Ray Blanco:

'Cruel, Arrogant, Ignorant': Texas Democrats Make It Clear What's in Store for Elon Musk Before Investigation

Tech billionaire Elon Musk moved his businesses and home to Texas in recent years to avoid Democratic regulators and left-wing politics. He then dumped $158 million ahead of the 2026 midterms into the Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC, in September, and that money ended up with Texas PAC, a group backing Ken Paxton, and sent $10 million to Lone Star Liberty PAC, another pro-Paxton group.

Democratic nominee James Talarico said at the time that Musk was trying to "buy" a win for Paxton, and if that was indeed Musk's goal, he failed miserably. Texas, like most of the country during Tuesday's elections, found itself swept by a blue wave.

Six months after moving to the Lone Star State, Musk is now surrounded not just by Talarico, but also by incoming attorney general Nathan Johnson, who has pledged to investigate Musk, and governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, who has questioned whether Musk pays enough in taxes.

Musk may already be feeling the financial consequences of Election Day. Despite a massive stock market rally, SpaceX shares closed down by 3.8%, while Tesla stock price fell 3.3%. Musk moved to Texas expecting a financial and tax haven, but Tuesday's results are setting it up to be anything but.

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Ari Goldschmidt:

Sam Altman Says It's 'F*cking Annoying' His RAM Comments Were Taken Out of Context

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has hit back at criticism of his comments about computer memory, saying they were taken out of context.

"I actually do want the world to have tons of memory and people to put as much as they want in their computers, and it is f*cking annoying that this was taken out of context," Altman tweeted early Wednesday.

Altman's original comments came in an interview with YouTube channel Cheeky Pint, where he discussed shortages of memory and other components caused by the AI boom. "From like a global allocation perspective, actually, it's quite terrible to have everybody have a bunch of the world's limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer and being used 5% of the time," he said. "You want maximum utilization in a cloud if you're trying to deal with this very supply-constrained environment."

In the same interview, Altman also blamed memory makers for being slow to expand production.

The remarks drew widespread criticism, including from Elon Musk, who mocked Altman on Sunday with a meme of the Inglourious Basterds character Hans Landa asking, "You are withholding DRAM from the cloud, are you not?" "The people deserve to have their RAM too!" Musk wrote.

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Greg Guenthner:

DuckDuckGo Pitches Itself to Schools Amid Backlash Over Google's AI Policy

DuckDuckGo is pitching itself to schools after Google created an opening for the alternative search engine. On Tuesday, Google told schools they could turn off Gemini, but it said shutting off its other AI features would cost schools Google Search, as well.

DuckDuckGo, a company that focuses on user privacy by limiting data collection, clearly sees this as a moment to make inroads in education, where Google has historically dominated. According to figures Google has published in previous years, there are around 50 million Chromebooks in schools, used by students and educators, and its Google Classroom platform serves over 150 million users globally.

On X, DuckDuckGo's founder and CEO, Gabriel Weinberg, pointed to the company's online documentation, explaining how schools can switch their default search engine to DuckDuckGo's service instead, adding, "get in touch for help."

Meanwhile, DuckDuckGo's chief public affairs officer, Kamyl Bazbaz, issued a stronger statement, writing, "Forcing AI on school children: how a monopolist behaves when they think people are powerless. Prove Google wrong."

The company's comments come as the American public is weighing how much AI they want to allow into their lives.

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