• Warning: Major spoilers ahead for "The Last of Us" season two.
• The final episode of season two delivers a fast, tragic twist for Ellie (Bella Ramsey).
• It also heavily suggests what to expect from "The Last of Us" season three.

Warning: Major spoilers ahead for "The Last of Us" season two.

"The Last of Us" season two ends with a bang, as Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) finally come face-to-face for a moment in the last episode.

This season has pulled on the audience's heartstrings with gut-wrenching moments, chief among them Joel's (Pedro Pascal) death in episode two. But the series' exploration of grief and love has been just as emotional as the brutal violence that Ellie was forced to watch, and the season finale doubles down on it all.

The finale sees Ellie and Jesse (Young Mazino) head to Seattle to try to find Tommy (Gabriel Luna). They even hear over the radio that he uses a sniper rifle to murder numerous members of the Washington Liberation Front. But after the pair disagree about getting revenge on Abby, Ellie decides to go it alone and follow Abby's group to the Seattle aquarium.

After a brief detour and a clash with the Seraphites, Ellie eventually finds her way there and kills Abby's ally Owen (Spencer Lord) almost immediately. But Ellie is forced to reckon with the consequences of her actions when she realizes that she accidentally shot the heavily pregnant Mel (Ariela Barer) too, who begs her to perform an emergency C-section but dies seconds later.

It puts Ellie's revenge tour into perspective, as Tommy and Jesse bring Abby back to the Seattle hotel. When they arrive, Tommy questions whether Ellie can make peace with Abby's survival, and she replies, "I guess I'll have to."

However, shortly after, Ellie and Jesse hear Tommy shouting, and they rush to find out what's going on. As soon as Jesse bursts through the door, Abby shoots him in the head, killing him, while Tommy lies injured on the floor.

Abby tells Ellie, "I let you live, and you wasted it," before shooting at her — and it cuts to black. It's a much bigger cliffhanger than the end of the first season, albeit those who played the game will be expecting it, and it's a faithful adaptation of that moment in the games.

Still, the way it's executed will definitely get audiences tuning in when "The Last of Us" season three eventually arrives.

However, the final scene suggests that the HBO series will switch things up when it returns.

"The Last of Us" season two ending is faithful to the game

After the brief stand-off in the theater, the episode cuts away to Abby taking a nap on a couch. As she wakes up and walks around the WLF base, it becomes clear that she's staying in the Seattle SoundView stadium, another location from the game.

A line of text reads: "Day One," similar to the way the show has dated Ellie and Dinah's (Isabela Merced) journey through Seattle.

This heavily implies that "The Last of Us" season three will switch perspectives to show audiences Abby's journey after killing Joel, in the same way that the game shows players her side of the story. In the game, this ultimately changes the player's perception of the character and the decisions she's made.

HBO has already greenlit "The Last of Us" season three

Fans eagerly awaiting "The Last of Us" season three will be glad to know that HBO greenlit the show's return before season two was released in April 2025. According to the Film and Television Alliance, the third season is expected to start production in June 2025.

Most of the season two cast is likely to return for the next batch of episodes, so expect Ramsey, Dever, Luna, and Merced to reprise their roles.

The next season does not have a confirmed release date, but if season three follows the same pattern of a two-year gap between seasons one and two, it could return in in early 2027.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

• At 25, Martina Smidova felt there had to be more to life than the daily grind of a 9-to-5 job.
• She quit her corporate job in the Czech Republic to travel around Asia before settling down in Thailand.
• Living in Koh Samui made her realize she didn't have to follow a conventional life path.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Martina Smidova, a 29-year-old digital nomad living in Koh Samui, Thailand. It has been edited for length and clarity.

At 25, I felt trapped in my corporate job.

I was working 9-to-5 as a project manager in the automotive field in the Czech Republic. With an hourlong commute each way, it felt like I was always either at work or on my way there.

One day, it hit me: there has to be another way to live. So I quit.

I decided to find a remote job and live abroad. I didn't have a plan B. I told myself that I'd figure it out, and off I went to Asia. I'd visited before on vacation, and it felt like the right place to start over.

I spent half a year in Bali before traveling around the region, including to countries like Vietnam and Malaysia. But Thailand stuck with me the most.

It was the people, the food, and the lifestyle. I felt comfortable here — almost like home — so I decided to stay.

