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Taylor Lorenz / Wired: How influencers boosting US-based AI and opposing Chinese AI are paid with money tied to Leading the Future, funded by execs from OpenAI, Palantir, a16z, others — Build American

Tool: iNaturalist Sightings I wanted to see my iNaturalist observations - across two separate accounts - grouped by when they occurred. I'm camping this weekend so I built this entirely on my phone us

Smack dab between Australia and South America, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research vessel Rainier is currently on a mission to map more than 8,000 square nautical mi

A 78-year-old man with a 6-month history of progressive skin lesions developed the condition after returning from Florida. The case was diagnosed as disseminated Acanthamoeba infection through PCR tes

Discover how Marketing Architects scaled real-time CTV advertising with Vultr, doubling throughput, reducing latency by 50%, and cutting cloud costs by up to 50% with high-performance Kubernetes and c

Twitter said pick a side. The eval said the question was wrong. Six months ago, MCP (model context protocol) was the hot new thing: tool usage with a built-in discovery... The post MCP vs. CLI Skills

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Meta acquires a startup Assured Robot Intelligence to bolster its robotics team, which is working on humanoid hardware and the underlying AI that powers it — Meta Platforms In

Microsoft is launching a new AI agent inside Word that's specifically designed for legal teams. Legal Agent handles document edits, negotiation history, and complex documents to help legal teams handl

Minnesota passed the nation's first ban on 'nudification' apps in a 65-0 Senate vote , addressing nonconsensual deepfake imagery where photographs of fully clothed people are manipulated with generati

Model risk governance and risk intelligence are distinct but complementary practices in machine learning operations. Model risk governance focuses on establishing policies, controls, and compliance fr

In the first week of the landmark trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI, Musk took the stand in a crisp black suit and tie and argued that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and president Greg Brockman had deceived h

Nebius Group NV, a Dutch operator of artificial intelligence data centers, today announced plans to buy software maker Eigen AI Inc. for 643 million. The company will finance the acquisition with cash

Companies are taking control of their own data to tailor AI for their needs. The challenge lies in balancing ownership with the safe, trusted flow of high‑quality data needed to power reliable insight

The U.S. Defense Department today announced that it has inked artificial intelligence procurement contracts with seven tech firms. The group includes Amazon Web Service Inc., Google LLC, Microsoft Cor

The Pentagon has struck deals with OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, Elon Musk's xAI, and the startup Reflection, allowing the agency to use their AI tools in classified settings, according t

Ashley Carman / Bloomberg: “Podslop” is flooding listening platforms like Spotify; Podcast Index: of ~11K new podcast feeds in a recent 9-day span, ~39% were likely for AI content shows — Over the pas

This IBM Research challenge problem likely involves analyzing mathematical properties of binary matrices (matrices containing only 0s and 1s), potentially exploring topics such as matrix operations, e

Vercel has updated its Sandbox firewall to support PostgreSQL database connections, enabling developers to connect to Postgres databases from within Vercel's sandboxed environment. This enhancement im

Ben Shimkus / Business Insider: Pushing back on AI job loss fears, AWS CEO Matt Garman says Amazon plans to hire 11,000 software engineering interns in 2026, a figure in line with recent years — - AWS

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: Researchers detail CopyFail, a now-patched Linux vulnerability that lets unprivileged users gain admin access, as many distributions have yet to add fixes — Publicly release

Customer experience used to be something tuned at the edges. Better call center scripts, nicer portals, lower prices or a new survey could make incremental improvements in consumers’ perceptions of a

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy returned to flight this week, marking its first mission of 2026 by launching a heavy-lift payload for the US Space Force. Russia's Soyuz-5 rocket lifted off on April 30 from Baik

Research analyzing 18 scorpion species revealed distinct patterns of metal enrichment in their weapons, with zinc concentrated at stinger tips and zinc or zinc-iron combinations along pincer cutting e

