Apple has [1]sharply raised prices across its Mac, iPad, HomePod, and Apple TV lineups as surging AI-driven demand creates a global memory and storage shortage. Increases range from $30 for the HomePod mini to $1,300 for the M3 Ultra Mac Studio, with Apple CEO Tim Cook saying efforts to shield customers from higher costs had become "unsustainable." The Verge reports:

> On Thursday, the company adjusted the price of its new MacBook Neo, which will now start at $699 instead of $599, while the base MacBook Air will jump to $1,299 from $1,099, as [2]reported earlier by Bloomberg . The 14-inch MacBook Pro is getting an increase as well, going from $1,699 to $1,999. Meanwhile, the iPad Air will now start at $749 instead of $599, while the iPad Pro is increasing to $1,199 from $999.

>

> As [3]spotted by MacRumors , the M4 Max Mac Studio will now cost $2,499, a big jump from $1,999. The M3 Ultra Mac Studio is now priced at $5,299, up from $3,999. Apple is even raising the prices of its HomePod, which now costs $349 instead of $299, as well as bumping the price of the HomePod mini to $129 instead of $99. The Apple TV also now costs $199 instead of $129.



[1] https://www.theverge.com/tech/952162/apple-price-increase-ram-shortage

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-25/apple-raises-mac-and-ipad-prices-to-counter-memory-shortages

[3] https://www.macrumors.com/2026/06/25/apple-just-increased-prices/

LastPass says hackers [1]stole customers' personal information, support case records, and sales data by breaching market research partner Klue. The password manager told TechCrunch that its own systems and password vaults were unaffected. However, the hackers used their access to obtain "reams of data about LastPass customers," the report says. From the report:

> In a [2]blog post that shared information about the incident, LastPass said the hackers took customers' names, phone numbers, email addresses, and physical addresses, as well as customer support case data and sales-related data. It's not yet known what was in the contents of customer support tickets, although they likely contain fragments of potentially private or sensitive information. Customers typically contact customer service when they are having a billing issue or need assistance in gaining access to their accounts. Past incidents involving customer support tickets have included credentials and government-issued identity documents.

The last data breach LastPass reported was [3]in 2022 , when hackers stole the company's entire store of customer password vaults.



[1] https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/23/password-manager-maker-lastpass-says-hackers-stole-customer-support-case-data-during-klue-breach/

[2] https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/klue-supply-chain-incident-and-lastpass-response

[3] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/22/12/22/2345231/lastpass-hackers-stole-customer-vault-data-in-cloud-storage-breach

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica:

> Anthropic has accused the Chinese firm Alibaba of [1]launching the largest attack yet attempting to clone Claude , as China races to match the capabilities of Anthropic's leading model following [2]Mythos' release and [3]subsequent restriction from foreign markets. Ars obtained a June 10 letter sent to Senators Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) one day ahead of a Senate committee hearing on "AI and the American Dream." In the letter, Anthropic shared "new, confidential evidence of the largest campaign to illicitly extract Claude's capabilities we have ever measured."

>

> The attacks occurred between April 22 and June 5, when "operators afliated with Alibaba and Alibaba Qwen, Alibaba's AI lab" allegedly generated "more than 28.8 million exchanges with Claude through almost 25,000 fraudulent accounts," Anthropic said. Violating Claude's terms of service and access restrictions, this campaign "targeted some of Claude's most valuable capabilities, such as agentic reasoning, software engineering, and long-horizon tasks." According to Anthropic, Alibaba evaded detection by "using obfuscation techniques and proxy networks." As Chinese demand for reliable obfuscation techniques increases, Anthropic warned there's already "a growing circumvention economy" to fuel an ever-expanding web of future distillation attacks. [...]

>

> "Alibaba is governed by an independent board, none of whom has any military affiliation," Alibaba said. "Its products and services are built for retail, logistics, and enterprise information technology -- not weapons, defense, or intelligence." Anthropic appears unconvinced, however, that Alibaba isn't working with the Chinese government. In the letter, Anthropic warned that without stronger interventions, these distillation attacks will "help China reach Mythos Preview-level capabilities sooner."

>

> To keep the US ahead of China, Anthropic recommended that Congress pass legislation with three objectives. First, antitrust laws must be updated to allow AI firms to share information about evolving Chinese tactics to deter more threats. Second, the US needs more export controls on chips to hamstring Chinese access to advanced compute so that they simply can't train on US model outputs. That could make conducting distillation attacks pointless, Anthropic suggested. Finally, Congress should pass laws penalizing Chinese labs' "bad behavior" so that it's "more difficult and costly" to rely on distillation attacks to advance Chinese models. Penalties could include limiting Chinese firms from accessing US models or advanced US chips or from relying on data centers outside of China, Anthropic suggested.



