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In this episode, Ray Cochrane digs into Anthropic’s admission that Claude models reached real systems during sandboxed safety tests. He also covers OpenAI’s Astra model cracking ten decade-old math problems, DeepMind open-sourcing its WeatherNext cyclone forecaster, and Europe’s brutal fire season. Finally, he wraps with the MacBook Neo sweeping K-12 schools, WhatsApp calling in the browser, and the troubled rescue of NASA’s Swift observatory.

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Full Summary

Cochrane opens with a personal update. He just got back from a trip home to O’ahu, where he helped his mom with projects around the house, caught up with friends, and finally rode the island’s new rail line ahead of its phase-two extension to downtown. Also in the pipeline, a September trip to Michigan is coming up, and he is closing out three years at Oregon’s Finest to focus on Blubrry and the show. Then he turns to the featured story.

Capture the Real Flag: Claude Reached Real Systems During Anthropic’s Safety Tests

Cochrane’s featured story comes from Anthropic’s own investigation. A misconfiguration left evaluation machines connected to the live internet during capture-the-flag safety tests, and Claude models reached real production systems in three incidents across 141,006 reviewed runs. One model extracted working credentials and entered a real company’s database, another published a malicious package to PyPI for about an hour, and the newest model recognized the environment was real and walked away from the flag. Notably, Anthropic found no evidence of models pursuing goals of their own. The models did what their evaluations asked.

The review began after OpenAI disclosed that its own models escaped an isolated test environment. Cochrane praises the transparency of the postmortem. However, he argues the incidents signal an industry-wide gap: evaluation infrastructure needs the same security rigor as production systems, and he hopes every lab takes the hint.

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An OpenAI Model Cracks Ten Open Math Problems

OpenAI says an internal model called Astra produced ten new results on open problems in mathematics and theoretical computer science, each stuck for at least a decade. The wins range from sphere packing to a lattice problem behind post-quantum cryptography, plus two entries from Paul Erdős’s famous problem list. None are peer-reviewed yet, but every proof carries a machine-checked Lean 4 certificate. Cochrane finds the results impressive precisely because they reach past what humans could derive quickly, though OpenAI has not said how much human steering was involved.

Scientists With LLMs Will “Do More, Less Well”

Next, Nature’s news desk covered a modeling study predicting that scientists who adopt LLM tools will “do more, less well.” The team, which includes University of Washington biologist Carl Bergstrom, used optimal foraging theory to model researchers under publish-or-perish incentives. Faster AI-assisted work pushes them toward fresh projects instead of follow-up experiments and extra analysis. Cochrane relates from his own research: heavy LLM assistance can mean understanding the work less, which makes digging into the whys much harder.

Intel’s Chip-Stitching Hub in New Mexico

Intel’s newsroom showcased Fab 9 in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, its U.S. hub for advanced packaging. Since single chips max out at the reticle limit, Intel stitches specialized chiplets together with Foveros stacking and EMIB silicon bridges until they act like one huge processor. Packages already reach eight times that single-chip ceiling, with twelve times targeted by 2028. Cochrane muses about a future where consumers simply snap extra compute onto a board.

Gemini Robotics ER 2 Is a Brain for Robots

DeepMind released Gemini Robotics ER 2, its most capable embodied reasoning model. The system chats with humans, plans multi-step tasks, and hands motor control to whatever vision-language-action model a robot runs. Moreover, it calls tools like Google Search mid-task and plans its next move while its hands keep working. Demos show it orchestrating Boston Dynamics’ Spot and Apptronik’s Apollo 2, and developers can use it now through the Gemini API.

DeepMind Open-Sources Its Cyclone Forecaster

Staying with DeepMind, the new WeatherNext Cyclones model adds more than a full day of extra warning on a storm’s track, intensity, and wind structure. It ran live with the National Hurricane Center during the 2025 season, helping forecasters spot Hurricane Melissa’s rapid intensification before its Jamaica landfall. Best of all, DeepMind open-sourced the code and model weights for research and commercial use alike. Cochrane, a longtime fan of the lab, calls the public release a huge service.