After spending time in Chiang Mai, about 450 miles north of Bangkok, and meeting my boyfriend in Phuket, we decided to move to Koh Samui together.

I wanted to experience island life

At the same time, I also wanted access to modern amenities. Living in Samui, you have everything you need — plus peace and quiet.

There are parts of Samui that are well-developed and attract many tourists, but if you travel to the other side of the island, you'll find villages that feel frozen in time.

A year ago, my boyfriend and I moved into a two-bedroom condo in Bangrak, in the northeastern region of the island. We found it on Facebook Marketplace.

I knew I wanted to be in a good location. Even though it's a small island, I didn't want to travel an hour to get to the gym or somewhere else I needed to be.

We pay 55,000 Thai baht, or about $1,700, each month in rent. We have a common pool, but the view from the balcony sold me on the unit.

I have gotten to know some neighbors because I keep bumping into them, but because we are on such a holiday island, many of the apartments are Airbnbs.

It was hard for me to make friends

I still feel that way sometimes. There are different communities of people on the island, but they are often a bit older than I am.

I met all of my friends either through the gym or through other friends. While the digital nomad community of young people is slowly growing, many don't stay for a long time. That's the sad part about this lifestyle — you meet amazing people and then they're gone.

But the locals are really open to helping you, so I reach out when I need something.

I do get by just by speaking English, but I believe my experience here would be much better if I could speak Thai — that's why I'm planning to learn the language.

My life here is so different from back home

Now I work in operational management. But since my clients are in Europe, I work European hours, which start at 2 p.m. in Thailand.

I have the whole morning to myself. I'll go to the gym, have a nice breakfast, head to a coffee shop, or meet up with my friends.

I start work in the afternoon and usually finish up around 6 or 7 p.m. Then it's time to have dinner or to go for a walk on the beach.

Back home, everybody was rushing. I saw stressed faces all the time, but it wasn't their fault.

In order to meet up with friends, you need to schedule it three months in advance because everyone's so busy. But here, people are so chill.

My mom came to Samui to visit me last year. It was her first time in Asia, and she experienced culture shock.

I remember driving her from the airport, and she asked me incredulously, "You like it here?" It took her two weeks on the island to change her mind, and in the end, she didn't want to leave.

Living abroad broadened my horizons

I'm going to be 30 soon, and I don't plan on having kids yet. I'm not sure if I ever will, and I think that's something that won't resonate with my friends back home.

Before I started traveling, I didn't think about it as a choice. You grow up, you get a career, then you get a family, and that's how life works.

When I started meeting people who made the decision to pursue different careers or not have families, I realized, "Oh, it's a choice."

I try to reflect on my life every now and then. I've been living Thailand for four years, and even today, I still have moments when I can't believe that this is my life.

I don't plan on moving back in the foreseeable future. Of course, I miss my family, but I don't miss the lifestyle.

• K-pop fans' desire for flawless pictures of their idols has created a niche market in Asia's tech scene.
• Businesses are offering day rentals of Samsung Galaxy phones to concert goers for under $50.
• The Galaxy phones have powerful 10x zoom lenses, helping fans leave concerts with perfect pictures.

It's the new K-pop concert starter kit: a T-shirt emblazoned with your favorite singer's name, a band light stick, and a rented Samsung phone with a razor-sharp zoom.

K-pop fans clamoring for a picture of their favorite singers have carved out a niche market within the South Korean tech industry, with people shelling out money to rent Samsung Galaxy phones for a day.

K-pop concerts have been known to easily and repeatedly sell out arenas that can seat upward of 16,000 people, such as the Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul. And a strong zoom lens is crucial for fans seated far from the stage.

So, phones with 10x optical zoom lenses are now a key part of the concert survival tool kit.

At least a dozen established businesses in Southeast Asia offer day rentals of phones like the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and Galaxy S24 Ultra for under $50.

Both phones, released in February 2023 and January 2024, respectively, have strong 10x optical zoom lenses. Samsung did not respond to a request for comment for this story from Business Insider.

$30 to rent a Samsung phone for a day

Small businesses and individuals rent phones for concert day use all across Southeast Asia. But in South Korea — the home of K-pop, where concerts go on all year round — the market is particularly hot.

One business offering this phone rental service is Snapshoot. Founded in 2022, the company rents phones for 30,000 to 50,000 South Korean won, or about $22 to $37, daily.

