Grok, the chatbot built by Elon Musk’s xAI and popularized on his social media platform X, appears to have repeatedly spread misinformation about today’s mass shooting at Bondi Beach in Australia.
Gizmodo pointed to a number of posts where Grok misidentified the bystander — 43-year-old Ahmed al Ahmed — who disarmed one of the gunmen, and where it questioned the authenticity of videos and photos capturing al Ahmed’s actions.
Grok does appear to be fixing some of its mistakes. At least one post that reportedly claimed a video of the shooting actually showed Cyclone Alfred has been corrected “upon reevaluation.”
And the chatbot subsequently acknowledged al Ahmed’s identity, writing that the “misunderstanding arises from viral posts that mistakenly identified him as Edward Crabtree, possibly due to a reporting error or a joke referencing a fictional character.” (The article in question appeared on a largely non-functional news site that may be AI-generated.)
Fintech startup Mesa has shut down its Homeowners Card, which awarded points to cardholders for paying their mortgages.
A message on the Mesa website states that as of December 12, “all Mesa Homeowners Card accounts are closed,” adding, “All credit cards have been deactivated and you are no longer able to make any new purchases or earn Mesa Points.”
A Mesa FAQ about the shutdown described this as “a business decision to close the Mesa Homeowners Card Program entirely.” TechCrunch has reached out to Mesa for additional comment on its future plans.
The startup launched just over a year ago, in November 2024, with $9.2 million in funding ($7.2 million in equity funding and $2 million in debt). It offered two products — mortgage loans with 1% cash back, as well as the credit card with rewards including cash back, travel, and offset mortgage payments.
At the time, CEO Kelley Halpin told TechCrunch that the startup had “taken what everybody loves about travel and dining cards to re-contextualize that for the homeowner/parent.”
In theory, you could earn points for home expenses by using any credit card with rewards, but Mesa said it structured its points program to incentivize spending related to home ownership.
“So it’s not rewarding you on travel and dining spend; it’s rewarding you on gas, groceries, your HOA, utilities, home goods as well as your mortgage payment,” Halpin said.
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Bilt, which has a rewards card that allows customers to earn points on rent payments, says it will expand with points for mortgage payments when it launches a revamped card next year.
Mesa’s card shutdown has been covered by travel deals websites like One Mile at a Time and Upgraded Points, which say that Mesa cardmembers have been complaining about declined transactions for the past week, with the company initially claiming this was only a temporary outage.
Now, it seems the only remaining way to redeem points earned on the Mesa card is through a statement credit at a rate of 0.6%.
Whether or not Netflix’s $82.6 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. goes through, the deal encapsulates a fraught moment for Hollywood, as the entertainment business is increasingly overshadowed by tech giants.
On the latest episode of the Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec and I discussed the deal’s implications, both for Netflix and the larger Hollywood ecosystem. Kirsten noted that it’s just the latest move bringing more consolidation to the media business, and she wondered whether it’s “too big a risk” for Netflix.
Meanwhile, I discussed a call with Netflix executives where Wall Street analysts also seemed to be struggling to wrap their heads around the deal. And then of course there’s Paramount’s competing hostile bid — whatever happens, Warner Bros.’ days as a standalone company seem to be numbered.
You can read an edited preview of our conversation below.
Kirsten: I remember when Netflix was just a little baby startup and I got their [DVDs] in the mail. Here they are, all grown up, bidding for a legacy company. Did that run through your head when you saw the news?
Anthony: Certainly symbolically, it’s this moment where the upstart has eaten Hollywood. There’ve been all these articles, even before this deal, saying, “Netflix is eating Hollywood, Netflix is transforming Hollywood.” Regardless of whether or not this deal ends up going through, Netflix will have transformed Hollywood, but this seems like the biggest — both symbolically but also substantively — one of the most dramatic things that can happen.
Then there are all these other questions about: Will Netflix get regulatory approval? Will Paramount’s hostile bid succeed?
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What jumped out to you is you were catching up on it, Kirsten?
Kirsten: Well, the first thing was I was like, can there be any more consolidation in this market? I mean, that was the big one for me, because if memory serves, Warner Bros. already went through like this consolidation with Discovery, right? So here we are again. There’s been so much consolidation that I have lost track of all of that.
