So Long, ‘Ferrynoia.’ Green Maritime Technology Is Here
From San Francisco to Stockholm, a new generation of electric ferries is entering passenger service, marking a tipping point for green maritime technology. ⌘ Read more

Anthropic urges global freeze on AI as it warns of losing control
The tech giant has offered to halt work on more powerful systems on one condition: that its rivals in the US and China agree to stop at the same time. ⌘ Read more

Antony Starr Agrees With Backrooms Director, Calls Cast ‘Horrible’ in AI Movies
Antony Starr recently came out in support of Backrooms director Kane Parsons regarding AI. He admitted that recent movies have shown that audiences value real storytelling over big VFX-driven productions. These comments come shortly after Parsons expressed his disinterest in AI, claiming that such technology takes away the creative satisfaction. Antony Starr backs Kane Parsons’ […]

The po … ⌘ Read more

Analysts raise IkeGPS forecasts on sharper earnings and AI gains
Forsyth Barr analysts have raised their spot valuation on IkeGPS after the technology company delivered a “strong” full-year result.

The dual-listed utility pole assessment technology firm more than halved its net after-tax loss in the 12 months ending March 31, 2026, to $7.5 million from a net loss … ⌘ Read more

NZ startup wins Dubai airport contract
Auckland-based aviation compliance startup OneReg has signed Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest international airport, as a customer.

While currently impacted by the war in Iran, Dubai is the home base airport for the global airline Emirates and has long been the world’s most heavily trafficked international hub. ⌘ Read more

EU Plots To Abandon US Tech
Ancient Slashdot reader whitroth shares a report from Politico, with the caption: “shutting down Microsoft Office for the International Criminal Court (ICC) was clearly a wake-up call.” From the report: The EU is moving to counter American dominance in technology by reaching for one of the oldest tools in its arsenal: industrial strategy. As the European Commission unveiled a plan Wednesday to reduce Europe’s reliance … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Plans Linux Tools, RTX Spark Desktop For Windows Devs
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft’s Build developer conference kicked off today, and as with almost everything the company has done in the last few years, Microsoft’s opening keynote focused overwhelmingly on AI and other closely related technologies. […] On the hardware front, we didn’t get any updates for existi … ⌘ Read more

New science priorities will give more bang for buck: PM science adviser
New Zealand needs to get more impact out of its science research system ahead of any major funding increases, says Government science leader John Roche.

Roche is the Prime Minister’s chief science adviser and is deputy chair of the PM’s science, innovation and technology advisory council. The council has driven a programme to [reprioritise](https://businessdesk.co.nz/article/opinion/b … ⌘ Read more

From Uber to Exaba: AJ Tills takes on Big Tech storage
When it comes to scaling high‑growth tech companies, AJ Tills has been in the engine room. ⌘ Read more

Gemma 4 12B: A unified, encoder-free multimodal model
Article URL: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/developers-tools/introducing-gemma-4-12b/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48385906

Points: 47

# Comments: 10 ⌘ Read more

How James Cameron’s Aliens Helped Inspire Real Military Tech
James Cameron’s visionary filmmaking techniques have not only captivated audiences but also inspired real-life technology used by the US military, according to Aliens star Ricco Ross. In a recent interview, the 68-year-old actor claimed that the equipment used while filming the 1986 sci-fi adventure was “so brilliant” that the military reached out to Cameron to […]

The post [How James Cameron’s Aliens Helped I … ⌘ Read more

Australia gets access to AI model ‘too dangerous to release’
Mythos is so good at finding software flaws that its maker won’t release it. Now Australia is on the access list. ⌘ Read more

Data centre boom could send power prices 26 per cent higher: Climate group
As Victoria and NSW chase billions in data centre capital, a report warns households could foot the bill for a dirtier, costlier grid. ⌘ Read more

DataMasque raises $7m
Auckland startup DataMasque solved a real-life privacy and security problem for people who build software – or, more recently, for those who need to get a new AI-based app up to speed.

That helped it land marquee clients like payroll giant ADP, New York Life and the Best Western hotel chain in the United States and One NZ here. ⌘ Read more

Attention is a leadership skill. Your phone is undermining it
I didn’t step away from my smartphone for a year because I dislike technology. I did it because I wanted to lead and perform at a higher level.

