BYD Co. sees China’s electric vehicle price war as unsustainable, according to a senior company executive, who stopped short of saying the country’s largest EV maker would scale back the aggressive discounting it helped trigger.
“It’s very extreme, tough competition,” executive vice president Stella Li said in an interview with Bloomberg News in London. “No, it’s not sustainable,” she added, noting that consolidation across the sector is likely as the market matures.
The comments highlight mounting strain within China’s overheated EV market, where a flood of new entrants and deep price cuts—many led by BYD—have eroded margins and triggered rare government intervention. While BYD has gained market share, the fallout is growing, with investors, regulators and rivals all pushing for a reset.
Beijing summoned industry leaders for talks earlier this month, telling EV makers not to sell cars below cost or offer unreasonable price cuts.
The EV price war has weighed heavily on automaker shares, with BYD losing around $22 billion in market capitalization since peaking in late May. Still, the company is seen as a likely long-term winner if smaller and mid-sized rivals are squeezed out, allowing BYD to grow its dominant market share.
Li said BYD plans to continue investing aggressively outside China, with a particular focus on Europe. The company expects to spend as much as $20 billion in the region over the coming years, she said.
BYD’s market share is rising rapidly in key European countries including Germany, the UK and Italy, helped by a fast-expanding dealer network and competitively priced offerings—especially plug-in hybrids.
The company recently overtook rival Tesla Inc. in Europe, a shift attributed in part to BYD offering a wider lineup of models. It currently sells around nine to ten vehicles in the region, compared to Tesla’s four.
Li also said that BYD has no immediate plans to partner with a European automaker, a strategy that local rivals Xpeng Inc. and Zhejiang Leapmotor Technology Co. have embraced. “But the door is open,” she said.
Li added that BYD is also investing heavily in after-sales service, and expects its European market share to climb further as more customers become familiar with the company’s technology and support.
“If we decide to do something, we put all our resources behind it,” she said. “We want to make sure it’s successful in the long run.”
Stella Li, vice president of BYD Co., during a Bloomberg Television interview at the Founders Forum Global conference in Great Tew, UK, on Thursday, June 12, 2025.
OpenAI hit $10 billion in annualized revenue on Monday, almost doubling its 2024 ARR in six months. Investor Mark Cuban believes the ChatGPT creator’s massive sales growth reflects its standout brand in a crowded start-up market.
Mark Cuban is bullish on ChatGPT.
The chatbot’s creator, OpenAI, said its annual recurring revenue reached $10 billion on Monday, almost doubling its $5.5 billion in ARR last year. While whispers of a potential IPO ripple through the investor community, AI advocate and investment luminary Cuban said he prefers the chatbot over competitors like Gemini and Claude, which he also uses.
“This is still a race in the first inning, but ChatGPT has done the best job of building a brand, and it shows in their sales,” he told Fortune in an email.
The San Francisco startup said its $10 billion figure includes ChatGPT business products, consumer products, and its application programming interface, or API.
“(OpenAI) earned every penny of it,” Cuban said of the company’s revenue landmark.
ChatGPT became the fastest-adopted app in history when it launched in 2023, gaining a million users in five days. OpenAI now supports 500 million weekly active users, it said in late March.
The company announced earlier this month that it has 3 million paying business users, a 50% increase from the 2 million it reported in February. Customers of ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Team and ChatGPT Edu, which are all workplace-specific versions of the chatbot with separate subscription tiers, comprise the 3 million users.
But the company’s growth hasn’t been profitable. OpenAI lost about $5 billion last year.
Still, the company forecasts continued growth, and targeted $125 billion in revenue by 2029, The Information reported in April.
OpenAI closed a $40 billion funding round in March, penning the largest private tech deal on record—its valuation now 30 times its annualized revenue.
In early October 2024, OpenAI closed a $6.6 billion funding round that Cuban could’ve contributed to, the former principal owner of the Dallas Mavericks revealed during an appearance on the “All-In” podcast.
Cuban told FortuneGoogle Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and Perplexity AI are some of the chatbots he uses, noting he uses ChatGPT daily. The Information recently reported that ‘AI native’ companies’—businesses fundamentally built around AI—annualized revenue have seen exponential sales in 2025, but OpenAI has taken the lion’s share, accounting for over two-thirds of revenue.
