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December 20, 2025, 11:05 PM
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| Mariella Moon / Engadget: |
Google says it needs more time to upgrade Assistant to Gemini on most Android devices; Google previously planned to complete the transition by the end of 2025 — The transition from Assistant to Gemini will continue into 2026. — Google wanted to remove Assistant from most Android phones … | Business Insider: |
Google advises some employees on visas, including H-1B visas, not to travel outside the US due to processing delays, following new social media screening rules — - Google and Apple are advising some employees with visas not to travel outside the US, per memos viewed by Business Insider.
| Wall Street Journal: |
Inside NeurIPS 2025, and how it has transformed from a small academic conference into a massive industry event with 24,000+ attendees, yacht parties, and more — It used to be a small gathering just for nerdy researchers. Now there are yacht parties—and everyone is feeling bubbly.| April Roach / CNBC: |
S&P Global: data center deals hit $61B globally in 2025; debt issuance nearly doubled YoY to $182B, with Meta raising $62B debt since 2022, ~50% of that in 2025 — Global data centers dealmaking surged to hit another record high this year, driven by a rush to build out the infrastructure required for energy-intensive AI workloads.
More: Mashable, Bloomberg, The Guardian, and Reuters
X: @ttunguz, @jack_hoogland, @stealthqe4, @morningbrew, and @business
LinkedIn: April Roach and Iuri Struta
| Max Knoblauch / Sherwood News: |
Morgan Stanley: ad tiers account for 30% of Netflix subscribers and 50% of Disney+ subscribers; ad tiers accounted for all US net subscriber additions in 2025 — As streaming prices climb, ad-free subscribers are becoming a rarity. — A mass digital migration is taking place … | Isabelle Bousquette / Wall Street Journal: |
The RAISE Act requires AI companies with $500M+ in revenue to publish safety protocols and disclose safety incidents within 72 hours, with fines up to $3M — Days after President Trump moved to block states from regulating AI, New York's governor signs what the bill's sponsor calls the strongest AI safety law in the U.S.| Jennifer Elias / CNBC: |
A profile of Josh Woodward, the head of Google Labs who is credited with turning around the Gemini app, growing its MAUs from 350M in March to 650M by October — Josh Woodward may not be a household name in Silicon Valley. But inside Google, everybody knows about him.
X: @sal19
| Jon Keegan / Sherwood News: |
A look at Meta's 2GW Hyperion data center in Louisiana, with the first phase opening in 2028; an analysis shows sales tax breaks on GPUs could total $3.3B+ — $10 billion of investment. Code names to disguise projects and companies. Mixed opinions. Skyrocketing property values.
More: KALB-TV and Meta Newsroom
X: @ljkawa and @enriqueabeyta
Bluesky: @sherwood.news, @joshadams, and @jonkeegan.com
| OpenAI: |
OpenAI introduces a framework to evaluate chain-of-thought monitorability and a suite of 13 evaluations designed to measure the monitorability of an AI system — We introduce evaluations for chain-of-thought monitorability and study how it scales with test-time compute, reinforcement learning, and pretraining.
More: WinBuzzer. X: @mileskwang, @zhuokaiz, @tomekkorbak, @koylanai, @mileskwang, @sama, @mileskwang, and @andersonbcdefg
| Dan Gallagher / Wall Street Journal: |
Micron projects FY Q2 sales to grow over 2x YoY to $18.7B and adjusted operating income to rise over 5x to $11.3B, signaling higher memory chip prices in 2026 — The AI gold rush is creating shortages for memory chips that could raise prices for all sorts of gadgets
More: Barron's Online, Yahoo Finance, The Straits Times, Barchart.com, The Next Platform, and Android Headlines. Mastodon: @[email protected]
| Emma Roth / The Verge: |
OpenAI rolls out an update to let users adjust ChatGPT's characteristics, including how warm or enthusiastic it is, and its use of headers, lists, and emojis — OpenAI is making it easier to edit emails with ChatGPT, too. … OpenAI will now give you the ability to dial up — or down — ChatGPT's warmth and enthusiasm.
More: TechCrunch, The Decoder, iClarified, Mashable, Tech in Asia, and Blockchain.News
| Chris Stokel-Walker / Fast Company: |
Sequoia's Shaun Maguire speculated in an X post that an innocent Palestinian student was behind the Brown University shooting; the post was later deleted — The discovery of the body of Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a Portuguese national who studied physics at Brown University … | Cheng Ting-Fang / Nikkei Asia: |
Sources: TSMC plans to move chipmaking tools into its second Arizona fab in summer 2026, in line with its push to accelerate US production by “several quarters” — TAIPEI — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. plans to start moving chipmaking tools into its second plant …
More: Android Headlines, Phoenix Business Journal, and Semafor
| Ashley Carman / Bloomberg: |
YouTube's head of products for podcasts Steve McLendon says viewers streamed 700M+ hours of podcasts on TV in October, up from 400M hours in October 2024 — That's up from 400 million hours a year ago as podcasts become the new late-night TV. — People are spending more time tuning … Sponsor Posts
ElevenLabs:
ElevenAgents by ElevenLabs — You know us for voice. Now meet ElevenAgents — featuring Expressive Mode, our most human-sounding AI voice technology in 70+ languages with ultra-low latency. Hear it for yourself.
ElevenAgents by ElevenLabs — You know us for voice. Now meet ElevenAgents — featuring Expressive Mode, our most human-sounding AI voice technology in 70+ languages with ultra-low latency. Hear it for yourself.
Intel:
5G's most deployed platform — Powering live networks with built-in Inference across Core and RAN. That's the power of Intel Inside®
5G's most deployed platform — Powering live networks with built-in Inference across Core and RAN. That's the power of Intel Inside®
Zoho:
5 common AI pitfalls in staffing and how to fix them — Staffing teams are turning to AI to keep up with growing hiring demands. It helps recruiters move faster, handle more applications, and stay on top of their pipelines.
5 common AI pitfalls in staffing and how to fix them — Staffing teams are turning to AI to keep up with growing hiring demands. It helps recruiters move faster, handle more applications, and stay on top of their pipelines.
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.Featured Podcasts
Access:
Live @ Nvidia's nerd Super Bowl, poker takes over tech, and the future of AI banking
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
Big Technology Podcast:
OpenAI's Superapp Ambitions, Jensen on Jobs, Bezos's $100 Billion Automation Fund
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Hard Fork:
'A.I.-Washing' Layoffs? + Why L.L.M.s Can't Write Well + Tokenmaxxing
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
The Social Radars:
Paul Graham, Founder, Y Combinator
Come be a fly on the wall as Y Combinator's Jessica Livingston and Carolynn Levy talk to some of the most successful founders in Silicon Valley about how they did it.
Subscribe to The Social Radars.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Star Catcher's Andrew Rush: Harnessing The Sun To Build The First Energy Grid In Space
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Everybody Goes Home: How technology is helping prevent wildfires from spreading
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
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