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Elon Musk launched a $97.4 billion bid to take control of OpenAI. The Wall Street Journal reported a group of investors led by Musk's xAI submitted an unsolicited offer to the company's board of directors on Monday. The group wants to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI's for-profit arm. 

When asked for comment, an OpenAI spokesperson pointed Engadget to an X post from CEO Sam Altman. "No thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want," Altman wrote on the social media platform Musk owns. 

On Friday, OpenAI's board of directors officially rejected Musk's bid. "OpenAI is not for sale, and the board has unanimously rejected Mr. Musk's latest attempt to disrupt his competition," the company said in a response attributed to Bret Taylor, the chair of OpenAI's board of directors. "Any potential reorganization of OpenAI will strengthen our nonprofit and its mission to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity." 

Taylor, incidentally, was the chairman of Twitter's board before Musk bought the social media platform for $44 billion in 2022. 

"OpenAI is not for sale, and the board has unanimously rejected Mr. Musk's latest attempt to disrupt his competition. Any potential reorganization of OpenAI will strengthen our nonprofit and its mission to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity."

—Bret Taylor, Chair, on behalf of…

— OpenAI Newsroom (@OpenAINewsroom) February 14, 2025

"It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was," Musk said in a statement his attorney shared with The Journal. "We will make sure that happens."

OpenAI

It's hard to say how serious this bid from Musk is and what — if any — chance it has to succeed. OpenAI is not a traditional company, and the nonprofit structure Sam Altman and others at the company want it to get away from may in fact protect it from Musk's offer. Were OpenAI a for-profit company with publicly traded shares Musk's bid would likely trigger what's known in corporate law as a Revlon moment, where, under certain circumstances, the company's board of directors would be forced to sell to the highest bidder to maximize shareholder profits.  

Update 02/14 4:34PM ET: Added response from OpenAI's board of directors. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openais-board-unanimously-rejects-elon-musks-974-billion-takeover-bid-215221683.html?src=rss

Breaking: Netflix made an oopsie. On Thursday, word spread online that some of its content began appearing in the Apple TV app. The lack of an official announcement (and extremely buggy nature) of the integration was enough to cast doubt on the news. But that didn't stop users from rejoicing and sharing "FINALLY!" GIFs on social media. Unfortunately, your triumphant festivities weren't warranted, as the company has said it was unintentional.

A Netflix spokesperson told The Verge on Friday that the Apple TV app integration was an error that has been rolled back. Indeed, Redditors who had been tracking the forbidden fruit with unbridled glee confirmed that all signs of Netflix content had since vanished from Apple's streaming hub. Netflix giveth, and Netflix taketh away.

While the boo-boo was still active, PC World reported it let you add Netflix originals like Stranger Things, Cobra Kai and The Crown but lacked licensed shows and movies. Even the available content was a buggy mess. For example, only season five of The Crown was available, leaving you to wonder what hijinks Liz and the gang had gotten into before or after the grunge era. The "Add to Watchlist" and "Continue Watching" features were also said to be spotty.

It's easy to speculate that such a glitch was tied to internal testing accidentally made public, but there's no reason to assume that's anything but wishful thinking. At least for now, you'll have to watch Netflix content in the Netflix app, leaving Apple’s for a well-earned rewatch of The Sopranos (via Max), The Bear (via Hulu) and Apple's own Silo.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/netflix-accidentally-made-its-content-show-up-in-the-apple-tv-app-212851906.html?src=rss

You could soon pay to access certain subreddits, according to comments shared by Reddit CEO Steve Huffman during a taped video AMA (Ask Me Anything). Huffman has suggested the company might experiment with some kind of Reddit paywall before, and now its apparently happening.

When asked if he could share information about the development of paid subreddits, Huffman said that "It's a work in progress right now, so that one's coming." To a follow up question about new features coming to Reddit in 2025, Huffman said "Paid subreddits? Yes," confirming they're on the list.

Unfortunately there's little detail as to how paid subreddits will actually work when they do launch. It might make sense for only Reddit Premium subscribers to be able to access paid subreddits, for example. As Ars Technica notes, Reddit does offer an exclusive subreddit for subscribers called r/lounge. The company also currently pays some users for posting via the Reddit Contributor Program. The pieces for a paywall are there, but you have to fill in more than a few blanks to get them to fit together.

However they happen, paid subreddits continue Reddit's goal of monetizing as much of its user-generated content as possible after going public in 2024. The company has signed licensing deals with both OpenAI and Google, and is currently pulling on users' posts to answer questions with its Reddit Answers chatbot, all in an attempt to squeeze as much value out of the content it already has. A paywall is maybe a blunter way to make that happen, but it's not surprising.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/reddit-ceo-says-paid-subreddits-are-coming-this-year-203823936.html?src=rss

Corporate mascots may just have one of the most precarious jobs in marketing. 

The latest casualty: the Duolingo owl, a sassy multilingual bird who met his tragic fate after a car accident. 

On Tuesday, the language-learning app Duolingo announced the owl’s death, calling on people to do a Duolingo lesson in lieu of flowers. Soon after, the company released video proof of the owl’s untimely demise, showing that he had been hit by what appears to be a Tesla cybertruck, ramming him so hard that he flies into the gates of hell. 

UPDATE: Reward for whoever can identify the driver. Please post any leads on Twitter.

Thank you for your patience with us during these trying times. #Ripduo pic.twitter.com/zv8QxtNh9E

— Duolingo (@duolingo) February 12, 2025

Many companies have moved away from mascots because it’s becoming increasingly difficult for these characters, which are sometimes out of touch or even offensive, to appeal to diverse audiences, said Linda Ferrell of Auburn University’s Harbert College of Business.

Some of the lucky ones who survive have still been the victims of unrepentant marketers. In the late aughts, Jack in the Box launched a “Hang in there Jack” ad campaign, which followed Jack’s recovery after he was hit by a bus.

And back in 2020, the Planters mascot Mr. Peanut died sacrificing himself to save his friends after a road accident. However, Mr. Peanut was later reborn as Baby Nut after the Kool-Aid man shed a single tear on his gravesite. 

As you’d expect, the purpose of these injuries or deaths is to drum up attention. 

“Oftentimes, a brand will rely on something like this when they feel they need to revive or revitalize a brand or a mascot, or maybe they’re kind of out of the conversation in some way,” said Mathew Isaac, a marketing professor at the Seattle University Albers School of Business. 

Mr. Peanut, for example, is a mascot for a brand that’s more than a century old. “To some extent, that did work, because there was conversation around it,” Isaac said. 

But Duolingo’s campaign is unusual because of how successful the brand already is. The company’s stock price reached a record high this month and its social media accounts have attracted a large number of followers, Isaac pointed out. 

This marketing gimmick aligns with the brand’s image, which has been described as both “unhinged” and “wholesome,” Isaac said. “It’s not your standard corporate marketing,” he said. 

Duolingo’s marketing also tends to focus on “narratives” and “extended storylines,” he added. For example, Duo has frequently expressed his unrequited love for the pop singer Dua Lipa (who is now mourning his death). 

“I think some people really do like this character and the brand. And sometimes when you make a change, it really can make people think about how much they like a brand and what it means to them,” Isaac said. 

These morbid campaigns don’t always pan out. They may catch attention in the short run, but in Planters’ case, the reaction to baby nut wasn’t very favorable, Isaac said. 

Duolingo may have more luck. The company is using its mascot’s death to promote its lessons, claiming that doing them could revive the green bird. 

“I think they are using it as a way to build even more engagement, and I think that could be an effective strategy for them,” Isaac said. 

Duolingo loves its storylines, and this latest marketing stunt is a familiar one. It’s reminiscent of the “comic book death” trope, Isaac said. 

“You have a superhero that will die and then, invariably, they’ll return,” he said. 

If you look at your Roomba with disgust, thinking about what a far cry it is from the Jetsons’ Rosey the Robot, help is on the way. Bloomberg reported on Friday that Meta plans to leverage its advances in AI and augmented reality to build a platform for futuristic humanoid robots that can help with household chores like folding laundry.

Meta is reportedly creating a new team within its Reality Labs hardware division, which handles Quest VR headsets and the long-term Orion AR glasses project. Although it will build robot hardware during development, Meta’s long-term goal is more like Android, where Google makes the software platform that almost all of the industry (outside of Apple) uses. Meta would make the underlying sensors, AI and software for other companies to put inside their hardware. In other words, it wants to be the Android of androids.

Like The Jetsons’ Rosey the Robot, Meta’s version would help with household chores.Warner Bros. / YouTube

At least initially, Meta plans to make household chores the project’s central focus. Bloomberg lists folding laundry, carrying glasses of water, putting dinnerware in the dishwasher and other home chores as examples to build excitement around what could be an unsettling product category for many people. (For examples of why those concerns may be warranted, look no further than the Unitree G1 robot that ran full-speed at Engadget’s Karissa Bell at CES, momentarily pinning her against the onlooking crowd.)

Speaking of Unitree, Meta has reportedly held early discussions with the Chinese robotics company, which also makes a quadruped "robot dog" that can run around, climb stairs and sit on its hind legs like a good girl. Meta is also said to have discussed its plans with California-based humanoid robot maker Figure AI, which can count OpenAI, Nvidia, Microsoft, Intel and Jeff Bezos among its investors.

Karissa Bell for Engadget

Today’s humanoid robots aren’t advanced enough to pitch in around the house like Rosey, but Meta believes all the resources it’s sinking into AI and XR are paving a road to that destination. Although the company thinks it will be a few years before useful humanoid robots are widely available, Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth reportedly views the company’s progress in hand tracking, low-bandwidth computing and always-on sensors as advantages.

"The core technologies we’ve already invested in and built across Reality Labs and AI are complementary to developing the advancements needed for robotics," Bosworth reportedly wrote in a memo. "We believe that expanding our portfolio to invest in this field will only accrue value to Meta AI and our mixed and augmented reality programs."

Meta isn’t alone in raising its eyebrows at the prospect of home robots for (likely rich) consumers. Last year, news broke that Apple was working on robotics. Ditto for Google. Both companies have published research papers on their robotics work. Flying cars may have to wait, but Rosey is looking a lot less like a pipe dream.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-is-reportedly-working-on-humanoid-robots-that-help-with-chores-192453416.html?src=rss

Instagram is testing a new dislike button, which the company has signaled is a way for users to effectively downvote a distasteful or irrelevant comment. The dislike button is only for comments, and not the actual content itself. The platform is testing this with both Reels and Feed posts.

The service will not show a dislike count, though Instagram head Adam Mosseri says that dislikes will eventually contribute to comment ranking. In other words, this feature is most like the Reddit downvote button.

