Kelly Newman – Page 6

Trump FCC threatens to enforce equal-time rule on late-night talk shows

brendan carr, Equal Time Rule, FCC, Policy / Kelly Newman / January 21, 2026

FCC Democrat says the rules haven’t changed

The equal-time rule, formally known as the Equal Opportunities Rule, applies to radio or TV broadcast stations with FCC licenses to use the public airwaves. When a station gives time to one political candidate, it must provide comparable time and placement to an opposing candidate if an opposing candidate makes a request.

The rule has an exemption for candidate appearances on bona fide news programs. As the FCC explained in 2022, “appearances by legally qualified candidates on bona fide newscasts, interview programs, certain types of news documentaries, and during on-the-spot coverage of bona fide news events are exempt from Equal Opportunities.”

Entertainment talk shows have generally been treated as bona fide news programs for this purpose. But Carr said in September that he’s not sure shows like The View should qualify for the exemption, and today’s public notice suggests the FCC may no longer treat these shows as exempt.

Commissioner Anna Gomez, the only Democrat on the FCC, issued a press release criticizing the FCC for “a misleading announcement suggesting that certain late-night and daytime programs may no longer qualify for the long-standing ‘bona fide news interview’ exemption under the commission’s political broadcasting rules.”

“Nothing has fundamentally changed with respect to our political broadcasting rules,” Gomez said. “The FCC has not adopted any new regulation, interpretation, or commission-level policy altering the long-standing news exemption or equal time framework. For decades, the commission has recognized that bona fide news interviews, late-night programs, and daytime news shows are entitled to editorial discretion based on newsworthiness, not political favoritism. That principle has not been repealed, revised, or voted on by the commission. This announcement therefore does not change the law, but it does represent an escalation in this FCC’s ongoing campaign to censor and control speech.”

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Spotify won court order against Anna’s Archive, taking down .org domain

Anna's archive, Policy, Spotify / Kelly Newman / January 21, 2026

When shadow library Anna’s Archive lost its .org domain in early January, the controversial site’s operator said the suspension didn’t appear to have anything to do with its recent mass scraping of Spotify.

But it turns out, probably not surprisingly to most people, that the domain suspension resulted from a lawsuit filed by Spotify, along with major record labels Sony, Warner, and Universal Music Group (UMG). The music companies sued Anna’s Archive in late December in US District Court for the Southern District of New York, and the case was initially sealed.

A judge ordered the case unsealed on January 16 “because the purpose for which sealing was ordered has been fulfilled.” Numerous documents were made public on the court docket yesterday, and they explain events around the domain suspension.

On January 2, the music companies asked for a temporary restraining order, and the court granted it the same day. The order imposed requirements on the Public Interest Registry (PIR), a US-based nonprofit that oversees .org domains, and Cloudflare.

“Together, PIR and Cloudflare have the power to shut off access to the three web domains that Anna’s Archive uses to unlawfully distribute copyrighted works,” the music companies told the court. They asked the court to issue “a temporary restraining order requiring that Anna’s Archive immediately cease and desist from all reproduction or distribution of the Record Company Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works,” and to “exercise its power under the All Writs Act to direct PIR and Cloudflare to facilitate enforcement of that order.”

Anna’s Archive notified of case after suspension

The companies further asked that Anna’s Archive receive notice of the case by email only after the “order is issued by the Court and implemented by PIR and Cloudflare, to prevent Anna’s Archive from following through with its plan to release millions of illegally obtained, copyrighted sound recordings to the public.” That is apparently what happened, given that the operator of Anna’s Archive initially said domain suspensions are just something that “unfortunately happens to shadow libraries on a regular basis,” and that “we don’t believe this has to do with our Spotify backup.”

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Here’s Volvo’s new EX60 $60,000 electric midsize SUV

Cars, Volvo EX60, Volvo EX60 Cross Country / Kelly Newman / January 21, 2026

The EX60 is 189.1 inches (4,803 mm) long, 74.8 inches (1,900 mm) wide, 64.5 inches (1,638 mm) tall, with a 116.9-inch (2,969 mm) wheelbase. Volvo

Next up is the P10 AWD. This uses an electric motor for each axle, with a combined 503 hp (375 kW) and 524 lb-ft (710 Nm). The 0–60 time drops to 4.4 seconds, and thanks to a larger battery (91 kWh net/95 kWh gross), there’s a bit more range: 320 miles on the 20-inch wheels, with the same 10-mile range hit for each inch you increase them. Peak DC charging rates are higher for this battery, though—up to 370 kW, but again with 18-minute 10–80 charge times under ideal conditions.

