Former Patagonia CEO Rose Marcario is resigning from her position on Rivian’s board of directors, according to a Friday afternoon stock exchange filing. Rivian wrote in the filing that Marcario’s last day will be on January 1, and that she is leaving “to focus on other commitments.” Rivian’s board will shrink from eight members to seven upon her resignation. Marcario’s departure and the downsizing of Rivian’s board comes on the eve of an important year for the company. Rivian plans to start selling its more affordable R2 SUV in the first half of 2026.

The defense bill, which Congress passed earlier this week, includes two amendments that advocates for commercial nuclear energy are celebrating. The International Nuclear Energy Act establishes working groups and boosts funding and interagency cooperation on the development and export of US nuclear technologies. The NDAA also reauthorizes the US International Development Finance Corporation, a finance institution that’s expected to invest in nuclear power plant and uranium fuel projects. Those are “big wins” that make nuclear exports more attractive in the global market, Rowen Price, senior policy advisor for nuclear energy at center-left think tank Third Way, says in an email to…

Investors at TechCrunch Disrupt did not shy away from admitting they are interested in mainly one thing: artificial intelligence.   Nina Achadjian from Index, Jerry Chen from Greylock and Peter Deng from Felicis, all spoke about the latest obsession in venture capital and how startups can stand out in a quickly crowding market. The environment is moving fast, Achadjian told the crowd, and companies are experiencing unprecedented growth.   “We spend an enormous, enormous amount of time really assessing the entrepreneur and how resilient they will be able to be in a moment where things are just rapidly changing,” Achadjian said. 

OpenAI will now give you the ability to dial up — or down — ChatGPT’s warmth and enthusiasm. An update rolling out on Friday gives you the option to choose whether you want “more” or “less” of these personality traits, or stick with the default. There are also options to tweak how often ChatGPT uses emoji, headers, and lists. You can find these settings by tapping the menu at the top left corner of the ChatGPT app, selecting your profile, heading to Personalization, and choosing Add Characteristics. Alongside these options, you can…

In an effort to halt this harmful misappropriation and protect its partner relationships, Google developed and deployed a technological measure, known as SearchGuard, that restricts access to its search results pages and the copyrighted content they contain. So that it could continue its free riding, however, SerpApi developed a means of circumventing SearchGuard. With the automated queries it submits, SerpApi engages in a wide variety of misrepresentations and evasions in order to bypass the technological protections Google deployed. But each time it employs these artifices, SerpApi violates federal law… When SearchGuard launched in January 2025, it effectively blocked SerpApi from accessing Google’s Search results and the copyrighted content of Google’s partners.

Anonymous messaging app NGL announced on Friday that it has been acquired by Mode Mobile, a smartphone rewards company that makes money by flooding its users with ads. NGL quickly climbed the App Store charts after its launch in late 2021, joining a group of similar apps popular among teens that allow users to send and receive anonymous questions and messages. But it’s been embroiled in controversy for most of its existence. Anonymous messaging apps are problematic because they can encourage bullying among teens — Snapchat banned third-party apps like NGL, LMK, Sendit, and YOLO from its platform in 2022 after a parent sued the company for its alleged role in her teenage son’s suicide.

A major new international study led by ETH Zurich has, for the first time, estimated how many of the world's glaciers are expected to survive through the end of this century and how long each one is likely to last. The findings show a dramatic contrast between warming scenarios. If global temperatures rise to +4.0 °C, only about 18,000 glaciers would remain worldwide. Limiting warming to +1.5 °C could preserve roughly 100,000 glaciers. The researchers also introduced the concept of "Peak Glacier Extinction," which marks the year when glacier losses reach their highest level.

