Tootfinder

Ricursive, founded by ex-Google researchers to automate advanced chip design, raised $335M from Sequoia, Radical, Lightspeed, and others at a $4B valuation (Cade Metz/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/technology/recursive-ai-ricursive.html

Silicon Valley Wants to Build A.I. That Can Improve A.I. on Its Own
Ricursive Intelligence, founded by two former Google researchers and valued at $4 billion, is among several efforts to automate the creation of artificial intelligence.

Ryan Lizza claims Olivia Nuzzi regularly shared "opposition research" that she obtained from sources with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during his 2024 presidential bid (The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/pol

Ryan Lizza Claims Olivia Nuzzi Would Share “Opposition Research” With Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The claim is the latest in a series of explosive allegations about the Vanity Fair West Coast editor and the Health and Human Services Secretary, who allegedly had an affair last year.

"2025 was third-warmest year on record, research shows"
#Climate #ClimateChange
https:/…

2025 was third-warmest year on record, research shows
2025 was the third-warmest year on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The warmest year on record is still 2024, with 2023 coming in second. The global average surface temperature for 2025 was estimated to be 1.44° Celsius (2.59° Fahrenheit) higher than preindustrial levels. The last 11 years have been the warmest 11 years […]

The Securitization of Minerals in the EU: Why Europe is Not Immune to the Resource Curse - 15/15\15 https://www.15-15-15.org/webzine/2025/12/24/the-securitization-of-minerals-in-the-eu-why-europe-is-not-immune-to-…

The Securitization of Minerals in the EU: Why Europe is Not Immune to the Resource Curse
Joám Evans shows how the EU’s securitization of mineral supply legitimizes environmental rollback.

RE: https://researchbuzz.masto.host/@researchbuzz/115781454555182765
OH HELL YES.

Trump’s recent claims that the US should keep Venezuelan oil from seized tankers
are part of a broader belief in rightwing “resource imperialism”, experts say.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has escalated pressure on Venezuela, invoking drug-trafficking claims.
This month, the US intercepted two tankers carrying Venezuelan oil and began pursuing a third,
while intensifying its campaign against the country’s president, Nicolšs Maduro.
Critics have comp…

OpenAI says nearly 1.3M weekly users are discussing "advanced topics in hard science" in January, with an average of 8.4M ChatGPT messages on those topics (Ashley Gold/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2026/01/26/openai-scientific-research-partner

Exclusive: OpenAI wants to be a scientific research partner
AI is increasingly being used as a research collaborator for mathematicians and scientists.

How an indirect prompt injection can manipulate Google's Antigravity IDE to invoke a malicious browser subagent and exfiltrate data; Google is working on a fix (PromptArmor)
https://www.promptarmor.com/resources/google-antigravity-exfiltrates-data

Google Antigravity Exfiltrates Data
An indirect prompt injection in an implementation blog can manipulate Antigravity to invoke a malicious browser subagent in order to steal credentials and sensitive code from a user’s IDE.

An interview with Citizen Lab founder Ronald Deibert about the US adopting authoritarian digital practices, the research group's accomplishments, and more (Finian Hazen/MIT Technology Review)
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/12/2

Meet the man hunting the spies in your smartphone
Ronald Deibert and his research group, the Citizen Lab, have rigorously worked to unveil alarming digital threats for the past two decades. Now, he warns, this kind of work is under threat.

OpenAI confirms Andrea Vallone, the head of an OpenAI safety research team that works on ChatGPT's mental health responses, is set to leave at the end of 2025 (Maxwell Zeff/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/openai-research-lead-mental-health-quietly-depar…

A Research Leader Behind ChatGPT’s Mental Health Work Is Leaving OpenAI
The model policy team leads core parts of AI safety research, including how ChatGPT responds to users in crisis.