Flaco Jimenez, the legendary accordionist from San Antonio who won multiple Grammys and helped expand the popularity of conjunto, Tejano and Tex-Mex music, died Thursday. He was 86.

Jimenez’s death was announced Thursday evening by his family on social media. He was surrounded by family members when he died in the San Antonio home of his son Arturo Jimenez.

“Dad was in peace when he left. He started saying his goodbyes several days before. He said he was proud of himself for what he had done and he just leaves memories for the public to enjoy. He said he was ready to go,” Arturo Jimenez told The Associated Press in a phone interview on Friday.

Arturo Jimenez said a cause of death has not yet been determined. His father had been hospitalized in January after getting a blood clot in his leg. Doctors then discovered he had some vascular issues.

Born Leonardo Jimenez in 1939, he was known to his fans by his nickname of Flaco, which means skinny in Spanish.

He was the son of conjunto pioneer Santiago Jimenez. Conjunto is a musical genre that originated in South Texas and blends different genres and cultural influences.

According to the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin, the development of conjunto “began more than a century ago when Texans of Mexican heritage (Tejanos) took an interest in the accordion music of German, Polish, and Czech immigrants. The ensuing Tejano accordion music, accompanied by the bajo sexto (replacing the European tuba) soon came to represent the Tejano way of life, which was closely associated with working in the agricultural fields. The music remains unchanged and serves as a symbol that binds many Tejano communities in South and Central Texas.”

Jimenez refined his conjunto musical skills by playing in San Antonio saloons and dance halls. He began performing in the 1960s with fellow San Antonio native Douglas Sahm, the founding member of the Sir Douglas Quintet. Jimenez would later play with Bob Dylan, Dr. John, Ry Cooder and the Rolling Stones.

Throughout his career, Jimenez added other influences into conjunto music, including from country, rock and jazz.

“He always wanted to try to incorporate accordion into all sorts of different genres and how to make the accordion blend in. That was always a fascination of his and he was able to,” Arturo Jimenez said.

In the 1990s, Jimenez was part of the Tejano supergroup the Texas Tornados, which included Sahm, Augie Meyers and Freddy Fender. The group won a Grammy in 1991 for the song, “Soy de San Luis.”

Jimenez also won another Grammy in 1999 as part of another supergroup, Los Super Seven.

Jimenez earned five Grammys and was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.

He was also inducted into the National Hispanic Hall of Fame and NYC International Latin Music Hall of Fame and was named a Texas State Musician in 2014.

Arturo Jimenez said his father was a humble man who never wanted to be a showman and was focused on playing music for his fans.

“I’ve seen where fans come up to him and they literally cry and they thank my dad for all the good music and how dad’s music has been there for them in multiple situations, either happiness or sadness,” Arturo Jimenez said.

When Jimenez was named a 2022 National Medal of Arts recipient, the White House said he was being honored for “harnessing heritage to enrich American music” and that by “blending Norteño, Tex Mex, and Tejano music with the Blues, Rock n’ Roll, and Pop Music, he sings the soul of America’s Southwest.”

“We appreciate the gift of your musical talent, which brought joy to countless fans. Your passing leaves a void in our hearts,” the Texas Conjunto Music Hall of Fame and Museum said in a post on social media.

Kyle Young, the CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, said Jimenez “was a paragon of Tejano conjunto music” who “drew millions of listeners into a rich musical world they might not have discovered on their own.”

Jimenez lived all his life in San Antonio, a city that was “very close to his heart,” his son said.

“They call him ‘el hijo de San Antonio’ and my dad always was proud of that,” Arturo Jimenez said, quoting a Spanish phrase that means the son of San Antonio.

His family plans to have a private funeral service followed by a celebration of his life with the public.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• Sales of the Nintendo Switch 2 are outpacing the original Switch. The company has sold 5.8 million units since launch and expects to hit the 15 million mark by the end of March. Software sales were strong as well. The original Switch is the best-selling console in the company’s history, beating the Wii, NES and SNES.

Demand for Nintendo’s Switch 2 is not slowing down.

The Kyoto-based company says it has sold 5.82 million units since the system went on sale in early June and demand continues to outpace supply in most locations. Nintendo says it’s on track to sell 15 million units by the end of its fiscal year (in March of 2026).

Should it achieve that goal, that will make the Switch 2 a faster seller than the original Switch, which went on to become Nintendo’s best-selling console system. (The original took a full calendar year to hit the 15 million mark.)