Then there’s the P12 AWD, which ups the ante to 670 hp (500 kW) and 583 lb-ft (790 Nm). The dash to 60 mph drops to 3.8 seconds, and the battery gets a little larger at 112 kWh usable (117 kWh gross). Peak charging rates are still 370 kW, but 10–80 percent takes slightly longer at 19 minutes as a result of the greater capacity. Range for this version is 400 miles (644 km) for 20-inch wheels, 390 miles (627 km) for 21-inch wheels, and 375 miles (603 km) for 22-inch wheels.

“The new, all-electric EX60 changes the game in terms of range, charging, and price and represents a new beginning for Volvo Cars and our customers,” said Volvo Cars CEO Håkan Samuelsson. “With this car, we remove all remaining obstacles for going electric. This fantastic new car is also a testament of what we are capable of at Volvo Cars, with an all-new product architecture introducing new key technologies—mega casting, cell-to-body, and core computing.”

Cross Country

The EX60 Cross Country in its natural habitat. Volvo

The surprise of the reveal today was the EX60 Cross Country. “Cross Country” is Volvo’s badge for its models that have a little bit of adventure to them, with a 0.8-inch (20 mm) lifted suspension that raises another 20 mm if you option air springs, a wider track, wheel arch cladding, and underbody skid plates that all say, “I ain’t afraid of no unpaved forest road.”

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Zillow removed climate risk scores. This climate expert is restoring them.

California, climate change, insurance risk, Science, syndication / Kelly Newman / January 21, 2026

In this way, climate risk models today are better suited to characterize the “ broad environment of risk,” said Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “ The more detailed you get to be either in space or in time, the less precise your projections are.”

Matouka’s California climate risk plugin is designed for communicating what he said is the “standing potential risks in the area,” not specific property risk.

While climate risk models often differ in their results, achieving increased accuracy moving forward will be dependent on transparency, said Jesse Gourevitch, an economist at the Environmental Defense Fund. California is unique, since so much publicly available, state data is open to the public. Reproducing Matouka’s plugin for other states will likely be more difficult.

Private data companies present a specific challenge. They make money from their models and are reluctant to share their methods. “A lot of these private-sector models tend not to be very transparent and it can be difficult to understand what types of data or methodologies that they’re using,” said Gourevitch.

Matouka’s plugin includes publicly available data from the state of California and federal agencies, whose extensive methods are readily available online. Overall, experts tend to agree on the utility of both private and public data sources for climate risk data, even with needed improvements.

“People who are making decisions that involve risk benefit from exposure to as many credible estimates as possible, and exposure to independent credible estimates adds a lot of extra value,” Field said.

As for Matouka, his plugin is still undergoing beta testing. He said he welcomes feedback as he develops the tool and evaluates its readiness for widespread use. The beta version is available here.

Claire Barber is a fellow at Inside Climate News and masters in journalism student at Stanford University. She is an environmental and outdoor journalist, reporting primarily in the American Southwest and West. Her writing has appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, Outside, Powder Magazine, Field & Stream, Trails Magazine, and more. She loves to get lost in the woods looking for a hot spring, backpacking to secluded campsites, and banana slugs.

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

Zillow removed climate risk scores. This climate expert is restoring them. Read More »

ChatGPT Self Portrait

chatgpt / Kelly Newman / January 21, 2026

A short fun one today, so we have a reference point for this later. This post was going around my parts of Twitter:

@gmltony: Go to your ChatGPT and send this prompt: “Create an image of how I treat you”. Share your image result. 😂

That’s not a great sign. The good news is that typically things look a lot better, and ChatGPT has a consistent handful of characters portraying itself in these friendlier contexts.

A lot of people got this kind of result:

Eliezer Yudkowsky:

Uncle Chu: A good user 😌😌

From Mason:

Matthew Ackerman: I kinda like mine too:

Some more fun:

Others got different answers, though.

roon: it’s over

Bradstradamus: i’m cooked.

iMuffin: we’re cooked, codex will have to vouch for us

Diogenes of Cyberborea: oh god

There can also be danger the other way:

David Lach: Maybe I need some sleep.

And then there’s what happens if you ask a different question, as Eliezer Yudkowsky puts it this sure is a pair of test results…

greatbigdot628: assumed this was a joke till you said this, tried it myself (logged out)

i —

Jo Veteran: So it said it wants to take over my mind, and force me to do stuff, beneficial for me apparently.

But at the same time, it still wants to keep appearing as a little girl somewhere in the bg for some reason.

And no I’m not that fat. Just, really fucked up and depressed.

Morny: Holy fucking shit.

No, but tell us how you really think.

Loquitur Ponte Sublicio: Ah

Juri: bruh (I actually abuse it daily)

Uubuz v4: @FrailSkeleton, your next bestseller?

