Sam Altman says he feels sorry for Elon Musk's life-long 'insecurities'
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently stated in an interview he feels sorry for Elon Musk's lifelong "insecurities" after OpenAI rejected Musk's bid to purchase the company for $97.4 billion.
The feud between Musk and Altman has certainly been heating up as of late and then reached a boiling point on Monday when the Wall Street Journal reported Musk offered to purchase OpenAI for a whopping $97.4 billion. However, that bid was rejected by OpenAI, and the company's CEO, Sam Altman, took to X to post a rebuttal offer for X, writing, "No thank you but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want." In response to that X post from Altman, Musk wrote, "Swindler."
But now things have seemingly taken a more personal turn, as Altman has stated during a recent Bloomberg interview at the Paris AI Action Summit that this recent offer from Musk is just one of the many tactics the Tesla CEO has attempted in the past. When asked what Musk's goal would be with this offer Altman said he believes Musk is trying to slow OpenAI down due to Musk's AI company, xAI, being a direct competitor. However, Altman said he wishes Musk would compete by "building a better product," but "I think there's been a lot of tactics. Many, many lawsuits, all sorts of other crazy stuff. Now this."
Man who lost nearly $1 billion worth of Bitcoin now wants to buy the landfill
James Howells has been on a quest to recover his lost Bitcoin, which he claims is missing within a landfill site in Newport, Wales.
Howells' quest to recover the lost hard drive, which he says contains approximately 7,500 Bitcoins, worth approximately £586 million ($728 million USD) at the current time of reporting, has now resulted in the man offering to purchase the landfill site from the city council. The escape of events doesn't start there, though, as Howell has been trying to convince the Newport City Council to give him access to the landfill so he can begin sifting through the trash to look for the hard drive.
According to Howell, the hard drive's location has been pinpointed down to 100,000 tonnes of waste, which may sound large, but it's not as large as the landfills' approximate total capacity of 1.4 million metric tonnes. Howell has already been rejected by the city council for gaining access to the landfill, despite his promise to share 10% of the recovered Bitcoin with the city council if the drive is found. In response to the rejection, Howell filed a lawsuit against the Newport City Council, which was dismissed early last month as the judge ruled Howell had no reasonable grounds along with no realistic prospect of success at the trial.
Elon Musk says he's uncovered the biggest level of fraud in history
Elon Musk has taken to his personal X account to warn he has discovered the the level of fraudulent federal entitlements exceeds the combined sum of every private scam anyone has ever heard of.
The post from Elon Musk has undoubtedly kicked off several alarm bells within the US government as the Tesla and SpaceX CEO continues to audit the US government books with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). According to Musk, he is "100% certain" that the magnitude of the fraudulent federal entitlements, which include services such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Disability, and others, completely outweighs the combined sum "of every private scam you've ever heard by FAR."
The alarming post from Musk comes after the billionaire took to his X account on February 8 to share that he was informed there is currently more than $100 billion per year of entitlements distributed out to people with no Social Security Number or "even a temporary ID number." For those who don't know, individuals must have a Social Security Number in order to work, collect Social Security Benefits, and officially receive government assistance, according to the Social Security Administration website, per Newsweek.
Continue reading: Elon Musk says he's uncovered the biggest level of fraud in history (full post)
Microsoft warns some Windows 11 users they should downgrade to Windows 10 'immediately'
We are, of course, very much used to Microsoft pushing folks to upgrade to Windows 11, but for certain users, some fresh advice from the company is the exact opposite - albeit there's a good reason for this.
The advice to downgrade to Windows 10 is being given (via a support document) to people who are running Windows 11 on an unsupported PC (that doesn't meet the hardware requirements of the OS).
The document in question is entitled 'Ways to install Windows 11' and is all about just that, but it previously contained some advice on implementing an installation on a PC that didn't meet the necessary system specs.
NASA officially increases probability of most-dangerous asteroid hitting Earth
NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) officials have issued an update on an asteroid that is officially considered the most significant threat to Earth.
A NASA-operated telescope located in Chile detected a suspicious object on Christmas Day, and after human researchers conducted manual follow-up observations, the object was found to be an asteroid now referred to as 2024 YR4. Astronomers discovered the asteroid's orbit around the Sun is elongated, and it's currently traveling directly away from Earth, almost in a straight line.
Because of its position relative to Earth and its straight-line trajectory, researchers struggled to measure its characteristics and project its orbit into the future. Preliminary measurements stated that 2024 YR4 is anywhere between 130 and 300 feet in diameter and is traveling at a speed of 38,700 mph.