Anthropic hit $3 billion in annualized revenue in May, tripling its $1 billion figure from December 2024. The company said it’s on track to become profitable in 2027.
OpenAI’s massive growth is a testament to “just how explosive the (AI) market is,” Evercore ISI analyst Mark Mahaney said.
But, if he were to guess, he said it’s likely the company doubled its losses along with its annualized revenue.
But Cuban is now a believer, having experienced the growth of OpenAI’s influence firsthand.
“I often ask the question at talks and panels, ‘how many of you use ChatGPT.’ The responses have gone from just a few a year ago, to pretty much all but (two) people in a large room,” Cuban said.
In March, Apple delayed its upgraded Siri, saying that “it’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver” the promised features. At WWDC this week, Apple’s SVP of software Craig Federighi and SVP of worldwide marketing Greg Joswiak shared more details about the decision to delay in an interview with The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern.
As part of its initial Apple Intelligence announcements at WWDC 2024, Apple said that the improved Siri would have awareness of your personal context and the ability to take actions for you in apps. While Apple was showing real software at that show, Siri “didn’t converge in the way, quality-wise, that we needed it to,” Federighi said. Apple wanted it to be “really, really reliable. And we weren’t able to achieve the reliability in the time we thought.”
“Look, we don’t want to disappoint customers,” Joswiak said. “We never do. But it would’ve been more disappointing to ship something that didn’t hit our quality standard, that had an error rate that we felt was unacceptable. So we made what we thought was the best decision. I’d make it again.”
Stern asked why Apple, with all of its resources, couldn’t make it work. “When it comes to automating capabilities on devices in a reliable way, no one’s doing it really well right now,” Federighi said. “We wanted to be the first. We wanted to do it best.” While the company had “very promising early results and working initial versions,” the team came to feel that “this just doesn’t work reliably enough to be an Apple product,” he said.
At WWDC, Federighi also spoke to YouTuber iJustine, and both Federighi and Joswiak were interviewed by Tom’s Guide’s Mark Spoonauer and TechRadar’s Lance Ulanoff. In Apple’s March statement, it said that anticipated rolling out the Siri upgrades “in the coming year,” which, to Spoonauer, Joswiak clarified to mean 2026.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT service was down all day for many users after the platform started experiencing performance issues on Tuesday morning. The chatbot responded with a “Hmm…something seems to have gone wrong” error message to my colleague after failing to load, and users across X and Reddit are reporting platform outages.
Downdetector showed that issues started at around 3AM ET, with multiple regions impacted globally. OpenAI’s own status page said that some users started experiencing “elevated error rates and latency” at that time, noting that the issues were affecting ChatGPT, its Sora text-to-video AI tool, and OpenAI APIs. OpenAI added a separate line for “elevated error rates on Sora” at 5:23AM ET, and later updated the status for both to “partial outage.”
As of 6:32PM ET, OpenAI’s tracker reported a “full recovery in the API,” and that “Nearly all ChatGPT components are now working properly for all users.” The one spot of trouble, however, is voice mode, which still has elevated error rates.
Some users were able to access ChatGPT, but found that the service was sluggish and taking much longer than usual to respond. Others, like myself, were able to use the chatbot without any issues, so the outages and errors didn’t seem to impact everyone.
So, you’re thinking of buying a smart ring. Well, some good news. Picking the best of the lot is incredibly easy right now. The “bad” news is that, as far as trustworthiness and reliability, your choices are somewhat limited, as this is still a niche and emerging gadget category.
Smart rings are in the middle of a resurgence. That means a lot of experimental ideas and newcomer tech brands you’ve probably never heard of. Enough competitors have cropped up that I spent the better part of last summer rocking six rings like a high-tech mafia don. While these aren’t necessarily bad products (some are pretty good), many aren’t as polished as what you’d see in more mature categories like smartwatches, headphones, and smartphones.
