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The New Zealand government has ruled out restricting or banning VPNs as part of its planned under-16 social media ban. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Education Minister Erica Stanford both moved to kill the idea after a rapid privacy backlash,TechRadar reports. I can reject that outright. Theres no plan to ban VPNs at all, Luxon [] This story continues at The Next Web

Toyota will invest $3.6bn to expand its San Antonio plant and move some Tacoma pickup production from Mexico to Texas. The carmaker announced the plan on Monday, adding a second assembly line,according to CNBC. President Donald Trump quickly claimed the move as proof his trade policy is working. Thats what tariffs do, properly used, he [] This story continues at The Next Web

OpenAI is recruiting an investment-banking expert to help train its AI on the trade. Thejob listingseeks a subject matter expert with at least two years of investment experience for its Applied AI team in San Francisco. Base pay runs from $185,000 to $205,000, with equity on top,Business Insider reports. That equity sweetener carries new weight [] This story continues at The Next Web

Scotlands governing party wants to freeze every new datacentre in the country. If ministers agree, a core pillar of the UKs AI strategy could stall. The Scottish government is weighing a sweeping moratorium on new datacentres. Last Sunday, the Scottish National Party (SNP) voted to freeze all new builds, the Guardian reports. The motion now [] This story continues at The Next Web

Microsoft has begun replacing OpenAI and Anthropic models with its own AI in some product features,Bloomberg reports. The shift routes selected tasks to Microsofts in-house MAI models where cost or data residency favours them. The change is incremental rather than a clean break. OpenAI and Anthropic still handle most production traffic inside Copilot, with MAI [] This story continues at The Next Web

Axos is buying Arc Technologies, an AI-native fintech that banks tech startups, and bolting its software onto a chartered bank. Axos Financial, a US digital bank with about $29bn in assets, has agreed to acquire Arc Technologies, the company announced. Arc runs a financial platform for technology and growth companies, bundling cash management, debt financing, [] This story continues at The Next Web

AI agents can write code and answer questions, but they still fall apart on long, messy jobs. A Mountain View startup just raised $40M to build the training grounds that fix that. Bespoke Labs, which builds the environments that train and test AI agents, has raised $40 million, the company announced. The total spans a [] This story continues at The Next Web

Nobel Prize-winning economist has poured cold water on the idea that artificial intelligence will haul Western economies back into an era of rapid productivity growth, warning that the fast-growth years may already be gone for good. Christopher Pissarides, who shared the 2010 Nobel Memorial Prize in economics and teaches at the London School of Economics, [] This story continues at The Next Web

Texas can now make Apple and Google check how old you are before you download an app. The Supreme Court just let the rule stand. The US Supreme Court has refused to block a Texas law aimed at app stores, the Associated Press reports. The rule forces Apple and Google to verify users ages and [] This story continues at The Next Web