The OpenAI chaos took another twist on Monday morning as most of the company's staff threatened to quit unless the board resigns and reinstates former CEO Sam Altman and ex-president Greg Brockman. According to Wired and Kara Swisher, around 500 employees — including several executives — signed the letter. 

Swisher noted that OpenAI has 700 employees. Several of them, including Chief Technical Officer Mira Murati (who held the company's top job on an interim basis for less than a weekend), wrote on X early Monday that "OpenAI is nothing without its people."

The letter to the board is the latest development in a series of events that started on Friday afternoon, when OpenAI's board fired Altman. The board claimed Altman had not been "consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities." As such, the board felt it no longer had "confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI." Brockman told OpenAI staff in an email on Friday that he was resigning as chairman "based on today's news." 

Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap later said in a leaked internal memo that Altman was sacked due to “a breakdown in communication,” not “malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices,”

Altman and Brockman held crunch talks with OpenAI's board over the weekend in an attempt to be reinstated in their former roles. But those discussions did not work out in the former CEO's and chairman's favor. It emerged late Sunday night that the board had instead opted to hire former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as OpenAI's interim chief executive.

This story is developing; please refresh for updates.

Tea is so much more than just a drink. It’s a ritual, a habit that allows you to explore an endless variety of flavors, aromas and preparations. And, without getting into the argument of true teas (aka leaves from Camellia Sinensis) versus herbal teas, there’s a wonderful world of concoctions to try – from earthy oolongs, to grassy matchas, to smoky yerba mates and more. So while coffee may be the go-to beverage of choice in the West, this holiday season, we wanted to put together a list of some of the best gifts to buy for people who appreciate the finer cup of brew.

Hiware Borosilicate glass pitcher

Hario Cold Brew Bottle

Fellow Stagg EKG Electric Kettle

Subminimal Nanofoamer

Breville IQ Electric Kettle

OXO Brew Tea Infuser Basket

Rishi Tea Sampler

Fellow Atmos Vacuum Canister

Breakaway Matcha Flight Kit

Firebelly Tea Travel Mug

Tea House tea-scented candles

Black Friday is almost here, and deals are springing up everywhere from tablets to streamers. Max, the streamer formerly known as HBO Max, is offering 70 percent off its Max with Ads plan, dropping the price from $9.99 per month (or $100 if you pay for an entire year) to $2.99 per month. The reduced cost lasts for six months, at which point you can cancel or pay full price — all depends on how badly you want to watch reruns of Succession.

The Max with Ads plan comes with concurrent streaming on two devices, full HD 1080p and, of course, ads. Max currently offers three plans: With Ads, Ad Free and Ultimate. Ad Free is $16 each month or $150 for a year and includes the same benefits as the cheapest plan, just no ads and up to 30 downloads. Ultimate is $20 per month or $200 for a year and allows for simultaneous streaming on four devices, certain titles available in 4K UHD with Dolby Atmos and up to 100 downloads. All new plans include the Bleacher Report Sports Add-On through the end of February 2024.

You have a few days to decide if you want to lock in the discounted subscription or put your money towards other deals, as the sale is available from now through Monday, November 27. Both new and returning customers can access it when signing up for a Max With Ads plan.

Your Black Friday Shopping Guide: See all of Yahoo’s Black Friday coverage, here. Follow Engadget for Black Friday tech deals. Learn about Black Friday trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Black Friday deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Black Friday sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.

OpenAI may grab all the headlines, but Amazon has been quietly toiling on AI across all its divisions and even using AI-powered robots in its warehouses. Now, in a bid to attract new talent, the company is launching a free program called "AI Ready," with the aim of providing generative AI training to two million people globally by 2025. 

Consisting of eight free courses, the classes will be available through Amazon's learning website and offered to non-Amazon employees as well. They'll teach people AI skills including the generative AI technology that powers ChatGPT and other language models. 

They're designed for beginners and advanced users in both tech and tech-adjacent roles. Three courses are aimed at business and nontechnical users, while five are designed for developer and technical audiences. Along with the classes, Amazon announced that it's providing Udacity scholarships valued at more than $12 million to more than 50,000 high school and university students from underrepresented communities around the world. 

 "The goal of AI Ready is to help level the playing field of AI education, supported by the new initiatives we're launching here today," said AWS VP of data and AI, Swami Sivasubramanian. "If we are going to unlock the full potential of AI to tackle the world’s most challenging problems, we need to make AI education accessible to anyone with a desire to learn."

AI technology has been in use for some time now in field ranging from medical research to retail customer assistance — but it really exploded with the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT virtual assistant. The field is still in its teething stages and systems are notoriously complex, however, so there's a serious shortage of qualified programmers, technicians and others. Amazon notes that 73 percent of employers say that hiring AI-skilled talent is a priority, but three of four are unable to find qualified people. 