Speaking of which, there are a few things to know about the category. Currently, these devices are primarily health trackers. Their benefit is they’re more discreet and are better suited to sleep tracking than a smartwatch. However, the vast majority don’t include smart alarms or push notifications. This makes them best suited to casual athletes or more wellness-minded people. Hardcore athletes would be better served in most cases by a smartwatch or fitness tracker, with a smart ring as a supplementary source of data. (But that’s quite an expensive endeavor.) Smart rings are also ill-suited for weightlifters, as they can easily scratch against equipment.
With that in mind, here’s the best smart ring for most people in 2025 — and a handful of runners-up worth highlighting for the more tech-adventurous.
How we test smart rings
Smart rings are meant to be a stylish and discreet alternative to traditional fitness trackers. That requires a combination of experiential testing and benchmarks. We wear them daily for weeks to see how well they accommodate bloated fingers and temperature changes. We don’t take them off in the shower or to wash dishes to test waterproofing. And we compare them to a smartwatch, the Oura Ring, and a smart bed to gauge sleep and health tracking accuracy. Other factors we consider are size ranges, sizing kits, app design, syncing times, and, of course, battery life.
Sizing
Your fingers will bloat. How accommodating is the design? What’s the size range offered? (Some of us have tiny fingers!) How easy is it to return?
Design
Many people want a smart ring to double as a piece of jewelry. Is it comfortable to wear 24 / 7? Is the design versatile for all sorts of events? Will you get compliments for wearing it?
Durability
Does the finish scuff? Will you see visible scratches if you wear other rings alongside it?
Charging and battery
Rings are easy to lose. Does it have a charging case or does it use a charging dock that a cat can easily knock off your nightstand? Sleep tracking is one of the most popular use cases for a smart ring, and for that you need good battery life. How much do you get on a single charge?
App
Many smart ring companies are newcomers. The hardware can be nice, but it means nothing if the app is a nightmare. How easy is the ring to update and sync? Does it sync with larger platforms like Apple Health or Google Health Connect?
Best smart ring for most people
Surprising no one, it’s the Oura Ring 4.
I can already hear some of you shouting, “But what about the subscription!” And I agree. Even Oura’s relatively affordable $6 monthly fee can feel more like $100 when you consider the sheer number of apps, gadgets, and services asking for a chunk of your monthly paycheck. However, Oura is still the best in terms of hardware, size range, features offered, app, dedication to research, and experience in the field. Many of the smart rings available today follow the example Oura set this past decade.
The upgrades from the Oura Ring Gen 3 to the Oura Ring 4 were mostly software-based, with minor hardware refinements. You can read more in my review, but the gist is a more accurate heart rate and blood oxygen algorithm, improved automatic activity detection, and an expanded range that spans size 4 to 15. The app has been redesigned to be less cluttered, and in the last few weeks, Oura added AI-powered meal logging and glucose tracking, the latter of which requires Oura users to purchase a Dexcom Stelo CGM ($99). It also recently launched an AI chatbot. (Of the AI chatbots in health trackers I’ve tested, this one is among the more polished implementations — though it often feels like Captain Obvious-level insights.)
I’ve been long-term testing three iterations of the Oura Ring since 2018. Accuracy, design, and comfort have improved with each generation. The company continues to frequently and clearly communicate research and scientific developments. Third-party retail options have expanded, and I’ve seen investment pour into Oura. In an emerging category, these things matter. A lot. While I believe some of Oura’s newer competitors do some things better or have more creative ideas, Oura is the one I continually recommend for its combination of reliability, accuracy, and experience.
If subscriptions are an absolute dealbreaker, you’ll find zero protest here. In that case, here are the best alternatives to the Oura Ring.
The $400 Samsung Galaxy Ringnails the hardware. Its charging case is more elegant than the Oura Ring’s, and I prefer the slightly concave design for comfort. It also has the second widest size range. If you’re already all-in on a Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 or Ultra, you get the added benefit of extended battery life. If you have the latest Galaxy Z Flip 6 or Z Fold 6, Samsung also has gesture controls for the ring so you can control the camera.
There are a lot of interesting ecosystem-centric ideas that Samsung has for its Galaxy Ring, but while there’s no subscription, it’ll cost you a pretty penny to unlock the ring’s full potential. Without discounts, we’re talking about $1,800 to nearly $3,000 for the phone, watch, and ring. The Galaxy Ring is also a first-gen device with some first-gen quirks, too. Samsung is still catching up with sleep tracking accuracy, and its Galaxy AI-powered health features are rather hit or miss.
