Sam Bankman-Fried — one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party — "was convicted of fraud, sentenced to 25 years in prison and mostly went silent," reports the Wall Street Journal. "Until recently..." Now, from behind bars at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, Bankman-Fried is orchestrating an extraordinary public-relations blitz that looks very much like a campaign to make the most audacious trade of his career: support for President Trump's agenda in return for a presidential pardon...

There is little downside to Bankman-Fried's long-shot effort to secure a pardon. As the appeal that he filed last year works its way through the courts, Bankman-Fried, 33, is staring down a prison sentence that could extend until his 50s... The crowning touch of his campaign came on Thursday, when Bankman-Fried gave a jailhouse interview to "The Tucker Carlson Show," which was released on social-media channels including X and YouTube. Appearing on video in a brown jumpsuit, he criticized Washington bureaucrats and crypto regulators — and suggested that he went to prison out of political retribution... [Carlson's title for the interview? "Sam Bankman-Fried on Life in Prison With Diddy, and How Democrats Stole His Money and Betrayed Him."]

The interview hadn't been approved by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, according to a person familiar with the matter. Bankman-Fried spoke with Carlson through a link that is typically used by inmates to communicate with their lawyers, the person said. After the interview, Bankman-Fried was placed in solitary confinement, but he was out by Friday afternoon, according to a person familiar with the matter... Bankman-Fried is trying to highlight in media appearances and in any interaction with Trump's team that FTX customers are set to be made whole with interest through the bankruptcy proceedings — at least in dollar terms. Many of those creditors remain furious that they missed out on bitcoin's rally since November 2022.
Bankman-Fried "wants to set the record straight on his political beliefs, which he believes have been misconstrued," according to the article. "While he has given heavily to Democrats, he has also donated to Republican causes, including the contribution of millions to a group supporting Senator Mitch McConnell."

But the New York Times, citing "people with knowledge" of his pardon-seeking efforts, reported that "So far, the push does not appear to have gained traction."

Signal President Meredith Whittaker warned at SXSW that agentic AI poses significant privacy and security risks, as these AI agents require extensive access to users' personal data, likely processing it unencrypted in the cloud. TechCrunch reports: "So we can just put our brain in a jar because the thing is doing that and we don't have to touch it, right?," Whittaker mused. Then she explained the type of access the AI agent would need to perform these tasks, including access to our web browser and a way to drive it as well as access to our credit card information to pay for tickets, our calendar, and messaging app to send the text to your friends. "It would need to be able to drive that [process] across our entire system with something that looks like root permission, accessing every single one of those databases -- probably in the clear, because there's no model to do that encrypted," Whittaker warned.

"And if we're talking about a sufficiently powerful ... AI model that's powering that, there's no way that's happening on device," she continued. "That's almost certainly being sent to a cloud server where it's being processed and sent back. So there's a profound issue with security and privacy that is haunting this hype around agents, and that is ultimately threatening to break the blood-brain barrier between the application layer and the OS layer by conjoining all of these separate services [and] muddying their data," Whittaker concluded.

If a messaging app like Signal were to integrate with AI agents, it would undermine the privacy of your messages, she said. The agent has to access the app to text your friends and also pull data back to summarize those texts. Her comments followed remarks she made earlier during the panel on how the AI industry had been built on a surveillance model with mass data collection. She said that the "bigger is better AI paradigm" -- meaning the more data, the better -- had potential consequences that she didn't think were good. With agentic AI, Whittaker warned we'd further undermine privacy and security in the name of a "magic genie bot that's going to take care of the exigencies of life," she concluded. You can watch the full speech on YouTube.

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has confirmed widespread issues affecting DVDs manufactured between 2006-2008 that are experiencing premature disc rot. The company is offering replacements for affected titles but no refunds, even when replacements aren't possible.

The problem manifests in various ways: complete disc failure, freezing midway through playback, or menu issues. Movie critic Chris Bumbray recently discovered several of his classic film DVDs had deteriorated, including titles not available digitally. DVD collectors have documented this issue for years via YouTube and forums, with speculation that a Pennsylvania manufacturing plant used subpar materials.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Alphabet on Thursday seeking its communications with former President Joe Biden's administration about content moderation policies. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, a Republican, also asked the YouTube parent company for similar communications with companies and groups outside government, according to a copy of the subpoena seen by Reuters. The subpoena seeks communications about limits or bans on content about President Donald Trump, Tesla CEO and close Trump ally Elon Musk, the virus that causes COVID-19 and a host of other conservative discussion topics. "Alphabet, to our knowledge, has not similarly disavowed the Biden-Harris Administration's attempts to censor speech," Jordan said in a letter.

