Alvaro Lopez Ortega / 2026-06-24 Briefing

Created Wed, 24 Jun 2026 14:00:59 +0000 Modified Wed, 24 Jun 2026 14:01:24 +0000
5006 Words

64 stories from 42 sources.

📰 News

London cops bring live facial recognition to West End

‘Permanent biometric surveillance of the public square’ incompatible with policing by consent, say critics

Microsoft rivals line up to tell UK watchdog where the software behemoth hurt them

Browsers, cloud challengers, and Killinghall Parish Council all accuse Redmond of locking in customers, hobbling competition

Database vendors pitch themselves as the cure for runaway AI costs

Pinecone and Tiger Data say smarter data plumbing can cut token use and tame agentic workloads

Alpine Linux 3.24 scales new desktop heights with COSMIC

Plus interesting news from the Xfce-on-Wayland project

Ordering a trip back to 2009, with a side of nostalgia

A time when Windows 7 was Microsoft’s latest and greatest

Explainer: Why your legacy storage is choking your expensive GPU

THE REGISTER EXPLAINER: GPUs idle? Blame your outdated storage, not the silicon sprinters.

Germany went off the rails as wireless outage saw all trains cancelled

Unexplained GSM-R failure at Deutsche Bahn caused confusion and delay

You have got to be KDDI-ng – Japanese telco exposes 14.2 million managed email credentials

Five ISPs and plenty of users await their fate

Chinese supercomputer using local processors heads TOP500 list

Use of Arm cores and Linux mean Beijing hasn’t broken away from the world

GTA 6 will cost $79.99… or $99.99 for premium edition

GTA 6 will cost $79.99… or $99.99 for premium edition Rockstar Games has finally announced the price tag for its Grand Theft Auto VI, arguably the most anticipated game of the year. A standard version of the game is set to cost $79.99 and the more expensive “Ultimate Edition” will be priced at $99.99. Players can start pre-ordering the game starting midnight June 25th. The release date of GTA 6 is scheduled for November 19th, with players who pre-order the digital version of the game able to…

Winds of change: tech evolution trivia

Winds of change: tech evolution trivia When we embrace new tech, are we evolving or just outsourcing basic problem-solving skills? To rephrase, is the YouTube generation smarter than the AI generation? The music in our office building often throws us back into the 90s or earlier. “I follow the Moskva down to Gorky Park, listening to the wind of change,” I hear my colleague mumbling while we wait for the elevator. “Don’t you know this song? It’s The Winds of Change by the Scorpions,” he…

What is fearmaxxing? Experts question the self-improvement trend

What is fearmaxxing? Experts question the self-improvement trend Fearmaxxing, a viral self-improvement trend that encourages people to confront their biggest fears, is gaining traction online, but experts warn that treating fear as a universal signal for action can lead to impulsive decisions and costly mistakes.

Fear isn’t always a sign you should take action. Experts say fearmaxxing oversimplifies complex decisions.

Social media rewards dramatic success stories. The risks and failures…

Data centers are surveillance facilities, aren’t they?

Data centers are surveillance facilities, aren’t they? Forget the energy bills, what if the true cost of data centers is the mass surveillance infrastructure they power?

Data centers are the critical infrastructure that allows vast amounts of personal data to be collected, stored, and analyzed by AI systems at unprecedented scale.

While information about individuals is currently spread across many organizations, advances in AI and data integration are raising concerns about the creation of…

“To see a play, you must now pay with your privacy”: backlash over facial recognition expansion i…

“To see a play, you must now pay with your privacy”: backlash over facial recognition expansion in London’s West End The UK’s biggest police force is to expand the use of static live facial recognition (LFR) cameras into some of London’s busiest areas, prompting warnings that millions of shoppers and theatre goers could be scanned.

The Metropolitan Police is expanding static live facial recognition cameras into London’s West End and Soho, with installation expected by Christmas and six more…

Millions could claim share of $4 billion iCloud lawsuit against Apple

Millions could claim share of $4 billion iCloud lawsuit against Apple Britain’s competition tribunal has approved a £3 billion ($4 billion) lawsuit against Apple over its iCloud storage service, consumer group Which? said, clearing the way for tens of millions of consumers to join a collective action.