"This gives people a private way to signal that they don’t feel good about that particular comment," Mosseri wrote on Threads. "Our hope is that this might help make comments more friendly on Instagram."

A Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch that the primary purpose of the dislike button is to improve the quality of the comment section, echoing Mosseri’s post. This is just a test for now, so the button is only available to a “very small group of people.” It may get a broader rollout down the line.

Instagram has been busy in recent months. Platform representatives announced that it was working on a video-editing app that looks eerily-similar to TikTok’s sibling app, CapCut. The platform even expanded the length of Reels to three minutes, which was seen as another TikTok mimic. It also recently got rid of third-party fact checkers because of freedom or something.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-is-testing-a-dislike-button-but-only-for-comments-192130246.html?src=rss

After being rumored to be in the early stages of the project last year, Meta confirmed today that it's building "Project Waterworth," an over 50,00 km subsea cable that will connect five continents. The company has partnered on other cable projects previously, but this would be the first piece of subsea infrastructure it owns outright.

The project touches land in the US, Brazil, India, and South Africa, and is apparently breaking new ground technically, too. Meta claims Waterworth is the longest 24 fiber pair cable project in the world, and the company is using "first-of-its-kind routing" to place the cables as deep as possible, "at depths of up to 7,000 meters." If cables aren't deep enough, undersea hazards, like boats dropping and dragging their anchors, can cause permanent damage, disrupting service.

Meta

Meta's announcement doesn't go into detail about how the cable will be used, beyond noting that subsea cables enable "digital communication, video experiences, online transactions and more," and that high-speed connectivity is a necessity for "AI innovation." On their own, Meta services and platforms are said to account for about 10 percent of global fixed internet usage and 22 percent of mobile traffic, so at the very least the company's existing businesses stand to benefit from a stable connection.

Interestingly, Meta isn't only one backing the new project. A United States-India joint statement released after Prime Minister Modi visited the US revealed that India is financially involved in Waterworth, too. The country plans on helping to finance, maintain and repair the portions of the cable that are in the Indian Ocean.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-confirms-its-building-its-own-subsea-cable-190153227.html?src=rss

This is just one of the stories from our “I’ve Always Wondered” series, where we tackle all of your questions about the world of business, no matter how big or small. Ever wondered if recycling is worth it? Or how store brands stack up against name brands? Check out more from the series here.

Listener Kevin Pritchard from Holland, Michigan, asks: 

Where do all the roses for Valentine’s Day come from? How does the world meet the demand for a single day in February?

Nearly 1 billion cut flowers arrived in Miami just in time for Valentine’s Day this year, according to the Association of Floral Importers of America.

The U.S. isn’t the only country that recognizes the holiday. Feb. 14 is a day for love in Chile, Denmark, France, Kenya, Japan, the United Kingdom and more.

The growing popularity of Valentine’s Day has helped boost the global flower industry, said Kaitlin Simpson, an assistant professor of U.S. history at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. 

“It’s very much a celebration of romantic love, which is appealing across cultures,” Simpson said. 

Supplying roses for Valentine’s Day is a labor-intensive process that requires taking into account past demand, hiring enough workers to harvest these roses and adapting to unforeseen weather events, floral industry experts told Marketplace.   

Americans can seamlessly purchase roses in time for the holiday thanks to a reliable supply chain, but the process is more complex than they realize, said Kate Penn, CEO at the Society of American Florists. 

“It’s not like you can all of a sudden just make all those additional rose plants and flower plants appear,” she said. 

Most flowers sold in the U.S. are imported. About 60% of those stems come from Colombia and a quarter  from Ecuador, Penn said. The remainder primarily comes from the Netherlands, Canada and Mexico, she said. 

Rose breeders spend about seven years developing commercially viable blooms, taking into account petal and stem strength, fragrance and heartiness, Penn said. Once plant propagators get a new plant variety, they create the cuttings, then send them to growers around the globe.

“Roses are typically grown in controlled environments, often in greenhouses,” Penn said. “These growers are using environmentally friendly practices to protect against pests and diseases.” 

Growers predict future demand based on trends from previous years. Those calculations were disrupted by the pandemic, when more people were sending flowers to housebound loved ones, Penn said. A grower’s customers will begin pre-booking products in November and December, helping them assess how many roses they’ll need to harvest. 

They’ll also monitor their roses to ensure they’re in peak condition by the time Valentine’s Day rolls around.

“They will do careful pruning and maintenance practices so they are timing the roses to develop and have ready stems just a couple weeks before the holiday itself,” said Chad Miller, associate professor of landscape and ornamental horticulture at Colorado State University. 

A primarily female labor force will harvest the flowers in Colombia and Ecuador, sometimes working 15-hour shifts in the lead-up to Valentine’s Day, Simpson said. Growers ramp up production and hire extra labor ahead of holidays, Simpson added. 

Most flowers, especially roses, must be hand cut at just the right stage to ensure they’ll fully bloom, Penn said. Workers will then put flowers in nutrient-rich solutions and store them in highly controlled environments for shipping, which usually runs through Miami. 

Growers are also highly attuned to how weather will affect their crops. If there’s a lot of rain, roses may emerge later. 

“Sometimes that window for shipping is compressed into an even shorter than normal period … but somehow our industry makes it happen,” Penn said. 

Flower production has shifted from the U.S. to other countries over the past century thanks to technological advancements and cheap labor. 

The Colombian and Ecuadorian flower markets began developing and exporting their products between the 1960s and 1980s, Simpson said. Quicker and cheaper air travel enabled the floral industry to export roses from other countries with more ideal climate conditions and lower prices, while maintaining their quality, she explained.  

“In part, their value lies in the fact that they wilt so quickly. They’re ephemera in that sort of way,” Simpson said. 

Southern climates don’t have harsh winters, allowing flowers to grow year-round, Simpson added. 

As Colombia and Ecuador gained prominence in the floral industry, so did Kenya’s flower industry. The East African country exports roses to the Middle East, Russia and some other European countries, Simpson said. 

“They’re grown outside of Lake Naivasha in Kenya,” Simpson said. “Kenya is now the fourth largest exporter of cut flowers in the world, behind the Netherlands, Colombia and Ecuador,” Simpson said. 

When we pick up a bouquet of flowers, we often forget that these flowers come from the Global South, where workers endure long and tough working conditions, with relatively little pay, Simpson said. 

“Often that labor goes unrecognized, and so it’s just important to keep that in mind,” Simpson said.

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Apparently President's Day was created to honor George Washington's birthday. But now on a Monday in February we celebrate every US president by shopping for deals. Nixon, Taft, Coolidge, Polk, Johnson, Hoover and all those other guys — they'd be quite proud of us. In our searches we found quite a few deals on the tech we recommend, including $100 off Apple's new iPad Mini, a streaming deal for a year of Peacock for $30 and an $80 discount on the Apple AirPods Pro 2 . If you're already thinking about spring cleaning, you may want to check out the robot vacuum deals we gathered up from both iRobot and Dyson. And if you're in the market for security cams, a number of Amazon's Blink devices are currently discounted. Here are the best President's Day tech deals from this week that you can shop right now.  

Spotlight President's Day deal

The best President's Day tech deals Nathan Ingraham for Engadget

Apple iPad mini for $499 at Amazon ($100 off): Apple’s smallest tablet was updated in October and got a new A17 Pro chip, which Engadget's Nathan Ingraham found to be plenty fast for anything you'd want to do with the mini — casual browsing, couch binging, game playing and email checking. He gave it an overall score of 83 in our official review and particularly enjoyed it as a Balatro machine. It's also our favorite (partly because it's the only) small iPad on our list of the best iPads. 

Apple AirPods 4 for $100 at Amazon ($29 off): Apple's newest wireless earbuds came out in September and last week, they hit their lowest price yet. That price is still going strong, so you can still pick them up at a discount. Engadget's Billy Steele gave them a review score of 88, saying they sounded clearer and more balanced than most open-back earbuds. Plus you get all the Apple-perks like fast pairing and device switching with other Apple gadgets, hands-free Siri and Find My tracking. Also at Target and Best Buy. There's also a noise-canceling version on sale for $149.

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

Apple 2024 MacBook Pro M4 for $1400 at Amazon ($199 off with coupon): Apple's latest Pro-model laptop is down to $1,400 at Amazon with a discount and an on-page coupon. The 14-inch MacBook Pro has 16GB of memory and 512GB SSD storage and both the Space Black and Silver colorways are on sale. Engadget's Devindra Hardawar gave the computer a 92 in his review and it's currently Engadget's pick for the best MacBook for creatives. It has a fast M4 chip, long battery life, bright display and Sharp 12MP Center Stage webcam.

Apple Studio Display with tilt-adjustable stand for $1,300 at Amazon ($300 off): We appreciated the excellent build quality of Apple's pricey display in our official review, but noted that it's probably only for Apple diehards. Both the standard glass model and the nano-textured glass option are on sale. The Studio Display made our list of the best monitors and has built-in speakers, a 12MP camera, three USB-C ports and a screen with 5K resolution — but a max refresh rate of 60Hz and single-zone backlighting.  

Apple Pencil (USB-C) for $69 at Walmart ($10 off): Apple sells too many versions of the Apple Pencil. So we made a guide. The USB-C model works with all current-generation iPads, including the M2 iPad Air, the M4 iPad Pro, the new iPad mini and the 10th generation iPad. It'll also work with a few older tablets too. Just note that this one attahced magnetically but doesn't recharge that way, like the other Apple Pencils. And it doesn't have pressure sensitivity. Also at Amazon and Target. 

Peacock

Peacock Premium (One Year) at Peacock for $30 ($TK off): Here's one from our new streaming deals guide: A year of Peacock's streaming service is $30 if you use the code WINTERSAVINGS at checkout. The code is valid through February 18 and saves you 60 percent off the usual $80 annual fee. Though it's called "Premium" it's actually the ad-supported tier (Premium Plus is the ad-free plan but it's not discounted and goes for $140 yearly). Peacock is one of our picks for the best streaming services and has some great original content, including Poker Face, a Twisted Metal adaptation and Mrs. Davis.

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (16 GB) for $135 at Amazon ($25 off): Our choice for best premium ereader. is the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition that goes for $200 and isn't discounted. The standard Paperwhite, on sale here, is basically the same machine, minus a few (inessential) perks like auto-adjusting front lights, extra storage and wireless charging. This is the lowest price we've tracked this year (it went about $5 lower for Black Friday) on a very lovely e-reader with remarkably fast page turns, a super crisp display and a great battery life.

Photo by Valentina Palladino / Engadget

Amazon Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition (32 GB) for $230 at Amazon ($50 off): Engadget's Valentina Palladino found a lot to like about the Kindle Colorsoft in her review including quick page turns, the fairly accurate (if a bit cold) color technology and the pinch to zoom feature, which was especially nice for reading comics. If you're just looking to read black and white text, you can save yourself a bit of money and go with the Paperwhite — text on the Colorsoft is not as crisp.

