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About 35,000 feet (10,670 meters) over the Mojave Desert, northwest of Los Angeles, Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 became the first privately funded airplane to break the sound barrier during a test flight on Tuesday. “She was real happy supersonic,” Boom Chief Test Pilot Tristan “Geppetto” Brandenburg said after landing, in a video posted by Boom Supersonic. “That’s the best she’s ever flown, was supersonic.” After getting to altitude, Brandenburg opened up the test plane’s throttles, accelerating to Mach 1.1, or about 845 mph (1,360 kph) faster than the speed at which sound travels. In 1947, Chuck Yeager became the first human to break the sound barrier when he pushed the Bell X-1 past Mach 1 during a flight over the Mojave Desert. Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 is a stepping stone in its plan to develop a commercially viable supersonic airliner, the Overture, capable of carrying 64-80 passengers across the Atlantic in about 3 1/2 hours. The company has 130 orders and pre-orders from American Airlines, United Airlines and Japan Airlines. Last year, it completed construction on its Overture Superfactory in Greensboro, North Carolina, where it plans to build 66 Overture aircraft per year. Dan Catchpole, Reuters
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E-Commerce
In an effort to monetize the social media platform, Elon Musk’s X announced Tuesday it would be partnering with Visa on a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payment services for its upcoming X Money Account. The product, which is likely to launch in the first quarter of this year, would enable users to move funds between their bank accounts and a digital wallet in real time, similar to Venmo or Zelle, with more deals on the horizon, CNBC reported. CEO Linda Yaccarino said on X it will launch later in 2025 and is just the “first of many big announcements about X Money this year.” Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, has struggled to make X profitable and to prevent users from fleeing to Bluesky and Threads due to its increasing right-wing tone and content. The announcement comes days after the Wall Street Journal reported banks are ready to sell billions of dollars of debt Musk borrowed to buy Xand revealed Musk told employees in an email that “revenue is unimpressive, and were barely breaking even. Visa, which is the largest credit card network in the country, will use Visa Direct, its financial solution for instant money transfers, according to TechCrunch. Musk has previously said he wants to transform X into an everything app” similar to China’s WeChat: a single application that encompasses everything, from digital town square to banking platform, where users could do payments, messages, video, calling, whatever youd like, from one single, convenient place,” The Verge reported.
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E-Commerce
OpenAI on Tuesday announced a new ChatGPT system for U.S. government workers that it calls more secure than its Enterprise offering. ChatGPT Gov will allow for government agencies to feed nonpublic, sensitive data into the platform while operating in their own hosting environments. OpenAI said that self-hosting enables agencies to manage their own security, privacy, and compliance requirements. It’s unclear when ChatGPT Gov will be available for government customers. Still, some government workers are already using ChatGPT today. Since the beginning of 2024, more than 90,000 users across more than 3,500 federal, state, and local government agencies have sent upwards of 18 million messages on ChatGPT to support their work, the company said. “By making our products available to the U.S. government, we aim to ensure AI serves the national interest and the public good, aligned with democratic values, while empowering policymakers to responsibly integrate these capabilities to deliver better services to the American people,” OpenAI wrote in a press release. The announcement of ChatGPT Gov comes a week into President Donald Trump’s new administration. OpenAI leader Sam Altman attended Trump’s inauguration last week in Washington, D.C., alongside several other Big Tech leaders. The two reportedly have spoken about the importance of developing artificial intelligence in the U.S. Altman, who donated to Trump’s inauguration fund, has also expressed admiration for the president. “I’m not going to agree with him on everything, but I think he will be incredible for the country in many ways!” he wrote on X last Wednesday.
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E-Commerce
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