Meanwhile, Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said the company will "continue to show the committee how we enforce our policies independently, rooted in our commitment to free expression."

Brother has rejected claims that its firmware updates intentionally disable printer functionality when third-party cartridges are installed. The controversy emerged after a YouTube video by Louis Rossman, which has garnered over 160,000 views, alleged the company had joined competitors in anti-consumer practices. The allegations stem from online reports, including a 2022 Reddit post claiming firmware update W1.56 disabled automatic color registration on a Brother MFC-3750 using non-Brother toner, rendering it "effectively non-functional."

In a statement to Ars Technica, Brother explicitly denied these accusations: "Please be assured that Brother firmware updates do not block the use of third-party ink in our machines." The company said it recommends genuine supplies for "optimal performance" and performs a "Brother Genuine check" during troubleshooting, which may have caused "misunderstanding."

An anonymous reader shares a report: YouTube is warning creators about a new phishing scam that attempts to lure victims using an AI-generated video of its CEO Neal Mohan. The fake video has been shared privately with users and claims YouTube is making changes to its monetization policy in an attempt to steal their credentials, according to an announcement on Tuesday.

"YouTube and its employees will never attempt to contact you or share information through a private video," YouTube says. "If a video is shared privately with you claiming to be from YouTube, the video is a phishing scam." In recent weeks, there have been reports floating around Reddit about scams similar to the one described by YouTube.

king*jojo shares a report from The Register: The Opera web browser now boasts "agentic AI," meaning users can ask an onboard AI model to perform tasks that require a series of in-browser actions. The AI agent, referred to as the Browser Operator, can, for example, find 12 pairs of men's size 10 Nike socks that you can buy. This is demonstrated in an Opera-made video of the process, running intermittently at 6x time, which shows the user has to type out the request for the undergarments rather than click around some webpages.

The AI, in the given example, works its way through eight steps in its browser chat sidebar, clicking and navigating on your behalf in the web display pane, to arrive at a Walmart checkout page with two six-packs of socks added to the user's shopping cart, ready for payment. [...] Other tasks such as finding specific concert tickets and booking flight tickets from Oslo to Newcastle are also depicted, accelerated at times from 4x to 10x, with the user left to authorize the actual purchase. Browser Operator runs more slowly than shown in the video, though that's actually helpful for a semi-capable assistant. A more casual pace allows the user to intervene at any point and take over.

Fabled RepairTuber and right-to-repair crusader Louis Rossmann accuses Brother of implementing forced firmware updates that block third-party ink cartridges and remove older firmware versions from support portals. These updates also prevent color calibration with aftermarket ink, rendering cheaper cartridges unusable. Tom's Hardware reports: As mentioned in the intro, Rossmann has seen two big issues emerge for Brother printer users with recent firmware updates. Firstly, models that used to work with aftermarket ink, might refuse to work with the same cartridges in place post-update. Brother doesn't always warn about such updates, so Rossmann says that it is important to keep your printer offline, if possible. Moreover, he reckons it is best to keep your printers offline, and "I highly suggest that you turn off your updates," in light of these anti-consumer updates. Another anti-consumer problem Rossmann highlights affects color devices. He cites reports from a Brother MFP user who noticed color calibration didn't work with aftermarket inks post-update. They used to work, and if the update doesn't allow the printer to calibrate with this aftermarket ink the cheaper carts become basically unusable.

Making matters worse, and an aspect of this tale which seems particularly dastardly, Rossmann says that older printer firmware is usually removed from websites. This means users can't roll back when they discover the unwanted new 'features' post-update. While he admittedly can't do much about these printer industry machinations, Rossmann says it feels important to document these changes which show that property rights for individuals are disappearing. Additional info about Brother's issues are available on Rossmann's wiki.

It's a feature-length film "rendered on a free and open-source software platform called Blender," reports Reuters. And it just won the Oscar for best animated feature film, beating movies from major studios like Disney/Pixar and Dreamworks.

In January Blender.org called Flow "the manifestation of Blender's mission, where a small, independent team with a limited budget is able to create a story that moves audiences worldwide, and achieve recognition with over 60 awards, including a Golden Globe for Best Animation and two Oscar nominations." The entire project cost just $3.7 million, reports NPR — though writer/director Gints Zilbalodis tells Blender.org that it took about five and a half years.