KitchenAid Artisan Series 5 quart tilt head stand mixer for $350 at Amazon ($100 off): One of our top picks for kitchen tech is, unsurprisingly, KitchenAid's famed stand mixer. It's not only powerful, the seemingly endless array of available attachments make it a true kitchen multitasker. KitchenAid is hosting a larger sale for President's Day on its own website, and many of the brand's countertop appliances are currently up to $100 off.

iRobot Roomba Combo 10 Max for $789 at Wellbots ($610 off with code): Wellbots has a few iRobot vacuums on sale for President's Day, including the new Roomba Combo 10 Max and its Autowash Dock, which can empty and cleans the vac. Right now it's on sale for $789 if you use the code ENGAD410 at checkout. That'll take a full $610 off the hefty $1,399 MSRP. That's even cheaper than the last time it was on sale. Not only does the robot itself mop and vacuum, the dock can hold 60 days worth of dust and seven days worth of dirty mop water. For a slightly cheaper combo robo vac, Wellbots is also discounting the Roomba Combo j5 for $239 instead of the full $529 with the code ENGAD210. 

Dyson V12 vaccuum for $499 at Dyson ($150 off): Now through President's Day, the Dyson V12 Detect Slim stick vacuum is $150 off. This is the lighter sibling to the V15 model we picked as the best cordless vac in our guide. This one includes the Fluffy Optic cleaner head that won us over in our testing. It's a hard-floor brush head with a laser "blade" that clearly shows you the tiniest bits of dust so you can be sure to suck them up. The Gen5 Outsize Absolute is also on sale for $150 off. It's down to $899. That model is the largest cordless vac and has up to 140 minutes of run time. 

Photo by Billy Steele/Engadget

Samsung LS60D Music Frame for $150 at Woot ($250 off): You might be familiar with Samsung's Frame TV — the sets that mimic works of art when you're not watching television. The Music Frame furthers that home-theater-as-decor aesthetic by hiding Dolby Atmos audio equipment behind what looks like a regular picture frame. This one doesn't have a screen, instead you'll insert your own photo or art behind the glass. Inside are two woofers, two tweeters and two mid-range drivers. The speaker array is capable of Dolby Atmos audio and it leverages Samsung's SpaceFit tech to calibrate the sound to the room. We checked it out at CES 2024 and were impressed with how robust the music sounded.

Fitbit Charge 6 Fitness Tracker for $116 at Amazon ($44 off): Our current top pick for a fitness tracker is back on sale. It went as low as $100 for Black Friday, but this is the lowest price we've seen this year. Our favorite fitness tracker is the successor to our previous top pick, the Charge 5. This new generation has a more accurate heart rate monitor and the ability to pair with exercise machines via Bluetooth. Plus there's now a physical side button for navigation in addition to the touchscreen.

8BitDo

Mill food composter for $874 at Mill ($125 off): A President's Day sale from Mill, the kitchen composter company, will run until Monday, February 17 and will give you $125 off a new composter. If you've explored the different options for composting food and have decided to give a composting machine a try, Mill could be one to check out. The machine dries and grinds food scraps, reducing odors and bulk while creating grounds that you can add to your garden.

8BitDo

8BitDo Pro 2 controller for $39 at Amazon ($12 off): The black version of one of our picks for the best Switch controllers is down to a record-low price. The programmable controller is compatible with the Switch, Apple devices, Android devices, Windows PC, Steam Deck and Raspberry Pi. 

Blink Mini 2 (2-pack) for $38 at Amazon ($32 off): The Blink Mini 2 security camera sell for $40 each at full price, so this deal gets you two for less than the MSRP for one. The small security cameras have two way talk and listen, capture live video in 1080p and have infrared sensors for black and white images at night. You'll need a Blink Subscription Plan if you want to save clips to the cloud, but if you also buy a Sync Module 2, you can save clips from your Blink Mini cameras to a flash drive.

Blink Video Doorbell and Sync Module 2 for $35 ($35 off): Here's a bundle that combines the Video Doorbell with a Sync Module 2, the device that allows you to store footage from your Blink cameras and doorbells locally. The doorbell offers 1080p daytime footage and infrared night video plus two-way audio. You can use it wired or on batteries that should last two years before needing to be replaced. The Blink subscription plan is required if you want person detection and the ability to store clips in the cloud.

Ring Battery Video Doorbell for $60 at Amazon ($40 off): Another Amazon security device company, Ring, is also having a sale right now. The discount matches the record-low price for the Ring Video Doorbell. This battery-powered model doesn't need to be wired into your home, so you can put it near any door. The removable battery is rechargeable via USB-C and will likely need a refill every couple months. You'll need a Ring subscription to access all the features, like person and package alerts and extended event history.  

Apple

Apple Music (6 months) for $3 at Apple ($60 off): Normally an Apple Music subscription is $11 per month after a 30-day free trial. And when you buy a new Apple device, you usually get a three-month trial. But if you somehow haven't yet signed up for the service, this promotion applies to you. The deal will run through February 27 and is open only to people who are entirely new Apple Music — current and previous customers are not eligible, nor are those who qualify for the free trial that comes with a new device. You'll need to redeem the offer through an iPhone, iPad or Mac. Apple Music made our guide to the best music streaming services for its lossless streaming quality, ease of use with Apple devices and emphasis on using DJ curation over AI and algorithm playlists. Note that the subscription will automatically renew unless you cancel. 

NordPass Premium (27 months) for $35 at Nord ($46 off): One of our favorite password managers for cross-platform availability is having a sale. NordPass Premium is currently available for $35 for 27 months. At full price, two years would cost you $81, and this deal throws in three months for free. NordPass also offers a free tier, but the Premium plan keeps you logged in when you switch devices while also helping you analyze your passwords to improve their strength.

EcoFlow DELTA Pro Ultra for $5,299 at EcoFlow ($797 off): The whole-home backup battery and inverter from EcoFlow is on sale for a Valentine's Day/President's Day sale at the manufacturer's site.

Samsung Evo Select (1TB) microSD card for $70 at Amazon ($10 off): The Evo Select is the budget pick in our guide to the best microSD cards: It's not the fastest model we tested, but it'll serve as a way to add storage for your Nintendo Switch or Android tablet. This deal matches the all-time low for the extra-spacious 1TB model. Also at Samsung and B&H.

Roomba

iRobot Roomba Vac Essential (Q0120) for $119 at Amazon ($130 off): The top pick in our guide to the best budget robot vacuums has hit a new low price. It can't map paths in your home, instead it randomly traverses a room until it's covered the area. But it has good suction and cleans well, plus it's easy to set up and control through Roomba's mobile app. Also at Best Buy and Target.

LG B4 OLED TV (48") for $600 at Best Buy ($200 off): This ties the lowest price we've seen for the 48-inch LG B4, which is the entry-level model in LG's 2024 OLED lineup. While it's not as bright or color-rich as some higher-end alternatives, it still offers the essential perks of any good OLED TV: superb contrast with deep black tones, clear motion, wide viewing angles and the like. It's also a nice value for gaming, as it has four HDMI 2.1 ports that support refresh rates up to 120Hz. It's just better off in a darker room, and this particular model is relatively small.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-best-presidents-day-tech-deals-on-apple-samsung-dyson-blink-and-more-173252189.html?src=rss

States across the country have big goals for renewable energy and carbon emission reductions. Meeting these goals requires development of renewable energy projects at scale, and the workforce to do them.

Dan Hendricks is the training director of the Denver Joint Electrical Apprenticeship and Training Center. Much of the work apprentices do is hands-on, both in a classroom setting and on the job. (Caroline Llanes)

In Colorado, labor unions are asking, “Who better to complete these projects than workers already in the trades?”

At the Denver Joint Electrical Apprenticeship and Training Center, Dan Hendricks is multitasking. While he demonstrates switches on a practice motor, he describes what goes into an electrician’s apprenticeship: “This is towards the end of their apprenticeship where they would learn motor control, different switching systems — things of that nature. So as they progress, right, the work gets more interesting.”

Outside, there’s practice infrastructure: a 60-foot wind turbine, which connects to four electric vehicle chargers, as well as solar panels.

Hendricks gets a lot of questions about green jobs, but he said this program just expands traditional training.

“That wind turbine out there really is just another electrical installation for us. You know, it’s a piece of machinery that has to hook to the electrical system of the building,” he said. “So it’s really no different than a motor or anything else of that nature that we might do anyway.”

Colorado labor unions want to ramp up green energy projects. Historically, energy production in the state has come from rural areas — mostly coal and fossil fuels.

Dennis Dougherty with Colorado AFL-CIO wants to see rural communities play a role in the transition.

“You do not have to choose between a good union, family-sustaining job and taking care of Colorado’s climate, our water and our lands,” he said.

Colorado is the first state in the Mountain West with a labor coalition for climate jobs, but other states have similar campaigns — including Texas and California, which also have initiatives to transition workers from the fossil fuel industry to green energy jobs.

“I have a strong interest in a career that will positively benefit the environment,” said Aidan Boyd, a 24-year-old prospective electrician apprentice at the Denver facility. “​​I’m excited to work with my hands. You know, it’s a job that I feel won’t be a victim in the future to automation or artificial intelligence. It’s going to be required.”

And with the skills he’ll learn, Boyd will just as easily be ready to install solar panels or maintain wind turbines as wire new appliances in someone’s home.

According to researchers, anyone who knows where to look can spray digital graffiti on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) website. Two web development experts said the site doesn’t seem to be hosted on government servers and that the database it pulls from can be modified by those who locate it. At the time of writing, a message reading “these ‘experts’ left their database open - roro” is still visible on the DOGE site.

DOGE chief and President Trump consigliere Elon Musk said on Tuesday that his team would be as transparent as possible, with updates on its actions shared to an X account and website. As 404 Media notes, the DOGE website was pretty much blank at the time. Since then, it's been hurriedly assembled to show a feed of posts from the entity’s X account, along with details about the federal workforce.

The researchers told 404 that the site appeared to be built on Cloudflare Pages instead of government servers. After looking at the site’s architecture and API endpoints, one was able to locate the database containing stats on government employees. They made changes to database entries that were reflected on the DOGE website.

It's not the first time that a federal website operating under the Trump administration has appeared to have been slapped together. Just this week, the waste.gov was locked after it was reported that the site displayed a dummy WordPress page, complete with placeholder text.

DOGE does acknowledge that there are possible issues with its web presence. “This is DOGE's effort to create a comprehensive, government-wide org chart,” a footnote on the DOGE website reads. “This is an enormous effort, and there are likely some errors or omissions. We will continue to strive for maximum accuracy over time.”

However, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that a team tasked with making sweeping cuts to government spending and allegedly barging its way into federal systems that contain sensitive data on federal employees and citizens can’t secure its own website. Perhaps gutting the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency wasn't the wisest idea.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/the-doge-website-is-seemingly-so-insecure-it-can-be-edited-by-anyone-160612228.html?src=rss

The Guardian Media Group, owner of The Guardian and The Observer newspapers, is partnering with OpenAI. The deal will see reporting from The Guardian appear as a news source within ChatGPT, alongside article extracts and short summaries. In return, OpenAI will provide the Guardian Media Group with access to ChatGPT Enterprise, which the company says it will use to develop new products, features and tools.      

"This new partnership with OpenAI reflects the intellectual property rights and value associated with our award-winning journalism, expanding our reach and impact to new audiences and innovative platform services," said Keith Underwood, chief financial and operating officer of the Guardian Media Group.

The Guardian Media Group joins a growing list of news publishers that are now working with OpenAI after an initial period of uncertainty over the company and its business model. What started as a trickle with The Associated Press in 2023 has since become a flood, with many of the English-speaking world's leading publishers inking deals with the AI startup. 

In some ways, The Guardian has been more proactive than others. In 2023, the newspaper publish an article detailing its approach to generative AI. A year later, it announced a partnership with ProRata, a company that built a platform that allows AI platforms to attribute search results and share revenue with content owners. Today's announcement also comes after a major coalition of publishers, including The Guardian, announced a lawsuit against Cohere, a Canadian startup they allege improperly used more than 4,000 copyrighted works to train its AI models.   

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/the-guardian-is-the-latest-news-organization-to-partner-with-openai-155555243.html?src=rss

If you’re eager to binge-watch shows like Poker Face, revisit classics like The Office or catch the upcoming SNL 50th anniversary special, Peacock is the place for all of that. Presidents’ Day streaming deals have made it a bit more affordable to stream Peacock content right now: through February 18, you can snag one year of Peacock Premium for only $30. To recap, we saw the same subscription drop to $20 during the holiday shopping season last year, and this is the best discount since then. Just use the code WINTERSAVINGS at checkout if you don't see the deal price immediately.

It’s important to note that, despite the name, this isn’t the actual premium tier. It includes ads, which could be a dealbreaker for some. However, there’s plenty to watch on this platform for those okay with the occasional long and harrowing commercial about random pharmaceuticals. Peacock, after all, easily made our list of the best streaming services.

The platform is home to all kinds of original content, from Rian Johnson’s Poker Face to that surprisingly fun Twisted Metal adaptation. It’s also the only place to watch the dearly-departed AI-centric sci-fi romp Mrs. Davis. During its early years, Peacock invested heavily in scripted comedy and a lot of that stuff is still on the platform. This includes shows like Rutherford Falls, Bust Down and MacGruber.

More recently, the streamer has found success with shows like Ted, Hysteria! and Laid. It also has all kinds of reality TV shows, if that’s your bag, as NBC owns Bravo.

If this deal interests you, get on it quick. The aforementioned coupon code stops working on February 18. Also, this deal is only for new subscribers. As for more Presidents' Day streaming deals, you can save on Apple Music, NBA League Pass and more. These are some of the best Presidents' Day streaming deals we found this year.

• Apple Music for $3 for six months ($63 off): New subscribers can get one of the best deals we've seen on Apple Music, period. The iPhone maker has discounted the Individual plan to only $3 total for six months of access — that's a far cry from the typical $11-per-month cost. Apple Music is one of our top picks for the best music streaming services available now. Just note: Offer for eligible new subscribers redeeming on eligible devices. Auto-renews at $10.99/mo after offer period until cancelled. Offer not available if you are eligible for a 3-months free Apple Music offer. Terms apply.

• NBA League Pass for $77 for one year (30 percent off): This gift subscription gives your recipient (or you) access to NBA League Pass for one year, with live and on-demand game coverage, including all out-of-market games, and 24/7 access to NBA TV.

• Disney+, Hulu, Max bundle with ads for $17/month: This bundle is offered all year round, but it's particularly compelling now with the new season of Max's The White Lotus Season 3 premiering on February 16. Max may not technically be under the Disney mega-umbrella, but you get full, ad-supported access to its content here along with Disney+ and Hulu. You’ll save 43 percent with this bundle, as opposed to paying for all three services individually.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-best-presidents-day-streaming-deals-include-one-year-of-peacock-premium-for-only-30-195123462.html?src=rss

A third of Americans have more credit card debt than emergency savings, according to a new poll commissioned by Bankrate. That number has actually improved a bit compared to the last two years, but it’s a sign that higher prices are still weighing on many household budgets.

Bankrate has measured this balance between credit card debt and emergency savings since 2011. For years, it didn’t change all that much, according to Greg McBride, Bankrate’s chief financial analyst.

But then, a few years ago, “inflation really picked up,” he said. “And all of a sudden, the percentage of households with more credit card debt than emergency savings that really picked up as well.”

This year, McBride said that it appears households are making a bit of progress adding to their savings.

But a different category ticked up in the poll, noted Rice University assistant professor of finance Benedict Guttman-Kenney: those who said they have no credit card debt and no savings.

“So it’s not, not as clear that people are in, like, a massively better financial situation than they were a year ago,” he said.

And with more potential tariffs on the way from the Trump administration, it’s hard to tell if and when consumers might see higher prices, he added.

“If they don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or even next week, next month, then it becomes far more difficult to work out, ‘Well, how much should I be saving now? How much should I be spending?'” Guttman-Kenney said.

Higher debt levels aren’t all bad. For some households, it might actually be a sign of financial confidence, per Steven Blitz, chief U.S. economist at TS Lombard: “You’re willing to run a high balance because you feel like you’re going to get the income down the line to pay it down or to carry it.”

American households, he added, are in pretty good financial shape right now if you look at the population overall.

The recipients of the US government's CHIPS and Science Act awards may not get the amount that they were initially promised. According to Reuters, the Trump administration is looking to assess and change the CHIPS Act's current requirements. After that, it's set to renegotiate some of the deals awarded by the Biden administration. It has also indicated a delay in some of the disbursements that are already scheduled, Reuters said. A spokesperson for Taiwan-based GlobalWafers said the company was notified by the program's office that CHIPS Act policies are under review because certain conditions do not align with Trump's executive orders. GlobalWafers is one of the program's awardees that was set to receive $406 million in grants. 

Former president Joe Biden signed the CHIPS Act into law in 2022 to boost semiconductor production in the US. While each awardee has different milestones they need to achieve in order to get grants, the goal is to get them to build new foundries and upgrade existing ones in the country. The Trump administration is reportedly concerned with many of the previous administration's requirements for recipients. They include clauses added into contracts by Biden's team, the news organization's sources said, including requirements to use unionized labor when building factories and to provide factory workers with affordable childcare. The White House also isn't happy that some of the companies, such as Intel, announced expansion plans in China after being chosen as a recipient.

The US government has yet to formally announce any changes to CHIPS Act policies, so it's not yet clear how extensive they will be and how previous deals will be affected. Bloomberg reported last year that the Biden administration rushed to finalize deals with recipients after Donald Trump won the presidential elections. Trump vocally criticized the program in the past, calling it "bad" and arguing that increasing tariffs would attract chip companies without the government having to award any grants. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/trump-administration-reportedly-eyes-renegotiating-chips-act-awards-143035924.html?src=rss

Wellbots is offering multiple of iRobot's Roomba Combo vacuum and mop machines for 40 percent off, and in one case, over 50 percent off as an early President's Day sale. You can even get the new Roomba Combo 10 Max and its Autowash Dock, which can empty and cleans your robot, for $789, around $410 off its normal $1,199 price. That's a good bit cheaper than the last time it was on sale.

The Roomba Combo 10 Max + Autowash Dock is a newer addition to iRobot's lineup, and an important one. Besides combining the ability to vacuum and mop your floors, the inclusion of the robot's Autowash Dock means you now have an automated way to clean and sanitize the Combo 10 Max's mop brush. Combine that with its ability to empty itself, and you go a long way to towards doing away with some of the most annoying parts of owning a robot vacuum.

The Autowash Dock can hold 60 days worth of dust and only seven days worth of dirty mop water, so you will need to check on it occasionally, but that might be worth it for this deal. You can get the Roomba Combo 10 Max + Autowash Dock for $789, and save $410 with code ENGAD410.

The Roomba Combo j5 doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the Combo 10 Max, but it does start at a much more approachable $449. The robot can both vacuum and mop your floors, and adapt its cleaning patterns based on the layout of your room. It can even identify high traffic areas of your home and give them extra attention so no dirt gets overlooked.

The robot's dock is sold separately, so you won't benefit from its ability to empty itself, but it should be relatively simple to upgrade down the road if you want. The Roomba Combo j5 is available for over 50 percent off, knocking a good $210 off if you use code ENGAD210.

The Roomba Combo i5 is a little bit older than the Combo 10 Max and Combo j5, but it's still a competent helper when you need your floor vacuumed and mopped. Like iRobot's other options, the Combo i5 maps your home to determine the best way to clean it, and can be completely controlled with a companion phone app if you want. 

This model is also technically compatible with a self-emptying base, but it doesn't come included, so you'll want to buy it separately if you want to automate your cleaning process even further. You can lower the Roomba Combo i5 from its $349 starting price to $189, a savings of $160, with code ENGAD160.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/irobots-roomba-combo-vacuum-and-mop-machines-are-more-than-50-percent-off-right-now-140049700.html?src=rss

Apple's artificial intelligence features for iPhones could be available in China as early as May, according to Bloomberg. The company reportedly established several teams in China and the US to make that happen, and it's also teaming up with local companies for its generative AI needs in the country. Joe Tsai, Alibaba Group's Chairman, recently confirmed that Apple will use his company's generative AI technology for Chinese iPhones during an event. Tsai didn't say when Apple intends to roll out the AI features that use Alibaba's tech, but The Information previously reported that the companies had already submitted them for approval to the country's regulators. 

Bloomberg says Apple will use Alibaba's technology for its on-device AI models, specifically as a layer on top that can censor certain materials and information for the Chinese government. Alibaba will be able to ask Apple to make updates to its AI models if China's government asks, and Apple will apparently disable outdated AI features on a user's phone until they update their device to remove any content that's been prohibited. These will only apply for iPhones meant for sale within China and not for devices purchased elsewhere. However, Apple Intelligence will not work in the country even on devices meant for sale in other regions once the user changes their location to mainland China.

