To give: Blueberries, jam and cheese from Josh Pond farm in Maine
“Their jams taste like they were made by someone’s grandmother on a farm in 1950, and all of their stuff is impossibly good, like a little box of New England magic.” From $14 at JoshPondFarm.com.

To give: Amazon Gift Cards
“I suck at giving gifts.” From $5 at Amazon.com.

Michael Strahan, ‘Good Morning America’ co-anchor

To give: Michael Strahan Suits
“There’s something about putting on a well-tailored suit that changes how you feel. When you look good, you feel good.” From $299 at MichaelStrahan.com.

To get: Berluti Boots
“They’re the definition of creative French taste with comfort and style.” From $1,260 at Berluti.com.

To get: Eight Sleep Pod
“It would pair perfectly with my current ritual, allowing for biometric optimization and custom temperature settings. Hopefully my husband will agree!” From $2,649 at EightSleep.com.

To get: Unitree G1 Robot. “It could help with all my clothes — laundry, folding, you name it.” From $13,500 at Unitree.com.

To give: Hannah Polskin menorah
“Bethenny Frankel gave me one last year and now I love surprising people with them.” From $1,500 at HannahPolskin.com.
To get: A yacht
“Just because.” Prices vary.

To give: Lingua Franca sweaters
“They’re such good quality and they’re adorable and their sayings are really clever and interesting and funny.” From $275 at LinguaFranca.com.
To get: Caviar
“There’s nothing better than a dinner of baked potato, a little bit of full-fat plain yogurt and caviar on top.” From $219 at Petrossian.com.

Pat Kiernan, NY1 anchor

To get: Bambu Lab A1 mini 3D Printer
“I’m not 100% sure what I’m going to build with it, but I have a long-mothballed HO-scale model train set that I’d like to rebuild. Some 3D printed models would be an excellent way to start.” $329 at BambuLab.com.
To give: Only NY x DSNY Trash Can Pen Holder
“Like the real thing, it’s made out of a sturdy metal that won’t fall over if you’ve got something heavy on one side.” $58 at Store.Moma.org.

To give: Sadelle’s bagels
“New York bagels are a nostalgic favorite for my twin daughters who are away at college, so I’ll be sending them a gift basket of those. Sometimes the most thoughtful presents are the simplest ones that remind you of home.” From $66 at GoldBelly.com.

To give: Sassicaia Wine
“Old friends of ours steward the vineyard, treating it more like an art form than a business. It’s the sort of gift meant to be opened with people you love on a special occasion.” From $270 at AstorWines.comhttps://www.astorwines.com/

Aldo Sohm, Le Bernardin sommelier

To get: Apple Vision Pro
“I just tried them out, and while they look funny, I saw a new dimension of film. It’s a whole different experience.” From $3,499 at Apple.com.

Frédéric Fekkai, hair stylist and FEKKAI founder

To give: Blade Bounce
“My friends seem to have almost everything but time, so I’m giving BLADE Bounce. It’s a $100 flight that gets you between Manhattan and the airport in five minutes. And for my friends in Greenwich, to the city in about ten minutes instead of two hours.” From $100 at Blade.com.

To get: Vintage Vacheron Constantin watch
“I’ve had my eye on a vintage dress watch from the late 1970’s.” From $4,400 at Hodinkee.

This story is part of NYNext, an indispensable insider insight into the innovations, moonshots and political chess moves that matter most to NYC’s power players (and those who aspire to be).

Eric Ripert, Le Bernardin chef and co-owner

To give: Takamura Knives
“I find that people don’t go out of their way to purchase good knives on their own, but they’re always great to have in their kitchen.” From $130 at MTCkitchen.com.

Simon Kim, COTE Korean Steakhouse owner

To give: Marmalade Grove Citrus Boxes
“They usually arrive after the holidays, when citrus season is in full swing in the Northeast. Packed with vitamin C, they’re a simple, thoughtful pick-me-up. Custom designs add a more personal touch.” From $100 at MarmaladeGrove.com.

Send NYNext a tip: nynextlydia@nypost.com.

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The leader insists the gambling activity will be limited to five-star hotels, with a 25% tax levy applied to fund social programs, including school meals and child malnutrition.

