Instead of wallowing in misery about potentially losing access to their favorite short-form video app, many TikTokers are flocking to RedNote, a Chinese social media platform also called Xiaohongshu. I’ve decided to spend some time on the platform myself, and it looks like so-called “TikTok refugees” are excited about interacting with a community mainly comprised of Chinese-speaking users — and vice versa.

Launched in 2013 as a shopping platform, RedNote has grown into one of China’s most popular social apps featuring photos, videos, and written content. Now it’s seeing another spike in users from another part of the globe, with more than 700,000 users joining RedNote in just two days, according to a report from Reuters. The number is still small, at just a fraction of the 150 million Americans TikTok reported were already using the app in early 2023.

As noted by CNN, the name Xiaohongshu translates to “little red book,” which “could be seen as a tongue-in-cheek reference to a red-covered book of quotations from the founding father of Communist China, Mao Zedong.” Many US users seem to be using the Chinese platform out of spite of the US government’s plan to ban TikTok — but in a deeply unserious way.

Screenshot: The Verge

Amongst all the Chinese-language posts depicting sleek fit checks, mouthwatering food videos, and memes I don’t quite understand yet, is content from TikTok expats. Many joke about their sudden appearance on the app, with one user wondering what Chinese users might think after seeing an influx of US-based users and another showing their gradual transformation from a gun-wielding, Buc-ee’s merch-wearing American into a Chinese-speaking RedNote user. Others are simply saying “hello” to their new community — some of whom have written captions in what I’d assume is machine-translated Chinese.

Even more interesting though, are all the RedNote users welcoming TikTokers with open arms. Several RedNote users are eager to introduce the app while also sharing some tips and tricks on how to navigate it. One creator says, “now’s the perfect time to dive into Chinese culture” through RedNote with the Chinese New Year coming up, adding that users on the platform are “obsessed with Luigi, Trump, and Squid Game.” Some even offer to teach their new community members Chinese.

But many TikTokers are equally curious about RedNote users in China, too. “Chinese friends, post pictures of your meal or snacks for today! Curious to see what you typically eat,” one user writes. Another asks, “I’m American. Do y’all like us? We know y’all not the enemy. Can we all be friends?”

The trend is actually kind of wholesome, and I’m here for it, but I’m not confident it will actually last. If these apps grow in popularity, they could potentially face a ban, too. But the migration to RedNote is likely just a trend — and trends only last as long as it takes for another to replace it.

Some YouTubers say Honey’s practices are stealing money from them.

PayPal’s Honey browser extension has been lauded for years as an easy way to find coupons online. But some are calling it a “scam” after a deep dive from YouTuber MegaLag, who accused Honey of “stealing money from influencers.”

The video shines a light on Honey’s use of last-click attribution, an approach to online shopping referrals that gives credit for a sale to the owner of the last affiliate cookie in line before checkout. As MegaLag’s video tells it, Honey takes that credit by swapping its tracking cookie in for others’ when you interact with it.

The company has issued statements saying that it follows “industry rules and practices” like last-click attribution. But creators who may have missed out on money because of it aren’t happy. Some YouTube channels Legal Eagle and GamersNexus are now suing.

Below, you’ll find all our coverage of the controversy.

TikTok told employees that its executives are “planning for various scenarios” ahead of the Supreme Court likely upholding a US ban of the app.

In an internal memo obtained by The Verge, employees were told that the company is “continuing to plan the way forward” ahead of the Supreme Court’s decision, which is expected as soon as Wednesday, January 15th.

“We know it’s unsettling to not know exactly what happens next,” reads the memo, which notes that “our offices will remain open” regardless of whether the app is not available on January 19th — when the bill banning it is set to go into effect — or not. “The bill is not written in a way that impacts the entities through which you are employed, only the US user experience [of TikTok],” according to the memo.

You can read TikTok’s full memo to employees below:

On behalf of our HR teams, | want to acknowledge the resilience and dedication you have continued to demonstrate, especially over the past few months as we have pursued our legal challenge of the TikTok ban in the US. As we await the decision by the US Supreme Court ahead of January 19, we know you have a lot of questions and wish we could provide a clear roadmap of next...

Read the full story at The Verge.

A major copyright lawsuit against Meta has revealed a trove of internal communications about the company’s plans to develop its open-source AI models, Llama, which include discussions about avoiding “media coverage suggesting we have used a dataset we know to be pirated.”