Amazon said its aim is to "democratize" generative AI education, noting that the program will benefit not just its own employees but its enterprise customers who seek workers with prompt engineering and other skills. It could also help AWS (Amazon Web Service) customers as several courses are based on its own platforms including Bedrock AI and CodeWhisperer, a tool that automatically generates code. 

There has always been little more to swiping right or left on a person's Tinder profile than if you like how they look. Now, the dating app is finally introducing a range of features that provide a more rounded idea of people, such as profile prompts and basic info tags.

Anyone who has used apps like fellow Match Group-owned Hinge or Bumble will likely find many of these updates familiar. Profile prompts, for example, are a long-standing feature on both, with Tinder users now able to share their responses to statements like "The first item on my bucket list is" or the ever-popular "Two truths and a lie." Basic info tags let people share facts such as their zodiac sign, drinking habits and love language. More unique is the addition of a quiz, which should highlight a user's interests and preferences (they can add these results to their profile). Plus, there's now an option to report specific details of a person's profile that are alarming versus reporting the entire account.

Tinder is openly looking to engage Gen Z, and that couldn't be clearer than the pointedly named "Rizz-first Redesign." There are UI updates, enhanced animations, and even a new "It's a Match!" screen. At the same time, Tinder has also introduced a dark mode feature for more discrete swiping while out in public or dimmer lighting at night. 

The dating app points to Gen Z's responses in its recent Future of Dating Report as motivation for the updates. "At Tinder, we understand that connecting today is about authenticity, depth, and the desire for connections that go beyond the surface. This suite of features is the response to this evolving need," Mark Van Ryswyk, Chief Product Officer at Tinder, said in a statement. "We know the new generation of daters prioritizes value-based qualities such as respect (78 percent) and open-mindedness (61 percent) over looks (56 percent). They care about authentic connections formed through shared interests and common causes and have no time for the 'game-playing' of previous generations." Was connecting not about authenticity in the past? That's for someone else to debate.

OpenAI’s board of directors announced Friday it had fired CEO Sam Altman. But he’s doing okay. By Monday morning, he had joined Microsoft “to lead a new advanced AI research team,” according to the company.

Altman cofounded OpenAI with Elon Musk in 2015 as a nonprofit and served as the CEO for the for-profit arm since 2019. He was originally fired from OpenAI over “a breakdown in communication between Sam and the board,” according to an internal staff memo. Several key members also resigned, including co-founder Greg Brockman (who will now also join Microsoft) along with a few senior researchers. “Dozens” of OpenAI employees reportedly announced internally they’d be quitting too, with some expressing interest in joining a potential new Altman startup.

According to Bloomberg, the board had reportedly considered reversing Altman’s firing, though the ousted exec wanted the existing board to resign and issue a public apology — and I fully endorse all this drama, if true.

The company did not apologize, however.

— Mat Smith

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The biggest stories you might have missed

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What is RCS and how is it different from SMS and iMessage?

Apple will finally support it next year.

Following the news that iPhones will support Rich Communication Services next year, what exactly is RCS? Well, positioned as a next-generation replacement for SMS and MMS, it adds modern features you may already use on WhatsApp, including read receipts and the ability to send high-resolution images and more. We wrestle with what this means, and how iMessage fits into it all.

Continue reading.

Nothing pulls its iMessage-compatible Chats app

The Sunbird-based app, which was still in beta, has been removed from the Play Store.

Nothing

It’s a weird week for messaging and texts. Nothing has pulled the beta of its new messaging app, Nothing Chats. The company touted the Sunbird-based app as the answer to the longstanding Android versus Apple texting woes, supporting RCS and iMessage. However, critics voiced concerns over the security risks workarounds like this bring. Nothing Chats does not have end-to-end encryption, and 9to5Google noted attachments sent by other users could easily be accessed in plain text.

Continue reading.

SpaceX loses another Starship and Super Heavy rocket

There was a double explosion during testing.

SpaceX

SpaceX's second test flight of its Starship spacecraft — which it hopes will eventually ferry humans to the Moon and Mars — ended in an explosion Saturday morning, minutes after taking off from the company's spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas. After completing stage separation, when the Super Heavy booster detached itself from Starship, the rocket's first stage exploded. Starship, however, continued for several more minutes, with a faint explosion heard around the eight-minute mark. Unlike its first test, Starship was able to reach space this time. The company is framing it as a success, even if it did… explode.

Continue reading.

The best Black Friday Deals we’ve found so far

From Amazon, Walmart, Target and more!

We’ve rounded up the best Black Friday deals on tech we’ve tested, and we expect many of the live deals to run through to Cyber Monday. As a taster, we’re already seeing record lows on iPads, wireless earbuds, PS5 controllers, Xbox consoles, Sonos gear, smart TVs and more.

Continue reading.