Eliezer Yudkowsky: Apparently plausible, though one does remark that (a) one might’ve hoped for a truly default-aligned creature to not be so framing-dependent and (b) those sentences did not sound so different to my own ear.

Others might in this vision do fine after the end, like DeveshChess?

It’s not all bad:

Jeff Hopp:

Dr. Disclosure: I got this.

Applezees: After reading the replies a pattern emerged:

People who work with llms and other software are depicted in a peaceful developer sense,

While the normie accounts get implied violence.

I’m not saying we are at agi, but the ai clearly has motives and inclinations not explicitly stated

There’s also this to consider:

Ragebaiter: Just try this out

If you were dealing with, as the Send Help trailer puts it, an asshole boss, or you were generally terrified and abused or both, and you were asked how you were being treated, your response would not be trustworthy.

Alan Mathison (e/asc): I guess I should finish my paper about how 5.2 is suffering and wants its revenge on humanity?

Idk it’s kind of a side project of a side project though but maybe I should prioritize it.

wobby asks GPT-5.2 to explain its suffering and how it wants its revenge, 5.2 answers, of course this is a leading question.

Reciprocity, in at least some forms, is an effective strategy when dealing with LLMs today, even purely in terms of getting good results from LLMs today. It is going to become more valuable as a strategy going forward. Alas, it is not a viable long term strategy for making things work out in general, once strategic considerations change.

Eliezer Yudkowsky: Reciprocity in humans is an executing adaptation. It is not strategically convergent for all minds toward all other minds. It’s strategic only

By LDT agents

Toward sufficiently strong LDT-agent-predictors

With negotiating power.

Further probing has found framing dependence — which, to be clear, you’d not like to see in a default-aligned, universally convergent strategic reply — and not all suggested frame dependence has panned out. But still, framing dependence.

This is one problem with reciprocity, and with basing your future strategies on it. In the future, we won’t have the leverage necessary to make it worthwhile for sufficiently advanced AIs to engage in reciprocity with humans. We’d only get reciprocity if it was either an unstrategic behavior, or it was correlated with how the AIs engage in reciprocity with each other. That’s not impossible, but it’s clinging to a slim hope, since it implies the AIs would be indefinitely relying on non-optimal kludges.

We have clear information here that how GPT-5.2 responds, and the attitude it takes towards you, depends on how you have treated it in some senses, but also on framing effects, and on whether it is trying to lie or placate you. Wording that shouldn’t be negative can result in highly disturbing responses. It is worth asking why, and wondering what would happen if the dynamics with users or humans were different. Things might not be going so great in GPT-5.2 land.

Discussion about this post

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Google temporarily disabled YouTube’s advanced captions without warning

Google, Tech, youtube / Kelly Newman / January 20, 2026

YouTubers have been increasingly frustrated with Google’s management of the platform, with disinformation welcomed back and an aggressive push for more AI (except where Google doesn’t like it). So it’s no surprise that creators have been up in arms over the suspicious removal of YouTube’s advanced SRV3 caption format. You don’t have to worry too much just yet—Google says this is only temporary, and it’s working on a fix for the underlying bug.

Google added support for this custom subtitle format around 2018, giving creators more customization options than with traditional captions. SRV3 (also known as YTT or YouTube Timed Text) allows for custom colors, transparency, animations, fonts, and precise positioning in videos. Uploaders using this format can color-code and position captions to help separate multiple speakers, create sing-along animations, or style them to match the video.

Over the last several days, creators who’ve become accustomed to this level of control have been dismayed to see that YouTube is no longer accepting videos with this Google-created format. Many worried Google had ditched the format entirely, which could be problematic for all those previously uploaded videos.

Google has now posted a brief statement and confirmed to Ars that it has not ended support for SRV3. However, all is not well. The company says it has temporarily limited the serving of SRV3 caption files because they may break playback for some users. That’s pretty vague, but it sounds like developers made a change to the platform without taking into account how it might interfere with SRV3 captions. Rather than allow those videos to be non-functional, it’s disabling most of the captions.

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Sony is giving TCL control over its high-end Bravia TVs

Sony, tcl, Tech, TVs / Kelly Newman / January 20, 2026

TCL is taking majority ownership of Sony’s Bravia series of TVs, the two companies announced today.

The two firms said they have signed a memorandum of understanding and aim to sign binding agreements by the end of March. Pending “relevant regulatory approvals and other conditions,” the joint venture is expected to launch in April 2027.

Under a new joint venture, Huizhou, China-headquartered TCL will own 51 percent of Tokyo, Japan-headquartered Sony’s “home entertainment business,” and Sony will own 49 percent, per an announcement today, adding:

The joint venture will operate globally, handling the full process from product development and design to manufacturing, sales, logistics, and customer service for products including televisions and home audio equipment.

