Elon Musk's strategy of suing or threatening to sue companies that don't buy advertising on X has reportedly paid off in at least a few cases. A Wall Street Journal report yesterday said that Verizon and other companies started advertising on X after lawsuit threats.

X sued some advertisers last year over what it claims is an illegal boycott and reportedly threatened to add other companies to the lawsuit if they didn't buy ads. The WSJ article said that Verizon, which hadn't advertised on X since 2022, was told late last year that it would be added to the lawsuit if it didn't buy ads. Verizon subsequently pledged to spend at least $10 million on the platform this year, the article said.

"Fashion company Ralph Lauren also agreed to resume buying ads on X after receiving a lawsuit threat, people familiar with the matter said," according to the report. "All told, at least six companies that had either received lawsuit threats or were motivated in part by pressure tactics have struck ad deals with X, according to people familiar with the negotiations. The agreements include both firm ad-spending commitments and nonbinding targets."

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On Tuesday, OpenAI announced that o3-pro, a new version of its most capable simulated reasoning model, is now available to ChatGPT Pro and Team users, replacing o1-pro in the model picker. The company also reduced API pricing for o3-pro by 87 percent compared to o1-pro while cutting o3 prices by 80 percent. While "reasoning" is useful for some analytical tasks, new studies have posed fundamental questions about what the word actually means when applied to these AI systems.

We'll take a deeper look at "reasoning" in a minute, but first, let's examine what's new. While OpenAI originally launched o3 (non-pro) in April, the o3-pro model focuses on mathematics, science, and coding while adding new capabilities like web search, file analysis, image analysis, and Python execution. Since these tool integrations slow response times (longer than the already slow o1-pro), OpenAI recommends using the model for complex problems where accuracy matters more than speed. However, they do not necessarily confabulate less than "non-reasoning" AI models (they still introduce factual errors), which is a significant caveat when seeking accurate results.

Beyond the reported performance improvements, OpenAI announced a substantial price reduction for developers. O3-pro costs $20 per million input tokens and $80 per million output tokens in the API, making it 87 percent cheaper than o1-pro. The company also reduced the price of the standard o3 model by 80 percent.

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Amid all the Gemini hype at Google I/O last month, the company also turned one of its experiments into a (kind of) real product. Project Starline was reborn as Google Beam, a 3D video conferencing system that makes it look like you're in the same room with the other party. Google said HP would reveal the first Beam setup, and now it has. The HP Dimension is coming this year, and the price tag is a predictably hefty $24,999.

Google Beam calls for a lot of advanced hardware, so the high price isn't a surprise. The HP Dimension uses six high-speed cameras positioned around the display to capture the speaker from multiple angles. This visual data is then fed into Google's proprietary volumetric video model, which merges the streams together into a 3D reconstruction of the speaker.

Eventually, there will be Beam systems of various sizes, but the HP model comes with a big 65-inch display. All Beam systems will use light field screen technology, which can show the volumetric model in 3D, eliminating the need to wear a headset or glasses for the 3D effect. Google says Beam can show minute details at 60 fps with millimeter-scale precision.

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Foundation , Apple TV+'s lavish adaptation (or re-mix, if you prefer) of Isaac Asimov's seminal sci-fi series, returns for its third season next month, and the streaming platform has dropped an official trailer to give us a taste of what's in store.

As previously reported , the first season ended with a major time jump of 138 years, and S2 focused on the Second Crisis: imminent war between Empire and the Foundation, along with an enemy seeking to destroy Empire from within. The Foundation, meanwhile, adopted the propaganda tactics of religion to recruit new acolytes to the cause. We also met a colony of "Mentalics" with psionic abilities. We're getting another mega time jump for the Third Crisis.

Per the official premise:

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The governing body for world motorsport met in Macau yesterday. Among the jobs for the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile was to sign off on various calendars for next season, which is why there's now a clash between the F1 Monaco Grand Prix and the 24 Hours of Le Mans and also between the Indy 500 and F1's annual visit to Canada. The Formula E calendar was also announced, although with a pair of blank TBCs in the middle, I'll hold off calling it finalized.

The US round will now take place in late January, and it's moving venues yet again. No longer will you need to drive an hour south of Miami; instead, the northern outskirts of the city will suffice. The infield at Homestead is no more , and the sport has negotiated a race at the Hard Rock Stadium, albeit on a different layout than the one used by F1. It seems that Formula E's recent "Evo Sessions" race between influencers , which was held at the stadium, proved convincing.

The really interesting Formula E news from Macau won't take effect until the 2026–2027 season, and that's the arrival of the Gen4 car.

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Donald Trump has said the US and China’s deal to restore their trade war truce is “done” after two days of marathon negotiations in London.

In a post on his Truth Social network on Wednesday the US President hailed a breakthrough reached in bilateral talks in London late the night before.

The deal revived a trade truce agreed in Geneva last month that subsequently faltered because of differences over Chinese rare earth exports and US export controls.

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Audi provided flights from Washington, DC, to Denver and accommodation so Ars could drive the Q5 and SQ5, as well as two other models you can read about next week. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

ASPEN, Colo.—There's a lot riding on Audi's next Q5. The model has been Audi's bread and butter here since the model went on sale in the US in 2009, as tastes changed and sedans fell out of favor. The third-generation Q5 is built on an all-new platform and is one of a new generation of software-defined vehicles that's meant to ditch a lot of legacy crud for a clean sheet approach. You would have known all of that from our look at the new Q5 in a studio last year , when Audi briefed us on its new platform. What you wouldn't have known from that piece is how it drives, particularly on US roads. The answer is: surprisingly well.

PPC

Just a few years ago, the world's big car brands were telling us that soon everyone would be driving electric cars, and that it would be wonderful. Things haven't quite panned out the way people thought they might when prognosticating in 2018, though. Electric powertrains have yet to reach price parity, in many places infrastructure still lags, and so automakers are developing new combustion-powered vehicles , particularly for markets like the US, where adoption remains far behind Europe or China.

For Audi and the other premium brands within the Volkswagen Group empire, that's a new platform called PPC, or Premium Platform Combustion. PPC will provide the bones for new vehicles in a range of sizes and shapes, the same way the MLB (and MLB Evo) platforms have done until now. In a week, you can read about the A5, for example, but as the sales figures show, SUVs are what people want, so the Q5 comes first.

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Robots like Atlas , Spot , and Stretch have amazed people with natural, life-like agility and body balance. What they were lacking, though, was a way to quickly connect this natural movement to perception—the robotic equivalent of the reflexes that let you catch a ball or duck in an instant to avoid getting hit.

So, a team of scientists at ETH Zurich got busy fixing this problem. “I wanted to fuse perception and body movement,” said Yuntao Ma, a roboticist who led a team developing an AI-powered, badminton-playing robot.

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If signed into law as written, the White House's proposal to slash nearly 25 percent from NASA's budget would have some dire consequences.

It would cut the agency's budget from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion. Adjusted for inflation, this would be the smallest NASA budget since 1961, when the first American launched into space.

The proposed funding plan would halve NASA's funding for robotic science missions and technology development next year, scale back research on the International Space Station, turn off spacecraft already exploring the Solar System, and cancel NASA's Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft after two more missions in favor of procuring lower-cost commercial transportation to the Moon and Mars.

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