Mingwan Jeong, the founder of Snapshoot, told BI his business serves hundreds of customers monthly and is increasingly attracting customers from outside South Korea, such as Japan, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

"When Samsung released the S22 Ultra, their promotional slogan emphasized its capability to 'photograph the moon,'" Jeong said. "Fans quickly recognized that this advanced camera could help them capture their idols clearly at concerts."

He said Snapshoot started in 2022 with a small inventory of 10 phones, but now keeps several hundred smartphones in stock at any given time.

Another example is Woori Mobile Service, a South Korean telecommunications company that started renting out phones in 2023. Its collection points are at Seoul's Konkuk University and the hip Sinchon neighborhood. It also has a pickup point at Seoul's Incheon airport, catering to Woori's foreign clients.

"Many of them didn't own the latest smartphones or didn't want the hassle of international roaming," Han Da Bean, a spokesperson for Woori Mobile, told BI.

The company offers rentals of the S23 and S24 models, charging 35,000 won or about $25 per day, and a 10,000 won daily reservation fee.

"Samsung's flagship models like the S23 Ultra and S24 Ultra offer exceptional camera and audio capabilities, especially in low light and concert environments, making them ideal for fans looking to record memories in high definition," Han added.

He said the company serves 50 to 100 rental customers a month, typically renting out the phones for three to seven days. They see a spike in activity during major K-pop festivals and tour seasons, he added.

Han said Woori Mobile keeps an inventory of about 20 Samsung devices, but it plans to expand to other models like the Galaxy Z Fold and Flip series and add more mid-range models for budget-conscious users.

Forholiday, a luggage storage and rental company in Seoul, also offers phone rentals, with its services available on Klook. It has rented phones to more than 2,000 customers, per the Klook listing.

The company rents the S23 Ultra for 11,800 won and the S24 Ultra for 15,700 won daily.

Forholiday's CEO, Shin Dong-min, told BI the company's phone rentals are a stopgap for cost-conscious fans.

"It is inevitably burdensome to buy expensive mobile phones to use them for a short period," Shin said.

Shin said Forholiday sees the most demand around concerts by boy bands BTS, Seventeen, Stray Kids, and Zerobaseone.

Worth every cent

Some K-pop fans who've rented phones for concerts have said the experience was worth every cent.

"I own an iPhone 11, which works pretty well except the phone camera is limited to a 3x, which means I can't do any close-up fancams if I'm in any seat beyond VIP," Ghia Hong, a content creator from Malaysia, told BI.

TikTok user wanderwithgaby also posted about renting a Samsung S25 for 50,000 South Korean won.

"It was the best money I spent," she wrote in the caption of a zoomed-in fan video of BTS member J-Hope.

A+ marketing for Samsung

To be sure, Samsung's smartphones are not the only phones with a strong zoom lens.

Google's Pixel 9 Pro's specs say it produces pictures with the quality of a 10x optical zoom. Apple's iPhone 16 Pro has a 5x optical zoom function and a 25x digital zoom option. Other Asian brands like Oppo, Huawei, and Xiaomi are strong contenders, too.

Still, the rental service is doing wonders for Samsung's image.

Parker Burton, a tech reviewer and content creator on YouTube with over a million followers, said Samsung likely became the phone of choice because the brand has a huge fan base on home ground in South Korea.

"I think a big part of it can stem from the fact that it's a brand that people are used to and familiar with and has a lot of trust and loyalty in the community," Burton said.

Catherine Bautista, a partner at Flying Fish Lab, a branding consultancy agency in Singapore, said Samsung is also core to fan culture, and rentals have made it "the default choice for K-pop enthusiasts."

"Renting out Galaxy S23/S24 Ultra phones for K-pop concerts is a brilliant reputation booster for Samsung because, instead of simply competing on specs, Samsung dominates a niche need and turns fans into brand ambassadors," she said.

Bautista said Samsung has also positioned itself as the "official phone of K-pop" by sponsoring concerts, featuring top idols in its advertisements, and releasing special edition phones.

Samsung recently tapped Felix Lee, a singer from the band Stray Kids, as its newest ambassador. Lee, who is also a house ambassador of fashion powerhouse Louis Vuitton, is the face of the ad campaign for the brand's latest super-slim Galaxy S25 Edge phone.

And with Stray Kids now on a 34-city tour, the group's fans can sing, dance, and zoom in on their idols' faces to their hearts' content.

