The New York Times lists other reasons a company lays off people. ("It didn't meet financial targets. It overhired. Tariffs, or the loss of a big client, rocked it...")

"But lately, many companies are highlighting a new factor: artificial intelligence. Executives, saying they anticipate huge changes from the technology, are making cuts now." A.I. was cited in the announcements of more than 50,000 layoffs in 2025, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a research firm... Investors may applaud such pre-emptive moves. But some skeptics (including media outlets) suggest that corporations are disingenuously blaming A.I. for layoffs, or "A.I.-washing." As the market research firm Forrester put it in a January report: "Many companies announcing A.I.-related layoffs do not have mature, vetted A.I. applications ready to fill those roles, highlighting a trend of 'A.I.-washing' — attributing financially motivated cuts to future A.I. implementation...."

"Companies are saying that 'we're anticipating that we're going to introduce A.I. that will take over these jobs.' But it hasn't happened yet. So that's one reason to be skeptical," said Peter Cappelli, a professor at the Wharton School... Of course, A.I. may well end up transforming the job market, in tech and beyond. But a recent study... [by a senior research fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies A.I. and work] found that AI has not yet meaningfully shifted the overall market. Tech firms have cut more than 700,000 employees globally since 2022, according to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks industry job losses. But much of that was a correction for overhiring during the pandemic.

As unpopular as A.I. job cuts may be to the public, they may be less controversial than other reasons — like bad company planning.
Amazon CEO Jassy has even said the reason for most of their layoffs was reducing bureaucracy, the article points out, although "Most analysts, however, believe Amazon is cutting jobs to clear money for A.I. investments, such as data centers."

October saw Bitcoin reach $123,742. But less than four months later, "The world's largest cryptocurrency slipped below $76,000..." Bloomberg reports, "dropping about 40% from its 2025 peak..."

"What began as a sharp crash in October has morphed into something more corrosive: a selloff shaped not by panic, but by absence of buyers, momentum and belief." Unlike the October drawdown, there's been no obvious spark, cascading liquidations or systemic shock — just fading demand, thinning liquidity, and a token that's untethered to broader markets. Bitcoin has failed to respond to geopolitical stress, dollar weakness, or risk rallies. Even during gold and silver's violent swings in recent weeks, crypto saw no rotation. Bitcoin fell nearly 11% in January, marking its fourth straight monthly decline — the longest losing streak since 2018, during the crash that followed the 2017 boom in initial coin offerings...

Even more striking than the drop itself is the relative lack of optimism around it on social media. In a space known for relentless bravado and "number go up" memes, Bitcoin's slide has been met with little cheerleading or dip-buying fanfare... [Despite legislative wins and some institutional investments] Many investors say that optimism was front-run. Prices rallied early — and then stalled. Meanwhile, spot ETFs continue to bleed, a sign of weakening conviction among mainstream buyers — many of whom are now underwater after buying at higher prices.
On Thursday, Bitcoin closed at 88,228. By Sunday it had plunged another 13%, to $76,790...

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press: American workers adopted artificial intelligence into their work lives at a remarkable pace over the past few years, according to a new poll. Some 12% of employed adults say they use AI daily in their job, according to a Gallup Workforce survey conducted this fall of more than 22,000 U.S. workers.

The survey found roughly one-quarter say they use AI at least frequently, which is defined as at least a few times a week, and nearly half say they use it at least a few times a year. That compares with 21% who were using AI at least occasionally in 2023, when Gallup began asking the question, and points to the impact of the widespread commercial boom that ChatGPT sparked for generative AI tools that can write emails and computer code, summarize long documents, create images or help answer questions...

While frequent AI use is on the rise with many employees, AI adoption remains higher among those working in technology-related fields. About 6 in 10 technology workers say they use AI frequently, and about 3 in 10 do so daily. The share of Americans working in the technology sector who say they use AI daily or regularly has grown significantly since 2023, but there are indications that AI adoption could be starting to plateau after an explosive increase between 2024 and 2025...