Up to 40 million UK iCloud users can join a £3 billion lawsuit accusing Apple of anti-competitive practices.

The case claims Apple trapped customers in its iCloud service and limited…

LastPass discloses data breach via Klue integration with Salesforce environment

LastPass discloses data breach via Klue integration with Salesforce environment LastPass has notified customers that it had fallen victim to a data breach via Klue, a third-party market analysis platform integrated with Salesforce.

LastPass suffered a data breach after attackers used compromised Klue OAuth tokens to access customer contact and CRM data stored in its Salesforce environment.

The breach did not impact LastPass products, infrastructures, or customer vaults – only information…

AOL was down (1996)

Jun 23, 2026 Latest PostJun 23, 2026 Latest PostDisclaimer: We, ngrok, have sponsored Mac to write this post because we think it’s an underexplored perspective on the topic of reliability. We’re glad to have the opportunity to give writers the space and time to do this, but the opinions are Mac’s, not the company’s. Enjoy! Picture yourself traveling back to August 7th, 1996. Close your eyes and imagine a world where tensions are high with Russia, China, and in the Middle East, people are…

C++ Lifetime-End Pointer-Zap and OOTA Progress

C++ Lifetime-End Pointer-Zap and OOTA Progress Both lifetime-end pointer zap and out-of-thin-air (OOTA) accesses made great progress during the C++ standards committee meeting in Brno in early June 2026! Lifetime-End Pointer Zap Lifetime-end pointer zap was described in detail in this August 2025 blog post. This post provided detailed descriptions of four C++ working papers, and the successors of three of them have now been voted into C++29:

The Joy and Power of Understanding

The Joy and Power of Understanding Deeper understanding of the code and software systems we work on, is not only pragmatic and practical but highly enjoyable as well. The usefulness is quite obvious: understanding gives us control and ownership of the systems and code we are responsible for. What we do not understand, we can neither fix nor change. Interestingly, that deeper understanding not only allows us to be masters of our tools and not their slaves, but also is simply fun and brings lots…

The Coming Loop

written on June 23, 2026 I don’t prompt Claude anymore. I have loops running that prompt Claude and figuring out what to do. My job is to write loops. — Boris Cherny Over the last months I have watched more and more people build something on top of coding agents that feels meaningfully different from just using a coding agent. Some of this happens on top of Pi which is cool to see for sure! The pattern is the same everywhere though: work is put into a queue of sorts, a machine picks it up,…

Flatpak package for GIMP 0.54.1 (1996)

G GIMP 0.54 Loading

Making Rust supply chain attacks harder with Cackle (2023)

Making Rust supply chain attacks harder with Cackle If you want a slightly shorter read, skip to Introducing Cackle. A hypothetical story about Alex Alex is a software engineer who has built a tool which she licences to her customers. She only has a small number of clients, but they like her tool. She built her tool using Rust, with about 20 direct dependencies from crates.io. When you count indirect dependencies, her tool has about 250 dependencies. One of those indirect dependencies is a…

NYC-based Taktile, which helps fintechs build automated decision-making workflows, raised a $110M…

Banks and insurance companies spend billions of dollars to employ staff to screen risky transactions, process claims, and onboard new customers.

Investigators used new tools to defeat old malware technology.  —  Microsoft Corp. deployed artificial intelligence to link …

OpenAI and Broadcom unveil Jalapeño, an LLM-optimized inference chip developed from design to man…

Loading…  - Early testing shows that the first-generation accelerator will deliver performance per watt substantially better than current state-of-the-art

Google Home Speaker review: the $100 speaker, the company’s first such device in six years, works…

The Google Home Speaker is the first new device of its kind to come from Alphabet Inc. in six years.

Amazon plans to expand Amazon Now to 300+ Indian cities and towns, up from 100 at present, as CEO…

Amazon.com Inc. is multiplying the Indian cities and towns covered by its Amazon Now quick deliveries, an aggressive move …

Qualcomm says it will acquire Modular, which builds a chip software platform and has a proprietar…

Modular, one of the most promising chip software startups of the AI era, heads for a multibillion-dollar exit.

