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December 5, 2025, 1:50 AM
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Top News

Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Apple says general counsel Kate Adams and policy chief Lisa Jackson will retire, and Jennifer Newstead, Meta's former chief legal officer, will replace Adams  —  Apple's general counsel, Kate Adams, and its vice president for environment, policy, and social initiatives, Lisa Jackson …
Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:
Sources: Meta is considering deep budget cuts to its metaverse efforts in 2026, potentially as high as 30% and most likely including layoffs as early as January  —  Meta Platforms Inc.'s Mark Zuckerberg is expected to meaningfully cut resources for building the so-called metaverse …
Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Meta says it is shifting some of its investment from metaverse toward AI glasses and wearables, and “we aren't planning any broader changes than that”  —  Meta plans to direct its investments to focus on wearables like its augmented reality glasses but does not plan to abandon building the metaverse.
Will Oremus / Washington Post:
Two studies suggest AI chatbots can shift political views more effectively than TV campaign ads, especially by presenting many claims, regardless of accuracy  —  New research suggests AI chatbots can shift people's political views more effectively than campaign ads on TV.
Robert Hart / The Verge:
Researchers claim that prompts framed as riddle-like poems could skirt AI chatbots' safety features designed to block production of explicit or harmful content  —  Riddle-like poems tricked chatbots into spewing hate speech and helping design nuclear weapons and nerve agents.
A.J. Vicens / Reuters:
US and Canadian authorities warn that Chinese hackers are using the Brickstorm malware to install backdoor access within unnamed government and IT entities  —  Chinese-linked hackers used sophisticated malware to penetrate and maintain long-term access to unnamed government …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google rolls out Gemini 3 Deep Think to Google AI Ultra subscribers in the Gemini app, after saying in November it needed “extra time for safety evaluations”  —  After previewing last month with the launch of Gemini 3 Pro, the new Deep Think mode is now available for Google AI Ultra subscribers.
Boaz Sobrado / Forbes:
A Polymarket trader netted $1M+ in 24 hours, mostly by placing suspiciously accurate bets on Google's 2025 Year in Search rankings  —  Boaz Sobrado is a fintech leader and entrepreneur.  —  A Polymarket trader known as AlphaRaccoon has ignited controversy after allegedly netting over $1 million …
Reuters:
Russia's Roskomnadzor says it has blocked FaceTime in Russia, claiming the service is being used to organize and “carry out terrorist attacks in the country”  —  Russia has blocked Apple's (AAPL.O) video-calling app FaceTime, the state communications watchdog said on Thursday …
Google Research:
Google debuts Titans, an architecture combining RNN speed with transformer performance for real-time learning, able to scale effectively to a 2M+ context window  —  Ali Behrouz, Student Researcher, Meisam Razaviyayn, Staff Researcher, and Vahab Mirrokni, VP and Google Fellow, Google Research
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
CEO Matthew Prince says Cloudflare has blocked 416B AI bot requests for its customers since July 1, and that Google can see 3.2x more internet pages than OpenAI  —  Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince claims the internet infrastructure company's efforts to block AI crawlers are already seeing big results.
More: Gazetteer SF
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Amazon plans to release its $630 Kindle Scribe Colorsoft and $500 Kindle Scribe on December 10, after announcing them in September, but won't offer preorders  —  The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft and upgraded Kindle Scribe will be available to order soon.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Apple announces its 2025 App Store Award winners and names visual planner Tiimo as the iPhone App of the Year; many of the winning apps have AI integrations  —  Apple on Thursday shared its annual list of App Store Award winners, continuing its tradition of celebrating the best apps and games of the past year.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Microsoft will increase prices for commercial Office subscriptions on July 1, 2026, including a 33% jump for front-line worker plans like Microsoft 365 F1  —  Microsoft said Thursday that it will increase the prices of Office productivity software subscriptions for commercial and government clients on July 1.
Christina Kyriasoglou / Bloomberg:
Phia, founded by Bill Gates' daughter Phoebe to develop an AI search engine accessed via an extension for Chrome and Safari, raised $30M at a $180M valuation  —  Phoebe Gates, daughter of Microsoft Corp.'s billionaire founder Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, is raising $30 million …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Meta launches a centralized support hub for Facebook and Instagram, with AI-powered search and an AI assistant to answer queries, in its iOS and Android apps  —  Meta is launching a new centralized support hub for Facebook and Instagram users, the company announced on Thursday …
Peter S. Goodman / New York Times:
A look at “TSMC Village” in North Phoenix, as TSMC brings skilled workers from Taiwan who struggle with adapting to a sprawling suburbia and summer temperatures  —  Skilled workers from Taiwan engaged in the chip industry have found ways to ease the transition to America while making an imprint on Greater Phoenix.
Peter S. Goodman / New York Times:
How TSMC, Intel, and Amkor are transforming Phoenix into a US chip hub, investing tens of billions and illustrating the difficulties of large-scale US projects

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From Mediagazer

Benjamin Mullin / New York Times:
Paramount completes its $110B acquisition of WBD, creating Skydance and putting David Ellison in control of Hollywood studios, streamers, and cable networks

Michael Schneider / Variety:
Amazon's Prime Video acquires exclusive global rights to the Primetime Emmys under a six-year deal from 2027; sources say Prime Video will pay ~$15M per year

New York Times:
Disney is seeking an injunction in US District Court to block the FCC from conducting an unusual, early review of eight ABC-owned station licenses

More News

Blake Brittain / Reuters:
A US federal judge rules that OpenAI must produce 20M anonymized ChatGPT chat logs in the copyright lawsuit brought by The New York Times and other news outlets
Steven Levy / Wired:
A profile of AI hearing aid startup Fortell, which has raised $150M so far and is targeting affluent clients in NYC with a $6,800 device that uses a custom chip

Earlier Picks

Jacob Bogage / Washington Post:
Sources: Amazon, the USPS' top customer, providing $6B+ in 2025 revenue, is considering ending its deal at the end of 2026 and expanding its US delivery network
Ece Yildirim / Gizmodo:
DealBook Summit: Palantir CEO Alex Karp says “the more constitutional you want to make” the US' Caribbean boat strikes “the more you're going to need” Palantir
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