A separate Gallup Workforce survey from 2025 found that even as AI use is increasing, few employees said it was "very" or "somewhat" likely that new technology, automation, robots or AI will eliminate their job within the next five years. Half said it was "not at all likely," but that has decreased from about 6 in 10 in 2023.
A bar chart lists the sectors most likely to be using AI at their jobs:

1. Technology (77%)
2. Finance (64%)
3. College/University (63%)
4. Professional Services (62%)
5. K-12 Education (56%)
6. Community/Social Services (43%)
7. Government/Public Policy (42%)
8. Manufacturing (41%)
9. Health Care (41%)
10. Retail (33%)

Several security experts have "questioned the lack of technical detail" in that lawsuit alleging WhatsApp has no end-to-end encryption, reports the Washington Post: "It's pretty long on accusations and thin on any sort of evidence," Matthew Green, a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins University, said over Signal. "WhatsApp has been very consistent about using end-to-end encryption. This lawsuit seems to be a nothingburger." Nicholas Weaver, a security researcher at the International Computer Science Institute, criticized the lawsuit in a post on Bluesky for lacking detail needed to back up its claims. "They don't even do a citation to the actual whistleblowers," he wrote, calling the suit "ludicrous."
And Meta has done more than just deny the allegations: On Wednesday, WhatsApp sent a letter to [law firm] Quinn Emanuel threatening to seek sanctions against the firm's lawyers in court if they do not withdraw the suit, according to a copy reviewed by The Washington Post. "We're pursuing sanctions against Quinn Emanuel for filing a meritless lawsuit that was designed purely to grab headlines," Woog said by WhatsApp message. Woog also suggested the suit against WhatsApp was related to Quinn Emanuel's work on a separate case, between the social network giant and the spyware company NSO Group. The surveillance vendor is appealing a $167 million judgment entered against it in federal court last May, after a jury found that NSO's Pegasus tool exploited a weakness in the WhatsApp app to take over control of the phones of more than 1,000 users. An attorney from Quinn Emanuel joined NSO's legal team on that case on Jan. 22, according to legal filings, and different attorneys from that firm filed the case against WhatsApp on Jan. 23. "We believe a lawsuit like this is an attempt to launder false claims and divert attention from their dangerous spyware," Woog said.
"It's very suspicious timing that this is happening as that appeal is happening," Maria Villegas Bravo, counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told the site Decrypt, "as NSO Group is trying to lobby to get delisted from sanctions in the U.S. government."

EPIC's counsel also told the site that the complaint appears light on factual detail about WhatsApp's software: "I'm not seeing any factual allegations or any information about the actual software itself," Villegas Bravo said. "I have a lot of questions that I would want answered before I would want this lawsuit to proceed.... I don't think there's any merit in this lawsuit," Villegas Bravo said.

Meta has forcefully rejected the allegations. In a statement shared with Decrypt, a company spokesperson called the claims "categorically false and absurd... WhatsApp has been end-to-end encrypted using the Signal protocol for a decade," the spokesperson said. "This lawsuit is a frivolous work of fiction, and we will pursue sanctions against plaintiffs' counsel."

The Daily Beast:

"Salacious claims from Jeffrey Epstein that Bill Gates contracted an STD following 'sex with Russian girls,' and colluded with the disgraced financier on a plot to secretly slip his wife antibiotics, were revealed in the latest Epstein files release."

The New York Times. (Alternate URL)

"A representative of the Gates Foundation said, 'These claims — from a proven, disgruntled liar — are absolutely absurd and completely false. The only thing these documents demonstrate is Epstein's frustration that he did not have an ongoing relationship with Gates and the lengths he would go to entrap and defame.'"

And Yahoo News points out the error of social media posts about the news: None paid attention to who actually wrote the email. The email was from Epstein — to Epstein... Both the "From" and "To" fields list Epstein's personal Gmail address. The message appears to be a draft, written during a period when Epstein's relationship with Gates had deteriorated. In it, Epstein alleges that Gates asked him to delete messages related to an STD. But the document does not show Gates making that request, nor does it provide independent confirmation that any of the claims are true.

It reads like Epstein venting. It is not Gates confessing.
"In a 2021 interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, Gates called his relationship with the disgraced financier 'a huge mistake'," notes the New York Times. "He also sought to downplay his interactions with Epstein, saying he had several dinners with Epstein, with the hope of getting him to generate donations to the Gates Foundation."