Rockstar says physical GTA 6 copies will contain a download code, not a disc; physical copies wil…

Keep it on the download.  —  Rockstar will sell physical copies of Grand Theft Auto 6 — though you’ll only get a box containing a digital download code.

The US FDA drops an enforcement complaint against Whoop over its blood pressure tracking tool, re…

The US Food and Drug Administration dropped its complaint against fitness tracker brand Whoop Inc. over its blood-pressure tracking tool …

An analysis of GPT-5.5, Gemini 3.1 Pro, Grok 4.3, Gab’s Arya, and other AI models: most chatbots …

Excerpts from each chatbot’s responses to political questions  —  Left-leaning argument  —  Right-leaning  —  ChatGPT  —  Gemini

Rockstar sets the release date for GTA VI for November 19 and says it will cost $79.99, or $99.99…

The game is set to launch on November 19th. The game is set to launch on November 19th.

How Chicago is betting on quantum computing, including turning the site of its former US Steel mi…

Illinois is betting on a promising—but commercially unproven—technology  —  CHICAGO—The Lake Michigan docks that once received iron ore …

Q&A with AWS CEO Matt Garman on the parallels between early AWS and AI, Quick, AI coding, Amazon’…

Matt Garman argues that junior employees are as necessary as ever.  But AWS now sells agents that can recruit, code, and process claims.

Humanoid robot maker Agility plans to go public via a merger with Michael Klein’s SPAC, in a deal…

Agility’s humanoid robot, Digit, is used by companies including Amazon  —  Agility Robotics, a startup that makes humanlike robots used …

Texas man sentenced to 30 years for transporting pamphlets

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: New York, June 23, 2026 — Texas artist Daniel “Des” Sanchez Estrada was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison today for transporting a box of zines, or political pamphlets. The prosecution claimed Sanchez moved the zines so they wouldn’t incriminate his wife, who attended a protest outside the Prairieland immigration detention center near Dallas, where a police officer was wounded by gunfire. The zines at issue may have discussed controversial political views, but they…

Slate EV truck starts at $24,950

SHOPPING CART Your cart is empty. Subtotal $0.00 THE MOST AFFORDABLE TRUCK The Blank Slate has the essentials from Whatever else you add—wraps, accessories, you name it—is entirely up to you. THE MOST AFFORDABLE TRUCK The Blank Slate has the essentials from Whatever else you add—wraps, accessories, you name it—is entirely up to you. GET IT HOW YOU WANT. TRUCK. SUV. ALL YOU. Keep it as a two-seat pickup. Or get it as a five-seat SUV or Fastback. Your call. 200+ ACCESSORIES. AND COUNTING. START…

Founding a company in Germany: €9600, 152 days and I still can’t send an invoice

I started founding my second company in Germany in late January. It is now late June. In that time, the state, two courts, a notary, a law firm, a tax firm, and software vendors have all found a way to bill me. Every single one of them, on time. I have spent more than 9,600 euros to start a company: a little over 7,600 in fees and bills, plus 2,000 in share capital frozen in an account I am not allowed to touch. And after five months, here is what I have to show for it: I have not been able to…

Reid Hoffman says SpaceX ’not an AI company’, xAI ‘complete train wreck’

The LinkedIn co-founder and investor in both Anthropic and OpenAI offers his most pointed public assessment yet of Elon Musk’s AI ambitions—and raises alarms about the government’s handling of Anthropic’s pulled models Reid Hoffman has watched the AI industry from virtually every vantage point—as a founder, a lead investor and as a decade-long Microsoft board member. So when he calls SpaceX’s AI strategy “buying your way into relevance” and describes xAI as “a complete train wreck,” it’s not a…

Everyone Is Wrong About AI Except Me

Everyone is Wrong About AI Except Me This subject is going to give me a stroke Here’s something weird that I bet you’ve never noticed: If a film, TV show, novel or video game asks, “should robots be treated as living human beings?” the answer will be a resounding “yes” roughly 100% of the time. Any character who insists robots aren’t people is pretty much always portrayed as either ignorant or genocidal. Hell, I think you could find more art asserting that humans don’t have souls. This, then,…