The messages, which were part of a series of exhibits unsealed by a California court, suggest Meta used copyrighted data when training its AI systems and worked to conceal it — as it raced to beat rivals like OpenAI and Mistral. Portions of the messages were first revealed last week.

In an October 2023 email to Meta AI researcher Hugo Touvron, Ahmad Al-Dahle, Meta’s vice president of generative AI, wrote that the company’s goal “needs to be GPT4,” referring to the large language model OpenAI announced in March of 2023. Meta had “to learn how to build frontier and win this race,” Al-Dahle added. Those plans apparently involved the book piracy site Library Genesis (LibGen) to train its AI systems.

An undated email from Meta director of product Sony Theakanath, sent to VP of AI research Joelle Pineau, weighed whether to use LibGen internally only, for benchmarks included in a blog post, or to create a model trained on the site. In the email, Theakanath writes that “GenAI has been approved to use LibGen for Llama3... with a number of agreed upon mitigations” after escalating it to “MZ” — presumably Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. As noted in the email, Theakanath believed “Libgen is essential to meet SOTA [state-of-the-art] numbers,” adding “it is known that OpenAI and Mistral are using the library for their models (through word of mouth).” Mistral and OpenAI haven’t stated whether or not they use LibGen. (The Verge reached out to both for more information).

Screenshot: The Verge

The court documents stem from a class action lawsuit that author Richard Kadrey, comedian Sarah Silverman, and others filed against Meta, accusing it of using illegally obtained copyrighted content to train its AI models in violation of intellectual property laws. Meta, like other AI companies, has argued that using copyrighted material in training data should constitute legal fair use. The Verge reached out to Meta with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.

Some of the “mitigations” for using LibGen included stipulations that Meta must “remove data clearly marked as pirated/stolen,” while avoiding externally citing “the use of any training data” from the site. Theakanath’s email also said the company would need to “red team” the company’s models “for bioweapons and CBRNE [Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives]” risks.

The email also went over some of the “policy risks” posed by the use of LibGen as well, including how regulators might respond to media coverage suggesting Meta’s use of pirated content. “This may undermine our negotiating position with regulators on these issues,” the email said. An April 2023 conversation between Meta researcher Nikolay Bashlykov and AI team member David Esiobu also showed Bashlykov admitting he’s “not sure we can use meta’s IPs to load through torrents [of] pirate content.”

Other internal documents show the measures Meta took to obscure the copyright information in LibGen’s training data. A document titled “observations on LibGen-SciMag” shows comments left by employees about how to improve the dataset. One suggestion is to “remove more copyright headers and document identifiers,” which includes any lines containing “ISBN,” “Copyright,” “All rights reserved,” or the copyright symbol. Other notes mention taking out more metadata “to avoid potential legal complications,” as well as considering whether to remove a paper’s list of authors “to reduce liability.”

Screenshot: The Verge

Last June, The New York Times reported on the frantic race inside Meta after ChatGPT’s debut, revealing the company had hit a wall: it had used up almost every available English book, article, and poem it could find online. Desperate for more data, executives reportedly discussed buying Simon & Schuster outright and considered hiring contractors in Africa to summarize books without permission.

In the report, some executives justified their approach by pointing to OpenAI’s “market precedent” of using copyrighted works, while others argued Google’s 2015 court victory establishing its right to scan books could provide legal cover. “The only thing holding us back from being as good as ChatGPT is literally just data volume,” one executive said in a meeting, per The New York Times.

It’s been reported that frontier labs like OpenAI and Anthropic have hit a data wall, which means they don’t have sufficient new data to train their large language models. Many leaders have denied this, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said plainly: “There is no wall.” OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever, who left the company last May to start a new frontier lab, has been more straightforward about the potential of a data wall. At a premier AI conference last month, Sutskever said: “We’ve achieved peak data and there’ll be no more. We have to deal with the data that we have. There’s only one internet.”

This data scarcity has led to a whole lot of weird, new ways to get unique data. Bloomberg reported that frontier labs like OpenAI and Google have been paying digital content creators between $1 and $4 per minute for their unused video footage through a third-party in order to train LLMs (both of those companies have competing AI video-generation products).

With companies like Meta and OpenAI hoping to grow their AI systems as fast as possible, things are bound to get a bit messy. Though a judge partially dismissed Kadrey and Silverman’s class action lawsuit last year, the evidence outlined here could strengthen parts of their case as it moves forward in court.

