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Category: Technology

The National Design Studio, staffed by DOGE veterans, installed visitor-tracking software on vital federal websites

The National Design Studio, staffed by DOGE veterans, installed visitor-tracking software on vital federal websites

The Guardian reports: An opaque White House office staffed largely by veterans of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has quietly rebuilt some of the federal government’s most sensitive websites – for passport applications, voter registration, prescription-drug pricing and children’s savings – in ways critics say appear to violate federal law. The National Design Studio (NDS) was established by a Donald Trump executive order last August, and is led by Trump-aligned Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia and staffed by Doge…

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What is Peter Thiel up to in Argentina?

What is Peter Thiel up to in Argentina?

Pablo Alabarces writes: Javier Milei’s rise to power in Argentina has transformed the country into a laboratory for the global far right and tech capital. At the center of this convergence stands Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, who has been living in Buenos Aires for just over a month. Some commentators in the press and on social media have claimed that Thiel’s relocation represents a new flight of defeated Nazis to South America (though Thiel is…

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Zuckerberg looks for new way to profit from addiction: a prediction markets app

Zuckerberg looks for new way to profit from addiction: a prediction markets app

The New York Times reports: Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, has urged his lieutenants to explore partnerships with the popular prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi as his company builds a similar app, three employees with knowledge of the matter said. The app that Meta is creating, called Arena, could allow people to make bets on practically anything, aiming to capitalize on how prediction markets have become an increasingly big business. Internally, Meta’s executives have said Arena is different from Polymarket…

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Ukraine’s growing drone armada is overwhelming Russia’s air defenses

Ukraine’s growing drone armada is overwhelming Russia’s air defenses

The Wall Street Journal reports: Denys Shtylerman was surprised how many of his company’s drones were getting through as he watched footage of them slamming into an oil refinery on the edge of Moscow last week, sending plumes of black smoke billowing over the Russian capital. “We just used a big bunch of drones and they overwhelmed the Russian air-defense systems,” Shtylerman, the head designer at Fire Point, one of Ukraine’s largest defense manufacturers, said in an interview. Ukraine is…

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We can’t let my former venture capital colleagues in the AI lobby buy off our democracy

We can’t let my former venture capital colleagues in the AI lobby buy off our democracy

John O’Farrell writes: I first came to America from Ireland in 1984, as a young engineer about to attend business school. I chose Stanford University — partly for the weather and natural beauty, but more for the electrifying entrepreneurial spirit coursing through Silicon Valley. I was riveted by Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl ad — an athlete hurls a sledgehammer into Big Brother’s screen, shattering IBM’s grip on computing. More than an advertisement, it was a manifesto that technology could dismantle…

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Bribery: How a $45 million donation brought Larry Ellison deeper into Trump’s circle

Bribery: How a $45 million donation brought Larry Ellison deeper into Trump’s circle

The Wall Street Journal reports: Larry Ellison didn’t join the gaggle of CEOs that traveled with President Trump on his state visit to China. He wasn’t among the guests at a White House dinner Trump hosted with tech titans. He also skipped the UFC event on Trump’s 80th birthday. The Oracle billionaire didn’t need to be at these public events. Ellison, 81, has developed a more-private friendship with Trump that has helped his tech company’s business as well as his…

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‘You can’t make billions without hurting people’: Cory Doctorow on Elon Musk, the AI bubble and bosses’ cruel fantasies

‘You can’t make billions without hurting people’: Cory Doctorow on Elon Musk, the AI bubble and bosses’ cruel fantasies

Zoe Williams writes: A “centaur”, in automation theory, is a person assisted by a machine, and a “reverse centaur”, hero of Cory Doctorow’s new book, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI, is a “human who is conscripted into acting as an assistant to a machine”. Every warehouse worker who ever had to urinate in a water bottle because they couldn’t otherwise meet the fulfilment targets set by an algorithm is a reverse centaur. Reaching into the future, everyone…

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Advanced AI models suffer a near-total collapse on classic psychology test as cognitive demands increase

Advanced AI models suffer a near-total collapse on classic psychology test as cognitive demands increase

PsyPost reports: New research provides evidence that while advanced artificial intelligence models process language with remarkable skill, they struggle significantly with tasks requiring the kind of sustained focus and conflict resolution seen in human attention. The study, published in PNAS Nexus, indicates that as cognitive demands increase, these programs experience a complete collapse in their ability to override automatic responses. The findings suggest that artificial intelligence systems currently lack the fundamental executive control necessary for developing true artificial general intelligence….

