An anonymous reader shares a report: It's too soon to be talking about the Curse of OpenAI, but we're going to anyway. Since September 10, when Oracle announced a $300 billion deal with the chatbot maker, its stock has shed $315 billion in market value.
OK, yes, it's a gross simplification to just look at market cap. But equivalents to Oracle shares are little changed over the same period (Nasdaq Composite, Microsoft, Dow Jones US Software Index), so the $15 billion loss figure [figure updated with stock price] is not entirely wrong. Oracle's "astonishing quarter" really has cost it nearly as much as one General Motors, or two Kraft Heinz.
Klarna has claimed that AI-related savings have allowed the buy now, pay later company to increase staff salaries by nearly 60%, but hinted it could slash more jobs after nearly halving its workforce over the past three years. From a report: Chief executive Sebastian Siemiatkowski said headcount had dropped from 5,527 to 2,907 since 2022, mostly as a result of natural attrition, with departing staff replaced by technology rather than by new staff members.
The figures add to the impact of an internal artificial intelligence programme, which had steadily reduced its use of outsourced workers including those in customer service, with technology now carrying out the work of 853 full-time staff, up from 700 earlier this year. It meant the company, which was founded in Sweden in 2005, had managed to increase revenues by 108% while keeping operating costs flat. Siemiatkowski told analysts on an earnings call on Tuesday that it was "pretty remarkable, and unheard of as a number, among businesses."
Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant in Windows 11 fails to replicate the capabilities shown in the company's TV advertisements. The Verge tested Copilot Vision over a week using the same prompts featured in ads airing during NFL games. When asked to identify a HyperX QuadCast 2S microphone visible in a YouTube video -- a task successfully completed in Microsoft's ad -- Copilot gave multiple incorrect answers. The assistant identified the microphone as a first-generation HyperX QuadCast, then as a Shure SM7b on two other occasions. Copilot couldn't identify the Saturn V rocket from a PowerPoint presentation despite the words "Saturn V" appearing on screen. When asked about a cave image from Microsoft's ad, Copilot gave inconsistent responses.
About a third of the time it provided directions to find the photo in File Explorer. On two occasions it explained how to launch Google Chrome. Four times it offered advice about booking flights to Belize. The cave is Rio Secreto in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Microsoft spokesperson Blake Manfre said "Copilot Actions on Windows, which can take actions on local files, is not yet available." He described it as "an opt-in experimental feature that will be coming soon to Windows Insiders in Copilot Labs, starting with a narrow set of use cases while we optimize model performance and learn." Copilot cannot toggle basic Windows settings like dark mode. When asked to analyze a benchmark table in Google Sheets, it "constantly misread clear-as-day scores both in the spreadsheet and in the on-page review."
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Meta did not illegally stifle competition when it acquired Instagram and WhatsApp. The decision marks Big Tech's first major victory against antitrust enforcement that began during President Donald Trump's first term. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission had sought to force Meta to sell or restructure the platforms to restore competition among social media networks. Meta argued it faced competitive pressure from TikTok, YouTube, and Apple's messaging app.
"Your royal highness," [Mary Bruce asked], "the U.S. intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. 9/11 families are furious that you are here in the Oval Office. Why should Americans trust -- "
At that moment, the president cut in, his voice vibrating with anger. [...]
"You're mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial," Mr. Trump said, referring to the murdered columnist. "A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about. Whether you like him, or didn't like him, things happen."
"You don't have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that," he said to the reporter.
BERLIJN (ANP/RTR) - Een tekort aan chips van het Nijmeegse chipbedrijf Nexperia lijkt voor toenemende problemen in de auto-industrie te zorgen. Het Japanse Nissan vermindert zijn productie volgende week met nog eens 1400 voertuigen, meldde persbureau Reuters op basis van ingewijden. Verder heeft de Duitse toeleverancier Bosch laten weten op drie locaties met verstoringen te kampen.