Parallels has added support for x86 emulation in Parallels Desktop 20.2, product manager Mikhail Ushakov wrote in a blog post last week. The “early technology preview” will let you emulate Intel-based hardware on an M1-or-greater Mac, a first for Parallels since Apple’s Arm transition in 2020 — but don’t expect stellar performance.

Parallels says users will be able to:

Run existing x86_64 Windows 10, Windows 11*, Windows Server 2019/2022, and some Linux distributives with UEFI BIOS via Parallels Emulator.

Create new Windows 10 21H2 and Windows Server 2022 virtual machines.

Image: Parallels

However, performance will be “really slow,” with up to seven-minute boot times, Ushakov says. Other limitations include no external USB device support, Windows 11 24H2 isn’t supported, and you can only emulate 64-bit operating systems, though Ushakov says you can run 32-bit apps.

He writes that the option to start one of these VMs is hidden for now “to avoid false expectations” from those who don’t need x86 emulation.

Parallels has a longer list of caveats in a separate article.

Image: Parallels

Version 20.2 brings some other changes, including support for automatic time and time zone syncing in macOS virtual machines on Apple silicon. It also adds Apple’s AI-powered Writing Tools to the Windows right-click menu in Word, Powerpoint, and the classic version of Outlook. Before, you had to use a keyboard shortcut or the macOS menu bar’s Edit menu.

A day after Sonos announced a CEO transition, the company is making more moves. Chief product officer Maxime Bouvat-Merlin will also be leaving his position. Some employees have told me that Bouvat-Merlin shares a significant amount of blame for the brand damage that Sonos has endured over the last year after deciding to release an overhauled mobile app well before it was ready for customers. There have been reports that top executives at the company ignored warnings from engineers and app testers that the new software wasn’t up to par ahead of its May rollout. Those alarms didn’t stop it from shipping.

In an email to staff, interim CEO Tom Conrad — who himself has plenty of product experience — said the CPO position is now “redundant” and that Bouvat-Merlin’s job is being eliminated. “I know this is a lot of change to absorb in two days and I want to thank you for being resilient,” Conrad wrote.

“Max’s tenure represents an iconic era for Sonos products, including the award-winning Sonos One, Beam, Move, Ace, Arc, and Arc Ultra, establishing Sonos as the world leader in home theater audio and setting the foundation for our next chapter,” Conrad’s email reads.

Bouvat-Merlin will serve as an adviser to Conrad before fully exiting the company. These major changes within Sonos’ ranks suggest that the company is taking its effort to win back trust and right the wrongs of its previous leadership quite seriously.

Conrad’s full email follows below:

Team,

Earlier this morning, I committed to you to share the truth. In that spirit, I want to share some changes I am making to simplify our leadership structure and flatten our Product organization.

With my stepping in as CEO, the Board, Max, and I have agreed that my background makes the Chief Product Officer role redundant. Therefore, Max’s role is being eliminated and the Product organization will report directly to me. I’ve asked Max to advise me over the next period to ensure a smooth transition and I am grateful that he’s agreed to do that.

Max’s tenure represents an iconic era for Sonos products, including the award-winning Sonos One, Beam, Move, Ace, Arc and Arc Ultra, establishing Sonos as the world leader in home theater audio and setting the foundation for our next chapter. These achievements are a testament to the talent, passion, and creativity that define our Product team, and Max has been a leading part of all of that.

I shared this news openly with the Sonos leaders yesterday with the intention that these leaders would share the update as needed with their teams. Unfortunately this news quickly made its way outside the organization. While this is frustrating for all of us, I will not let the possibility of a leak change our ability to communicate openly with one another. So I’m going to keep telling you the truth.

I know this is a lot of change to absorb in two days and I want to thank you for your resilience, continued commitment to Sonos and support of each other during this time.

Tom

Though the fourth season of Netflix’s live-action Witcher series still doesn’t have a concrete release date, Netflix has finally announced when we’ll see yet another animated take on Geralt of Rivia.

Originally, Netflix intended for The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep to debut some time late last year, but the steamer revealed today that the movie is now set to premiere on February 11th. Based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s short story “A Little Sacrifice” from Sword of Destiny, Sirens of the Deep tells the tale of how Geralt of Rivia (Doug Cockle) and Jaskier (Joey Batey) get caught up in an age-old conflict between humans and merpeople.