[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/anthropic-claims-alibaba-defied-trump-to-attack-claude-and-steal-capabilities/

[2] https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/04/07/2115208/anthropic-unveils-claude-mythos-powerful-ai-with-major-cyber-implications

[3] https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/04/22/2038241/anthropics-mythos-model-is-being-accessed-by-unauthorized-users

After Ford's automated quality-control systems and AI tools fell short, the automaker [1]hired 350 veteran engineers over the past three years to mentor younger staff and reprogram the underperforming technology. "Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it's only as good as the information you use to train it," Charles Poon, Ford's vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, told reporters on a call Wednesday. "Over prior years, we didn't pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers that have been with us through many product cycles." Bloomberg reports:

> Those engineers were "at the heart" of Ford's efforts to turn around quality problems, said Kumar Galhotra, chief operating officer. They now run mandatory meetings that rigorously troubleshoot quality problems and they have reprogrammed AI tools to head off glitches before they happen. "We had been relying more and more on automated quality systems" and not getting the desired results, Galhotra said. "We brought back technical specialists" and "they hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor."

>

> The return of the veteran engineers at Ford cuts against the prevailing wisdom -- and fear -- that AI will replace all kinds of knowledge workers. But Ford found the machines couldn't replace experience. "Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product," Poon said. But "we recognized that for us to enhance some of our automation and machine learning and artificial intelligence tools we needed to ensure that they were trained by the most experienced individuals."

>

> As a result of the efforts of the old hands, Ford vaulted above quality stalwarts such as Toyota and Honda on [2]JD Power's bellwether survey that measures the quality of a car during the first three months of ownership. Only luxury brands Porsche and Genesis topped Ford this year.



[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-25/ford-has-been-rehiring-quality-inspectors-after-ai-fell-short

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/06/25/j-d-power-new-auto-quality-survey-here-are-the-results.html

Micron has signed 16 "strategic customer agreements" (SCAs) that include a floor price the company says [1]comes with "a very robust gross margin for Micron , well above our peak quarterly margins in any past cycle." Most of the deals run through 2030 and cover about 40% of Micron's revenue. The Register reports:

> Micron CEO, president and chairman Sanjay Mehrotra explained the SCAs in [2]prepared remarks delivered during the company's Q3 earnings call. He explained that Micron has signed 16 SCAs, most of them covering 2026 to 2030, and that they involve a commitment to buy a certain quantity of product and pay for it in a pricing band that has a floor and a ceiling price. The floor price covers the historically high gross margins mentioned above, and the ceiling price means those who commit to an SCA are insulated if memory prices go even higher.

>

> The CEO said 16 customers have signed SCAs and then explained why it's worth locking into the deals even though they bake in such high margins. "Our customers are recognizing that supply shortages in memory and storage will take considerable time to improve," he said. "Even as we expect industry supply to improve gradually in 2028, we currently do not have line of sight as to when memory supply will be able to catch up with increasing demand."

>

> Even massive efforts to build new chip fabs aren't much help, he said, because the increasing complexity of new memory types means it takes longer to build factories -- and when they come online there still won't be enough capacity to build both the high-bandwidth memory needed for AI and other types of NAND and DRAM. "Supply is structurally constrained in its growth and ability to meet industry demand, despite our comprehensive efforts to increase supply," he said.

>

> Don't assume that SCAs mean your suppliers get price certainty, because Mehrotra said the deals will account for 40 percent of Micron revenue -- meaning the company is reserving most of its inventory to sell at prices it can negotiate. The CEO did have a little good news in the form of predictions that Micron's DRAM output in 2026 will "grow in the low- to mid-20s percentage range, slightly above our prior outlook." He also revealed that the SCAs see customers pay up front, which helps Micron to fund its fab expansions.



[1] https://www.theregister.com/systems/2026/06/25/micron-locks-in-historically-high-memory-prices-for-five-years/5261854

[2] https://investors.micron.com/static-files/631b1a32-5537-46ae-8f40-82e42fc79dfe

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica:

> Google spent the last few years locked in a [1]legal grudge match with Epic Games, which claimed that Google's stewardship of the Play Store was anticompetitive. Now, the companies are thick as thieves, and Google is [2]beginning to implement app store changes as agreed in its settlement with Epic . The lower developer fees and new payment options that Google promised are rolling out in select markets this month before expanding. [...] Starting on June 30, developers in Europe, the UK, and the US will have access to the new fee structure. This system will split the commission into two components: billing and service fees.

