Author: admin

Disney’s three-year licensing partnership with OpenAI includes just one of exclusivity, Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC. The company signed the partnership with OpenAI last week that will bring its iconic characters to the AI firm’s Sora video generator. Once that exclusive year is up, Disney is free to sign similar deals with other AI companies. The deal gives OpenAI a high-profile content partner, allowing users to draw on more than 200 characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars to create content on Sora. For now, it’s the only AI platform that’s legally permitted to do so. For Disney,…

A frightening scene unfolded in the Bronx Monday afternoon as panicked passengers cried out in fear aboard a Bx6 bus that lost control in Longwood, slamming into several vehicles over a five-block stretch before coming to a stop just before a major intersection. Cops say the bus driver reported losing control as she approached Cauldwell Ave. near the Forest Houses at around 2 p.m. Monday afternoon. The bus, No. 1040, collided with at least one car near the intersection of 163rd St. and Tinton Ave. and continued traveling more than a block before coming to a stop shortly before the…

Nvidia continues to expand its footprint in open source AI on two fronts: an acquisition and a new model release. The semiconductor giant announced Monday it acquired SchedMD, the leading developer of popular open source workload management system Slurm. Nvidia said the company will continue to operate the program, which is designed for high-performance computing and AI, as an open source, vendor-neutral software. Slurm was originally launched in 2002 and SchedMD was founded in 2010 by the lead Slurm developers Morris Jette and Danny Auble. Auble is the current CEO of SchedMD. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Nvidia declined…

Regulators at the US Securities and Exchange Commission met with cryptocurrency industry leaders on Monday to discuss financial surveillance and user privacy, as part of the agency’s ongoing efforts to shape digital asset oversight.In opening remarks at the roundtable, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who also heads the agency’s crypto task force, joined Chair Paul Atkins and Commissioner Mark Uyeda in outlining how regulators could balance investor protection with privacy considerations as blockchain-based financial activity expands.Atkins said crypto had the potential to become “the most powerful financial surveillance architecture ever invented,” depending on how the US government handled regulation. He cited…

After announcing earlier this year a framework for an open AI ecosystem, the nonprofit Creative Commons has come out in favor of “pay-to-crawl” technology — a system to automate compensation of website content when accessed by machines, like AI web crawlers. Creative Commons (CC) is best known for spearheading the licensing movement that allows creators to share their works while retaining copyright. In July, the organization announced a plan to provide a legal and technical framework for dataset sharing between companies that control the data and the AI providers that want to train on it. Now, the nonprofit is tentatively backing…

After a surge of VC investments from the 2021 bubble failed to yield strong returns from many venture firms, limited partners, such as endowments, pension plans, and sovereign wealth funds began to funnel a greater share of their capital into a select group of established firms with proven track records. The latest huge capital haul has come to Lightspeed Venture Partners. The 25-year-old venture firm announced Monday that it raised a total of $9 billion in fresh funds, the largest fundraise in firm’s history. At a time when very few companies have managed to IPO, Lightspeed was an early investor…

AI’s impact on our social media feeds has not gone unnoticed by one of America’s top dictionaries. Amidst the onslaught of content that has swept the web over the past 12 months, Merriam-Webster announced Sunday that its word of the year for 2025 is “slop.” The dictionary defines the term as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” “Like slime, sludge, and muck, slop has the wet sound of something you don’t want to touch. Slop oozes into everything,” the dictionary writes, adding that, in an age of AI anxiety, it…

Check out the companies making the biggest moves midday: KLA Corp. — The semiconductor equipment maker jumped 4%, nearing a 52-week high, after Jefferies raised its 12-month price target to $1,500 from $1,200, saying “AI continues to drive spend with [wafer fab equipment] accelerating into C26/C27,” and citing KLA’s “outsized exposure to the Leading Edge.” Immunome — The biotech company surged 20% after releasing positive Phase 3 trial results for varegacestat, a drug that aims to treat desmoid tumors. “These findings demonstrate the potential of varegacestat to offer best-in-class results in a convenient, once-daily, oral medicine that may help patients…

Oscar-nominated actor and filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were discovered dead in their Los Angeles home on Sunday, December 14, with police indicating that homicide is suspected. Their son, Nick, is reportedly in police custody and faces a bond of 4 million dollars for felony charges related to the death of his parents. According to the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Fire Department responded to the home for a medical aid request made by one of their children, which was made shortly after 3:30 a.m. Upon arrival, firefighters found Rob Reiner, 78, and Michele Singer Reiner,…

For more than a decade, Bitcoin’s largest holders have acted as the unseen forces behind many of the market’s biggest surges and deepest crashes. These so-called whales have always held outsized influence, but their behavior throughout 2025 suggests that a major shift is underway that could fundamentally reshape how Bitcoin (BTC) behaves heading into 2026.The turning point came on Oct. 10, a day many traders now view as the unofficial end of the most recent crypto bull market. While billions in retail positions were wiped out in minutes, one early Bitcoin whale walked away with roughly $200 million in profit.…