In a new trailer for the movie, things seem simple enough to Geralt as he’s first hired to put his special skills to good use. It makes sense that humans would want a witcher’s help to deal with a deadly series of sea monster attacks. The gig’s also easy money for Geralt and a solid way to keep his mind off Yennefer of Vengerberg (Anya Chalotra). There’s something nefarious at the root of the interspecies war, though, and by the time Geralt realizes he might have gotten things wrong, he can only do but so much to stop the bloodshed.

Compared to the live-action series, Sirens of the Deep looks like it’s going for a more spectacular (in the sense that the action’s big) depiction of Geralt’s adventures. And while it might not connect directly to the events of Netflix’s last animated Witcher movie or the live-action Witcher’s fourth season, it should make the wait a little more bearable.

Hackers in North Korea stole a total of $659 million in crypto across several heists in 2024, according to a joint statement issued today by the US, Japan, and South Korea. The report specified five such incidents, like the $235 million theft from the Indian crypto exchange WazirX that is being newly attributed to the Lazarus Group. That organization is estimated to have stolen billions across previous attacks over the last decade, including $625 million stolen from Axie Infinity in 2022.

Of the 2024 incidents, Japan’s DMM Bitcoin suffered the biggest loss, with $308 million stolen, ultimately resulting in the exchange’s closure.

As recently as September 2024, the United States government observed aggressive targeting of the cryptocurrency industry by the DPRK with well-disguised social engineering attacks that ultimately deploy malware, such as TraderTraitor, AppleJeus and others. The Republic of Korea and Japan have observed similar trends and tactics used by the DPRK.

A warning issued by the FBI last September noted that their methods to gain access for delivering these payloads include “individualized fake scenarios,” such as enticing victims with prospective jobs and business opportunities. All three countries advised businesses in the industry to check out the latest warning to reduce their risk of “inadvertently hiring DPRK IT workers,” as described in this recent report by CoinDesk.

They’ve also used long-time common phishing tactics against employees of crypto firms, such as convincing impersonations of trusted contacts or prominent people of interest in related industries, with realistic photos and information likely lifted from public social media accounts of known connections.

Pixelfed, a decentralized and ad-free Instagram alternative, now has apps on iOS and Android, as reported by TechCrunch. The iOS app launched today, while the Android app launched on January 10th.

The platform is seeing a surge in popularity following Meta’s announcement last week that it would be drastically changing its content moderation policies; over the weekend, Pixelfed said that it’s seeing “unprecedented levels of traffic” to the pixelfed.social server and was working to increase resources.

Pixelfed was also in the news this week because some users claimed that Meta randomly blocked links to the site they shared on Facebook. According to Engadget, Meta blocked the Pixelfed links by mistake and is now reinstating the posts.

The creator of Pixelfed, Daniel Supernault, also launched a decentralized version of TikTok last October called Loops. With TikTok facing a ban in the US and the fallout from Meta’s content moderation changes, Pixelfed and Loops offer other options for people to jump ship to.

Diamond Comics Distributors, one of the biggest companies involved in getting graphic novels into physical retailers for purchase, is filing for bankruptcy and scaling its business back as the industry braces itself for a new wave of economic challenges.

In a letter sent to comics retailers and publishers today, Diamond president Chuck Parker announced that the company has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and plans to sell off its Alliance Game Distributors arm to Universal in order to “protect the most vital aspects of our business.”

“This decision was not made lightly, and I understand that this news may be as difficult to hear as it is for me to share,” Parker explained. “The Diamond leadership team and I have worked tirelessly to avoid this outcome but the financial challenges we face have left us with no other viable option.”

Founded in 1982 by Stephen A. Geppi (who still serves as CEO), Diamond became a heavyweight in the comics business by securing a number of exclusive distribution agreements with various publishing houses like DC, Marvel, and Image. For decades, Diamond — which also publishes its Previews magazine showcasing upcoming titles — was instrumental in bringing comics to market and played a huge role in determining a book’s success because of how Previews influenced retailer orders.

News about Diamond’s bankruptcy comes weeks after the company suddenly shuttered its flagship fulfillment center in Plattsburgh, NY, which the company’s VP of retailer services Chris Powell described as a necessary step to address longstanding operational issues that made its distribution process unsustainable.

“Ideally, changes would have been planned and tested while we continued to operate as we had been at Plattsburgh,” Powell said. “With that no longer an option, we must make changes and test them with live data and shipments while trying to minimize the impact on retailers.”

