X Chat's standalone app isn't the only new service X is testing this week. The company has also begun offering select users invites to its X Money payments service, which was previously being tested internally among X employees. These invites, however, were not doled out in the typical way. Instead, X owner Elon Musk worked with William Shatner (yes, the actor) to invite people into the beta in exchange for a $1,000 donation to Shatner's charity that supports children's and veterans' organizations. On X, the 'Star Trek' actor has been sharing information about the X Money service and its beta invites, which were made available via an online auction on Monday. Musk reshared one of Shatner's posts to his own feed, saying simply 'X Money.' Musk also reposted another user's post about X Money, adding, 'This will be big.' The auction, Shatner noted, was conducted with Musk's blessing after Shatner received payment from Musk via the X Money app. (A screenshot showed that Musk sent him $42, a playful sci-fi reference: The number is, in 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' by Douglas Adams, the computed answer to the meaning of life.)...

Researchers have unveiled plans to investigate the mysterious production of 'dark oxygen' on the sea floor ' large amounts of the gas that seem to be coming from a region too deep for sunlight to power photosynthesis. The discovery of the oxygen 4,000 metres below the surface of the Pacific Ocean was first published in 2024 in Nature Geoscience1. The team behind it is embarking on a fresh series of studies to verify their findings and establish what could be causing the phenomenon. At a press conference in London last week, the researchers unveiled a suite of instruments specifically designed to look at oxygen production, either on the sea floor or in laboratory experiments that reproduce deep-sea conditions, including 400 atmospheres of pressure. The Nippon Foundation, a Tokyo-based charity, is funding the follow-up studies with a grant of US$5.2 million. By May, project scientists will travel to the Clarion'Clipperton Zone ' the region between Hawaii and Mexico where the original discovery was made ' aboard the research vessel Nautilus. Speaking at the event, team leader Andrew Sweetman, a sea-floor ecologist at the Scottish Association for Marine Science in Oban, UK, described two probes ' each with different capabilities ' designed to land on the sea floor to take measurements and samples....

Donor-advised funds, or DAFs, are charitable investment accounts. After donors put money or other financial assets into these accounts, the assets are technically no longer theirs. But they do get a say in how those funds are invested, as well as when and which charities should get some of the money. Americans gave nearly US$90 billion to DAFs in 2024 ' up from the $20 billion DAFs took in a decade earlier. One distinguishing feature about DAF donors is that when they dispatch money from their charitable accounts, they fund politically engaged charities at higher rates than people who give directly to charity. That's what we, two scholars who research the flow of money between donors and nonprofits, found when we conducted a study examining the links between donor-advised funds and donations to charities that are politically active. Our results will be published in a forthcoming issue of Nonprofit Policy Forum, a peer-reviewed academic journal. Like foundations, DAFs give donors a sense of long-term control over funds they've designated for charitable spending in the future. But because DAFs are accounts held within certified public charities, often those affiliated with financial institutions like Fidelity and Vanguard, they offer added tax benefits and simplicity....

The firm announced TxO in 2020 to support founders who do not have access to traditional venture networks. Many of TxO's participants were women and minorities who, overall, receive very slim amounts of venture capital dollars. The announcement of the fund came during the wave of support that underrepresented founders received in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. The fund launched with $2.2 million in initial commitments, TechCrunch previously reported, with a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz and his wife, Felicia, matching up to an additional $5 million. TxO provided founders with access to tech networks, a 16-week-long training program, and a $175,000 investment through a donor-advised fund managed by the nonprofit Tides Foundation. The program went on to support more than 60 companies (like the media brand Brown Girl Magazine, food tech Myles Comfort Foods, and the maternity tech Villie). TxO garnered some criticism when it launched because it's technically structured as more of a nonprofit, rather than a traditional investment fund. Those investing in the fund are considered donors, and the money given is regarded as charity donations, rather than traditional limited partner investments....