An anonymous reader shares a report: Oracle could cut up to 30,000 jobs and sell health tech unit Cerner to ease its AI datacenter financing challenges, investment banker TD Cowen has claimed, amid changing sentiment on Big Red's massive build-out plans. A research note from TD Cowen states that finding equity and debt investors are increasingly questioning how Oracle will finance its datacenter building program to support its $300 billion, five-year contract with OpenAI. The bank estimates the OpenAI deal alone is going to require $156 billion in capital spending. Last year, when Big Red raised its capex forecasts for 2026 by $15 billion to $50 billion, it spooked some investors. This year, "both equity and debt investors have raised questions about Oracle's ability to finance this build-out as demonstrated by widening of Oracle credit default swap (CDS) spreads and pressure on Oracle stock/bonds," the research note adds.

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JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon interrupted a conversation between Coinbase chief Brian Armstrong and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair at Davos last week to tell Armstrong "You are full of s---," his index finger pointed squarely at Armstrong's face. Dimon told Armstrong to stop lying on TV, according to WSJ. Armstrong had appeared on business programs earlier that week accusing banks of trying to sabotage the Clarity Act, legislation that would create a new regulatory framework for digital assets. He also accused banks of lending out customers' deposits "without their permission essentially." The fight centers on stablecoin "rewards" -- regular payouts, say 3.5%, that exchanges like Coinbase offer for holding digital tokens. Banks typically offer under 0.1% on checking accounts and worry consumers will shift their money in droves to crypto. Other bank CEOs were similarly cold at Davos. Bank of America's Brian Moynihan gave Armstrong a 30-minute meeting and told him "If you want to be a bank, just be a bank." Citigroup's Jane Fraser offered less than a minute. Wells Fargo's Charlie Scharf said there was nothing for them to talk about. Armstrong had pulled support from a draft of the Clarity Act on January 14, posting on X that Coinbase would "rather have no bill than a bad bill."

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Apple "runs on Anthropic at this point" and that the AI company is powering much of what Apple does internally for product development and internal tools, according to Mark Gurman, the most influential reporter on the Apple beat. Apple had initially pursued an AI deal with Anthropic before the Google partnership came together, but negotiations fell apart over pricing -- Anthropic reportedly wanted several billion dollars per year and a doubling of fees over time. Apple's deal with Google is costing roughly one billion dollars annually.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: One-third of U.S. video game industry workers say they were laid off over the past two years, according to a new survey conducted by the organizers behind the newly revamped Game Developers Conference (GDC). Based on responses from more than 2,300 gaming industry professionals, with surveys "customized for each participant group, ensuring that developers, marketers, executives, investors and others answered questions most relevant to them," the 2026 State of the Game Industry Report found that 33% of respondents in the U.S. were laid off in the past two years. AI use has grown to 36% of respondents, but sentiment has turned sharply negative: 52% now believe generative AI is harming the industry, compared to 30% last year and 18% in 2024. On the labor front, 82% of US respondents support unionization for game workers, and 62% said they're not in a union but interested in joining one. No respondents between 18 and 24 years old opposed unionization.

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DuckDuckGo recently asked its users how they felt about AI in search. The answer has come back loud and clear: more than 90% of the 175,354 people who voted said they don't want it. The privacy-focused search engine has since set up two versions of its tool: noai.duckduckgo.com for the AI-averse and yesai.duckduckgo.com for the curious. Users can also tweak settings on the main site to disable AI summaries, AI-generated images, and the Duck.ai chatbot individually.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: A hacking of the Nobel organization's computer systems is the most likely cause of last year's leak of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado's name, according to the results of an investigation [non-paywalled source]. An individual or a state actor may have illegally gained access in a cyber breach, the Norwegian Nobel Institute said on Friday after concluding an internal investigation assisted by security authorities. The leak had triggered an unusual betting surge on Machado at the Polymarket platform hours before she was unveiled as the award recipient in October. The Venezuelan opposition leader hadn't previously been considered a favorite for the 2025 prize. "We still think that the digital domain is the main suspect," said Kristian Berg Harpviken, director of the Oslo-based institute, an administrative arm of the Nobel Committee that awards the prize. The institute has decided against filing for a police investigation given "the absence of a clear theory," he said in an interview in Oslo.

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A new study [PDF] examining the United States between 1850 and 1920 found that expanded market access -- driven largely by railroad expansion -- made Americans more trusting of strangers and more outward-looking, but weakened family-based care for the vulnerable. Researchers Max Posch of the University of Exeter and Itzchak Tzachi Raz of Hebrew University compared places and people gaining different levels of commercial connectivity. In better-connected regions, Americans became more likely to marry outside their local communities, and parents more likely to pick nationally common names for children. Trust toward others rose, as measured through language in local newspapers. The researchers used multiple tests to rule out the possibility that these shifts simply reflected places getting richer. The cultural changes were concentrated among migrants in trade-exposed industries; workers in construction and entertainment showed no effect. But market access also meant orphans, the disabled, and the elderly became less likely to be cared for by relatives at home.

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Apple's call-screening feature, introduced in iOS 26 last year, was designed to combat the more than 2 billion robocalls placed to Americans every month, but as WSJ is reporting, it is now creating friction for the rich and powerful who find themselves subjected to automated interrogation when dialing from unrecognized numbers. The feature uses an automated voice to ask unknown callers for their names and reasons for calling, transcribes the responses, and lets recipients decide whether to answer -- essentially giving everyone a pocket-sized executive assistant. Venture capitalist Bradley Tusk said his first reaction when encountering call screening is irritation, though he understands the necessity given the spam problem. Ben Schaechter, who runs cloud-cost management company Vantage, said the feature "dramatically changed my life" after his personal number ended up in founding paperwork and attracted endless sales calls.

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The UK government paid consulting firm PwC $5.65 million to build its new AI Skills Hub, a site meant to help 10 million workers gain AI skills by 2030 that functions largely as a bookmarking service, directing users to external training courses that already existed before the contract was awarded. The hub links to platforms like Salesforce's free Trailhead learning system rather than offering original educational content. PwC has acknowledged the site does not fully meet accessibility standards. The platform also contains factual errors in its course on AI and intellectual property, which references "fair use" -- a legal doctrine specific to the U.S. -- rather than the UK's "fair dealing" framework.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon is in talks to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be a giant bet on the hot AI startup. The ChatGPT maker is seeking up to $100 billion in new capital from investors, a round that could value it at as much as $830 billion, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. Andy Jassy, Amazon's chief executive, is leading the negotiations with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, according to some of the people. The exact shape of a deal, should one be reached, could still change, the people said. Investing tens of billions of dollars in OpenAI could make Amazon the biggest contributor in the AI company's ongoing fundraising round. SoftBank is in talks to invest up to $30 billion more in OpenAI as part of the round, adding to the Japanese conglomerate's already large stake in the startup.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft's PowerToys team is contemplating building a top menu bar for Windows 11, much like Linux, macOS, or older versions of Windows. The menu bar, or Command Palette Dock as Microsoft calls it, would be a new optional UI that provides quick access to tools, monitoring of system resources, and much more. Microsoft has provided concept images of what it's looking to build, and is soliciting feedback on whether Windows users would use a PowerToy like this. "The dock is designed to be highly configurable," explains Niels Laute, a senior product manager at Microsoft. "It can be positioned on the top, left, right, or bottom edge of the screen, and extensions can be pinned to three distinct regions of the dock: start, center, and end."

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