Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire is once again drawing unwanted attention to the prominent venture firm after falsely accusing a Palestinian student of being behind the December 13 Brown University mass shooting and the subsequent murder of an MIT professor. In since-deleted posts on X, Maguire speculated that “it seems very likely” the student was the perpetrator, pointing to Brown “actively scrubbing his online presence.” In reality, authorities identified the shooter as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national who was later found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility.

Much of the imagery is familiar from previous releases, and includes things like a photo of a stuffed tiger, a photo of a framed Times of London cover of Princess Diana placed at the back of a closet, photos of the many paintings of nude women in Epstein’s townhouse, and framed photos of Epstein associates like Trump and Woody Allen. Volume 2 The second volume contains 574 photos and one four-second video. Many of the photos feature Epstein and Maxwell in various locations. Several celebrities and politicians also appear in the photos, including actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, singer Michael Jackson, and Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards—none of whom appear in suspicious or compromising positions.

Today was the deadline for Google to reveal how it’s complying with Judge James Donato’s order to crack open Android for third-party app stores, stop illegally tying its Google Play Billing system to its app store, and let developers link to ways to download their apps outside the Play Store in the US. But Google isn’t just letting app developers do things however and whenever they’d like. The company’s quietly updated its support pages with a January 28th deadline to enroll in specific Google programs for “alternative billing” and…

Google is once again part of Movies Anywhere, meaning that movies you’ve purchased from Google Play and YouTube will now show up as part of your Movies Anywhere collection. Films from Google Play and YouTube became unavailable on Movies Anywhere on October 31st, but now they should sync to your account again. “Support for Google as a digital retailer has been re-enabled,” Movies Anywhere says in a support page. “Reconnect your Google account and your movie purchases from Google will be added to your collection as usual. It only takes a minute!”

Resolve AI, a startup developing an autonomous site reliability engineer (SRE), a tool that automatically maintains software systems, has raised a Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, according to three people familiar with the deal. The headline valuation for the fresh round is $1 billion, sources said. However, the company’s actual blended valuation was lower because of a multi-tranched structure. In this setup, investors purchased some equity at a $1 billion valuation but acquired the remainder — likely a larger percentage of the round — at a lower price. This novel investment approach has recently…

The Delaware Supreme Court has reinstated Elon Musk’s $56 billion Tesla pay package from 2018, overturning last year’s ruling by the state’s Chancery Court, according to an opinion published Friday. In a unanimous ruling, the judges on the highest court in Delaware said that canceling Musk’s package left him “uncompensated for his time and efforts over a period of six years.” Adjusted for Tesla’s current stock price, which hit all-time highs this week, the reinstated package would be worth around $140 billion, according to Bloomberg. The state supreme court’s decision likely draws to a close a years-long battle that left such a bad taste in Musk’s mouth that he moved Tesla’s incorporation from Delaware to Texas, which prompted other companies to follow suit.

Brian Barrett: I just this week was looking back at some of our earliest DOGE reporting and reminded of what a crazy couple of months that was. So just as a reminder for folks who were slumbering through the first half of the year, A, I'm jealous. I respect that. Zoë Schiffer: I was just going to say, good for you. Brian Barrett: Department of Government Efficiency came about when Elon Musk and Donald Trump got together and basically Trump gave Elon Musk kind of free rein to do whatever he wanted, and I'm not really exaggerating here, within the federal government.

Building in regulated industries adds a massive hurdle to the already challenging journey of building a startup. And this week on Build Mode, Startup Battlefield editor Isabelle Johannessen spoke to two founders who are working to make progress  in industries ripe for disruption, despite the regulatory headaches that might have deterred many other people.   In this episode, we’re talking about life and death and how regulatory clearance doesn’t have to be a damper on innovation but it will elongate timelines and require careful planning from the jump.   Isabelle is first joined by Gabriel Sanchez, the CEO and co-founder of 

Canelo is currently without a confirmed opponent for his next fight and is expected to target one of the fragmented titles in the division. Pacheco, ranked No. 2 by the WBO, is well placed for a title opportunity against Sheeraz or Munguia should the belt become available. Securing a title would strengthen Pacheco’s standing in the division and make him a more viable option for Alvarez. “That decision by Terence Crawford means a lot of the belts become vacant,” Hearn said to the press. “So you’ve got Sheeraz against Mbilli.

