January 29 2025

1. U.S. Student Reading Scores Plummet
2. Private Supersonic Plane Breaks Sound Barrier, Startup Aims to Restore Commercial Supersonic Flight
3. OpenAI Accuses Chinese Rival of Model Theft
4. Trump’s Busy Tuesday: Federal workforce buyouts, federal payment freeze blocked, trans care ban
5. FAA Authorized Mystery Drones Over New Jersey
January 29, 1861: Kansas enters the Union

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FLASH…Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moves “Doomsday Clock” to 89 second to midnight…in this case midnight is a metaphor for the End of the World…this is the closest it has ever been to midnight…

1. U.S. Student Reading Scores Plummet

The reading skills of American students are deteriorating further, according to new national test scores that show no improvement in a yearslong slide. The 67% of eighth-graders who scored at a basic or better reading level in 2024 was the lowest share since testing began in 1992, results from a closely watched federal exam show. Only 60% of fourth-graders hit that benchmark, nearing record lows. The declines started before the pandemic, continued during it, and have persisted since. While the lowest-achieving students fell further behind everyone else, the slides were broad, affecting students across different states, school types, races and economic backgrounds.   

Article Source: WSJ

2. Private Supersonic Plane Breaks Sound Barrier, Startup Aims to Restore Commercial Supersonic Flight

About 35,000 feet (10,670 meters) over the Mojave Desert, northwest of Los Angeles, Boom Supersonic's XB-1 became the first privately funded airplane to break the sound barrier during a test flight on Tuesday. After getting to altitude, Brandenburg opened up the test plane's throttles, accelerating to Mach 1.1, or about 845 mph (1,360 kph) – faster than the speed at which sound travels. Boom Supersonic's XB-1 is a stepping stone in its plan to develop a commercially viable supersonic airliner, the Overture, capable of carrying 64-80 passengers across the Atlantic in about 3-1/2 hours. The company has 130 orders and pre-orders from American Airlines, United Airlines and Japan Airlines. Last year, it completed construction on its Overture Superfactory in Greensboro, North Carolina, where it plans to build 66 Overture aircraft per year.

Article Source: Reuters

3. OpenAI Accuses Chinese Rival of Model Theft

OpenAI says it has found evidence that Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek used the US company’s proprietary models to train its own open-source competitor, as concerns grow over a potential breach of intellectual property. The San Francisco-based ChatGPT maker told the Financial Times it had seen some evidence of “distillation”, which it suspects to be from DeepSeek. The technique is used by developers to obtain better performance on smaller models by using outputs from larger, more capable ones, allowing them to achieve similar results on specific tasks at a much lower cost. Distillation is a common practice in the industry but the concern was that DeepSeek may be doing it to build its own rival model, which is a breach of OpenAI’s terms of service. OpenAI and its partner Microsoft investigated accounts believed to be DeepSeek’s last year that were using OpenAI’s application programming interface (API) and blocked their access on suspicion of distillation that violated the terms of service, another person with direct knowledge said. These investigations were first reported by Bloomberg.  

Editors note: it is very likely that cutting-edge Western models were used to train DeepSeek’s model and that the extremely low costs cited to train DeepSeek are misleading. However, the efficiency it demonstrates is a real achievement and topples existing assumptions about the future of AI. We’re going to need less power, fewer chips, and Big Tech might be less entrenched than feared - all good things for the general public.

Article Source: WSJ

4. Trump’s Busy Tuesday: Federal workforce buyout, federal payment freeze blocked, trans care ban

A. White House Offers Federal Workers Buyouts Amid Return to Office Push 

The White House has offered buyouts to nearly all federal employees who do not wish to return to work in the office, giving them until February 6 to accept. Its human resources arm sent a letter to more than 2mn government workers on Tuesday evening offering eight months of salary to any who resigned by next Thursday. It included a “deferred resignation letter” for anyone who wanted to participate. Administration officials said the offer was available to all full-time federal employees except for members of the armed forces, the US Postal Service and positions related to immigration enforcement. 

B. DC Judge Blocks Trump's Federal Payment Freeze  

A federal judge blocked Donald Trump’s plan to freeze hundreds of billions of dollars in payments to federal programmes just minutes before it was set to take effect on Tuesday, capping a day of US political chaos less than two weeks into the new president’s term in office. Loren AliKhan, a judge in the Washington DC district court, temporarily halted part of the Trump White House’s order to pause federal financial assistance, according to US media reports, and ordered the funding to continue until a hearing on February 3.  

C. Trump Orders Restrictions on Transgender Youth Care  

President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday that would restrict access to treatments, including puberty blockers and hormones, for transgender children and teens.  Trump is directing federal agencies to take steps to withhold funding to institutions that provide common gender therapies to anyone under the age of 19 and exclude such treatments from health insurance coverage for members of the military and their families. It also directs the Department of Health and Human Services to take whatever steps it can to restrict access to such care, including potentially by withholding Medicare and Medicaid funds.

Article Source: FT, WSJ

5. FAA Authorized Mystery Drones Over New Jersey

The mysterious drones that caused alarm among many New Jersey residents last year were in large part authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration, the White House said Tuesday. The large number of unexplained nighttime drone sightings in New Jersey and other East Coast states created a panic which at one point shut down an airport.  Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, now says many of those drones were authorized and known by the government.  "After research and study, the drones that were flying over New Jersey in large numbers were authorized to be flown by the FAA for research and various other reasons," Leavitt said at a briefing Tuesday. Leavitt said that the issue grew worse "due to curiosity," as some of the drones also belonged to hobbyists and private citizens. "This was not the enemy," she told reporters.

Article Source: NBC

January 29, 1861: Kansas enters the Union

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Sources

2. https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/reading-test-scores-american-students-5fb78d4e?st=2qBZv5&reflink=article_copyURL_share

3. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/boom-supersonic-xb-1-breaks-sound-barrier-over-mojave-desert-2025-01-28/

4. https://www.ft.com/content/a0dfedd1-5255-4fa9-8ccc-1fe01de87ea6?shareType=nongift

5. A https://www.ft.com/content/91d27bd8-3e2c-43e9-93ad-ec4155ca3422?shareType=nongift
B https://www.ft.com/content/8be21970-6709-4cb3-941d-efb92d457cdf?shareType=nongift
C https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-signs-order-to-restrict-medical-treatments-for-transgender-minors-efd37978?st=LS9Eow&reflink=article_copyURL_share

6. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/white-house-says-new-jersey-drones-authorized-faa-was-not-enemy-rcna189646