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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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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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On a frigid, gray morning this month, a half-dozen community advocates stood on a street corner in the South Bronx, struggling to be heard over the roar of heavy trucks. New York had recently begun charging vehicles to enter the citys central business district, becoming the first in the nation to try to reduce traffic with a congestion pricing program. Yet while the tolls are expected to speed commutes and help improve air quality in the region, they are also projected to worsen traffic and pollution in a handful of neighborhoods, including the South Bronx, one of the citys poorest. We are inundated with traffic, said Mychal Johnson, cofounder of South Bronx Unite, a community advocacy group that was part of the environmental justice advisory group for the congestion pricing program. Mychal Johnson (center), cofounder of South Bronx Unite, speaks about one of the air monitors his group has installed around the New York neighborhood to measure pollution. [Photo: Nicholas Kusnetz/Inside Climate News] One block south of where Johnson stood is a waste transfer facility, the destination of many of the trucks driving behind him. One block north is the six-lane Major Deegan Expressway, while Bruckner Boulevard, a heavily traveled route into Manhattan, lay in between. Nestled around these are a public housing project, several new residential high-rises, and a charter high school built to serve 1,300 students. On Jan. 5, New Yorks Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) began charging vehicles that drive into Manhattan below 60th Street. The program should increase train and bus ridership and generate billions of dollars in revenue for public transportation. But it is also expected to divert some traffic around Manhattan, leading to more vehicles rumbling through parts of the Bronx, Staten Island, and Northern New Jersey. In the neighborhood where Johnson spoke, 95% of residents are Hispanic or Black, according to data compiled by New York Universitys Furman Center. One-third live in poverty. Across the Bronx, one in five people have asthmathe highest rate in the citys five boroughswhile the South Bronx has the highest rates of respiratory hospitalizations related to air pollution, according to city data. South Bronx Unite held the press conference to highlight the disproportionate impacts of congestion pricing on the neighborhood. A nurse from a hospital spoke about treating asthma patients. A parent detailed the psychological, educational, and financial impacts when kids miss school due to chronic asthma attacks, forcing parents to miss work too. A community gardener displayed his portable nebulizer, which he uses to treat symptoms of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Daniel Chervoni grew up in the South Bronx and now runs a community garden in the area. He carries a portable nebulizer to treat symptoms of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary fibrosis. [Photo: Nicholas Kusnetz/Inside Climate News] An associate professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University spoke about a partnership with South Bronx Unite to monitor air quality with a network of sensors. Early data showed stark comparisons with a wealthy neighborhood in Northern Bronx. Johnson lamented that his organization should feel the need to embark on such a monitoring project, and he stressed that the group was not opposed to the plan to charge drivers for entering the city center. We are for reducing congestion, Johnson said as more trucks drove behind him. We just cant be the shoulder-bearers of when they reduce it at other locations. Our community is suffering. Broadly speaking, many environmental advocates and planners praised New Yorks congestion charging as a major victory. City and state leaders had been trying to implement a program for nearly two decades, and finally reached agreement to do so in 2019. Last year, New York Governor Kathy Hochul suspended the plan shortly before it was to begin, only to revive a new version with lower rates after the election. President Donald Trump, a native New Yorker, has opposed congestion pricing and pledged to block it. New York has some of the nations worst traffic. And while air quality has improved over the past decades, levels of some pollutants remain high, especially in Midtown and Lower Manhattan. The MTAs environmental assessment said congestion pricing would increase worker productivity, lower the cost of making deliveries, and help emergency vehicles reach their destinations more quickly, by speeding traffic. The assessment projected that levels of some pollutants like fine particulate matter should drop by more than 10% in the area covered by tolls, and incrementally region-wide. Yet the environmental assessment acknowledged that not all areas would benefit, and that some of these burdens would fall on environmental justice communities, poor neighborhoods that already have bad air quality or pollution-related health problems. To counter these disproportionate impacts, the MTA is allocating $100 million for mitigation in affected neighborhoods to install air purifiers in schools, plant roadside vegetation, and take other measures. In the Bronx, which will receive 72% of the funds, the agency will also create an asthma treatment center and replace diesel refrigeration units with cleaner alternatives at a large food distribution center that is a source of heavy truck traffic. The MTA declined to make anyone available for an interview for this article. Instead, a spokesperson pointed to comments by the authoritys chief executive, Janno Lieber, at a recent press conference and during a local radio show, when he touted the spending in the Bronx. Were making the big investments that more than offset any hypothetical impact from truck traffic in the Bronx thats a result of congestion pricing, Lieber said on WNYCs Brian Lehrer Show. Hochuls office referred questions to the MTA. Johnson said his group was not satisfied with the MTAs response, and called the asthma center funding insulting. If they know that problem is already preexisting, mitigation after the fact is not helpful, Johnson said. In an interview after the press conference, Johnson said he had spoken with the MTA as the agency was developing congestion pricing. We told them we dont want one more truck, Johnson said. I said, Is it fair to ask our children to have to ingest the fumes from another truck when they already are impacted so heavily? He added, They had no response. How do you respond? The group dispersed quickly after the press conference, seeking warmer and quieter spots. The trucks kept roaring by. Nicholas Kusnetz, Inside Climate News This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.
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