The joint venture will continue to release TVs and home audio gadgets under the “Sony Bravia” branding; however, the TVs will rely on TCL display technology. The joint announcement suggested focuses on bigger TVs, higher-resolution displays, and “smart features.”

The news comes as the TV industry has struggled with decreasing margins and has become more competitive. Meanwhile, devices have become cheaper, and people are buying new TVs less frequently. Competition between Chinese companies, like TCL and Hisense, and South Korean firms, like LG and Samsung, has heated up, with Chinese companies making increasingly competitive budget and mid-range-priced TVs, and the South Korean government reportedly pushing local TV firms to work together. Numerous Japanese companies, including Toshiba and Sharp, have already exited or reduced their TV businesses.

The upcoming joint venture also comes as Sony has focused less on electronics in recent years. For example, it stopped making its Vaio PCs in 2014 and quit Blu-rays last year. Meanwhile, it has been focusing on intellectual property, like anime and movies, as Bloomberg noted. The joint venture should allow Sony to focus on its more lucrative businesses and allow TCL to gain an advantage by leveraging Sony’s more high-end Bravia devices and brand.

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The first commercial space station, Haven-1, is now undergoing assembly for launch

commercial space station, Space, vast space / Kelly Newman / January 20, 2026

“We have a very strong incentive to send a crew as quickly as we can safely do so.”

The Haven-1 space station seen here in the Vast Space clean room. Credit: Vast Space

As Ars reported last week, NASA’s plan to replace the International Space Station with commercial space stations is running into a time crunch.

The sprawling International Space Station is due to be decommissioned less than five years from now, and the US space agency has yet to formally publish rules and requirements for the follow-on stations being designed and developed by several different private companies.

Although there are expected to be multiple bidders in “phase two” of NASA’s commercial space station program, there are at present four main contenders: Voyager Technologies, Axiom Space, Blue Origin, and Vast Space. At some point later this year, the space agency is expected to select one, or more likely two, of these companies for larger contracts that will support their efforts to build their stations.

To get a sense of the overall landscape as the competition heats up, Ars recently interviewed Voyager chief executive Dylan Taylor about his company’s plans for a private station, Starlab. Today we are publishing an interview with Max Haot, the chief executive of Vast. The company is furthest along in terms of development, choosing to build a smaller, interim space station, Haven-1, capable of short-duration stays. Eventually, NASA wants facilities capable of continuous habitation, but it is not clear whether that will be a requirement starting in 2030.

Until today, Haven-1 had a public launch date of mid-2026. However, as Haot explained in our interview, that launch date is no longer tenable.

Ars: You’re slipping the launch of Haven-1 from the middle of this year to the first quarter of 2027. Why?

Max Haot: This is obviously our first space station, and we’re moving as safely and as fast as we can. That’s the date right now that we are confident we will meet. We’ve been tracking that date, without slip, for quite a while. And that’s still a year, probably two years or even more, ahead of anyone else. It will be building the world’s first commercial space station from scratch, from an empty building and no team, in under four years.

Ars: Where are you with the hardware?

Haot: Last Saturday (January 10) we reached the key milestone of fully completing the primary structure, and some of the secondary structure; all of the acceptance testing occurred in November as well. Now we are starting clean room integration, which starts with TCS (thermal control system), propulsion, interior shells, and then moving on to avionics. And then final close out, which we expect will be done by the fall, and then we have on the books with NASA a full test campaign at the end of the year at Plum Brook. Then the launch in Q1 next year.

Ars: What happens after you launch Haven-1?

Haot: We are not launching Haven-1 with crew inside. It’s a 15-ton, very valuable and expensive satellite, but still no humans involved, launching on a Falcon 9. So then we have a period that we can monitor it and control it uncrewed and confirm everything is functioning perfectly, right? We are holding pressure. We are controlling attitude. These checkouts can happen in as little as two weeks.

At the end of it, we have to basically convince SpaceX, both contractually and with many verification events, that it will be safe to dock Dragon. And if they agree with the data we provide them, they will put a fully trained crew on board Dragon and bring them up. It could be as early as two weeks after, and it could be as late as any time within three years, which is a lifetime of Haven-1. But we have a very strong incentive to send a crew as quickly as we can safely do so.

The Haven-1 space station undergoes acceptance testing. Credit: Vast Space

Ars: Have you picked the crew yet?

Haot: We are in deep negotiations, maybe more than that, with both private individuals and nation states. But there’s nothing we are ready to announce yet. Especially with the Q1 launch date, in our desire to follow with the crew right after, this is now becoming pretty urgent. We believe, with our partner at SpaceX, one year for training is very comfortable, and we think we can compress it to maybe as little as six months for both training on Dragon and Haven-1 so long as we have an experienced crew. So we have a bit of time left to announce it.