I’m also keen on the $350 Ultrahuman Ring Air. It gave the Oura Ring an honest run for its money when I tested six smart rings at once last year. It’s not quite as good with accuracy, but it’s on par with comfort and design. The app has much more of a fitness focus than wellness. Instead of a subscription, it has “Power Plugs.” You can think of them as add-on features. Some are free, like smart alarms and cycle tracking. Others will come with an additional fee, like a planned atrial fibrillation detection Power Plug and a cardio adaptability metric, which costs $2.90 a month.
Lastly, I’ve been testing the RingConn Gen 2 Air, a slimmer, entry-level version of its Gen 2 ring. At $200, it’s the most affordable smart ring I’ve tested but looks and feels a lot nicer than the original RingConn I tested last summer. I had issues with the RingConn’s squarish shape, but it’s much less noticeable this time around and more comfortable. It’s broadly accurate, and the app goes heavy on AI, to middling effect. It has great battery life. I’ve gotten around eight to nine days on a single charge — far better than any other smart ring I’ve tested.
Update, June 10th: Updated to reflect current pricing / availability and add several related links.
Spotlight and themes are in the limelight. | Screenshot: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
At WWDC, Apple announced its new Liquid Glass design language, which is coming to all of its devices, including Macs. I've been tinkering with the macOS Tahoe 26 developer beta on the M4 MacBook Air for about a day. So far, the aesthetic changes range from slick to slightly overwrought, but the new Spotlight search features are nifty and useful.
There are new touches of glassy transparency all over macOS 26, including the Dock, Finder, widgets, and built-in apps. It's more subtle than on the iPhone, mostly because the Mac's much larger screen real estate makes the Liquid Glass elements more like accents than whatever this mess is supposed to be. I'm not very fond of it just yet, but maybe it will grow on me, like UI changes tend to.
The Dock now has a frosted background that's more translucent than Sequoia's flatter design. The hazy, frozen glass aesthetic also extends to widgets, like the calendar and weather, and drop-down menus - though the latter have much higher opacity. The pop-ups for volume and brightness now use this distorted glass look as well, though they've moved to the top-right corner of the screen instead of being centered above the dock. Frankly, they're ugly, …
Apple's WWDC 2025 had new software, Formula 1 references, and a piano man crooning the text of different app reviews. But one key feature got the short end of the stick: Siri.
Although the company continuously referenced Apple Intelligence and pushed new features like live translation for Messages, FaceTime, and phone calls, Apple's AI assistant was barely mentioned. In fact, the most attention Siri got was when Apple explained that some of its previously promised features were running behind schedule.
To address what many saw as the elephant in the room, Apple's keynote briefly mentioned that it had updated Siri to be "more natural and more helpful," but that personalization features were still on the horizon. Those features were first mentioned at last year's WWDC, with a rollout timeline "over the course of the next year."
"We're continuing our work to deliver the features that make Siri even more personal," Craig Federighi, Apple's SVP of software engineering, said during Monday's keynote. "This work needed more time to reach our high quality bar, and we look forward to sharing more about it in the coming year."
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in a blog post published Tuesday, says an average ChatGPT query uses about 0.000085 gallons of water, or “roughly one fifteenth of a teaspoon.” He made the claim as part of a broader post on his predictions about how AI will change the world.
“People are often curious about how much energy a ChatGPT query uses; the average query uses about 0.34 watt-hours, about what an oven would use in a little over one second, or a high-efficiency lightbulb would use in a couple of minutes,” he says. He also argues that “the cost of intelligence should eventually converge to near the cost of electricity.” OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on how Altman came to those figures.
AI companies have come under scrutiny for energy costs of their technology. This year, for example, researchers forecast that AI could consume more power than Bitcoin mining by the end of the year. In an article last year, The Washington Post worked with researchers to determine that a 100-word email “generated by an AI chatbot using GPT-4” required “a little more than 1 bottle.” The publication also found that water usage can depend on where a datacenter is located.
