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Thu, Jun 18, 2026, 4:16 AM EDT

Tech

AI Summary

  • The tech industry is grappling with the dual nature of AI, with potential breakthroughs in areas like Mars missions and smart homes contrasted by concerns over job displacement, price hikes, and public skepticism regarding its positive societal impact.
  • Apple faces potential iPhone price increases attributed to AI-related memory demands, highlighting the financial implications of advanced AI integration.
  • AI startups are exploring diverse revenue streams and collaborations, from carbon removal initiatives (Anthropic) to AI model development (Odyssey, DeepSeek), while established tech giants like Google and Amazon are heavily investing in AI's future.
  • The cybersecurity landscape remains a critical concern, with reports of major companies having their firewalls compromised and increasing governmental scrutiny on AI export controls and data security.
  • There's a noticeable shift towards user empowerment and decentralized technologies, seen in the exploration of user-controlled social media algorithms, the growth of open-source alternatives like Mastodon, and a broader societal pushback against constant digital engagement, often termed 'slowtech'.

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  • Midjourney goes from generating cat images to full-body ultrasound scans 6 hours ago by Richard Lawler
    AI, Health, News, Science

    “A scan of an imaging phantom, segmented to validate how cleanly structures separate under controlled conditions.“ | Image: Midjourney Medical Midjourney CEO David Holz just showed off the company's first hardware product and plans to build a San Francisco spa, which he admitted is a bit different from the "cat pictures" produced by its AI image generator. Dubbed The Midjourney Scanner , it's an ultrasound-based full-body scanner that uses a ring of sensors to capture vertical slices of the inside of your body, looking at the composition of your muscle, fat, bone, and organs to start. Holz said ideally, you

  • Tim Cook says RAM expenses are ‘unsustainable’ and Apple is going to raise prices 12 hours ago by Emma Roth
    Apple, iPhone, macOS, News, Tech

    Apple is planning to raise prices in response to the ongoing memory shortage. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal , Apple CEO Tim Cook says "price increases are unavoidable:" We're doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we've been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable. Cook doesn't say when Apple plans on raising prices or which products will be affected. The company has already stopped selling the Mac Studio with 512GB of RAM in March and later raised the starting price of

  • VSCO launches Studio Pro mobile photo editing app and plans $500 per year subscription 13 hours ago by Stevie Bonifield
    Apps, Creators, News, Tech

    VSCO is taking on Adobe with a new Studio Pro editing app rolling out today on iOS and coming to macOS later this year, as Bloomberg reports. At launch, the app offers tools for batch editing, style matching from a reference image, and sharing images through VSCO Galleries. VSCO says more features are coming later, including support for RAW images, advanced export options, and additional advanced editing tools like adjusting image aspect ratios. A press release says the app is made for managing high-volume editing projects, like "weddings, portraits, events, sports, school photography, and other large-scale photoshoots." The $500 per

  • Epic wants to let you bring your Fortnite skins to other games 14 hours ago by Jay Peters
    Entertainment, Fortnite, Gaming, News

    Epic Games has been touting the potential of an interoperable metaverse for years , though that vision hasn't yet become a reality. But with Unreal Engine 6, the next major version of its game development engine, Epic plans to take a big step toward that theoretical future: it will let developers make games that can use a player's Fortnite skins and will let developers build skins of their own that work with Fortnite . "We're tackling this problem first because we want to prove things out with a system that's complex enough to be a meaningful existence proof of the

  • Anthropic got hit by export rules nobody understands 15 hours ago by Robert Hart
    AI, Anthropic, Policy

    Anthropic has spent much of this week fighting to get its newest AI models back online after the Trump administration abruptly ordered the company to cut access for all foreign nationals, including users inside the US and its own employees, forcing Anthropic to block access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for everyone. "To my knowledge, this is the first time US export controls have been used to control access to an AI model in this way." The Trump administration has not publicly explained the legal basis for the order, but in a statement on its website, Anthropic said the


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