Tsai said during an event that Apple talked to several companies in the region for its AI needs, including DeepSeek. While Alibaba will be its primary AI partner in China, Bloomberg says Apple will also work with Baidu for certain features like Visual Intelligence, which lets users find information online by scanning items on their phone. For AI features that need additional power and have to be processed through external servers, Apple will likely have to work with a local partner, as well. 

As Bloomberg notes, bringing Apple Intelligence to Chinese iPhones is a critical goal for the company. China is Apple's second biggest market, but the company's sales are on the decline as customers turn to local brands that offer AI features on their devices. In the last three months of 2024, Apple's sales in the country dropped by 11.1 percent, putting Apple in third place in the country's smartphone market after Huawei and Xiaomi. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/apple-could-roll-out-ai-features-for-iphones-in-china-as-early-as-may-133036284.html?src=rss

If you detest vacuuming, like I do, a robot vacuum can make it so you have one less chore to do. The good thing is that you don’t have to spend a fortune to get a good robot vacuum anymore. In fact, our favorite budget robot vacuum for 2025 is currently 52 percent off: the iRobot Roomba Vac Robot Vacuum (Q0120) is down to $119 from $250 — a new record-low price.

There's a reason iRobot's Roomba Vac robot vacuum is across all our best lists (check it out alongside our top smart home gadgets). It's an easy to use, high-performance robot vacuum that's not going to break the bank. For starters, you can control the entire device with iRobot's very easy to use app. All that's required of you is connecting the Roomba to your home Wi-Fi network. 

The Roomba Vac robot vacuum also offers features like Clean While I'm Away, cleaning schedules and up to two hours of cleaning on one charge — it automatically heads back to its charging station when on low battery. Plus, you can get a Clean Map report to see exactly where it cleaned. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/our-favorite-budget-roomba-robot-vacuum-drops-to-a-new-record-low-price-152501884.html?src=rss

Chip designer Arm plans to unveil its own processor this year with Meta as the launch customer, The Financial Times reported. The chip would be a CPU designed for servers in data centers and would have the potential to be customized for clients. Manufacturing would be outsourced to a contract fab plant like TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.) and the first in-house chip could be revealed as early as this summer, according to the FT's sources. 

Last month, Arm parent Softbank announced the Stargate project, a partnership with OpenAI to build up to $500 billion worth of AI infrastructure. Arm, along with Microsoft and NVIDIA, is a key technology partner for the project. Arm's chip could now play a role in that project, and also in Jony Ive's mysterious AI-powered personal device, reportedly being developed in collaboration with OpenAI's Sam Altman, according to the report. 

Arm's designs power nearly every smartphone and mobile device in the world, along with Apple Mac and Qualcomm-powered Windows PCs. They generally use less power for the same level of compute as Intel and AMD chips, so they've become desirable for data farms that power AI applications as well. 

The move would put Arm in direct competition with many of its own customers like NVIDIA, which manufacturers its own Arm-based server CPUs. To date, Arm has never made its own chips — instead, it licenses its technology and patents to major companies like Apple. Those companies then customize the designs for their own needs and use a contract manufacturer like TSMC or Samsung to build the chips. 

UK-based Arm is currently embroiled in a testy legal battle with Qualcomm over licensing terms. Meanwhile, parent SoftBank is reportedly close to purchasing Ampere, a server chip designer. That deal will be "central to Arm's own chipmaking project," according to FT's inside sources. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/arm-is-reportedly-developing-its-own-in-house-chip-130026316.html?src=rss

We joked about "President Musk" shortly after Donald Trump took office, but it turns out that wasn't far from the truth. Over the past few weeks, Elon Musk and his DOGE team wasted no time in trying to dismantle the American administrative state. They've illegally accessed the Treasury Department's federal payment system, pushed for USAID to be dismantled, and have also infiltrated the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In this episode, we chat with 404 Media's Jason Koebler about what Musk and his young tech cronies are up to, and how it ties into Silicon Valley's approach to the new Trump administration.

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!

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Topics

• Move Fast and Break Things: What is Elon Musk’s DOGE doing to the United States government? – 1:04

• iPhone SE 4 announcement expected soon – 34:54

• Elon Musk makes $97.4 billion offer for OpenAI, Altman declines in a tweet – 39:03

• France wants to build a gigawatt of new nuclear plants to power AI ambitions – 41:27

• Working on – 44:05

• Pop culture picks – 44:48

Credits 

Hosts: Devindra Hardawar
Guest: Jason Koebler from 404 Media
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North

Transcript

Devindra: What's up, Internet, and welcome back to the Engadget Podcast. I'm senior editor, Devindra Hardawar. This week, I'm joined by podcast producer, Ben Ellman. Hey, Ben.

Ben: Hello, everyone.

Devindra: Hello, and special guest Jason Koebler from 404 Media. Hey, Jason.

Jason: Hey, thanks for having me.

Devindra: Thank you for joining us, Jason, because I feel like you're a good person to talk about stuff.

How you doing, everyone? Kind of the hellscape of what's happening in the US government right now. And we want to follow up with some comments we made about Elon Musk right after Trump's inauguration. We were joking that he really seemed more like President Musk than some sort of special advisor.

And honestly, That's kind of how it feels. Judging from all the meddling we've seen from Doge and his initiative and his lackeys in the administrative state, it seems like Elon Musk is taking a real strong hand in a lot of things, especially when it comes to money and funding. So we're going to dive into all of that.

And I don't know, just try to figure out where we're going from here, folks. As always, if you're enjoying the show, please be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or your podcatcher of choice. Leave us a review on iTunes and drop us an email at podcastendingadget. com. I feel like my first question here for you, Jason, is what, what the heck is happening?

Because I don't know how we got into the situation where Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is now just so strongly determining what is happening with federal agencies, with funding. Do we have a sense? Is it just the money that Musk invested in the Trump campaign that has given him this leeway at this point?

Jason: Well, there's definitely a whoa dude aspect to what's happening. I mean, while you were saying that, I remember when Elon Musk talked about politics before, but he didn't really get behind Trump until the assassination attempt. And that was not that long ago. And now he's, you know, like this, with with the administration and in many ways seemingly dictating what is happening.

I mean, you made that joke about President Musk, and I think that started as a joke, like in the first days of the presidency. And now he's giving speeches from behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. His son is talking to Trump and perhaps telling him to shut up, if you saw those clips. So, I mean, yeah, it really does seem like Elon Musk is dictating what is happening within the executive branch.

I think the thing that I've heard most in terms of what is going on here is that Elon Musk really seems to care a lot about policy and, and what is happening here, whereas Trump doesn't care about that sort of thing. And so he's saying you know, Elon, do whatever you want. And what Elon seems to want to do is gut these really important agencies.

You know, starting with USAID, which provides, you know, billions of dollars of aid all around the world is a really, Is like the most powerful soft power agency that the United States has. And then start, sort of going into the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after that. I've been talking to dozens of federal workers across the entire government.

And I feel like the message that I'm getting from them most often is, Oh my God, the Doge Bros are here today, or the specter of the Doge Bros showing up at some point seems to loom very large over really every agency at this point.

Devindra: And it's weird how they're saying, Oh my God, this is the Doge Bros.

The Doge Bros from reporting from Wired and other places. And they're 19, 20 year olds. One of them is like a freshman in college and they're all just Musk and Peter Thiel acolytes. This is the dumbest future. Like this, I did not expect, I don't know, our democracy to crumble like this, but really that, that is what it is.

And I don't quite know how to explain it, that Musk and his lackeys have gotten this this amount of leeway. To do all this stuff. So I remember something we learned from the first Trump presidency is that he really hated the job, right? He didn't like actually doing work. He was watching TV all day trying to like, you know, half ass as much as possible.

So what seems to be happening here is Musk is determining a lot of the administrative stuff. And I think the executive orders that we've seen, the deletion of all that stuff is from the folks behind project 2025, right? So it's like he's, he's split up the actual work of what it takes to be a president and he will show up for camera ops because that's what he loves.

So we're not going to talk about the project 2025 stuff, but A lot of those executive orders will have an impact in the tech world too. So we'll dive into that when we can. Brendan Carr, head of the FCC, like that's a whole other thing. That's a whole other episode of like how this is all going to dismantle so many things that we love.

And I know the little bits of a consumer friendly product group progress, the Biden administration administration did. Just kind of a man, just kind of a wild place. We're in you mentioned a couple of things, USAID. I have friends there, so I'm going to, I don't know. I feel particularly pissed off about this because of the potential for good with that agency, there are legitimate arguments like yes, soft power.

Yes. It's very easy to hide spies in there to help them, you know, manipulate things in other countries, but also. Legitimate good, right? Ben, there was something you wanted to point out. The actual tech angle, like one major tech thing that USAID workers

Ben: relied on. So for USAID, You are posted all over the world.

Devindra: Your family is there. They've settled there. Yeah.

Ben: And often in very remote locations, think about USAID being like the Peace Corps on steroids. You're doing similar work to Peace Corps stuff, like Getting into, you know, places in Sub Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia places that don't usually get foreign aid, and you are living there for a long amount of time.

But that also exposes you to some issues where there might be, you know, local terrorist groups or something of the like that might want to take your cache of aid that you want to, you know, distribute between, you know, X number of towns and villages. They have a piece of technology at USAID called ScryPanic that just like broadcasts your coordinates wherever you are in the world.

If you have cell service, it will say, Hey, this person really needs help. Send local authorities, send any like U. S. forces if they're around there, like this is a huge alarm bell. And there have been some mixed reports of. USAID workers and contractors just getting like bad token messages when they try to log into this like incredibly crucial piece of technology.

Devindra: I mean, I'm not, not surprised there are people I know that have been there. I'm not going to say their names, but over, over the weekend before a lot of this stuff was public, they were just like, hey, come home. They got messages like, hey, come home, you're, you're done. And these are people who have settled in other countries.

They have kids in schools. They have whole lives set up and it's kind of evaporating in an instance. I think the story was like wasn't that barred by a court? Like they're dismantling FEOSAID, but the damage has already been done.

Jason: Well, that's the thing. If you're in a really remote area and you're You're called home and, you know, a court at some point says, Oh, this is illegal.

You can go back. It's not necessarily as easy as, Oh, just go back to this incredibly remote place and, and spin up your project again. And so, you know, whether this is deemed constitutional or not, and whether you, you know, the, the administration complies with what ultimately happens, you know, lots of questions there.

It that the damage has already been done. Like you said,

Devindra: Yeah, it's kind of really hard to to fix this. Like from a lot of people I've talked to you, it seems like the overall damage that's potentially happening to the administrative government right now. This could take years, decades, like depending on how far they go, it could take a long, long time to fix a lot of these issues.

