New types of AI coding assistants promise to let anyone build software by typing commands in plain English. But when these tools generate incorrect internal representations of what's happening on your computer, the results can be catastrophic.

Two recent incidents involving AI coding assistants put a spotlight on risks in the emerging field of "vibe coding"—using natural language to generate and execute code through AI models without paying close attention to how the code works under the hood. In one case, Google's Gemini CLI destroyed user files while attempting to reorganize them. In another, Replit's AI coding service deleted a production database despite explicit instructions not to modify code.

The Gemini CLI incident unfolded when a product manager experimenting with Google's command-line tool watched the AI model execute file operations that destroyed data while attempting to reorganize folders. The destruction occurred through a series of move commands targeting a directory that never existed.

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To the casual observer, cybercriminals can look like swashbuckling geniuses.

They possess technical skills formidable enough to penetrate the networks of the biggest companies on the planet.

They cover their tracks using technology that is arcane to most people—VPNs, encrypted chat apps, onion routing, aliases in dark web forums.

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Search is changing at a breakneck pace, with Google rolling out new AI features so quickly it can be hard to keep up. So far, these AI implementations are being offered in addition to the traditional search experience. However, Google is now offering a sneak peek at how it may use AI to change the good old-fashioned list of blue links. The company says its new Web Guide feature is being developed to "intelligently organize" the results page, and you can try it now, if you dare.

Many Google searches today come with an AI Overview right at the top of the page. There's also AI Mode, which does away with the typical list of links in favor of a full chatbot approach. While Google contends that these features enhance the search experience and direct users to good sources, it's been easy to scroll right past the AI and get to the regular list of websites. That may change in the not too distant future, though.

Google's latest AI experiment, known as Web Guide, uses generative AI to organize the search results page. The company says Web Guide uses a custom version of Gemini to surface the most helpful webpages and organize the page in a more useful way. It uses the same fan-out technique as AI Mode, conducting multiple parallel searches to gather more data on your query.

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Donald Trump vowed to save TikTok before taking office, claiming only he could make a deal to keep the app operational in the US despite national security concerns.

But then, he put Vice President JD Vance in charge of the deal, and after months of negotiations, the US still doesn't seem to have found terms for a sale that the Chinese government is willing to approve. Now, Trump Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has confirmed that if China won't approve the latest version of the deal—which could result in a buggy version of TikTok made just for the US—the administration is willing to shut down TikTok. And soon.

On Thursday, Lutnick told CNBC that TikTok would stop operating in the US if China and TikTok owner ByteDance won't sell the app to buyers that Trump lined up, along with control over TikTok's algorithm.

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The CEOs of every major artificial intelligence company received letters Wednesday urging them to fight Donald Trump's anti-woke AI order.

Trump's executive order requires any AI company hoping to contract with the federal government to jump through two hoops to win funding. First, they must prove their AI systems are "truth-seeking"—with outputs based on "historical accuracy, scientific inquiry, and objectivity" or else acknowledge when facts are uncertain. Second, they must train AI models to be "neutral," which is vaguely defined as not favoring DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), "dogmas," or otherwise being "intentionally encoded" to produce "partisan or ideological judgments" in outputs "unless those judgments are prompted by or otherwise readily accessible to the end user."

Announcing the order in a speech, Trump said that the US winning the AI race depended on removing allegedly liberal biases, proclaiming that "once and for all, we are getting rid of woke."

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At least $1 billion worth of Nvidia’s advanced artificial intelligence processors were shipped to China in the three months after Donald Trump tightened chip export controls, exposing the limits of Washington’s efforts to restrain Beijing’s high-tech ambitions.

A Financial Times analysis of dozens of sales contracts, company filings, and multiple people with direct knowledge of the deals reveals that Nvidia’s B200 has become the most sought-after—and widely available—chip in a rampant Chinese black market for American semiconductors.

The processor is widely used by US powerhouses such as OpenAI, Google, and Meta to train their latest AI systems, but banned for sale to China.

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Most people, after suffering consequences for a bad decision, will alter their future behavior to avoid a similar negative outcome. That's just common sense. But many social circles have that one friend who never seems to learn from those consequences, repeatedly self-sabotaging themselves with the same bad decisions. When it comes to especially destructive behaviors, like addictions, the consequences can be severe or downright tragic.

Why do they do this? Researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia, suggest that the core issue is that such people don't seem able to make a causal connection between their choices/behavior and the bad outcome, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications Psychology. Nor are they able to integrate new knowledge into their decision-making process effectively to get better results. The results could lead to the development of new intervention strategies for gambling, drug, and alcohol addictions.

In 2023, UNSW neuroscientist Philip Jean-Richard Dit Bressel and colleagues designed an experimental video game to explore the issue of why certain people keep making the same bad choices despite suffering some form of punishment as a result. Participants played the interactive online game by clicking on one of two planets to "trade" with them; choosing the correct planet resulted in earning points.