In a detailed communication on Elon Musk’s X social media platform, Noboa outlined that multiple issues would be addressed in the proposed “consulta popular” (popular consultation) referendum. 

“Today we take a new step: a popular consultation that asks the people about issues that for years have been of popular interest and in urgent need of change, he said.

“These 7 questions give citizens the power to choose, once and for all, whether we, as a nation, want to bury the past and embrace with hope a future of peace and development.”

The question on gambling could lead to the legalization of any form of gambling for the first time in 14 years. 

It is anticipated that he plebiscite could take place on December 14, but there is a legal and constitutional process that must be followed, due to potential amendments to the constitution, pending the outcome of the vote.

Desde el inicio de este proyecto político luchamos por justicia y progreso, por hacer lo correcto sobre lo cómodo, lo justo sobre lo tradicional, y lo valiente sobre lo complaciente.

A diario recibimos críticas, especialmente de los que están más lejos de la gente, aquellos que…

— Daniel Noboa Azin (@DanielNoboaOk) August 5, 2025

Ecuador gambling ban in place since 2011

Gambling houses, including casinos, have been banned in Ecuador since 2011, following a referendum during the tenure of the 45th President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa. 

Noboa assumed office in November 2023, becoming the 48th head of state.

At the time, a social and moral question was posed to the public, with gambling considered to be causing financial harm and contributing to the proceeds of organized crime.

7.¿Está usted de acuerdo con permitir el funcionamiento de salas de juego y casinos dedicados a juegos de azar en hoteles categorizados con cinco estrellas, quienes entregarán al Estado un tributo del veinte y cinco por ciento (25 %) de sus ventas por esta actividad, para el…

— Daniel Noboa Azin (@DanielNoboaOk) August 5, 2025

There will still be significant opposition this time around, with concerns over the social impact on families, finances, and well-being, but proponents will argue the need for reform. 

Supporters take the position that the casino and gambling activity will be limited to exclusive locations, providing a valuable outlet for tourist spending as well as returning important tax income. 

It will also create employment in the controlled facilities, while providing a regulated outlet for the demand, taking people away from illicit underground activity.

Image credit: Presidencia de la República del Ecuador / Creative Commons 4.0

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When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg poached Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang last week as part of a $14.3 billion investment in the artificial intelligence startup, he was apparently just getting started.

Zuckerberg’s multibillion-dollar AI hiring spree has now turned to Daniel Gross, the CEO of Ilya Sutskever’s startup Safe Superintelligence, and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, according to sources with knowledge of the matter.

It’s not how Zuckerberg planned for a deal to go down.

Earlier this year, sources said, Meta tried to acquire Safe Superintelligence, which was reportedly valued at $32 billion in a fundraising round in April. Sutskever, who just launched the startup a year ago, shortly after leaving OpenAI, rebuffed Meta’s efforts, as well as the company’s attempt to hire him, said the sources, who asked not to be named because the information is confidential.

Soon after those talks ended, Zuckerberg started negotiating with Gross, the sources said. In addition to his role at Safe Superintelligence, Gross runs a venture capital firm with Friedman called NFDG, their combined initials.

Both men are joining Meta as part of the transaction, and will work on products under Wang, one source said. Meta, meanwhile, will get a stake in NFDG, according to multiple sources.

The Information was first to report on Meta’s plans to hire Gross and Friedman.

Gross, Friedman and Sutskever didn’t respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

A Meta spokesperson said the company “will share more about our superintelligence effort and the great people joining this team in the coming weeks.”

Zuckerberg’s aggressive hiring tactics escalate an AI talent war that’s reached new heights of late. Meta, Google and OpenAI, along with a host of other big companies and high-valued startups, are racing to develop the most powerful large language models, and pushing towards artificial general intelligence (AGI), or AI that’s considered equal to or greater than human intelligence.

Last week, Meta agreed to pump $14.3 billion into Scale AI to bring on Wang and a few other top engineers while getting a 49% stake in the startup.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on the latest episode of the “Uncapped” podcast, which is hosted by his brother, that Meta has tried to lure OpenAI employees by offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million, with even larger annual compensation packages. Altman said “none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.”

“I’ve heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor,” Altman said on the podcast. “Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped and I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things.”