• Critical Role launched "Daggerheart" — its own tabletop roleplaying game system — on May 20.
• The team's eight cofounders are going all-in for a splashy promo for the game, "Age of Umbra."
• There's a lot riding on "Daggerheart's" success — and CCO Matt Mercer says it'll be a "major part" of the team's future.

Critical Role, the nerdworld business that has sold out stadium shows in and outside the US, just launched its new game, "Daggerheart," after more than a year of beta testing.

The team's cofounders rolled out the game on-stream on May 20, kicking off a new era for the business's game-making arm, Darrington Press.

"Daggerheart" plays like a sophisticated, modern answer to the 50-year-old "Dungeons & Dragons" — the Hasbro-owned game that first made CR nerdworld-famous. Now, the eight CR cofounders run a multi-division business that spans live shows and streaming, podcasting, Amazon-backed animations, gaming, and publishing.

The "Daggerheart" starter kit comes with a 366-page rulebook, around the same length as the main "D&D" rulebook. The core set comes with 279 player cards. Unlike "D&D," CR's "Daggerheart" involves the use of a card system that outlines each character's backstory and history.

Matthew Mercer, CR's chief creative officer, told Business Insider that the process of creating Daggerheart has been a "wild and rewarding journey."

"The scale of collaboration between both studying what elements of TTRPG gaming we've all been drawn to, and then implementing those lessons into a new game system has been a whole host of new challenges and unexpected revelations along the entire process," Mercer said.

"There's still so much more to come, and Daggerheart will most definitely be a major part of CR's future and content alongside everything else we've been working on," he added.

The eight cofounders are using other arms of the company to promote "Daggerheart." They're releasing an eight-part miniseries where they'll all be at the table, playing the game. It's titled "Age of Umbra," a dark fantasy-themed adventure that premieres on May 29.

Mercer told BI "Age of Umbra" is a marked departure from Exandria, the high fantasy setting that CR has been streaming in for its main campaign for 10 years.

Mercer said guiding the seven other cofounders, who've been playing "D&D" on-stream for a decade, was easier than he expected.

"We intentionally designed the game to be quite intuitive, and while there's always a learning curve to any new system — especially if you're having to unlearn habits from other game systems — everyone ultimately slipped into the game rapidly and comfortably," he said.

Designing 'Daggerheart'

Spenser Starke, the lead game designer for "Daggerheart," told BI that the game has been built for narrative-focused play, but it also has the latitude for "cinematic combat."

"The most challenging part of designing the game for me was trying to ensure all the mechanics felt balanced and locked together at every level to create a cohesive game," Starke said.

The player cards, Starke said, were a high-priority item for the development team, particularly the ancestry, community, and subclass cards — elements that go into character creation.

CR's Darrington Press created "Daggerheart" in-house, meaning Starke and his crew of designers built the book to the final stages of production, overseeing everything from art to the last edits.

One of the later additions to the rulebook that Starke and his team made was campaign frames, a quick-start method for new players to get their home games going.

"The design team spent so much time, effort, and energy putting that chapter together, and I'm really proud of what we created," Starke said. "We're truly so excited for people to take the format for campaign frames and start building their own."

Starke and Mercer also teased that there'll be more updates coming down the pipe soon.

"We can't announce anything officially, but know we are working every day on new, exciting stuff for 'Daggerheart,'" Starke said.

• Mahesh Chayel, a product management lead at Meta, mentors AI startups outside his job.
• He outlined the three steps founders need to take to sell their AI vision.
• "The biggest gap I've seen is essentially, why use Gen AI?" he said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Mahesh Chayel, a product management lead at Meta. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Since 2018, I have mentored 12 startups, especially those operating in the enterprise and AI spaces. The biggest gap I've seen is essentially, why use Generative AI?

I work closely with early-stage founders to shape product strategy, refine their go-to-market approach, and explore how AI can be meaningfully integrated into their solutions.

I bring a unique blend of deep product experience at scale, having worked on Meta Ads, along with a strategic understanding of enterprise pain points from my time in Silicon Valley.

I also help teams clarify what real customer problems are worth solving, how to validate their solution early, and how to position their offering to resonate with decision-makers, especially in business-to-business environments.

This is what I tell founders who are building in AI.

1. Hyper-focus on the customer

I work with a couple of founders who are like, "Let's use AI and then let's build a product."

If this problem could have been solved in other ways, what would it look like? And if they are using Gen AI, is AI the best use of technology in that case? In some cases, it can be.

