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Category: Technology

AI therapy is a surveillance machine in a police state

AI therapy is a surveillance machine in a police state

Adi Robertson writes: Mark Zuckerberg wants you to be understood by the machine. The Meta CEO has recently been pitching a future where his AI tools give people something that “knows them well,” not just as pals, but as professional help. “For people who don’t have a person who’s a therapist,” he told Stratechery’s Ben Thompson, “I think everyone will have an AI.” The jury is out on whether AI systems can make good therapists, but this future is already…

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Silicon Valley is bracing for chaos

Silicon Valley is bracing for chaos

Matteo Wong writes: On a Wednesday morning last month, I thought, just for a second, that AI was going to kill me. I had hailed a self-driving Waymo to bring me to a hacker house in Nob Hill, San Francisco. Just a few blocks from arrival, the car lurched toward the other lane—which was, thankfully, empty—and immediately jerked back. That sense of peril felt right for the moment. As I stepped into the cab, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was…

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The risks from chemicals in our food may be even worse than Kennedy suggests

The risks from chemicals in our food may be even worse than Kennedy suggests

Julia Belluz writes: The health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., believes toxic chemicals in food are behind the U.S. explosion in rates of obesity and a range of other chronic illnesses. “A facade of normalcy has masked this meteoric rise in chronic disease, and we can no longer ignore it,” he said recently. He intends to rid the U.S. food supply of nine chemicals — all petroleum-based, synthetic food dyes — in as soon as 18 months. Mr. Kennedy has…

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Musk’s regulatory troubles have begun to melt away in Trump’s second term

Musk’s regulatory troubles have begun to melt away in Trump’s second term

NBC News reports: Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s regulatory problems have started to fade into the past. Since the start of the second Trump administration, federal agencies that had scrutinized Musk and his business empire in recent years have begun to look a lot different. At the Department of Agriculture, for example, President Donald Trump fired the person who had been investigating the Musk company Neuralink. At other agencies including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Trump and Musk have tried to…

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U.S. pushes nations facing tariffs to approve Elon Musk’s Starlink, cables show

U.S. pushes nations facing tariffs to approve Elon Musk’s Starlink, cables show

The Washington Post reports: Less than two weeks after President Donald Trump announced 50 percent tariffs on goods from the tiny African nation of Lesotho, the country’s communications regulator held a meeting with representatives of Starlink. The satellite business, owned by billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, had been seeking access to customers in Lesotho. But it was not until Trump unveiled the tariffs and called for negotiations over trade deals that leaders of the country of roughly…

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Tesla sales plunge across Europe

Tesla sales plunge across Europe

CNN reports: Tesla’s sales continue to dive across Europe even as car buyers there increasingly buy electric vehicles. Tesla sales were down sharply in April in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark and Portugal, as well Sweden and France, according to monthly sales figures. Just like in the United States, Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s politics has inspired backlash and protests across Europe. Musk has backed some far-right political candidates in Germany and the UK. And given his high-profile role in…

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DNI Tulsi Gabbard appears to be a security clutz

DNI Tulsi Gabbard appears to be a security clutz

Wired reports: Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, used the same easily cracked password for different online accounts over a period of years, according to leaked records reviewed by WIRED. Following her participation in a Signal group chat in which sensitive details of a military operation were unwittingly shared with a journalist, the revelation raises further questions about the security practices of the US spy chief. WIRED reviewed Gabbard’s passwords using databases of material leaked online created by the…

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Naomi Klein on Trump, Musk, the far right and ‘End Times fascism’

Naomi Klein on Trump, Musk, the far right and ‘End Times fascism’

  ‘The rise of end times fascism‘ by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor was published in The Guardian on April 13. The movement for corporate city states cannot believe its good luck. For years, it has been pushing the extreme notion that wealthy, tax-averse people should up and start their own high-tech fiefdoms, whether new countries on artificial islands in international waters (“seasteading”) or pro-business “freedom cities” such as Próspera, a glorified gated community combined with a wild west med…

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Every American child is born pre-polluted with synthetic chemicals

