual sexual imagery of women and minors. On Friday, the government followed up by sending a cease-and-desist letter to the company, demanding that it take immediate action to stop the production of nonconsensual intimate images and CSAM — child sexual abuse material. “Today, I sent xAI a cease-and-desist letter, demanding the company immediately stop the creation and distribution of deepfake, nonconsensual, intimate images and child sexual abuse material,” said California AG Rob Bonta in a…
Renee Nicole Good was a poet, a mother of three, a wife. Within hours of her death, as far as the government was concerned, she was a domestic terrorist.On January 7, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot Good through her car windshield and window in Minneapolis. She appeared to have four gunshot wounds, according to The New York Times, which cited a Minneapolis Fire Department report. Hours after the shooting, Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem accused Good of “[weaponizing] her vehicle.” President Donald Trump claimed the 37-year-old had “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over” the agent who killed her.…
The last three months of the year belonged to MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), as it was the only cable news network to experience across-the-board growth in primetime and total day.The network, which changed its name in November, led the quarter with double-digit growth in total viewers and the advertiser-coveted Adults 25-54 demo.Fox News still finished as the most-watched cable news network, but it was the only network not to grow in the quarter in both measured categories across the two featured dayparts.Fox News ChannelAccording to Nielsen big data + panel, Fox News averaged 2.070 million total primetime viewers and 190,000…
Runpod, an AI app hosting platform that launched four years ago, has hit a $120 million annual revenue run rate, founders Zhen Lu and Pardeep Singh tell TechCrunch. Their startup journey is a wild example of how if you build it well and the timing is lucky, they will definitely come. The story includes bootstrapping their way to over $1 million in revenue; landing a $20 million seed round after VC Radhika Malik, a partner at Dell Technologies Capital, saw some Reddit posts; and gaining another key angel investor, Hugging Face co-founder Julien Chaumond, because he was using the product…
Leaders at Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab confronted the startup’s cofounder and former CTO, Barret Zoph, over an alleged relationship with another employee last summer, WIRED has learned.That relationship was likely the alleged “misconduct” that has been mentioned in prior reporting, including by WIRED.To protect the privacy of the individuals involved, WIRED is not naming the employee in question. The individual, who worked in a different department than Zoph and was in a leadership role, is no longer at the lab.Murati approached Zoph to discuss the relationship, sources say. The cofounders’ working relationship broke down in the months following that…
The first full week of 2026 saw the three evening broadcasts start on an upswing for a variety of reasons. NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas won the advertiser-coveted Adults 25-54 demo battle for the week by the slimmest of margins, a strong start for the network’s evening franchise.Meanwhile, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir and the first week of the CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil showed positive movement in both total viewers and Adults 25-54 compared to the transitional week the week before, spanning the end of 2025 and the start of 2026.The previous week was also…
Database provider ClickHouse secured $400 million at a $15 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported, representing about a 2.5x increase from its $6.35 billion valuation last May. The round was led by Dragoneer Investment Group, the startup said, with participation from investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, GIC, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. ClickHouse, which spun out from Russian search giant Yandex in 2021, develops database software designed to process the massive datasets required by AI agents. The company competes with Snowflake and Databricks. The company also announced the acquisition of Langfuse, a startup that helps developers track and evaluate…
Here in the Pacific Northwest, we’re heading into the cold and windy season, which generally means power outages. One of the best ways to stay prepared for those cold and dark days is a portable power station like the Jackery Explorer 300 Plus, which is currently marked down by $100 at Best Buy and by the same amount at B&H. It’s compact enough to tuck away in a cabinet for a rainy day, but still has enough juice to power small and medium sized devices.I actually picked up one of these a few weeks ago ahead of a big windstorm,…
John Gentry, a longtime advertising executive and the chief executive officer of supply-side platform OpenX, died Wednesday evening after a long battle with cancer. He was 58.A post to Gentry’s LinkedIn profile Thursday evening read: “If you are reading this, it means that I’m no longer around and lost my fight with cancer. While I am dying earlier than most, I outlived myself by 28 years, thanks to a kidney transplant and modern medicine, and I’ve had a wonderful life. I am a lucky and thankful man.” Gentry went on to express gratitude for the many people he bonded with during…
TikTok has quietly released a new standalone short drama app called PineDrama in the U.S. and Brazil. The app offers access to micro dramas, which are essentially bite-sized TV shows that can be watched in a series of one-minute episodes. Think TikTok, but every single video you come across is a short episode of a fictional story. PineDrama is available on iOS and Android. It’s free and currently ad-free, though that could change in the future. The news was first reported by Business Insider. You can find content through the app’s “Discover” tab, where you can sort through “All” or…
You know what’s great about a show like Pluribus? It’s that we don’t really know what’s going on, so we get to speculate. Just like real life! In case you haven’t seen this show, which just finished its first season, here’s a quick recap:A radio transmission arrives from a planet 600 light-years away, and the message turns out to be RNA code for an alien virus. Some fool synthesizes it, and it infects almost everyone on Earth, causing them to act as one entity—a hive mind with common goals, values, knowledge, everything. The show’s title comes from the old US…
OpenAI is finally ready to see if its users will trade their screen real estate for a free chat.The AI giant announced Friday that it will begin testing ads within the Free and Go tiers of ChatGPT in the “coming weeks,” marking a watershed moment for the world’s most popular AI chatbot as it adopts a traditional monetization approach.Ads will appear at the bottom of ChatGPT answers when there’s a relevant sponsored product or service tied to the ongoing conversation, the company said in a blog post. The company said that ads will be “clearly labeled and separated from the…
The Trump administration wants the largest electricity grid to add $15 billion worth of new power generation — and he wants tech companies to pay for it, even if they don’t need the capacity. The White House and the governors of several states in the region want grid operator PJM to hold an auction for 15-year contracts for new generating capacity. The administration said it wants tech companies to bid on the contracts even if they don’t ultimately need the power for their data centers. Demand from data centers is expected to increase nearly threefold over the next decade. PJM said…
OpenAI plans to start testing ads inside ChatGPT in the coming weeks, marking a significant shift for one of the world’s most widely used AI products. The company announced Friday that initial ad tests will roll out in the United States before expanding globally.OpenAI says ads will not influence ChatGPT’s responses, and that all ads will appear in separate, clearly labeled boxes directly below the chatbot’s answer. For instance, if a user asks ChatGPT for help planning a trip to New York City, they will still get a standard answer from the chatbot, and then they also might see an…