Google is again pressuring some longtime G Suite Legacy users to move onto paid Workspace plans, warning that accounts flagged as "commercial use" could lose access to Gmail, Drive, Calendar, and other services if appeals fail. "The trouble, according to users, is that the appeals system appears about as transparent as a brick," adds The Register. From the report: A reader alerted The Register to what appears to be a new crackdown on long-standing G Suite Legacy accounts, with similar complaints now piling up on Reddit from users accused of violating Google's non-commercial use policy, despite insisting they use the accounts only for family email and personal domains. Reports have been stacking up on Reddit's r/gsuitelegacymigration subreddit from users who say their long-running personal G Suite Legacy accounts are suddenly being classified as "commercial use" accounts and pushed toward paid Google Workspace plans by May 2026. A lot of users have been through this before. Google spent part of 2022 trying to wind down free G Suite Legacy accounts, then changed course after users running family domains made enough noise. Now some of those same users are being told they have fallen outside Google's rules after all.

Emails seen by The Register warn users their accounts have been "identified as being used for commercial purposes" and say Google may start suspending Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Meet, and other Workspace services if they do not either win an appeal or begin paying for Workspace subscriptions. "Please upgrade to a paid Google Workspace subscription to continue using your services. Look out for a notification regarding the appeal process in Google Admin console or email," the email reads. "If you don't take action during your 45-day appeal period, Google will begin suspending your Google Workspace core services, including Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and Meet. As a result, you will lose access to these core services and data." One wrongly-flagged user said the company reversed its decision after they filed a GDPR data request seeking evidence. Others were less fortunate, with some reporting that family-only custom domains were permanently classified as commercial despite failed appeals.

Google is giving its iconic search box its first major redesign since 2001. The new design incorporates, you guessed it, artificial intelligence, "getting bigger and more interactive so that people can ask even longer questions and upload photographs and videos into queries," reports the New York Times. "In addition, people can ask follow-up questions with a chatbot on Google's main search page." From the report: The company will also offer digital assistants, known as agents, to automate searches so that someone who may be apartment hunting can be notified of a new listing without opening a real estate site like Zillow. The search features will be powered by a new artificial intelligence model, Gemini 3.5 Flash. Google said the model had improved on creating software code and performing autonomous tasks, worked faster and was less expensive to run than comparable models.

[...] Google is also bringing one of A.I.'s biggest breakthroughs -- software coding -- to search. When people research complex topics like astrophysics, Gemini can build interactive graphics and simulations behind the scenes to provide a deeper answer than its previous listing of websites. Google said it was introducing an alternative to the agents powered by Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex. Called Gemini Spark, the service is embedded in Gmail, Docs and other Google products, where it can turn meeting notes spread across emails and chats into a single document. It can also read and draft emails. "The open web is on its way out," says Richard Kramer, a financial analyst with Arete Research. "With A.I., Google is reducing everyone to raw data providers."

A researcher known as Chaotic Eclipse has released a proof-of-concept exploit for a new Windows zero-day dubbed MiniPlasma, which BleepingComputer confirmed can grant SYSTEM privileges on fully patched Windows 11 systems. The researcher claims the bug is effectively a still-exploitable version of a 2020 flaw Microsoft said it had fixed. From the report: At the time, the flaw was assigned the CVE-2020-17103 identifier and reportedly fixed in December 2020. "After investigating, it turns out the exact same issue that was reported to Microsoft by Google project zero is actually still present, unpatched," explains Chaotic Eclipse. "I'm unsure if Microsoft just never patched the issue or the patch was silently rolled back at some point for unknown reasons. The original PoC by Google worked without any changes."

BleepingComputer tested the exploit on a fully patched Windows 11 Pro system running the latest May 2026 Patch Tuesday updates. In our test, we used a standard user account, and after running the exploit, it opened a command prompt with SYSTEM privileges, as shown in the image [here]. Will Dormann, principal vulnerability analyst at Tharros, also confirmed the exploit works in his tests on the latest public version of Windows 11. However, he said that the flaw does not work in the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview Canary build.

The exploit appears to abuse how the Windows Cloud Filter driver handles registry key creation through an undocumented CfAbortHydration API. Forshaw's original report said that the flaw could allow arbitrary registry keys to be created in the .DEFAULT user hive without proper access checks, potentially enabling privilege escalation. While Microsoft reports having fixed the bug as part of its December 2020 Microsoft Patch Tuesday, Chaotic Eclipse now claims the vulnerability can still be exploited.

Meta is expected to begin cutting about 8,000 jobs this week as it pours more money into AI infrastructure and looks to "offset" other investments, with additional layoffs reportedly possible later this year. According to CNBC, the morale has worsened inside the company. "Internally, there's an emerging sense of dread across wide swaths of the company," the report says, citing current and former Meta employees. "That's in part because more cuts are expected this year, including a potential round of layoffs in August, followed by another round later in the year, some of the sources said." From the report: [...] Whatever anxiety investors are experiencing, the feelings inside the company are more intense, with some longtime staffers questioning Meta's AI pursuits under AI chief Alexandr Wang, while also weighing if now is the time to leave for opportunities at other companies in the AI race, according to current and former employees. Data aggregated by Blind, an anonymous professional network that requires users to verify their employment with a work email address, reveals some of the internal malaise. Meta's overall rating by employees on Blind has declined 25% from a peak in the second quarter of 2024 to the current period, with a 39% drop in its culture rating. In every category other than compensation, Meta has seen a ratings decline and dramatically underperforms rivals Amazon, Google and Netflix, the Blind data reveals.