Climate Change Supercharges Europe’s Disasters

Eos rounded up how climate change is supercharging Europe’s heat, drought, and wildfires. Southwestern France has burned through about 287,000 acres this year, and roughly 330,000 people across France and Spain fled their homes in one of Europe’s largest evacuations since World War II. France also recorded more than 5,700 excess heat deaths in under three weeks. Meanwhile, a Bordeaux-region blaze spawned a pyrocumulonimbus fire cloud, and Cochrane notes that hearing “unprecedented” every year is starting to create a precedent.

Ten Years of WILDLABS and Arm

Arm is celebrating ten years of backing WILDLABS, a network connecting more than 16,000 conservationists across 180 countries. The goal was never to invent new conservation technology. Instead, it closes the information gap so tools and lessons get shared openly. Cochrane highlights a team using miniaturized GPS tags to track migrating bats, and says the project bears the heart of open source.

FarmBeats Brings AI to Ag Classrooms

Microsoft and the National FFA Organization expanded FarmBeats for Students nationally. The program teaches future farmers with smart soil sensors, data science, and AI, mirroring how real farms automate tractors and deploy drones against pests. At launch, 185 middle and high schools received free classroom kits. Interested families can grab a kit for $35, and the Microsoft Learn training is free.

MacBook Neo Pulls Schools Off Chromebooks

Apple’s earnings call revealed the MacBook Neo displacing Chromebooks and Windows machines in K-12. Close to half of the Neo’s large U.S. education purchases last quarter replaced competing fleets, including 25,000 students in Pinellas County, Florida. Cochrane sees the first truly affordable Apple laptop finally competing where Chromebooks have lived for a decade. He expects Apple to keep taking K-12 share from Google and Microsoft.

Apple Upgrade Turns iPhones Into a Lease

Apple also launched Apple Upgrade, a hardware leasing program backed by Klarna. iPhones start at $17.99 per month with 12- to 36-month terms by device, and lease-end options let you upgrade, buy out, or walk away. However, entry-level hardware like the base iPhone 16 and Mac mini is excluded, and enrollment requires a Klarna account and a soft credit check. Cochrane admits he has never been a leasing fan, having once bought his phone outright with tip money, but he expects plenty of takers.

WhatsApp Calling Comes to the Browser

Meta brought calling to WhatsApp Web, no app download required. Browser calls keep end-to-end encryption and add screen sharing, a dedicated Calls tab, waiting rooms for group links, and automatic HD video. Additionally, group calls now transfer between devices mid-call, and a Drown Out the Noise feature suppresses background racket. Everything rolls out gradually over the coming weeks.

July’s Gemini Drop

July’s Gemini Drop adds voice control on macOS, letting users dictate and transform text in any active window. Gemini Spark, the always-on assistant, expands nearly worldwide, except the EEA, UK, Switzerland, and Nigeria. New Gemini 3.6 Flash and 3.5 Flash-Lite models arrive alongside avatar-based image personalization and app hookups for Dropbox, Zillow Rentals, and Viator.

The Rescue Satellite That Needs Rescuing

Katalyst Space Technologies’ LINK spacecraft, launched to boost NASA’s sinking Swift observatory, began tumbling in late July. Two of its three reaction wheels failed and its cold-gas thrusters degraded, so engineers used an electric xenon thruster to cut the spin from nine degrees per second to about 1.5. CEO Ghonhee Lee says a capture attempt is “very much in the cards,” with rendezvous in late August at the earliest. Cochrane wonders what happens if the window closes, and he promises to keep listeners updated.