That led to a strong quarter for the company. Revenues more than doubled compared to a year ago, coming in at $3.8 billion. Profits topped $378 million. Officials say Nintendo is on track to early $12.6 billion this fiscal year.

To make up for Switch 2 shortages, Nintendo plans to boost production – as many people who have ordered one have yet to receive theirs.

It’s not just game systems that are selling well. Switch 2 software sold 8.67 million units in the quarter, with Mario Kart World and the highly-rated Donkey Kong Bananza both leading the charge.

The Switch 2 is backwards compatible with the original Switch, so software sales for that older system were even higher. Nintendo says it sold 24.4 million Switch games in the quarter – along with nearly 1 million of the older consoles.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Earlier today, Mark Zuckerberg shared a rambling memo outlining his vision to build AI "superintelligence." In the memo, Zuckerberg hinted that the pursuit of more powerful AI might require the company to be more selective in what it open sources.

Citing "safety concerns" he wrote that Meta would need to be "rigorous" about such decisions. The line stood out to many as Zuckerberg — who once said "fuck that" in reference to closed platforms — has made open source central to Meta's AI strategy.

During Meta's second quarter earnings call, Zuckerberg further acknowledged there could be a shift, though he downplayed the significance of it. Here's what he said when asked if his thinking had changed.

I don't think that our thinking has particularly changed on this. We've always open sourced some of our models and not open sourced everything that we've done. So I would expect that we will continue to produce and share leading open source models. I also think that there are a couple of trends that are playing out. One is that we're getting models that are so big that they're just not practical for a lot of other people to use, so we kind of wrestle with whether it's productive or helpful to share that, or if that's really just primarily helping competitors or something like that. So I think that there's, there's that concern.

And then obviously, as you approach real superintelligence, I think there's a whole different set of safety concerns that I think we need to take very seriously, that I wrote about in my note this morning. But I think the bottom line is I would expect that we will continue open sourcing work. I expect us to continue to be a leader there, and I also expect us to continue to not open source everything that we do, which is a continuation of kind of what we, what we've been, been kind of working on.

That's notably different than what he wrote almost exactly a year ago in a different memo titled "Open Source AI is the Path Forward." In that, even longer note, he said that open source is crucial for both Meta and developers.

"People often ask if I’m worried about giving up a technical advantage by open sourcing Llama, but I think this misses the big picture," he wrote. "I expect AI development will continue to be very competitive, which means that open sourcing any given model isn’t giving away a massive advantage over the next best models at that point in time."

He also argued that open source is safer. "There is an ongoing debate about the safety of open source AI models, and my view is that open source AI will be safer than the alternatives. As long as everyone has access to similar generations of models – which open source promotes – then governments and institutions with more compute resources will be able to check bad actors with less compute."

To be clear, Zuckerberg said the company would continue to open source some of its work. But he seems to be laying the groundwork for a future in which Meta's "superintelligence" could be a lot less open.

Fable, a startup designing tools to generate animated TV shows from scratch, is launching an AI-powered streaming service this week, Variety reports. The service is called Showrunner, and it will allow subscribers to generate scenes, view content created for Fable's in-house AI-generated animated shows and even insert themselves into the animations they generate.

Showrunner is launching in alpha, and based on Fable's website, you'll primarily interact with it through the company's Discord to start. Per Variety, subscribers will pay anywhere from $10 to $20 month for credits that can be exchanged for the ability to generate new animated scenes. The word "scenes" is key here. While Fable is launching with a couple of distinct animated shows, they're really more like collections of worlds and characters that subscribers can use to create new scenes. 

Those include Exit Valley, a Family Guy-inspired riff on the culture of Silicon Valley, and Everything is Fine, a comedy about a husband and wife who are stranded in an alternate world and trying to reunite. The company's goal is bigger than than just original content. Fable founder Edward Saatchi imagines a Disney-owned "Toy Story of AI" where subscribers could generate endless new scenes of Buzz and Woody interacting. For now, though, interested Showrunner users have to settle with knockoffs.

Engadget was able to preview an earlier version of Fable's Showrunner AI models back in 2019 that capably generated new South Park episodes based on audio inputs. The startup's model was able to create a watchable copy of the show's style even back then, which might be why Amazon has invested an undisclosed amount in Fable as part of the launch of Showrunner. 