The company's full-court press with AI included the recent debut of an employee tracking tool intended to collect data from staffers' actions, such as mouse movements and keystrokes on their work computers. The Model Capability Initiative, or MCI, as it's called, is part of Meta's efforts to train AI models to power digital agents that can perform various coding and white-collar tasks. Employees have characterized the data tracking tool as "dystopian," according to messages viewed by CNBC, with some workers expressing fear that personal information could be leaked. Some Meta workers have noted that their workplace computers appear slower since the company initiated the project, adding to their frustration, sources said.

Meta workers responded by creating an online petition that urges Zuckerberg and leadership to shutter the project. "Collecting and repurposing this kind of data raises serious concerns around privacy, consent, and trust in the workplace," the petition says. "It should not be the norm that companies of any size are permitted to exploit their employees by nonconsensually extracting their data for the purposes of AI training." Further reading: NYT: 'Meta's Embrace of AI Is Making Its Employees Miserable'

After three weeks of testimony, which was covered extensively here on Slashdot, a U.S. jury on Monday ruled against Elon Musk in his lawsuit against OpenAI, finding that he waited too long to bring his claims that the company betrayed its nonprofit mission. Reuters reports: The trial had widely been seen as a critical moment for the future of OpenAI and artificial intelligence generally, both in how it should be used and who should benefit from it. Following the verdict, Musk's lawyer said he reserved the right to appeal, but the judge suggested he may have an uphill battle because whether the statute of limitations ran out before Musk sued was a factual issue. "There's a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury's finding, which is why I was prepared to dismiss on the spot," U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said.

In his 2024 lawsuit, Musk accused OpenAI, its Chief Executive Sam Altman and its President Greg Brockman of manipulating him into giving $38 million, then going behind his back by attaching a for-profit business to its original nonprofit and accepting tens of billions of dollars from Microsoft and other investors. Musk called the OpenAI defendants' conduct "stealing a charity." OpenAI was founded by Altman, Musk and several others in 2015. Musk left its board in 2018, and OpenAI set up a for-profit business the next year. OpenAI countered that it was Musk who saw dollar signs, and that he waited too long to claim OpenAI breached its founding agreement to build safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity. "Mr. Musk may have the Midas touch in some areas, but not in AI," William Savitt, a lawyer for OpenAI, said in his closing argument.

The verdict followed 11 days of testimony and arguments where Musk's and Altman's credibility came under repeated attack. Lawyers for OpenAI embraced each other after the verdict was announced. Microsoft faced an aiding and abetting claim. In a statement, a Microsoft spokesperson said, "The facts and the timeline in this case have long been clear and we welcome the jury's decision to dismiss these claims as untimely." Recap:
Musk Accused of 'Selective Amnesia', Altman of Lying As OpenAI Trial Nears End (Day Twelve)
OpenAI Trial Wraps Up With 'Jackass' Trophy For Challenging Musk (Day Eleven)
Sam Altman Testifies That Elon Musk Wanted Control of OpenAI (Day Ten)
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Testifies In OpenAI Trial (Day Nine)
Sam Altman Had a Bad Day In Court (Day Eight)
Sam Altman's Management Style Comes Under the Microscope At OpenAI Trial (Day Seven)
Brockman Rebuts Musk's Take On Startup's History, Recounts Secret Work For Tesla (Day Six)
OpenAI President Discloses His Stake In the Company Is Worth $30 Billion (Day Five)
Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial (Day Four)
Elon Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Him, Clashes With Company's Attorney (Day Three)
Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (Day Two)
Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court (Day One)

Iran's government "wants to charge the world's largest tech companies for using the subsea internet cables laid under the Strait of Hormuz," reports CNN. Their article also notes that Iran's state-linked media outlets "have vaguely threatened that traffic could be disrupted if firms don't pay." Lawmakers in Tehran discussed a plan last week which could target submarine cables linking Arab countries to Europe and Asia. "We will impose fees on internet cables," Iranian military spokesperson Ebrahim Zolfaghari declared on X last week. Iran's Revolutionary Guards-linked media said Tehran's plan to extract revenue from the strait would require companies like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon to comply with Iranian law while submarine cable companies would be required to pay licensing fees for cable passage, with repair and maintenance rights given exclusively to Iranian firms. Some of these companies have invested in the cables running through the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, but it's unclear if those cables traverse Iranian waters.

It's also unclear how the regime could force tech giants to comply, as they are barred from making payments to Iran due to strict US sanctions; as a result, the companies themselves may view Iran's statements as posturing rather than serious policy. Still, state-affiliated media outlets have issued veiled threats warning of damage to cables that could impact some of the trillions of dollars in global data transmission and affect worldwide internet connectivity... Iran's threats are part of a strategy to demonstrate its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz and ensure the survival of the regime, a core objective for the Islamic Republic in this war, said Dina Esfandiary, Middle East lead at Bloomberg Economics. "It aims to impose such a hefty cost on the global economy that no-one will dare attack Iran again," she said.
The article notes that subsea cables "carry vast internet and financial traffic between Europe, Asia and the Persian Gulf," and that targetting them "would affect far more than internet speeds, threatening everything from banking systems, military communications and AI cloud infrastructure to remote work, online gaming and streaming services."

