Dan Whateley / Business Insider:
TikTok US says it is working to restore services after a power outage at a data center and any algorithm changes users noticed were likely due to the outage  —  - TikTok's algorithm was disrupted on Sunday as the company dealt with a data center outage.  — Users reported seeing a flurry of old videos in their feeds.

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft unveils the Maia 200, its 2nd-generation AI accelerator built on TSMC's 3nm process, deploying today in its Azure US Central data center region  —  The Maia 200 chip is starting to roll out to Microsoft's data centers today. … Microsoft is announcing a successor to its first in-house AI chip today, the Maia 200.

Jesse Coburn / ProPublica:
Sources: the US DOT plans to use Gemini to draft federal regulations, cutting the process to just 30 days; the DOT used it to draft a still-unpublished FAA rule  —  The Transportation Department, which oversees the safety of airplanes, cars and pipelines, plans to use Google Gemini to draft new regulations.

Anupriya Datta / Euractiv:
The EU Commission says WhatsApp's Channels fall under the DSA's Very Large Online Platform rules, joining Instagram and Facebook, requiring it to address risks  —  Commission designation means Meta-owned messaging giant's public channels must comply with the EU's Digital Services Act rules for very large platforms

The Information:
Source: OpenAI targets ~$60 per 1,000 views for ChatGPT ads, on par with live NFL broadcasts and above Meta's sub-$20 CPM, while offering little conversion data  —  In its initial rollout of ads, OpenAI is charging prices that rival those for coveted video programs like the NFL …

Tim De Chant / TechCrunch:
Nvidia announces its Earth-2 Medium Range weather model, built on its Atlas architecture, claiming it outperforms Google DeepMind's GenCast in 70+ variables  —  In the run-up to the winter storm currently pummeling much of the U.S., weather forecasts for some regions were all over the map, with snowfall predictions varying wildly.

Ryan Christoffel / 9to5Mac:
Apple unveils a second-gen AirTag with an updated speaker and the same second-gen Ultra Wideband chip as in the iPhone 17, costing $29 for one and $99 for four  —  Apple has announced a brand new AirTag 2 that's available to order now, here are the details on the update.

Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge:
Intel Panther Lake laptop CPU review: the 18A-based Core Ultra X9 388H outperforms Apple's M5 and AMD's top-tier Strix Halo in some tests like 4K video exports  —  Intel's been talking the talk for months about its new generation of laptop chips, the first made on its long-anticipated 18A process.

Axios:
As tech CEOs stay silent after two fatal shootings, 450+ workers at Google, Meta, OpenAI, Amazon, and others urge CEOs to cancel any ICE contracts and speak out  —  Some tech workers are pressuring the industry's top leaders to speak out against ICE after federal officers killed Alex Pretti …

Matt Burgess / Wired:
How the explicit deepfake ecosystem evolved from images to high-quality video; an analysis shows 1.4M+ Telegram accounts signed up to 39 deepfake creation bots  —  Sexual deepfakes continue to get more sophisticated, capable, easy to access, and perilous for millions of women who are abused with the technology.

Bloomberg:
Nvidia invests an additional $2B in CoreWeave to help speed up adding 5GW+ of AI computing capacity by 2030 and deploy Nvidia's new Vera CPU; CRWV jumps 9%+  —  Nvidia Corp., the dominant maker of artificial intelligence chips, invested an additional $2 billion in CoreWeave Inc. to help speed …

Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
TSMC's conservative capex approach is resulting in supply-demand imbalances and foregone revenue, and hyperscalers must build up Samsung or Intel as its rivals  —  You probably think, given this title, you know what this Article is about.  The most advanced semiconductors are made by TSMC …

Rebecca Torrence / Bloomberg:
Sources: NY-based Tandem, which uses AI to automate the paperwork for writing and receiving medical prescriptions, raised a $100M Series B at a $1B valuation  —  Health care technology startup Tandem Technology Inc., which aims to smooth the process of writing and receiving medical prescriptions …

New York Times:
Interviews with 100+ therapists and psychiatrists on clients' AI chatbot usage show, while there are some upsides, conversations also deepened negative feelings  —  Dozens of doctors and therapists said chatbots had led their patients to psychosis, isolation and unhealthy habits.

Ashley Gold / Axios:
OpenAI says nearly 1.3M weekly users are discussing “advanced topics in hard science” in January, with an average of 8.4M ChatGPT messages on those topics  —  AI is increasingly being used as a research collaborator for mathematicians and scientists, per a new report from OpenAI shared exclusively with Axios.

Cade Metz / New York Times:
Ricursive, founded by ex-Google researchers to automate advanced chip design, raised $335M from Sequoia, Radical, Lightspeed, and others at a $4B valuation  —  One new start-up is called Recursive with an “e.”  Another is called Ricursive with an “i.”  They are trying to do the same thing …

Irina Anghel / Bloomberg:
Morgan Stanley: UK companies reported that AI led to 8% net job losses over the past 12 months, above Japan's 7%, Germany's 4%, Australia's 2%; the US added 2%  —  The UK is losing more jobs than it's creating because of artificial intelligence — and at a faster rate than its international peers.

Josh Chin / Wall Street Journal:
Documents: China's military is focused on harnessing AI to deploy swarms of drones, robot dogs, and other autonomous systems, learning from hawks and coyotes  —  Beijing's military focuses on swarming drones that can pick off prey or robots that can chase down enemies

Jasmine Sun / @jasmine's substack:
Claude Code can feel daunting, and most people's problems are not software-shaped, but it is clearly autonomous and the home-cooked app renaissance is great  —  are your problems software-shaped?  —  ∙ Paid  —  If you tell a friend they can now instantly create any app, they'll probably say “Cool!

Barbara Moens / Financial Times:
The EU opens a formal DSA investigation into xAI over Grok generating sexualized images of women and children; xAI faces fines of up to 6% of global revenue  —  European regulators begin investigation into creation and spread of sexualised images of women and children