While creatives remain skeptical to downright antagonist towards AI, companies have started using it more publicly in production. For example, Netflix recently touted its use of generative AI in its original show The Eternaut. Even if adoption grows, though, that doesn't really clarify whether the average film or TV viewer has any desire to generate content on their own, especially if it's as rough-around-the-edges as most AI-generated media is. Besides being a public demonstration of Fable's tech, Showrunner seems like a test to see if that desire is even there.

It was easy to view Substack's 2023 Nazi controversy as a kicked can that could turn up again. Well, white supremacist content led to another headache for the company this week. User Mag reported on Tuesday that the app sent a push alert to some users promoting a Nazi newsletter. The company told Engadget the notification was an "extremely offensive and disturbing" error.

The Substack newsletter in question describes itself as "a National Socialist weekly newsletter." It includes "opinions and news important to the National Socialist and White Nationalist Community." The far-right blog has a mere 757 subscribers. (That's a drop in the ocean compared to, say, Heather Cox Richardson's 2.6 million, George Saunders' 312,000 and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's 236,000.)

Given the newsletter's offensive content and relatively paltry audience, this wouldn't seem like something to promote. According to the company, it didn't mean to. "We discovered an error that caused some people to receive push notifications they should never have received," a Substack spokesperson told Engadget.

"In some cases, these notifications were extremely offensive or disturbing," the statement continued. "This was a serious error, and we apologize for the distress it caused. We have taken the relevant system offline, diagnosed the issue and are making changes to ensure it doesn't happen again."

Engadget asked Substack for extra details or context about how the accident happened. It didn't have further comment at the time of publication. We'll update this story if we find out more.

Substack

User Mag reports that those who clicked on the Nazi blog's profile received recommendations for a similar one. That one had a larger audience of 8,600 subscribers.

One reason social users were quick to pounce on the latest incident: It provides a symbolic callback to Substack's 2023 Nazi shitstorm. That's when The Atlantic dug up "scores" of white-supremacist, neo-Confederate and Nazi newsletters on the platform. Some were monetized.

Substack's policy is one of anti-censorship. "I just want to make it clear that we don't like Nazis either — we wish no one held those views," Substack cofounder Hamish McKenzie wrote in December 2023. "But some people do hold those and other extreme views. Given that, we don't think that censorship (including through demonetizing publications) makes the problem go away — in fact, it makes it worse."

After weeks of negative press coverage and prominent authors leaving the platform, Substack relented… sort of. On one hand, the company removed "some" pro-Nazi publications. However, it did so without changing its policies. Instead, it said five publications violated its existing content guidelines. Specifically, they broke rules prohibiting "incitements to violence based on protected classes."

Some critics didn't believe that was enough. The Platformer's Casey Newton, a prominent voice who left Substack during the episode, thought the company needed to take more responsibility. "Every platform hosts its share of racists, white nationalists and other noxious personalities," Newton wrote in early 2024. "In some very real sense, there is no escaping them online. But there ought to be ways to see them less; to recommend them less; to fund them less. Other platforms have realized this as they’ve grown up. Here’s hoping Substack does the same."

Substack has since found its footing as a haven for independent content creators. Numerous journalists looking to build an audience sans traditional media have flocked to it. (Among others, that list includes Tina Brown, Jim Acosta, Terry Moran and Jennifer Rubin.) In recent years, Substack has added a Twitter-like social feature, live video and TikTok-esque vertical video.

The company said it had its biggest week during the 2024 presidential election with an 82 percent boost in paid subscriptions. It recently raised $100 million in funding.

YouTube will be included in Australia's social media ban for children under 16, as reported by Bloomberg. The country's Labor government said that the site will be subject to the same rules as other leading platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X when the legislation goes into effect this December.

Australia had planned to exempt YouTube from the forthcoming social media ban, on the grounds that it's an educational tool. This irked other platforms, with Meta and TikTok urging the country's government to backtrack on the exclusion.

This move didn't sit too well with YouTube and parent company Alphabet. A company spokesperson told CNN that this decision “reverses a clear, public commitment” from the government to treat the platform as an educational tool. YouTube Kids isn't included in the ban because it doesn't allow users to upload videos or comment.

The government said this reversal was largely influenced by a survey released by Australia's independent online regulator, the eSafety Commission. It found that 37 percent of children surveyed had reported seeing harmful content on YouTube. This includes stuff like dangerous online challenges, fight videos and hateful rhetoric.

Communications Minister Anika Wells recently spoke to the Australian Parliament and noted that "YouTube uses the same persuasive design features as other social media platforms, like infinite scroll, like autoplay and algorithmic feed." She went on to say that she accepted the results of the aforementioned survey and that YouTube "should not be treated differently from other social media platforms."