Google isn’t quite ready to replace Assistant with Gemini on Android devices. The company said on Friday that it will “continue our work to upgrade Assistant users to Gemini on mobile devices into 2026,” instead of its original plans to make the switch by the end of 2025. “We’re adjusting our previously announced timeline to make sure we deliver a seamless transition,” Google says. Once the transition away from Google Assistant is complete, users will no longer be able to access the voice assistant on devices that meet the minimum requirements to run Gemini.

Rocket Lab has won an $816 million contract — its largest to date — with the U.S. Space Development Agency as the company continues to diversify beyond its “rocket company” label. The company said Friday that its subsidiary, Rocket Lab USA, was awarded a prime contract by the Space Development Agency (SDA) to design and manufacture 18 satellites. The satellites will be equipped with advanced missile warning, tracking, and defense sensors for the agency’s Tracking Layer Tranche 3 program. This contract is separate from an existing $515 million award to deliver satellites for the SDA’s Transport Layer-Beta Tranche 2 program.

On Friday, retro and arcade game publisher ININ Games surprisingly announced it’s been able to “recalculate production” on offering a physical version of R-Type Dimensions III for the Switch 2 because “Two days ago Nintendo announced two new smaller cartridge sizes for Nintendo Switch 2.” Physical games on the Switch 2 have been something of a contentious topic; full physical games are reportedly expensive for developers, while game-key cards don’t actually have the game on the cart. But later in the day, ININ removed that line from its post and published…

AI coding assistant Cursor announced that it has acquired Graphite, a startup that uses AI to review and debug code. Although the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Axios reported that Cursor paid “way over” Graphite’s last valuation of $290 million, which was set when the five-year-old company raised a $52 million Series B earlier this year. The tie-up makes strategic sense. The output of code generated by AI is often buggy, forcing engineers to spend a lot of time on corrections. Even though Cursor offers AI-powered code review through its…

Former Patagonia CEO Rose Marcario is resigning from her position on Rivian’s board of directors, according to a Friday afternoon stock exchange filing. Rivian wrote in the filing that Marcario’s last day will be on January 1, and that she is leaving “to focus on other commitments.” Rivian’s board will shrink from eight members to seven upon her resignation. Marcario’s departure and the downsizing of Rivian’s board comes on the eve of an important year for the company. Rivian plans to start selling its more affordable R2 SUV in the first half of 2026.

The defense bill, which Congress passed earlier this week, includes two amendments that advocates for commercial nuclear energy are celebrating. The International Nuclear Energy Act establishes working groups and boosts funding and interagency cooperation on the development and export of US nuclear technologies. The NDAA also reauthorizes the US International Development Finance Corporation, a finance institution that’s expected to invest in nuclear power plant and uranium fuel projects. Those are “big wins” that make nuclear exports more attractive in the global market, Rowen Price, senior policy advisor for nuclear energy at center-left think tank Third Way, says in an email to…

Investors at TechCrunch Disrupt did not shy away from admitting they are interested in mainly one thing: artificial intelligence.   Nina Achadjian from Index, Jerry Chen from Greylock and Peter Deng from Felicis, all spoke about the latest obsession in venture capital and how startups can stand out in a quickly crowding market. The environment is moving fast, Achadjian told the crowd, and companies are experiencing unprecedented growth.   “We spend an enormous, enormous amount of time really assessing the entrepreneur and how resilient they will be able to be in a moment where things are just rapidly changing,” Achadjian said. 