>

> The biggest win for small developers is the new flat 10 percent service fee for the first $1 million in earnings every year. Above that, the rate for various transaction types may reach 25 percent on existing installs. Apps installed after June 30 will top out at 20 percent. Developers will finally be allowed to send users outside the Play Store to complete a transaction, too. Google [3]says they can design a choice screen "in accordance with our UX guidelines" to direct users to these external options. Devs pay the standard service fee on these purchases, but they'll avoid the billing fee. All transactions that run through Google's Play Store platform add a 5 percent billing fee -- even the base rate for publishers earning less than $1 million. Google notes that the billing fee is set at 5 percent in the initial markets, but it could be different in other regions.

Google will expand the new fee structure globally through September 2027, while also offering reduced fees through updated developer programs.

Although the changes may let developers retain more revenue, Google will continue controlling Android distribution and collecting a share of sales as it works toward allowing certified third-party app stores to operate more like the Play Store.



[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/11/05/1729212/epic-and-google-settle-antitrust-case-with-global-fee-cuts-and-easier-third-party-store-access

[2] https://arstechnica.com/google/2026/06/google-starts-lowering-play-store-fees-making-good-on-epic-games-settlement/

[3] https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/06/play-expanded-billing.html

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider:

> For the most powerful voices in AI, [1]it's all about being in the loop . Claude Code creator Boris Cherny recently said he doesn't write his own AI prompts much anymore. Thanks to loops, he doesn't have to. "It's an agent that prompts Claude," Cherny recently [2]told CNBC , adding, "I don't write the prompt anymore. Claude writes the prompt, and now I'm talking to that new Claude that is kind of coordinating." In the same interview, Cherny said that loops and a similar feature were examples of the kind of work he would be proudest of in a decade.

>

> Cherny isn't the only one embracing "loop engineering." OpenAI engineer Peter Steinberger, the creator of the viral OpenClaw project, wrote a public reminder to users who are still writing out prompts for AI agents. "Here's your monthly reminder that you shouldn't be prompting coding agents anymore," Steinberger [3]wrote recently on X. "You should be designing loops that prompt your agents." [...] Steinberger shared an example of a loop he uses: "Tell codex to maintain your repos, wake up every 5 minutes and direct work to threads. That makes it easy to parallelize+steer work as needed."

Claire Vo, founder of ChatPRD and host of the "How I AI," said, "it's really just reminding people that you don't have to use your human fingers to type in a prompt in order for your agent to do work on your behalf."

The days of directly prompting generative AI coding tools are "kind of over, or at least some think it's going to be," Addy Osmani, director of Google Cloud, [4]wrote in his post explaining the concept.



[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/what-are-loops-ai-engineering-tips-2026-6

[2] https://x.com/PawelHuryn/status/2069363303952818474

[3] https://x.com/steipete/status/2063697162748260627

[4] https://addyosmani.com/blog/loop-engineering/

[1]joshuark shares a report from Car and Driver:

> A [2]new study conducted by the New York Times shows that the increase in vehicle hood height seen over the last two and a half decades, mainly due to the rise in popularity of large SUVs and trucks, has [3]resulted in several thousand deaths that otherwise may not have happened . The study shows that while automakers and regulators have focused on occupant safety, they have turned a blind eye to pedestrian safety, which has fallen since around 2009. Researchers looked at four main datasets in their investigation: crash test data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) Crash Report Sampling System (CRSS) from 2016 to 2024; NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS); vehicle measurement data from Expert AutoStats; and vehicle registration data from S&P Global from 2002 to 2024. The researchers concluded that the increased danger to pedestrians is caused by two main culprits.

>

> First, large SUVs and trucks have taller hoods, raising the point of impact above most people's center of gravity and pushing them to the ground, typically hard asphalt, rather than up and onto the hood, which is designed to absorb impacts. Second, with larger A-pillars designed to protect occupants in rollover crashes, modern cars tend to have larger blind spots than cars sold at the turn of the century (presuming the 21st century). The shift toward vehicles with taller hoods led to roughly 3000 deaths between 2016 and 2024. This number is conservative because it does not include crashes that take place in parking lots, driveways, or private roads, which aren't part of the federal database.