CNN spoke to Mostafa Ahmed, "a senior researcher at the United Arab Emirates-based Habtoor Research Center, who published a paper on the effects of a large-scale attack on submarine communications infrastructure in the Gulf." Armed with combat divers, small submarines, and underwater drones, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) poses a risk to underwater cables, Ahmed said, adding that any attack could trigger a cascading "digital catastrophe" across several continents. Iran's neighbors across the Persian Gulf could face severe disruptions to internet connection, potentially impacting critical oil and gas exports as well as banking.

Beyond the region, India could see a large proportion of its internet traffic affected, threatening its huge outsourcing industry with losses amounting to billions, according to Ahmed... Any disruption could also slow financial trading and cross-border transactions between Europe and Asia, while parts of East Africa could face internet blackouts. And if Iran's proxies decide to employ similar tactics in the Red Sea, the damage could be far worse.

Today former Google CEO Eric Schmidt "was booed multiple times," reports NBC News, "while discussing AI during a commencement speech at the University of Arizona."

Schmidt had started by remembering how computer platforms "gave everyone a voice" but also "degraded the public square... They rewarded outrage. They amplified our worst instincts. They coarsen the way we speak to each other, and that way, and in the way that we treat each other, is in the essence of a society." But then Schmidt "drew a parallel between artificial intelligence and the transformative impact of the computer — and was immediately met with boos." "I know what many of you are feeling about that. I can hear you," Schmidt said, addressing the crowd as many continued to boo him. "There is a fear ... there is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics is fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create, and I understand that fear."

He went on to argue that the future remains unwritten and that the graduating class of 2026 has real power to shape how AI develops — a claim that drew further disapproval from parts of the audience...

He closed by congratulating the class and offering them closing words. "The future is not yet finished. It is now your turn to shape it."
404 Media shared a video on YouTube of the crowd's booing — and what Schmidt said that provoked them:

SCHMIDT: "If you don't care about science that's okay because AI is going to touch everything else as well. [Very loud booing] Whatever path you choose, AI will become part of how work is done..."

"You can now assemble a team of AI agents to help you with the parts that you could never accomplish on your own. [Loud booing] When someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat. You just get on... The rocket ship is here."

An anonymous reader shared this report from Electrek: A Nevada utility just told 49,000 Lake Tahoe residents that it's redirecting 75% of their electricity supply to data centers, and they have less than a year to find a new power source. It's one of the starkest examples yet of the AI boom's impact on everyday Americans... NV Energy needs the capacity for data centers being built by Google, Apple, and Microsoft around the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center east of Reno, according to Fortune... Data centers drove half of all US electricity demand growth last year....

That dynamic — small residential customers losing out to massive industrial electricity buyers — is exactly what's driving the broader shift to distributed solar and storage. When the grid becomes unreliable or unaffordable because of data center demand, the homeowners who have solar panels and a battery in the garage are the ones with options.
"The shift is measurable," they argue: Third-party ownership models (leases and power purchase agreements), which still qualify for the [U.S.] commercial investment tax credit through 2027, are projected to grow 25% in 2026 and capture up to 69% of residential installations, up from roughly 45% in 2025. Homeowners aren't waiting for incentives to come back — they're finding new ways to get solar on their roofs... [A] battery that can store cheap solar energy and deploy it during peak hours is increasingly essential. California utility customers alone are adding roughly 8,000 new home batteries per month — about 100 MW of new storage capacity. Municipal programs are accelerating the trend. Ann Arbor, Michigan, recently became the first US city to directly deploy solar and battery systems on 150 homes through its city-owned utility. Vermont's Green Mountain Power is offering home batteries at little to no upfront cost. These programs signal that utilities themselves recognize the value of distributed energy.

USA Today reports: Trump Mobile phones are being shipped this week, the company exclusively confirmed to USA TODAY in an email May 11.... The company's first smartphone — the T1 Phone — was originally scheduled for release in August. However, the golden gadget's release was later delayed to October before being pushed back again to this week. Now, Trump Mobile CEO Pat O'Brien told USA TODAY, pre-ordered phones will start getting sent out to customers this week... O'Brien said the company anticipates all pre-ordered phones to be delivered within the next several weeks... The company's 5G "47 Plan" is available for $47.45 a month, a nod to President Donald Trump's two presidential terms, according to the website... Customers will also have Trump(SM) displayed as the status bar in their network.
The Verge reported the phone was added last week to Google's public list of devices certified for Google Play, "usually one of the final steps before an Android phone is launched." Trump Mobile may have broken radio silence partly in response to a recent wave of media coverage alleging that buyers had received emails notifying them that their preorders had been canceled, coverage that even made it onto Stephen Colbert's The Late Show... [T]here's seemingly no evidence of the alleged cancellation emails beyond unverified social media claims. In January The Verge also questioned reports that 600,000 people preordered the Trump phone with a $100 deposit. "I can't find a shred of evidence that this figure is true," calling it "a microcosm of how the modern media landscape and AI chatbots can combine to give falsities the sheen of respectability." I first saw the figure in, of all places, the Threads feed of California governor Gavin Newsom's press office, which had shared a screenshot of a tweet of a Grok summary making the claim. Trustworthy, right? The Grok post cites "reports from sources like Fortune, NPR, and The Guardian" for the 600,000 preorders, but a quick search of their recent output shows no sign of the number... India's Economic Times and Hindustan Times both reported a more specific figure of 590,000 preorders, referencing an unspecified Associated Press report as the source. [The Associated Press] VP of corporate communications, Lauren Easton, confirmed to me that "AP's original stories never contained such a number...."