I don’t want to admit it, but I did spend a lot of money online this holiday shopping season. And unsurprisingly, some of those purchases didn’t meet my expectations. A photobook I bought was damaged in transit, so I snapped a few pictures, emailed them to the merchant, and got a refund. Online shopping platforms have long depended on photos submitted by customers to confirm that refund requests are legitimate. But generative AI is now starting to break that system. A Pinch Too Suspicious On the Chinese social media app RedNote…

On Wednesday, Cisco revealed that a group of Chinese government-backed hackers is exploiting a vulnerability to target its enterprise customers who use some of the company’s most popular products. Cisco has not said how many of its customers have already been hacked, or may be running vulnerable systems. Now, security researchers say there are hundreds of Cisco customers who could potentially be hacked. Piotr Kijewski, the chief executive of the nonprofit Shadowserver Foundation that scans and monitors the internet for hacking campaigns, told TechCrunch that the scale of exposure “seems more in the hundreds rather than thousands or tens of thousands.”

The knockdown was the beginning of the end for Robles as Cardena became more effective and precise with his punches, ultimately stopping Erik in the fifth round. Cardenas landed 40.2 percent of his power punches while Robles was only able to land 9.9 percent of his total punches, demonstrating Ramon’s defensive improvements (Compubox). Over the course of the last year, Ramon has gained valuable experience in having been in the ring with both Naoya Inoue and Junto Nakatani. Cardenas trainer Manny Robles was asked about Ramon’s experience of having been in the ring with both, “I’ve always said you learn more from your defeats than you do from your wins.

The hardware world had a brutal week, with iRobot, Luminar, and Rad Power Bikes all filing for bankruptcy.  Each company faces its own mix of tariff pressures, supply chain issues, and shifting markets, but together they tell a larger story about the challenges of building physical products in an era of global trade tensions and cheap overseas competition. From the Roomba maker that almost got acquired by Amazon to the e-bike company that couldn’t escape its Chinese supply chain, this week’s bankruptcies are a warning sign for hardware startups everywhere. 

For decades, neuroscientists have taught that neurons do not regenerate once they are damaged or destroyed. This belief has shaped how brain injuries are understood and treated. Yet people often regain at least some lost abilities after trauma, raising an important question: if neurons do not grow back, how does recovery happen? A new JNeurosci paper offers insight into this puzzle. Athanasios Alexandris and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University used mice to study what happens inside the visual system after traumatic brain injury. The visual system includes cells in the eye that send information to the brain, allowing animals and humans to see.

Where’s the Trump Phone? We’re going to keep talking about it every week, except next week, when we take a break until the new year. We’ve reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump Phone’s whereabouts. As usual, we’re still waiting for a response. In the meantime, we’re wondering who’s actually behind the mobile company. Yesterday’s announcement that one of the Trump companies is merging with TAE Technologies raised an unexpected prospect: Is the company that gave up on building phones in the US about to try making a nuclear fusion power plant instead?

Renowned AI scientist Yann LeCun confirmed on Thursday that he had launched a new startup — the worst-kept secret in the tech world — though he said he will not be running the new company as its CEO. His startup is called Advanced Machine Intelligence (or AMI) and has hired Alex LeBrun, co-founder and CEO of medical transcription AI startup darling Nabla, as its CEO. Nabla disclosed LeBrun’s new job in a press release and LeCun confirmed it in a brief post on LinkedIn. “Yes, AMI Labs is my new startup.

Speaking on the Chris Mannix YouTube channel, Mora said Mercado should continue to face experienced opposition as he resumes activity, noting that additional rounds against seasoned fighters would be important at this stage of his career. He mentioned former IBF junior welterweight champion Liam Paro, along with Jamaine Ortiz and Oscar Duarte, as potential next opponents. “A good match-up for him would be someone like Liam Paro,” Mora said. “That’s a fight where he wouldn’t be able to stand still and would have to go find the other guy.”

Trump Media — yup, the parent company of Truth Social — is the latest entrant in the near century-long race to develop a nuclear fusion power plant. It announced a merger agreement with fusion company TAE Technologies on Thursday and a bold plan to break ground on the first utility-scale fusion plant some time in 2026. TAE doesn’t plan to start generating power from its first plant until 2031, which is still an incredibly ambitious timeline. There will likely be a myriad of financial and regulatory issues to contend with along the way, of course.

