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Submission + - Garbage trucks may soon start spying on people (msn.com) 1

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: Garbage trucks could soon do more than collect trash—they may also help identify code violations using artificial intelligence (AI).

Officials in Cape Coral, Florida, recently considered equipping sanitation trucks with AI-powered cameras that would photograph properties as crews complete their normal collection routes.

The system would have been designed to identify potential issues such as overgrown lawns, peeling paint, and illegal dumping, and to flag violations so the city staff can review them later before taking enforcement action.

Submission + - Ongoing problems with Hitachi Rail Aurora fleet

Submitted by Mirnotoriety
Mirnotoriety writes: These UK train services are reduced until further notice over issues with new fleet

Key Issues Impacting the Service:

* Class 810 "Aurora" Reliability: The new Class 810 fleet has suffered technical teething problems, including ongoing software faults affecting onboard safety systems, doors, and onboard amenities, leading to unexpected breakdowns and service cancellations.

* False Fault Alarms: Unresolved software bugs trigger safety system warnings, causing trains to automatically enter fail-safe modes or forcing drivers to pull units out of service for safety checks.

* Brake System Warnings: Instances of intermittent brake alarms during transit have resulted in unexpected delays at intermediate stations and service cancellations mid-route.

* Intermittent Locking/Opening: Doors have frequently failed to open at station stops (or take excessive time to release), requiring conductors to perform emergency manual overrides or forcing entire trainloads of passengers to disembark through a single door.

* Mass Lockouts: Software issues governing the train's waste and vacuum systems have repeatedly caused all onboard toilets to shut down simultaneously mid-journey.

* Air Conditioner Damper Noise: Issues with external fresh-air intake dampers constantly cycling open and closed, leading to a persistent high-pressure "compressor hiss" inside passenger cars.

Submission + - Samsung reportedly cuts some U.S. jobs (cnbc.com)

Submitted by walterbyrd
walterbyrd writes: Samsung Electronics has cut jobs at its U.S. display, phone and other consumer electronics operations — affecting workers mainly in New Jersey and Texas, according to documents and two people familiar with the matter.

The South Korean tech giant said on Sunday in a statement to Reuters that 739 roles in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, have been affected by plans by Samsung Electronics America (SEA) — which is focused on consumer electronics and does not include chips — to move its headquarters to Texas.

A majority of people affected have received relocation offers, but others were let go, it added without elaborating.

Submission + - DGPUNET P2P AI Update on Distributed GPU Network v.06.25 complete, v.0.7 next (techtalkhawke.com)

Submitted by kmleon
kmleon writes: From the dgpunet.com website:
"DGPUNET (Distributed GPU Network) is a free and open source software (FOSS) project that enables clusterized pools of GPU — and CPU — compute from whatever machines you have on hand, enterprise or consumer, different makes and generations, not just Nvidia, into one distributed AI compute fabric. It keeps AI work moving without vendor lock-in and without a single point of failure, when the cloud gives you the runaround or hardware is 3, 6, or 24 months out.

As of v0.6.25 DGPUNET has moved from pre-alpha to alpha stability. Not quire yet ready for beta, but I am now using it in my daily personal and professional work."

Submission + - A Visual Catalog of Retro Macintosh Software (the icon-ic collection!)

Submitted by marciot
marciot writes: A picture might be worth a thousand words, but scrolling through 75,052 icons is a fun and nostalgic way to explore retro apps! The Visual Catalog of Retro Macintosh Software showcases an (almost) endless wall of icons culled from Macintosh CD-ROMs from the 80s and 90s, from the days before megapixels, when 32x32 pixels were enough for everybody!

Submission + - Gen Z Is Bringing CDs Back but They're Missing One Important Piece of the Puzzle (vice.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: Believe it or not, the CD—yes, that CD— is having a resurgence. In fact, new data reveals that Gen Z seems to be buying up the outdated music format without even having a way to play it.

On a broader note, physical media seems to be having a big moment in 2026. Through the first half of the year, total physical album sales on vinyl, CDs, and cassettes reached 38.2 million units in the United States. This equates to a 7.8 percent increase.

So how did all this come about? Well, it seems that younger music fans have been driving a lot of the retro revival. The report shows that in 2026, 60 percent of Gen Z listeners said they most often listen to music from the 1990s and older. This is a massive increase from the 18 percent marker in 2021.

Submission + - SpaceX stock has cratered nearly 23% since joining the Nasdaq-100 (cnbc.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: Friday’s loss of 5.43% marked a sixth-straight losing day and came after Elon Musk’s space and artificial intelligence company aborted a test flight for its Starship rocket.

The aerospace giant was expected to launch its Starship mega rocket within a 90-minute window at 5:45 p.m. in Texas on Thursday, but an engine ignition failure forced SpaceX to scrub the launch.

“Some of the engines didn’t start, triggering an automatic launch abort,” billionaire founder Musk said in a post on X. “Now offloading propellant. Next launch attempt hopefully in a few days.”

Submission + - Steve Wozniak's foundation partners with RealDoll maker to make teacherbots (nysfocus.com) 1

Submitted by Hentes
Hentes writes: Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak's foundation is partnering with Realbotix, best known for their RealDoll brand artificial companions, to deploy AI powered robotic tutors in classrooms. The doll will serve as a sort of artificial teacher's assistant, helping students that get stuck, or generating lessons. Students will be assigned an ID code, allowing the robot to provide personalized mentoring.