Google rolled out a bunch of new features with Android 16 on Tuesday, but the company appears to be saving its big Material 3 Expressive redesign for a future update. The update doesn’t feature the design language’s revamped elements, and a source tells Android Authority’s Mishaal Rahman that Google is planning to launch the new look on September 3rd, 2025, instead.
With Android 16, Google is starting to roll out support for Live Updates with progress-centric notifications and enhanced settings for users with hearing aids. The updates are coming to Pixel devices first, but according to Google, Android users will have to wait for another update to see Live Updates “fully realized.”
Google officially took the wraps off Material 3 Expressive following a leak last month, which features updates to icon shapes, type styles, and color palettes with “more natural, springy animations” across the Android interface. You can still check out some Material 3 Expressive updates in the Android 16 QPR1 beta that’s available now, but Rahman notes that Google plans on launching more design updates in the next Android 16 QPR1 Beta 2.
Google is expected to include Android’s desktop mode in a September launch as well. The new mode, which builds on Samsung’s DeX platform, optimizes apps and content for large-screen devices. It will allow you to resize multiple app windows across your screens, as well as connect phones and tablets to external displays for a desktop-like experience. Users with a Pixel 8 and up can try out these features in the Android 16 beta, but the rest of us will likely have to wait a few more months.
Google is starting to offer buyouts to US-based employees in its sprawling Search organization, along with other divisions like marketing, research, and core engineering, according to multiple employees familiar with the matter.
The buyouts, which Google is referring to as a "voluntary exit program," are currently not being offered to employees in DeepMind, Google Cloud, YouTube, or Google's central ad sales organization. Employees in Google's platforms and services group, which includes Android and the Pixel line of devices, were offered buyouts earlier this year before the company enacted layoffs. It's unclear if more layoffs will follow this week's buyout announcement. Employees in some orgs are being offered a minimum of 14 weeks' pay with a July 1st enrollment deadline.
Other parts of Google, including YouTube, are also requiring US employees within a 50-mile radius of an office to return to work at least three days a week by September, or be laid off with severance.
In an internal memo I obtained, Nick Fox, the head of Google's wider "Knowledge and Information" group that includes Search, called the buyout program a "supportive exit path for those of you who don't feel a …
According to Sveum, Alexa Plus is now being rolled out to customers with Echo smart speakers and displays “at an increasing pace” following its late March launch, and the company will “make it even more broadly available over the summer,” he says.
The slow rollout is down to Panos Panay’s insistence that all Alexa Plus problems be ironed out before the full release, according to a recent profile of the new head of Amazon devices and services in The Wall Street Journal. It reported that “he knows that getting Alexa+ right is critical because it will be released to millions of people who depend on the technology across multiple devices. It’s a very public rollout.”
First announced in September 2023, the supercharged Alexa faced more than a year of delays, reportedly in part due to the challenges of imposing the new technology on top of the existing Alexa assistant.
It was finally relaunched under Panay last February as an entirely new assistant, and was slated to roll out to US users in the Early Access program in March. When it eventually gets its full release, the new assistant will cost $19.99 a month and be free for Prime members.
However, it sounds like it’s not fully ready for primetime. Several features announced at the launch event aren’t yet in Early Access. According to Sveum these include asking Alexa to “jump to your favorite scene on Fire TV; order groceries hands-free; order delivery through Grubhub; schedule your next spa visit; brainstorm the perfect gift idea; set personalized reminders and Routines for your family; create personalized music — on the fly” and “Access Alexa+ on browser.” That last one feels big, as personal computers are a place that Alexa has long struggled to gain traction and is somewhere it will need to be to compete with ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.
Sveum says that these missing features “will ship over the coming weeks and months” and that nearly 90 percent of announced features are live in Early Access. These include the big one, a more conversational voice assistant, which I tested briefly at the launch event. Plus, the ability to ask Alexa to remember important details you tell it and recall things from documents you’ve sent to it (Alexa now has its own email address).
Several features announced at the launch event are still not part of the Early Access program.
Alexa Plus can also manage your calendar and move music from room to room, says Sveum. It can book you an Uber, find tickets for an upcoming event, and source someone to come fix something via Thumbtack. For smart home control, you can create Alexa Routines by voice, control multiple devices at once, and customize your own smart home widget on Echo Show devices. Smart cooking timers are also live, says Sveum.