As leaders and executives, our effectiveness depends on clarity of thought, presence in decision-making, and the ability to focus on what truly matters. ⌘ Read more

Meta legal action forces Facebook whistleblower to sit in silence – Hay festival
Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/31/meta-legal-action-forces-facebook-whistleblower-to-stay-silent-at-hay-festival

Comments URL: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48353965](https://news.ycombinato … ⌘ Read more

Meta tests AI subscriptions and rolls out new paid plans for Facebook, Instagram
By Dean Seal and Meghan Bobrowsky

Meta Platforms has started the rollout of subscription plans for Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and is testing new subscriptions for users of its AI chatbot as the company seeks to recoup some of the costs from its expensive AI buildout. ⌘ Read more

European banks could cut 20% of jobs on AI, Morgan Stanley says
By Isabella Farr

The rapid spread of artificial intelligence may enable European banks to reduce their headcount by as much as a fifth over the “shorter term,” according to Morgan Stanley analysts. ⌘ Read more

Feeling the chill? These are the best portable heaters to keep you toasty
From cheap convector panels to cutting-edge far infrared units, what’s the best kind of fan-free portable heater for your home? ⌘ Read more

‘Here to stay’: The numbers behind the NFL’s major Australian gamble
With 8.8 million local fans and a confidential cheque from Victorian taxpayers, American football is taking on the AFL and NRL. ⌘ Read more

G7 Agrees On Shared Language Around Open-Source AI, Open Weights AI
Ahead of the 52nd G7 Summit being held in Evian, France next month, the recently conducted G7 Digital and Technology Ministers’ Meeting came to agreement on shared language around open-source AI and on the importance of open-source in AI… ⌘ Read more

Leo’s first encyclical attacks technological messianism
Article URL: https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/05/28/leos-first-encyclical-attacks-technological-messianism

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48334710

Points: 8

# Comments: 1 ⌘ Read more

Company accidentally blows $500M on Claude AI in one month
Article URL: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/company-accidentally-blows-500-000-000-on-claude-ai-in-one-month/ar-AA24nahv

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48333177

Points: 5

# Comments: 0 ⌘ Read more

Anthropic rockets to $1.6t valuation, topping OpenAI in AI showdown
By Bradley Olson and Josh Beckerman

AI startup Anthropic closed a funding round at a US$965 billion (NZ$1.6 trillion) valuation, rocketing past ChatGPT-maker OpenAI as the companies race ahead on expected public listings this year. ⌘ Read more

Oppo Find N6: The foldable that finally rattles Samsung
Oppo’s Find N6 is the first book-style foldable that genuinely feels like a rival – and in some respects, a threat – to Samsung’s dominant Galaxy Z Fold line.

It has a near-invisible crease on its screen when unfolded, a larger battery, faster charging and respectable camera hardware, setting new benchmarks for what’s available in a foldable – at least among those available in the New Zealand market. ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Allegedly Leaked Dutch Civil Servants’ Data To the US
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cybernews: The technology giant Microsoft has been accused of leaking the data of civil servants working for the Netherlands’ regulatory agencies to the US House of Representatives. The civil servants affected by the leak work at the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) and the Dutch Data Protection Autho … ⌘ Read more

Of course, @movq@www.uninformativ.de! Most of my points are also included in your list.

First of all, programming is what I really do enjoy the most. So, it doesn’t make any sense at all to not do this anymore. “But you could use your now free time to do something much cooler and more valuable!”, others might reply. Fuck no, I don’t want to waste my time with other shit that doesn’t fulfill me, why on earth would I want to do that?

All this hallucination reduces quality badly. In my experience, it’s also happening much more rapidly than I expected. Even though developers are still supposed to own and understand whatever has been generated under their name and even be responsible for that, the sad reality is that teammates often blindly trust the AI output. “But I asked the AI and it told me that $this was impossible”, “I’ve no idea either, but the AI just generated it” are responses I get more often. What really makes my angry is when I point out a flaw and suggest an alternative and this is the reaction. It happened several times that just trying it out and seeing it clearly work to proof my point only took me half a minute, but people still did something handwavy else instead.

The learning effect is drastically reduced. The more time I spend on a topic, the better the odds that whatever I learned actually makes it over into long-term memory. It’s like if a collegue just says “do it like that” or “this solves your problem”, but neither explains the why or how. Somehow, people are still convinced that it’s a completely different story when you replace the human counterpart with a computer program in this equation.

