OpenAI Losses Increased Nearly 8X In 2025, With Spending Hitting $34 Billion
An anonymous reader quotes a report from independent journalist Ed Zitron: Today, I can exclusively report, based on audited financial documents viewed by this publication that have been independently verified by the Financial Times, that OpenAI lost around $38.5 billion in 2025, as well as other crucial details about the financi … ⌘ Read more

Stop Killing Games Fails To Secure EU Law Despite 1.3 Million Signatures
The European Commission has declined (PDF) to propose a law requiring publishers to keep discontinued video games playable, despite the Stop Killing Games initiative collecting nearly 1.3 million verified signatures. Instead, it plans to develop a voluntary industry code covering end-of-life transparency and preservation. Dextero … ⌘ Read more

AI and Brain-Computer Interface Allow Speechless ALS Patient To Work a Full-Time Job
UC Davis researchers say an implanted brain-computer interface has allowed Casey Harrell, an ALS patient who cannot speak, to synthesize sentences from brain activity with 99% accuracy in controlled tests and about 92% accuracy in everyday use. The Register reports that the system has remained usable at … ⌘ Read more

HPE Tempts VMware Users, Partners With Year of Free Virtualization Software
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) new virtualization software promotion will likely pique the interest of end users and resellers who are unhappy with Broadcom’s pricing of VMware. During its HPE Discover event in Las Vegas this week, HPE announced that customers could u … ⌘ Read more

Commodore’s Callback 8020 Is a $499 Flip Phone That Blocks Social Media and Browsers
Commodore has unveiled the Callback 8020, a $499 Sailfish OS flip phone that runs most Android apps but deliberately blocks social media, browsers, email, and workplace apps to discourage doomscrolling. The “not dumb dumbphone” still supports messaging, music, maps, ridesharing, hotspots, a removable battery … ⌘ Read more

Binance Set To Lose Permission To Operate In EU
Binance is expected to lose permission to serve EU customers in July after Greek regulators reportedly decided to reject its MiCA license application. Reuters reports: Under new EU rules, called MiCA, crypto firms have until the end of June to obtain a licence to allow them to keep servicing clients across the bloc. Binance’s application, made to Greece’s market regulator, is set … ⌘ Read more

France To Stop Certifying Products Without Quantum-Safe Encryption
Starting in 2027, France’s cybersecurity agency ANSSI will stop certifying security products that lack quantum-resistant encryption, effectively forcing government agencies and critical infrastructure operators to phase out older cryptographic systems. Reuters reports: Samih Souissi, ANSSI’s chief of staff, said at the France Quantum conference … ⌘ Read more

Mobileye Is Entering the US Robotaxi Market With Standalone Service
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The driving technology company Mobileye plans to launch a robotaxi service in an as-yet-unnamed US city in 2027, it said earlier today. The service will be vertically integrated, using Mobileye’s Moovit mobility platform to interact with customers booking rides, coordinate drivers, and … ⌘ Read more

Snap’s First Consumer AI Glasses Are Coming This Fall For $2,195
Snap is launching its first consumer augmented-reality glasses this fall for $2,195. “You can preorder a pair of Specs now at specs.com with a $200 refundable deposit, and Snap says they’re expected to ship ‘this fall’ in the US, UK, and France,” reports The Verge. From the report: This is a big moment for Snap: The company made a big entry into sma … ⌘ Read more

SpaceX To Acquire AI Coding Startup Cursor For $60 Billion
SpaceX has agreed to acquire Cursor for $60 billion in stock, adding the popular AI coding assistant to Elon Musk’s newly public aerospace-and-AI conglomerate. CNBC reports: Cursor built a popular AI coding tool that helps software developers generate, edit and review code, and the company has experienced explosive growth since its founding in 2022. In Nove … ⌘ Read more

The US Government’s Anthropic Models Ban Was Never About an AI Jailbreak
TechCrunch’s Zack Whittaker argues that the U.S. government’s abrupt export-control order forcing Anthropic to pull its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models offline was “never about an AI jailbreak” threat. Instead, it was driven more by “personality differences” between the AI company and Trump administration. Security experts say the repor … ⌘ Read more

Russian Spam and Profanities Are Now Plaguing the Arch Linux AUR
The Arch Linux User Repository “AUR” is facing another issue just days after more than 1,500 packages were found carrying malware. According to Phoronix, over 70 AUR packages have reportedly been modified to insert Russian spam and profane messages into users’ shell configuration files. From the report: Nicolas Boichat with his AI/LLM detection bot … ⌘ Read more

Firefox 152 Adds JPEG XL Support, Redesigned Settings
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Linuxiac: Mozilla has released Firefox 152, the latest update to its popular open-source web browser, with updated settings, improved media controls, experimental JPEG XL support, and various platform-specific fixes for desktop and Android. A key update is the redesigned Firefox Settings page, which now features clearer groupings … ⌘ Read more