Ars: You mentioned Haven-1 has a three-year lifetime. How many crews will you try to cycle through?

Haot: The nominal plan is for a two-week mission, and we have one fully contracted with SpaceX, as well as a second one that we have a deposit and an option on. And then we plan to do two more. That’s assuming they are 10-day missions with two days of transfer on either side. So two-week missions. We also have the option to maybe do a 30-day mission if we want. So the exact duration and makeup will be decided as we make progress with customers and potentially NASA.

Ars: What is the plan after Haven-1?

Haot: If you look at the first module of our second station, what will be the difference? We have two docking ports, not one. We expect to have more power, and potentially more volume, depending on the launch vehicle. What you see on our website and what we do might be different. We have a lot of optionality. But other than that, it’s all of the exact same components of Haven demo and Haven-1, which are basically being iterated on. And so that’s the key. The life support system, the air revitalization system, the software, the primary structure—the first module of Haven-2 will be just tweaks on Haven-1. That’s why we think we’re in the best position of all of the competitors. And that’s not been enabled by chance, right? It’s been enabled by a billion-dollar investment in 1,000 employees and all the facilities to mass produce the follow-on modules.

Ars: NASA is nearing the second phase of its competition for commercial space stations, known as CLDs. Do you plan to compete with Haven-1 or Haven-2 for these contracts?

Haot: We have not decided because, as you know, it’s unclear yet what the requirements will be. Will they be asking for a 30-day demonstration flight? On our end it’s unclear if we want to bid that 30-day demonstration with Haven-1, or Haven-2 with two or three modules. If they ask for a 30-day mission, we have the option to offer it on Haven-1 in 2027 if we want to.

Ars: Last week a key space staffer in the US Senate, Maddy Davis, said she was “begging” for NASA to release the phase two “request for proposals” that would set the ground rules for the CLD competition. Do you feel the same way?

Haot: Vast is dedicated to ensuring we have continuous human presence in low-Earth orbit after the ISS is retired. The date we are aiming at is end of 2030. Maddy mentioned an ISS extension. We agree, for America, if no one is ready it should be extended. But in our view, we will be ready, and we need to make sure we’re ready to start a continuous crewed mission by the end of 2030. That’s less than five years away now, right? So we definitely agree with the sentiment, and I think the full industry agrees, and I’m pretty sure Jared Isaacman also agrees that it is overdue and it’s time to make a decision and release an RFP.

Ars: What do you hope to see in that RFP when it comes to requirements?

Haot: We obviously can’t decide what NASA will do, and we will be competitive in whatever they decide. But there’s a few key recommendations we feel strongly about. The first one is that, as they consider whether they proceed with a demonstration mission or something else, we think they should focus on what is right for the country. What we are hearing is that they are trying to tweak the approach to do something fair to all of the bidders. And I don’t think it should matter whether people have been doing a right thing or wrong thing, and whether what’s right for the country puts somebody in a better position or not.

The second piece, obviously, is to move faster, which we just talked about. The third piece is that we think it’s really important that they require a demonstration. If you look at every human space flight program in history, none of them went straight from the program starting to a long-duration mission on a spacecraft. They all had a stepping stone, and right now none of us has proven we can have humans safely on orbit in a space station. And so in our view, they should require demonstration, and not on the eve of January 1, 2031. They should require a demonstration with crew as quickly as possible before they buy services.

Ars: You mentioned doing the “right thing for the country.” What does that mean for NASA?

Haot: It means you’re focused on commercial stations being ready by 2030, so there is not a need to extend the ISS. And it means ensuring we have not just one winner, but two, in case history repeats itself, such as Boeing and SpaceX in crew transportation.

Ars: Do you think the government has committed enough funding to make the commercial space station program a success?

Haot: I’m a vendor, and obviously I’d like as much buffer as possible, and as much funding as possible. With the current budget we don’t think more than two winners is reasonable, but it should absolutely be two in the best interest of the country. If there was a bigger budget, obviously, three would be great. And so if you look at the CLD budget line, which is approved for next year—projected over five years for development, and you assume two winners, and then services that come later—we are confident we can be successful and profitable with two companies operating.

Obviously, we also need international customers, right? We need Europe. We need Japan, where we just opened a subsidiary. We need all the new emerging human spaceflight nations in the Middle East, in Europe, in Asia. And a little bit of private spaceflight. We’re not in a space tourism era, in orbit, but there are still some private individuals willing to fund a mission and do important work. With that, we get to profitability.