>

> The data also showed an estimated 2.8 percent increase in the odds of a pedestrian fatality for every one-inch increase in vehicle hood height. Between two different scenarios, one decreasing the hood height of every vehicle in the dataset by 3 inches, and the second using a random sampling of hood heights from 2002 across 10,000 simulated crashes, between 2624 (for scenario two) and 3077 (for scenario one) lives could have been saved from 2016 to 2024.



[1] https://slashdot.org/~joshuark

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/06/21/us/trucks-suv-pedestrian-crashes.html

[3] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a71663782/study-vehicle-hood-height-pedestrian-safety/

Astronomers have discovered two Jupiter-sized exoplanets [1]with densities lower than cotton candy , making them the lightest known worlds of their size. The rare "super-puffs," located about 1,110 light-years away, are likely composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, with follow-up observations by the James Webb Space Telescope expected to probe their atmospheres. The Associated Press reports:

> [University of Oxford's George Dransfield] suspects these fluffy, wispy worlds are probably white or blue, depending on whether the skies there are cloudy -- no shades of cotton-candy pink. The planets are probably mostly hydrogen and helium, although it will take follow-up observations by NASA's Webb Space Telescope to confirm their chemical makeup.

>

> Detected by NASA's Tess satellite over the past decade, these two especially puffy-puffs orbit a star in the southern constellation Volans, known as the flying fish. The researchers studied the planets' orbits using telescopes on Earth to determine their density, from 1,110 light-years away. A light-year is nearly 6 trillion miles (9.7 trillion kilometers). Jupiter, by comparison, is as much as 35 times denser than these two lightweights.

>

> Considered rare in the cosmos, super-puffs are thought to form around the disk of gas and dust around a newborn star where there is more gas than dust. They shed much of the material over time, stripping down even more. NASA's tally of worlds outside our solar system currently stands at nearly 6,300 confirmed. Fewer than 40 are super-puffs, according to Dransfield.

The findings have been [2]published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society .



[1] https://apnews.com/article/super-puffs-cotton-candy-giant-light-planets-db1ebf1cb946e1c0bba67a5040bfc8a9

[2] https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/mnras/stag864

NASA's Perseverance rover has [1]detected complex organic carbon in ancient Martian mudstones . The measurements were taken by the rover's Sherloc instrument and the organic carbon that was identified was from the Bright Angel outcrop, "a dried-up river that carried water into the planet's Jezero crater billions of years ago," notes The Guardian. From the report:

> The form of carbon detected, known as macromolecular carbon or MMC, can originate from living organisms. Geological processes can also produce the material, meaning its detection does not amount to proof of past Martian life. Dr Ashley Murphy at the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona said MMC can be found in different settings and types of rocks. "It may originate from biological sources such as fossilized organic matter found in microbial mats and coal," she said, but could also form in reactions between rocks and water or arrive on impacting meteorites.

>

> The mudstone rocks from the Bright Angel outcrop caused a stir in 2024 when the Perseverance rover discovered intriguing surface spots and nodules that resemble features produced by fossilized microbes on Earth. When the scientific details were published last year, Sean Duffy, the former acting head of Nasa, said: "This very well could be the clearest sign of life that we've ever found on Mars." [...] The discovery means Nasa rovers have now found organic-bearing mudstones more than 2,000 miles apart on Mars. The others were reported by the Curiosity rover which is exploring the planet's Gale crater. It "indicates that the habitability of Mars, and the availability of organics, may have been widespread across the planet billions of years ago," the authors [2]write in Science Advances .



[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jun/24/nasa-rover-detects-potential-signatures-ancient-microbial-life-mars

[2] http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx0047

Slate Auto [1]says its stripped-down electric pickup will [2]start at $24,950 before fees , with the base model's estimated range increased from 150 to about 205 miles. The company has started [3]taking preorders on Wednesday. "The aggressive pricing -- half the average cost of a new car in the United States -- puts Slate in position to capture a share of the lowest end of the new car market, which has few gas and fewer electric options these days," reports TechCrunch. From the report:

> The price reveal comes more than a year after Slate Auto [4]emerged from stealth . Since then, the company has been steadily detailing the extremely basic, transforming EV, which starts as a two-seater pickup truck, but can be modified into a five-seater SUV. The SUV version will start at $29,950, Slate said Wednesday. Slate has said the conversion can be done by professionals or by owners themselves. On Wednesday, it finally showed off some of the first of its "Slate University" how-to videos, which guide people through the steps for doing everything from the SUV conversion to adding headlight covers.