In recent years, many of Diamond’s bigger name publishing partners have dropped them as the company failed to meet expected delivery deadlines to retailers, which left stores struggling to meet customer demand. Given the tough time Diamond has been having as of late, the announcement that it’s filing for bankruptcy isn’t entirely surprising. It sounds like the company’s leadership very much wants to stay in the comics game as long as possible, but as it stands now, it seems like all Diamond can really do is to staunch the bleeding as much as it can.

OpenAI is launching a new beta feature in ChatGPT called Tasks that lets users schedule future actions and reminders.

The feature, which is rolling out to Plus, Team, and Pro subscribers starting today, is an attempt to make the chatbot into something closer to a traditional digital assistant — think Google Assistant or Siri but with ChatGPT’s more advanced language capabilities.

Tasks works by letting users tell ChatGPT what they need and when they need it done. Want a daily weather report at 7AM? A reminder about your passport expiration? Or maybe just a knock-knock joke to tell your kids before bedtime? ChatGPT can now handle all of that through scheduled one-time or recurring tasks.

To use the feature, subscribers need to select “4o with scheduled tasks” in ChatGPT’s model picker. From there, it’s as simple as typing out what you want ChatGPT to do and when you want it done. The system can also proactively suggest tasks based on your conversations, though users have to explicitly approve any suggestions before they’re created. (Honestly, I feel like the suggestions have the potential to create annoying slop by accident).

All tasks can be managed either directly in chat threads or through a new Tasks section (available only via the web) in the profile menu, so it’s easy to modify or cancel any task you’ve set up. Upon completion of these tasks, notifications will alert users on web, desktop, and mobile. There’s also a limit of 10 active tasks that can run simultaneously.

OpenAI hasn’t specified when (or if) the feature might come to free users, suggesting Tasks might remain a premium feature to help justify ChatGPT’s subscription costs. The company has monthly $20 and $200 subscription tiers.

Wyze’s latest AI feature aims to reduce how often you need to manually check security footage by instead just describing what the camera has seen. The new Descriptive Alerts will send notifications that “accurately summarize motion events” with more contextual detail than simply telling users that the camera has detected movement or an object, according to Wyze.

An example alert provided by the company is “a delivery driver wearing a blue hat leaves a package on the doorstep, then leaves. A green SUV is parked in the street.” Rival smart home security companies like Ring, Google’s Nest, and (to some extent) Arlo provide similar AI summarization features for their own cameras, but Wyze’s video-to-text alerts seem to be the only service that specifies detail like color in its descriptions.

Image: Wyze

Wyze’s Descriptive Alerts are available to Cam Unlimited Pro members — a new $19.99 per month (or $199.99 per year) subscription that bundles other features like facial recognition, searching videos using descriptive keywords, and simultaneously viewing live feeds from multiple Wyze cameras. The Cam Unlimited Pro subscription will also include 60 days of cloud storage, though Wyze says this won’t be available until “Spring 2025.”

Just remember, Wyze cameras have suffered from serious security and privacy issues in the past. Choose wisely.

Though there were only a handful of Super Mario games showcased during Awesome Games Done Quick 2025, his brother Luigi was everywhere — and it’s pretty clear why.

In the gaming community, Mario’s taller, greener brother is beloved in his own right, celebrated for his goofiness or memed because his genial nature apparently conceals something a bit darker. However, in light of the actions of Luigi Mangione, the man charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the gaming community’s love for Luigi has taken on a different significance. That significance was on full display during AGDQ 2025 where his name popped up early and often.

During the charity speedrunning marathon, there were frequent opportunities for viewers to have their donations fund bidding wars for things like the player completing a specific task during the run or for naming rights to a character. For example, during the Pokémon: Let’s Go Eevee run, viewers could donate for the privilege of naming the trainer, and they picked Luigi. Throughout the marathon viewers submitted Luigi for almost every naming-based bid war, and it won quite often.

Luigi was the character name in Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim. He was the name for the warrior in Guantlet IV and it was the file name in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. And of the four named characters in Final Fantasy Legend 2, “Lugi” was three of them (as the game only supports four-letter names). Overall, all of the bids for Luigi — not just those that ultimately won — earned over $18,000.

Games Done Quick has a reputation for its inclusiveness and social consciousness — once cancelling a live event in Florida in 2023 over the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law and lax COVID-19 policies. So while it’s impossible to know for sure whether or not the preponderance of Luigi was due to typical gamer memeing or if it represented some kind of tacit statement of support for Luigi Mangione’s actions, it’s probably easy to say it was a little bit of both.