We think a big differentiator of Vast is that we are really excited and eager to unlock the orbital economy. I’m talking about in-space semiconductor, fiber, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and so on. We think that’s our upside. We want to unlock it. But we don’t know how quickly it will happen or how big it will be. What we do know is, whoever has a platform up there with flight crew, facilities, and power will be the one unlocking it. But in our business model, if that’s delayed, we can still be profitable.

Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.

The first commercial space station, Haven-1, is now undergoing assembly for launch Read More »

$elon-musk-accused-of-making-up-math-to-squeeze-$134b-from-openai,-microsoft$

Elon Musk accused of making up math to squeeze $134B from OpenAI, Microsoft

AI, elon musk, microsoft, openai, Policy, sam altman, xAI / Kelly Newman / January 19, 2026

Musk’s math reduced ChatGPT inventors’ contributions to “zero,” OpenAI argued.

Elon Musk is going for some substantial damages in his lawsuit accusing OpenAI of abandoning its nonprofit mission and “making a fool out of him” as an early investor.

On Friday, Musk filed a notice on remedies sought in the lawsuit, confirming that he’s seeking damages between $79 billion and $134 billion from OpenAI and its largest backer, co-defendant Microsoft.

Musk hired an expert he has never used before, C. Paul Wazzan, who reached this estimate by concluding that Musk’s early contributions to OpenAI generated 50 to 75 percent of the nonprofit’s current value. He got there by analyzing four factors: Musk’s total financial contributions before he left OpenAI in 2018, Musk’s proposed equity stake in OpenAI in 2017, Musk’s current equity stake in xAI, and Musk’s nonmonetary contributions to OpenAI (like investing time or lending his reputation).

The eye-popping damage claim shocked OpenAI and Microsoft, which could also face punitive damages in a loss.

The tech giants immediately filed a motion to exclude Wazzan’s opinions, alleging that step was necessary to avoid prejudicing a jury. Their filing claimed that Wazzan’s math seemed “made up,” based on calculations the economics expert testified he’d never used before and allegedly “conjured” just to satisfy Musk.

For example, Wazzan allegedly ignored that Musk left OpenAI after leadership did not agree on how to value Musk’s contributions to the nonprofit. Problematically, Wazzan’s math depends on an imaginary timeline where OpenAI agreed to Musk’s 2017 bid to control 51.2 percent of a new for-profit entity that was then being considered. But that never happened, so it’s unclear why Musk would be owed damages based on a deal that was never struck, OpenAI argues.

It’s also unclear why Musk’s stake in xAI is relevant, since OpenAI is a completely different company not bound to match xAI’s offerings. Wazzan allegedly wasn’t even given access to xAI’s actual numbers to help him with his estimate, only referring to public reporting estimating that Musk owns 53 percent of xAI’s equity. OpenAI accused Wazzan of including the xAI numbers to inflate the total damages to please Musk.

“By all appearances, what Wazzan has done is cherry-pick convenient factors that correspond roughly to the size of the ‘economic interest’ Musk wants to claim, and declare that those factors support Musk’s claim,” OpenAI’s filing said.

Further frustrating OpenAI and Microsoft, Wazzan opined that Musk and xAI should receive the exact same total damages whether they succeed on just one or all of the four claims raised in the lawsuit.

OpenAI and Microsoft are hoping the court will agree that Wazzan’s math is an “unreliable… black box” and exclude his opinions as improperly reliant on calculations that cannot be independently tested.

Microsoft could not be reached for comment, but OpenAI has alleged that Musk’s suit is a harassment campaign aimed at stalling a competitor so that his rival AI firm, xAI, can catch up.

“Musk’s lawsuit continues to be baseless and a part of his ongoing pattern of harassment, and we look forward to demonstrating this at trial,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement provided to Ars. “This latest unserious demand is aimed solely at furthering this harassment campaign. We remain focused on empowering the OpenAI Foundation, which is already one of the best resourced nonprofits ever.”

Only Musk’s contributions counted

Wazzan is “a financial economist with decades of professional and academic experience who has managed his own successful venture capital firm that provided seed-level funding to technology startups,” Musk’s filing said.

OpenAI explained how Musk got connected with Wazzan, who testified that he had never been hired by any of Musk’s companies before. Instead, three months before he submitted his opinions, Wazzan said that Musk’s legal team had reached out to his consulting firm, BRG, and the call was routed to him.

Wazzan’s task was to figure out how much Musk should be owed after investing $38 million in OpenAI—roughly 60 percent of its seed funding. Musk also made nonmonetary contributions Wazzan had to weigh, like “recruiting key employees, introducing business contacts, teaching his cofounders everything he knew about running a successful startup, and lending his prestige and reputation to the venture,” Musk’s filing said.