But the second thought was what I immediately thought, what I kicked [off our discussion] with, which is really thinking about how Netflix [has grown], and there have been these dips in the road along its way, where the headlines have been about how it’s struggling, and will it remain relevant, and how can it do that? If they’re successful in the actual deal, [it would] potentially reflect [that] they have made it.
But then again, they have to execute on [running] an even bigger company than ever before. And so I guess my third thought on this is: Should they be buying this? Is this what it takes for them to expand? Is it a risk for them to take on so much? Why not just stay as they are? And I don’t know if you agree with me on that one. Is it too big of a risk?
Anthony: I can see how it makes sense for Netflix. It’s a way to take a [content] library that is already quite large, and they’ve obviously had some very successful TV shows — less so on the movie side — [but] potentially, they just become so much stronger on the content side.
[And] they’re suddenly now involved in all these other businesses, although the question is to what extent are they going to invest in things like the theatrical business, theme parks, making TV shows for other streaming services and networks, which are all businesses that Warner Bros is in, and Netflix says it will continue to support. But we’ll see to what extent that’s true.
So it seems like something that can really benefit Netflix in some ways, but, at the same time, it does seem like this is a huge risk. If you go and look at the analyst call that Netflix’s executives did after announcing the deal, you can see that the analysts are wrestling with it and wondering “Okay, I can see that this grows your business, but does it grow your business [so much that it’s] worth an $82 billion deal?”
And then of course, beyond the Netflix perspective, you have everybody else in Hollywood. There are all these maybe accurately hyperbolic headlines about: Is this the end of Hollywood? Is this the end of the movie theater business? All the unions are basically saying either, “This deal should be blocked” or “We’re very, very, very worried about this deal.” The theater owners are saying that
And so I think there’s A) Is this a good deal for Netflix? And B) is this a good deal for the entertainment business? I don’t have a good answer for either, [but] I think it’s more likely to be a good deal for Netflix than it is to be a good deal for the entertainment business.
Though again, part of what to keep in mind as people weigh those options or think about possible outcomes here, is that because of the way that Paramount has forced Warner Bros. to consider these acquisition offers, it seems unlikely that Warner Bros. is going to be able to continue as an independent company — which, if you’re not a fan of media consolidation, that is disappointing.
A woman is facing felony charges in Evansville, Indiana over a DoorDash delivery in which she allegedly sprayed the food with a substance that made the customers vomit.
In a press release, the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office said that it was contacted on December 7 by a man who said that he and his wife vomited and experienced a burning sensation in their mouth, nose, throat, and stomachs after eating fast food ordered through DoorDash.
The man told NBC News that he noticed something red had been sprayed on the delivery bag, so he checked footage from their doorbell camera. According to the sheriff’s department, the footage shows that after dropping off the food and taking a photo, the woman appeared to spray a substance towards the food from a small aerosol can attached to her keychain.
The sheriff’s department said that using DoorDash records, detectives identified the woman as Kourtney Stevenson of Kentucky, who told local police in a phone call that she had been working for DoorDash while visiting her father, and that she’d used pepper spray to spray a spider. But the department also said that with an overnight low of 35 degrees Fahrenheit, “outdoor spiders in Indiana are not active and would not be capable of crawling on exposed surfaces.”
When Stevenson allegedly declined to come in for an interview, detectives obtained a warrant to arrest her for battery resulting in a moderate injury and consumer product tampering. She is now awaiting extradition to Indiana.
A DoorDash spokesperson said in a statement that Stevenson has been banned from the platform.
“We have absolutely zero tolerance for this type of appalling behavior,” the spokesperson said. “The Dasher’s access to the platform has been permanently removed, and our team is supporting law enforcement with their investigation.”
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Improvements to roads, bridges, and other infrastructure could take a hit as data center construction accelerates, according to Bloomberg.
In 2025, state and local governments reportedly sold a record amount of debt for the second year in a row, with strategists predicting another $600 billion in sales next year. Most of that money is expected to fund infrastructure projects.
Meanwhile, Census Bureau data reportedly shows that private spending on data center construction was running at annualized run rate of more than $41 billion — roughly the same as state and local government spending on transportation construction.
All these projects are likely to compete for construction workers just as the industry faces labor shortages from retirements and President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Andrew Anagnost, CEO of architecture and design software maker Autodesk, told Bloomberg there’s “absolutely no doubt” that data center construction “sucks resources from other projects.
“I guarantee you a lot of those [infrastructure] projects are not going to move as fast as people want,” he said.