Ben: Well, can you be more specific about that, Devindra? What do you mean when you say like it could take years or decades to fix? Are we talking about data breaches? Are we talking about like soft power? I think

Devindra: it's like the, the actual infrastructure and Jason, you may be able to talk about this better, but from what I've seen, the actual infrastructure of things like, Hey, the consumer finance protection board that thing, that, That thing didn't exist until after the 08 you know, banking crisis and that's all Liz Warren's idea.

That, that whole thing there is to protect consumers and to prevent another banking crisis. Essentially, it seems like that is just going to disappear. We have DOJ people looking into the Treasury Department, right? And getting access to the federal payment system. There's a lot of reporting from security professionals who are like, What the hell are you doing?

Because this information is, is now, is highly protected, highly sensitive. And this stuff is going to get out there. There are a lot of arguments that many people in this government, including Musk and including Trump, are tied to foreign governments, like Russia, like potentially China.

Ben: That's a lot of hearsay.

It's a lot of, yeah, there's,

Devindra: listen, there's a reason Tesla is like the only foreign car, you know, manufacturer in China. They have a, they have a very close relationship there. There's a lot of, there's a lot of hearsay and there's a lot of hey, a lot of money has been transferred between these countries and these individuals.

Anyway we should get back a little to the top. Do we have a sense of what Doge is actually trying to accomplish versus what they're saying, Jason?

Jason: Yeah, I mean, so Doge is the Department of Government Efficiency, and they've been brought on nominally to detect fraud, waste, and abuse, is what both Trump and Musk are constantly saying.

And the way that they set this up was they took this agency called the U. S. Digital Service. Which was spun up under Obama after the healthcare. gov rollout disaster, and it's essentially this strike team of coders, lawyers, policy people, design people, who go from agency to agency and solve things. And, you know, there, there were hundreds of people who worked there, and Rather than create a fully new agency, they basically installed Musk as the king of this agency brought, he brought in a bunch of his people and one of the reasons why they, they use this agency was it has the status that allows for very easy hiring, which is why you have, you know, former Tesla interns and Neuralink you know, fellows and, and stuff like that running around the government right now.

And so, you know, yeah. I hate to even say this, but I feel like it should be said there is real the federal government is very bloated, it's a very bloated you know, apparatus, and so, anyone who works in government will tell you this, and there needs to be some sort of reform, but rather than follow any sort of like they just emailed everyone in the federal government said, Hey, you want to quit?

Which is not really, maybe that works if you're running Twitter, you know, we can argue about that, but when you're running, you know, the most powerful government in the world, it's. It's quite concerning. And so a lot of what DOJ has done has been stopped in the short term by the courts. We'll see how this sort of all shakes out, but basically they're going agency by agency cutting programs.

They don't like trying to fire people. They don't like sort of like intimidating people all over the federal government. And it's a mess.

Devindra: It's I think mess is just like the key word here. Even, even the fact that like Musk is taking over us digital services, right. Which is this weird thing. A lot of people have not really thought about, but I've always heard it from people, from engineers, especially from people who straddle the world of.

You know, politics and tech, it is, it was kind of a dream team because these were people who sacrificed a lot more money and like stock options and the power you'd get working for a big tech company to do civil work and to do I don't know, potentially legitimately good tech work. So we lose that.

Instead of that to it's these, it's these kids going around and just like dismantling things all over the place. There's been some recent news, by the way, like the the purported purpose of doge is to reduce you know, reduce make things more efficient. Sure. We've also seen stories like just yesterday, there's a story that an armored Tesla project is projected to win a 400 million state department contract.

I believe the language around that thing. Was changed to be armored Evie or something like that. And potentially that could also involve other companies too, like BMW. I think they're going to buy some, but it seemed it seems like they're gonna buy a lot of cyber trucks.

Jason: Yeah, I mean, this also feels quaint, but yeah, but like Elon Musk has so much business with the federal government and, you know, with a lot of these agencies that he is now gutting and installing, you know, loyalists and, and things like that.

And so it's you know, SpaceX and Tesla have received billions of dollars of government contracts. And then also some of the agencies that are being dismantled have been investigating his companies you know, the, the CFPB sort of notoriously has been investigating a lot of different, you know, Silicon Valley companies, USAID was investigating whether Starlink was shutting off internet for people in Ukraine fairly or unfairly, I guess it was, it was what they're investigating.

And so, Musk now sort of controls this, you know, I think during the first. Trump administration the idea of like you should divest from your companies and Conflict of interest and stuff like it feels quaint at this point, but oh my god, does it feel quaint? Yeah, but it's like I mean Elon Musk really we are really looking at like an oligarchy and we we are really are looking at you know sort of the people making the rules benefiting from the the you know loyalists that they're installing all over the federal government and

Devindra: Yeah, I mean who benefits is the question we should be asking whenever we see any of these stories and Often it's Musk or often it's people tied to him Or people within the Trump administration themselves or Trump themselves or their their family or something

Ben: Yeah, so Jason, can you tell us a bit more about the reporting that 404 did where you had audio from someone at the GSA, is that correct?

And they were saying something like, we're losing so much money, like they're basically talking as if the government had shareholders, but they don't.

Jason: Yeah, so I mean, I think that's probably one of our biggest scoops over the last week is we got audio from this meeting at the General Services Administration, which is the vaguest like possible name for an agency, but they basically do a lot of like cybersecurity stuff for the government.

They do a lot of coding for the government. They are in charge of all of the government's real estate. They're basically like a cross agency well, they're not an HR department, but they, they help a lot with a lot of different parts of the government. And within this, there's this technological services division that is made up of coders.

And the guy in charge of that now is Thomas Shedd, who is a former Tesla engineer. And basically in this meeting, he was telling folks there that one, they wanted to replace a lot of them with AI, which is wonderful. So basically they Yeah,

Ben: They wanted them to code AI agents that could then you know, 10x their output or something.

Is that right?

Jason: Yeah. They, they talked about making AI coding agents that could work for each government agency and then would be overseen by the few number of humans who are left. And yeah. You know, this is actually like a Silicon Valley dream that lots of companies are trying, like Mark Zuckerberg said that he wants to do this at Meta starting very soon, and the difference here, like I'm skeptical whether that will work in any sort of company, but the difference here is that the federal government Like, there's a reason why a lot of their software is clunky and old, and it's because it has to be designed to withstand, you know, cyber attacks, it has to be designed to run under any circumstance, so that's why a lot of the government's databases are on old mainframes and stuff.

And so, the idea that you're just gonna go start writing software all over the federal government with AI is quite concerning based on the people I, I spoke to. And then, yeah, they, they really do at least talk about the idea that the American taxpayer is a shareholder and, and they need to return some sort of investment for these folks.

And it's I don't know, that's, that's really not how government works and that would be huge paradigm shift. In, in how government is supposed to serve its people.

Devindra: At the same time, we are not talking about the I don't know, many, many millions, hundreds of millions in taxes that Musk and his companies are not paying properly, right?

So,

Jason: yeah, that's the elephant in the room that I'll just say very briefly is that a lot of these cuts are being done in advance of a massive Trump tax cut that's supposed to add trillions of dollars to the deficit. And so they are trying to balance the budget knowing that they're about to cut off a lot of revenue because they're going to give a giant tax cut to the rich.

Devindra: Gotta love it. Gotta love it. We saw the story yesterday that Doge apparently took 80 million dollars right out of the New York bank accounts. Oh yeah, but

Ben: before we get to that, let's talk about the Access that they have to the treasury department because that's a very murky situation Jason, I don't know if you have any like more specific information about this But yes, they just walked past security and everything and started like plugging stuff install their own security Well,

Devindra: it seems like really weird stuff.

Ben: Do you mean that they installed their own Rent a cops. Rent a cops. Oh yeah, that's right. That's right. There was the triple canopy cop that Ed Markey and Bernie Sanders didn't just walk past. So yeah, they started like rooting around in the IT stuff. There were questions of whether or not anyone had access to right access to how the Treasury spends money, which is like insane thing for a department under the executive branch to be able to do maybe they do, maybe they don't.

What is the like newest information on that, Jason?

Jason: Yeah, so this, this is a story that really wired has done amazing reporting on. I haven't done much on it, but I've been reading and I've been following it because it's so insane. And basically the, the latest as I understand it is that a federal judge said, Hey You can't do this.

And, and one of the reasons that the federal judge, you know, said get out and delete the information that you have until this is able to be appealed to a higher court is that the potential for damage for irreparable damages was so, so high and so urgent. I mean, you, you imagine something going wrong with how the U S government doles out money.

It's I can't think of a bigger. potential disaster, really. And there was some talk about whether or not

Ben: any of Musk's under 30 coders would even really understand how to muck around in the treasury payment system, because it's all in COBOL.

Jason: Right. It's, it's all, as I said some of these mainframes are quite old.

Some of these databases are very old. And, you know, this was, this was a highly secure. System that only a few people had access to because it wasn't something that you wanted anyone to be able to change. I think that there's still some debate about whether they had write access or, or read access.

I think it doesn't matter all that much. It's just you know, the federal government Musk is fighting it as though they want write access to be able to change things. And the idea that you could just stop payment. On a bunch of things because you you felt like it like that's sort of One of the fears the other fear is that they just break something accidentally And you know you think about social security payments not going out medicare payments not going out like all sorts of payments not going out and that Throws the country into like actual real instant chaos.

I think

Devindra: yeah, they announced that I mean early on One of the first like funding freezes that they announced that broke the Medicaid portal, right? So a lot of this stuff is like a house of cards, right? We don't know what relies on what or what depends on what? We saw the story yesterday by the way that apparently 80 million dollars was taken from a New York City bank account That was dedicated for FEMA funding And that was specifically around money for shelter and services.

I saw Kristi Noem. I saw people like celebrating this in the, in the Trump camp. And meanwhile, the New York, NYC comptrollers like issued a blistering statement saying what, what is happening here? Basically, New York City cannot take this lying down. I call on the mayor to immediately just pursue legal action.

They said in a quote eric adams is not gonna do anything apparently, right?

Jason: I mean eric adams was just had his the corruption charges against him dropped you know, he I saw a headline today that you know, obviously was like a take but it said donald trump is now the mayor of new york city because you know, he did this massive favor to eric adams the the mayor there and so, you know, who knows?

Wasn't that a

Ben: conditional situation too? It was like we're Like holding on prosecution until november or so. So it's basically like making The mayor of the biggest city in the United States

Jason: dance for his freedom. Yeah, that's actually a great point because the initial reporting was that the charges have been dropped, but they actually haven't been dropped.

They may be dropped, as you said, and so it's not a great situation. I think the fact that Doge was able to pull 80 million out of a New York City bank account is incredibly scary. The specifics there are not like it's a little bit of a murky situation. You know, we know that the money has been taken back, but we don't know sort of like how Where's it going?