The ban originally passed at the tail-end of last year, though some of the details have yet to be ironed out. The government has until December to finalize everything. We do know that the ban puts the onus on the actual platforms to prevent children from opening up accounts, as they'll face hefty fines of up to nearly $50 million Australian dollars ($32 million USD) if they don't comply.

“Kids, God bless them, are going to find a way around this. Maybe they’re all going to swarm on LinkedIn. We don’t know,” Minister Wells said. My hunch is that it'll be more VPN than LinkedIn.

Have you ever wondered what bops powerful figures are listening to on Spotify? You'd be amazed what you can get with a profile search - but just in case you want them all in one place, there's the Panama Playlists, a newly published collection of data on the musical listening habits of politicians, journalists, and tech figures, as curated by an anonymous figure.

The site appears to have data for a number of notables, including Open AI CEO Sam Altman, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, US Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Late Night host Seth Meyers. Five people featured on the website confirmed to The Verge that data for them is accurate: "T …

Read the full story at The Verge.

• Pamela Anderson has found love many times in her life.
• She and her "The Naked Gun" co-star Liam Neeson sparked dating rumors while promoting their film.
• Here's a look back at her romantic history, from Kid Rock to Julian Assange.

When it comes to falling in love, few in Hollywood can match Pamela Anderson.

Since the late 1980s, Anderson has been linked to hard rockers, surfers, and even Julian Assange.

Most recently, Anderson, 58, sparked dating rumors with her "The Naked Gun" costar Liam Neeson, 73. The two played coy about their offscreen relationship while appearing on "Today" to promote the movie, but according to People, the stars are in a "budding romance."

Reps for Anderson and Neeson did not respond to a request for comment.

Here's a look back at Anderson's dating history.

Jon Peters

In the late 1980s, Anderson dated "Batman" producer Jon Peters. They then rekindled their relationship in 2019 and reports claimed they'd married in a private ceremony in 2020. Twelve days later, Anderson told The Hollywood Reporter that the marriage paperwork was never formalized and that the two were going their separate ways. In a 2024 interview, Anderson again denied that she and Peters ever married, telling The Hollywood Reporter, "it was just a funny moment."

Scott Baio

During Anderson's Playboy modeling days, she dated Baio, who got her one of her first acting gigs as a guest star on his hit show, "Charles in Charge."

Bret Michaels

Anderson's attraction to bad boy rockers started with Michaels, but she and the Poison frontman only lasted a year.

Kelly Slater

Anderson dated her "Baywatch" costar on and off for years beginning in the mid-1990s and up until she became smitten by another hard rocker.

Tommy Lee

When Anderson met Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee in 1995, she thought she'd found her soulmate. Four days after meeting, they married; they went on to have two children together.

Anderson and Lee's three-year-relationship quickly became a focus of the tabloids. When their sex tape was leaked to the public, they catapulted into pop-culture infamy. The sex tape saga would go on to become the basis of the 2022 Hulu limited series "Pam & Tommy."

The two tried to rekindle their relationship in the early 2000s, but it didn't last.

Marcus Schenkenberg

After Tommy Lee, Anderson had a very brief romance with this male model from 2000 to 2001.

Kid Rock

Anderson nabbed another bad boy rocker in 2001. She and Kid Rock were briefly engaged during their two years together. They married in 2006, but divorced less than a year later.

Laurence Hallier

Anderson and real-estate mogul Hallier dated for five years. They split in 2010, which resulted in them both suing each other over projects they were involved in.

Rick Salomon

Anderson's third (and fourth) husband is someone who has been close to her for years. She and the professional poker player first married in 2007; that only lasted a year. They tried again in 2014, but again, for only a year.

Jamie Padgett

Between marriages with Salomon, Anderson briefly dated this surfer.

Julian Assange

In 2017, at the height of Assange's political asylum inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, Anderson had a fling with the WikiLeaks founder.

Adil Rami

Anderson's relationship with the French soccer pro ended messy, as she accused Rami of infidelity and abuse.

Dan Hayhurst

Anderson's last marriage was to her former bodyguard. They tied the knot on Christmas Eve in 2020. The two divorced in 2022.

Liam Neeson

Anderson and Neeson had never met before costarring in "The Naked Gun." Rumors that they were dating began to swirl when the two began doing press for the movie in July 2025.