Hindustan Times writer Shamik Banerjee called the citation "a typo," and told me that the figure was in fact taken from The Times of India. The Times of India story, which is bylined only to the newspaper's lifestyle desk, is more transparent in its sourcing: a viral post by a meme account... It's been covered by multiple publications, now presented as fact on MSN.com and tech site Phone Arena. And that coverage has helped it to filter into the chatbots and not just Grok — Gemini and ChatGPT were both happy to confirm to me that 600,000 T1 Phones have been ordered so far, the former falsely attributing the number to the Associated Press, and the latter to Phone Arena.

As for how many Trump Phone preorders have actually been placed? No one outside the company knows.

Google has confirmed it is testing a 5GB storage limit for some new Gmail accounts, with users able to unlock the standard 15GB by adding a phone number. Android Authority reports: While the company didn't mention which regions are impacted, user reports from yesterday were mostly from African countries. That said, if Google's tests prove successful, this could possibly become the norm for new sign-ups in more regions. The company could be testing ways to discourage users from creating multiple Gmail accounts to access free cloud storage. However, if you already have a Gmail account with 15GB free storage, it shouldn't be impacted by this change.

The language on Google's support page mentions "up to 15GB of storage." However, it's a recent change. An archived version of the support page from February did not use the words "up to." Whether the test has been running since early March or Google updated its language before it ever started the test, it's evident that the company could roll out the change globally as well.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A lawyer for Elon Musk hammered at the credibility of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Thursday, near the end of a trial over whether to hold the ChatGPT maker and its leaders responsible for allegedly transforming the nonprofit into a vehicle to enrich themselves. OpenAI's lawyers fought back, claiming the world's richest person waited too long to claim OpenAI breached its founding agreement to build safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity, and couldn't claim he was essential to its success. "Mr. Musk may have the Midas touch in some areas, but not in AI," said William Savitt, a lawyer for OpenAI. "To succeed in AI, as it turns out, all Mr. Musk can do is come to court."

The claims were made during closing arguments of a trial in the Oakland, California, federal court. [...] In his closing argument, Musk's lawyer Steven Molo told jurors that five witnesses, including Musk, former OpenAI board members and former OpenAI Chief ScientistIlya Sutskever, testified that Altman was a liar. Molo also noted that during cross-examination on Tuesday, Altman did not say yes unequivocally when asked if he was completely trustworthy and did not mislead people in business. "Sam Altman's credibility is directly at issue in this case," Molo said. "If you don't believe him, they cannot win."

Molo accused OpenAI of wrongfully trying to enrich investors and insiders at the nonprofit's expense, and failing to prioritize AI's safety. He also challenged Brockman's goals for the business, citing Brockman'sstatementthat his own OpenAI stake was worth nearly $30 billion. "The arrogance, the lack of sensitivity, the failure to account for just common decency is really, really abhorrent." Musk also accused Microsoft, which invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019 and $10 billion in 2023, of aiding and abetting OpenAI's wrongful conduct. "Microsoft was aware of what OpenAI was doing every step of the way," Molo said.

Sarah Eddy, another lawyer for the OpenAI defendants, accused Musk and his legal team in her closing argument of resorting to "sound bites and irrelevant false accusations." Eddy said by 2017, everyone associated with OpenAI -- including Musk, then still on its board -- knew it needed more money to fulfill its mission than it could raise as a nonprofit. "Mr. Musk wanted to turn OpenAI into a for-profit company that he could control," she said. "But the other founders refused to turn the keys of AGI (artificial general intelligence) over to one person, let alone Elon Musk."She also said if Musk truly believed AI should serve humanity, he would not have pushed to fold OpenAI into his electric car company Tesla, or made his rival xAI a for-profit company.

Musk had a three-year statute of limitations to sue, and OpenAI's lawyers said his August 2024 lawsuit came too late because he knew several years earlier about OpenAI's growth plans. Eddy expressed disbelief that Musk claimed he did not read a four-page term sheet in 2018 discussing OpenAI's plan to seek outside investments. "One of the most sophisticated businessmen in the history of the world" wouldn't have "stuck his head in the sand," Eddy said. Savitt accused Musk of having "selective amnesia." Microsoft's lawyer Russell Cohen said in his closing statement that Microsoft wasn't involved in the key events of the case, and was "a responsible partner at every step." On Monday, the nine-person jury is expected to begin deliberating. The judge and lawyers will also return to court to discuss possible remedies if Musk wins, including how OpenAI should be restructured and what damages might be awarded. If Musk loses, there will be no remedies to consider.