The female robot, named Sally, will have a “lifelike appearance” with silicone skin and long brown hair, Kiguel said in an interview with New York Focus. It will be stationary in a seated position but have a wide range of upper-body movements and facial expressions.

Submission + - AI Executives Add Personal Security as Backlash Turns Violent (aiweekly.co)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: In April, someone threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's San Francisco home, and within days a second attack put gunfire into the property. The Wall Street Journal reports that AI executives are hardening personal security as opposition to the industry moves from online posts into the physical world.

Prosecutors say Daniel Moreno-Gama, the 20-year-old accused in the first attack, traveled from Texas to San Francisco intending to kill Altman, and had writings on him about AI's purported risk to humanity. He faces two counts of attempted murder and attempted arson in California state court. Two more suspects were later arrested in connection with the second incident. Around the same time, The Information described Silicon Valley leaning into a new breed of bodyguards for AI leadership.

The pressure isn't only on the people at the top. According to the Data Center Watch Q1 2026 report, organized opposition groups roughly doubled from 396 at the end of last year to 833 by the end of March, spanning 49 states, and opponents blocked or delayed at least 75 projects worth about $130 billion in a single quarter. That is a very different problem from a viral tweet. It is permits denied, votes lost, sites relocated.

Submission + - AI Data Centers Being Built Faster Than They Can Be Secured (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: AI is reshaping data centers and introducing security risks traditional architectures weren't designed to handle. As AI data centers scale at breakneck speed, security isn't keeping up. Researchers outline the Top 10 AI infrastructure security risks, including hardware integrity, multi-tenant isolation, high-speed network fabrics, supply chain compromise, and patching failures.

Submission + - US Suffered a Major Power Outage Every Month of 2026 (electrek.co)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A Reddit post making the rounds this week claims the US has experienced at least one major power outage every month of 2026 – but is it true? I dug into several outages, the extreme weather behind them, and what we can do to help keep the lights on. [...] The claim that hundreds of thousands of Americans were without power over extended periods at least once per month, every month of 2026 surprised be in two ways. First, because I had no idea if it was true – and, second, because it felt true. We try to do better than writing about things that feel true around here, however, so I did a bit of research (translation: I Googled power outages by month) and came up with the following examples in about sixty seconds

January: More than 296,000 customers still without power as winter storm freezes much of the US
February: More than 380,000 customers without power as winter storm hits US Northeast
March: Storms Cut Power to Over 1 Million Customers in US Midwest, Mid-Atlantic; Ohio Hardest Hit
April: At least 29 tornadoes touched down in Central Illinois on April 17th
May: Energy Secretary Issues Emergency Order to Deploy Backup Generation in the Mid-Atlantic Amid Heatwave
June: More than 373,000 US customers without power due to extreme weather

... and that list is far from comprehensive, and how you feel about it might depend on what you consider a “major” outage, of course – but consider that there are tens of thousands of Americans without power right now, and that’s not making the news. [...] The lesson here is that weather-related grid outages – whether they’re caused by wildfires, mudslides, derechos, tornadoes, ice storms, hurricanes, heat waves, or some other disaster I’m lucky enough to have forgotten about – read like statistics when they’re happening over there, but get personal real quick when they’re happening to you.

Submission + - China — New law bans AI companions bots (scmp.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Two of China’s major consumer-facing artificial intelligence apps, ByteDance’s Doubao and Alibaba Group Holding’s Qwen, are moving to disable customised agent features, as new rules on humanlike AI interaction services are set to take effect, part of Beijing’s push to build a broader regulatory framework for the fast-growing sector.

Doubao informed users in a Friday night notice that its agent feature would go offline on July 15 because of “product function adjustments”. After October 15, Doubao’s related data would be handled in accordance with the company’s privacy policy and no longer be viewable or recoverable inside the app.

Qwen also issued a similar notice on Saturday morning, saying that its “humanlike interactive agents and user-created agent functions” would be disabled on July 10, while broader “Qwen agent functions and services” would be taken offline on July 15. Users would no longer be able to access related agent settings or previous conversations after the shutdown.

Both apps had offered a pool of agents, created by both the companies and users, that could be customised for specific tasks, skills and speaking styles. Users could also create their own agents, turning a general-purpose chatbot into a named assistant, tutor, role-playing character or companion with a fixed persona and tone.

The timing coincides with the implementation of the Interim Measures for the Administration of Artificial Intelligence Anthropomorphic Interaction Services, effective July 15. Issued in April, the rules cover AI services that “simulate human personality traits, thinking patterns and communication styles to provide sustained emotional interaction”.

The rules exclude customer service bots, knowledge Q&A, workplace assistants, education and scientific research tools, as long as they do not involve sustained emotional interaction.

Submission + - Physicists create first room-temperature quantum material (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: In a study published in Nature, LSU physicists have developed the first room-temperature quantum material capable of distinguishing and transporting different quantum states of light, overcoming one of the biggest challenges in quantum materials research. Led by Associate Professor of Physics Omar S. Magaña-Loaiza, the work establishes a general design principle for engineering an entirely new class of quantum materials, opening new possibilities for quantum computing, secure communications, sensing technologies and advanced energy systems.

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