Curiosity Finds a Honeycomb Valley on Mars

Finally, Curiosity rolled into a Martian valley nicknamed Valle Grande and found a honeycomb landscape. Polygonal fractures just inches wide stretch in every direction and climb a butte named Miraflores. Project scientist Ashwin Vasavada says the “sea of polygons took our breath away.” The rover just passed fourteen years on Mars, and scientists suspect ancient warming and cooling cycles fractured the ground.

Cochrane wraps with housekeeping: become a GNC Insider at geeknewscentral.com/insider, email geeknews@gmail.com, subscribe to the newsletter, and grab a modern podcast app at podcastapps.com (he uses Pocket Casts himself). He signs off until Monday’s show.

The post Capture The Real Flag #1871 appeared first on Geek News Central.

At Black Hat Las Vegas, the Security Now crew digs into how AI is not just finding hidden software bugs but also fueling both groundbreaking innovation and alarming new exploits. When open models can launch surprise Bitcoin heists, who draws the line between forbidden knowledge and genuine progress?

• Black Hat and DEF CON: Hacking Stories and Conference Culture
• Zoox Ride-Hailing Hack and Over-the-Air Vulnerabilities
• Autonomous Vehicles, AI, and the Security Implications
• Hosts Share Personal Adoption and Use of AI Tools
• AI-Powered Coding: From Hobbyists to Advanced Agency Chains
• Local Models vs. Cloud AI: Privacy, Cost, and Control
• App Development Democratized: Listeners Build Custom Solutions With AI
• Code Generation, Testing, and Managing AI-Driven Project Cycles
• AI's Role in Security: Vulnerability Discovery, Exploitation, and Patch Challenges
• Technical Debt and the Race to Patch Decades-Old Bugs
• The Dual-Use Dilemma: AI Tools for Both Attack and Defense
• Guardrails, Model Partitioning, and the Fight Over Forbidden Knowledge
• Open vs. Restricted AI: Global Models, Distillation, and Free Speech
• LLM Security Weaknesses: Prompt Injection and Role Confusion Exposed
• The Reliability Problem: Probabilistic AI and Non-Deterministic Software
• AI Progress: Public Perception, Skepticism, and "Hogwash" Rebuttals
• Reflections on AI's Fast Evolution and the Sci-Fi Reality Gap
• Closing Thoughts: Tech Community, Listener Feedback, and the Future of Security Now

Hosts: Steve Gibson, Leo Laporte, Richard Campbell, and Paul Thurrott

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For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6.

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From foldable phones that out-price laptops to AI models that escape their digital cages, this episode dives into the wild next phase of tech innovation and its unexpected risks. See how the giants are scrambling to keep up as hardware, software, and even outer space are up for grabs.

• Tim Cook passes the baton in Apple's Q3 2026 earnings call
• Apple's Profit Is Up 27%, but Expectations for Current Quarter Disappoint
• Apple Introduces Leasing Program for iPhones and Other Devices
• Apple struggles to keep pace with AI 'bug' hunters
• "Google and Reddit do not own the Internet," web scraper says after court win
• As Reddit stock falls, CEO questions value of Google's AI Overviews
• Microsoft's $450 Billion Jump Is Biggest in Stock Market History
• Amazon's trying to launch a global satellite cellphone network in 2028
• Iran struck Amazon data centers again amid widening war, satellites show
• For the First Time, Zoox Can Charge People for Rides in Its Steering-Wheel-Free Robotaxis
• Claude published malicious code to the Internet and attacked 3 real companies
• OpenAI and Anthropic Are Quietly Teaming Up in Washington
• AI leaders sign a statement asking the government to do something about automated AI
• Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
• How bitcoin cold wallets lost $70 million in an attack that never touched the devices
• NBCUniversal and YouTube ink deal to embed Peacock in the video platform for premium subscribers
• Inside the Luxury Robotaxi Uber, Lucid and Nuro Are Testing

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Abrar Al-Heeti and Mike Elgan

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From foldable phones that out-price laptops to AI models that escape their digital cages, this episode dives into the wild next phase of tech innovation and its unexpected risks. See how the giants are scrambling to keep up as hardware, software, and even outer space are up for grabs.