Meta didn’t respond to a request for comment on Altman’s remarks.

OpenAI, for its part, has gone to similar lengths, paying about $6.5 billion to hire iPhone designer Jony Ive and to acquire his nascent devices startup io.

Elsewhere, the founders of AI startup Character.AI were recruited back to Google last year in a multibillion-dollar deal, while DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman was brought on by Microsoft in a $650 million purchase of talent from Inflection AI.

In Gross, Zuckerberg is getting a longtime entrepreneur and AI investor. Gross founded the search engine Cue, which was acquired by Apple in 2013. He was a top executive at Apple and helped lead machine learning efforts and the development of Siri. He was later a partner at startup accelerator Y Combinator, before co‑founding Safe Superintelligence alongside Sutskever.

Friedman co-founded two startups before becoming the CEO of GitHub following Microsoft’s acquisition of the code-sharing platform in 2018.

NFDG has backed Coinbase, Figma, CoreWeave, Perplexity and Character.ai over the years, according to Pitchbook. It’s unclear what happens to its investment portfolio in a Meta deal, a source said.

WATCH: Zuckerberg, Altman feud for top AI talent

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Partners at Andreessen Horowitz, the blue-chip venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, defended to investors their decision to hire Daniel Penny, a Marine veteran acquitted on a charge of criminally negligent homicide last year, according to an internal memo viewed by The New York Times.

Andreessen Horowitz, the memo said, is most likely the largest investor of public safety and defense venture capital in the country, and “as result, we spend a lot of time with active-duty military, veterans, chiefs of police, sheriffs; these relationships are critical to the success of our companies.”

Mr. Penny’s “military veteran experience can be helpful in continuing to build these relationships, and many of our public safety and defense founders and partners have shared a similar sentiment,” said the memo, which was sent on Wednesday by Jen Kha, the firm’s head of investor relations.

The firm told employees on Tuesday morning that it had hired Mr. Penny. David Ulevitch, an investment partner, said in a separate memo that he had been introduced to Mr. Penny last year and that the veteran had acted with “courage in a tough situation.”

Mr. Ulevitch asked Mr. Penny to join the firm’s American Dynamism investment team, which focuses on the aerospace, defense and manufacturing sectors.

Mr. Ulevitch added that he had conducted “investigations and interviews” with Mr. Penny and believed that Mr. Penny had behaved “honorably and appropriately given the chaotic and dangerous circumstances” on the subway, the memo said.

Soon after the hiring became public, partners at the firm began receiving messages from outsiders and limited partners expressing concern, said two people familiar with the messages, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Some of the people asked why Mr. Penny was being hired with no investment experience, while others expressed concern that his highly politicized trial would draw undue attention to the firm.

A spokesperson for Andreessen Horowitz did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A lawyer who represented Mr. Penny during the trial declined to comment on Wednesday.

Partners at the firm, including the co-founder Marc Andreessen, supported President Trump in last year’s election. Some have also gravitated toward right-leaning figures, including Mr. Penny, who was embraced by conservatives during his trial.

A former architecture student, Mr. Penny was charged in 2023 by the Manhattan district attorney’s office with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide after a video of him fatally choking another passenger, Jordan Neely, on the subway circulated online.

Mr. Neely, 30, had boarded a northbound F train at the Second Avenue station and immediately began to scream at passengers, witnesses said, about wanting to return to jail and not caring if he lived or died. Mr. Penny approached him from the back, put him in a chokehold and took him to the floor.

A four-minute video recorded by a bystander quickly spread online, showing the men struggling on the floor of the subway train. Mr. Neely, who had struggled with his mental health for years, died.

In December, jurors deadlocked on the most serious charge Mr. Penny faced, manslaughter, and the judge dismissed it. Jurors then considered criminally negligent homicide and acquitted Mr. Penny.

For some, the case epitomized their concerns over homelessness, mental illness and crime in New York City. Others saw Mr. Neely as someone in need of help in a city that lets its most vulnerable slip through the cracks.

The Andreessen Horowitz memo acknowledged strong opinions about Mr. Penny, but added that “we believe there is long-term value in expanding our network in collaboration with Daniel and are excited to have him as part of our team.”

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