Minimus container images are now free

Explore Minimus secure container images and deploy them using curated Helm charts. This catalog is published by Minimus. All product names, logos, and marks, other than those belonging to Minimus, shown are owned by their respective rights holders and appear here only to identify the open source software each image contains. Minimus claims no ownership of those marks and implies no affiliation with, endorsement by, certification by, or sponsorship by any rights holder. Images are provided…

A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading

A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading It’s just a matter of time before it reaches the U.S., a CDC expert warns This is a human-written story voiced by AI. Got feedback? Take our survey . (See our AI policy here .) WASHINGTON — Microbiologists are used to looking at gross pictures and hearing scary statistics. So when a moderator of a session on emerging fungal infections at the ASM Microbe meeting uttered the words “somewhat terrifying,” it caught my attention. He was…

Haystack: Open-Source AI Framework for Production Ready Agents, RAG

The Open Source AI Framework for Production Ready Agents, RAG & Context Engineering Haystack Sets the Standard for Agentic AI Across Industries Why Teams Choose Haystack for their AI Workflows Build Transparent, Context Engineered AI Systems Orchestrate every step of your AI agent, from retrieval to reasoning to memory and tool use. Haystack’s modular framework gives you full visibility to inspect, debug, and optimize every decision your AI makes. Integrate Freely with Your AI Stack Connect to…

Too many R packages: CRAN is inundated with submissions

CRAN continues to be the most accessible repository for statistical knowledge on the planet, and the number of new packages being accepted by CRAN is growing faster than ever. But, is the R community really benefiting from this new growth? Author Joseph Rickert Published June 12, 2026 If you are reading this post on R-bloggers, you will probably know that I have been publishing my selection of the “Top 40” new R packages on CRAN for quite some time. I did this first as part of my work at…

European Commission’s Metsola Overrides MEPs to Force Through Chat Control

BRUSSELS — European Parliament President Roberta Metsola is trying to push through a controversial law on scanning child abuse content online even though it has been repeatedly slapped down by her own chamber, according to a document seen by POLITICO. In a step that diplomats deem “without precedent,” the top EU politician has asked member countries in the Council to approve a bill that her own Parliament shot down in a plenary vote in March. At stake is whether the EU allows tech platforms to…

How to burst the AI bubble: Strike at its roots

Last year, we featured a lengthy interview with tech journalist/science fiction author Cory Doctorow about his book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It. The prolific Doctorow is back with a provocative new book that serves as a follow-up of sorts, focusing on AI and related issues: The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI. Doctorow doesn’t actually enjoy talking about AI, but he’s constantly being asked to comment on it. “I made the tactical error of…

We’re making Bunny DNS free: because a faster internet won’t build itself

At bunny.net, our mission has always been ambitious but focused: help make the internet hop faster. To do that, we’ve built a massive global network spanning 119 locations and counting. Today, this network powers over 1.5 million websites and consistently delivers some of the fastest content delivery around the globe. But while deploying thousands of servers globally is an impressive feat on its own, the hardware itself does not explain how bunny.net is able to deliver such an impressive level…

GitHub Is Becoming a Giant AI Code Dump

GitHub Is Becoming a Giant AI Code Dump By MAREF Engineering GitHub has 630 million repos. Nearly half of all new code is written by AI. Sounds like a productivity explosion, right? But there’s another number in that same report: developer trust in AI code dropped from 77% to 60%. More people are using it. Fewer people believe in it. And it gets worse. Half the projects you see are fake Carnegie Mellon University found 6 million fake stars on GitHub. Security firm Socket uncovered 370,000 “fix…

US AI stock sell-off shakes markets from Wall Street to Asia

A tech sell-off shook global markets on Tuesday as attention turned away from developments in the US war with Iran and toward the future of AI companies and chipmakers that have driven stock markets to record highs. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index closed 2.2% lower on Tuesday. The S&P 500 was also down by Tuesday afternoon, dropping 1.43% while the Dow remained steady. All three major US indices have hit record highs this year, riding off a rush of funding to support AI technology and…