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Some VMware perpetual license holders are currently unable to download security patches, The Register reported today. The virtualization company has only said that these users will receive the patches at “a later date,” meaning users are uncertain how long their virtualization environments will be at risk.

Since Broadcom bought VMware and ended perpetual license sales in favor of bundled subscription-based SKUs, some organizations have opted against signing up for a subscription and are running VMware without a support contract. These users are still supposed to have access to zero-day security patches. However, some customers reported to The Register that they have been unable to download VMware patches from Broadcom’s support portal.

VMware customer service has told some of these customers that they may have to wait 90 days before they can download the patches, The Register reported.

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Indie game clearinghouse itch.io is the latest online gaming storefront to take action to remove or limit the availability of some adult content, bowing to pressure from payment processors spurred by an Australian grassroots group's campaign against certain sexualized content.

Wednesday night, itch.io creators and users began noticing that many adult-oriented games and content were no longer appearing in search results on the platform. Other creators reported that their adult-focused titles had been removed from the platform entirely, without any advance warning.

By early Thursday morning, itch.io had confirmed in a blog post that it had "'deindexed' all adult NSFW content from our browser and search pages." Itch said the move—which it admitted was "sudden and disruptive"—came in response to a pressure campaign from Collective Shout, an Australian nonprofit that describes itself as "a grassroots movement challenging the objectification of women and sexualization of girls in media, advertising, and popular culture."

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Apple released the macOS 26 Tahoe public beta today, alongside the public betas for iOS, iPadOS, and other operating systems.

The headliner this year is the new Liquid Glass aesthetic that Apple is introducing across its entire product lineup this year, and aside from that, there's nothing coming to the Mac that feels quite as significant as the iPad's new multi-window multitasking interface.

But macOS remains Apple's most powerful, most flexible, and most power-user-friendly operating system, and per usual, there are a few new things coming in other than the big headliners. Here are a handful of under-the-hood and lesser-publicized things coming in Tahoe, both for those who install the public beta this summer and who install the final version of the update in the fall.

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The Mac and the iPad are different devices that do different things. This has been the line from Apple executives, from its initial introduction to the advent of touchscreen PCs to just last month when Apple’s Craig Federighi talked to us about iPadOS 26’s new multitasking features.

But it sometimes feels like this internal commitment to keeping the devices separate has held the iPad back as its hardware has become more capable. A mouse cursor? Sure, we’ll add it, after a few years of insisting on keyboard-and-finger interactions, but we’ll make it round and imprecise instead of pointy because the iPad is Different. Windowed multitasking? Sure, we’ll give you a version of it, but you can’t do whatever you want with the windows, and we’ll tie it to a weird new interface for grouping them, because the iPad is Different.

I respect the desire not to take the path of least resistance here, which would be to imitate the Mac by default without trying to do anything new. And it’s not like you could just move macOS elements over totally unchanged; having a touch-first user interface and touch-first apps means the iPad’s system needs to work well with both touch and a keyboard-and-mouse/trackpad setup. It needs to work well in landscape and portrait modes.

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As promised, Apple has just released the first public beta versions for the next-generation versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and most of its other operating systems. The headlining feature of all the updates this year is Apple’s new Liquid Glass user interface, which is rolling out to all of these operating systems simultaneously. It’s the biggest and most comprehensive update to Apple’s software design aesthetic since iOS 7 was released in 2013.

Rather than getting iOS 19, macOS 16, and watchOS 12, all of the new operating systems this year are labeled as version 26, a shift to a new year-based version numbering system meant to make releases more consistent across all of Apple's platforms.

The one major update that isn’t getting a public beta is visionOS 26. If you want to test the new software on a Vision Pro, you’ll need to sign up for the developer betas instead—just know that when Apple chooses not to release a public beta, there’s usually a good reason. You might risk additional instability, an increased risk of data loss, or even damage to your device, so tread especially carefully.

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A lawyer who represents Children's Health Defense—the rabid anti-vaccine organization founded by the equally fervent anti-vaccine advocate and current US health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—has filed a lawsuit against Kennedy, alleging that he has failed to set up a task force to promote safer childhood vaccinations.

The task force's creation is outlined in the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which is mainly known for setting up the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The program provides compensation to people who have credible claims that they were injured by a vaccination, such as experiencing a very rare, severe side effect. It acts as a no-fault alternative to costly lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies. Otherwise, those lawsuits could deter pharmaceutical companies from marketing and developing vaccines, which would create a grave threat to vaccination rates and public health.

Tucked into the 1986 law is also a provision that states the US health secretary "shall establish a task force on safer childhood vaccines." The task force is intended to "promote the development of childhood vaccines that result in fewer and less serious adverse reactions than those vaccines on the market on the effective date of this part and promote the refinement of such vaccines." The task force is supposed to provide progress reports to Congress, which are to be submitted every two years.

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On Wednesday, the White House released "Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan," a 25-page document that outlines the Trump administration's strategy to "maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance" in AI through deregulation, infrastructure investment, and international partnerships. But critics are already taking aim at the plan, saying it's doing Big Tech a big favor.

