David Gilbert / Wired:
Meta’s fact-checking partners, including USA Today, say they were blindsided by Meta’s decision to drop them and reject claims of being “too politically biased” — Fact-checkers claim they had no idea the company was going to end their partnerships and are scrambling to figure out the financial implications of the move.
Asus unveils the 2025 Asus XG Mobile, a $1,200+ portable docking station with the world’s first Thunderbolt 5 eGPU, with an option to add a GeForce RTX 5090 (Sean Hollister/The Verge)
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Asus unveils the 2025 Asus XG Mobile, a $1,200+ portable docking station with the world’s first Thunderbolt 5 eGPU, with an option to add a GeForce RTX 5090 — This smoky black translucent box isn’t a gaming PC — instead, it might be the most powerful single-cable portable docking station ever conceived.
Sources: Anthropic is in advanced talks to raise $2B in a round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners that would value it at $60B (Berber Jin/Wall Street Journal)
Berber Jin / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Anthropic is in advanced talks to raise $2B in a round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners that would value it at $60B — The Amazon-backed OpenAI rival was valued at $18 billion last year.
People are taking horrific videos like of mass shootings and using Runway’s AI tools to insert cartoons, likely to bypass social networks’ automated moderation (Emanuel Maiberg/404 Media)
Emanuel Maiberg / 404 Media:
People are taking horrific videos like of mass shootings and using Runway’s AI tools to insert cartoons, likely to bypass social networks’ automated moderation — People are using the popular AI video generator Runway to make real videos of murder look like they came from one of the animated Minions movies …
CFTC chair Rostin Behnam will resign on January 20; on his watch the CFTC deepened scrutiny of crypto and event contracts, like those allowing bets on elections (Stefania Palma/Financial Times)
Stefania Palma / Financial Times:
CFTC chair Rostin Behnam will resign on January 20; on his watch the CFTC deepened scrutiny of crypto and event contracts, like those allowing bets on elections — CFTC chair Rostin Behnam will step down on day of president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration
For months, Meta hid posts that included LGBTQ+ hashtags for all users who had their sensitive content filter turned on; Meta claims this was done erroneously (Taylor Lorenz/User Mag)
Taylor Lorenz / User Mag:
For months, Meta hid posts that included LGBTQ+ hashtags for all users who had their sensitive content filter turned on; Meta claims this was done erroneously — Posts with LGBTQ+ hashtags were hidden under Meta’s “sensitive content” policy which restricts “sexually suggestive content”
Source: OpenAI may launch agents this month and has been cautious, as rivals like Anthropic moved ahead, partly due to concerns of prompt injection attacks (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information)
Stephanie Palazzolo / The Information:
Source: OpenAI may launch agents this month and has been cautious, as rivals like Anthropic moved ahead, partly due to concerns of prompt injection attacks — Imagine you’re asking a computer-using agent from OpenAI, Anthropic or Google to find and order a new outfit for your upcoming holiday party …
Meta is dropping fact-checking after incoming FCC head Brendan Carr threatened it over such practices, undercutting the notion that Meta’s move was principled (Adi Robertson/The Verge)
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Meta is dropping fact-checking after incoming FCC head Brendan Carr threatened it over such practices, undercutting the notion that Meta’s move was principled — I have to commend Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his new policy chief Joel Kaplan on their timing.
Screenshots: several employees’ posts critical of Meta’s new board member Dana White were deleted by Meta’s ICC, which aims to “minimize disruption” internally (Jason Koebler/404 Media)
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
Screenshots: several employees’ posts critical of Meta’s new board member Dana White were deleted by Meta’s ICC, which aims to “minimize disruption” internally — “Insulting, criticizing, or antagonizing our colleagues or Board members is not aligned with the CEE.”
Lenovo unveils the $499 Legion Go S, the first authorized third-party SteamOS handheld, weighing 1.6 pounds and ditching the previous gen’s detachable gamepads (Sean Hollister/The Verge)
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Lenovo unveils the $499 Legion Go S, the first authorized third-party SteamOS handheld, weighing 1.6 pounds and ditching the previous gen’s detachable gamepads — Lenovo is trying an experiment. In May, it will officially become the very first company outside of Valve to ship a handheld gaming PC …