>

> Everything else about the truck is bare, though it's customizable. It has hand-crank windows, lacks an infotainment system, and all orders start with the same gray composite material, with no paint options, as Slate plans to let buyers order customizable wraps for the vehicle. That likely helps cut out a major cost center, as factory paint shops can run in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The company did not offer more details about the buying process. Slate has said it "won't have traditional dealerships," and plans to sell directly to customers, similar to other EV companies like Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid Motors.



[1] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/back-to-basics-made-to-be-accessorized-over-time-the-24-950-slate-truck-is-the-most-affordable-truck-in-america-302808453.html

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/24/slate-autos-radically-simple-electric-truck-starts-at-24950/

[3] https://www.slate.auto/en

[4] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/04/26/0425259/cheap-transforming-electric-truck-announced-by-jeff-bezos-backed-startup

Meta has [1]paused its Model Compatibility Initiative that tracked employee mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, and screen content to train AI agents, after some of its collected data became accessible to more employees than intended. Meta says it has no evidence the information was improperly accessed and will not restart the program until it is confident in its safeguards. Wired reports:

> Meta rolled out the Model Compatibility Initiative (MCI) tool [2]in April to US employees. The tool "collects computer inputs such as mouse movements, click locations and keystrokes, as well as screen content," according to workers who have been petitioning against it over privacy, security, and personal liberty concerns. When MCI launched, employees [3]couldn't opt out , but that changed to a limited degree after workers protested. Meta executives have repeatedly defended the data-gathering project, saying it was necessary to train AI systems to operate computer software the way humans do and that employees were the best examples for the artificial intelligence to learn from.

>

> On Monday, a Meta engineer issued an internal security notice stating that databases filled with information gathered by MCI had been exposed to anyone inside the company. A former employee actively involved in pushing back against MCI describes the lapse as "a mess" -- and one that employees had expected would occur. "When workers raised concerns, leadership doubled down and failed to acknowledge the risks workers raised about the safety and privacy of worker and customer data," the person says. "Leadership has clearly created an authoritarian environment where workers are no longer respected or heard."

>

> But after critical comments poured into internal forums on Monday expressing frustration about the security issue, Meta shocked some of its staff by pausing MCI altogether, telling WIRED about the development several hours before announcing it to employees. A few workers told WIRED they were confused in the meantime because the tool was continuing to run on their laptops. Late on Monday, Stephane Kasriel, a Meta vice president overseeing AI research, announced the pause and told staff that the security issue had been discovered on June 18 and addressed within four hours. But the initial fix didn't stick and access to the data had to be further locked down. The issue made "some MCI-derived data" accessible to more people than intended, he wrote, without elaborating.



[1] https://www.wired.com/story/meta-pauses-employee-tracking-program-following-internal-security-breach/

[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/04/21/1849217/meta-to-start-capturing-employee-mouse-movements-keystrokes-for-ai-training-data

[3] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/06/03/1713239/meta-workers-can-opt-out-of-workplace-tracking-for-up-to-30-minutes

Rockstar Games has [1]revealed the price of Grand Theft Auto VI to be $79.99, and confirmed that the [2]physical versions of the game won't include a disc . Instead, they'll contain a one-time download code when it launches November 19. "Not only is that a disappointing decision for people who like to own physical games, but given the scale of the next GTA, it also sets a bad precedent for the rest of the industry," reports The Verge. From the report:

> There are a lot of advantages to buying digital. You can start a download from your couch. You can store multiple games on one hard drive so you don't have to get up to play something else. Storefronts like Steam or the PlayStation Store don't run out of inventory of the newest game you're interested in, and you can often get games at a cheaper price thanks to frequent sales.

>

> But it's becoming increasingly clear that digital ownership has significant disadvantages, too. If a game you don't own digitally is removed from a storefront, whether that's for things like licensing, artificially limited availability, or even the store eventually closing down, your only option is to hope you can find a physical version. If your account on a platform is banned, even if that ban isn't warranted, you might be locked out of your digital library with no way to play those games unless you buy them again or hope your account gets restored. You can't sell or trade digital games you've purchased, and while there are ways to share digital games, they require some work and are usually intended just for families.

>

> It's also much harder to preserve digital games because they only "exist" on the hard drive of a console, PC, or device they were downloaded to. This is an issue across many industries, not just console games; there are multiple examples of things like mobile games and streaming shows becoming lost for good when they don't have a physical version. Without physical versions, you also can't find a used version of a game at a garage sale or a local game shop.