As a customer facing a problem, you really don't care how to solve it. It's more about, are you solving these problems for the customer in a better way?

Founders usually start thinking: If somebody else is going to use the same idea, use AI or Gen AI to solve the problem faster. Founders iterate a lot and keep trying to solve the problem through different mechanisms.

Can you be super laser-focused on the customer? Can you really identify how this technology can specifically solve the problem? If it doesn't, find other ways to solve it.

2. Get product-market fit right

People sometimes measure product-market fit in an incorrect way.

For some, even before building the product, their product market fit is not very clear.

It's not about 100 or 10,000 people looking at this product and just being aware of it. Many times, the first-time sale is not a good mechanism because all of those metrics can be gamified.

You can spend a lot of money on ads and make the product available to a lot of people. You can provide discounts and sell the product first time to a set of customers.

The most important thing for product market fit is: Do your set of customers really love and trust the product to keep using it and coming back?

That's the real crux of it. Product market fit comes down to retention metrics or the repeat purchase of a product.

3. Understand the business model

A startup I gave advice to was essentially building an AI tool for young adults — AI companions. The founder was not generating money from this.

There are a couple of parts. Young adults are not the real users who are going to pay for the product. You would need to identify who can really pay. It can be the parents, it can be the schools where these kids are studying.

It was a breakthrough to help this founder really understand the business model that can work in such a space. We uncovered that the market wasn't quite there yet, at least not in the way the founder had imagined.

While disappointing at first, it helped them redirect their focus toward a more validated pain point, saving months of effort and repositioning the company for a better product-market fit.

Take a step back: Who is the product used by? Who is the product paid by? How can it scale?

As a founder, sometimes you get so attached to the problem that you don't see the larger space.

This restart has helped the startup build a more sustained business now.

Whether it's unlocking growth or steering away from misaligned markets, I measure success by how much clarity and conviction founders gain in their next move.

• Trump said Sunday he'll delay a 50% tariff on EU goods until July.
• European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she had a "good call" with Trump.
• The US still has a baseline 10% tariff on the EU.

President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he agreed to extend the deadline for a 50% tariff on the EU from June 1 until July 9.

"I received a call today from Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, requesting an extension on the June 1st deadline on the 50% Tariff with respect to Trade and the European Union," he said on his Truth Social platform. "I agreed to the extension — July 9, 2025 — It was my privilege to do so."

"The Commission President said that talks will begin rapidly," he added.

Earlier on Sunday, Von der Leyen said on X that she had a "good call" with Trump.

"The EU and US share the world's most consequential and close trade relationship. Europe is ready to advance talks swiftly and decisively," she wrote.

In April, Trump imposed 20% tariffs on the EU before issuing a 90-day pause and lowering the levy to 10%. However, Trump recently floated a 50% tariff for the EU, calling the 27-member group of nations "very difficult to deal with."

The Trump administration recently forged a trade agreement with the United Kingdom and is working on a trade pact with China, which has had the most tumultuous trade relationship with the United States since the beginning of Trump's second term.

Two days after threatening to impose a 50% tariff on imports from the European Union, President Trump on Sunday paused the levies until July and said talks would start "rapidly."

Why it matters: The threat of such a large tariff, on more than $600 billion of goods, sent a chill through markets that feared a sudden re-escalation of the trade war.

Catch up quick: On Friday, Trump posted to Truth Social that the EU had been "very difficult to deal with" and that talks were "going nowhere!"

• He said he'd recommend a tariff starting June 1 that was more than double what he'd imposed on "Liberation Day" in early April (but paused a week later).

Yes, but: On Sunday evening, Trump said he'd received a call from Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, requesting a pause until July 9.

• "(It) was my privilege to do so," he said on Truth Social.
• In a post to X, von der Leyen said the EU was "ready to advance talks swiftly and decisively."

The intrigue: The Financial Times reported on Friday the U.S. was preparing to reject an approach on trade from the EU, demanding instead that the Europeans make unilateral tariff cuts first.

• Trump later said in the Oval Office he was "not looking for a deal" with Europe.

What to watch: The EU is the midst of a public review on a proposed list of tariffs on about $100 billion in U.S. goods.

• The fate of that review, and any other counter-tariffs, are up in the air for now in light of Sunday's developments.