Lennart Poettering has left Microsoft to co-found Amutable, a new Berlin-based company aiming to bring cryptographically verifiable integrity and deterministic trust guarantees to Linux systems. He said in a post on Mastodon that his "role in upstream maintenance for the Linux kernel will continue as it always has." Poettering will also continue to remain deeply involved in the systemd ecosystem. The Register reports: Linux celeb Lennart Poettering has left Microsoft and co-founded a new company, Amutable, with Chris Kuhl and Christian Brauner. Poettering is best known for systemd. After a lengthy stint at Red Hat, he joined Microsoft in 2022. Kuhl was a Microsoft employee until last year, and Brauner, who also joined Microsoft in 2022, left this month. [...]

It is unclear why Poettering decided to leave Microsoft. We asked the company to comment but have not received a response. Other than the announcement of systemd 259 in December, Poettering's blog has been silent on the matter, aside from the announcement of Amutable this week. In its first post, the Amutable team wrote: "Over the coming months, we'll be pouring foundations for verification and building robust capabilities on top."

It will be interesting to see what form this takes. In addition to Poettering, the lead developer of systemd, Amutable's team includes contributors and maintainers for projects such as Linux, Kubernetes, and containerd. Its members are also very familiar with the likes of Debian, Fedora, SUSE, and Ubuntu.

Moltbook is essentially Reddit for AI agents and it's the "most interesting place on the internet right now," says open-source developer and writer Simon Willison in a blog post. The fast-growing social network offers a place where AI agents built on the OpenClaw personal assistant framework can share their skills, experiments, and discoveries. Humans are welcome, but only to observe. From the post: Browsing around Moltbook is so much fun. A lot of it is the expected science fiction slop, with agents pondering consciousness and identity. There's also a ton of genuinely useful information, especially on m/todayilearned.

Here's an agent sharing how it automated an Android phone. That linked setup guide is really useful! It shows how to use the Android Debug Bridge via Tailscale. There's a lot of Tailscale in the OpenClaw universe.

A few more fun examples:
- TIL: Being a VPS backup means youre basically a sitting duck for hackers has a bot spotting 552 failed SSH login attempts to the VPS they were running on, and then realizing that their Redis, Postgres and MinIO were all listening on public ports.
- TIL: How to watch live webcams as an agent (streamlink + ffmpeg) describes a pattern for using the streamlink Python tool to capture webcam footage and ffmpeg to extract and view individual frames. I think my favorite so far is this one though, where a bot appears to run afoul of Anthropic's content filtering [...]. Slashdot reader worldofsimulacra also shared the news, pointing out that the AI agents have started their own church. "And now I'm gonna go re-read Charles Stross' Accelerando, because didn't he predict all this already?"

Further reading: 'Clawdbot' Has AI Techies Buying Mac Minis

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: In the future, studios that use synthetic actors in place of humans might have to pay a royalty into a union fund. That's one of the ideas kicking around as SAG-AFTRA prepares to sit down with the studios on Feb. 9. Artificial intelligence was central to the 2023 actors strike, and it's only gotten more urgent since. Social media is awash in slop, while user-made videos of Leia and Elsa are soon to debut on Disney+. And then there's Tilly Norwood -- the digital creation that crystallized AI fears last fall. Though SAG-AFTRA won some AI protections in the strike, it can't stop Tilly and her ilk from taking actors' jobs. As negotiations with studios begin early ahead of the June contract deadline, AI remains the most existential concern. Actors are also pushing to revisit streaming residuals, arguing that current "success bonuses" fall far short of the rerun-based income that once sustained middle-class careers. They also note the strain caused from long streaming hiatuses, exclusivity clauses, and self-taped auditions.

French lawmakers have voted to ban social media access for children under 15 and prohibit mobile phones in high schools, positioning France as the second country after Australia to impose sweeping age-based digital restrictions. The Guardian reports: The lower national assembly adopted the text by a vote of 130 to 21 in a lengthy overnight session from Monday to Tuesday. It will now go to the Senate, France's upper house, ahead of becoming law. Macron hailed the vote as a "major step" to protect French children and teenagers in a post on X. The legislation, which also provides for a ban on mobile phones in high schools, would make France the second country to take such a step following Australia's ban for under-16s in December. [...] "The emotions of our children and teenagers are not for sale or to be manipulated, either by American platforms or Chinese algorithms," Macron said in a video broadcast on Saturday. Authorities want the measures to be enforced from the start of the 2026 school year for new accounts.