Assistant to the President for Science and Technology Michael Kratsios and Special Advisor for AI and Crypto David Sacks crafted the plan, which frames AI development as a race the US must win against global competitors, particularly China.

The document describes AI as the catalyst for "an industrial revolution, an information revolution, and a renaissance—all at once." It calls for removing regulatory barriers that the administration says hamper private sector innovation. The plan explicitly reverses several Biden-era policies, including Executive Order 14110 on AI model safety measures, which President Trump rescinded on his first day in office during his second term.

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Two NASA satellites rocketed into orbit from California aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday, commencing a $170 million mission to study a phenomenon of space physics that has eluded researchers since the dawn of the Space Age.

The twin spacecraft are part of the NASA-funded TRACERS mission, which will spend at least a year measuring plasma conditions in narrow regions of Earth's magnetic field known as polar cusps. As the name suggests, these regions are located over the poles. They play an important but poorly understood role in creating colorful auroras as plasma streaming out from the Sun interacts with the magnetic field surrounding Earth.

The same process drives geomagnetic storms capable of disrupting GPS navigation, radio communications, electrical grids, and satellite operations. These outbursts are usually triggered by solar flares or coronal mass ejections that send blobs of plasma out into the Solar System. If one of these flows happens to be aimed at Earth, we are treated with auroras but vulnerable to the storm's harmful effects.

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On Tuesday, OpenAI announced a partnership with Oracle to develop 4.5 gigawatts of additional data center capacity for its Stargate AI infrastructure platform in the US. The expansion, which TechCrunch reports is part of a $30 billion-per-year deal between OpenAI and Oracle, will reportedly bring OpenAI's total Stargate capacity under development to over 5 gigawatts.

The data center has taken root in Abilene, Texas, a city of 127,000 located 150 miles west of Fort Worth. The city, which serves as the commercial hub of a 19-county region known as the "Big Country," offers a location with existing tech employment ecosystem, including Dyess Air Force Base and three universities. Abilene's economy has evolved over time from its agricultural and livestock roots to embrace technology and manufacturing sectors.

"We have signed a deal for an additional 4.5 gigawatts of capacity with oracle as part of stargate. easy to throw around numbers, but this is a gigantic infrastructure project," wrote OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on X. "We are planning to significantly expand the ambitions of stargate past the $500 billion commitment we announced in January."

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Tesla posted its financial results for the second quarter of 2025 this afternoon. The numbers show yet another bad three months for the automaker. As competition in the EV marketplace has exploded, Tesla has increasingly been left behind, with a small and aging model lineup, before we even contemplate how CEO Elon Musk has tarnished what was once the hottest brand in the car world. Earlier this month, we learned that sales dropped by 13 percent year over year in Q2 2025; today, the financials show that automotive revenues fell even more, dropping 16 percent year over year to $16.7 billion.

Tesla’s battery business has been feeling the pain, too. For a while, this was a growth area for the company, albeit one with a relatively minor contribution to the bottom line. During Q2 2025, Tesla’s energy generation and storage division brought in $2.8 billion in revenue, a 7 percent decline from the same period in 2024.

Sales of Carbon credits—those government-issued permits that other automakers buy in order to pollute—shrank by more than half, to $490 million. Those other automakers are now selling EVs, at least most of them, and have less need to buy credits from Tesla. It’s likely this subsidy, which has kept the company out of the red in the past, will be even less of a contributor in the coming years as the US strips away environmental protections.

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Julian LeFay, the man often credited as "the father of The Elder Scrolls," has died at the age of 59, his creative partners announced this week.

"It is with profound sadness and heavy hearts that we inform our community of the passing of Julian LeFay, our beloved Technical Director and co-founder of Once Lost Games," his colleagues wrote in a Bluesky post.

LeFay spent most of the 1990s at Bethesda Softworks, culminating in his work on The Elder Scrolls series into the late '90s.

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Government agencies and private industry have been under siege over the past four days following the discovery that a critical vulnerability in SharePoint, the widely used document-sharing app made by Microsoft, is under mass exploitation. Since that revelation, the fallout and the ever-increasing scope of the attacks have been hard to keep track of.

What follows are answers to some of the most common questions about the vulnerability and the ongoing exploitation of it, which collectively is being called ToolShell by people tracking the activity.

What’s known so far

Question: What’s SharePoint?

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Hacking is hard. Well, sometimes.

Other times, you just call up a company's IT service desk and pretend to be an employee who needs a password reset, an Okta multifactor authentication reset, and a Microsoft multifactor authentication reset... and it's done. Without even verifying your identity.

So you use that information to log in to the target network and discover a more trusted user who works in IT security. You call the IT service desk back, acting like you are now this second person, and you request the same thing: a password reset, an Okta multifactor authentication reset, and a Microsoft multifactor authentication reset. Again, the desk provides it, no identity verification needed.

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