“A lot of customers are telling us they love having natural, free-flowing conversations with Alexa. It enables them to complete more complex requests like controlling multiple smart home devices at once, deep dive on music or trending topics,” Sveum says. “We’re also getting lots of positive feedback about how easy and helpful it is to get things done — like coordinating calendars, making reservations, and taking care of weekly meal planning.”
There haven’t been any formal reviews of Alexa Plus yet (Amazon PR seems to be keeping a tight lid on this one), but one USA Today columnist got in through the Early Access program. He was largely complimentary about the experience, writing he’s “been very pleased – and occasionally quite impressed.”
This is also the general vibe on Facebook and Reddit user groups from those with access, but there are clearly some bugs to work out. “It’s early days, but it feels a tiny bit closer to what I have with ChatGPT,” said one Reddit user.
Another user agreed, noting they liked how it remembered things they mentioned to it and could recall them. But they did say they weren’t happy that Alexa couldn’t access some smart temperature sensors that the previous Alexa could. One user said controlling multiple smart home devices at once was impressive, but another said they reverted to regular Alexa as the Plus version couldn’t control their smart air fryer.
Control of smart home devices is clearly going to be a huge hurdle here. Existing smart voice assistants with their command and control structure can generally be relied upon to do the correct thing (assuming they heard/understood you). However, the transition to these more conversational, intuitive assistants is potentially fraught with danger, especially when it comes to controlling things in your home. Still, I’m very much looking forward to putting it to the test.
Amazon said Monday that it will spend $20 billion on two data center complexes in Pennsylvania, including one it is building alongside a nuclear power plant that has drawn federal scrutiny over an arrangement to essentially plug right into the power plant.
Kevin Miller, vice president of global data centers at Amazon’s cloud computing subsidiary, Amazon Web Services, told The Associated Press that the company will build another data center complex just north of Philadelphia.
One data center is being built next to northeastern Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna nuclear power plant. The other will be in Fairless Hills at a logistics campus, the Keystone Trade Center, on what was once a U.S. Steel mill.
At a news conference in Berwick in the shadow of the power plant, Gov. Josh Shapiro called it the largest private sector investment in Pennsylvania’s history. He said Monday’s announcement is “just the beginning” because his administration is working with Amazon on additional data center projects in the state.
While critics say data centers employ relatively few people and pack little long-term job-creation punch, their advocates say they require a huge number of construction jobs to build, spend enormous sums at area vendors and generate strong tax revenues for local governments.
Shapiro touted the work that will keep construction trades members busy building Amazon’s data centers, the tech jobs that will be waiting for graduates of area colleges and the millions of dollars in property taxes that will flow to schools and local governments.
“For too long, we’ve watched as talents across Pennsylvania got hollowed out and left behind,” Shapiro said at the news conference. “No more. Now is our time to rebuild those communities and invest in them. This investment in Pennsylvania starts reversing that trend.”
Neither Shapiro’s administration nor Amazon provided details about the taxpayer-paid financial incentives that Amazon is getting to build in Pennsylvania, typically a key element of data center deals as states compete for large installations they hope will be an economic bonanza.
Amazon, however, will likely qualify for Pennsylvania’s existing sales tax exemption on purchases of data center equipment, such as servers and routers, an exemption that most states offer and that is viewed as a must-have for a state to compete.
The announcements add to the billions of dollars in Big Tech’s data center cash already flowing into the state.
Since 2024 started, Amazon has committed to about $10 billion apiece to data center projects in Mississippi, Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina as it ramps up its investment in infrastructure to compete with other tech giants to meet growing demand for artificial intelligence products.
The rapid growth of cloud computing and artificial intelligence has fueled demand for data centers that need power to run servers, storage systems, networking equipment and cooling systems.
The majority owner of the Susquehanna nuclear power plant, Talen Energy, announced last year that it had sold its data center to Amazon for $650 million in a deal to eventually provide 960 megawatts. That’s 40% of the output of one of the nation’s largest nuclear power plants, or enough to power more than a half-million homes.
