Government & Policy

Meta asks California attorney general to block OpenAI’s conversion to for-profit

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, is supporting Elon Musk’s effort to block OpenAI’s conversion from a nonprofit company into a for-profit one. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Meta sent a letter to California attorney general Rob Bonta, arguing that allowing the shift would have “seismic implications for Silicon Valley.” And while the company asked […]

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Biden administration races to approve clean energy loans before Trump takes over — here’s who is benefiting

The Department of Energy (DOE) is on a loan-approval spree in the lead-up to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, and the winners are all companies manufacturing clean energy solutions on U.S. soil. Companies like Stellantis and Samsung, Rivian, and most recently, EVgo. Trump has promised to cancel any unspent federal dollars under President Joe Biden’s Inflation

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Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos are the latest billionaires to donate $1M to Trump fund

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos’ Amazon plan to donate $1 million each to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, according to reports from Fox and the Wall Street Journal.  TechCrunch has confirmed Altman’s plans to personally commit the money, which is not coming directly from OpenAI.    The donations from the billionaires follow plans by

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Texas AG is investigating Character.AI, other platforms over child safety concerns

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday launched an investigation into Character.AI and 14 other technology platforms over child privacy and safety concerns. The investigation will assess whether Character.AI — and other platforms that are popular with young people, including Reddit, Instagram and Discord — conform to Texas’ child privacy and safety laws. The investigation

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Google wraps ‘blue links’ search test, lobbies for less maximalist application of EU’s DMA

Google has ended a test in which it was returning basic “blue link” search results for hotel-related searches in a handful of markets in the European Union, in response to compliance complaints related to the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). These blue links appeared instead of visually richer results, where its search engine will display

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Mark Zuckerberg sweetens Meta’s $1M donation to Trump’s inaugural fund with a pair of smart glasses

Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg is pulling off a lobbying-public relations combo move by gifting President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund $1 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. The money came from Meta, to be clear, but Zuckerberg sweetened the gift further — while doing great marketing — by sending Trump a pair of Meta’s smart

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How much ‘government efficiency’ will Elon Musk be able to pull off?

The idea that government “should be run like a business” is by no means a new one. But with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of government efficiency, it’s worth taking a closer look at whether business principles can be applied to government.  Today on Equity, Rebecca Bellan is discussing the intersection of tech,

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EU cybersecurity rules for smart devices enter into force

Rules for boosting the security of connected devices have entered into force in the European Union. The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) puts obligations on product makers to provide security support to consumers, such as by updating their software to fix security vulnerabilities. Although the deadline for compliance with the main obligations of the law is

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