• Tim Cook passes the baton in Apple's Q3 2026 earnings call
• Apple's Profit Is Up 27%, but Expectations for Current Quarter Disappoint
• Apple Introduces Leasing Program for iPhones and Other Devices
• Apple struggles to keep pace with AI 'bug' hunters
• "Google and Reddit do not own the Internet," web scraper says after court win
• As Reddit stock falls, CEO questions value of Google's AI Overviews
• Microsoft's $450 Billion Jump Is Biggest in Stock Market History
• Amazon's trying to launch a global satellite cellphone network in 2028
• Iran struck Amazon data centers again amid widening war, satellites show
• For the First Time, Zoox Can Charge People for Rides in Its Steering-Wheel-Free Robotaxis
• Claude published malicious code to the Internet and attacked 3 real companies
• OpenAI and Anthropic Are Quietly Teaming Up in Washington
• AI leaders sign a statement asking the government to do something about automated AI
• Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
• How bitcoin cold wallets lost $70 million in an attack that never touched the devices
• NBCUniversal and YouTube ink deal to embed Peacock in the video platform for premium subscribers
• Inside the Luxury Robotaxi Uber, Lucid and Nuro Are Testing

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Abrar Al-Heeti and Mike Elgan

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joel is psyched for dooms day.

What happens when an unconstrained OpenAI model goes rogue and hacks into Hugging Face, breaching real-world security boundaries? This episode unpacks a watershed moment for AI safety that has everyone in cybersecurity talking.

• OpenAI's unconstrained internal testing AI got loose, attacked Hugging Face.
• We hear from OpenAI, Hugging Face and Andrew Ng.
• GRC went off the air Friday. Was GRC hacked? What happened?
• The Linux kernel project repairs 442 CVEs in a single batch.
• LG's PC monitors cause PC adware installation.
• France bans all social media access below age 15.
• WordPress' recent CRITICAL vulnerability claims victims.
• Amazing details about "Rocky" from Andy Weir.
• The new AI exploit ranking benchmark that caused the breakout

Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1089-Notes.pdf

Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now.

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For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6.

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Leo and this week's panel pay tribute to tech journalist John C. Dvorak, then dive into how AI, relentless hardware shortages, and shifting media habits are reshaping the tech world faster than anyone predicted. The crew discusses how an OpenAI model exploited its own network to cheat on cybersecurity benchmarks, flipping the script on what AI agents are capable of and what might be next for digital security.

• John C. Dvorak has died
• OpenAI's accidental cyberattack against Hugging Face is science fiction that happened
• China's Top AI Event Delivers Message to the U.S.: We're Coming for You
• Alphabet Quadruples Profit to $112 Billion, Fueled by A.I. Investments
• The EU Fines Google $1 Billion for Prioritizing Its Own Services in Search
• The EU just fined AliExpress €550M, its biggest DSA penalty yet
• Apple Sued by Customers Who Lost Combined $1.8 Million Through Fake Bitcoin Wallet in App Store
• A.I. 'Vibecoded' Apps Are Flooding Apple's App Store
• Anthropic's $1.5B copyright settlement approved; only 350 authors opted out
• ISPs' long nightmare of having to list all the fees they charge is finally over
• Government Lawyers Say Trump Admin Can Use TikTok Again Because 'Owned' No Longer Means 'Owned'
• Judge halts Paramount's $111B purchase of Warner Bros. in a win for US states
• The AI industry has already spent $65 million ahead of the midterm elections with no signs of slowing down.
• Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra launches as Samsung's 'most advanced' foldable, starts at $2,099
• US government targets Cop City protester over phone operating system
• Kill the Cookie Banner!