OpenAI will now give you the ability to dial up — or down — ChatGPT’s warmth and enthusiasm. An update rolling out on Friday gives you the option to choose whether you want “more” or “less” of these personality traits, or stick with the default. There are also options to tweak how often ChatGPT uses emoji, headers, and lists. You can find these settings by tapping the menu at the top left corner of the ChatGPT app, selecting your profile, heading to Personalization, and choosing Add Characteristics. Alongside these options, you can…

In an effort to halt this harmful misappropriation and protect its partner relationships, Google developed and deployed a technological measure, known as SearchGuard, that restricts access to its search results pages and the copyrighted content they contain. So that it could continue its free riding, however, SerpApi developed a means of circumventing SearchGuard. With the automated queries it submits, SerpApi engages in a wide variety of misrepresentations and evasions in order to bypass the technological protections Google deployed. But each time it employs these artifices, SerpApi violates federal law… When SearchGuard launched in January 2025, it effectively blocked SerpApi from accessing Google’s Search results and the copyrighted content of Google’s partners.

Anonymous messaging app NGL announced on Friday that it has been acquired by Mode Mobile, a smartphone rewards company that makes money by flooding its users with ads. NGL quickly climbed the App Store charts after its launch in late 2021, joining a group of similar apps popular among teens that allow users to send and receive anonymous questions and messages. But it’s been embroiled in controversy for most of its existence. Anonymous messaging apps are problematic because they can encourage bullying among teens — Snapchat banned third-party apps like NGL, LMK, Sendit, and YOLO from its platform in 2022 after a parent sued the company for its alleged role in her teenage son’s suicide.

A major new international study led by ETH Zurich has, for the first time, estimated how many of the world's glaciers are expected to survive through the end of this century and how long each one is likely to last. The findings show a dramatic contrast between warming scenarios. If global temperatures rise to +4.0 °C, only about 18,000 glaciers would remain worldwide. Limiting warming to +1.5 °C could preserve roughly 100,000 glaciers. The researchers also introduced the concept of "Peak Glacier Extinction," which marks the year when glacier losses reach their highest level.

I don’t want to admit it, but I did spend a lot of money online this holiday shopping season. And unsurprisingly, some of those purchases didn’t meet my expectations. A photobook I bought was damaged in transit, so I snapped a few pictures, emailed them to the merchant, and got a refund. Online shopping platforms have long depended on photos submitted by customers to confirm that refund requests are legitimate. But generative AI is now starting to break that system. A Pinch Too Suspicious On the Chinese social media app RedNote…

On Wednesday, Cisco revealed that a group of Chinese government-backed hackers is exploiting a vulnerability to target its enterprise customers who use some of the company’s most popular products. Cisco has not said how many of its customers have already been hacked, or may be running vulnerable systems. Now, security researchers say there are hundreds of Cisco customers who could potentially be hacked. Piotr Kijewski, the chief executive of the nonprofit Shadowserver Foundation that scans and monitors the internet for hacking campaigns, told TechCrunch that the scale of exposure “seems more in the hundreds rather than thousands or tens of thousands.”

The knockdown was the beginning of the end for Robles as Cardena became more effective and precise with his punches, ultimately stopping Erik in the fifth round. Cardenas landed 40.2 percent of his power punches while Robles was only able to land 9.9 percent of his total punches, demonstrating Ramon’s defensive improvements (Compubox). Over the course of the last year, Ramon has gained valuable experience in having been in the ring with both Naoya Inoue and Junto Nakatani. Cardenas trainer Manny Robles was asked about Ramon’s experience of having been in the ring with both, “I’ve always said you learn more from your defeats than you do from your wins.

The hardware world had a brutal week, with iRobot, Luminar, and Rad Power Bikes all filing for bankruptcy.  Each company faces its own mix of tariff pressures, supply chain issues, and shifting markets, but together they tell a larger story about the challenges of building physical products in an era of global trade tensions and cheap overseas competition. From the Roomba maker that almost got acquired by Amazon to the e-bike company that couldn’t escape its Chinese supply chain, this week’s bankruptcies are a warning sign for hardware startups everywhere. 

For decades, neuroscientists have taught that neurons do not regenerate once they are damaged or destroyed. This belief has shaped how brain injuries are understood and treated. Yet people often regain at least some lost abilities after trauma, raising an important question: if neurons do not grow back, how does recovery happen? A new JNeurosci paper offers insight into this puzzle. Athanasios Alexandris and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University used mice to study what happens inside the visual system after traumatic brain injury. The visual system includes cells in the eye that send information to the brain, allowing animals and humans to see.