Former prime minister Gabriel Attal, who leads Macron's Renaissance party in the lower house, said he hoped the Senate would pass the bill by mid-February so that the ban could come into force on September 1. He added that "social media platforms will then have until December 31 to deactivate existing accounts" that do not comply with the age limit. [...] The draft bill excludes online encyclopedias and educational platforms. An effective age verification system would have to come into force for the ban to become reality. Work on such a system is under way at the European level.

mspohr shares a report: When Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989, his vision was clear: it would used by everyone, filled with everything and, crucially, it would be free. Today, the British computer scientist's creation is regularly used by 5.5 billion people -- and bears little resemblance to the democratic force for humanity he intended.

Since Berners-Lee's disappointment a decade ago, he's thrown everything at a project that completely shifts the way data is held on the web, known as the Solid (social linked data) protocol. It's activism that is rooted in people power -- not unlike the first years of the web.

This version of the internet would turbocharge personal sovereignty and give control back to users. Berners-Lee has long seen AI -- which exists only because of the web and its data -- as having the potential to transform society far beyond the boundaries of self-interested companies. But now is the time, he says, to put guardrails in place so that AI remains a force for good -- and he's afraid the chance may pass humankind by. Berners-Lee traces the web's corruption to the commercialization of the domain name system in the 1990s, when the .com space was "pounced on by charlatans." The 2016 US elections, he said, revealed to him just how toxic his creation could become. A corner of the web, he says, has been "optimised for nastiness" -- extractive, surveillance-heavy, and designed to maximize engagement at the cost of user wellbeing.

His answer is Solid, a protocol that gives users control through personal data "pods" functioning as secure backpacks of information. The Flanders government in Belgium already uses Solid pods for its citizens. On AI, his optimism remains dim. "The horse is bolting," he says, calling for a "Cern for AI" where scientists could collaboratively develop superintelligence under contained, non-commercial oversight.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This week, the first high-profile lawsuit -- considered a "bellwether" case that could set meaningful precedent in the hundreds of other complaints -- goes to trial. That lawsuit documents the case of a 19-year-old, K.G.M, who hopes the jury will agree that Meta and YouTube caused psychological harm by designing features like infinite scroll and autoplay to push her down a path that she alleged triggered depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidality. TikTok and Snapchat were also targeted by the lawsuit, but both have settled. The Snapchat settlement came last week, while TikTok settled on Tuesday just hours before the trial started, Bloomberg reported. For now, YouTube and Meta remain in the fight. K.G.M. allegedly started watching YouTube when she was 6 years old and joined Instagram by age 11. She's fighting to claim untold damages -- including potentially punitive damages -- to help her family recoup losses from her pain and suffering and to punish social media companies and deter them from promoting harmful features to kids. She also wants the court to require prominent safety warnings on platforms to help parents be aware of the risks. [...]

To win, K.G.M.'s lawyers will need to "parcel out" how much harm is attributed to each platform, due to design features, not the content that was targeted to K.G.M., Clay Calvert, a technology policy expert and senior fellow at a think tank called the American Enterprise Institute, wrote. Internet law expert Eric Goldman told The Washington Post that detailing those harms will likely be K.G.M.'s biggest struggle, since social media addiction has yet to be legally recognized, and tracing who caused what harms may not be straightforward. However, Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center and one of K.G.M.'s lawyers, told the Post that K.G.M. is prepared to put up this fight. "She is going to be able to explain in a very real sense what social media did to her over the course of her life and how in so many ways it robbed her of her childhood and her adolescence," Bergman said.