The Biden administration finalized a new rule that would effectively ban all Chinese vehicles from the US under the auspices of blocking the “sale or import” of connected vehicle software from “countries of concern.” The rule could have wide-ranging effects on big automakers, like Ford and GM, as well as smaller manufacturers like Polestar — and even companies that don’t produce cars, like Waymo.

The rule covers everything that connects a vehicle to the outside world, such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cellular, and satellite components. It also addresses concerns that technology like cameras, sensors, and onboard computers could be exploited by foreign adversaries to collect sensitive data about US citizens and infrastructure. And it would ban China from testing its self-driving cars on US soil.

“Cars today have cameras, microphones, GPS tracking, and other technologies connected to the internet,” US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said in a statement. “It doesn’t take much imagination to understand how a foreign adversary with access to this information could pose a serious risk to both our national security and the privacy of U.S. citizens. To address these national security concerns, the Commerce Department is taking targeted, proactive steps to keep [People’s Republic of China] and Russian-manufactured technologies off American roads.”

The rules for prohibited software go into effect for model year 2027 vehicles, while the ban on hardware from China waits until model year 2030 vehicles. According to Reuters, the rules were updated from the original proposal to exempt vehicles weighing over 10,000 pounds, which would allow companies like BYD to continue to assemble electric buses in California.

The new rule is the latest escalation in the ongoing trade restrictions put in place on Chinese-made vehicles, including components like computers and batteries. It comes at a time when China is churning out more cars then ever before, earning its status as the No. 1 auto exporter in the world. The rule also covers vehicles and components made by Russia.

China’s access to vehicle software presents “a significant threat” to the US in that it would grant an adversary “unfettered access” to critical tech systems and the user data that they collect, the White House said.

“As [the People’s Republic of China] automakers aggressively seek to increase their presence in American and global automotive markets, through this final rule, President Biden is delivering on his commitment to secure critical American supply chains and protect our national security,” the administration adds.

The auto industry sought to delay the rule by a year, effectively delivering it to the incoming Trump administration to enforce but was unsuccessful. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents GM, Ford, Volkswagen, Toyota, and others, said in comments submitted last April that it supports the goal of the proposed rules but warned that the global automotive supply chain “is one of the world’s largest and most complex” and that parts could not be simply swapped out without disruptions.

Other automakers were more explicit in their criticisms. Polestar, an electric vehicle manufacturer owned by Geely, said in October that the rule “would effectively prohibit Polestar from selling its cars in the United States, including the cars it manufactures in South Carolina.”

Indeed, the White House states in its fact sheet that the rule prevents the import or sale of connected vehicles “by entities who are owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of the PRC or Russia – even if those vehicles were made in the United States.”

Meanwhile, Waymo, which is planning on using vehicles manufactured by Geely’s Zeekr for its next-gen robotaxi, said that it takes precautions to ensure that the vehicles it purchases for its fleet arrive without any manufacturer-installed telematics systems. Still, the rule could significantly disrupt the Alphabet-owned company’s plans to expand if the government decides to ban the import of the Zeekr vehicle under the new rule.

“Waymo filed comments in support of the rule last fall,” Waymo spokesperson Ethan Teicher said in an email. “We’re reviewing the final rule, and appreciate the Department’s prompt rulemaking.”

A spokesperson for Polestar did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Update January 14th: Updated to include a comment from Waymo.

Meta will soon lay off more “low-performers” across the company, according to an internal memo from CEO Mark Zuckerberg that was shared by a source at the company.

“I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,” Zuckerberg says in the memo, which you can read in full below. “We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle — with the intention of backfilling these roles in 2025.”

While the exact number of job cuts is unclear, managers at Meta have been told that about 5 percent of employees will be let go starting February 10th. Bloomberg first reported on Zuckerberg’s memo and the planned layoffs. Meta last laid off employees in October after cutting 21,000 workers between 2022 and 2023.

Here’s Zuckerberg’s full memo to employees:

Meta is working on building some of the most important technologies in the world — Al, glasses as the next computing platform, and the future of social media. This is going to be an intense year, and I want to make sure we have the best people on our teams.

I’ve decided to raise the...

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Meta Quest 3S VR headset is a great alternative to the Meta Quest 3. The base 128GB version of the Quest 3S starts at $299.99 at Amazon, which is $200 less than the Quest 3 yet delivers essentially the same mixed reality experience. And now, you can step up to the 256GB version of the Quest 3S for just $349 ($50 off) from Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy.