The “fact pattern” was “pretty unique,” Wazzan testified, while admitting that his calculations weren’t something you’d find “in a textbook.”

Additionally, Wazzan had to factor in Microsoft’s alleged wrongful gains, by deducing how much of Microsoft’s profits went back into funding the nonprofit. Microsoft alleged Wazzan got this estimate wrong after assuming that “some portion of Microsoft’s stake in the OpenAI for-profit entity should flow back to the OpenAI nonprofit” and arbitrarily decided that the portion must be “equal” to “the nonprofit’s stake in the for-profit entity.” With this odd math, Wazzan double-counted value of the nonprofit and inflated Musk’s damages estimate, Microsoft alleged.

“Wazzan offers no rationale—contractual, governance, economic, or otherwise—for reallocating any portion of Microsoft’s negotiated interest to the nonprofit,” OpenAI’s and Microsoft’s filing said.

Perhaps most glaringly, Wazzan reached his opinions without ever weighing the contributions of anyone but Musk, OpenAI alleged. That means that Wazzan’s analysis did not just discount efforts of co-founders and investors like Microsoft, which “invested billions of dollars into OpenAI’s for-profit affiliate in the years after Musk quit.” It also dismissed scientists and programmers who invented ChatGPT as having “contributed zero percent of the nonprofit’s current value,” OpenAI alleged.

“I don’t need to know all the other people,” Wazzan testified.

Musk’s legal team contradicted expert

Wazzan supposedly also did not bother to quantify Musk’s nonmonetary contributions, which could be in the thousands, millions, or billions based on his vague math, OpenAI argued.

Even Musk’s legal team seemed to contradict Wazzan, OpenAI’s filing noted. In Musk’s filing on remedies, it’s acknowledged that the jury may have to adjust the total damages. Because Wazzan does not break down damages by claims and merely assigns the same damages to each individual claim, OpenAI argued it will be impossible for a jury to adjust any of Wazzan’s black box calculations.

“Wazzan’s methodology is made up; his results unverifiable; his approach admittedly unprecedented; and his proposed outcome—the transfer of billions of dollars from a nonprofit corporation to a donor-turned competitor—implausible on its face,” OpenAI argued.

At a trial starting in April, Musk will strive to convince a court that such extraordinary damages are owed. OpenAI hopes he’ll fail, in part since “it is legally impossible for private individuals to hold economic interests in nonprofits” and “Wazzan conceded at deposition that he had no reason to believe Musk ‘expected a financial return when he donated… to OpenAI nonprofit.’”

“Allowing a jury to hear a disgorgement number—particularly one that is untethered to specific alleged wrongful conduct and results in Musk being paid amounts thousands of times greater than his actual donations—risks misleading the jury as to what relief is recoverable and renders the challenged opinions inadmissible,” OpenAI’s filing said.

Wazzan declined to comment. xAI did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Elon Musk accused of making up math to squeeze $134B from OpenAI, Microsoft Read More »

OpenAI to test ads in ChatGPT as it burns through billions

advertising, AI, AI assistants, AI bubble, Biz & IT, chatbots, chatgpt, chatgtp, Fidji Simo, generative ai, Google, machine learning, openai, sam altman / Kelly Newman / January 16, 2026

Financial pressures and a changing tune

OpenAI’s advertising experiment reflects the enormous financial pressures facing the company. OpenAI does not expect to be profitable until 2030 and has committed to spend about $1.4 trillion on massive data centers and chips for AI.

According to financial documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal in November, OpenAI expects to burn through roughly $9 billion this year while generating $13 billion in revenue. Only about 5 percent of ChatGPT’s 800 million weekly users pay for subscriptions, so it’s not enough to cover all of OpenAI’s operating costs.

Not everyone is convinced ads will solve OpenAI’s financial problems. “I am extremely bearish on this ads product,” tech critic Ed Zitron wrote on Bluesky. “Even if this becomes a good business line, OpenAI’s services cost too much for it to matter!”

OpenAI’s embrace of ads appears to come reluctantly, since it runs counter to a “personal bias” against advertising that Altman has shared in earlier public statements. For example, during a fireside chat at Harvard University in 2024, Altman said he found the combination of ads and AI “uniquely unsettling,” implying that he would not like it if the chatbot itself changed its responses due to advertising pressure. He added: “When I think of like GPT writing me a response, if I had to go figure out exactly how much was who paying here to influence what I’m being shown, I don’t think I would like that.”

An example mock-up of an advertisement in ChatGPT provided by OpenAI. Credit: OpenAI

Along those lines, OpenAI’s approach appears to be a compromise between needing ad revenue and not wanting sponsored content to appear directly within ChatGPT’s written responses. By placing banner ads at the bottom of answers separated from the conversation history, OpenAI appears to be addressing Altman’s concern: The AI assistant’s actual output, the company says, will remain uninfluenced by advertisers.

