Tech

Source: The Verge For my last issue of the year, I’m focusing on the AI talent war, which is a theme I’ve been covering since this newsletter launched almost two years ago. And keep reading for the latest from inside Google and Meta this week. But first, I need your questions for a mailbag issue…

Source: The Verge To try to counteract the impact their pollution has on the climate, Google and other big companies have bought into a plan to trap carbon dioxide using rocks. They recently announced multimillion dollar deals with a Sheryl Sandberg-backed startup called Terradot. Google, H&M Group, and Salesforce are among a gaggle of companies…

Source: The Verge For the last day of ship-mas, OpenAI previewed a new set of frontier “reasoning” models dubbed o3 and o3-mini. The Verge first reported that a new reasoning model would be coming during this event. The company isn’t releasing these models today (and admits final results may evolve with more post-training). However, OpenAI…

Source: The Verge YouTube is taking a tougher stance on clickbait, saying it will remove content with titles or thumbnails that promise viewers “something that the video doesn’t deliver,” as spotted earlier by TechCrunch. This change will “slowly” roll out in India first, according to YouTube’s blog post, but will “expand to more countries” in…

Source: The Verge Japanese accessory maker Sanwa Supply has released a new 240W USB-C cable with a flexible design that could help prevent damage, as spotted by Tom’s Hardware. The USB-C connectors on either end of the cable can rotate 360 degrees and bend from side-to-side up to 180 degrees, reducing strain on ports and…

Source: The Verge The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced a new “voluntary national framework for the evaluation and oversight” of autonomous vehicles, a bureaucratic first step that could eventually open the floodgates for fully driverless cars. But there’s a twist: the agency wants self-driving car companies to cough up more data. The proposed rules…

Source: The Verge The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has filed a lawsuit against Zelle and three banks that own it — Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase — claiming they failed “to protect consumers from widespread fraud.” Zelle is a payment network designed to compete with payment platforms like Venmo and Cash…