Now through the end of April, your purchase includes a copy of Batman: Arkham Shadow (one of the best VR games yet, if I say so myself) and three months of Meta Quest Plus. The service is normally $7.99 a month or $59.99 a year, and grants instant access to more than two dozen free games with new additions every month, plus exclusive discounts.

Since the Quest 3S has the same Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 processor and Touch controllers as the base Quest 3, you’ll have access to all of the same games and mixed reality features. But the displays are not as sharp: the Quest 3S has a lower per-eye resolution of 1832 x 1920 (compared to 2064 x 2208) with a narrower field of view. It also doesn’t have a dedicated depth sensor to go along with its pair of triangular camera arrays, and it’s a bit heavier than the Quest 3. That said, you do get some exclusive perks like a slightly longer 2.5-hour battery life and a dedicated button to switch between immersive and passthrough modes.

Read our Meta Quest 3S review.

More deals, discounts, and ways to save

• If your 2025 goals include a digital detox during fabulous vacationing, the HMD Barbie can help you maintain societal connections without excessive distractions. Amazon is selling the pink flip phone for a record low $79.99 ($50 off). You can activate it on most American carriers with 4G LTE; its nostalgically basic features — which include calling, texting on a T9 keypad, and browsing a less flashy web — won’t require heavy mobile plans. If nothing else, it can be a fun conversation starter and a symbol of gratitude for the technological advancements we often take for granted. Read our hands-on impressions.
• The Ugreen Uno Magnetic Wireless Power Bank (10000mAh, 15W) is down to $44.99 ($25 off) at Amazon, which is its lowest price to date. The charger conveniently snaps to the back of your MagSafe iPhone, along with any other Qi2 Ready smartphones we might see in 2025. That means it supplies the fastest charge you can get without using a cable, though you can get a 20W charge using its two-way USB-C port. It has a sturdy metal kickstand to keep the phone propped up, and the integrated display uses cutesy robotic faces to show an approximation of the battery’s remaining power.
• You can get the newest Amazon Fire 7 tablet with 32GB of storage and lock-screen ads for $44.99 ($35 off) at Amazon, which is an all-time low price. You can also get it without ads for $59.99 ($35 off), or pay afterward to remove them. The affordable Fire 7 is great for light browsing and apps or for enjoying digital content such as movies, music, and books. You can even use your voice and ask Alexa to place a video call. It may not be as smooth or fun as an iPad, but at that price, the durable 7-inch tablet is easily replaceable and has features the iPad can’t claim, like a 3.5mm headphone jack and expandable storage with microSD cards up to 1TB. Read our review.

The FBI hacked about 4,200 computers across the US as part of an operation to find and delete PlugX, a malware used by state-backed hackers in China to steal information from victims, the Department of Justice announced on Tuesday.

In an unsealed affidavit, the FBI says the China-based hacking group known by the monikers “Mustang Panda” and “Twill Typhoon” used PlugX to infect thousands of Windows computers in the US, Asia, and Europe since at least 2012. The malware, which infects computers through their USB ports, operates in the background while allowing hackers to “remotely access and execute commands” on victims’ computers.

To do this, infected computers contact a command-and-control server run by the hackers, which has its IP address hard-coded into the malware. From there, hackers can remotely access users’ files and obtain information about infected computers, such as their IP addresses. At least 45,000 IP addresses in the US have contacted the command-and-control server since September 2023, according to the FBI.

The FBI used this very exploit to remove PlugX from infected computers. In collaboration with French law enforcement, which launched a PlugX deletion operation of its own, the FBI gained access to the command-and-control server and requested the IP addresses of infected computers. It then sent a native command to make PlugX delete the files it created on victims’ computers, stop the PlugX application from running, and delete the malware after it’s stopped.

Last year, the FBI similarly dismantled a network of infected Quakbot computers by instructing devices to download software to uninstall the malware. The agency also remotely hacked hundreds of computers to protect them from the Hafnium hack in 2021.

President Biden issued an executive order today aimed at speeding the development of AI data centers in the US.

It directs the Department of Defense (DOD) and Department of Energy (DOE) to lease federal sites to private companies building gigawatt-scale AI data centers and clean power facilities. It also tells federal agencies to “prioritize” and speed up permitting of AI infrastructure. The measure could create “categorial exclusions” to speed environmental review under the National Environmental Protection Act.

Developing new AI tools is an increasingly energy-hungry endeavor. Nevertheless, the Biden administration seems to think it’s worth the risk of further derailing US climate goals and putting additional pressure on already stressed power grids.

