← Feed

Posts

• 'Seismic Shift' as Over 100 House Democrats Vote to Cut Off US Military Aid to Israel

  Nearly half of all Democrats in the House of Representatives voted Wednesday to cut off US military aid to Israel, a move that underscored a dramatic shift away from the US support the Mideast ally has enjoyed for nearly 60 years. While House lawmakers ultimately rejected Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) amendment to a national security spending bill that would have eliminated the $3.3 billion in annual foreign military financing provided to Israel’s military, the details of the vote were viewed a...

• Third-party app stores coming to Google Play next week as Epic settlement withdrawn

  Big changes are coming to Android apps, but they’re not the changes Google wanted. The settlement between Google and Epic that aimed to put to rest the companies’ long-running antitrust battle is being withdrawn, and that means third-party app stores are coming to the Play Store. Google has confirmed that it will begin distributing rival app stores next week, setting the stage for competing platforms to take a bite out of Google’s Android revenue stream. This case has the potential to upend so...

• Trump is poised to bring his administration’s “chum cycle” tactic to election denial

  Trump’s latest attack on American democracy relies on an old tactic. Throughout his second administration — and even dating back to his first — Trump appointees have laundered documents they claim prove Democratic and “deep state” malfeasance through credulous right-wing outlets, counting on MAGA media to amplify their conspiracy theories and hoping that mainstream outlets would pick them up as well. Now they’re applying the same playbook to election denial. On Thursday night, Trump plans to u...

• Trump Fires Blue State Attorney After Less Than an Hour

  The White House has found a novel way to ensure Donald Trump’s nominees ascend to power. Federal judges in the Western District of Washington swore in former King County Superior Court Judge Roger Rogoff as U.S. attorney Wednesday morning. Within 54 minutes, Trump fired him. The district’s 17 federal judges have been trying to find a replacement for Seattle’s First Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd, after Trump failed to formally nominate him. Floyd was appointed in October, though his name...

• Trump relished in being compared to dictators like Hitler and Stalin, journalist says

  The New York Times journalist Jonathan Swan has spent the past 11 years covering President Trump through three political campaigns, his first, and now second, term in office and the ongoing war with Iran. Swan says aside from the COVID-19 pandemic, he can’t remember a time where Trump looked “as stuck as he looks right now.” “It’s pretty clear he realizes that this war [with Iran] has not gone well, has not played out the way that Netanyahu pitched him or that Trump himself thought [it] would...

• DOJ wants to help anti-voting group purge California rolls

  The Department of Justice wants to intervene in a lawsuit to force a massive voter roll purge in California. Tom Fitton, the president of the far-right legal group Judicial Watch, boasted on social media Wednesday that the DOJ seeks to “clean nearly 1 million dirty voter names from California’s voter rolls” after the department filed its motion to intervene as a plaintiff Monday. Judicial Watch has led the charge in seeking to purge voter rolls in Oregon, Colorado, Kentucky and New York. T...

• LAPD ending deal with company operating license plate-reading cameras

  The Los Angeles Police Department is ending its agreement with Flock Safety, a company that operates surveillance cameras throughout the city. LAPD announced that it will allow its agreement with the company to expire Saturday, ending the department’s three-year relationship with the security firm - at least for now. Flock cameras capture images of vehicles and license plates on roadways. LAPD says the cameras can help track down suspects involved in crimes.

• AI Fiction Is Easy to Detect Because It's Stupid and Bad, Research Finds

  Fiction written by artificial intelligence is easy to detect because it struggles with complex story structure and tends to moralize in clunky ways, according to a preprint study from researchers at University of Maryland, College Park and Google DeepMind. They found that AI fiction has tells that go beyond stereotypical overuse of em-dashes and other obvious AI tropes and have more to do with the formulaic nature of the text itself. “AI stories over-explain themes and favor tidy, single-track...

• Patreon Blocks Crawlers From Stealing Creators' Work for AI Training

  Patreon announced on Thursday that it’s partnering with Cloudflare to block crawlers from stealing creators’ work to train AI models. “I HAVE A KICKASS PRODUCT UPDATE FOR YOU ALL!” Jack Conte, the founder and CEO of Patreon, wrote in a post on Instagram with the superimposed text, “POV: you’re CEO of one of these fucking tech companies, so you do what you want.” “Patreon has partnered with an internet infrastructure company called Cloudflare to block Al training crawlers from using the work...

• Meta Patents AI Device That Tracks Your Emotions, Watches You Take Your Meds

  Meta has filed a patent for a system that records your voice and surroundings all day, then uses an AI to analyse your mood. The patent’s stated, theoretical goal is for Meta, a company that makes billions of dollars targeting ads at its users based on their data, is to sell users a wearable that tailors workouts for them based on whether they’re happy or sad. Patentlyze first noticed the patent which was published on July 2 after Meta filed it back in December of 2025. The filing described an...