Venus’ Strange Rotation Was Likely Triggered By a High Velocity Moon-Sized Impactor
New simulations suggest Venus’ extremely slow backward rotation may have been triggered by a high-angle collision with a fast-moving object roughly one-tenth its mass. The impact could have dramatically altered Venus’ spin and melted nearly its entire mantle. Universe Today reports: Venus’ bizarre and extra … ⌘ Read more

A Chinese Rocket Breaks Apart Dangerously Close To the Starlink Constellation
A Chinese Zhuque-2E rocket’s upper stage broke apart shortly after last week’s June 9 launch, likely creating 100 to 150 pieces of debris in a busy region of low-Earth orbit crossed by the ISS and lower-altitude Starlink satellites. Most fragments should reenter within months because of atmospheric drag, but experts s … ⌘ Read more

Cybersecurity Vets Protest ‘Dangerous’ US Government Ban On Anthropic’s Most Powerful Models
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A group made up of dozens of cybersecurity experts, including several well-known veterans of the industry, published an open letter to the U.S. government asking it to lift the export control order on Anthropic’s Fable and Mythos models. Accord … ⌘ Read more

The US Government Is Letting a Key Data Center Regulation Expire
The Federal Data Center Enhancement Act (FDCEA) is set to expire in September without an apparent replacement, potentially ending requirements for federal agencies to report on data-center efficiency, resilience, energy and water use, and contractor sustainability. Wired reports: Despite the public backlash, the Office of Management and Budget (OM … ⌘ Read more

FBI Issues Urgent Kali365 Security Warning For Teams, Outlook, OneDrive Users
alternative_right shares a report from The Hill: The FBI released an urgent security warning to the public about a fast-acting scam targeting Microsoft 365 users on Teams, Outlook and OneDrive. The agency warned that the hacking platform Kali365 seeks out OAuth device codes, allowing scammers to sneak past multi-factor auth … ⌘ Read more

Google Chrome’s Next Update Will Mark the End of Popular Ad Blockers
Google is removing Chrome’s last remaining workarounds for Manifest V2 extensions, effectively ending support for legacy ad blockers such as the original uBlock Origin. 9to5Google reports: CyberNews points out a Chromium commit that removes support for the “kExtensionManifestV2Disabled” flag, which is referred to as “dead code” seeing as Ch … ⌘ Read more

Users Cry Foul After AMD Stripped Memory Crypto From Its Consumer CPUs
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A decade ago, AMD added a protection to its high-end CPUs to protect them against cold boot attacks and other types of physical exploits that siphon sensitive data out of the connected memory chips. Short for Transparent Secure Memory Encryption, TSME encrypts the entire conten … ⌘ Read more

Trump’s ‘Made In the USA’ Phone Is Just a Reskinned HTC U24 Pro
Longtime Slashdot reader necro81 writes: The heavily promoted, $499 T1 “Trump Phone” was originally said to be “Made in the USA” and ship in September 2025. Later, that was downgraded to “Assembled in the USA.” Given the Trump Organization’s lack of engineering or supply chain expertise, many assumed the “T1” would just be a private-label phone made … ⌘ Read more

Britain Unveils Sweeping Ban On Social Media For Under-16s
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from NBC News: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced a sweeping ban on social media use for those under 16, joining other countries around the world seeking to protect children online. “It’s a big step for our country,” Starmer said in a recorded video message released Monday. “Social media is maki … ⌘ Read more

Fox Is Buying Roku For $22 Billion
Fox is buying Roku for $22 billion, combining Fox’s sports, news, entertainment, Tubi, and Fox One offerings with a streaming platform that reaches about 100 million people. The companies say the merger would create the “third-largest player in US television by share of viewing,” while Fox insists Roku will remain open to competing apps after the deal closes. CNN reports: Fox has dabbled in stream … ⌘ Read more

Google CEO Largely Avoids Discussing AI In Stanford Commencement Speech
BrianFagioli writes: Google CEO Sundar Pichai delivered Stanford University’s 2026 commencement address, but despite leading one of the companies at the center of the AI boom, he spent very little time discussing artificial intelligence. Instead, the speech focused on optimism, working on hard things, and following your interests. T … ⌘ Read more

Swiss Voters Reject Proposal To Cap Population At 10 Million
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Voters in Switzerland have rejected an unprecedented far-right proposal to cap the country’s population at 10 million in a divisive referendum dubbed “the Swiss Brexit.” Some 54.79% of voters were against the proposal by the Swiss People’s party (SVP) and 45.21% were in favor. Turnout was 58.86%. A differ … ⌘ Read more

Are Many College Students Losing the Ability to Read?
Futurism reports:

in a new essay for The Chronicle Higher Education, university-level literature and writing instructor Tyler Jagt recalls how not a single one of his students could get through an assigned 20-page article, something that he had read “without complaint” as an undergraduate a decade ago.