De problemen ontstonden nadat Nederland Nexperia onder curatele had gesteld. Het kabinet was bang dat het Chinese moederbedrijf activiteiten en kennis zou weghalen uit Europa. China reageerde door exporten vanuit de Nexperia-fabriek in het land te verbieden. De leveringen aan alle klanten zijn nog steeds niet hervat. Deze week praat een delegatie van de Nederlandse overheid in China over een oplossing.
Volgens Reuters volgt de productieverlaging bij Nissan op een vermindering van negenhonderd voertuigen vorige week. Bosch gaf aan dat het problemen ondervindt in zowel Duitsland als Portugal. Honderden medewerkers zijn tijdelijk naar huis gestuurd.
LOS ANGELES (ANP/RTR) - LeBron James heeft al aangekondigd dat hij in 2028 niet zal meedoen aan de Olympische Spelen van Los Angeles. De basketballer zei dat in de podcast 'Mind the Game'. De 40-jarige James speelde op vier Zomerspelen mee met de Amerikaanse ploeg en won drie keer goud en een keer brons. "Je weet mijn antwoord al. Ik ga de wedstrijden kijken", aldus James, die dit seizoen nog niet in actie kwam voor Los Angeles Lakers in de NBA.
Stephen Curry, de 37-jarige sterspeler van Golden State Warriors, was in dezelfde podcast minder uitgesproken dan James, maar ook hij verwacht niet mee te doen aan de Spelen van LA. "Zeg nooit nooit, als ik dan nog belangrijk kan zijn voor het team, maar ik betwijfel het ten zeerste", aldus Curry, die op de Spelen van Parijs een cruciale rol speelde voor het Amerikaanse team dat goud won.
GENÈVE (ANP/RTR) - De Wereldgezondheidsorganisatie (WHO) schrapt tot halverwege volgend jaar meer dan een kwart van haar personeelsbestand. Dit komt neer op een verlies van meer dan 2000 banen, ingegeven door de bezuinigingen bij de WHO vanwege het vertrek van de Verenigde Staten.
De VS trokken zich na het aantreden van president Donald Trump in januari terug uit de VN-gezondheidsorganisatie. Washington was veruit de grootste financier, goed voor ongeveer 18 procent van het budget. Het was al bekend dat er daarom flink gereorganiseerd moest worden. Maar tot nu toe was nog niet bekend hoeveel banen er precies zouden verdwijnen.
De in Genève gevestigde WHO verwacht om precies te zijn dat haar personeelsbestand tegen juni 2026 met 2371 banen is afgenomen, staat in een presentatie die in handen is van persbureau Reuters en woensdag aan aangesloten landen wordt getoond. Dat gebeurt via directe ontslagen en natuurlijk verloop, zoals pensioneringen die niet worden opgevuld.
What lies at the heart of this unusual-looking spiral galaxy? The galaxy NGC 4102, featured in this ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week, is home to what astronomers call an active galactic nucleus. Active galactic nuclei are luminous galactic centres powered by supermassive black holes that contain millions to billion times the mass of our Sun. As these black holes ensnare gas from their surroundings and draw it close with their intense gravitational pull, the gas becomes so hot that it begins to glow and emits light from X-ray to radio wavelengths.
At a distance of just 56 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major (The Great Bear), NGC 4102 provides an ideal opportunity to study the ways in which active galactic nuclei interact with their home galaxies. Active galactic nuclei come in many different flavours, from extremely powerful types that consume massive amounts of matter and shoot out jets of charged particles, to calmer types that sip gas from their surroundings and glow more faintly.
NGC 4102 likely falls into the latter category. It’s classified as Compton-thick — a way of saying that its nucleus is obscured by a thick layer of gas — and a LINER, or low-ionisation nuclear emission-line region. LINER galaxies are identified by emission lines from certain weakly ionised elements, and they can be powered by a supermassive black hole that is lazily collecting gas from around it.