Every American child is born pre-polluted with synthetic chemicals

Mariah Blake writes: During the crucial early weeks of pregnancy, when fetal cells knit themselves into a brain and organs and fingers and lips, a steady flow of man-made chemicals pulses through the umbilical cord. Scientists once believed that the placenta filtered out most of these pollutants, but now they know that is not the case. Along with nutrients and oxygen, numerous synthetic substances travel to the womb, permeating the fetus’s blood and tissues. This is why, from their very…

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Trump’s space budget rewards Elon Musk and SpaceX

Trump’s space budget rewards Elon Musk and SpaceX

The New York Times reports: Elon Musk and SpaceX are big winners in Donald J. Trump’s 2026 spending plan. President Trump is delivering on Mr. Musk’s wish list at both NASA and the Pentagon to reorient federal spending on space in a way likely to drive billions of dollars in new business to Mr. Musk’s space technology company, if Congress signs off on the budget plan. At the Pentagon, Mr. Trump is calling for a massive jump in spending, an…

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New study shows handwriting improves early reading skills more than typing

New study shows handwriting improves early reading skills more than typing

PsyPost reports: New research published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology suggests that handwriting helps children learn to read more effectively than typing. In an experiment with 5-year-old prereaders, those who practiced writing by hand—either by copying or tracing—outperformed children who typed the same material on a keyboard across a variety of tasks. The findings provide strong support for the idea that the physical act of writing strengthens children’s ability to learn letters and words. The study was conducted…

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Meta is turning its Ray-Bans into a surveillance machine for AI

Meta is turning its Ray-Bans into a surveillance machine for AI

Gizmodo reports: What you see is what Meta AI sees while wearing the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, and your opt-out options are getting narrower and narrower. In a recent update to the privacy policy for the device, received by most owners in an email sent April 29, according to The Verge, Meta opened up the ability to collect more data for use to train its artificial intelligence models. Under the new policies, Meta explains that “Meta AI with camera use…

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DOGE operatives gain accounts on classified networks holding nuclear secrets

DOGE operatives gain accounts on classified networks holding nuclear secrets

NPR reports: Two members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have been given accounts on classified networks that hold highly guarded details about America’s nuclear weapons, two independent sources tell NPR. Luke Farritor, a 23-year-old former SpaceX intern, and Adam Ramada, a Miami-based venture capitalist, have had accounts on the computer systems for at least two weeks, according to the sources who also have access to the networks. Prior to their work at DOGE, neither Farritor nor Ramada appear…

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An American panopticon of databases

An American panopticon of databases

Ian Bogost and Charlie Warzel write: If you were tasked with building a panopticon, your design might look a lot like the information stores of the U.S. federal government—a collection of large, complex agencies, each making use of enormous volumes of data provided by or collected from citizens. The federal government is a veritable cosmos of information, made up of constellations of databases: The IRS gathers comprehensive financial and employment information from every taxpayer; the Department of Labor maintains the…

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Elon Musk says he will spend less time in Washington as Tesla’s profit falls by 71%

Elon Musk says he will spend less time in Washington as Tesla’s profit falls by 71%

The New York Times reports: Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, said on Tuesday that he would spend less time in Washington working for President Trump after the automaker reported a profit drop of 71 percent in the first three months of the year. Mr. Musk told Wall Street analysts in a conference call that he would continue to spend “a day or two per week” on Washington matters, probably for the duration of Mr. Trump’s presidency. The billionaire executive is…

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China’s CATL EV battery — 5 min charge to go 320 miles — even better than Tesla-killer BYD’s

China’s CATL EV battery — 5 min charge to go 320 miles — even better than Tesla-killer BYD’s

CNN reports: China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), the world’s largest producer of electric vehicle batteries, has unveiled an upgraded battery it says promises an even longer range than rival BYD’s cutting-edge technology. Both tech giants now boast they have batteries that can charge EVs in as little as five minutes. But on Monday, CATL upped the ante by announcing that its new Shenxing battery has a range of 320 miles, about 70 miles longer than BYD’s stated range of 250…

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