However, the arrangement between Talen and Amazon — called a “behind the meter” connection — has been held up by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the first such case to come before the agency.
It has raised questions over whether diverting power to higher-paying customers will leave enough for others and whether it’s fair to excuse big power users from paying for the grid.
For Big Tech, plugging energy-hungry data centers directly into a power plant can take years off their development timelines and is a much faster route to procuring power than having to connect to the congested electricity grid.
It’s not clear when FERC, which blocked the deal on a procedural grounds, will decide the matter, leaving in limbo regulatory treatment of the deal and others that likely would follow.
Already in Pennsylvania, Microsoft announced a deal with the owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant to restart the reactor under a 20-year agreement to supply its data centers in four states with energy.
Meanwhile, the owners of what was once Pennsylvania’s biggest coal-fired power plant say they will turn it into a $10 billion natural gas-powered data center campus.
On Wednesday, acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau told the House Appropriations Committee that the Federal Aviation Administration plans to replace its aging air traffic control systems, which still rely on floppy disks and Windows 95 computers, Tom's Hardware reports. The agency has issued a Request For Information to gather proposals from companies willing to tackle the massive infrastructure overhaul.
"The whole idea is to replace the system. No more floppy disks or paper strips," Rocheleau said during the committee hearing. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called the project "the most important infrastructure project that we've had in this country for decades," describing it as a bipartisan priority.
Most air traffic control towers and facilities across the US currently operate with technology that seems frozen in the 20th century, although that isn't necessarily a bad thing—when it works. Some controllers currently use paper strips to track aircraft movements and transfer data between systems using floppy disks, while their computers run Microsoft's Windows 95 operating system, which launched in 1995.
One weakness of Valve's Steam Deck gaming handheld and SteamOS is that, by default, they will only run Windows games from Steam that are supported by the platform's Proton compatibility layer (plus the subset of games that run natively on Linux). It's possible to install alternative game stores, and Proton's compatibility is generally impressive, but SteamOS still isn't a true drop-in replacement for Windows.
Microsoft and Asus' co-developed ROG Xbox Ally is trying to offer PC gamers a more comprehensive compatibility solution that also preserves a SteamOS-like handheld UI by putting a new Xbox-branded user interface on top of traditional Windows. And while this interface will roll out to the ROG Xbox Ally first, Microsoft told The Verge that the interface would come to other Ally handhelds next and that something "similar" would be "rolling out to other Windows handhelds starting next year."
Bringing a Steam Deck-style handheld-optimized user interface to Windows is something Microsoft has been experimenting with internally since at least 2022, when employees at an internal hackathon identified most of Windows' handheld deficiencies in a slide deck about a proposed "Windows Handheld Mode."
Warner Bros. Discovery will split its business into two publicly traded companies, with one focused on its streaming and studios business and the other on its television network businesses, including CNN and Discovery.
The US media giant said the move would unlock value for shareholders as well as create opportunities for both businesses, breaking up a group created just three years ago from the merger of Warner Media and Discovery.
Warner Bros. Discovery last year revealed its intent to split its business in two, a plan first reported by the Financial Times in July last year. The company intends to complete the split by the middle of next year.
On Thursday, pioneering computer engineer and Apple veteran William "Bill" Atkinson died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Portola Valley, California, surrounded by family. He was 74. "We regret to write that our beloved husband, father, and stepfather Bill Atkinson passed away," his family wrote on Facebook. "He was a remarkable person, and the world will be forever different because he lived in it."
As Apple employee No. 51, Atkinson transformed abstract computer science into intuitive visual experiences that millions would use daily: His QuickDraw graphics engine made the Macintosh interface possible; he introduced the wider world to bitmap editing with MacPaint; and HyperCard presaged hyperlinked elements of the World Wide Web by years.
A screenshot of Bill Atkinson's MacPaint, released with the Macintosh in January 1984.
Credit:
Benj Edwards / Apple
"I say this with no hyperbole: Bill Atkinson may well have been the best computer programmer who ever lived," wrote veteran Apple analyst John Gruber on Daring Fireball in a tribute. "Without question, he's on the short list. What a man, what a mind, what gifts to the world he left us."
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