Skills are unlearned. It’s like with automation in general, just much worse. You end up in a state where you’ve no clue how anything works under the hood or how to actually find out important information that are needed to solve your problem. You’re screwed when a process breaks out of the blue. Even though it can become also rather terrible, with classical automation you’re typically still be able to decipher how exactly the thing was supposed to do something.

The energy consumption is sooo high, I absolutely do not want to be a part in burning down our planet. I’m sure I find (and probably have long found without knowing) other ways to contribute to worsen our climate crisis.

The scraper part is already covered in detail in your list. :-)

I’m convinced that license and copyright violations are only played down or even refused entirely because companies want to make big money quickly. With the work of others of course. Their double standards are obvious, they still try to actively keep their own stuff secret and out of any training sets. At most for internal use only. Virtually noone in charge is interested in good long-term solutions. Short-term for the win, when disaster eventually strikes, the causers are long gone, the responsibilities in other hands.

Vendor lock-in is something that lots of folks are only realizing very slowly. It’s completely crazy to me. This drug dealer routine should be well-known by now. It’s fucking everywhere. Yet, people are always surprised when they found themselves caught in it.

Adding new AI stuff only increases complexity. But complexity is the enemy that everybody should fear and reduce as much as possible. Of course, this is not limited to AI at all. And everywhere I look around, people in charge looooove to make things way more complicated than they ever need to be. Yet, simplicity is the real art and much harder to achieve.

I don’t understand why we have to go back full force to the ambiguity of natural languages. This alone should be more than enough to realize what a stupid idea all that is. Linked to that is that the “instruction set” is interpreted differently with newer model versions. I mean, is has to be. Why else would somebody want to upgrade in the first place than to get more Powerful™ Features™?

Some people argue that with AI the democratization is empowered. However, in my view, the exact opposite is the case. Models are getting so large that you can basically not run them locally or even train them. So, you have to rely on whatever the vendor offers you and runs for you. In the end, this only gives the owners more power, the multi billionaires. Not exactly what I understand by democratization.

Finally, technology assessments are missing completely. Or they are faked such that mostly only the (questionable) benefits are listed. But all the negative impact is just ignored.

Let’s keep some popcorn around for when this all explodes. :-)

NZ’s early AI adopters are already reaping the benefits
When Air New Zealand updated its uniforms last year, it faced a large and potentially expensive job: updating its library of 18,000 brand images.

“So, what are we going to do?” the airline’s data and AI lead, Mike Parsons, asked rhetorically at one of the last formal Techweek26 sessions in Auckland last week. ⌘ Read more

Google’s plan to run your life could break the internet
The tech giant’s new AI overhaul is set to have damaging ramifications. ⌘ Read more

OMG, most of today’s new slang goes unspoken
Where Romeo and Juliet once uttered pledges on the QT, serenading in shadows, the modern Romeo is as likely to slide into Juliet’s DMs. ⌘ Read more

China wants its companies to embrace AI – without firing workers
By Hannah Miao and Raffaele Huang

Last summer, Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng asked the country’s biggest employers – tech companies, banks, carmakers and others – how AI could affect their workforces. ⌘ Read more

Business of Tech: Is Elon Musk’s Starlink eating rural New Zealand?
Starlink has quickly become the hero – and potential hazard – of rural broadband in New Zealand. ⌘ Read more

James Bond’s battle with AI is his most human story yet
As Amazon tries to decide a cinematic future for a broken icon, a new video game provides the best 007 experience in decades. ⌘ Read more

Straker updates on ongoing fraud investigation
Straker has provided an update on its ongoing investigation into transaction anomalies involving the bank accounts of its US subsidiary, Straker Translations.

The Auckland translation technology company, Straker, was suspended from trading on the Australian Securities Exchange after discovering suspected fraud at its United States subsidiary involving at least US$1.5 million (NZ$2.5m) and possibly more. ⌘ Read more

What Pope Leo XIV’s First Encyclical Says About the Power of AI
In Magnifica Humanitas, the Pope decries the concentration of technological power in a few global players. ⌘ Read more

The $180m payday that ‘meme king’ didn’t share with most staff
He’s the face of the viral “co-founder Albo” campaign. He’s also the founder whose $180 million exit handed a payday to a tiny circle while other staff were kept in the dark. ⌘ Read more

Meet Mark Zuckerberg’s right-hand man
By Meghan Bobrowsky

Tensions were running high at Meta Platforms.