• Movie theaters saw record sales this Memorial Day weekend.
• "Lilo & Stitch" and "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning" led the way.
• Disney's 'Lilo & Stitch' is expected to make over $180 million, a Memorial Day weekend record.

This year, Americans are gathering on Memorial Day weekend for barbecues, picnics, and, apparently, "Lilo & Stitch."

Movie theaters earned a record $325 million at the box office this weekend, the most-ever for a Memorial Day weekend, with Disney's live-action reboot of "Lilo & Stitch" claiming the top spot.

"Lilo & Stitch" brought home a whopping $145 million in its opening weekend, while "Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning" starring Tom Cruise brought in another $63 million. Continued strong showings from "Sinners" and "Thunderbolts*" also contributed to the record turnout.

"Lilo & Stitch" is expected to make over $180 million by the end of the day Monday, which would unseat "Top Gun: Maverick," which earned $160 million when it opened on Memorial Day weekend in 2022, as the highest-grossing Memorial Day debut of all time.

It's a comforting sign for the film industry, which has weathered several storms since the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything for movie theaters. At the time, theaters transformed into ghost towns, and the multibillion-dollar industry came to a near halt. The rise of streaming has also eaten into its profits, as did the 2023 strike by actors and writers.

The success of "Lilo & Stitch" also marks a positive turn for Disney's live-action reboots, several of which have performed poorly in recent years.

Disney's live-action "Snow White," a remake of the 1937 animated classic "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," opened to disappointing numbers in March. Disney's live-action remake of "Dumbo," directed by Tim Burton, also flopped at the box office in 2019.

The debut of "Lilo & Stitch" is now one of the best-ever debuts of Disney's live-action remakes, following "The Lion King," which made $191 million over three days in 2019, and "Beauty and the Beast," which collected $174 million over three days in 2017.

• Google launched a new AI search mode in the US, and it could impact Reddit's growth.
• Reddit's stock fell as analysts predicted a decline in traffic thanks to Google's AI.
• Reddit said its most loyal users were key to its business and is refining its own AI search engine.

Google announced last week that it is rolling out a new search tool powered by AI that it's calling, simply, AI Mode.

That could be bad for Reddit.

Reddit has grown significantly over the past year, thanks in large part to Google prioritizing Reddit links in its search results and because searchers are often looking for human input on an internet increasingly dominated by AI and automated bots.

At Google I/O last week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai described AI Mode as a "total overhaul" of the company's search tool. AI Mode will offer users a more conversational experience, rather than the traditional list of links. That means Google can give a user information found on Reddit, without that user ever having to visit the site.

This will mostly affect Reddit's logged-out users, who are more casual visitors without their own accounts. Logged-in users are Reddit's everyday fans. Much of Reddit's growth is with logged-out users coming through Google Search.

On Monday, Reddit's stock dropped about 5% after Wells Fargo said it expected Reddit traffic to decrease as "Google more aggressively implements AI features in search."

It wasn't the first time that changes to Google's search feature caused Reddit's stock to fall. Shares of the company fell by over 15% in February after Huffman said in an earnings call that the site saw traffic "volatility" in the fourth quarter after Google tweaked its search algorithm.

While algorithms are often shifting (just ask a digital news organization), Wells Fargo said recent user disruptions on Reddit are "likely more permanent" as search behavior changes in response to Google's AI advancements.

Reddit, however, says that its logged-in users, who come to Reddit directly, are the primary driver of its business.

"A lot of our product work allows us to develop and consistently grow those logged-in users, which are the bedrock of our impressions and inventory because of their very long engagement on Reddit," Reddit Chief Operating Officer Jen Wong said at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, & Telecom Conference in March. "It's not existential for us … I think the business is extremely healthy because, again, it's powered by the logged-in users."

Reddit also has its own internal AI search tool, Reddit Answers, which replies to searches with a list of relevant information found in posts on the site.

Ultimately, Huffman says he is confident that Reddit will hold its place on the internet because of the human interactions it provides.

"There's no doubt LLMs will evolve search on the internet. We can all see that. It's awesome," he said in an earnings call with investors earlier this month. "Sometimes people will want the summarized, annotated, sterile answers from AI, and we're even building this ourselves in Reddit Answers. But other times, they want the subjective, authentic, messy, multiple viewpoints that Reddit provides."

"So in the same way that Reddit for the last decade has been an alternative to social media — social media being performative and manicured, and Reddit being the opposite — Reddit communities and conversations will be an alternative to AI search answers," he added.