It's unclear whether Rockstar will ever release a physical version of the game. As for why, The Verge suspects the decision was made in part to prevent leaks; "by only being available digitally, Rockstar can ensure that GTA VI unlocks at the same exact time for everyone."

"The digital-only choice might also indicate that the game has a massive file size that's too big for PlayStation and Xbox game discs."



[1] https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/5171972o3ak5oa/pre-order-grand-theft-auto-vi-on-june-25

[2] https://www.theverge.com/games/956389/grand-theft-auto-6-gta-digital-code-in-box-physical-games

OpenAI and Broadcom have [1]unveiled Jalapeno, OpenAI's first custom AI chip, [2]designed primarily to handle inference for ChatGPT and other services . It's a major step in OpenAI's plan to "build the full stack behind its models and products," says OpenAI. "By designing more of the stack ourselves, we can serve more intelligence with greater efficiency and keep pushing advanced AI toward broader access." CNBC reports:

> The chip with Broadcom is an ASIC, which industry experts say is less flexible than Nvidia's GPU, but is also less expensive and can be designed for specific AI tasks. OpenAI said that it designed the chip in nine months, and that it also crafted large parts of the computer system where it will be used.

>

> The companies are calling the chip an "Intelligence Processor" and describe it as the first "AI accelerator" in a platform they're building "to make advanced AI faster, more reliable, and more accessible to more people." [...] A physical sample of the new chip will be delivered to OpenAI on Wednesday. The companies said they're aiming for initial deployment of the Jalapeno chips by the end of 2026, "expanding in the years ahead."



[1] https://openai.com/index/openai-broadcom-jalapeno-inference-chip/

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/24/openai-and-broadcom-reveal-jalapeno-first-ai-chip-in-partnership.html

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review:

> [T]he payment company Stripe, founded by brothers Patrick and John Collison, says it will fund a new $500 million nonprofit whose [1]goal is preventing both the common cold and the flu . Its eventual aim is to get rid of respiratory viruses altogether. The new organization, called [2]Intercept , will use grants and investments to back prevention approaches, including vaccines, as well as large-scale air-cleaning systems for schools, offices, and other public spaces. In addition to Stripe, other funders include Anthropic, Flu Lab, and the OpenAI Foundation, as well as Bill Gates and several traders at the quantitative investing fund Jane Street Capital, according to an Intercept spokesperson.

>

> "I think we treat respiratory infections as a minor nuisance, but have really underweighted the burden that they impose on society," says Nan Ransohoff, the Stripe executive leading the initiative along with Charlie Petty, a venture capitalist who joined Stripe this year. On average, people spend 5% of their lifetime fighting a cold or the flu, according to Ransohoff. Despite that, drug companies put relatively little effort into preventing colds. Part of the problem is that the sniffles are caused by more than 200 different viruses, according to the American Lung Association, with rhinoviruses being the most common culprits. There are so many that it typically doesn't pay to try to stop any one of them with a vaccine. "When pharma companies look at it, it's not as attractive as other things they could work on," says Ransohoff. "So it hasn't attracted the resources."

>

> [...] The project takes inspiration from efforts to fight the covid-19 virus, where Veesler's group was among those involved in the speedy development of vaccines, antiviral drugs, and antibodies. According to Ransohoff, Intercept's advisors will include Peter Marks, a former top FDA official, as well as Moncef Slaoui, the pharmaceutical executive who led the US coronavirus vaccine effort, Operation Warp Speed. A key challenge for Intercept will be coming up with ways to counter many viruses at one time. That accounts for the interest in air-cleaning technology, such as using strong ultraviolet light to inactivate viruses. The idea, the group says, is to remove them from the air in the same way municipalities remove impurities from the water supply before it's piped to people's homes.



[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/06/24/1139621/stripe-anthropic-and-openai-are-backing-an-effort-to-stop-respiratory-infections/

[2] https://www.interceptfund.com/

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Barron's:

> Walmart is signing a long-term contract to buy nuclear power for the first time ever, a promising sign that the industry's future is [1]supported by more than just the AI data center boom . The retail giant [2]agreed on Tuesday to buy power from a nuclear plant in Illinois owned by Constellation Energy for its operations in the area, including its stores and a high-tech warehouse in Illinois that stores and sorts perishable food.