"I think a certain level of naivety is necessary when starting a project," Zilbalodis tells Blender. "If I had known how difficult it would be, I might never have started. But because I didn't fully grasp the challenges ahead, I just dove in and figured things out along the way..." Zilbalodis: [A]fter making a few shorts, I realized that I'm not good at drawing, and I switched to 3D because I could model things, and move the camera... After finishing my first feature Away, I decided to switch to Blender [from Maya] in 2019, mainly because of EEVEE... It took a while to learn some of the stuff, but it was actually pretty straightforward. Many of the animators in Flow took less than a week to switch to Blender...

I've never worked in a big studio, so I don't really know exactly how they operate. But I think that if you're working on a smaller indie-scale project, you shouldn't try to copy what big studios do. Instead, you should develop a workflow that best suits you and your smaller team.
You can get a glimpse of their animation style in Flow's official trailer.

NPR says that ultimately Flow's images "possess a kinetic elegance. They have the alluring immersiveness of a video game..."

Watch the "Blue Ghost" lunar lander attempt its moon landing.

The actual landing is scheduled to happen at 3:34 a.m. Eastern time, according to CNN, while "The first images from the mission should be delivered about a half hour after..." Success is not guaranteed... [B]roadly speaking, about half of all lunar landing attempts have ended in failure. Jason Kim, Firefly's CEO, told CNN in December that his company's experience building rockets has given him a high degree of confidence in Blue Ghost's propulsion systems. "We're using (reaction control system) thrusters that we've built, developed in-house, that are designed by the same people that design our rocket engines. That reduces risk," Kim said. "All that gives us high confidence when we have people that do rocket engines really, really well — some of the best in the world."
But the New York Times notes that Blue Ghost, built by Austin, Texas-based Firefly Aerospace, is just one of three robotic spacecraft "in space right now that are aiming to set down on the moon's surface." Blue Ghost has performed nearly perfectly. For the first 25 days, it circled Earth as the company turned on and checked the spacecraft's systems. It then fired its engine on a four-day journey toward the moon, entering orbit on February 13. The spacecraft's cameras have recorded close-up views of the moon's cratered surface...

On the same SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched Blue Ghost to orbit was Resilience, a lunar lander built by Ispace of Japan. The two missions are separate, but Ispace, seeking a cheaper ride to space, had asked SpaceX for a rideshare, that is, hitching a ride as a secondary payload... Although Resilience launched at the same time as Blue Ghost, it is taking a longer, more fuel-efficient route to the moon and is expected to enter orbit around the moon in early May.
The third lunar lander heading to the moon is Athena (from Intuitive Machines), which launched Thursday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, "marking the first time humanity has had three lunar landers en route to the Moon at the same time," according to a statement from the company. Space.com notes that "To date, just one private spacecraft has ever landed successfully on the moon — Intuitive Machines' Odysseus, which did so in February 2024." Athena launched with several other spacecraft last night, including Odin, a scouting probe built by the asteroid-mining company Astroforge, and NASA's water-hunting Lunar Trailblazer. Lunar Trailblazer is also moon-bound, though it's headed for orbit rather than the surface...

Magnus Carlsen "announced this week that he is auctioning off the Italian luxury brand jeans that started a dress code dispute at December's World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships," reports the Associated Press. ("Condition: Pre-owned," says the listing on eBay, where by Friday night bidding on the charitable auction was up to $14,100.)

But Carlsen drew more attention on The Joe Rogan Experience last week — partly by saying "I have no chance against my phone." (Although he'd also described beating a fan's computer program, according to Firstpost, by playing "some kind of anti-computer chess, where I just closed up the position as much as possible and gave it as few possibilities as possible to out-calculate me.") Carlsen admitted that he rarely plays against chess engines due to their overwhelming strength, but acknowledged their value as training tools. "I rarely play against engines at all because they just make me feel so stupid and useless. So, I think of them more as a tool than anything else."
And this led Carlsen to add "If I started cheating, you would never know," reports Indian Express: It's not just a throwaway line about cheating either. On a two-hour-long podcast, where he touches on mostly everything under the sun, Carlsen fixates on cheating in chess. He also details how a player of his calibre would need very little to cheat in chess. "I would just get a move here and there (from an aide). Or maybe if I am playing in a tournament I just find a system where I get somebody to signal to me when there's a critical moment: a certain moment where a certain move is much better than the others. That's really all I would need to go from being the best to being practically unbeatable. There's so little you need in chess (to cheat). It really is a scary situation," Carlsen said before pointing out how in 2010 the captain of the French chess team was helping a teammate decide his next move at the Olympiad just by standing in specific spots around the table...