A new species of mouse opossum with an exceptionally long nose and tail, Marmosa chachapoya. Credit: © Pedro Peloso From biting fruit flies and a tiny long-nosed mouse opossum to a feathered dinosaur preserved with evidence of its final meal, scientists at the American Museum of Natural History identified more than 70 species new to science this year. These discoveries cover an astonishing sweep of life on Earth, including dinosaurs, mammals, fishes, reptiles, insects, arachnids, marine invertebrates, and even a mineral never documented before. Together, they reflect the Museum's ongoing role at the forefront of global biodiversity research.

After shifting its gaming strategy to focus more on games played on the TV, Netflix announced it’s acquiring Ready Player Me, an avatar-creation platform based in Estonia. The streamer said Friday it plans to use the startup’s development tools and infrastructure to build avatars that will allow Netflix subscribers to carry their personas and fandom across different games. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Ready Player Me had raised $72 million in venture backing from investors, including a16z, Endeavor, Konvoy Ventures, Plural, and various angels, including the co-founders of companies like Roblox, Twitch, and King Games.

As Netflix continues to build out its gaming strategy, which has recently included a new era of TV party games, it’s going to let people build avatars — with the help of a new acquisition. The company is acquiring avatar company Ready Player Me and its “cross-game avatar tech” to let players “carry their identities and fandom across games,” according to…

When you tune in to a podcast, you’re probably not opening the Netflix app – at least for now.  That might change, if Netflix gets its way. The streamer signed deals with iHeartMedia and Barstool Sports this week, in addition to a recent deal with Spotify, to gain exclusive video rights to select shows. The company is also rumored to be in talks with SiriusXM. Podcasters see this as an offensive move with YouTube as the primary target. And the data provides a convincing argument. YouTube shared this week that viewers watched over…

Like it or not, AI is here to stay. Time magazine named the "architects of AI" as 2025's person of the year. In this edition, we focus on artificial intelligence and entertainment. A UK AI-focused studio recently released "Non Player Combat", which it calls the world's first AI-generated reality TV show. Dheepthika Laurent talks to Tom Paton, CEO of the studio and in a first, we interview Clara, the AI host of the show! Source link

Strong social ties are often linked to better health, and new research adds a brain benefit to that list. Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and University of Massachusetts Boston report that regularly helping people outside your household can noticeably slow cognitive decline in middle-age and older adults. In a study that followed more than 30,000 adults in the U.S. for two decades, people who consistently helped others outside the home showed a slower rate of age-related cognitive decline. The researchers found the decline was reduced by about 15%-20% among those who either volunteered formally or helped in informal ways, such as supporting neighbors, family, or friends.

In its latest effort to address growing concerns about AI’s impact on young people, OpenAI on Thursday updated its guidelines for how its AI models should behave with users under 18, and published new AI literacy resources for teens and parents. Still, questions remain about how consistently such policies will translate into practice.  The updates come as the AI industry generally, and OpenAI in particular, faces increased scrutiny from policymakers, educators, and child-safety advocates after several teenagers allegedly died by suicide after prolonged conversations with AI chatbots.  Gen Z, which includes those born between 1997 and 2012, are the…

Your next smartphone or PC might cost more amid a global memory shortage that the International Data Corporation expects to “persist well into 2027.” A new report from the research firm lays out the potential impact of the RAM crunch, saying it “signals the end of an era of cheap, abundant memory and storage” — for now, at least. As noted by the IDC, the cost of a smartphone “is heavily dependent” on the type of memory it uses, with soaring RAM costs leading phonemakers to “raise prices significantly, cut specifications or both.” Budget-friendly smartphones from brands like Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Honor, and Huawei will “have no other option” but to pass along these higher costs to consumers, according to the IDC.

Celeste Amadon and Asher Allen were working on an app that used AI to book restaurants for dates, when they stumbled on a bigger idea that encourages people to meet in person. And now it’s catching on with investors. The duo created a voice-powered AI onboarding system for its app that helped them learn more about users without them having to fill out a form. What they discovered: people loved to talk, and that increased the length of the onboarding session with the app clocking 26 minutes on average. That is how San Francisco-based dating startup Known was born.