One student confessed that the reason they didn’t finish was that … ⌘ Read more

IT Workers Are Now Struggling to Find Work, as ‘Picky’ Companies Demand AI Skills
“Battered by years of mass layoffs, California tech workers were hoping the job market would rebound this year,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “But things are getting worse.”

The class divide is widening in Silicon Valley as a tiny group of employees is landing unprecedented packages for AI skills, while many others … ⌘ Read more

US-Iran Peace Agreement Prompts Stock Rally, Leaves Some Investors Skeptical and Questions on Speed of Resuming Oil Production
“Asian stocks rallied Monday while oil prices tumbled,” reports CNBC, “after the U.S. and Iran agreed to a peace deal aimed at ending nearly four months of conflict…”

The strongest reaction was seen in energy markets. U.S. … ⌘ Read more

Workers Spend As Much Time ‘Botsitting’ AI As Producing Useful Work, Survey Finds
“As the use of artificial intelligence spreads across companies worldwide, it is relieving workers of tedious old chores but creating new ones,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

“Most people don’t realize the amount of time that they’re spending working on the tools to get the time savings that they’re professing,” sai … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Updates Six Windows’ Apps. ‘Photos’ Gets Watermarks for Copilot Images (Off by Default)
Microsoft dropped “massive” updates for six stock Windows apps, reports the “Microsoft enthusiast” site Neowin.

Here’s some of their more interesting highlights for Clock, Media Player, Calculator, Voice Recorder, Photos, and Paint:

The Photos app (version 2026.11060.2004.0):

AI wat … ⌘ Read more

UK Scientists See Little Evidence for Claims Smartphones Are Rewiring Kids’ Brains
UK’s Members of Parliament (MP) were “looking for proof that smartphones and social media are rotting children’s brains,” writes The Register — but they got “a less satisfying answer from neuroscientists on Wednesday: nobody can really prove it.”

Appearing before the Science, Innovation and Technology Commit … ⌘ Read more

As ‘Disclosure Day’ Premieres, Steven Spielberg Says He Believes Aliens Really Have Visited Earth
Steven Spielberg grants that his 1977 UFO film Close Encounters was “speculative,” writes the Associated Press, but “Disclosure Day, he insists, is the real deal.”

“It’s my first film that will be considered science fiction that I do not consider to be science fiction,” Spiel … ⌘ Read more

Will Meta’s $14 Billion Bet on AI Ever Pay Off?
“A year after spending over $14 billion to bring in Alexandr Wang and a group of his top Scale AI engineers to revamp its artificial intelligence efforts, Meta is at least back on the map in AI,” reports CNBC, “though it’s still far behind OpenAI, Anthropic and Google in the market.”

Wang’s big accomplishment was the delivery of the Muse Spark AI model in April, marking Meta’s firs … ⌘ Read more

Vintage AMD R600 Graphics Driver Sees Code Cleanups Thanks To GitHub Copilot
Phoronix reports:

The AMD R600 Gallium3D driver saw 59 commits [last] Sunday to Mesa 26.2. Making this code restructuring and code cleaning all the more notable is that the improvements to this old AMD Radeon graphics driver was done in part by GitHub Copilot.

Gert Wollny has been among the few open-source developers … ⌘ Read more

How America’s Energy Department is Building a National Platform for Doing Science with AI
America’s Energy Department “wants to build a single national platform for doing science with AI,” reports Communications of the ACM:

It is called the Genesis Mission, and the idea is to connect the country’s 17 national laboratories, their supercomputers, scientific datasets, and a growing layer o … ⌘ Read more

Blizzard Sues To Take Down Another Private World of Warcraft Server, Project Ascension
“Blizzard Entertainment is continuing its crusade against private World of Warcraft servers,” reports the gaming news site Aftermath:

The company filed a new lawsuit on Friday in a California court against the makers of Project Ascension, alleging copyright infringement, Digital Millennium Copyright A … ⌘ Read more

Bitcoin Has Lost Nearly Half Its Value in 11 Months
The price of bitcoin dropped 13% down to $64,394 just in June — but there’s more bad news, reports CNBC.” “Bitcoin has lost nearly half its value since reaching a record high above $123,000 in July 2025.”

