Today’s Big Story

Lunar New Year Is Here

The Year of the Snake is all about shedding that bad energy

Red lanterns, fireworks and family feasts. This is how millions of families around the world will be ringing in the Lunar New Year—the most important holiday in the Chinese zodiac calendar. Today marks the beginning of the 15-day celebration, also known as the Spring Festival, when the Year of the Snake is ushered in.

It’s also known as the world’s biggest mass migration as Asian families across the world prepare to gather at home. Train and air travel are expected to "hit record highs" during this year's migration, Chinese state news agency Xinhua said, with the transport ministry saying it expects 510 million train trips and 90 million air trips during the period. “For many in the Chinese diaspora and the more broad Asian diaspora, Lunar New Year is probably the most important festival and cultural event of the year—it’s like our Christmas,” Russell Mark Jeung, a fifth-generation Chinese American and an Asian American studies professor at San Francisco State University, tells the Washington Post.

It’s a huge holiday, celebrated by more than 1 billion people around the world, including Korean, Malaysian, Vietnamese and Singaporean communities as well as the Chinese, of course.

This year, the vibe is all about shedding that bad energy—the year of the snake is expected to bring about transformation and new beginnings. While the snake may get a bad rap across many Western cultures, the animal is actually a celebrated and revered sign across the Eastern hemisphere. And its year is expected to be one of positive transformation as people slither into new beginnings—if they’re willing to move on.

It’s all about “shedding toxicity in personality, in character traits,” Jonathan H. X. Lee, an Asian and Asian American studies professor at San Francisco State University told NBC News. His research focuses in part on Chinese folklore. “It’s shedding the ego, letting go of the past, letting go of anger, letting go of love lost,” he says. “This is the year where that kind of growth—personal and macro, internal and external—is very much possible.”

The DeepSeek AI Freak-Out

The startup’s AI models show that China is making rapid gains in the field, despite American efforts to hinder it

Last week, a Chinese AI company called DeepSeek triggered a shock wave of excitement and panic in the artificial-intelligence community after it released its new open-source R1 reasoning model, which by most accounts gives industry leader OpenAI’s o1 a run for its money, only for a lot less money and compute resources. Over the weekend, DeepSeek’s ChatGPT competitor became the most-downloaded app in Apple’s App Store, and on Monday, the disruption hit the stock market. An AI tech sell-off wiped out nearly $600 billion of AI chip-maker Nvidia’s market value, which CNBC says is the biggest one-day loss for a company in U.S. history.

Did AI really just have a “Sputnik moment”? That was famed tech investor Marc Andreessen’s widely repeated DeepSeek take over the weekend. Put another way, as explained by Fortune’s Christiaan Hetzner: “China’s artificial intelligence breakthrough is shaking the foundation of the West’s dominance in this technological arms race, conjuring comparisons to one of the USSR’s greatest achievements.” Then again, Pivot podcast hosts Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway spoke with several analysts and they said that like every sector, this is going to “bifurcate into the cheap layer and the high-end layer—everything eventually goes Walmart/Tiffany’s. And they’re saying this might be the Walmart.”

One thing is clear: The development has raised big questions about export controls built by the United States in recent years. The New York Times says the Biden administration set up a system of global rules and steadily expanded them to try to keep advanced A.I. technology—particularly chips made by Nvidia—out of Chinese hands. They were concerned that technology would give China an edge not just economically, but also militarily.

It’s Really ‘The Gulf of America’?

Google says it plans to use Trump's new names for Denali and Gulf of Mexico

Google announced it will use the names for Denali and the Gulf of Mexico favored by President Donald Trump—Mount McKinley and Gulf of America—when federal maps make the switch. In an executive order signed on Trump’s first day back in office on Jan. 20, the president ordered the interior secretary to make the changes within 30 days.

Trump's order said the new names would need to be reflected in the federal Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) run by the U.S. Geological Survey, part of the Interior Department. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum largely shrugged off Google’s move, noting that Trump’s order only applies to the U.S. continental shelf, suggesting that her country (and much of the world) would ignore it. At a press conference, she presented a 1607 map that labeled parts of North America as “Mexican America,” and dryly proposed that the continent be renamed as such.

Across the federal government and military, the change to "Gulf of America" has been quickly implemented. Sources familiar with the matter say that internal documentation and public-facing communications are already updated or in the process of being updated, with map and chart changes to come. However, Business Insider points out that the process isn't as simple as crossing out the old name and writing in a new one. It's a complicated switch across the bureaucracy, involving a top-down effort to update official documents, communications, maps, and charts. And will people really adopt this? Or will it be a Twitter/X situation?

Civilian Jet Breaks Sound Barrier

America’s answer to Concorde completes its first test flight

I’m an aviation nerd, so this is very exciting to me: A civilian jet broke the sound barrier for the first time Tuesday while making a historic test flight over the Mojave Desert. The XB-1 aircraft, manufactured by Boom Supersonic, was piloted by Tristan Brandenburg, the company said in a statement. The plane, nicknamed "Baby Boom," took off from Mojave Air and Space Port and reached an altitude of 35,290 feet before accelerating to Mach 1.122, the company said. That speed is equivalent to 750 miles per hour.

The U.S. company is building what promises to be the world’s fastest airliner—a 55 to 64 seat commercial plane that would be America’s answer to the now-retired Concorde. Already, the hotly anticipated plane has 130 orders and pre-orders from American Airlines, United and Japan Airlines. During the test flight, the XB-1 entered the supersonic realm three times, landing safely in the Mojave after a flight of a little over 30 minutes.

The company says it will now focus its attention on Overture, the supersonic airliner that will be ready to fly in the next few years. The company finished building a “superfactory” in North Carolina in 2024, and will eventually produce 66 planes per year. Boom Supersonic’s CEO Blake Scholl told CNN that he expects supersonic planes to replace conventional airliners in our lifetime.

Give Custom, Personalized Jewelry This Valentine’s Day

Jewlr is a new kind of jewelry company

This Valentine’s Day, give a piece of jewelry that’s as unique and personal as your own love story. Jewlr is a new kind of jewelry brand that's centered entirely around helping you create custom-made, personalized jewelry. You can do it entirely online and they walk you through the process to make it quick and easy.

The brand's customizable rings, birthstone pieces, and name necklaces are handcrafted in North America and have been designed to create meaningful connections—the perfect gift for your Valentine. Whether you're looking for trendsetting pieces or timeless, elegant classics, Jewlr offers something special for up to 70% off retail prices, with free shipping and returns, and a one-year warranty.

Be humble.