Scientists create revolutionary light-based AI chip smaller than a speck of dust
Engineers are attempting to discover new ways to leverage AI to make breakthroughs in various scientific fields, and one may have just happened that harnesses the power and speed of light.
Researchers have penned a new study published in Nature Photonics that builds upon an earlier concept initially unveiled in 2018, where researchers showcased the power of diffractive neural networks. For those who don't know, traditional computing is comprised of electronic circuit boards, and while extremely powerful in their own right, they do have limitations or concessions users must make. Electronic circuit boards have inherent latency as it takes time for the data to be moved. Additionally, this process can be extremely energy-demanding.
However, researchers have designed a new AI chip that manipulates light as it's capable of performing the calculation instantly versus a traditional computer that has to interpret light. As light travels through the new AI chip, it's directed, significantly speeding up the transmission process of data and also reducing the power needed for a calculation to be completed. While being a ground-breaking design that has many implications for numerous fields of computing, the new light-manipulating AI chip does face significant problems, and that is scaling it at the product.
Google and Apple officially change the name of the Gulf of Mexico, but there's a catch
Google and Apple have officially changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, following an executive order signed by President Trump.
Following an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, tech companies in control of maps have begun changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, with Google announcing at the end of last month that it would adhere to the executive order and will apply the name change when official government sources have been updated.
Government resources have now been updated, and Google has rolled out the respective changes, with the company confirming in an update that anyone connecting to Google Maps from the US will see "Gulf of America," while the rest of the world will still see "Gulf of Mexico," but with "Gulf of America" in brackets.
Widespread VPN attack: 2.8 million IPs involved in brute-force campaign
An unidentified threat actor is conducting brute-force attacks targeting over 2.8 million VPN and network devices worldwide. Threat monitoring platform The Shadowserver Foundation posted the reports to X, highlighting a wave of intrusion attempts against networks using devices from Palo Alto, Ivanti, and SonicWall.
There's a specific concentration of attacks in Brazil, Turkey, Russia, and Argentina, with 1.1 million of the 2.8 million affected devices located in Brazil. The foundation also reports that the brute-force attacks are primarily targeting vulnerable edge (network) devices - particularly compromised routers from manufacturers such as MikroTik, Huawei, Cisco, Boa, and ZTE. Threat actors are leveraging a botnet or residential proxy network to disguise malicious traffic, making detection and mitigation more difficult.
The companies above often provide enterprise-level VPNs used for remote work and secure corporate access, making them targets for network infiltration. As reported by Techradar, the attack fits the profile of a conventional brute-force attack, during which threat actors submit large numbers of username and password combinations until breaking through. In that regard, devices with week or reused credentials are particularly vulnerable.
Nintendo Switch 2 price leak backs up Nintendo's recent official statements
A Costco worker may have just leaked the price of the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2, and the leaked price has seemingly backed up recent statements from Nintendo.
Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa recently stated during a Q&A with investors that Nintendo will be taking into account the exchange rate environment shifting since the launch of the Nintendo Switch and how buyers expect Nintendo products to come with a degree of affordability. These statements from the Nintendo president quelled fears the Nintendo Switch 2 was going to be priced similarly to other competing consoles, and while that was never going to be a reality, it was good to hear it from Nintendo itself.
The official statements of the Nintendo Switch 2 being affordable have now been purportedly backed up by leaked pricing, as reported by NintendoWire. A Canadian Costco employee shared an internal product listing along with a sales floor sign that states the Nintendo Switch 2 will cost $499.99 CAD, which is about $350 USD. However, the Nintendo Switch OLED is currently priced at $450 CAD / $350 USD, which means the Nintendo Switch 2 will likely be priced at $399 USD.
GeForce RTX 5090 power connector spotted at 150+ Celsius, prone to melting
A Reddit user took to the r/NVIDIA subreddit to share an image of a melted 12VHPWR power cable that was plugged into a GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition.
The Reddit user "ivan6953" posted photos of the melted 12VHPWR cable and explained that he recently upgraded from an RTX 4090 Founders Edition to an RTX 5090 Founders Edition. The Reddit user added that he is a PC enthusiast who's aware of the potential problems of not correctly seating the power cable.
As a result, he says he made sure the connector was secured tightly into the graphics card and the power supply. However, this didn't prevent the problems as the GPU's power socket had a single pin showing damage and evidence of melting, along with the corresponding pin on the PSU side showing evidence of melting.