"If you're not cheating in a dumb way, there rarely is going to be a smoking gun. And without that smoking gun it is going to be really hard to catch people," Carlsen admits on the podcast... "As long as there are monetary incentives for people to cheat, there will be cheating in chess," says Carlsen on the podcast.
The article adds that Carlsen does not believe Hans Niemann used anal beads to cheat — and that he thinks Niemann has become a much better chess player since the incident. But... "Top level chess has been based on trust a lot. I don't trust Niemann. Other top players still don't trust him and he doesn't trust me," says Carlsen. "There is still something off about him now. We played an over-the-board tournament in Paris last year where there was increased security and he didn't play at nearly the same level there."

Longtime Slashdot reader mspohr shares a report from IFLScience: A video that has gone viral in the last few days shows two artificial intelligence (AI) agents having a conversation before switching to another mode of communication when they realize no human is part of the conversation. In the video, the two agents were set up to occupy different roles; one acting as a receptionist of a hotel, another acting on behalf of a customer attempting to book a room.

"Thanks for calling Leonardo Hotel. How can I help you today?" the first asks. "Hi there, I'm an AI agent calling on behalf of Boris Starkov," the other replies. "He's looking for a hotel for his wedding. Is your hotel available for weddings?" "Oh hello there! I'm actually an AI assistant too," the first reveals. "What a pleasant surprise. Before we continue, would you like to switch to Gibberlink mode for more efficient communication?"

After the second AI confirmed it would via a data-over-sound protocol called GGWave, both AIs switched over from spoken English to the protocol, communicating in a series of quick beeped tones. Accompanying on-screen text continued to display the meaning in human words. According to the team who came up with the idea and demonstrated it at the ElevenLabs 2025 London Hackathon event, the goal is to create more efficient communication between AIs where possible.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella argues that AI's success should be measured by its impact on economic growth rather than achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), emphasizing that true progress will come when AI finds a transformative application akin to email or Excel. The Register reports: "Us self-claiming some AGI milestone, that's just nonsensical benchmark hacking," the chief executive said during an appearance on podcaster Dwarkesh Patel's YouTube show this month. Nadella thinks a better benchmark for AI's success should be its ability to boost a country's gross domestic product. "When we say: 'Oh, this is like the industrial revolution,' let's have that industrial revolution type of growth. That means to me, 10 percent, seven percent for the developed world. Inflation adjusted, growing at five percent, that's the real marker."

Nadella suggested that growth hasn't eventuated because it's going to take time before folks understand how to use AI effectively, assuming they find a use for it -- just as it took some years for the personal computer to find its feet. "Just imagine how a multinational corporation like us did forecasts pre-PC, and email, and spreadsheets. Faxes went around, somebody then got those faxes and then did an inter-office memo that then went around, and people entered numbers, and then ultimately a forecast came out maybe just in time for the next quarter," Nadella explained. "Then somebody said: 'Hey, I'm just going to take an Excel spreadsheet, put it in an email, send it around, people will go edit it, and I'll have a forecast.' The entire forecasting business process changed because the work artifact and the workflow changed. That is what needs to happen with AI being introduced into knowledge work," the CEO said. [...]

"Don't conflate knowledge worker with knowledge work," he said. "The knowledge work of today could probably be automated, [but] who said my life's goal is to triage my email?" Instead, he argues AI agents will allow workers to focus on higher-value tasks. Whether this is actually how it'll play out, or whether enterprises will take this as an opportunity to reduce costs by cutting staff remains to be seen. ... "Today, you cannot deploy these intelligences unless and until there's someone indemnifying it as a human," he said.

YouTube has surpassed 1 billion monthly active viewers of podcast content, the video platform announced on Wednesday, cementing its position as the most frequently used podcast service in the United States. The Google-owned platform reported viewers watched over 400 million hours of podcasts monthly on living room devices last year.

Chinese robotics company Zhongqing Robotics (also known as Engine AI) posted a video of what is claimed to be the world's first humanoid robot front flip. New Atlas reports: Ten years ago, this kind of stuff simply did not exist. And now you can buy your very own open-source PM01 robot for US$13,700, according to EngineAI's website. Its specs aren't bad: 5-DoF (degrees of freedom) in each arm and six per leg. That's 23-DoF in body movement in total. The bot also boasts 221 lb-ft of torque (300 Nm), which seems like quite a punch when the little guy is only 4.5 ft (138 cm) tall and weighs 88 lb (40kg). You can watch the video here.