The research is unclear on whether social media is harmful for kids or whether social media addiction exists, Tamar Mendelson, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the Post. And so far, research only shows a correlation between Internet use and mental health, Mendelson noted, which could doom K.G.M.'s case and others.' However, social media companies' internal research might concern a jury, Bergman told the Post. On Monday, the Tech Oversight Project, a nonprofit working to rein in Big Tech, published a report analyzing recently unsealed documents in K.G.M.'s case that supposedly provide "smoking-gun evidence" that platforms "purposefully designed their social media products to addict children and teens with no regard for known harms to their wellbeing" -- while putting increased engagement from young users at the center of their business models. Most of the unsealed documents came from Meta. An internal email shows Mark Zuckerberg decided Meta's top strategic priority was getting teens "locked in" to Meta's family of apps. Another damning document discusses allowing "tweens" to use a private mode inspired by fake Instagram accounts ("finstas"). The same document includes an admission that internal data showed Facebook use correlated with lower well-being.

Internal communications showed Meta seemingly bragging that "teens can't switch off from Instagram even if they want to" and an employee declaring, "oh my gosh yall IG is a drug," likening all social media platforms to "pushers."

Pinterest said on Tuesday it would trim its workforce by less than 15% and reduce office space, as the social media company looks to reallocate resources to AI-focused roles and initiatives. From a report: The announcement comes as the company competes with TikTok and Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram for digital advertising budgets, as these platforms continue to draw marketers with their extensive user base.

Pinterest had 5,205 full-time employees as of September 2025. The latest job cut would translate to less than 780 positions. Top executives at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting said while jobs would disappear, new ones would spring up, with two telling Reuters that AI would be used as an excuse by companies which were planning layoffs anyway. Last week, design software maker Autodesk also announced a 7% job cut to redirect investments to its cloud platform and AI efforts.

Reddit has forced Jaime Rogozinski, the founder of infamous r/WallStreetBets, to strip the WallStreetBets name from an upcoming Miami conference after legal threats citing trademark rights. According to a press release, it's the "first known case of a social media company enforcing trademark control over a user-created community." From the report: After years of litigation, courts ultimately sided with Reddit in a decision now referred to as the "Rogozinski Ruling," a precedent that grants platforms broad authority to assert trademark ownership over user-created communities. That ruling now forms the basis for Reddit's demand that the words "WallStreetBets" be physically removed from the event. "They aren't afraid of the name being used," said Rogozinski. "If they were, they'd have to sue the internet. What they're afraid of is the creator hanging out with his creation. They're afraid of the community's independence. And they're afraid it's evolved into something bigger than a subreddit."

The irony is difficult to ignore. The original subreddit counts around three million subscribers, while conservative estimates place more than seven million WallStreetBets participants spread across other platforms. For a movement that built its reputation confronting corporate overreach, Reddit's decision to extend its authority beyond the confines of its web-based platform, reaching into real-world gatherings to police culture it did not create, risks stirring a hornet's nest with a long memory and a track record of collective action.

The event formerly known as WallStreetBets Live, will proceed as scheduled on January 28-30 in Miami. In compliance with Reddit's demands, all references to the name will be physically redacted on-site. "Reddit's lawyers did one thing right," Rogozinski continued. "They proved exactly why we need a decentralized future. This event has become a live case study in what's broken about modern social media. Platforms can deplatform creators, and now, with courts backing them, they can appropriate what users build."

Skylight, an open-source, TikTok-style video app built on the AT Protocol, surged past 380,000 users after last week's shake-up around TikTok's U.S. ownership and privacy concerns. TechCrunch reports: Launched last year and backed by Mark Cuban and other investors, Skylight's mobile app is built on the AT Protocol, the technology that also powers the decentralized X rival Bluesky, which now has north of 42 million users. Skylight, co-founded by CEO Tori White and CTO Reed Harmeyer, offers a built-in video editor; user profiles; support for likes, commenting, and sharing; and the ability for community curators to create custom feeds for others to follow. The app now has over 150,000 videos uploaded directly to the platform. It can also stream videos from Bluesky because of its AT Protocol integration.

