Good morning. I’ve been thinking a lot about how a fleet of Waymo robotaxis might change my Los Angeles commute, thanks to the company’s recent announcements that it was ready to take on freeways and a greater swath of the metro area.
A ride to run errands? Sure. A lift home after a concert or ballgame? No brainer. A replacement for my daily drive? Not quite yet. A chauffeur for my kids? I’m not sure I (or the law) am ready.
A freeway full of Waymos won’t help reduce LA’s notorious traffic congestion, nor its signature smog (two words: brake dust). But you know what? There’s something quite compelling about more predictable drivers on the road. Because right now, they’re about as predictable as Mr. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs.
Today’s tech news below. —Andrew Nusca
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DOGE is dead
The Department of Government Efficiency is reportedly dead.
DOGE—the Elon Musk-led government initiative promising to slash federal spending—“has disbanded with eight months left to its mandate,” according to a new Reuters report.
DOGE “doesn’t exist,” according to Scott Kupor, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, because it’s no longer a “centralized entity.”
OPM has taken over many of DOGE’s functions, Kupor told the wire service.
DOGE claimed to have eliminated tens of billions of dollars in spending, but no one knows for sure—several cuts were subsequently rescinded, and the organization never had its records verified by a third party.
Many of its members have scattered to the wind. Musk has returned his focus to Tesla and his myriad other endeavors; acting administrator Amy Gleason has become an adviser to Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.
Elsewhere, two employees joined Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia at the so-called National Design Studio, one is now CTO at the Dept. Of Health and Human Services, one is chief of the Office of Naval Research, and another oversees foreign assistance at the State Department.
That’s not to say Mr. Musk won’t return to Washington. After some time away, the serial entrepreneur has resumed his political appearances and is expected to appear at a forthcoming DOGE reunion.
No word on how much it will cost, though. —AN
Yes, Apple plans to fix what ails iOS
If you’re like me, you’ve been rather disappointed by the unusually large quantity of missteps in Apple’s latest mobile operating system.
Well, good news: Many of them are slated for a fix.
Apple’s upcoming iOS 27, expected in September 2026, will reportedly come with a “Snow Leopard-style update” focused on “improving the software’s quality and underlying performance” rather than whizbang features.
(Apple’s Mac OS X Snow Leopard, released in 2009, memorably promised “no new features.”)
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that the bugs and other issues—battery drain, interface glitches, app crashes, and connectivity failures—should be addressed over the next year.
“Engineering teams are now combing through Apple’s operating systems,” the report reads, “hunting for bloat to cut, bugs to eliminate, and any opportunity to meaningfully boost performance and overall quality.”
There will be AI updates, however. The new iOS should contain “more dramatic changes” including a more refined Siri voice assistant and the integration of AI features in more apps.
We’ll see if all of that adds up to Apple’s famous promise of, “It just works.” —AN
Meta nixed research showing social media harm
The parent company of Facebook and Instagram reportedly halted internal research into the mental health effects of its oldest social media service after it found evidence of harm.
New filings from a lawsuit between U.S. School districts and social media platforms say a 2020 effort dubbed “Project Mercury,” conducted in conjunction with media survey giant Nielsen, aimed to understand what happened to users who deactivated their Facebook accounts.
Its finding: “People who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison,” according to the documents.
Meta didn’t publicly share that result, opting instead to call off further research, per Reuters, and internally declare “that the negative study findings were tainted by the ‘existing media narrative’ around the company.”
As one staffer put it in the filings, it was the social media equivalent of the tobacco industry determining that cigarettes were bad for customers’ health.
(Meta called the study’s methodology “flawed” in a recent statement.)
In the lawsuit in which these documents were filed, by the way, the school districts allege that Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snapchat knew of, and intentionally hid, the risks of their products.
A hearing is scheduled for January 26. —AN
More tech
—OpenAI’s impossible choice. Tweak ChatGPT to be more appealing at the risk of doing harm to those prone to delusion, or…?
—Trend watch: “LLM grooming.” Russia’s latest operation involves flooding the Internet with disinformation to mislead chatbots.
—Insurers shun AI liabilities. Worried about multibillion-dollar claims, they seek to exclude AI risks from corporate policies.
—Global memory chip shortage. Chipmakers are at full capacity and 2026 production slots are almost completely booked.
—The AI bubble “might be scarier” than the dotcom one, writes longtime tech watcher Fred Vogelstein.
—Byju ordered to pay $1 billion. The Indian edtech company will appeal the U.S. Bankruptcy court ruling.
—MAGA influencers unmasked as foreign actors. X’s new “About This Account” feature reveals that some “America First” folk are not U.S.-based.