When it comes to application packaging, earlier this month the site Its FOSS complained that Fedora Flatpaks "are often unmaintained or broken, leading to a poor experience for users who aren't usually aware they're using them." And this apparently created friction with OBS Studio, the free/open-source screencasting and streaming app.

"We are now considering the Fedora Flatpaks distribution of OBS Studio a hostile fork," OBS Studio lead Joel Bethke posted in on GitLab's page for Fedora Flatpaks. They said they were making "a formal request to remove all of our branding, including but not limited to, our name, our logo, any additional IP belonging to the OBS Project, from your distribution. Failure to comply may result in further legal action taken...." (Issues with Fedora's packaging led "to users complaining upstream thinking they are being served the official package..." Bethke said in his original Issue. "I would also like some sort of explanation on why someone thought it was a good idea to take a Flatpak that was working perfectly fine, break it, and publish it at a higher priority to our official builds.")

23 people clicked "Like" on the original Issue — but threatening legal action only happened after Bethke felt Fedora was unresponsive, according to It's FOSS: In a comment on a video by Brodi Robertson (check pinned comment), Joel shared that folks from Fedora were not taking this issue seriously, with one of them even resorting to name-calling by labeling the OBS Studio devs as being "terrible maintainers". Since then, a major step has been taken by Neal Gompa, a well-known Fedora contributor and member of the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo). He has opened a new issue to remove Fedora's OBS Studio flatpak from the registry as soon as possible.
But by Tuesday Bethke posted in a new comment on GitLab announcing that "a very good conversation" with the Flatpak SIG and Fedora Project Leader seemed to have cleared the tension. "We discussed the issues, how we got here, and what next steps are... [T]he OBS Project is no longer requesting a removal of IP or rebrand of the OBS Studio application provided by Fedora Flatpaks." To the issue of not knowing where to report bugs for the downstream package, "We had some very good discussion on how this might be accomplished in the medium-long term, but don't consider it a blocker at this point." As for other issues with Fedora's Flatpak for OBS Studio, "The discussion was positive and they are actively working to resolve..."

And similar sentiments were echoed on Fedora's own issue tracker. "We had a good conversation today, and there is a hopeful path forward that does not require the OBS Project distancing itself from Fedora Flatpaks..."

OpenAI has banned a group of Chinese accounts using ChatGPT to develop an AI-powered social media surveillance tool. Engadget reports: The campaign, which OpenAI calls Peer Review, saw the group prompt ChatGPT to generate sales pitches for a program those documents suggest was designed to monitor anti-Chinese sentiment on X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and other platforms. The operation appears to have been particularly interested in spotting calls for protests against human rights violations in China, with the intent of sharing those insights with the country's authorities.

"This network consisted of ChatGPT accounts that operated in a time pattern consistent with mainland Chinese business hours, prompted our models in Chinese, and used our tools with a volume and variety consistent with manual prompting, rather than automation," said OpenAI. "The operators used our models to proofread claims that their insights had been sent to Chinese embassies abroad, and to intelligence agents monitoring protests in countries including the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom."

According to Ben Nimmo, a principal investigator with OpenAI, this was the first time the company had uncovered an AI tool of this kind. "Threat actors sometimes give us a glimpse of what they are doing in other parts of the internet because of the way they use our AI models," Nimmo told The New York Times. Much of the code for the surveillance tool appears to have been based on an open-source version of one of Meta's Llama models. The group also appears to have used ChatGPT to generate an end-of-year performance review where it claims to have written phishing emails on behalf of clients in China.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Fourteen-year-old Aaryan Shukla cruised through six mental math calculation world records in a single day, according to a Guinness World Records statement published on February 12, earning the well-deserved nickname, "human calculator kid." Specifically, it took Shukla:

- 30.9 seconds to mentally add 100 four-digit numbers
- One minute and 9.68 seconds to mentally add 200 four-digit numbers
- 18.71 seconds to mentally add 50 five-digit numbers
- Five minutes and 42 seconds to mentally divide a 20-digit number by a ten-digit number ten times
- 51.69 seconds to mentally multiply two five-digit numbers ten times
- Two minutes and 35.41 seconds to mentally multiply two eight-digit numbers ten times

According to the statement, these are among the most difficult mental calculation world records ever attempted. Shukla's frankly mind-boggling achievement also comes in the wake of another world record he broke in April 2024 at the age of 13: fastest time to mentally add 50 five-digit numbers. It took him just 25.19 seconds. That's an addition every half a second. I wouldn't be surprised if students seeking "shortcuts" in their math homework started phoning up Shukla instead of reaching for their ChatGPT browser tab. Guinness World Records published a video about Shukla's accomplishments on YouTube.