• Gavin Newsom wants to make seizing ballots a felony

  California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) will introduce new legislation making ballot seizure before they are counted and certified by a state or county official a felony. In a July 4 recorded speech, Newsom was not shy about who the law targets. “We will not be his victims,” Newsom said. “We will be the wall he cannot get past, because we believe that once an election is decided, the winner governs for everyone. That’s the architecture of American liberty.” The “he” refers to President Donald Trump...

• Trump’s DOJ Will Deploy Election Monitors in Six States This Summer

  The Trump administration plans on sending election monitors to 15 jurisdictions in six states—four of which are deep blue, with the remaining being swing states—for the remaining primary elections this summer. Monitors will be placed in Arizona, Michigan, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Virginia. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet Dhillon made the announcement in a video posted on social media Tuesday. “The Department of Justice, like it has in Republic...

• Trump administration scraps AC recommendations following GOP freakout over Mamdani

  Last week’s reminder from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani seemed wholly unremarkable. As the city confronted an usually rough heat wave, the mayor published a July 1 post encouraging New Yorkers to set the air conditioners to 78 degrees, turn off electronics they’re not using and unplug as much as possible, all in the hopes of helping the power grid. Plenty of officials in many states have said the same thing for the same reason in recent years. Nevertheless, to put it mildly, Republicans d...

• Big Oil Takeover 'Now Complete,' Watchdog Warns as Exxon Lawyer Joins Trump DOJ

  The executive counsel at the fossil fuel behemoth ExxonMobil is leaving his role to join the Trump Justice Department’s newly renamed Energy and Natural Resources Division, a move one watchdog organization said shows that “Big Oil’s capture of the US government is now complete.” Robert Levy, who worked at Exxon for 17 years, announced in a recent LinkedIn post that he is departing the company, whose profits surged amid the Trump administration’s illegal war on Iran. Levy will reportedly serve...

• Hideo Kojima ‘really sad’ about PlayStation killing discs, ‘frightened’ for future of ownership

  Speaking at the “Il Cinema in Piazza” Film Festival in Italy (translated by Genki), the Death Stranding and Metal Gear director said that at least with digital games, users have the data on their systems, something that isn’t the case with cloud gaming. “Since production is ending in 2028, this is about video games, but I grew up with physical media, so I find it really sad,” he said. “Currently, I’ve been buying up a lot of Blu-rays, such as various movies, and CDs too. “The situation is di...

• Republican leaders seek to quell Mitch McConnell speculation as rebellion grows

  Republican leaders have moved to quash speculation about Mitch McConnell, the former Republican leader in the US Senate, amid a growing revolt over the lack of transparency around his health. The 84-year-old Kentucky politician, who led Senate Republicans for longer than anyone in history before stepping down last year, was admitted to the hospital on 14 June but his office declined to say what he was being treated for. The secrecy led to a backlash from Donald Trump’s support base, with som...

• Trump’s Board of Peace plans to grant itself sweeping immunity, documents show

  The UN-sanctioned Board of Peace announced by Donald Trump earlier this year to rule Gaza is planning a sweeping grant of legal immunity for itself, according to a draft of the resolution obtained by the Guardian. The draft language would also let the organization obtain public property in Gaza “free of charge”. The four-page resolution, labeled “sensitive but unclassified”, extends broad protections to every member of the Board of Peace and its administrative affiliate, the office of the high...

• Company Pulls Delivery Robots From All College Campuses

  College campuses across the country will no longer be swarming with tiny rolling robots. Starship Technologies, a leading delivery bot company, announced earlier this month that it was ending its university operations and redeploying over a thousand of its meal machines. But the news is just starting to sink in, as various partnered universities all issue official communications mourning the program’s end like obituaries for a celebrity’s passing. The time has come for the takeout drones to...

• Mike Johnson tells conservatives ‘I run the protection program’ to protect Trump

  House Speaker Mike Johnson told a hotel conference roomful of Christian conservatives that he was the only thing stopping Democrats from investigating not just President Donald Trump, but all of his allies and family members — and many of them, too. Johnson spoke on Friday to the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual summit, a gathering of religious conservatives, where Trump also spoke later in the day. Most polling shows Democrats have a good chance of winning back the House of Representative...

• Tulsi Gabbard’s Fauci Files Don’t Prove What She Says They Prove

  In her final act as director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard released a collection of declassified documents about COVID-19’s origins and Dr. Anthony Fauci. The headline claim was explosive: “Fauci Funded Wuhan Lab Research That Sparked COVID.” Her press release and accompanying five-minute long video monologue went further, accusing Fauci of manipulating intelligence assessments and lying to Congress. But the documents don’t show anything of the sort. The origins of COVID-19 remain...