A previous image of this galaxy, made from data taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), was released in 2014. This new version presents an upgraded view of the galaxy, using data from the Wide Field Camera 3, which replaced WFPC2 in 2009 and improved upon its resolution and field of view. The new observations come from a programme that will combine visible-light images from Hubble with X-ray information from the Chandra X-ray Observatory to study the relationship between NGC 4102 and its active galactic nucleus.
[Image Description: A spiral galaxy. The inner region immediately around the bright centre is golden in colour. A gap separates this region from a bright ring, itself surrounded by a glowing halo. Strands of dark brown dust swirl around the centre and the outer ring, joined in one spot by a curved arm. Bright, blue and pink specks of light dot the ring, showing where stars are concentrated or have recently formed.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, G. Fabbiano; CC BY 4.0
Though interesting to look at, NGC 1511 is one galaxy you might not want for a neighbour. Seen in this ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week, NGC 1511 is a peculiar spiral galaxy located roughly 50 million light-years away in the constellation Hydrus.
Like many galaxies, NGC 1511 doesn’t travel through space alone. Instead, it does so with a pair of small galactic companions called NGC 1511A and NGC 1511B, both of which lie outside the frame of this Hubble image. NGC 1511B is situated closest to NGC 1511, and the two galaxies have apparently clashed in the past; a narrow strand of hydrogen gas connects them, and NGC 1511B has been stretched and distorted by the encounter. Researchers have even found evidence that NGC 1511 once had another small companion galaxy that it has disrupted entirely!
These disruptions have an impact on NGC 1511, too. The galaxy is experiencing a burst of star formation, and its disc features strange loops and plumes that could point to past interactions with its neighbouring galaxies. Researchers will use Hubble’s keen observations of NGC 1511 to study star clusters embedded within its dusty gas, seeking to understand how matter is cycled from interstellar clouds to stars and back to clouds once again.
[Image Description: A spiral galaxy, tilted away so that it is seen mostly from the edge. The disc of the galaxy glows blue from its centre, due to younger stars in the spiral arms. There are large and small patches of gas, glowing in red and pink colours, where new stars are forming. Webs of dark dust are spread over the disc. The glow of the disc fades into a dark background, with a couple of stars.]
This very high-resolution image captures the beautiful medieval core of the Czech capital, Prague.
Zoom in or click on the circles to explore this image at its full resolution.
Lying at the heart of Europe, Prague’s historic centre became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992. From its original small riverside settlements, Prague has spread over its surrounding hills and valleys, reaching a metropolitan area of around 496 sq km.
Prague sits astride the Vltava River, the longest in Czechia. Thanks to the very high resolution of this image, a lot of Prague’s world-famous landmarks can be easily identified. Along the river’s winding course, we can see a succession of bridges and islands of different sizes.
Near the centre of the image, on the river’s left bank, we see Kampa Island, which gets its name from the Latin word ‘campu’, meaning ‘field’, due to its former use as farmland before it was raised above flood level. The island is separated from the mainland only by a small stream – the ‘Čertovka’. In this image it is even possible to spot the steps leading from Kampa Island up to Charles Bridge.
This famous arch bridge stretches for 500 m across the Vltava, with baroque statues lining its parapets. It was Prague's only bridge over the Vltava until 1841. Two towers lie on either end and offer good views along the bridge and up and down the river over the many spires for which Prague is famous.
The renowned twin spires that dominate the city skyline are those of the St. Vitus’s Cathedral within the grounds of Prague Castle. The latter is the city’s most popular attraction and official seat of the head of state. Its massive walls can be seen on a hill on Vltava’s left bank approximately where the river turns east. Covering an area bigger than seven football fields, the castle is the world’s largest ancient castle complex and includes several historic buildings, museums and galleries.
On the right bank of the river, Prague’s principal public square, the Old Town Square, can be spotted northeast of Charles Bridge. Zooming in, the statue known as Jan Hus Memorial is visible at the square’s northern end, with the Marian Column facing it.
