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Remember that AI-powered vending machine that went bankrupt after Wall Street Journal reporters "systematically manipulated the bot into giving away its entire inventory for free"? It was Anthropic's experiment, with setup handled by a startup named Andon Labs (which also built the hardware and software integration). But for their latest experiment, Andon Labs co-founders Lukas Petersson and Axel Backlund "signed a three-year lease on a retail space in SF," reports Business Insider, "and gave a…

175 million people in Brazil now use its instant-payment system "Pix", developed by the country's central bank for real-time payments using QR codes or keys, and American Banker notes that the central banks of Argentina and Costa Rica also have developed their own widely used digital systems for instant payments. Latin America has been able to build up sleek and effective payment systems in record time because it is not held back by legacy payment technology that isn't built for instant money m…

Arizona state prosecutors allege Kalshi is running an illegal gambling operation, charging the prediction market with 20 "wagering" misdemeanors. But Friday a federal judge "temporarily barred Arizona from enforcing its gambling laws against predictive market operators," reports the Associated Press, "and put the brakes on a criminal wagering case that the state has filed against Kalshi. "U.S. District Judge Michael Liburdi's ruling means a Monday arraignment hearing for Kalshi has been called …

"Breathable oxygen has been created from Moon dust," reports the Telegraph, "in a world first that paves the way for a lunar base." Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin ""announced this week that it had developed a reactor that could successfully release oxygen from lunar soil by using an electric current." Almost half of Moon dust — the thin layer of rock that blankets the lunar surface — is oxygen, but it is bound to metals such as iron and titanium... Previous work to isolate oxygen has been lab-based, …

Amazon's Luna cloud gaming service is making some changes, reports Engadget: It's no longer possible to buy Ubisoft+ and Jackbox Games subscriptions or standalone games through Luna. Amazon will automatically cancel any active subscriptions bought through Luna at the end of customers' next billing cycle. If you have a Ubisoft+ subscription that you bought directly from Ubisoft instead, you'll still be able to access games on that service through Luna until June 10. The Bring Your Own Library op…

"Only about 2% of visually impaired people in the United States use guide dogs," notes StudyFinds.com, "partly because breeding and training takes years and fewer than half the dogs in training actually graduate." But someday there could be another option: What if you could ask your guide dog where the nearest water fountain is and hear it answer back, complete with directions and an estimated walk time? Researchers at the State University of New York at Binghamton have built a robotic guide do…

A 17,000-word expose in the New Yorker reveals "several executives connected to OpenAI have expressed ongoing reservations about Altman's leadership." Reporters Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz spoke to "a hundred people with firsthand knowledge of how Altman conducts business," including current and former OpenAI employees and board members. Among other revelations, internal messages from a few years ago show that OpenAI executives and board members "had come to believe that Altman's omissions …

It's the first time a major U.S. newsroom has gone on strike partly to demand protections from AI-related layoffs, according to a report from Nieman Lab. They noted that one of the picketer's signs read "Thoughts not bots," : On Wednesday, roughly 150 members of the Propublica Guild, one of the largest nonprofit newsroom unions in the country, went on a 24-hour strike. About two dozen Guild members picketed ProPublica's headquarters in New York City's Hudson Square neighborhood during working h…

Critics say social media is engineered to be as addictive as tobacco or gambling, writes the Washington Post — while adding that "the science has been moving in parallel with the court's recognition." A growing body of research links heavy social media use not only to declines in mental health but to measurable cognitive effects — on attention, memory and focus — that in some studies resemble accelerated aging. Science also suggests we have more control than we realize when it comes to reversin…

In 2024 the Verge's consumer tech reporter paid $173 for a WD Black SN850X 2TB SSD. But "now that same SSD costs $649..." "Like with RAM, demand from the AI industry is swallowing up supply from a limited number of manufacturers, leading to a drastic reduction in the inventory that's available to consumers" — and skyrocketing prices: The price on my WD Black drive nearly quadrupled since November 2025, and consumer SSDs across the board are seeing similar increases, much like with RAM. The 4TB …

Phoronix staged "a showdown" between Firefox and Chrome, testing them both on an Intel Panther Lake laptop running Ubuntu 26.04. JetStream 3.0 was announced at the end of March as the latest major web browser benchmark. This updated version of JetStream is focused on intensive portions of modern JavaScript and WebAssembly web applications... Google Chrome 147 came in at 1.47x the performance of Mozilla Firefox 149. A very strong showing for Google's web browser and to not much surprise Google e…

"Every single Star Trek series has been canceled..." reports ScreenRant. "There is "no Star Trek in production or greenlit for the first time in nearly a decade." While there were five active Star Trek series just a few years ago, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds filmed its fifth and final season in the fall of 2025, and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy "wrapped filming its second and final season at the end of February." (Though ironically, both Star Trek series still have seasons yet to premiere, wi…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Trump administration has stepped up an effort to unmask a Reddit user who criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). After failing to obtain information through a summons issued (PDF) to Reddit, the government reportedly issued a subpoena demanding that Reddit provide the information and appear before a grand jury in Washington, DC. The Intercept described the subpoena today. "According to a subpoena obtained by The Intercept…

Attackers briefly hijacked part of CPUID's backend and swapped legitimate download links on its site with malware-laced ones. "The issue hit tools like HWMonitor and CPU-Z, with users on Reddit and elsewhere starting to notice something wasn't right when installers tripped antivirus alerts or showed up under odd names," reports The Register. From the report: CPUID has since confirmed the breach, pinning it on a compromised backend component rather than tampering with its software builds. "Inves…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: As the Trump administration seeks to fill a national shortage of air traffic controllers, officials are targeting a new talent pool: gamers. The Federal Aviation Administration on Friday is making a recruiting push aimed at avid players of video games, as the agency strives to fill thousands of vacancies that lawmakers have said leave the traveling public less safe. In a new YouTube ad, the agency is using flashy graphics and the prom…