Raspberry Pi Pico W as USB Wi-Fi Adapter

P pico-usb-wifi Loading

Ten years on, Brexit’s economic impact is becoming clearer

Not long after the UK left the EU in 2020, a Bristol-based firm called Eskimo started selling a new kind of high-fashion and energy-efficient electric radiator, based on new technology developed by academics in the city. They planned to send them around Europe using the Channel Tunnel. It was a timely product given Europe’s green ambitions, and with orders flowing, its Birmingham factory was being kept busy. The boss Phil Ward tells me his start-up has continued to grow, but that in his view it…

“Fix” MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds

| #!/bin/bash | | set -Efeuxo pipefail | | | | APP=“Unlag Neo” | | DISPLAY_NAME=“Unlag Neo” | | | | if [ -e “${APP}.app” ]; then | | echo “Error: ${APP}.app exists already” | | exit 1 | | fi | | | | mkdir -vp “${APP}.app/Contents/MacOS” “${APP}.app/Contents/Resources” | | PATH="$PATH:/usr/libexec” | | | | swiftc - -o “${APP}.app/Contents/MacOS/${APP}” «‘SWIFT’ | | import Foundation | | import AppKit | | import CoreGraphics | | import CoreMedia | | import ServiceManagement | | import…

The Teensy Executable Revisited

(or, “Thunderclouds Gather on the Horizon”) On a couple of occasions, people have responded to my original essay with the comment that what I’ve created by the end isn’t really an ELF executable. Rather, it is a file that the Linux kernel, in its current incarnation, happens to mistake for an ELF executable. It’s a fair point. That 45-byte file clearly doesn’t conform to numerous requirements of the ELF specification. But can you blame me? How could I have stopped at the point just before I…

The war on terror primed America for autocracy

https://archive.is/CBCZM

Qwen-AgentWorld: Language World Models for General Agents

Computer Science > Computation and Language [Submitted on 23 Jun 2026] Title:Qwen-AgentWorld: Language World Models for General Agents View PDF HTML (experimental)Abstract:A world model predicts environment dynamics based on current observations and actions, serving as a core cognitive mechanism for reasoning and planning. In this work, we investigate how world modeling based on language models can further push the boundaries of general agents. (i) We first focus on building foundation models…

DiffusionBench: Towards Holistic Evaluation of Generative Diffusion Transformers

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#  |  _ \(_)/ _|/ _|_   _ ___(_) ___  _ __                 |           |     #
#  | | | | | |_| |_| | | / __| |/ _ \| '_ \        …

- [DiffusionBench: Towards Holistic Evaluation of Generative Diffusion Transformers](https://github.com/End2End-Diffusion/diffusion-bench) — *github.com*

### Woman with Alzheimer's starts conversing again after taking psilocybin

A woman with severe Alzheimer’s disease who spent years communicating in monosyllables started initiating conversations after receiving a large dose of psilocybin. The woman, who also had urinary incontinence and was unable to get around without assistance, also regained control of her bladder and experienced improved mobility in the weeks after taking the drug. While further research is required, the case adds to evidence that psychedelics can acutely alter cognition and brain function.
“Her…

- [Woman with Alzheimer's starts conversing again after taking psilocybin](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2531319-woman-with-alzheimers-starts-conversing-again-after-taking-psilocybin/) — *newscientist.com*

### Chinese supercomputer leapfrogs best US machines to be ranked fastest

A supercomputer in China now outranks its US counterparts as the world’s most powerful. It is the first time since 2017 that a Chinese computer has topped a list sometimes viewed as a measure of a nation’s technological prowess.
The LineShine computer in Shenzhen displaced top-ranked US computer El Capitan in the Top500 rankings released on Tuesday. It was LineShine’s debut on the list.
China’s LineShine differs from other high-performance computers in that it runs entirely on conventional…

- [Chinese supercomputer leapfrogs best US machines to be ranked fastest](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/24/china-supercomputer-world-fastest-top500-ranking-lineshine) — *theguardian.com*