Moving south, the elongated, rectangular shape of Wenceslas Square can be seen stretching from northwest to southeast, ending with the neoclassical building of the National Museum next to Prague’s main train station.
Prague also hosts many parks, gardens and recreational facilities, including the vast Strahov sports complex visible to the west of Kampa Island.
This image was acquired by the Pléiades Neo mission, an optical constellation that pictures Earth with a resolution of up to 30 cm. It is part of ESA’s Third Party Missions programme, which means ESA uses its multi-mission ground systems and expertise to acquire, process, distribute and archive data from a wide range of satellite missions developed and operated by other agencies.
To illustrate the unique contribution that Earth observing satellites offer, a new ‘Earth from Space’ exhibit opened this week at the Prague Planetarium, which coincided with the 17th anniversary of Czechia joining ESA. The exhibition, organised by ESA, features four interactive installations with state-of-the-art immersive data visualisations aimed to inspire and fuel the curiosity of future generations.
At the Thales Alenia Space cleanroom in Cannes, France, European engineers successfully tested the deployment of one of the antennas of Lunar Link, ESA’s telecommunications element for the lunar Gateway station.
In orbit around the Moon, Lunar Link will provide vital communications between the Gateway and astronauts and infrastructures on the Moon.
Each of the two antennas measures 1.25 m in diameter and is mounted on a 1 m boom that will unfold in space. However, testing this on Earth is not straightforward: the boom and antenna actuators are designed to deploy and operate in zero gravity, while here on Earth the antenna’s mass of almost 20 kg makes it much heavier.
To overcome this challenge and avoid damaging the deployment boom, engineers attached a four-metre-wide helium balloon – proudly displaying ESA’s Lunar Link logo – to the antenna. The balloon lifted the antenna slightly, reducing its apparent weight and simulating the weightlessness conditions in orbit. With this setup, the team was able to verify that the boom deployed smoothly and reliably.
Lunar Link is being built by companies across Europe, with its two dish antennas have been built by the Spanish aerospace company SENER. In the same cleanroom where the balloon test took place, engineers are finalising the integration of Lunar Link's central section, known as the baybox. Positioned between the two antennas, the baybox houses critical components, including the flight computer – the “brain” that controls Lunar Link's operations.
The baybox and antennas will continue to be tested independently, before being integrated together early next year, forming ESA’s complete Lunar Link. Once fully assembled, the element will be sent to Northrop Grumman's facilities in the United States for assembly on top of NASA’s habitation module and then launched towards the Moon.
A star-studded spiral galaxy shines in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week. This galaxy is called NGC 4571, and it’s situated about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. NGC 4571 dominates the scene with its feathery spiral structure and sparkling star clusters.
The galaxy’s dusty spiral arms are dotted with brilliant pink nebulae that contain massive young stars. Though the star-forming clouds that are seen here are heated to roughly 10 000 degrees by searing ultraviolet light from the young stars at their cores, stars get their start in much chillier environments. The sites of star birth are giant molecular clouds tens to hundreds of light-years across, in which the temperature hovers just a few tens of degrees above absolute zero.
The dramatic transformation from freezing gas cloud to fiery young star happens thanks to the immense pull of gravity, which collects gas into dense clumps within a star-forming cloud. As these clumps yield to gravity’s pull and collapse inward, they eventually become hot and dense enough to spark nuclear fusion in their centres and begin to shine. The glowing clouds in this image surround particularly massive stars that are hot enough to ionise the gas of their birthplaces.
A Hubble image of NGC 4571 was previously released in 2022, using data from an observing programme the combines data from leading observatories like Hubble, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array to study star formation in nearby spiral galaxies like NGC 4571. The new image released today adds data from a programme that seeks to understand how dust affects our observations of young stars deeply embedded within their natal clouds.
