US President Donald Trump has signed a legal settlement that will see Facebook and Instagram owner Meta pay out roughly $25m (£20m).
Trump sued the social media giant and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, in 2021 over the suspension of his accounts after the 6 January Capitol riots that year.
In July 2024, Meta lifted the final restrictions on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the lead up to US presidential elections.
The settlement was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Economic growth in the US slowed at the end of last year, as trade and investment declined and the country was hit by hurricanes and labor strikes.
The economy expanded at an annual rate of 2.3% between October and December, down from 3.1% in the three months before, according to the US Commerce Department.
The pace, fuelled by solid growth in consumer spending, was nevertheless weaker than economists had forecast.
The figures come amid heightened uncertainty about the path for the world’s largest economy, as US President Donald Trump calls for a policy shake-up.
Apple released the latest updates for its iPhone, iPad, and Mac operating systems on Monday, which included switching on Apple Intelligence by default for newer devices.
As part of this batch of software updates, Apple also released several patches fixing security bugs, including a zero-day bug that “may have been actively exploited” — meaning hackers were using it to compromise devices — against users with iPhones running software older than iOS 17.2, which was released in December 2023.
The bug was found in Core Media, the media engine that powers a range of Apple devices, and is now fixed across its product line, including iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple TVs, Apple Watches, and its mixed-reality headset, Vision Pro. Apple said hackers could have “elevated privileges” by exploiting a memory corruption bug, which would have allowed broader access to a device’s data.
Chinese AI company DeepSeek made global headlines for helping spark a massive sell-off in U.S. tech stocks on Monday, with Nvidia dropping almost 20%.
In China, the hype around DeepSeek has sent shares of some public companies with supposed ties to it soaring. The problem: There’s no evidence these companies ever invested in or cooperated with DeepSeek to begin with.
Rumored DeepSeek investors Huajin Capital and Zhejiang Orient popped by 10% on Monday, while a research company called Sublime China Information jumped 20% for supposedly cooperating with DeepSeek on its AI models.
When Bill Gates stepped down from Microsoft’s board in 2020, it seemed to be the end of the entrepreneur’s almost four decades at the tech giant he co-founded in 1975. Though on his Gates Notes blog, he states he is still a “technical advisor,” it wasn’t clear how much time he was actually spending at the company.
Gates spent 25 years as CEO and transitioned into a part-time role at Microsoft in June 2008. And despite officially stepping down in 2020, it looks like Gates never actually retired.
In a new interview with the Wall Street Journal, Gates said that he is still doing “product reviews” at Microsoft, and it takes up “maybe 15%” of the 69-year-old’s time.
Rideshare driving was the most-searched side hustle last year, garnering nearly 31,000 monthly Google searches, per a Creative Fabrica study. More than seven million people drive or deliver with Uber alone every month.
However, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in an interview on Friday that driving for Uber is only a safe gig for the next decade. After that, autonomous vehicles, or cars that drive themselves, will take over the same routes humans drive today.
“You fast forward 15, 20 years, I think that the autonomous driver is going to be a better driver than the human driver,” Khosrowshahi told the Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern at WSJ Journal House Davos. “They will have trained on lifetimes of driving that no person can, they’re not going to be distracted.”
In today’s blog post, we’re going to explore the ultimate business resource: trust. If I were to ask you what the most valuable asset in your business is, what would you say? Over the years, I’ve posed this question to numerous business professionals, and while the answers vary, the common thread that emerges is trust.
Consider this: if you responded with “my product or service,” what ultimately drives people to choose and consume it? No matter how impressive or innovative your offering may be, if customers don’t trust that it will deliver on its promises, its value diminishes significantly. Likewise, if your answer revolves around yourself, your skills, or your knowledge, trust plays a crucial role. Without trust in you as an individual, regardless of your capabilities, people will hesitate to engage with you.
In the words of Henry Ford, “I know half my advertising doesn’t work; I just don’t know which half.”
As small business owners, we face an overwhelming array of marketing options, with paid advertising being a common go-to method. However, the truth is that paid advertising can be a hit-or-miss approach, lacking guaranteed success. Fortunately, there is an alternative that can bring long-term value to your business: building high-quality referral relationships.
The Benefits of Referred Business
While I may be biased, there are several advantages that referred business holds over paid advertising. The foremost benefit is the level of trust that referred customers have in your business even before they meet you.
Astronauts will wriggle into their spacesuits next week to swab outside the International Space Station and see if the lab orbiting 250 miles above Earth is releasing microorganisms into space.
The experiment will focus on collecting samples of bacteria and fungi near vents. NASA wants to know whether germs can survive the harsh environment and, if so, how far they travel. The specimens will be frozen and taken back to Earth for analysis.
Despite the U.S. space agency’s stringent spacecraft cleaning process, hardy microscopic lifeforms can’t be totally removed from instruments bound for space. Furthermore, people carry veritable ecosystems of life on their skin and in their bodies when they go to space. Humans can’t help but spread this stuff — a point John Grunsfeld, NASA’s former chief scientist, emphasized in 2015.
Samsung Galaxy S25 has arrived, and now you have a decision to make.
Samsung showed off its latest flagship phones at its Galaxy Unpacked event on Wednesday, which means people with older Samsung phones might be wondering whether or not it’s worth upgrading. Specifically, if you have last year’s Galaxy S24 model, there are some difference between the S25 and S24 that are worth noting.
No more wasting time. Here are the differences between Galaxy S25 and S24.
Samsung Galaxy S25 vs. 24: Price
This one’s easy. Last year, the Galaxy S24 started at $799. This year, the Galaxy S25 starts at…$799. It’s a wash, in other words. That said, it’s possible that Samsung drops the price of the S24 after the launch of the S25, but until that happens, these two phones cost the same amount of money.
Dispatches From The Front 