Defendant’s attorney in Dominion Voting defamation case releases company emails, risking sanctions

An attorney charged with illegally accessing Michigan voting machines after the 2020 election acknowledged in a court filing Monday that she disseminated numerous confidential emails from a voting machine company in a separate case. In a filing in federal court in Washington, D.C., attorney Stefanie Lambert acknowledged passing on the records from Dominion Voting Systems … Read more

Why Elon Musk’s AI company ‘open-sourcing’ Grok matters — and why it doesn’t

Elon Musk’s xAI released its Grok large language model as “open source” over the weekend. The billionaire clearly hopes to set his company at odds with rival OpenAI, which, despite its name, is not particularly open. But does releasing the code for something like Grok actually contribute to the AI development community? Yes and no. … Read more

How Tesla became the top-selling car company in Norway

Norway has had massive success with EV adoption — 82% of new cars sold in the country in 2023 were electric, according to the Norwegian Road Federation. This high adoption rate can be attributed to the generous subsidies the Scandinavian country has offered to electric vehicle owners as well as its investment in charging infrastructure. … Read more

Automakers Are Telling Your Insurance Company How You Really Drive

How do you know the internet has a deepfake porn problem? Just look at copyright takedown requests. WIRED found this week that Google is receiving thousands of Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaints for deepfake nudes, most of which are published by just a handful of websites. Experts say the deluge of DMCA takedown requests is … Read more

Leaked SpaceX documents show company forbids employees to sell stock if it deems they’ve misbehaved

SpaceX requires employees to agree to some unusual terms related to their stock awards, which have a chilling effect on staff, according to sources and internal documents viewed by TechCrunch. That includes a provision that allows SpaceX the right to purchase back vested shares within a six-month period following an employee leaving the company for … Read more

The Small Company at the Center of ‘Gamergate 2.0’

“There are marginalized devs who work on these games, and they want to put that stuff in their games,” Belair says, adding that it’s strange that players feel like characters of color, for example, need to have their presence justified in any way. “I’m a huge Uncharted fan,” Belair says.”’Why is Nathan Drake white?’ is … Read more

Telegram founder says the company will become profitable next year

Telegram founder Pavel Durov said that the company expects to hit profitability next year with eyes on going public in the future. The chat app, which crossed 900 million users, is making “hundreds of millions of dollars” through ads and subscriptions, Durov told the Financial Times in an interview. He mentioned that while global investors … Read more

Sam Altman rejoins OpenAI board, company adds three new members

OpenAI on Friday announced its new board and the wrap-up of an internal investigation by U.S. law firm WilmerHale into the events leading up to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s ouster. Sam Altman will also rejoin OpenAI’s board. The new board members are: Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who … Read more

Behind the doors of a Chinese hacking company, a sordid culture fueled by influence, alcohol and sex

BEIJING — The hotel was spacious. It was upscale. It had a karaoke bar. The perfect venue, the CEO of the Chinese hacking company thought, to hold a Lunar New Year banquet currying favor with government officials. There was just one drawback, his top deputy said. “Who goes there?” the deputy wrote. “The girls are … Read more

OpenAI says Elon Musk wanted ‘absolute control’ of the company

OpenAI has responded to Elon Musk’s lawsuit by saying that he at one point wanted “absolute control” of the company by merging it with Tesla. In a blog post published on Tuesday, OpenAI said it will move to dismiss “all of Elon’s claims” and offered its own counter-narrative to his account of the company abandoning … Read more