Where's it going? And I guess there's a New York state law where you know, it has to be out of a commercial bank. And so how, how was the federal government able to seize money that had already been transferred via wire transfer, which you normally can't undo? And so there's some questions about What type of access do they have?

Like, why were they able to do this on a technological level? Let alone like a legal and political level. That, that broke just yesterday as you said. So I think there's a lot more to come there.

Devindra: I feel like my two word response to this stuff is just, seems bad. Seems bad that they were able to do that.

Seems bad for the implications for the future. Just briefly, I just want to mention we've also seen many, many examples because of what Doge is doing, because of like the the pushes from the Trump side to, to minimize references to DEI or anything like that. Whenever you see that, folks, remember what they're really saying.

And a lot of people are saying this on Blue Sky. What they're really saying is that we want to resegregate this country. You know, that's, that's really what's going on here, but it is wild to see companies like Google, you know, just really dance to the tune of what the Trump campaign is asking for. This goes beyond the whole like Gulf of America thing, which is on Google maps right now.

I feel incredibly stupid that we are living in this timeline, that that, because the president has decreed that, that that is how Google's handling this, but also the removal of things like. I don't know, references to Black History Month default calendar entries around diverse topics. That has gone from Google Calendar.

Nobody asked for that, but Google's doing that because they're like, Hey, I guess this is bad now to talk about these things or references to trans kids or trans medicine across other companies, too.

Ben: Yeah, and I don't know if this counts as like obeying in advance as people are talking about, you know, like the way you resist fascism is don't obey in advance, but like they could still be covering their own butts for any possibility of, let's say, Google crosses the administration somehow in a way that they don't like, and then they'll complain about having African American History Month.

On Google Calendar, because that really matters. That this is precisely

Devindra: obeying in advance.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah, but also use that as possible leverage to, I don't know, restart the Google antitrust

Devindra: case or something like that? It's just really weird that we live in a world where Costco and Ben Jerry's are now like, Among, among the corporate I don't know the major companies that are on the side of like progress, I guess.

Ben Jerry's was kind of always there, but Wild, just Wild, that is where we are at. It feels like we are living through a semi demolition man future or something, right? I don't know. Yeah, so

Ben: let's just whip around the rest of the departments that Doge has touched. USAID, fed to a wood chipper. That's what Elon Musk said.

He could have done fun things on the weekend, but just yes. Gleefully posted, fed to a wood chipper. Then you've got OPM, the Office of Personnel Management, where they've Done the fork in the road email, which is exactly the same email subject that was sent to all Twitter employees

Devindra: really helped that whole company, right?

Really brought them

Ben: in the weeks after Musk bought Twitter. So far, 75, 000 around 75, 000 federal employees, which is like 2. 5%, maybe a little bit more of the total workforce have taken the buyout offer. I've seen that number by the

Devindra: way, because it's attributed to an anonymous It's a single anonymous.

It's government official. So it's a lot of people are like, are they doing this to say like they're being more successful than they really are? We don't really know.

Jason: Okay. It's also very, very much worth mentioning that you know, a lot of the federal government turns over every year anyway, because of retirements and people going back to the private sector.

So this is not some huge win. It's a very small number of people overall.

Ben: Yeah, that's kind of the churn that one would expect from a workforce of two and a half million anyway. And so yeah, it might be a little higher for this time in the year. There's also a big question on whether or not These people are going to get the severance that they hoped for.

I think the newest news was that the resignation program was restarted by a judge after being held up for a number of days. And yeah, we'll see if people continue getting paid for eight months or so as they look for new work. If they don't, there are certainly going to be articles about people who expected to be able to use this income to, I don't know, pay for groceries, pay for childcare use it as startup costs for their food truck that they've always wanted to do or something.

It's possible that they're leaving, like retirement benefits on the. Table as well. We covered the Treasury Department. There's also some talk about how they're in NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This is something Project 2025 said threatened American prosperity. That's really probably because it houses data on climate change.

Devindra: All those fires and major storms we just had, I think those are pretty threatening to American prosperity too, but you know.

Ben: But, I mean, there's also a question of, you know, if you don't have NOAA atmospheric information, ooh, does that mean that everyone's just going to have to buy more subscriptions to things?

Are you going to be able to sell a new pickaxe to all of the miners who want to know what the weather is going to be? That seems like a interesting area for privatization. And then the CFPB, that's doing nothing right now. It was told to do nothing. And then on top of that, Devindra, tell us more about how a bunch of names from the CIA were leaked.

Devindra: Oh, that was fun. I feel Ethan Hunt's entire team in the very first Mission Impossible did not need to die. Like they died to protect the knock list. Okay. And what apparently happens is that the Trump administration, maybe through some pressure by the Doge folks, basically pushed for the CIA to share names, full names of new hires over an unclassified email.

So Again, seems bad. Seems like that's a bad thing that should be, we should not be, you know, dealing with information like this, sensitive information like this. But this is, this is one of those stories where it just came and went in five minutes. It is such like a monumentally stupid thing that could be damaging to people's lives.

Seriously. But we're not actually talking about it much because there's so much other stupid stuff. Like it's just such an onslaught of stuff from this administration that we can't even keep up with all of this, but I'd want to point that out. I think that

Jason: when you say the damage is done and this could affect us for years and years and years, it's like, these are the identities of secret agents.

This is, you've burned them. Or you, you put them at serious risk and, and that's one of the things. I think also there's been this sort of like broader management by fear sort of thing you know, Elon Musk retweeted like the idea that, or not the idea, the identity of a judge's daughter who works in the Department of Education, which is another one that's on the chopping block.

And it just really feels You know, comply, or we will potentially put you, you know, in harm's way.

Devindra: Yeah, let's end, let's end on that. Is there, is there any sense, I guess at this point, like this is all still fresh. It, we're still, we're not even a full month right into, into this administration, but a lot of damage has been done.

Seems like it will be continue, like a lot of things will continue to happen from, from the DOJ team. I do wonder what sort of pushback we're going to see legally. Democratic leadership really is taking a hands off approach to a lot of this stuff. I'm seeing protests, I'm seeing strongly worded statements, but nothing major.

But it does seem like the courts are pushing back. I do wonder Where will you know, where will workers sit on this? Where will labor forces sit? How will people respond to this? It's weird how we entered 2025. I think a lot of billionaires and very rich people were worried about, Oh man, people really don't like us right now.

And what Elon Musk has done is essentially reminded everybody of why we should really dislike the super rich like Elon, like Musk himself and Trump. So I don't know. We don't know what's going to happen with any of that stuff, but Jason, anything you want to add? Yeah, I would say the

Jason: only silver lining is, you know, last week felt like.

A flurry of actions and really, really bad stuff. And then this week, there's, there's still some bad things happening, but some of that pushback has started to yield some results. Like the, the courts at this point have stopped a fair bit of this. And, you know, it's very interesting. I'll be interested to see which parts of, you know, these actions get appealed and which ones they say, okay, we're not going to do that anymore.

We're hanging on by a thread here, I feel, but like the courts are saying like, Hey, a lot of this clearly blatantly illegal stuff is illegal. And you know, that, that'll take us to next week when we'll see whether they comply or what, like what happens. But I think that like last week while I was reporting on this stuff, I was like, Oh my God, this is insane.

And then this week it's okay, some of our institutions are holding up, kind of, which I think is a little bit of a silver lining. A

Devindra: little bit of silver lining. Also just, it's a sign of like how slowly the law moves, I guess, in comparison to like how quickly these folks can do damage, right?

Because you can say, yeah, this is illegal, but then it's okay. That's

Ben: not going to keep them from exfiltrating data to. Possible private servers and then what happens after that? A

Devindra: judge can stop them for a couple days or a week as well And they push it to the supreme court and our supreme court is not going to do much to you know Protect us I guess at this point.

Ben: Yeah, so I think final question for everyone. Doge's stated purpose is find savings for the american taxpayer. What do you think the actual purpose is?

Devindra: We, I think we pretty much covered it, right? It's like who benefits, who benefits is mostly Elon Musk. It's mostly his cronies. I'm sure I would love to see something from Peter Thiel about like how he is like meddling with his own, you know, folks there too.

A lot of this stuff is going back to Trump, right? Like it's we saw the story that, what was it? 10 million. X is paying 10 million to Trump to the, I don't know, to Trump directly or the campaign because of X's initial Twitter suspension.

Ben: And this was all the way back after January 6th, right?

This is

Devindra: true. But a lot of people were saying X could have won that case, right? Like they, they didn't have to pay this money, but that's another example of a major, the media companies have been doing. It's just Hang to play nice with the new administration. And that's kind of where we're at and what we're seeing.

We've got a lot of stuff we'll need to be talking about at some point. We'll talk about Brendan Carr. We'll talk about Tulsi Gabbard at some point too, because our new head of national security, everybody. Most likely a Russian agent. I don't know what is happening. What, what have we learned from all the Mission Impossible movies, folks?

Apparently nothing, apparently nothing at all. I don't know. Jason, thank you so much for joining us. Where can we find you on the internet these days?

Jason: Yeah, I'm on blue sky Jason Kebler dot blue sky social. And then I'm at four Oh four media, which is four Oh four media. co.

Devindra: Awesome. Thank you so much.

And yeah, hope to have you back on soon.

Jason: Yeah, it's always fun. Thank you.

Devindra: Let's move on to some other news. And Hey, plain gadget news. You know, where I feel safe is when I'm just reading news unrelated to anything around politics or the state of the world right now. So let's talk about the iPhone SE4, which is, it was projected to drop at some point this week. We have been eagerly waiting for any update from Apple.

But hey it seems like if you like the cheaper iPhone, this could be a good option for you, potentially for around 500 bucks, I think more than the other one, still a single camera. But the idea is that it's going to be going away with the old home button design, and will, you know, likely have the notch and have a similar look to the iPhone 16 right now.

I, I kind of still, I wonder who this phone will be for if it's not actually that much smaller than the iPhone 16. Ben, I know you're an iPhone SE lover. What do you, what are you thinking at this point? Cause you're thinking of when to upgrade.

Ben: Yeah. And really right now I'm thinking that I should be upgrading to like just a base iPhone 16.

One of the reasons that I liked the iPhone SE was that it had a physical home button, but. Really? All signs are pointing to the fact that there's going to be no physical home. Was it really one of the reasons

Devindra: Ben? What, what do you do? What do you do with that home button? You just like

Ben: fingerprint unlock.

Devindra: You can no longer do on

Ben: iPhone. This is

Devindra: true, but you, you lose so much screen. It's funny, like when I go back and hold older iPhones, it's Oh man, all that screen real estate, which is taken up because you have to make the screen, you know, even between both sides, the, it's big bezel, it's big

Ben: bezel

Devindra: time.