“We will not let America be out-built when it comes to the technology that will define the future,” Joe Biden said in a statement today.

Prior to the announcement today — in response to reports that the White House was considering measures to fast track data center development — environmental and consumer advocacy groups as well as Democratic lawmakers had urged the White House to avoid exempting AI from typical permitting procedures and environmental standards.

“We urge you to reconsider any potential executive action that could lead to increased pollution and costs for consumers,” says a letter sent by senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Edward Markey (D-MA), Brian Schatz (D-HI), and Peter Welch (D-VT) to the Biden administration on December 17th. “We are the United States of America; there is no doubt that we can win the AI race while accelerating our decarbonization efforts,” it reads.

Electricity demand from data centers has tripled over the past decade, according to estimates published by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) on December 20th. It’s likely to double or triple again by 2028, according to the report. Data centers used about 4.4 percent of US electricity in 2023, which could rise to as much as 12 percent by 2028.

That rise in demand is the result of the tremendous compute power needed to train AI models. Utilities are already extending the lives of polluting coal and gas infrastructure to try to meet skyrocketing electricity demand. Customers also face rising electricity bills as a result.

Developers building new AI data centers on federal land will be required “to pay all costs of building and operating AI infrastructure so that this development does not raise electricity prices for consumers,” according to the White House.

That includes constructing the data center itself, as well as power facilities and transmission lines. Companies will be responsible for sourcing electricity that data centers use from new sources of “clean” electricity. They’ll also have to assess the security implications of AI models developed at federal sites and purchase “an appropriate share” of American-made semiconductors.

“In the race to dominate AI, we can’t lose sight of the very real race to stop the pollution that’s warming our planet and harming our health,” Johanna Neumann, a senior director at the Environment America Research & Policy Center, said in a December 19th statement.

Neumann argued that the focus should be on making sure that new computing facilities are more efficient, and that they run on renewable electricity. “Without those guardrails, AI’s insatiable thirst for energy risks crashing America’s efforts to get off dirty and dangerous fossil fuels,” Neumann added.

The government already leases federal lands for energy production, including fossil fuel exploration and renewable energy projects. Under the executive order, by February 28th, the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Energy are supposed to find at least three sites each to host new AI data centers on land that their departments manage.

WhatsApp is rolling out some new features and design improvements to help you become faster and more creative when messaging. Starting today, WhatsApp users can double-tap to react to messages in chats rather than tapping and holding, with their most-used emojis now being displayed in the scrolling pop-out menu instead of the generic selection that was previously provided.

It’s a similar quality-of-life feature that Discord provides: placing your favorite reactions within easy reach to prevent you from having to hunt through a massive wall of emojis. WhatsApp users can still easily access their other emoji options by clicking the plus symbol on the reaction bar. On the other hand, Meta’s Messenger app still only displays the same five emojis as reactions for each message — I’d like to see this update carried over from WhatsApp in the future.

Image: WhatsApp

The filters and virtual backgrounds that WhatsApp introduced for video calls last year are now coming to its messages, allowing users to edit shots using 30 different visual effects when they take a photo or video in chats. Sticker packs can now also be shared directly to chats, and users can turn their selfies into custom stickers by tapping on the sticker icon. The Sticker selfies feature is currently only available on Android, with iOS support coming “soon,” according to WhatsApp.

Popular YouTube toddler learning show Ms. Rachel is coming to Netflix. It will start with a four-episode season of “curated compilation” videos on January 27th, the company announced today.

Netflix says this first batch of “research-backed” educational videos aimed at early child development will cover topics like learning to talk or read. Here’s the list from Netflix’s announcement:

Learn to Talk — “What’s in the Box?” Speech and Toddler Learning

Baby Learning — First words, Milestones, Nursery Rhymes, and Songs

Learn to Read — Phonics, ABCs, and Preschool Learning

Hop Little Bunnies — Plus More Songs and Nursery rhymes

As a work-from-home parent who had a toddler and no daycare options early in the covid pandemic, I’m well familiar with the shortfalls of YouTube Kids, where shows like Ms. Rachel exist but which is also filled with inane content. Past reporting has also found the algorithmic recommendations included inappropriate videos.

There aren’t always great alternatives, either. Other streaming platforms have programming for kids, but it’s comparatively sparse. As my child has gotten older, that stuff has gotten boring, even with the limited screen time we allow. Ms. Rachel’s debut on Netflix may not fix that for older kids but it could offer parents of very young children somewhere to go besides YouTube.