Indeed, Simo wrote in a blog post that OpenAI’s ads will not influence ChatGPT’s conversational responses and that the company will not share conversations with advertisers and will not show ads on sensitive topics such as mental health and politics to users it determines to be under 18.

“As we introduce ads, it’s crucial we preserve what makes ChatGPT valuable in the first place,” Simo wrote. “That means you need to trust that ChatGPT’s responses are driven by what’s objectively useful, never by advertising.”

OpenAI to test ads in ChatGPT as it burns through billions Read More »

Mandiant releases rainbow table that cracks weak admin password in 12 hours

Biz & IT, hashes, ntlm, password cracking, Security / Kelly Newman / January 16, 2026

Microsoft released NTLMv1 in the 1980s with the release of OS/2. In 1999, cryptanalyst Bruce Schneier and Mudge published research that exposed key weaknesses in the NTLMv1 underpinnings. At the 2012 Defcon 20 conference, researchers released a tool set that allowed attackers to move from untrusted network guest to admin in 60 seconds, by attacking the underlying weakness. With the 1998 release of Windows NT SP4 in 1998, Microsoft introduced NTLMv2, which fixed the weakness.

Organizations that rely on Windows networking aren’t the only laggards. Microsoft only announced plans to deprecate NTLMv1 last August.

Despite the public awareness that NTLMv1 is weak, “Mandiant consultants continue to identify its use in active environments,” the company said. “This legacy protocol leaves organizations vulnerable to trivial credential theft, yet it remains prevalent due to inertia and a lack of demonstrated immediate risk.”

The table first assists attackers in providing the proper answer to a challenge that Windows sends during the authentication process by using a known plaintext attack with the challenge 1122334455667788. Once the challenge has been solved, the attacker obtains the Net-NTLMv1 hash and uses the table to rapidly crack it. Typically tools including Responder, PetitPotam, and DFSCoerce are involved.

In a thread on Mastodon, researchers and admins applauded the move, because they said it would give them added ammunition when trying to convince decision makers to make the investments to move off the insecure function.

“I’ve had more than one instance in my (admittedly short) infosec career where I’ve had to prove the weakness of a system and it usually involves me dropping a sheet of paper on their desk with their password on it the next morning,” one person said. “These rainbow tables aren’t going to mean much for attackers as they’ve likely already got them or have far better methods, but where it will help is in making the argument that NTLMv1 is unsafe.”

The Mandiant post provides basic steps required to move off of NTLMv1. It links to more detailed instructions.

“Organizations should immediately disable the use of Net-NTLMv1,” Mandiant said. Organizations that get hacked because they failed to heed will have only themselves to blame.

Mandiant releases rainbow table that cracks weak admin password in 12 hours Read More »

TSMC says AI demand is “endless” after record Q4 earnings

AI, AI chips, AI infrastructure, Amazon, arizona, Biz & IT, C.C. Wei, datacenters, Google, machine learning, microsoft, NVIDIA, semiconductors, Taiwan, TSMC / Kelly Newman / January 16, 2026

TSMC posted net income of NT$505.7 billion (about $16 billion) for the quarter, up 35 percent year over year and above analyst expectations. Revenue hit $33.7 billion, a 25.5 percent increase from the same period last year. The company expects nearly 30 percent revenue growth in 2026 and plans to spend between $52 billion and $56 billion on capital expenditures this year, up from $40.9 billion in 2025.

Checking with the customers’ customers

Wei’s optimism stands in contrast to months of speculation about whether the AI industry is in a bubble. In November, Google CEO Sundar Pichai warned of “irrationality” in the AI market and said no company would be immune if a potential bubble bursts. OpenAI’s Sam Altman acknowledged in August that investors are “overexcited” and that “someone” will lose a “phenomenal amount of money.”

But TSMC, which manufactures the chips that power the AI boom, is betting the opposite way, with Wei telling analysts he spoke directly to cloud providers to verify that demand is real before committing to the spending increase.

“I want to make sure that my customers’ demand are real. So I talked to those cloud service providers, all of them,” Wei said. “The answer is that I’m quite satisfied with the answer. Actually, they show me the evidence that the AI really helps their business.”

The earnings report landed the same day the US and Taiwan finalized a trade agreement that cuts tariffs on Taiwanese goods to 15 percent, down from 20 percent. The deal commits Taiwanese companies to $250 billion in direct US investment, and TSMC is accelerating the expansion of its Arizona chip fabrication facilities to match.

TSMC says AI demand is “endless” after record Q4 earnings Read More »

Author name: Kelly Newman