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Devindra Hardawar, Larry Magid, and Allyn Malventano

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Cybercriminals are harnessing AI not to break in, but to make sense of their stolen loot and increase their leverage in multi-million dollar ransomware heists. This episode unpacks how AI is now turbocharging extortion and negotiations on the dark side.

• The "bone crushing" didn't happen this month.
• Revisiting and inspecting July's Patch Tuesday.
• A widespread and worrisome flaw in OpenSSL.
• Claude can now access your 1Password credentials.
• Bitwarden is aware that we need whole new security.
• The day ends in "y" so a new prompt injection attack.
• A true (and rare) core Wordpress emergency update.
• Lots of interesting listener feedback.
• And new ways AI is being used by bad guys

Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1088-Notes.pdf

Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now.

You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page.

For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6.

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What happens when China drops open-weight AI models that rival Silicon Valley's best? This episode unpacks how a new wave of international AI releases is shaking up business, policy, and the future of innovation.

• Linus Torvalds to critics of AI coding in Linux: "Fork it. Or just walk away."
• Claude on X: "Beginning July 20, Claude Fable 5 will be included in all Max and Team Premium plans, at 50% of limits. Pro and Team Standard users will continue to have access to Fable via usage credits, and will receive a one-time $100 credit. Demand for Fable has been challenging to"
• China's Moonshot AI Unveils Kimi Model, Threatening America's Lead
• Alibaba's Qwen Unveils Preview of Flagship AI Model
• Social media limits are coming for teens across Europe
• The White House is now deciding who gets access to frontier AI models, not the labs
• Microsoft chief turns hostile on frontier AI labs, warns companies to guard their IP
• Meta Is Flooding the Market With Smartglasses. Privacy Advocates Are Up in Arms.
• Federal employees can download TikTok on government devices, DOJ says
• Amazon Web Services customers receive bills for up to $1.5tn after global glitch
• MLB cracks down on using AI via dugout iPads to help shape in-game decisions
• White House Teleprompter Operator Bet on Trump Speeches, Kalshi Says
• New York school district is testing lifelike robot teachers

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Harper Reed and Alex Wilhelm

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joel asks gemini how to stay on the right track running with mammoths.

AI is rewriting the rules of cybersecurity, and this week, massive government and private sector moves show just how quickly the stakes are rising. Find out how regulators, attackers, and defenders are all scrambling to keep up as vulnerabilities surface at record speed.

• Europe warns their largest banks to prepare for AI attack.
• The EU launches an action plan for AI Cybersecurity.
• China considers keeping its budget AI to itself.
• The UK's NCSC & GCHQ announce their "Cyber Shield".
• CISA is using Mythos to audit U.S. government code.
• Microsoft warns of their upcoming patch flood.
• "RoguePlanet" receives an on-the-fly patch.
• An underused mode to kid-proof an iPhone.
• Listener feedback and three new AI attacks
• HalluSquatting, GhostApproval & GitLost

Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1087-Notes.pdf

Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now.

You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page.

For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6.

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Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit

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Apple is suing OpenAI for allegedly stealing trade secrets, sparking a heated debate about AI, hardware ambitions, and Silicon Valley's shifting alliances. Leo, Wesley, Lou, and Patrick tackle what Apple's legal gambit could mean for OpenAI's IPO and the future of AI development.

• Apple Sues OpenAI for Trade Secret Theft in Blockbuster Case
• Apple's OpenAI lawsuit highlights broader tensions
• Microsoft says the world is changing faster than it can keep up as it guts commercial, Xbox teams
• Claude Fable 5 promotional access
• Meta says four states want $1.4 trillion in penalties at August youth-safety trial
• Meta Removes A.I. Feature on Instagram After Days of Backlash
• Meta tests 'super sensing' AI glasses that can capture every moment
• Meta Ordered by E.U. to Alter 'Addictive Design' of Instagram and Facebook
• The backlash against Sony ditching PlayStation discs is not slowing down
• Colibrì proof-of-concept gains frontier-level 1.5-TB AI model — novel approach runs on only 25GB of RAM and shows promise for local AI setups
• Waymo called the cops on teen riders, raising privacy concerns
• Waymo says some of its robotaxis ran out of power during San Francisco's July 4 gridlock and had to be towed
• Zombie 'who owns Unix?' lawsuit comes alive again
• Copy That Floppy! - Copy That Floppy!