Recap:
OpenAI Trial Wraps Up With 'Jackass' Trophy For Challenging Musk (Day Eleven)
Sam Altman Testifies That Elon Musk Wanted Control of OpenAI (Day Ten)
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Testifies In OpenAI Trial (Day Nine)
Sam Altman Had a Bad Day In Court (Day Eight)
Sam Altman's Management Style Comes Under the Microscope At OpenAI Trial (Day Seven)
Brockman Rebuts Musk's Take On Startup's History, Recounts Secret Work For Tesla (Day Six)
OpenAI President Discloses His Stake In the Company Is Worth $30 Billion (Day Five)
Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial (Day Four)
Elon Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Him, Clashes With Company's Attorney (Day Three)
Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (Day Two)
Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court (Day One)

After three weeks of testimony, the Musk v. Altman trial is nearing its end. OpenAI has rested its case, closing arguments are set for Thursday, and jury deliberations are expected to begin afterward. An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: Joshua Achiam, OpenAI's chief futurist, was probably the most memorable witness of the day. He told jurors about a companywide meeting where Musk answered questions about his planned departure from OpenAI in 2018. Musk told the crowd of 50 or 60 people that he was leaving OpenAI to start his own competing AI. He said he wanted to "build it very fast, because he was very worried that someone else, if they got it, would do the wrong thing with it," Achiam said. Achaim said he challenged Musk on the safety of this approach, which he called "unsafe and reckless." "How did Musk respond," OpenAI's lawyer Randall Jackson asked. "Defensively," Achiam said. "We had a pretty tense exchange, and he snapped and called me a jackass."

In an effort to prove Achiam's story, OpenAI's lawyers brought a trophy to court that the futurist said he received after his heated exchange with Musk. On the witness stand, Achiam described the trophy as "a small golden jackass, inscribed with: 'never stop being a jackass for safety.'" He said his then-colleagues, Dario Amodei and David Luan, gave it to him as a thank-you for standing up to the Tesla CEO. Lead OpenAI attorney William Savitt told reporters after the day's session that Wednesday had been the first time he'd touched the statue. The futurist had to do without the visual aid, however. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers did not accept the trophy as evidence, so it did not appear before the jury.

Musk and Altman have presented dueling experts on a question at the core of the trial -- was the nonprofit that runs OpenAI hurt or helped by its $13 billion partnership with Microsoft? Musk's expert testified last week that the partnership was indeed hurt, supporting the Tesla CEO's contention that in partnering with Microsoft, OpenAI betrayed the company's nonprofit origins and mission. But on Thursday, OpenAI's expert, John Coates, used Musk's expert's own pie chart and testimony against him. The partnership has "generated value for the nonprofit that I believe he himself accepted was in the $200 billion range in his own testimony," Coates said, referencing Musk expert Daniel Schizer. "If that's not faring well, I don't know what faring well is."

In a scored point for Musk, the jury learned Thursday that Microsoft's own CTO once raised concerns about how OpenAI's early nonprofit donors, including LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, would react to a partnership. "I wonder if the big OpenAI donors are aware of these plans," Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott said in a 2018 email he was asked to read aloud to jurors. In it, Scott said he doubted donors would appreciate OpenAI using their seed money to "go build a for-profit thing." Scott was being questioned by an OpenAI lawyer, who may have wanted jurors to quickly hear Scott's explanation: that he only had a "vague awareness" of what was happening at OpenAI at the time. Scott also told the jury he wasn't thinking about Musk when he made the remark. "Primarily, I was thinking about Reid Hoffman. He was the OpenAI donor I knew," Scott said, adding, "I wasn't thinking about anyone besides him." Recap:
Sam Altman Testifies That Elon Musk Wanted Control of OpenAI (Day Ten)
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Testifies In OpenAI Trial (Day Nine)
Sam Altman Had a Bad Day In Court (Day Eight)
Sam Altman's Management Style Comes Under the Microscope At OpenAI Trial (Day Seven)
Brockman Rebuts Musk's Take On Startup's History, Recounts Secret Work For Tesla (Day Six)
OpenAI President Discloses His Stake In the Company Is Worth $30 Billion (Day Five)
Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial (Day Four)
Elon Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Him, Clashes With Company's Attorney (Day Three)
Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (Day Two)
Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court (Day One)

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took the stand Tuesday in Elon Musk's trial against the company, testifying that Musk repeatedly sought control of OpenAI before leaving in 2018. Altman said he opposed putting AI "under the control of any one person," while Musk's lawyer used a pointed cross-examination to attack Altman's trustworthiness. An anonymous reader shares updates from the testimony via the New York Times: Before Elon Musk left OpenAI in a power struggle in 2018, he wanted to merge the nonprofit artificial intelligence lab with Tesla, his electric car company. Mr. Musk and other OpenAI co-founders met several times to discuss the merger. OpenAI's chief executive, Sam Altman, was even offered a seat on Tesla's board of directors, according to a court document. But folding OpenAI into Tesla would have eliminated the lab's nonprofit status, and that, Mr. Altman said on the witness stand on Tuesday, was something he wanted to avoid. [...] "I believed that A.I. should not be under the control of any one person," Mr. Altman said. [...] Mr. Altman testified about his feud with Mr. Musk. He said he had become worried that Mr. Musk, who provided the early investment money for OpenAI, wanted to take control of the lab. He described what he called a "particularly harrowing moment" when his OpenAI co-founders asked Mr. Musk what would happen to his control of a potential for-profit when he died. Mr. Altman said Mr. Musk had replied that the control would pass to his children. "I was not comfortable with that," Mr. Altman said. When Mr. Musk lost a power struggle for control of the lab, he left, forcing Mr. Altman to find another big financial backer in Microsoft.

