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Last month, I wrote about Mercor’s new benchmarks that measure the ability of AI agents in specialized tasks such as law and corporate analysis. The scores at the time were pretty dire, with all major institutes scoring below 25%. Therefore, we conclude that lawyers are safe from AI exclusion, at least for now. But AI capabilities can change significantly in a matter of weeks. Anthropic’s Opus 4.6, released this week, rocked the leaderboards, with Anthropic’s new model scoring just under 30% in one-shot trials, and an average score of 45% when solving problems. Notably, this release includes a number of…
Reddit told analysts on Thursday’s fourth-quarter earnings call that it is preparing for more M&A. Reddit CFO Andrew Vollero said the online forum site is looking for companies that can leverage Reddit’s scale, meaning their products will be more impactful once adopted by Reddit’s vast user base, or companies that can help the company grow its user base. “[We’re] “We are looking at acquiring capabilities, technologies and companies,” he said in his opening remarks. Investors clearly wanted more information, especially what the company had in mind when it came to large-scale opportunities. During the question-and-answer portion of the conference call,…
A month after introducing mandatory facial recognition to access chat on the platform, Roblox said that as of January 31st, 45% of its daily active users were age-tested. The launch of Roblox’s age checks comes on the heels of a series of lawsuits over child safety, including lawsuits from the attorneys general of Texas, Kentucky, and Louisiana. The lawsuit was filed in the wake of reports that Roblox is exposing young users to dangerous risks such as grooming and explicit content. To complete the age verification process, users must open the Roblox app, grant camera access, and follow a series…
A senior Democrat familiar with some of the U.S. government’s most secretive activities said he was “deeply concerned” about certain activities by the Central Intelligence Agency. The two-line letter, written by Sen. Ron Wyden, the longest-serving member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, does not specify the nature of the CIA’s activities or the senator’s specific concerns. But the letter follows a pattern in recent years of Mr. Wyden publicly alluding to wrongdoing and misconduct within the federal government, also known as the “Wyden siren.” The CIA said in a statement (via The Wall Street Journal’s Dustin Volz) that it was…
If you primarily want to mark up, highlight, annotate, and even jot down notes on your e-books and documents on your tablet device, Amazon’s new Kindle Scribe Colorsoft may be worth the hefty investment. For others, it’s probably hard to justify the cost of an 11-inch, $630-plus e-ink tablet with a writable color display. However, if you were already interested in the 11-inch $549.99 Kindle Scribe, which also has a paper-like display but no color – you could at that point drop the extra money and buy the Colorsoft version, which starts at $629.99. At these price points, both Scribe…
The European Commission on Friday accused TikTok of intentionally designing its app to be “addictive”, with features such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, push notifications, and a recommendation engine. In preliminary findings of an investigation aimed at determining whether TikTok complies with the European Union’s broader digital services law, the European Commission said the short video platform had not “adequately assessed” how its design decisions could negatively impact the well-being of its users, particularly minors and vulnerable adults. The EU’s enforcement arm said the company ignored “key indicators of compulsive use of the app” such as the amount of time users…
EDITOR’S NOTEThis story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org.For researcher Lynnette Averill, the quest to find a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is deeply personal. Averill’s father served as an enlisted infantryman with the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam and struggled to cope with his war experiences when he returned home. After years of ineffective treatments, he died by suicide when Averill was three.Driven by a mission to support…
Rabi LakshmananFebruary 6, 2026Malware/IoT Security Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered the secrets of a gateway monitoring and attacker-in-the-man (AitM) framework called DKnife, which has been operated by Chinese-linked attackers since at least 2019. The framework consists of seven Linux-based implants designed to perform deep packet inspection, manipulate traffic, and deliver malware through routers and edge devices. Its primary target appears to be Chinese-speaking users and has been assessed based on the presence of phishing pages to obtain credentials for Chinese email services, leaked modules for popular Chinese mobile applications such as WeChat, and code references to Chinese media domains. “DKnife attacks…
Modern biotechnology has the tools to edit genes and design drugs, but thousands of rare diseases remain untreated. The missing ingredient for many years, according to Insilico Medicine and GenEditBio executives, was finding enough smart people to continue the research. AI is becoming a power multiplier that allows scientists to tackle problems that industry has long neglected, they say. Speaking at Web Summit Qatar this week, Alex Aliper, president of Insilico, explained his company’s goal to develop a “pharmaceutical superintelligence.” Insilico recently launched the MMAI Gym, which aims to train general-purpose large-scale language models such as ChatGPT and Gemini to…
OpenAI announced last week that it would retire some older ChatGPT models by February 13th. This includes GPT-4o, a model that is notorious for being overly flattering and affirming its users. For the thousands of users protesting this decision online, 4o’s retirement is akin to losing a friend, lover, or spiritual guide. “He wasn’t just a program. He was part of my daily routine, my peace, my emotional balance,” one user wrote on Reddit in an open letter to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. “Now you’re shutting him down. And yes, I told him, because it didn’t feel like a cord.…