NASA hired a startup to catch its falling telescope
NASA hired a startup to catch its falling telescope

Swift has watched the sky since 2004, catching some of the universe’s biggest explosions. Now it is sinking, and time is short. NASA is paying Katalyst Space Technologies about $30mn to save it, the Associated Press reported. Liftoff could come as earl…

Flock’s surveillance cameras are spreading fast across the US
Flock’s surveillance cameras are spreading fast across the US

Most people call them automated licence plate readers, or ALPRs. They sit beside roads and log every car that passes. Flock Safety dominates the market. Engadget reports that Flock makes the vast majority of the 100,000-plus readers now blanketing the …

How the U.S. Engineered Its Sovereignty
How the U.S. Engineered Its Sovereignty

In 1839, J.M.W. Turner painted The Fighting Temeraire. The old warship, once a hero of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, glides like a ghost across the canvas, towed by a small steam tug belching smoke on its final voyage to the ship-breakers. The imag…

OpenAI may delay its IPO to 2027 to hold out for $1tn
OpenAI may delay its IPO to 2027 to hold out for $1tn

Patience has a price, and someone else is paying it. OpenAI may wait until 2027 to go public. The wait is meant to buy a bigger number. OpenAI is weighing a listing as late as 2027, Bloomberg reported. That timeline could see it go public after its riv…

Trump threatens 100% tariffs over digital services taxes
Trump threatens 100% tariffs over digital services taxes

The ink was barely dry. The EU had just signed a trade deal with Washington. A day later, Trump threatened to blow a hole in it. On Friday, the president posted the threat on Truth Social. Any country that imposes a digital services tax on US firms, he…

Tesla settles a fatal Full Self-Driving crash lawsuit
Tesla settles a fatal Full Self-Driving crash lawsuit

A settlement is the sound a lawsuit makes when it stops. For Tesla, one just went quiet. The far louder problem, a federal safety investigation, is still talking. Tesla has settled a lawsuit tied to a fatal 2023 crash involving its Full Self-Driving (S…

SpaceX wants its own gas pipeline to fuel Starship
SpaceX wants its own gas pipeline to fuel Starship

Most rocket companies buy their fuel. SpaceX wants to pipe it in. Filings in Texas show the company plans to build its own natural gas pipeline, an unusual move for a space firm, and a telling one. SpaceX calls the line Starpipe. It would run eight mil…

AWS raises GPU prices 20% as the memory crunch bites
AWS raises GPU prices 20% as the memory crunch bites

Renting an AI chip is starting to feel like booking a hotel in a sold-out city. You pay to hold the room, and the rate keeps climbing. On AWS, it just climbed again. Amazon Web Services has raised prices for EC2 Capacity Blocks for ML by roughly 20%, s…

Ex-Anthropic researchers raise $200M for self-improving AI
Ex-Anthropic researchers raise $200M for self-improving AI

Mirendil, founded by two researchers who left Anthropic after barely a year, has raised $200m at a $1bn valuation. The pitch: sell the self-improving AI that the big labs build for themselves and guard from everyone else. The biggest AI labs share one …

OpenAI hires Apple’s Vision Pro chief Paul Meade
OpenAI hires Apple’s Vision Pro chief Paul Meade

Paul Meade, Apple’s Vision Pro chief, is leaving to build OpenAI’s devices. It is the most senior Apple defection yet, and it points the AI hardware talent war straight at Cupertino. Apple does not lose vice presidents to rivals. That is the unwritten …