[Image Description: A spiral galaxy, seen face-on, fills the view. Swirling, patchy and broken spiral arms surround a softly glowing centre. The arms are filled with blue, speckled patches showing star clusters, shining pink and red dots where young stars are lighting up gas clouds, and a web of thin, dark red dust lanes. The glow of the galaxy’s arms extends out into the dark background. Individual tiny stars appear throughout.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team; CC BY 4.0
From thousands of colorful hair beads, Felandus Thames conjures vibrant patterns and portraits. He takes historical photographs as a starting point, focusing especially on Black and Indigenous figures whose stories have largely been underrepresented in American historical narrative. These include dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey and Amos Haskins, a 19th-century Wampanoag man who became a master mariner—one of the few Indigenous people to do so.
Based in West Haven, Connecticut, Thames emphasizes powerful associations with materials. In the case of these portraits, he employs beads frequently used to style braids. Recent projects also include installations incorporating multiple hairbrushes. “Lately, I’ve been thinking about the affordances of material and their ability to necessitate an idea,” Thames tells Colossal. “I’ve been mining materials from my childhood,” he adds, delving into memories that connect him and others within the Black diaspora.
Untitled (2025), (portrait of Alvin Ailey), hair beads on coated wire and aluminum rod, 60 x 41 x 4 inches
These materials reference both historical and contemporary functions, from the use of beads and shells as currency in early societies to the way a beaded curtain was separated different areas within Thames’ childhood home. “In these works, I offer the everyday as cultural currency,” he says.
Thames describes the mass-produced plastic components as “Black pixels,” akin to pieces of fabric patchworked together to form a quilt. A creative practice his maternal ancestors also pursued, quilting provides another “way of speaking to how carry memory with us,” he says. The neatly beaded strands, suspended from aluminum rods, also become almost fabric-like.
In his recent work, Thames has been interested in the Black radical tradition, a philosophy that rejects colonial attitudes, such as slavery, racial segregation, and other forms of oppression. The Black Panthers and the civil rights movement evolved around this philosophy, with more recent examples including the Black Lives Matter movement.
For Thames, Black radical tradition is “a form of resistance and insurgency” by people who took great leaps and made lasting change. “My focus gets beyond the outlier or exceptional individual, but thinking about people who have fostered sustainable change to the apparatus,” he says.
“African King of Dubious Origins” (2022), hair beads on coated wire and aluminum rod, 48 x 78 1/4 x 4 inches
Thames’ portraits exemplify changes or behavior that created something akin to what he calls a “scaffolding for substantive change.” Surrounded by vibrant patterns, their likenesses, often drawn from black-and-white archival photos, become timeless.
“Wail on Whalers (portrait of Amos Haskin)” is currently part of Entwined: Freedom, Sovereignty, and the Sea, which continues through January 19 at the Mystic Seaport Museum. Thames’ work is also currently on view in the group exhibition EXODUS at the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, which continues through April 18, 2026. See more on the artist’s website and Instagram.
“Jubilee” (2025), hair beads on coated wire with aluminum rod, 84.x 48 x 4 inches
“Believed to be Jenny Freeman in her Sunday’s best” (2024-2025), plastic beads, coated wire, and aluminum, 92 1/2 x 60 x 4 inches“King David of Harlem” (2024), beads on coated wire with aluminum rod, 85 3/4 x 48 x 4 inches. Photo by John Bentham
De 35-jarige Thom van Campen (VVD) is de nieuwe Tweede Kamervoorzitter. Dinsdagavond werd hij met 79 stemmen verkozen in de derde stemronde. Hij wil vaker normeren. „We moeten onszelf afvragen: willen we eigenlijk wel alles zeggen, wat we mogen zeggen?”
Curaçao en Suriname voor het eerst naar het WK voetbal: het kan werkelijkheid worden. Vannacht spelen de landen een beslissende wedstrijd. Op meerdere plekken in onze regio komen fans bijeen om de misschien wel historische duels op tv te volgen.
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