It takes up so much space at the top and the bottom. So,

Ben: yeah. So that's why I liked the iPhone at sea and also just like the price I've said before on the show that like, I like the idea of. Carrying a phone where if I, you know, drop it down a storm drain or something that it wouldn't really ruin my budget to get a new one.

But we've gotten to the point where I want to be able to play around with Apple intelligence sort of stuff. And, that I've also proven to myself that I am less likely to drop my phone down a storm drain than I think knock on wood You really let's make sure that that doesn't happen But I think now I trust myself a little more that this one has held up for almost five years now I think I got the iPhone se 2 or 3 new around 2020 and it's time for a big boy upgrade, I'd say

Devindra: definitely time for an upgrade.

The thing about Apple hardware is that we've talked about this before. It does last longer. So even if it's an SC, like it would still last you a couple of years. My mom needs a new phone. I ended up getting her an iPhone 13 plus and I got it refurbished. It looks great. It's in great condition. These are, I don't know, these devices will just stick around longer.

If you are looking to save some money, I would recommend actually looking at older devices rather than maybe the the SEs. Although, I don't know this one may, if it's Apple intelligence capable. That's what I said.

Ben: We were talking about this at the show planning meeting yesterday. And I said, Oh, well, maybe I'm going to get like a 15 pro or something just because it's a little cheaper.

And you were like, no, you probably want to like mess around with Apple intelligence and all that. You probably

Devindra: want that too, but not, I'm just saying other people may not. But the other thinking is that if the SE4 will likely be Apple intelligence capable too. So that actually, once you have that demarcation line, then that's a reason not to go back to older iPhones.

My mom won't care. So I can put her on a 13 plus. But I think a lot of people may, although I see people are really pissed off now when they see they, when they've turned off Apple intelligence, apparently new updates, re enable it. And people are not liking that whole process, so.

Ben: Yeah, I've heard about

Devindra: that.

That's fair. That's fair. I've not it, I don't hate it enough. I do think notification summaries have been useful for me. I don't like it for news stories, but I do like it for just texts and stuff like that. So that stuff has worked. Alright. In other news, we also saw the story that Elon Musk wants to buy OpenAI for 97.

4 billion dollars. And Sam Altman says, no thank you. I think that's the end of that story. I don't think it's going to go anywhere. But it is kind of hilarious to think this is the, the next thing on Musk's I don't know, task list is to take over OpenAI now that it's actually doing something, I don't know.

Not useful, but something with buzz. And there's also,

Ben: A big question of how much he can actually devote time to any one of these things, then. Because he loves to talk about how much work he puts in at all of his companies and, you know, he's slept on the factory floor at Tesla or something.

They're sleeping at the Doge headquarters, apparently. Yeah, yeah. So, if you are currently very involved in American government, what are you supposed to do if the OpenAI bid goes through?

Devindra: It I don't, the board would not There's

Ben: only so many hours in the day, man.

Devindra: What are you gonna do? Listen, if you're powered by Ketamine there are many things, there are many more hours in the day available to you, you know?

You can be productive. Ketamine's not even an upper! The pictures of his eyes at the, at, I think it was the, you have to make sure

Ben: that those aren't photoshopped because I've seen a few that are.

Devindra: Some of them were probably photoshopped. But I do the just when you see Elon Musk speaking in person too, he does give off very much the Mr.

Burns on the you know, Mr. Burns is an alien into the Simpsons vibes. Yeah. This will never happen. But it's hilarious that Elon Musk is trying to make it a thing. Yeah. We should have a whole segment about his kid, about X, in the Oval Office telling. It seems like he's telling Trump to shush.

Ben: Yeah.

Devindra: You should go away, apparently.

Hot mic, kid. Hot mic. Gotta learn about this. If

Ben: you had told me in 2010, when everyone was very excited about Grimes, that Grimes and Elon Musk were going to have a son who was going to shush President Trump in his second term, I would tell you that that was dystopian fiction.

Devindra: Mm hmm. That, that feels like something right out of a sequel to Idiocracy, you know, and that, that is what we're living in folks speaking of I don't know, unintended outcomes of our current future.

Apparently France wants to build a gigawatt of new nuclear for AI stuff. You found this interesting, Ben. I'm not surprised that more countries. So the thing that I found

Ben: interesting from this article is finding out that France. Gets two thirds of its power via nuclear to

Devindra: begin with. France gets a lot of nuclear, and people in France are like, there are a lot of protests, there are a lot of people fighting it.

But this is where the argument gets, gets messy, because it's if you shut down those nuclear plants and your renewables are not ready, where is that power going to come from?

Ben: Yeah, there are also big questions like where France could end up you know, putting its windmills for if it wants any kind of wind power, like the U.

S. is uniquely well positioned to use renewables because of how much land we and we alone own. Oversea. It's the U. S. U. S. coast, and then international waters. That's not the case for a lot of places like Europe that has more densely packed sovereignty. And

Devindra: France is not a huge country in general, yeah.

Not much coastline. So

Ben: my general point of view on this is that if this is what it takes to get nuclear restarted as an idea for renewable energy and as a kind of transitional technology from. fossil based energy production to much more efficient completely green renewables. That might not be such a bad thing, and that might be the nicest thing that I say about AI all month.

Devindra: I don't know. I don't know if that extra power is just being used to produce, you know, crappy generative media. I don't, I don't know. It's, it almost seems like a wash because the problems of potentially introducing new nuclear and the waste of around new nuclear I don't know. It's a, it's a complicated topic.

I want to do an episode about that. Cause I I've had many feelings, many changing feelings about nuclear over the past few decades, and I don't know, it does seem like renewables or have been good. Going stronger than we thought, but they need power now. The thing is, building a new nuclear plant takes a lot of money, or it takes a lot of time, as well, in addition to money.

Yeah,

Ben: and a lot of concrete, which is a big greenhouse gas producer, too. So, how much of a wash could it actually be?

Devindra: Maybe they can have a windmill powered by Ennui. That will just be self sustaining.

Ben: That would be the truest, most renewable energy in France, absolutely.

Devindra: Lessai equals power. Let's move on to what we're working on.

Hey, you saw my review of the RTX 5090 NVIDIA's card. There are more cards coming, so I think you can do the math in terms of what's happening. I didn't get a 5080 to review, unfortunately, but we should be getting a 5070 Ti and a 5070, and I'm really, really eager to see what the 5070 does for that price point.

So, that's where I am. I'm also taking a look at the Asus ZenBook A14, which I wrote about back at CES. This is their sort of MacBook Air competitor. It weighs around 2. 2 pounds. I'm playing with it right now. It is very underpowered. But man, is it crazy light. It feels insane to hold, honestly. So, I'll have a full review of that up soon.

Yeah, let's move on to our pop culture picks. Anything you want to shout out, Ben?

Ben: I talked about The Ugly American before. I talked about how it is really well suited for like a prestige TV adaptation. And I think that it's become even more relevant in the last two weeks or so. It's really hard to overstate how much this book like shook up Washington in the late fifties, early sixties.

I think that you can pretty much directly trace the publication of this book that was done by a someone high up in the Navy. I think he was a rear admiral or something and a professor talking about basically how the U S is like, strategy for global development and anti communism because that was the same thing, especially in the 50s, was all messed up and had no understanding of the facts on the ground of these areas of the global south where the U.

S. was trying to exert influence. And you can trace that directly to the establishment of the Peace Corps and USAID. So If you want to understand some of the circumstances that led to these programs that are now being fed to the woodchipper go read that book. I think that would be a useful thing for Engadget listeners and viewers.

Devindra: Good shoutout. I will definitely, I remember I had a copy at some point in college. I don't think I ever got into it, but I need to go back. Alright, and for me, I just want to, hey! You want, you want to take your mind off of things because this has been a heavy episode and news has been crazy. There's some good stuff out there to binge.

I want to shout out Creature Commandos on Max, the one to watch for HBO. I wonder why. Creature Commandos, real good. It's a, it is sort of like, I didn't know anything about these characters before watching the show, but it's another James Gunn, you know, DC universe series, but essentially, what if it was the Suicide Squad, but they were monsters, and monsters like a robot that wants to kill Nazis.

He's fun, he's a good guy. That's all he wants to do. He's a good guy. G. I. Robot. And also the Bride of Frankenstein is apparently there. I think the the show's a lot of fun. Great voice work, Indira Varma is the voice of the bride, Alan Tudyk's in this like it's, it's just fun. It's the stuff that James Gunn does really well of like genre stuff that can be kind of extreme and kind of wild at times, but there's always heart to it.

Who's the, the, the one, the like weird wild creature, the dog creature, I forget his name.

Ben: Oh yeah, the one from the recent Suicide Squad movie.

Devindra: He gets a backstory in the show, and it is it's heartbreaking. James Gunn always knows how to break your heart. So I am looking for this show is fantastic, worth the binge.

And I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what he does with Superman. Cause dude knows how to balance genre and hearts and character really well. Also want to shout out common side effects, which is also on max right now. Yeah, this one is created by the guy who did Scavenger's Reign. Incredible animated series that is available now on I think that's on Netflix now too, but you can still watch it on Max.

This one is about a guy, it's an animated show about a guy who discovers a mushroom that can cure anything. Even potentially even death and this is a fun show that dives into sort of like our pharmaceutical industry our health care industry But it's also very much like a government conspiracy thing has great voice work as well Frickin Mike judge is in here.

Mike judge is an executive producer and he's one of the voices here. You can totally totally hear it It's good stuff. If you like a good thrillers, but also like funny You know, funny shows, like just funny comedies is very much an adult comedy. I think it's worth watch also like the voice cast in general, Martha Kelly, who has become like one of my favorite voices in animation and all sorts of stuff.

She starred in Carol and the end of the world. She has this great, like deadpan monotone voice and she plays one of the DEA. detect agents going after the guy who found the mushrooms. She is hilarious, even when she's not trying to be. It's fun to see. So yeah, Common Side Effects, definitely worth a watch.

I think three episodes are up right now on Max, the one to watch for HBO.

Ben: Thank you everybody for listening. Our theme music is by game composer, Dale North. Our outro music is by our former managing editor, Terrence O'Brien. The podcast is produced by me, Ben Elman. You can find Devindra

Devindra: online at Devindra on Blue Sky and Mastodon.

And I also podcast about movies and TV at the filmcasts at thefilmcast. com.

Ben: If there are any other fiction books that also dramatically affected American foreign policy, please send them to me at Hey bellman Blue Sky Social. Email us@podcastatengadget.com. You can leave us a review on iTunes, and as the producer, I can tell you it definitely helps leave us a review on iTunes and subscribe on anything that gets podcasts that includes Spotify.

Devindra: SAI equals power.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/engadget-podcast-whats-up-doge-diving-into-elon-musks-hack-on-america-123006530.html?src=rss