Cybersecurity company Securonix Inc. today announced a new partnership with cyberthreat intelligence company AI SPERA Inc. to deliver integrated threat intelligence enrichment through its ThreatQ Plat

Following concern over insider trading, the U.S. Senate today voted unanimously to ban its members and staff from using prediction markets that can be used to make anonymous bets on future events, inc

The U.S. Senate voted unanimously to ban senators and Senate staff from participating in prediction markets . The action was prompted by insider trading concerns, particularly after Kalshi suspended a

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica: Servers operated by Ubuntu and its parent company Canonical have been down for more than a day, following a “sustained, cross-border attack” — Servers operated by Ubuntu and

Emily Nicolle / Bloomberg: Some retail traders are training AI agents to buy and sell assets on their behalf, as exchanges like Polymarket and Bybit roll out agent-friendly interfaces — Jake Nesler's

Bloomberg: Sources: Cerebras is seeking to raise as much as 4B in its IPO and is targeting a valuation of about 40B — Cerebras Systems Inc. is seeking to raise as much as $4 billion in its initial pub

Wall Street Journal: Sources: Coatue formed Next Frontier in 2025 to buy land for data centers; Next Frontier has a JV with neocloud Fluidstack that has raised $5.7B via junk bonds — Philippe Laffont'

Zijing Wu / Financial Times: Sources: Huawei expects AI chip revenue to hit ~12B in 2026, up 60% from 7.5B in 2025, as orders for its Ascend 950PR chip surge and Nvidia stalls in China — Chinese tech

Natasha Mascarenhas / Bloomberg: Sources: Peter Thiel's Founders Fund raised 6B for a fund to invest in later-stage companies, marking its largest haul ever; 4.5B comes from limited partners — Peter T

Katrina Manson / Bloomberg: Sources: the US DOD strikes agreements with Nvidia, Microsoft, Reflection AI, and AWS to use their AI tools on classified military networks for “lawful” use — The Pentagon

Standard Intelligence Inc., a six-person artificial intelligence startup, today announced that it has raised 75 million in funding. Sequoia and Spark Capital led the round. They were joined by multipl

Lisa Richwine / Reuters: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issues new rules saying acting and writing must be performed by humans and not AI to be eligible for Oscars — Academy Awards or

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. A new US phone network for Christians aims to block porn and g

Pierluigi Paganini / Security Affairs: The FBI warns of rising cyber cargo theft, where attackers hack freight brokers' accounts and dupe carriers; 2025 cargo theft losses in N. America rose 60% YoY —

The Federal Data Paradox examines how U.S. federal agencies accumulate vast amounts of data but face significant barriers to accessing and utilizing it effectively. The article likely discusses challe

Issie Lapowsky / Bloomberg: The gender gap in AI use may be a matter of visibility more than usage, as data suggests women face more judgment for using AI and are less likely to admit it — Women are u

Mike Stone / Reuters: The US Navy awards Domino Data Lab a contract worth up to $100M for AI software that teaches underwater drones to identify new mines in the Strait of Hormuz — The U.S. Navy is ra

Greg Otto / CyberScoop: The US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand publish guidance on orgs' use of agentic AI systems, saying many give AI more access than can be safely monitored — The guidance

Juli Clover / MacRumors: Tim Cook says that the Mac Studio and the Mac mini, which many are buying for AI and agentic tools, “may take several months to reach supply demand balance” — During today's e

This past week delivered another gut punch for science in the US. This time, the target was the National Science Foundation—a federal agency that funds major research projects to the tune of around $9

Canonical's web infrastructure is under a sustained, cross-border Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack , with the hacktivist group The Islamic Cyber Resistance in Iraq, aka 313 Team claiming re

Virgin Galactic has completed assembly of its first Delta-class SpaceShip and begun ground testing in April 2026, with a second ship expected to enter service between late Q4 2026 and early Q1 2027. T

Aarian Marshall / Wired: Waymo says it is continuing to “refine” its system preventing kids under 18 from riding alone, after adult riders reported new age-verification checks — As adult riders report