Sherwood News

America’s favorite (and least favorite) federal agencies

While the next government hangs in the balance, certain branches are simply more popular than others

7/29/24 9:06AM

Though we’re still months out from November, the presidential election race is getting more heated by what feels like the second, as an exceptionally eventful July obfuscated and even annulled some predictions of what the next US government might look like.

However, with the future heads of public bodies undecided (but hotly contested), politically weary Americans now have a less favorable view of nearly all federal agencies that comprise the US administration, according to recent surveys from Pew Research Center.

Out of the Depts

Indeed, Veterans Affairs was the only service that became more favorable in the public eye over that period. Knocking the Postal Service off of its (somewhat inexplicable) top spot, the National Park Service, with all its associated canyons and critters, was America’s favorite federal agency in 2023 — 81% of respondents had a favorable view and just 7% had an unfavorable view of the agency.

NASA — no stranger to both good and bad press in recent times — saw a slight decline in overall positive attitudes over the same timeframe. Net negative views of both the Department of Education and the IRS were recorded for the first time in last year’s survey, and although the tax-collecting IRS was, unsurprisingly, the least popular agency in 2023, what is perhaps surprising is that it was once much more popular: in 2019, respondents had a net favorable view of the agency by +15 percentage points.

Hyunsoo Rim13h

TIME names the “Architects of AI” as its Person of the Year for 2025

TIME just announced its Person of the Year… and it’s not a single person.

The magazine selected the “Architects of AI” as its 2025 honoree, spotlighting the executives and engineers behind the year’s AI boom. One of the two covers features eight tech leaders perched on a steel beam — recreating the iconic “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” photo from 1932 — including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, AMD’s Lisa Su, xAI’s Elon Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at the center, whose chips power many of today’s AI models.

Why the Architects of AI Are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year

Western Auctioneer with Two Fingers up and Gavel in Hand

As investors pick sides in Netflix vs. Paramount, analysts say a renewed Warner Bros. bidding war looks inevitable

Analysts at Bloomberg on Wednesday said Paramount’s WBD hostile takeover offer could go as high as $35 per share.

Max Knoblauch12/10/25

The Netflix-Warner Bros. deal now faces a wall of opposition

Netflix will owe Warner Bros. $5.8 billion in cash if the deal is terminated on antitrust grounds.

Max Knoblauch12/5/25

Jon Keegan12/5/25

The New York Times, Chicago Tribune sue Perplexity

The New York Times is suing the AI search engine startup Perplexity, alleging repeated copyright violations.

In the complaint, the Times accuses Perplexity of scraping the company’s content and generating outputs that are “identical or substantially similar” to Times content:

“Upon information and belief, Perplexity has unlawfully copied, distributed, and displayed millions of copyrighted Times stories, videos, podcasts, images and other works to power its products and tools.”

The Times also alleges that Perplexity’s AI tool generates “hallucinations” and falsely attribute them to the Times, creating confusion that harms the company’s brand.

In a separate suit filed Thursday, the Chicago Tribune accused Perplexity of similar copyright violations.

Perplexity’s “answer engine” made early inroads in an attempt to replace traditional web searches with AI-powered responses, but its larger competitors such as OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic have been adding similar features. OpenAI recently released its own AI-powered web browser, ChatGPT Atlas, which challenges Perplexity’s Comet browser.

Jesse Dwyer, Head of Communication for Perplexity told Sherwood News in a statement:

“Publishers have been suing new tech companies for a hundred years, starting with radio, TV, the internet, social media and now AI. Fortunately it’s never worked, or we’d all be talking about this by telegraph.”

New York Times Sues A.I. Start-Up Perplexity Over Use of Copyrighted Work

“Upon information and belief, Perplexity has unlawfully copied, distributed, and displayed millions of copyrighted Times stories, videos, podcasts, images and other works to power its products and tools.”

The Times also alleges that Perplexity’s AI tool generates “hallucinations” and falsely attribute them to the Times, creating confusion that harms the company’s brand.

In a separate suit filed Thursday, the Chicago Tribune accused Perplexity of similar copyright violations.

Jesse Dwyer, Head of Communication for Perplexity told Sherwood News in a statement:

“Publishers have been suing new tech companies for a hundred years, starting with radio, TV, the internet, social media and now AI. Fortunately it’s never worked, or we’d all be talking about this by telegraph.”

Jon Keegan11/28/25

European regulators will examine if Apple’s maps and ads businesses require stricter oversight

Apple has notified European regulators that its Apple Maps and Apple Ads platforms meet the threshold to be called “gatekeepers” under the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act, the European Commission said.

European antitrust regulators will now examine if the tech giant’s Maps and Ads units should be subject to stricter regulation. According to the DMA, when a platform reaches 45 million monthly active users and a market cap of €75 billion ($79 billion), it triggers the “gatekeeper” designation and additional rules apply.

While Apple notified regulators that the threshold has been met, it is pushing back on the designation, saying in a rebuttal to rule makers that the platforms are actually relatively small compared to the competition in Europe and should be excluded. The EC has 45 working days to make a final determination about the designation, and Apple would have six months to comply, Reuters reported.