But Mr. Altman ran into trouble in 2023 when OpenAI's board fired him because, as several of its members have testified in the trial, it didn't trust him. Steven Molo, Mr. Musk's lead lawyer, homed in on Mr. Altman's trustworthiness during an aggressive cross-examination. "Are you completely trustworthy?" Mr. Molo asked. "I believe so," Mr. Altman answered. After questioning Mr. Altman's trustworthiness for nearly 20 minutes, Mr. Molo turned to Mr. Altman's relationship with Mr. Musk. Mr. Altman said that after he met Mr. Musk in the mid-2010s, Mr. Musk had occasionally expressed concern about the dangers of A.I. But Mr. Musk spent far more time saying he was worried that companies like Google would get ahead in A.I. development, Mr. Altman said. (Mr. Musk testified in the trial that he had wanted to create OpenAI to prevent Google from controlling the technology.)

Mr. Altman, the lawyer intimated, took advantage of Mr. Musk's concerns and was never sincere about his own A.I. fears. "Are you a person who just tells people things they want to hear whether those things are true or not?" Mr. Molo asked. The lawyer also questioned whether Mr. Atman, who became a billionaire through years of tech investments, was self-dealing through OpenAI. Mr. Molo showed a list of Mr. Altman's personal investments across a number of companies that stand to benefit from their association with OpenAI. They included Helion Energy, a start-up that has deals with Microsoft and OpenAI, and Cerebras, a chip maker in business with OpenAI. Mr. Molo asked if Mr. Altman, who is on OpenAI's board as well as its chief executive, would ever fire himself. "I have no plans to do that," Mr. Altman said.

OpenAI's odd journey from nonprofit lab to what it is today -- a well-funded, for-profit company that is still connected to a nonprofit called the OpenAI Foundation with an endowment that could be worth more than $130 billion -- provided grist for Mr. Molo's questions about Mr. Altman's motivations. He implied that Mr. Altman could have continued to build OpenAI as a pure nonprofit. But the only way to build such a valuable charity was to raise billions through a for-profit venture, Mr. Altman responded. Still, the giant sums being raised appeared to upset Mr. Musk. In late 2022, according to court documents, Mr. Musk sent a text to Mr. Altman complaining that Microsoft was preparing to invest $10 billion in OpenAI. "This is a bait and switch," Mr. Musk said at the time. But Mr. Altman, under questioning from his own lawyers, said: "Every step of the way, I have done my best to maximize the value of the nonprofit. I would point out that there are not a lot of historical examples of a nonprofit at this scale." Before Altman took the stand, OpenAI board chair Bret Taylor continued his testimony that began on Monday. He said Elon Musk's 2024 bid to buy the company's assets appeared to conflict with his lawsuit and was rejected because the board did not believe OpenAI's mission should be controlled by one person. "We did not feel like it was appropriate for one person to control our mission," he said.

Recap:
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Testifies In OpenAI Trial (Day Nine)
Sam Altman Had a Bad Day In Court (Day Eight)
Sam Altman's Management Style Comes Under the Microscope At OpenAI Trial (Day Seven)
Brockman Rebuts Musk's Take On Startup's History, Recounts Secret Work For Tesla (Day Six)
OpenAI President Discloses His Stake In the Company Is Worth $30 Billion (Day Five)
Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial (Day Four)
Elon Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Him, Clashes With Company's Attorney (Day Three)
Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (Day Two)
Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court (Day One)

Google is teasing a new line of "Googlebook" laptops for this fall, powered by a new Android-and-ChromeOS-derived operating system that will run Chrome, Android apps, phone-connected apps and files, and deeply integrated Gemini features. The company says Chromebooks will continue "after the launch of Googlebook" and "...all Chromebooks will continue to receive support through their device's existing date commitment." The Verge reports: "We'll have more to share on the exact OS branding later this year," Peter Du of Google's global communications team tells The Verge. [...] Googlebooks will have a Magic Pointer feature that offers contextual suggestions whenever you shake your cursor and point it at something on the screen. Google's examples include setting up a meeting by pointing at a date in an email or selecting images of furniture and a living space to visualize them together. Beyond your mouse pointer, Googlebooks will also feature the custom AI-created widgets that Google is also debuting today for Android phones and Wear OS smartwatches. I don't know what kind of horrors people will be able to make into widgets, but Google gives the example of making one to organize your flights, hotel information, restaurant reservations, and another for creating a countdown timer for an upcoming family reunion. (It's always flights, hotels, and restaurants, isn't it?)

While there are many outstanding questions to be answered about Googlebooks, the biggest and most obvious ones are what will these laptops look like, what chips will be in them, and what will they cost? We've got none of that so far. Google only has some initial renders of a mysterious Googlebook and the promise that it's working with Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo to make the first models. There are no model names. No specs. Nada. Google isn't even saying if the laptop in its renders is made by a partner or a tease of some first-party Pixel-like Googlebook to come or is just a cool mockup. The one distinct hardware feature shown, the bar of glowing Google-colored light, will be a signature of all Googlebooks. (Sure, bring on the RGB. Why not?)