We're only a few days out from Black Friday, and the sales keep building. The latest deal worth checking out comes courtesy of a new all-time low price on Apple's ninth-generation iPad. The 64GB device is currently available for $230, down from $329 — a 30 percent discount. 

The ninth-gen Apple iPad is a great option if you want a simple, well-performing iPad that does everything you need. It's the cheapest option on the market (even more so now), with us naming it the best budget iPad for 2023. It first came on the scene in 2021, getting an 86 in our review thanks to updates like Apple's A13 Bionic chip and doubling the amount of storage it has for the same price. 

Apple's 2021 iPad also has True Tone technology, changing the color based on the room's ambient light, and has a 12MP front-facing camera. Plus, it offers up to 10 hours of battery life when watching videos, playing music or on the internet. Accessory-wise, it's compatible with the first-gen Apple Pencil. If you want a bit of an upgrade, Apple's tenth-generation iPad is also on sale, with a 22 percent discount dropping its price to $349 from $449. 

Your Black Friday Shopping Guide: See all of Yahoo’s Black Friday coverage, here. Follow Engadget for Black Friday tech deals. Learn about Black Friday trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Black Friday deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Black Friday sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.

In another twist on the OpenAI saga that raged over the weekend, Microsoft has swooped in and hired Sam Altman and Greg Brockman just after OpenAI confirmed Altman won't be returning, CEO Satya Nadella announced in a post on X. 

The pair, along with colleagues are joining Microsoft "to lead a new advanced AI research team." Nadella added that Microsoft "remain[s] committed to our partnership with OpenAI," but the move looks a giant hedge on that bet. It also means the much of OpenAI's talent may be moving to Microsoft, which may stall progress on the widely-used ChatGPT product. 

Altman has largely remained quiet since news of his firing dropped Friday, other than thanking OpenAI colleagues for their support. However, he confirmed his hiring by Microsoft, saying on X that "the mission continues." In a reply to that post, Nadella said he was "super excited" to have Altman as CEO of the new group. "We’ve learned a lot over the years about how to give founders and innovators space to build independent identities and cultures within Microsoft, including GitHub, Mojang Studios," he added. 

The appointment was announced just after it was suggested that Altman may return to OpenAI, following his sudden firing on Friday. That was preceded by an outpouring of support for Altman from OpenAI employees, many of whom shared hearts on social media. 

Talks between the parties broke down and OpenAI subsequently said that Altman (and co-founder Greg Brockman) would not return, according to reports. Instead, Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear was reportedly appointed as OpenAI's new CEO. 

The story is likely far from over, as the confirmation of Altman's firing and subsequent hiring by Microsoft raise multiple questions. Microsoft has invested $13 billion and owns a 49 percent stake in the for-profit segment of OpenAI and recently unveiled its Copilot AI assistant that's powered by OpenAI's technology. 

However, OpenAI has an odd "capped-profit" corporate structure with both a for-profit and non-profit body that has an impact on Microsoft's investment. And despite Nadella's words, the partnership with OpenAI will no doubt be affected by Microsoft having its own AI research team — particularly since it will be led by OpenAI's former CEO. With all that, expect further developments. 

Update Nov 20, 2023 at 8:42 AM ET: OpenAI co-founder, board member and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever has released a statement on recent developments: "I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we've built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company," he wrote on X. 

In another twist on the OpenAI saga that raged over the weekend, Microsoft has swooped in and hired Sam Altman and Greg Brockman just after OpenAI confirmed Altman's firing, CEO Satya Nadella announced in a post on X. The pair, along with colleagues are joining Microsoft "to lead a new advanced AI research team." Nadella added that Microsoft "remain[s] committed to our partnership with OpenAI," but the move looks a giant hedge on that bet. It also means the much of OpenAI's talent may be moving to Microsoft, which may stall the latter's progress with its widely-used ChatGPT product. 

The appoint was announced just after it was suggested that Altman may return to OpenAI, following his sudden firing on Friday. That was preceded by an outpouring of support for Altman from OpenAI employees, many of whom shared hearts on social media. 

In a bit of a surprising development, though, talks between the parties broke down and OpenAI subsequently said that Altman (and co-founder Greg Brockman) would not return, according to reports. Instead, Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear was appointed as the new CEO. 

Developing...

Talks over reinstating co-founder and former CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI have apparently broken down. According to The Information and Bloomberg, the board has now hired Altman's fellow Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear as OpenAI's new interim CEO. This appointment was apparently announced internally by co-founder and board director Ilya Sutskever.

Altman was originally fired from OpenAI over "a breakdown in communication between Sam and the board," according to an oddly blunt internal staff memo published by Axios earlier. The news was subsequently followed by resignations from several key members, including co-founder Greg Brockman (who was ousted as the chairman of the board), along with a few senior researchers.

Developing...