While previous bitcoin selloffs were often followed by large rebounds in price, the latest decline may prompt some investors to revisit why they own bitcoin in the first pla … ⌘ Read more

Four LTS Java Versions Get End-of-Support in a Three-Year Window (2029-2032)
Simon Ritter joined Sun Microsystems in 1996 and spent time working in both Java development and consultancy. He’s now written an opinion piece for InfoWorld warning that “Between 2029 and 2032, every currently supported long-term support (LTS) version of Java will reach end-of-support within a single three-year window … ⌘ Read more

UK Police Officer Accused of Using AI to Fake Evidence
The Sunday Times reports:

A criminal investigation has begun after a police officer allegedly used AI to create evidential material in a “number of cases”. Derbyshire Constabulary said an officer was being investigated over an allegation of suspected perverting the course of justice. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) confirmed it was engaging with defence lawyers … ⌘ Read more

How Author Dave Eggers Avoids Smartphones, Internet Access, and Flock Cameras
A few weeks ago on a bike ride “inspiration struck” for Dave Eggers, reports SFGate…

Without a pen and paper handy, he was stuck texting the idea to himself. The problem? Eggers doesn’t own a smartphone. “It takes 20 minutes to write a sentence,” Eggers said… It’s a funny predicament for Eggers, given that he’s arguab … ⌘ Read more

Amazon CEO’s Talks with U.S. Officials Triggered Crackdown on Anthropic Models
The Wall Street Journal reports:

The Trump administration’s decision to halt all foreign use of Anthropic’s most capable AI models was prompted by conversations between Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy and U.S. officials including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, people familiar with the matter said.

Researchers at Am … ⌘ Read more

Shutterstock ‘Evolves’ Into ‘Human-Led, AI-Powered Creative Platform’
Slashdot reader BrianFagioli writes:
Shutterstock has unveiled what it calls a “human-led, AI-powered” creative platform that combines its massive library of [human] contributor-created content with AI image and video generation, AI editing, conversational search, prompt enhancement, and automated model selection tools. The company says the goa … ⌘ Read more

GM Updates 250,000 EVs with Vehicle-to-Grid Firmware, Announces Grid-Scale Sodium-Ion Batteries
“Battery breakthroughs will lessen AI’s demand on the electricity grid,” argues The Washington Post’s editoral board, arguing that GM’s latest moves “offer a fresh reminder that resource constraints can be solved by innovation.”

Or As Fortune put it, “America’s electric grid is buck … ⌘ Read more

Vim Classic 8.3 Launched as an AI-Free Vim Fork
This month saw the release of Vim Classic 8.3, the first stable version of a new long-term support fork of Vim maintained without generative AI tools. Linuxiac reports:

The release is based on Vim 8.2.0148 and includes selected bug fixes and patches backported from later upstream Vim releases. Vim Classic was first announced by [SourceHut’s CEO/founder] Drew DeVault in March 20 … ⌘ Read more

Arch Linux Malware Incident: Malicious Commits Found in 1,579 Packages
More than 1,500 user-contributed packages in the Arch Linux User Repository “AUR” were infected with malware, reports Phoronix:

The last message in the thread over this security incident is noting that Arch Linux developers have deleted all the malicious commits they are aware of. Cited was this list that puts the number of malware-af … ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Investigated By Coalition of America’s State Attorneys General
“A coalition of state attorneys general has opened an investigation into OpenAI,” reports the Wall Street Journal, citing “people familiar with the matter.”

OpenAI was served Friday with a subpoena seeking documents related to a broad range of its activities and impact on users, including advertising, user engagement and retention, hand … ⌘ Read more

New UK Referendum Would Flip ‘Brexit’ Result of a Decade Ago, Poll Finds
It’s the 10-year anniversary of Britain’s “Brexit” vote withdrawing from the European Union.
But a new UK poll “shows that a new Brexit referendum would reverse the vote that led to Britain’s departure,” reports Bloomberg:

Fifty-two percent of Britons think the UK should rejoin the EU, according to an Ipsos survey of 1,137 British … ⌘ Read more

US Congress Lets ‘Warrantless Wiretap’ Law FISA Lapse
It’s the U.S. law that allows wiretaps without a warrant for surveilling foreign targets. And the U.S. Congress just let it lapse. Sort of. NPR reports:

Each year, the provision is used by American intelligence agencies to collect the electronic communications of hundreds of thousands of foreigners located outside of the United States. The government says that more than … ⌘ Read more

Mystery Orb Videos, Other UFO Records Released By White House
The Trump administration released another large batch of government UAP records, including videos of glowing orb-like objects appearing to split and rejoin, witness accounts, illustrations, and decades-old investigative documents. Axios reports: The documents indicate that government agents have spent years monitoring, investigating and documen … ⌘ Read more

World’s First Crewed Solid-State Flight Electrifies Aviation’s Future
The Helios Horizon has completed what its developers call the first crewed, fixed-wing flight powered by solid-state batteries. New Atlas reports: On June 5, test pilot Miguel Iturmendi lifted off from Zephyrhills Municipal Airport in Florida at the controls of the Helios Horizon – the first crewed, fixed-wing aircraft ever to fly on … ⌘ Read more