For weeks, rumours circulated that the company was planning a large layoff as it poured tens of billions of dollars into artificial intelligence. Then, employees were told their keystrokes and mouse clicks would be recorded to help train AI agents to use computers. ⌘ Read more

Intel Working On pmtctl Tool For Linux In Dealing With Platform Telemetry Data
A set if 17 patches were posted today to the Linux kernel mailing list for introducing a new tool in the kernel source tree, pmtctl. This new pmtctl tool is for interfacing with Intel Platform Monitoring Technology… ⌘ Read more

Straker suspended after suspected US employee fraud
Auckland translation technology company Straker has been suspended from trading on the Australian Securities Exchange after discovering suspected fraud at its United States subsidiary involving at least US$1.5 million (NZ$2.5m) and possibly more.

Straker requested the voluntary suspension on Tuesday, saying it had identified transactions totalling approximately US$1.5m that it was confident had been misappropriated … ⌘ Read more

AI ‘capability leap’: 80% of software developers now using it
Late last year, AWS senior engineer Mike Nooney noticed a flurry of activity on social media that indicated something exciting had happened in his field: AI had taken what we described as a “capability leap”.

“So, I thought, let’s get in and have a look at Claude Code and some of the other tools,” he recounted to an audience at last week’s Techweek26 summit. ⌘ Read more

Are chatbots making things more difficult than old-fashioned transactions?
These days as consumers, we are often locked into these false amities with chatbots, our to-and-fro reliant on what previous questions and responses have been digested by the software. ⌘ Read more

Eroad faces ‘distraction’ as largest shareholder tries to overhaul board
Eroad’s chair says a reset towards the New Zealand and Australian market is being distracted by a shareholder’s board takeover effort.

Alongside publishing full-year results on Monday that showed flat revenue and a $161.1 million loss, the fleet technology company said its largest single shareholder, Ampfield Management, was seeking to overhaul its board. ⌘ Read more

Pacific Edge is back from the brink and needs to prove it can execute
Medical technology company Pacific Edge’s annual revenue has nearly halved as it looks towards an expected US-led turnaround in its fortunes.

The company has resumed billing Medicare in the US after being frozen out of the system last year. ⌘ Read more

Syos expands drone fleet with underwater minesweeper
New Zealand drone company Syos Aerospace says it is closely monitoring the war in Iran and believes its uncrewed underwater vehicles could be suited to detecting and clearing mines in the Strait of Hormuz, as it expands its autonomous systems portfolio.

Undersea expansion ⌘ Read more

‘AI washing’: firms are scrambling to rebrand themselves as tech-focused
Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/24/ai-washing-pr-firms-scrambling-rebrand

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48257980

Points: 15

# Comments: 2 ⌘ Read more

KernelScript: A Programming Language For Kernel Customization & App Optimizations
Multikernel Technologies Inc has been working on a multi-kernel architecture for the Linux kernel while in addition to that they have been developing KernelScript as a domain-specific language for carrying out Linux kernel customizations and app-specific optimizations… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Flight Simulator’s new collaboration with NSW Rural Fire Service
The NSW Rural Fire Service has teamed up with Microsoft for a new aerial firefighting mission in Flight Simulator. 9news.com.au spoke to the game’s director, Jörg Neumann, to learn all about it, and how they’ve used a million-dollar camera to capture real life locations for the game. ⌘ Read more

What you need to know about VPNs in 2026
The technology is increasingly being used to dodge age and verification checks in Australia. But how does it work, and is it legal? ⌘ Read more

ICE Awards $25M Iris-Scanning Contract to Bi2 Technologies
Article URL: https://www.projectsaltbox.com/p/ice-awards-25-million-iris-scanning

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48252720

Points: 17

# Comments: 1 ⌘ Read more

Meta begins 8,000 global job cuts in AI efficiency push
By Kurt Wagner, Riley Griffin and Olivia Fletcher

Meta Platforms Inc. is alerting thousands of employees that they’re being laid off, part of a previously announced restructuring aimed at reducing costs while the company invests heavily in artificial intelligence. ⌘ Read more