• Trump angrily cancels signing housing bill over voter ID ‘national emergency’

  President Donald Trump on Wednesday cancelled plans to sign bipartisan housing legislation in a fit of pique over Republican senators’ refusal to blow up their chamber’s rules to pass his voter ID bill. The president had been set to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act in a rare Capitol signing ceremony at noon on Wednesday before attending a Senate Republican Steering Committee lunch. But with less than an hour remaining until he was scheduled to leave the White House, he took to Truth...

• Valve describes just how brutal RAM negotiations are in 2026

  Valve’s Steam Machine finally has a price: a whopping $1,049 for the 512GB configuration or $1,349 for the 2TB version. And those are without bundled controllers, which drive up the cost more. The prices are so high in part because Valve isn’t subsidizing the hardware, and the company has already indicated that the component crisis forced it to reconsider its initial pricing plans. In an interview with the YouTube channel Gamers Nexus, Valve engineers discussed the reality of sourcing RAM in 2...

• Bill that would mandate AI chip location tracking gains industry support

  A group of companies that specialize in tracking international shipments of sensitive technologies is backing a Capitol Hill bill that would require America’s most powerful AI chips to incorporate stronger security mechanisms aimed at preventing the chips from reaching China and other adversaries. The letter, signed by six companies, says the Chip Security Act (CSA) would increase American chip companies’ competitiveness and close key loopholes in the U.S. export control regime. The move clash...

• Pentagon boasts of using AI to write reports mandated by Congress

  The US Department of Defense has a lot of congressionally mandated homework to do every year involving hundreds of required reports on various national security topics. But Pentagon officials have been proudly describing a new shortcut—using generative AI tools to write such reports for Congress. Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael highlighted AI-generated reports to Congress as a key example of how the Department of Defense—stylized as the Department of War under the Trump administ...

• Wikipedia Cofounder Larry Sanger Banned From Site for ‘Canvassing’

  Larry Sanger, one of Wikipedia’s cofounders, was banned from editing the site indefinitely after other editors determined he was canvassing, or in other words, calling on his followers off platform in order to influence Wikipedia’s content. Sanger has spent more than a decade criticizing Wikipedia for what he claims is an ideological, left-wing bias on a variety of topics, and on X has framed this recent ban as further proof of everything that’s wrong with Wikipedia. The New York Post took tha...

• Trump says FISA extension must include voting bill

  U.S. President Donald Trump said ​on Sunday he opposes any renewal ‌of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that does not include his Save America ​Act, which would require proof ​of citizenship for voting. The U.S. Congress ⁠on Thursday rejected a short-term extension ​of the foreign surveillance powers amid ​a standoff over Trump’s selection of an inexperienced loyalist, Bill Pulte, to serve as ​the acting director of national intelligence, ​although some lawmakers also oppose an extensi...

• Software Update Automatically Turns off Amazon Delivery Drivers’ AC During Dangerous Summer Heat

  A software update to some Amazon delivery vehicles is automatically turning off the air conditioning after a few seconds if the driver is not in their seat, according to multiple Amazon delivery drivers who are complaining about the update online. According to Amazon delivery drivers, the new update is for the Amazon EDV (electric delivery vehicle), the custom-built Rivian van. Delivery drivers say that this update automatically turns off the air conditioning in the van if the driver is not in...

• Senate panel approves Department of War name change

  The Senate Armed Services Committee voted this week to formally change the Pentagon’s name to the Department of War, moving a significant step closer to solidifying President Donald Trump’s rebrand of the Defense Department as permanent. The move came during the committee’s closed-door deliberations over its defense policy bill, according to Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who announced the name change in explaining his vote against the legislation. “It’s a juvenile move that sadly describes the rea...

• Man jailed for a month despite Flock showing he was 5 miles from crime scene

  A San Diego police department is facing a lawsuit after jailing a man for a month based on a Flock camera alert that cops allegedly should have known, based on the timestamp, did not depict the car that they were looking for. Last November, Hugo Parra was arrested on felony charges after San Diego police relied on Flock data and a witness statement to wrongly connect him to an attempted carjacking at gunpoint, the Times of San Diego reported. Cops were looking for a red Alfa Romeo car with tin...

• School shooting survivor sues AI gun detection firm after system failed to spot weapon

  The injured teenage survivor of a January 2025 shooting at a Nashville, Tennessee high school recently sued the manufacturer of an “AI gun detection” system that failed to detect the handgun that left two dead, including the shooter. According to the lawsuit, which was filed in Davidson County court last month, the security company Omnilert either knew or should have known that there were “significant operational limitations in its gun detection system that could result in detection failures d...