While appearing on "Today," the two were asked about the dating rumors.

"It's like, 'Oh, this is nice. Let's not mold this. Let's just let it breathe,'" Neeson said. "And that's what we did."

The same day they were on "Today," People reported that the two are dating. A source told the outlet: "It's a budding romance in the early stages. It's sincere, and it's clear they're smitten with each other."

Whether it serves as a chill escape from the onslaught of the real world or simply a way to beat vacation doldrums, a viral Roblox game about gardening has become the surprise hit of the summer.

Grow a Garden, created by a 16-year-old in a few days, has shattered records for the most concurrent players of any game in history, beating out video games that take years and millions of dollars to develop.

And there’s no one to shoot, fight or race. If your last attempt at cultivating vegetables was FarmVille in 2010, don’t worry — your tomatoes will grow even if you never water them.

Grow a Garden is as simple as its name suggests — players can fill a plot of land with plants and animals, harvest and sell, trade or steal each others’ bounty. The game is low stress, with an aesthetic reminiscent of Minecraft and a soundtrack of soothing classical tunes such as Mozart’s Rondo Alla Turca playing in the background. Its popularity has further cemented Roblox’ place not just in the gaming world but in popular culture — for better or for worse, it’s where the kids hang out.

“The word I keep hearing used over and over to describe this particular game is that it’s chill, which is just such a nice alternative. I get a lot of sort of that Animal Crossing vibe from it. You know, like you can check in, you can check your gardens, you can get some new seeds, you can plant them,” said Becky Bozdech, editorial director at the nonprofit Common Sense Media. “I have an 11-year-old son who (plays it) and he says to him the big difference is that a lot of games have a big giant objective that you have to do, but in Grow a Garden, you can just kind of hang out and do what you want.”

Coincidence or not, Grow a Garden soared to popularity around the same time that Take-Two Interactive announced it would delay the launch of its wildly anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 until next year. In late June, the gardening game logged 21.6 million concurrent players, surpassing Fortnite’s previous record of 15.2 million according to Roblox. Analysts who follow Roblox’s stock say Grow a Garden is helping boost the company’s revenue and will push the company’s quarterly earnings numbers above Wall Street’s expectations.

While it’s not clear if the GTA audience flocked to this simple gardening game to pass the time until then, the timing reignited the age-old debate about who gamers are and what titles are taken seriously by the video game establishment. It happened with Candy Crush, with puzzle games, with Animal Crossing. Are people who play cozy games true gamers? Or is the title reserved for the folks who shoot enemies in Call of Duty or drive around creating mayhem in GTA?

“There’s a huge percentage of gamers that play Roblox and the actual industry just views it as like this esoterically immature platform of weird gameplay habits,” said Janzen Madsen, the New Zealand-based CEO and founder of Splitting Point studios, which acquired the game from its teenage creator. “Well, I actually think in five years this is what player expectation is gonna be. And because you guys haven’t embraced it, like you’re not gonna know how to make games.”

To start growing your garden, you’ll need a Roblox account. The game will start you out with an empty plot and some money — sheckles — and a starter seed. From there, you can plant seeds, harvest and sell your crops and buy more seeds, animals or tools for your garden. While it is possible to play the game without spending real-world money, it will take longer. Once you sell enough crops, you earn money to buy more expensive seeds beyond basic carrots and blueberries.

“For me, I just, I really want to get all the rarest stuff. I’m a completionist, so I want everything and that’s what’s fun for me,” said Leah Ashe, a YouTuber who plays Grow a Garden and other popular games to an audience of 5.3 million. “It’s really cool because you can come together because the seed shop is global, so everybody’s shop is the exact same. So you can work with other people and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, the sugar apple is in stock. Get online!’ The seed shop updates every five minutes, so there’s always something pulling you back into the game.”

For Roblox, which has faced a backlash for not doing enough to protect kids on its gaming service, Grow a Garden has served as something of a reprieve — along with new safety measures such as chat restrictions and privacy tools.

New players get help from more established peers who send them gifts and let them know when rare seeds become available in the seed shop.

Bozdech said that “if you have the right supervision and guidance,” Roblox can be a positive experience for kids, allowing them to create their own designs or practice coding, for instance.

“Something like Grow a Garden, particularly, is a nice opportunity maybe for parents and kids to play together,” she said.

And perhaps the slow cultivating of a magical garden can benefit parents too.

“It’s hitting a nerve, you know?” Bozdech said. “People need an escape from the world, I think we all do.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com