The Musk v. Altman trial entered its third week Monday, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and former OpenAI co-founder and renowned AI researcher Ilya Sutskever taking the stand. Nadella testified that Elon Musk never raised concerns to him that Microsoft's investments in OpenAI violated any special commitments, and said he viewed the partnership as clearly commercial from the start. He also described OpenAI's 2023 board crisis as "amateur city."

Meanwhile, Sutskever testified that he had raised concerns about Sam Altman because he feared OpenAI could be "destroyed." He expressed concerns about Altman's behavior to the board, in part because he said he felt "a great deal of ownership" over the startup. "I simply cared for it, and I didn't want it to be destroyed," Sutskever said. CNBC reports: Nadella said he was "very proud" that Microsoft took the risk to invest in OpenAI when "no one else was willing" to bet on the fledgling lab. Musk, who testified late last month, said Microsoft's $10 billion investment was the key tipping point that made him believe OpenAI was violating its nonprofit mission. He testified that the scale of the investment bothered him, and it prompted him to open a legal investigation into OpenAI. "I was concerned they were really trying to steal the charity," Musk said from the stand.

Nadella said he did not believe Microsoft's investments in OpenAI were donations, and that there was a clear commercial element to their partnership from the outset. He said during the partnership's early years, Microsoft gave OpenAI sharp discounts on computing resources, and Microsoft believed it would reap marketing benefits from doing so. During a separate video deposition that was played on Monday morning, Michael Wetter, a corporate development executive at Microsoft, said the company has recognized approximately $9.5 billion in revenue to date through its partnership with OpenAI as of March 2025.

[...] Nadella said he was "pretty surprised" by the board's decision [to fire Altman in November 2023], and that his priority was to try and figure out how to maintain continuity for Microsoft customers. Immediately after Altman was removed, Nadella said he made an effort to learn more about what happened, adding that he suspected jealousy and poor communication was at play. During conversations with OpenAI board members after the firing, Nadella said he was simply trying to understand the language in the OpenAI's statement about Altman being "not consistently candid" while communicating with the board. That language, Nadella said, "just didn't sort of suffice, because this is the CEO of a company that we are invested in and we're deeply partnered with, and so I felt that they could have explained to me what are the incidents or what is the detail behind it." There must have been instances of jealousy or miscommunication that could have justified pushing out Altman, Nadella said. He wanted more depth from the board members after the remark about candor, but no such information was available, he said. "It was sort of amateur city, as far as I'm concerned," Nadella testified.

[...] Musk testified that he is not entirely against OpenAI having a for-profit unit, but he said it became "the tail wagging the dog." He repeatedly accused Altman and Brockman of enriching themselves from a charity while also reaping the positive associations that come from running a nonprofit. "Microsoft has their own motivations, and that would be different from the motivations of the charity," Musk said from the stand. "All due respect to Microsoft, do you really want Microsoft controlling digital superintelligence?"

During a videotaped deposition shown in court last week, former OpenAI director Tasha McCauley recalled a discussion with Nadella and her fellow board members after the 2023 decision to dismiss Altman as OpenAI's CEO. "To the best of my recollection, Satya wanted to restore things to as they had been," McCauley said. The board members didn't think that was the right move, she said. But as a court witness on Monday, Nadella said he never demanded that the board reinstate Altman as OpenAI CEO. Recap:
Sam Altman Had a Bad Day In Court (Day Eight)
Sam Altman's Management Style Comes Under the Microscope At OpenAI Trial (Day Seven)
Brockman Rebuts Musk's Take On Startup's History, Recounts Secret Work For Tesla (Day Six)
OpenAI President Discloses His Stake In the Company Is Worth $30 Billion (Day Five)
Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial (Day Four)
Elon Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Him, Clashes With Company's Attorney (Day Three)
Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (Day Two)
Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court (Day One)

Apple says end-to-end encryption for RCS messages between iPhone and Android is now available in iOS 26.5, though the feature is still considered beta and depends on carrier support on both sides. MacRumors reports: Apple says that it worked with Google to lead a cross-industry effort to add E2EE to RCS. iOS users will need iOS 26.5, while Android users will need the latest version of Google Messages. End-to-end encryption is on by default, and there is a toggle for it in the Messages section of the Settings app. Encrypted messages are denoted with a small lock symbol. On iPhones not running iOS 26.5, RCS messages between iPhone and Android users do not have E2EE, but the new update will put Android to iPhone conversations on par with iPhone to iPhone conversations that are encrypted through iMessage.

Along with Google, Apple worked with the GSM Association to implement E2EE for RCS messages. E2EE is part of the RCS Universal Profile 3.0, published with Apple's help and built on the Messaging Layer Security protocol. RCS Universal Profile 3.0 also includes editing and deleting messages, cross-platform Tapback support, and replying to specific messages inline during cross-platform conversations.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Speaking to graduates of University of Central Florida's College of Arts and Humanities and Nicholson School of Communication and Media on May 8, commencement speaker Gloria Caulfield, vice president of strategic alliances at Tavistock Group, told graduating humanities students that AI is the "next industrial revolution," and was met with thousands of booing graduates. "And let's face it, change can be daunting. The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution," Caulfield said. At that point, murmurs rippled through the crowd. Caulfield paused, and the crowd erupted into boos. "Oh, what happened?" Caulfield said, turning around with her hands out. "Okay, I struck a chord. May I finish?" Someone in the crowd yelled, "AI SUCKS!"

