ChatGPT doubled its weekly active users in under 6 months, thanks to new releases | TechCrunch

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OpenAI’s flagship AI chatbot, ChatGPT, returned to solid growth in the latter half of 2024, according to a new report published on Thursday by VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). While it took ChatGPT nine months to grow from 100 million weekly active users in November 2023 to 200 million in August 2024, it’s now taken less than six months for the app to double those numbers yet again, the report found.

Shortly after its November 2022 release as a research preview, ChatGPT became the fastest app ever to reach 100 million monthly active users — a milestone it hit in only two months’ time.

By November 2023, ChatGPT had reached another milestone of 100 million weekly active users, which grew to 300 million by December 2024, then 400 million in February 2025.

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Scale AI is being investigated by the US Department of Labor | TechCrunch

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The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is investigating the data-labeling startup Scale AI for compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act, TechCrunch has learned.

That’s a federal law that regulates unpaid wages, misclassification of employees as contractors, and illegal retaliation against workers.

The investigation has been active since at least August 2024, a document seen by TechCrunch shows. And it’s ongoing, according to a person directly familiar with the matter.

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6 Ways to Spot and Capitalize on Emerging Social Media Trends | Entrepreneur

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Social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools available to small businesses and entrepreneurs. Currently, 84% of all consumers check out a brand’s social media page before making a purchase, resulting in about 20% of all sales coming directly through links from social media. For this reason, entrepreneurs often prioritize getting as much visibility on social media as possible. One of the most effective ways to accomplish this is by creating viral content and taking advantage of emerging trends.

The challenge with trends is that they only create a very short window of opportunity, lasting just a few days or weeks. These trends can be difficult to spot when they are just warming up. Most brands that try to capitalize on trends do so when the trend is fizzling out and don’t get the most benefit. Companies that can jump on the leading edge of a trend can significantly improve their ability to be prioritized by the social media platform’s algorithm and gain massive momentum from going viral. This can result in thousands, if not millions, of additional views to your post or social media profile. A single viral post can completely change the trajectory of your business’s long-term success.

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Reddit Rival Digg Is Making a Comeback, Using AI to Moderate | Entrepreneur

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Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, 41, has joined forces with former rival Kevin Rose, 48, to revive Digg, a social and link-sharing website Rose founded in 2004 — it was divided up and sold for parts to Betaworks, LinkedIn, and The Washington Post in 2012. The two intend to infuse the new Digg with AI content moderators, a move not yet implemented by Reddit.

The Digg of 2004 allowed users to share links that others could “digg” and upvote or “bury” and downvote, creating a place for trending news. Users could comment on links too, with the most popular content ending up on the homepage.

In its heyday, Digg attracted 40 million monthly unique users, but after a 2010 update removed the “bury” button, users revolted and left the site in droves, leading to its demise.

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Best of MWC 2025: The age of ultra-thin phones is upon us | Mashable

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If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that it’s impossible to judge how interesting the Mobile World Congress will be based on pre-announcements and teasers.

Yeah, we knew the Nothing phones are coming, and Xiaomi’s new phones weren’t exactly a secret, either. But at the show floor, we’ve also found some extremely thin phones, some wonderfully weird (but useful!) phone accessories, and we even got the first real-life glimpse of Xiaomi’s new supercar.

Here’s a list of the best and the most interesting stuff we’ve seen this year.

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Apple announces the M3 iPad Air with Apple Intelligence | Mashable

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Apple just dropped a new iPad Air with an M3 chip, and yes, it has Apple Intelligence.

The M3 iPad Air is twice as fast as the M1 iPad Air which was released in 2022, according to the announcement. The M3 chip also gives the iPad Air faster graphics performance and the same dynamic caching support that comes in other M3 models, which boosts performance and response time.

The M3 iPad Air comes with iPadOS 18, which supports Apple Intelligence features, including Writing Tools with ChatGPT integration, type to Siri, Image Playground, and Genmoji creation. Apple Intelligence for iPad also has photo and graphics editing tools like the Clean Up tool in Photos and Image Wand in the Notes app that works with the Apple Pencil.

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Dow tumbles 650 points as Trump confirms tariffs on Mexico and Canada will start Tuesday | CNN Business

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US stocks slid Monday as investors braced for President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico to go into effect by the midnight deadline. The Dow tumbled 650 points, or 1.48%, to close at 43,191.

The Dow fell almost 900 points in afternoon trading before pulling back slightly. The broader S&P 500 fell 1.76% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.64%.

The S&P 500 posted its biggest one-day decline of the year. The Nasdaq is down about 6.5% since since Trump took office on January 20.

“Tomorrow, tariffs — 25% on Canada and 25% on Mexico,” Trump said during a press conference at the White House. “And that’ll start. … What they have to do is build their car plants, frankly, and other things in the United States, in which case they have no tariffs.”

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The housing market has shifted in favor of buyers — depending on where you live | CNN Business

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Americans looking to purchase a home in certain US cities might be pleasantly surprised to find the tide is shifting their way this spring after years of challenging affordability.

There were 3.7 months of for-sale supply on the market in January, the most in six years, according to a recent Redfin analysis. That means it would take more than three months to sell all the homes that were listed for sale in January, given monthly average sales volume.

The findings point to a housing market where sellers are slowly losing leverage after years of having the upper hand. Generally, more than four months of supply sitting on the market indicates a full-tilt buyers’ market.

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Why can’t you tickle yourself? | Live Science

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For many of us, the tickling response is paradoxical — the playfulness it inspires is typically enjoyable, but the overstimulated nerves and loss of control can feel distressing. Whether you find it enjoyable, uncomfortable or somewhere in between, you can’t tickle yourself. But why?

The answer has to do with the brain already knowing about and downplaying the expected, predictable sensation of the self-tickle, experts told Live Science.

“It’s because the brain is always predicting into the future,” David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, told Live Science. “Brains are not just reactive; they are trying to guess ahead at what’s going to come next.”

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This year’s flu shot was up to 78% effective at preventing hospitalization in kids, early data finds | Live Science

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This year’s flu shots have dramatically reduced hospitalizations for seasonal influenza, early data suggest.

For kids and teens, the shots were at least 63% effective against flu hospitalizations and up to 78% in some regions. That’s according to data pulled from two networks of health care centers that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) monitors to assess flu shot effectiveness.

“Vaccine effectiveness” reflects how much a shot lowers the chances of a particular health outcome in the real world, and it’s calculated by comparing how often that outcome occurs in vaccinated versus unvaccinated people. So in this case, vaccinated kids had a 63% to 78% lower chance of being hospitalized for flu.

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