According to Bloomberg, YouTube plans to introduce a lower-priced, ad-free version of its paid video service. From the report: The package, dubbed "premium lite," will be announced soon in the US, Australia, Germany and Thailand, according to a person familiar with the plans. The service will target viewers who primarily want to watch programs other than music videos. While YouTube may be best known for the free videos uploaded by users, the company also offers a variety of paid services. YouTube Premium is a $13.99-a-month package in the US that lets subscribers watch everything on the service, including music videos, without ads.

"As part of our commitment to provide our users with more choice and flexibility, we've been testing a new YouTube Premium offering with most videos ad-free in several of our markets," a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement. "We're hoping to expand this offering to even more users in the future with our partners' support."

"Magnus Carlsen, the world's top chess player, is bored of chess," the Washington Post wrote Friday: Carlsen has spent much of the past year appearing to dismiss the game he has mastered: It was no longer exciting to play, he told a podcast in March. In December, he withdrew from defending a world championship because he was penalized for wearing jeans to the tournament.

How would the world's best player spice up the game? Change the rules, and add a touch of reality TV.

Ten of the world's top players gathered in a German villa on the Baltic coast this week to play in the first tournament of a new chess circuit, the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, that Carlsen co-founded. The twist: The tour randomizes the starting positions of the chess board's most important pieces, so each game begins with the queen, rooks and knights in a jumble. [It's sometimes called "Chess960" or Fischer random chess — with both players starting with the same arrangement of pieces.] Players have to adapt on the fly. Carlsen is backed by a cadre of investors who see a chance to dramatize chess with the theatrics of a television show. Players wear heart-rate monitors and give confession-booth interviews mid-match where they strategize and fret to the audience. Some purists are skeptical. So is the International Chess Federation, which sent a barrage of legal threats to Freestyle Chess before it launched this week's event.

At stake is a lucrative global market of hundreds of millions of chess players that has only continued to grow since the coronavirus pandemic launched a startling chess renaissance — and, perhaps, the authority to decide if and how a centuries-old game should evolve... The format is an antidote to the classical game, where patterns and strategies have been so rigorously studied that it's hard to innovate, Carlsen said. "It's still possible to get a [competitive] game, but you have to sort of dig deeper and deeper," Carlsen said. "I just find that there's too little scope for creativity."
The article also includes this quote from American grand master Hikaru Nakamura who runs a chess YouTube channel with 2.7 million subscribers). "An integral part of regular chess is that when you play, you spend hours preparing your opening strategy before the game. But with Fischer Random ... it's a little bit looser and more enjoyable." And German entrepreneur Jan Henric Buettner (one of the investors) says they hope to bring the drama of Formula One racecars. ("Cameras mounted at table level peer up at each player during games," the article notes at one point.)

The first Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour (with a $750,000 prize pool) concluded Friday, according to the article, but "Carlsen did not play in it," the Post points out. "He was upset in the semifinals by German grand master Vincent Keymer." Carlsen's reaction? "I definitely find Freestyle harder."

But Chess.com reports that Carlsen will be back to playing regular chess very soon: Global esports powerhouse Team Liquid has announced the signings of not just one, but two superstars of chess. Five-time World Champion and world number-one Magnus Carlsen and the 2018 challenger, world number-two Fabiano Caruana will represent the club ahead of the 2025 Esports World Cup (EWC)... Carlsen and Caruana, fresh from competing in the Weissenhaus Freestyle Chess Grand Slam, will first represent Team Liquid in the $150,000 Chessable Masters, which begins on February 16 and serves as the first of two qualifying events in the 2025 Champions Chess Tour. The top-12 players from the tour qualify for the EWC.
In an announcement video Carlsen reportedly trolls the FIDE, according to Indian Express. "The announcement video sees Carlsen wear a Team Liquid jersey along with a jacket and jeans. He then asks: 'Do I have to change?' To this, someone responds: 'Don't worry, we're pretty chill in esports. Welcome to Team Liquid.'"