### Eli Lilly Approved Obesity Drug for Mystery 79-Year-Old Patient

Eli Lilly Approved Obesity Drug for Mystery 79-Year-Old Patient
Questions are swirling over Donald Trump’s health after a bombshell report revealed a mystery man was getting unprecedented access to a weight-loss drug.
A special 79-year-old man has received unparalleled access to Eli Lilly’s obesity drug.
Millions of Americans are eagerly awaiting access to retatrutide, a powerful new drug from the pharmaceutical company. But one unidentified person has been able to gain premature access to the…

- [Eli Lilly Approved Obesity Drug for Mystery 79-Year-Old Patient](https://newrepublic.com/post/212206/eli-lilly-obesity-drug-79-year-old-patient-trump-health) — *newrepublic.com*

### How to Passive-Aggressively Shame People Who Use LLMs Selfishly

Too many slop grenades these days. LLMs are cool and all, but does every Slack message need to be a bulleted list where the first sentence of each item is bold?
I recently read one too many blog posts with the phrase, “it’s not X, it’s Y” as a one-line paragraph and finally snapped. It is now my life’s mission to purge selfish LLM usage from the internet.
Define “selfish”
Selfish LLM usage: A situation in which someone uses an LLM to save their own time at the expense of other people’s time,…

- [How to Passive-Aggressively Shame People Who Use LLMs Selfishly](https://joshmoody.org/blog/selfish-ai/) — *joshmoody.org*

### Hospitals switched to pen and paper to defeat a national cyber-attack

How 100 hospitals switched to pen and paper to defeat a national cyber-attack
One after another the calls came in from hospitals; criminals were infecting computer networks in a mass hack that was putting countless lives at risk.
At Bucharest's national cyber-security centre (DNSC) they watched helplessly as the hackers spread across Romania through a popular piece of medical software.
Cyber-chief Dan Cimpean had a tough decision to make, but it was the only option they had.
The order went out…

- [Hospitals switched to pen and paper to defeat a national cyber-attack](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gyk756mzlo) — *bbc.com*

### Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak

Meta is pausing a divisive employee tracking program after an internal security issue exposed potentially sensitive data collected through the initiative to other workers.
“We have carefully designed this program with privacy safeguards and while we have no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees, we're pausing it while we investigate,” says company spokesperson Tracy Clayton.
Meta rolled out the Model Compatibility Initiative (MCI) tool in April to US…

- [Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak](https://www.wired.com/story/meta-pauses-employee-tracking-program-following-internal-security-breach/) — *wired.com*

### 'The Worst It's Ever Been': Why Meta's AI Reorg Backfired Spectacularly

‘The Worst It’s Ever Been’: Why Meta’s Massive AI Reorg Backfired Spectacularly
A leaked internal memo from CTO Andrew Bosworth reveals how a rushed restructuring left engineers rudderless, tanked morale, and served as a stark warning to any company trying to cut managers.
EXPERT OPINION BY JESSICA STILLMAN, CONTRIBUTOR, INC.COM @ENTRYLEVELREBEL
Illustration: Inc.; Photos: Adobe Stock
If you want to find out just how badly Meta bungled the creation of its new, massive Applied AI division, you…

- ['The Worst It's Ever Been': Why Meta's AI Reorg Backfired Spectacularly](https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/the-worst-its-ever-been-why-metas-massive-ai-reorg-backfired-spectacularly/91363370) — *inc.com*

### Y – A malleable coding-agent desktop app built with Electron

# y

<p align="center">
  <img src="docs/assets/y-desktop.png" alt="y desktop app showing a chat-first coding workspace" width="100%" />
</p>

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/24f10277-bb0e-4c3f-8a05-6833363d07a2

<p align="center">
  <a href="https://github.com/y-times-y/y/releases/latest/download/y-0.0.1.dmg">
    <img alt="Download for macOS" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/Download%20for-macOS-000000?style=for-the-badge&logo=apple&logoColor=white" />
  </a>
</p>

**y** is a…

- [Y – A malleable coding-agent desktop app built with Electron](https://github.com/y-times-y/y) — *github.com*