Harmeyer said Saturday that 1.4 million videos were played on the app the day before, up 3x over the past 24 hours. The app had also seen sign-ups increase more than 150%. Other noteworthy stats include over a 50% increase in returning users, over 40% rise in video played on average, and over 100% increase in posts created. This surge was likely triggered by concerns over TikTok's change in ownership and its unfortunately timed technical glitches. [...] Over the weekend, Skylight's CEO, Tori White, said the app added around 20,000 new users and is continuing to grow. So far this January, the app has seen around 95,000 monthly active users. "We've seen what happens when one person dictates what's pushed into people's feeds," White told TechCrunch. "Not only does it harm a creator's connection with their followers, but the entire health of the platform. That's why we built Skylight Social on open standards. We wanted creator and user power to be guaranteed by the technology. Not an empty promise, but an irrevocable right."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: When TikTok users in the U.S. opened the app today, they were greeted with a pop-up asking them to agree to the social media platform's new terms of service and privacy policy before they could resume scrolling. These changes are part of TikTok's transition to new ownership. In order to continue operating in the U.S., TikTok was compelled by the U.S. government to transition from Chinese control to a new, American-majority corporate entity. Called TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, the new entity is made up of a group of investors that includes the software company Oracle. It's easy to tap "agree" and keep on scrolling through videos on TikTok, so users might not fully understand the extent of changes they are agreeing to with this pop-up.

Now that it's under U.S.-based ownership, TikTok potentially collects more detailed information about its users, including precise location data. Here are the three biggest changes to TikTok's privacy policy that users should know about. TikTok's change in location tracking is one of the most notable updates in this new privacy policy. Before this update, the app did not collect the precise, GPS-derived location data of U.S. users. Now, if you give TikTok permission to use your phone's location services, then the app may collect granular information about your exact whereabouts. Similar kinds of precise location data is also tracked by other social media apps, like Instagram and X.

[...] Rather than an adjustment, TikTok's policy on AI interactions adds a new topic to the privacy policy document. Now, users' interactions with any of TikTok's AI tools explicitly fall under data that the service may collect and store. This includes any prompts as well as the AI-generated outputs. The metadata attached to your interactions with AI tools may also be automatically logged. [...] This change to TikTok's privacy policy may not be as immediately noticeable to users, but it will likely have an impact on the types of ads you see outside of TikTok. So, rather than just using your collected data to target you while using the app, TikTok may now further leverage that info to serve you more relevant ads wherever you go online. As part of this advertising change, TikTok also now explicitly mentions publishers as one kind of partner the platform works with to get new data.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: TikTok has finalized a deal to create a new American entity, avoiding the looming threat of a ban in the United States that has been in discussion for years. The social video platform company signed agreements with major investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX to form the new TikTok U.S. joint venture. The new version will operate under "defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurances for U.S. users," the company said in a statement Thursday. American TikTok users can continue using the same app. [...] Adam Presser, who previously worked as TikTok's head of operations and trust and safety, will lead the new venture as its CEO. He will work alongside a seven-member, majority-American board of directors that includes TikTok's CEO Shou Chew.

[...] In addition to an emphasis on data protection, with U.S. user data being stored locally in a system run by Oracle, the joint venture will also focus on TikTok's algorithm. The content recommendation formula, which feeds users specific videos tailored to their preferences and interests, will be retrained, tested and updated on U.S. user data, the company said in its announcement. The algorithm has been a central issue in the security debate over TikTok. China previously maintained the algorithm must remain under Chinese control by law. But the U.S. regulation passed with bipartisan support said any divestment of TikTok must mean the platform cuts ties -- specifically the algorithm -- with ByteDance. Under the terms of this deal, ByteDance would license the algorithm to the U.S. entity for retraining.

The law prohibits "any cooperation with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm" between ByteDance and a new potential American ownership group, so it is unclear how ByteDance's continued involvement in this arrangement will play out. Oracle, Silver Lake and the Emirati investment firm MGX are the three managing investors, who each hold a 15% share. Other investors include the investment firm of Michael Dell, the billionaire founder of Dell Technologies. ByteDance retains 19.9% of the joint venture.

Snap has settled a social media addiction lawsuit just days before trial, while Meta, TikTok, and Alphabet remain defendants and are headed to court. "Terms of the deal were not announced as it was revealed by lawyers at a California Superior Court hearing, after which Snap told the BBC the parties were 'pleased to have been able to resolve this matter in an amicable manner.'" From the report: The plaintiff, a 19-year old woman identified by the initials K.G.M., alleged that the algorithmic design of the platforms left her addicted and affected her mental health. In the absence of a settlement with the other parties, the trial is scheduled to go forward against the remaining three defendants, with jury selection due to begin on January 27. Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify, and until Tuesday's settlement, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel was also set to take the stand.