Her speech begins around the hour and 15 minute mark in the UCF livestream. [...] Before the industrial revolution comment, Caulfield praised Jeff Bezos for his passion and use of Amazon as a "stepping stone" to his real dream: spaceflight. Rattled after the crowd's reaction, she continued her speech: "Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives." The crowd cheered. "Okay. We've got a bipolar topic here I see," Caulfield said. "And now AI capabilities are in the palm of our hands." The crowd booed again. "I love it, passion, let's go," she said. "AI is beginning to challenge all major sectors to find their highest and best use," she continued. "Okay, I don't want any giggles when I say this. We have been through this before, these industrial revolutions. In my graduation era, we were faced with the launch of the internet."

She goes on to talk about how cellphones used to be the size of briefcases. "At that time we had no idea how any of these technologies would impact the world and our lives. [...] These were some of the same trepidations and concerns we are now facing. But ultimately it was a game changer for global economic development and the proliferation of new businesses that never existed like Apple and Google and Meta and so many others, and not to mention countless job opportunities. So being an optimist here, AI alongside human intelligence has the potential to help us solve some of humanity's greatest problems. Many of you in this graduating class will play a role in making this happen."

Google says it has seen the first evidence of cybercriminals using AI to create a zero-day vulnerability. "Google reported its findings to the unnamed firm affected by the vulnerability before releasing its report," reports Politico. "The company then issued a patch to fix the issue." From the report: Google Threat Intelligence Group researchers detailed the development in a report released Monday. Zero-day exploits are considered the most serious type of security flaw because they are not detected by security companies and have no known fixes. The report noted that this was the first time Google had seen evidence of AI being used to develop these vulnerabilities -- marking a major change in the cybersecurity landscape, as it suggests newer AI models could be used to create major exploits, not just find them.

Google concluded that Anthropic's Claude Mythos model -- which has already found thousands of vulnerabilities across every major operating system and web browser -- was most likely not used to create the zero-day exploit. [...] The Google Threat Intelligence Group report also details efforts by Russia-linked hacking groups to use AI models to target Ukrainian networks with malware, while North Korean government hacking group APT45 used AI technologies to refine and scale up its cyber methods. John Hultquist, chief analyst at Google Threat Intelligence Group, said the findings made clear that the race to use AI to find network vulnerabilities has "already begun."

"For every zero-day we can trace back to AI, there are probably many more out there," Hultquist said. "Threat actors are using AI to boost the speed, scale, and sophistication of their attacks."

All 20 of America's state-run healthcare marketplace sites "include advertising trackers that share information with Big Tech companies," reports Gizmodo, citing a report from Bloomberg: Per the report, seven million Americans bought their health insurance through state exchanges in 2026, and many of them may have had personal information shared with companies, including Meta, TikTok, Snap, Google, Nextdoor, and LinkedIn, among others. Some of the data collected and shared with those companies included ZIP codes, a person's sex and citizenship status, and race.

In addition to potentially sensitive biographical details about a person, the trackers also may reveal additional details about their life based on the sites they visit. For instance, Bloomberg found trackers on Medicaid-related web pages in Rhode Island, which could reveal information about a person's financial status and need for assistance. In Maryland, a Spanish-language page titled "Good News for Noncitizen Pregnant Marylanders" and a page designed to help DACA recipients navigate their healthcare options were found to be transmitting data to Big Tech firms...

Per Bloomberg, several states have already removed some trackers from their exchange websites following the report.
Thanks to Slashdot reader JoeyRox for sharing the news.

A chain of 30 U.S. newspapers including the Sacramento Bee, the Miami Herald and the Idaho Statesman "has started to use a new AI tool that can summarize traditional articles and spit out different versions for different audiences," reports the New York Times.

And the chain's reporters "are not happy about it." Journalists in many of the company's newsrooms are now withholding their bylines from articles created by the new tool, meaning that those articles will run with a generic credit rather than a reporter's name, as is customary. They are also labeled AI-assisted. "We don't want to put our bylines on stories we did not actually write even if they're based on our work," said Ariane Lange, an investigative reporter at the Sacramento Bee and the vice chair of the Sacramento Bee News Guild. "That in itself feels like a lie."

The reporters' byline strike is one of the sharpest conflicts yet between journalists and their companies over the use of AI. Related debates are playing out in newsrooms across the country, as publishers experiment with new AI tools to streamline work that used to take hours, and some even use it to write full articles... [E]xecutives have promoted the tool internally as a way to increase the number of articles published and ultimately gain new subscribers... [Eric Nelson, the vice president of local news] said using reporters' bylines on the AI-generated articles was a way to show "authority" on Google so the search engine would rank the articles higher in the results. He also said the company was experimenting with feeding in reporters' notes to create articles. "Journalists who embrace and experiment with this tool are going to win," Nelson said in the meeting. "Journalists who are defiant will fall behind"....

McClatchy's public AI policy states that the company uses AI tools to summarize articles to "help readers quickly understand the main points of a single story or catch up on multiple stories about a larger topic," and that editors review the output before publication.