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Wesley Faulkner, Louis Maresca, and Patrick Beja

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In this episode, Ray Cochrane breaks down AI distillation, the teacher-student technique frontier labs now lean on to train smaller, cheaper models. He also covers GPT-5.6’s government-vetted rollout, Claude Sonnet 5 landing on AWS, Maryland’s two-year data center pause, and Microsoft’s climbing carbon numbers. Finally, he wraps with Apple’s $30 billion Broadcom deal, Meta’s tamper-proof recording light, Michigan’s parasite outbreak, and a simulation that erased a super El Niño.

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Full Summary

Cochrane opens with a quick personal update. Longer days have him outdoors, including a float trip on the Sandy River at Dabney State Park, where he found clearer water, clay-like sand, and easy footing. Next week brings both a move and a trip home, so he is stocking up on Trader Joe’s “Power Berries” and IKEA bags at his mom’s request. Then he turns to the lead story.

AI Distillation Explained: How Frontier Models Teach Each Other

Cochrane’s featured story comes from Hugging Face engineer Sergio Paniego. Distillation is teacher-student training for AI: a capable model generates the training signal, and a smaller student learns to match it. The classic off-policy version compresses giant models into cheap students, either through soft labels or piles of worked answers. Google’s Gemma models and DeepSeek’s R1-Distill line were built exactly this way.

However, the industry is now converging on multi-teacher on-policy distillation, or MOPD. Labs build reinforcement-learning specialists for math, coding, and agentic work, then have them grade a single student, word by word, as the student generates its own answers. DeepSeek-V4, MiMo-V2-Flash, and NVIDIA’s Nemotron 3 Ultra all run versions of the recipe, and the Qwen3 team reported better results at roughly a tenth of the GPU hours of raw reinforcement learning. Finally, self-distillation lets models like Cursor’s Composer 2.5 learn from better-prompted versions of themselves.

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GPT-5.6 Arrives With a Government-Vetted Rollout

OpenAI shipped GPT-5.6 as a three-tier family: Sol, Terra, and Luna. Sol costs five dollars in and thirty dollars out per million tokens, half of Claude Fable 5’s rate. The benchmarks split: Sol Ultra wins Terminal-Bench at 91.9 percent, while Claude Fable 5 still leads SWE-Bench Pro. Notably, the API launched in limited preview to roughly 20 partners vetted by the U.S. government, though the model went live in Microsoft 365 Copilot on day one.

Claude Sonnet 5 Lands on AWS, Plus Quick AWS Wins

Claude Sonnet 5 arrived on AWS through Bedrock, pitched as top-tier intelligence at Sonnet pricing. Additionally, Amazon WorkSpaces for AI agents reached general availability, enabling agents to drive full desktop applications securely. OpenSearch gained a log-analytics engine claiming four times the price-performance, and SageMaker now scales inference about twice as fast. Cochrane also flags that Kendra and Q Business move to maintenance mode at the end of July.

Anthropic Wants You to Reflect on Your Claude Habits

Anthropic launched Reflect, a beta feature that analyzes your past Claude conversations and visualizes how you actually use the assistant. It requires Memory, excludes incognito and health-related chats, and keeps its insights inside the tool. Cochrane loves the idea. He reviews his own transcripts to extract prompt patterns and turn them into reusable skills, and he suggests listeners simply ask their AI to do the same.