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From Hormuz to the cockpit: How warfare and criminal activity undermine GPS and the race to safeguard navigation

From Hormuz to the cockpit: How warfare and criminal activity undermine GPS and the race to safeguard navigation

The Strait of Hormuz is just one example of a busy shipping lane where GPS signals are blocked and faked. Asghar Besharati/Getty Images By Zak Kassas, The Ohio State University Few people want to get lost when traveling. But if there are places where being lost feels especially unsettling, they tend to be the sea, desert and sky. These environments share a defining feature: the absence of distinctive visual cues. Where horizons blur, landmarks disappear and every direction can look…

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Before SpaceX IPO, investors in China secretly acquired stakes

Before SpaceX IPO, investors in China secretly acquired stakes

By Justin Elliott and Joshua Kaplan This story was originally published by ProPublica A businessman with ties to Chinese military contractors was among the overseas investors who acquired stakes in SpaceX while it was still a private company. An entity linked to the Qatari royal family also took a stake. The new details come from a private investor list obtained by ProPublica that sheds light on a particularly delicate issue for Elon Musk’s rocket company: which people in countries like…

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UK develops low-cost long-range missiles without U.S. parts or navigation for Ukraine

UK develops low-cost long-range missiles without U.S. parts or navigation for Ukraine

Kyiv Post reports: The UK is developing a new, low-cost, long-range weapon system for deployment in Ukraine that will function without US components or data, Bloomberg reported. According to the UK Ministry of Defence, the initiative, known as “Project Brakestop,” was launched in late 2024 and is operating on an accelerated timeline to provide support for Kyiv. Defense companies MBDA, MGI Engineering, and Rotron Aerospace are currently developing three competing weapon systems. Testing is scheduled to take place in the…

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Prediction market philosophers got what they wanted. They’re not happy about it

Prediction market philosophers got what they wanted. They’re not happy about it

Brian Kahn writes: On June 11, Kalshi released a buzzy ad featuring noted New York Knicks fan Timothée Chalamet. It was a zeitgeist-capturing moment for prediction markets, akin to the 2022 Super Bowl, when seemingly every commercial featured a celebrity shilling crypto. Yet when I brought Chalamet’s spot up with attendees at Manifest, a recent festival for prediction markets, I was mostly met with blank stares. These conference goers—a mix of academics, startup founders, job seekers, and players in the…

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The criminal tendencies of AI

The criminal tendencies of AI

Science reports: In an infamous thought experiment known as the paperclip problem, an artificial intelligence (AI) program is tasked with making paperclips. Because it single-mindedly optimizes for the literal objective rather than the intent, the AI ends up consuming all the resources on Earth and judging any collateral damage—for example, killing all humans who get in its way—as irrelevant. This problematic logic is already simmering in today’s AI systems, a new study suggests. When researchers presented a large language model…

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Leak exposes members of Peter Thiel’s secretive ‘Dialog’ society

Leak exposes members of Peter Thiel’s secretive ‘Dialog’ society

Wired reports: A trove of internal records from a secret society for powerful figures in US politics, finance, and tech was left exposed online, WIRED has confirmed, naming participants in its events and revealing sensitive personal details they were assured would stay private. The group, called Dialog, is a private, invitation-only organization cofounded in 2006 by the billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel. It convenes US officials, foreign government figures, and Silicon Valley executives at off-the-record annual retreats. Dialog has spent…

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The Big Four accounting firms are selling AI governance while their own reports hallucinate

The Big Four accounting firms are selling AI governance while their own reports hallucinate

Janet Harrison writes: There is something clarifying about a consulting firm publishing a report on AI’s enterprise benefits that itself contains AI-generated hallucinations. That is what happened with KPMG, and it landed on top of a pattern. EY Canada pulled a cybersecurity report in May 2026 after researchers found fake footnotes, misattributed sources, and references to material that did not exist. Deloitte, meanwhile, agreed last year to refund part of an AU$440,000 Australian government contract after errors and fabricated references…

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A Peter Thiel-backed tribunal is putting journalists on trial. I’m its first target

A Peter Thiel-backed tribunal is putting journalists on trial. I’m its first target

Gary Baum writes: For many journalists, blowback is just part of the business. The irate call to the editor or publisher, often expressed through the promise of litigation. The online pile-on, often expressed through personal invective. Occasionally, the threat of violence, often expressed through all-caps derangement. It’s rare to encounter a novel variant. But on April 21, I received a remarkable email. “Someone has filed an objection against something you wrote,” explained Austin Livingston, pointing me to a web page…

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