• Yann LeCun says there are four traits of human intelligence.
• Meta's chief AI scientist says AI lacks these traits, requiring a shift in training methods.
• Meta's V-JEPA is a non-generative AI model that aims to solve the problem.

What do all intelligent beings have in common? Four things, according to Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun.

At the AI Action Summit in Paris earlier this year, political leaders and AI experts gathered to discuss AI development. LeCun shared his baseline definition of intelligence with IBM's AI leader, Anthony Annunziata.

"There's four essential characteristics of intelligent behavior that every animal, or relatively smart animal, can do, and certainly humans," he said. "Understanding the physical world, having persistent memory, being able to reason, and being able to plan, and planning complex actions, particularly planning hierarchically."

LeCun said AI, especially large language models, have not hit this threshold, and incorporating these capabilities would require a shift in how they are trained. That's why many of the biggest tech companies are cobbling capabilities onto existing models in their race to dominate the AI game, he said.

"For understanding the physical world, well, you train a separate vision system. And then you bolt it on the LLM. For memory, you know, you use RAG, or you bolt some associative memory on top of it, or you just make your model bigger," he said. RAG, which stands for retrieval augmented generation, is a way to enhance the outputs of large language models using external knowledge sources. It was developed at Meta.

All those, however, are just "hacks," LeCun said.

LeCun has spoken on several occasions about an alternative he calls world-based models. These are models trained on real-life scenarios and have higher levels of cognition than pattern-based AI. LeCun, in his chat with Annunziata, offered another definition.

"You have some idea of the state of the world at time T, you imagine an action it might take, the world model predicts what the state of the world is going to be from the action you took," he said.

But, he said, the world evolves according to an infinite and unpredictable set of possibilities, and the only way to train for them is through abstraction.

Meta is already experimenting with this through V-JEPA, a model it released to the public in February. Meta describes it as a non-generative model that learns by predicting missing or masked parts of a video.

"The basic idea is that you don't predict at the pixel level. You train a system to run an abstract representation of the video so that you can make predictions in that abstract representation, and hopefully this representation will eliminate all the details that cannot be predicted," he said.

The concept is similar to how chemists established a fundamental hierarchy for the building blocks of matter.

"We created abstractions. Particles, on top of this, atoms, on top of this, molecules, on top of this, materials," he said. "Every time we go up one layer, we eliminate a lot of information about the layers below that are irrelevant for the type of task we're interested in doing."

That, in essence, is another way of saying we've learned to make sense of the physical world by creating hierarchies.

• Jerome Powell addressed graduates on Sunday at his alma mater, Princeton University.
• Powell told the graduates he didn't major in economics in college because he found it "boring."
• After Princeton, Powell went to law school and decades later became chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told Princeton University graduates on Sunday that he didn't major in economics as a student because, at the time, he found the subject "boring and useless."

As Powell gave the Baccalaureate address at Princeton, where he graduated with a degree in politics, he recounted his path to a career that included the private sector and government service.

"I had no real plan for life after Princeton," he said. "Many of my classmates and friends went straight into prestigious graduate schools, politics, or Wall Street. Others went on to global capitals, the military, or the Peace Corps."

He continued: "I had brushed off my parents' one academic suggestion, which was to major in economics, which struck me as boring and useless. After 13 years at the Fed, I admit I was wrong about that."

Powell then spoke about life after Princeton and how it set him up for his future.

"After graduation, I had no plan and no job, and wound up putting labels on shelves in a warehouse for six months. I didn't feel great about that," he said. "In hindsight, that time in the warehouse was a blessing, and exactly what I needed. The next fall I entered law school, and for the first time I was highly resolved to make the most of the opportunity."

Powell attended law school at Georgetown University and later worked in investment banking and at the Treasury Department.

In 2011, then-President Barack Obama nominated Powell to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and Powell joined the board in 2012 after the Senate confirmed his nomination. In 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Powell to serve as chair, and in 2021, then-President Joe Biden renominated Powell as chair.

In recent months, Trump has publicly griped about Powell. In April, he said he was "not happy" with the Federal Reserve chair, in part because Powell has not lowered interest rates this year.

That same month, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, "Powell's termination cannot come fast enough!"

Trump later said he had "no intention" of firing Powell. Last November, Powell said he wouldn't leave his post even if Trump asked him to.

"Not permitted under the law," he said at the time.