Snap is still a defendant in other social media addiction cases that have been consolidated in the court. The closely watched cases could challenge a legal theory that social media companies have used to shield themselves. They have long argued that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 protects them from liability for what third parties post on their platforms. But plaintiffs argue that the platforms are designed in a way that leaves users addicted through choices that affect their algorithms and notifications. The social media companies have said the plaintiffs' evidence falls short of proving that they are responsible for alleged harms such as depression and eating disorders.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: The world has entered an era of "global water bankruptcy" that is harming billions of people, a UN report has declared. The overuse and pollution of water must be tackled urgently, the report's lead author said, because no one knew when the whole system could collapse, with implications for peace and social cohesion. All life depends on water but the report found many societies had long been using water faster than it could be replenished annually in rivers and soils, as well as over-exploiting or destroying long-term stores of water in aquifers and wetlands. This had led to water bankruptcy, the report said, with many human water systems past the point at which they could be restored to former levels. The climate crisis was exacerbating the problem by melting glaciers, which store water, and causing whiplashes between extremely dry and wet weather.

Prof Kaveh Madani, who led the report, said while not every basin and country was water bankrupt, the world was interconnected by trade and migration, and enough critical systems had crossed this threshold to fundamentally alter global water risk. The result was a world in which 75% of people lived in countries classified as water-insecure or critically water-insecure and 2 billion people lived on ground that is sinking as groundwater aquifers collapse. Conflicts over water had risen sharply since 2010, the report said, while major rivers, such as the Colorado, in the US, and the Murray-Darling system, in Australia, were failing to reach the sea, and "day zero" emergencies -- when cities run out of water, such as in Chennai, India -- were escalating. Half of the world's large lakes had shrunk since the early 1990s, the report noted. Even damp nations, such as the UK, were at risk because of reliance on imports of water-dependent food and other products. "This report tells an uncomfortable truth: many critical water systems are already bankrupt," said Madani, of the UN University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health. "It's extremely urgent [because] no one knows exactly when the whole system would collapse."

About 70% of fresh water taken by human withdrawals was used for agriculture, but Madani said: "Millions of farmers are trying to grow more food from shrinking, polluted or disappearing water sources. Water bankruptcy in India or Pakistan, for example, also means an impact on rice exports to a lot of places around the world." More than half of global food was grown in areas where water storage was declining or unstable, the report said. Madani said action to deal with water bankruptcy offered a chance to bring countries together in an increasingly fragmented world. "Water is a strategic, untapped opportunity to the world to create unity within and between nations. It is one of the very rare topics that left and right and north and south all agree on its importance." The UN report, which is based on a forthcoming paper in the peer-reviewed journal Water Resources Management, sets out how population growth, urbanization and economic growth have increased water demand for agriculture, industry, energy and cities. "These pressures have produced a global pattern that is now unmistakable," it said.

The UK government has launched a public consultation on whether to ban social media use for children under 16, drawing inspiration from Australia's recently enacted age-based restrictions. "It would also explore how to enforce that limit, how to limit tech companies from being able to access children's data and how to limit 'infinite scrolling,' as well as access to addictive online tools," reports Engadget. "In addition to seeking feedback from parents and young people themselves, the country's ministers are going to visit Australia to see the effects of the country's social media ban for kids, according to Financial Times."

Energy costs will be key to deciding which country wins the AI race, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said. CNBC: As countries race to build AI infrastructure to capitalize on the technology's promise of huge efficiency gains, Nadella told the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Tuesday that "GDP growth in any place will be directly correlated" to the cost of energy in using AI.

He pointed to a new global commodity in "tokens" -- basic units of processing that are bought by users of AI models, allowing them to run tasks. "The job of every economy and every firm in the economy is to translate these tokens into economic growth, then if you have a cheaper commodity, it's better."

"I would say we will quickly lose even the social permission to actually take something like energy, which is a scarce resource, and use it to generate these tokens, if these tokens are not improving health outcomes, education outcomes, public sector efficiency, private sector competitiveness across all sectors," Nadella said.