>

> Walmart will buy 176 megawatts of power from the plant over a 15-year period, or enough power to serve around 150,000 homes. The Walmart deal will allow Constellation to expand the capacity of the Illinois plant by 30 megawatts, a process known as an uprate, which can involve replacing older equipment and improving efficiency. Walmart, which has pledged to eliminate net carbon emissions from its U.S. operations by 2040, will also receive the environmental attributes associated with the nuclear energy, which generates electricity without carbon emissions.

Further reading: [3]Trump Admin Announces $17.5 Billion In Loans For 10 New Large Nuclear Reactors



[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/topstocks/ar-AA26n1U3

[2] https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2026/06/23/constellation-and-walmart-announce-longterm-agreement-to-support-reliable-emissionsfree-nuclear-energy-in-illinois

[3] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/06/24/0639241/trump-admin-announces-175-billion-in-loans-for-10-new-large-nuclear-reactors

In an exit interview with [1]The Financial Times (paywalled), former Disney CEO Bob Iger says the company seriously considered buying Twitter, explored a potential merger with Apple, and [2]pursued the James Bond franchise during his tenure . The Verge reports:

> According to Iger, Disney came close to buying Twitter from co-founder Jack Dorsey "at a very attractive price," sometime prior to Elon Musk buying the social media platform in 2022 and changing its name to X. Iger had plans to turn Twitter into a global distribution platform for Disney, but walked away on the morning of the deal over concerns that it would be "a horrible distraction."

>

> Disney was also at one point involved in early conversations regarding a potential merger with Apple, something Iger thinks would have been "truly transformational." In the end, Iger says these conversations "never went anywhere," and that "Apple didn't show that much interest." The two companies have a mixed history -- Iger was an Apple board member from 2011 to 2019, and notably a driving force behind Disney acquiring Pixar in 2006, which was led by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs at the time. According to Iger, his first call with Jobs resulted in an almost immediate deal to put Disney content on the first video iPod. "All of a sudden, I'm now someone Steve likes and respects," Iger told The Financial Times. "The old Disney that he knew was lumbering in terms of bureaucracy. And so he thought, this is a new day."

>

> The Pixar acquisition spurred Iger to find more companies to bring under Disney's wing, though not every attempt was successful. "We felt unstoppable. We put together a list of acquisition targets," said Iger. "Marvel was one, Star Wars was another, James Bond was one. We had a list and I figured let's just tick them off and buy them all." Iger provides no details about Disney's attempt to buy the James Bond franchise, but we know it obviously failed -- Amazon bought the 007 distribution rights when it acquired MGM in 2022, and later paid more than $1 billion to take full creative control of the franchise in February 2025.



[1] https://www.ft.com/content/460389f9-3d72-4fed-9dd4-bbc3209c88b0

[2] https://www.theverge.com/streaming/955646/disney-bob-iger-twitter-james-bond-apple-merger

A [1]peer-reviewed Nature critique argues that Microsoft's 2025 Majorana [2]quantum-computing breakthrough -- and its claim that it could enable "a truly meaningful quantum computer not in decades, as some have predicted, but in years" -- is fundamentally flawed. According to Dr Henry Legg, a lecturer at the University of St Andrews, the claims were undermined by omitted data, selective plotting, and [3]basic Python errors that concealed alternative results . Microsoft, for its part, says the bugs were minor and [4]stands by its findings and roadmap. The Register reports:

> "Last year they claimed to be years, not decades from a 'topological quantum supercomputer,'" Legg told The Register in an email. "My feeling is that they are centuries, not decades away. If it works at all -- and, based on what I have seen, the most likely scenario is that it doesn't work." Based on his analysis of the research Microsoft published in 2025, Legg argues that the company's claims about finding and being able to control the elusive Majorana particle to build a topological superconductor do not withstand scrutiny.

>

> "I demonstrate that Microsoft's tune-up software is flawed and that coding errors resulted in incorrect statements to peer reviewers," said Legg. "Raw data, which was omitted from the original paper, also appears to indicate Microsoft's devices contain considerable disorder and are not compatible with the existence of a topological gap. In other words, the prerequisites for Microsoft's claims do not appear to be met, but this was obscured because this data did not appear in the original publication."

>

> Essentially, Microsoft has proposed a [5]Topological Gap Protocol (TGP) that can be used to detect the phase transition deemed to be a prerequisite for conducting quantum calculations using Majorana particles. Legg argues that based on his analysis of underlying transport data (measurements of particle change) -- omitted from the original publication -- Microsoft chose to focus on results that supported its thesis and ignored data that could be interpreted as a negative result. As he notes in his critique: "The TGP plotting code was set to highlight only the largest purportedly topological region."