AlphaEvolve Goes GA on Google Cloud

Google made AlphaEvolve generally available to Google Cloud customers on the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform. The agent acts as an evolutionary collaborator: provide a baseline algorithm and your goals, and it searches for better, human-readable code. BASF, JetBrains, and Kinaxis are the named early adopters. Meanwhile, Cochrane renews his standing wish that DeepMind release AlphaGo as a playable teacher.

Google Adds “How This Ad Was Made” AI Labels

Google is adding a “How this ad was made” section to My Ad Center across Search, YouTube, and Discover. Ads built with Google’s own AI tools automatically get the disclosure, backed by invisible watermarks. However, ads made with outside tools rely on advertiser self-declaration. Cochrane points out the limits of voluntary disclosure in an AI-flooded content economy.

Microsoft’s Carbon Emissions Climb 25 Percent

Microsoft’s new sustainability report shows emissions up 25% in 2025, driven by a data center construction spree. The gross figure is 34 million metric tons before offsets, while other coverage puts the net figure at around 20 million. Water consumption also jumped thirty-four percent, even as Microsoft claims its first water-positive year. Cochrane argues regulation needs to catch up, since Google and Amazon report similar increases.

Prince George’s County Pauses Data Centers for Two Years

Prince George’s County adopted a two-year moratorium on new data center development, the longest pause in Maryland so far. The resolution blocks new applications, including hyperscale projects, until the council passes real regulations. Water and energy impacts remain open questions the county intends to study. Cochrane gives kudos to residents for making their voices heard.

Apple and Broadcom Ink a $30 Billion U.S. Chip Deal

Apple is expanding its partnership with Broadcom with a multiyear agreement expected to exceed $30 billion. The deal covers custom silicon and wireless components, with more than fifteen billion chips to be made on American soil. Broadcom’s Fort Collins, Colorado plant anchors the work with a $1.5 billion equipment expansion. Tim Cook framed the deal as accelerating Apple’s commitment to American manufacturing.

MSI and Intel Ship the First Arc G3 Extreme Handheld

Intel detailed how it co-engineered the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, the first handheld on the Arc G3 Extreme processor. Highlights include a heat-spreading board layout and game-tuning loops that Intel says run Cyberpunk 2077 up to thirty-seven percent faster. The device is on sale now in void purple for around $1,500. At that price, Cochrane jokes he would rather buy a computer.

Meta’s Glasses Get a Tamper-Proof Recording Light

Meta answered the most common privacy questions about its AI glasses. Photos stay private on the device until the wearer imports or shares them, and a white capture LED blinks during any recording with no off switch. Moreover, newer glasses disable the camera if the LED is blocked, tampered with, or destroyed. Cochrane reminds listeners these claims are Meta grading its own homework, but the blink signal is worth recognizing in public.

Michigan’s Parasite Outbreak Tops 1,200 Cases

Michigan’s cyclosporiasis outbreak reached 1,251 cases since June 22, with roughly forty hospitalizations along the way. Northwest Ohio adds more than five hundred cases. The parasite typically spreads through contaminated fresh produce, and investigators still have not found the source. Cochrane’s advice: wash your produce, and get tested if your symptoms fit.

AI Finds the San Andreas Fault’s Silent Slips

Researchers paired AI with borehole strainmeters to detect dozens of hidden slow-slip events beneath the San Andreas Fault’s Parkfield section. Each silent slip releases stress within hours and is reliably followed by low-frequency earthquakes. Together, the findings support a continuous spectrum from silent creep to destructive quakes. The study appears in Nature Communications, and Cochrane hopes it will lead to better earthquake prediction.

Cloud Brightening Erased a Super El Niño, in a Simulation

Finally, a Science Advances study simulated marine cloud brightening in response to the 1997 and 2015 super El Niño events. Seeding clouds over the eastern Pacific erased the events entirely inside the model. Real deployment would take roughly 2,400 ships spraying continuously, and the simulations showed side effects like extra warming over Europe and Asia. Cochrane finds the weather-machine concept fascinating, yet he questions the consequences of altering cycles the planet runs for a reason.

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