Meta is on the cusp of spending billions of dollars on Google-made AI chips rather than relying on Nvidia’s, in a deal that could permanently upend the world of tech.

It’s been a “rocky couple of weeks” for Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, said Brent D. Griffiths in Business Insider. Following reports of the Meta-Google talks, the rival chipmaker’s stock closed nearly 3% lower, as “lingering” worries about an AI bubble begin to “creep back in”.

What did the commentators say?
Nvidia customers have been crying out for “more competition” in the chip market, said Dina Bass on Bloomberg, and “one of the most formidable alternatives may have been hiding in plain sight”. Google’s tensor processing unit chips were first released 10 years ago, and are ideally suited to generating responses to AI models such as ChatGPT and Claude. Although “less adaptable” and “more specialised” than Nvidia’s graphics processing units, they offer a “less power-hungry” system at a lower cost.

Google has “pierced Nvidia’s aura of invulnerability”, said The Economist. Nvidia had seemed “unassailable”, but now Google has shifted from being one of Nvidia’s biggest customers to its “fiercest competitor yet”. 

Nvidia appears to be “spooked”, said Eva Roytburg in Fortune. In a statement on X, the company said it is a “generation ahead of the industry” and “the only platform that runs every AI model and does it everywhere computing is done”. It isn’t “hard to read between the lines”, said Roytburg: Nvidia wants investors and customers to know that “it still sees itself as unstoppable”.

What next?
The proposed deal may represent one of the “biggest threats” to Nvidia’s market dominance, said The Wall Street Journal, but there is a long way to go until a “potential crack” materialises. To challenge Nvidia, Google must start “selling the chips more widely to external customers”, which is no easy feat. And while the deal between Meta and Google could be worth “billions of dollars”, the ongoing talks “may not result in one”.

Five years on, whether Diego Maradona’s death could have been prevented is still hotly debated. His family believes it could. 

Seven health professionals will stand trial next year accused of negligent homicide relating to the legendary footballer’s death at the age of 60, after a first trial collapsed earlier this year.

Died ‘practically alone’
The captain of Argentina’s 1986 World Cup-winning team died in a rented house just outside Buenos Aires on 25 November 2020. He was recovering from surgery to remove a blood clot from his brain.

“No one was prepared,” said CNN. In Argentina, his death “managed to unite in desolation a country deeply divided”. Maradona had “dodged death so many times” during decades of cocaine and alcohol addiction that he seemed to have “indestructible genetics”. But in the end, he died “practically alone, under medical care that is suspected of being, at the very least, deficient”.

Seven doctors and nurses were accused of “homicide with possible intent”, for allegedly pursuing a course of action despite knowing it could lead to their patient’s death. Prosecutors alleged that the medical attention received by Maradona was grossly negligent.

‘Treated like an animal’
The case centres on the decision to allow Maradona to recuperate at home “with minimal supervision and medical equipment, instead of a medical facility”, said The Guardian.

The original trial “exposed chilling claims”, said The Sun, including allegations that he was “treated like an animal” by his medics. The post-mortem found that he died from acute pulmonary oedema secondary to an acute exacerbation of chronic heart failure. His heart, the court was told, weighed “more than twice the normal size”.

But, months in, the trial collapsed, after it emerged that one of the three judges had secretly authorised recordings of legal proceedings for a documentary that would feature her as the star. Julieta Makintach recused herself, and the two remaining judges chose to annul the trial rather than replace her. This month, Makintach was fired and disqualified from holding any judicial position in the future.

The defendants, who deny all the accusations, will stand trial again in March. If found guilty, they face a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.

First Lady Melania Trump watches as her husband pardons Gobble the turkey ahead of tomorrow’s Thanksgiving holiday. A second bird, Waddle, will also avoid becoming dinner after being spared by the president during the annual White House ceremony. 

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP / Getty Images

“Prisoner 951” is a “harrowing watch”, said Carol Midgley in The Times. The four-part series dramatises the nightmarish six years that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe endured as a political prisoner in Iranian custody before eventually being reunited with her husband and young daughter in the UK. This is “perhaps as close as we’ll get” to imagining “how much she suffered, physically and mentally” – thanks largely to a “powerhouse performance” by Narges Rashidi as Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

The series begins in Tehran, where Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been visiting family. When she arrives at the airport to catch her flight back to the UK, she is stopped by officials. “Wrenched from her crying baby daughter”, Gabriella, she is taken away and “shoved in a filthy, dark prison cell in solitary confinement”, accused of spying for the British state.

As Zaghari-Ratcliffe despairs in her prison cell, her husband, Richard Ratcliffe (Joseph Fiennes), gradually realises that “the Foreign Office is useless” and starts to mount his own campaign for her release, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. The first episode of this “illuminating” drama is “gripping”. It’s followed by three slower instalments that provide crucial political context. Based on “A Yard of Sky” – the soon-to-be-published book by the couple – the series makes it plain that this British-Iranian mother is a “political pawn”. Iran is putting pressure on Britain “to repay a £400m debt for military equipment, owed to Tehran since the 1970s”.

“Prisoner 951” is not “uplifting”, said Vicky Jessop in London’s The Standard, but “it’s a testament to two extraordinary people who never gave up fighting for each other – and that’s definitely worth celebrating”.

We were all idiots at school. But not all of us were racist, Mr Farage
Victoria Richards in The Independent
“In a typically slippery denial”, Nigel Farage says he “never directly racially abused” any of his Dulwich College classmates, writes Victoria Richards. “I’m not buying it.” You can wave off hate as “banter”, but the hate “has to be inside you to begin with”. Consider his party’s pledges: Reform’s “immigration policies are designed” to “hurt people”. Farage “needs to show us proof” that he isn’t racist, “because his words and actions – both current and historic – suggest strongly otherwise”.

Youngsters are a bigger loss than non-doms
Alice Thomson in The Times
When billionaires “quit the country there’s an outcry”, writes Alice Thomson, but it’s “more worrying” that the “aspirational young” are packing “their cases for an economy flight to jobs and prosperity”. These “much-needed future taxpayers” are “fleeing Britain” because they want “a better quality of life”. The government “needs to act fast” or more young graduates – “the most likely group to vote Labour” – will emigrate if they “feel ignored while wages stagnate and taxes and benefits soar”.

The cruelty of TikTok truthers
Sarah Ditum on UnHerd
Last year, teenager Jay Slater became “the focus of social media’s ‘armchair detectives’”, writes Sarah Ditum. Some said his death in Tenerife was “a grift” and he was “in hiding until he could reemerge and pocket” his family’s fundraiser cash. Others claimed “his family had killed him” to “pull off the scam”. Slater’s mother is campaigning for a law to protect bereaved families from trolling, but, “regrettably”, the “truth will always be overpowered” by the seductive pull “of a mystery”.