Industry
After Minneapolis, Tech CEOs Are Struggling to Stay Silent
Silicon Valley's power brokers spent the past year currying favor with President Trump. Two deadly shootings in Minneapolis are now exposing the price of that bargain. It was November 12, 2016, four days after Donald Trump won his first presidential election. Aside from a few outliers (looking at you, Peter Thiel), almost everyone in the tech world was shocked and appalled. At a conference I attended that Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it was " a pretty crazy idea " to think that his company had anything to do with the outcome.
Why Waymo's London Launch Matters
A Waymo vehicle pictured on January 15, 2026 in Austin, Texas. A Waymo vehicle pictured on January 15, 2026 in Austin, Texas. Welcome back to, TIME's new twice-weekly newsletter about AI. If you're reading this in your browser, why not subscribe to have the next one delivered straight to your inbox? On Wednesday night, I went to a press event in London hosted by the Google-owned robotaxi firm Waymo, which announced it was aiming to make driverless taxis available to Londoners by the fourth quarter of 2026. Even though Waymos have been driving autonomously in a handful of U.S. cities for years now, it's worth paying attention to what's going on in London.
Elon Musk is making a big bet on his future vision – will it work?
Elon Musk is making a big bet on his future vision - will it work? Reports suggest that Elon Musk is eyeing up a merger involving SpaceX, Tesla and xAI, but what does he hope to achieve by consolidating his business empire? Elon Musk is a busy man, heading up multiple billion-dollar companies. While he is increasingly a divisive figure, there is no doubt that Tesla and SpaceX, his two most important ventures, have done much to advance the future of electric cars and spacecraft, respectively. But a series of corporate moves this week suggests Musk has a new vision of the future - and he may be combining all his companies to get there.
The extreme sport of skijoring, where horses pull skiers at 40 mph
Participants take part in a skijoring race in Zab, Poland, on January 25, 2026. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. The high-adrenaline winter sport of skijoring, derived from the Norwegian word for "ski driving," takes so many forms that it even defies uniform pronunciation. "If you go to France, it's skijoering, pronounced SKEE-zhor-ing. In German, it's skijöring, pronounced SHEE-yuh-ring," says Loren Zhimanskova, founder of Skijor International and Skijor USA.
'Infinite Jest' Is Back. Maybe Litbros Should Be, Too
The notoriously challenging book is being re-released for its 30th anniversary. Its fandom is annoying, sure--but at least they read. The host had been grilling Wallace, ostensibly invited on to discuss his own literary and journalistic output, on range of topics: tennis, teaching, why women don't like Westerns, depression, and, yes, Anthony Minghella's Academy Award-winning epic war drama, which had by the time the interview aired already become a punch line . Watching the interview, it's clear Wallace, who died by suicide in 2008, bristles at being pressed to purvey rank punditry on the popular culture at large like some kind of dancing monkey. But the exercise revealed how Rose, and large swaths of American intellectual culture circa the late-1990s, thought of Wallace.
Robot Talk Episode 142 – Collaborative robot arms, with Mark Gray
Mark Gray has worked in automation for the last 30 years, first involved in machine vision and robotics and finally collaborative robots or cobots. As country manager, Mark was the first person to work for Universal Robots in the UK and has carried out projects with many research institutes such as the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), The Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), the National Robotarium, and Bristol Robotics Lab. Robot Talk is a weekly podcast that explores the exciting world of robotics, artificial intelligence and autonomous machines. Robot Talk is a weekly podcast that explores the exciting world of robotics, artificial intelligence and autonomous machines. In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Razanne Abu-Aisheh from the University of Bristol about how people feel about interacting with robot swarms.
The Download: US immigration agencies' AI videos, and inside the Vitalism movement
Plus: French company Capgemini has confirmed it's no longer working with ICE The US Department of Homeland Security is using AI video generators from Google and Adobe to make and edit content shared with the public, a new document reveals. The document, released on Wednesday, provides an inventory of which commercial AI tools DHS uses for tasks ranging from generating drafts of documents to managing cybersecurity. It comes as immigration agencies have flooded social media with content to support President Trump's mass deportation agenda--some of which appears to be made with AI--and as workers in tech have put pressure on their employers to denounce the agencies' activities. For the last couple of years, I've been following the progress of a group of individuals who believe death is humanity's "core problem." Put simply, they say death is wrong--for everyone. They've even said it's morally wrong.
The best new science fiction books of February 2026
We pick the sci-fi novels we're most looking forward to reading this month, from a new Brandon Sanderson to the latest from Makana Yamamoto Do you want to travel to Mars, to an alternate version of 1939 London or even to the very far future? If so, then February's science fiction is for you, with all three flavours on offer from our authors. I'm intrigued by a couple of time-travel novels: in we're time-travelling to save the world from global warming, and in, a time-traveller offers romantic salvation for a lonely immortal woman. I'm also keen to read a new entry in one of my favourite genres, fungal horror, thanks to . And I'm ready for a good debate about whether some of the books featured here are science fiction at all - check out new offerings from Brandon Sanderson and Francis Spufford and see what you think.
DeepSeek reportedly gets China's approval to buy NVIDIA's H200 AI chips
ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent received permission, as well, according to Reuters. The Chinese government has given DeepSeek its approval to purchase NVIDIA's H200 AI chips, according to . ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have also reportedly received permission from Beijing to buy a total of 400,000 H200 GPUs. says Chinese authorities are still finalizing the conditions they're imposing on the companies to be able to proceed with their orders, so it may take a while before they're able to receive their shipments. In addition, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang told reporters that his company has yet to receive orders from the aforementioned firms and that he believed China is still finalizing their licenses. In December 2025, the US government allowed NVIDIA to sell its second-best H200 processors to vetted Chinese companies in addition to its H20 model in exchange for a 25 percent tariff on those sales.