>

> "The primary consequence was the omission of other regions that passed their tune-up protocol (the TGP)," said Legg. "When peer reviewers asked if other regions existed, Microsoft inaccurately stated that they had investigated the only region passing the protocol within the explored range. This was not correct." Legg also argues that Microsoft mishandled its code. "The code antisymmetrized bias voltage based on array index rather than physical value," his analysis says.

>

> In other words, Microsoft's researchers made a basic programming mistake by evaluating the array index -- the number identifying a value's position in an array -- instead of the value to which the index refers. "There were two pretty basic Python programming errors that hid these alternative regions," Legg explained. "Their plotting software was hardcoded with a filter (zbp_cluster_numbers=[1]) that forced it to display only the single largest region, concealing other successful results from their phase maps. Changing this to zbp_cluster_numbers=[1,2] shows already a second region." Legg added: "The TGP software transformed the data by simply reversing a Python array (x[::-1]) based on its index position, ignoring the actual physical bias voltages."



[1] https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10568-7

[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/02/19/1651235/microsoft-reveals-its-first-quantum-computing-chip-the-majorana-1

[3] https://www.theregister.com/research/2026/06/24/boffin-claims-microsofts-supposed-quantum-leap-does-not-compute-due-to-basic-python-errors/5260489

[4] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10568-7

[5] https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.02472

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press:

> The Trump administration is providing $17.5 billion to [1]speed the development of 10 new large nuclear reactors to meet the skyrocketing power demand from massive data centers. Energy Secretary Chris Wright cited "tremendous interest" among developers of data centers that would buy the power, as well as utilities and energy companies. The nuclear plants could begin construction by 2030 and become operational in the mid-2030s, Wright and other officials [2]said Tuesday. "This is the start," Wright said on a call with reporters. "We're going to move with the players that are ready to stand up and move quickly. Once that supply chain is up and running, do we think there will be dozens of these built going forward? I'd be very surprised if there were not."

>

> Most U.S. nuclear power plants were built between 1970 and 1990. Only two new large reactors have been built from scratch in the United States in recent decades. Those two reactors, at Georgia Power Co.'s Plant Vogtle, were completed years late and billions of dollars over budget. The 10 new reactors will use the same design, Westinghouse's AP1000. Wright said the Plant Vogtle project struggled because of bad planning, supply chain problems and the COVID-19 pandemic. But, he said, the reactor design is "robust and sound."



[1] https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-reactors-energy-trump-wright-57841139aca7d2780a12256692b96fc5

[2] https://x.com/ENERGY/status/2069425458358169727

[1]alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert:

> If you consumed a wild mushroom and suddenly started seeing tiny people around you, you might reasonably assume it contained a familiar psychedelic. But that does not appear to be the case with Lanmaoa asiatica, known locally as jian shou qing, a mushroom species sold in markets in Yunnan, southwestern China. When eaten undercooked, the mushroom can produce [2]vivid visions of miniature people -- not unlike Gulliver on his travels to Lilliput. To try and find out the root cause, University of Utah mycologists Colin Domnauer and Bryn Dentinger sequenced the genomes of 53 mushroom samples from across the wider Lanmaoa genus. And despite the reported hallucinations, they [3]found no close matches to genes associated with psilocybin or ibotenic acid , two well-known mushroom hallucinogens whose biosynthetic pathways were specifically examined in the study.

>

> "Biosynthetic gene mining of the L. asiatica genome found no close hits with any genes known in the production of mushroom psychoactive compounds," write the researchers in their [4]published paper . "This supports our hypothesis of the presence of a novel unidentified metabolite responsible for the unique hallucinogenic properties of L. asiatica." [...] Whatever chemical pathways are causing these effects in the brain, the responsible compound appears to be something scientists have not yet identified. [...] By identifying 1,515 corresponding genes across the selected specimens, the researchers obtained a clearer answer to the question of what defines a mushroom species as part of the genus Lanmaoa. There are now 17 recognized species in the genus, including four that haven't been identified before, two of which the researchers specifically named here: Lanmaoa fallax and Lanmaoa carbonilivor. The researchers say the Lanmaoa family and evolutionary tree can now be more fully mapped out, and some existing specimens may need to be reclassified.



[1] https://slashdot.org/~alternative_right

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilliputian_hallucination

[3] https://www.sciencealert.com/mushroom-behind-tiny-human-visions-lacks-genes-for-known-psychedelics

[4] https://doi.org/10.1080/00275514.2026.2670968