Fusion startup Xcimer Energy on Wednesday flipped the switch on its Phoenix laser system, which the company says is the largest privately owned example in the world.

Xcimer’s approach to fusion power is modeled after the National Ignition Facility (NIF), which proved in December 2022 that a controlled fusion reaction could release more power than required to ignite it.

The NIF trained 192 laser beams on a fuel target smaller than a pencil eraser. The energy from the lasers hit the gold target. As the lasers obliterate the gold target, their energy is converted into X-rays, which are focused on the fuel pellet inside, compressing it until atoms in the fuel fuse and release energy.

The company is betting that more powerful, less complex lasers will help turn NIF’s concept for fusion power into something more profitable.

Xcimer’s plans for a fusion power plant call for two lasers capable of firing in microsecond-long pulses. Light from those pulses will be fed through a compression system, of sorts, which will delivers the lasers’ energy to the fuel target in nanoseconds. The quicker the fuel is compressed, the more likely it is to generate usable fusion reactions.

Phoenix is a step toward an eventual power plant. The system uses excimer amplification, similar to those used in semiconductor manufacturing but significantly more powerful. At full strength, the krypton-fluoride laser generates over 1 kilojoule of energy, Xcimer told TechCrunch, and its core is 38 meters long. 

While that may be the most powerful privately owned laser, it’s still a fraction of what the company says it will need for a commercial power plant, which could exceed 12 megajoules.

Xcimer hopes to complete a prototype in 2028 before working on a larger system that it hopes will produce at least as much power as it consumes. Sometime in the mid-2030s, it is planning to build its first commercial scale power plant. 

After objecting to turn over relevant emails during discovery in a lawsuit brought on by Elon Musk, the judge is forcing the matter. Musk’s email accounts must be submitted for review.

Apple and OpenAI were sued by Elon Musk’s xAI, now owned by SpaceX, due to alleged anticompetitive practices. The trial hasn’t been going well for Musk so far, as it was accused of destroying and withholding evidence previously.

On Tuesday, Judge Mark Pittman responded to Elon Musk’s objections over his various email accounts. The objections were overturned, and business email accounts owned by Elon Musk for SpaceX and Tesla must be turned over for discovery.

Even though the case was brought on by X and xAI, the emails for Musk’s other companies were found to be relevant due to how he’s used them. The judge cites that business conducted for X and xAI occurred through various accounts, including several email addresses and Xchat accounts.

The case has been moving at a snail’s pace since it was brought on in August 2025. In May, SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi was brought in as a document custodian.

Current Apple CEO Tim Cook was also requested as a custodian, but that was denied.

Pointless lawsuits

It isn’t clear how long these proceedings might go, as the claims themselves are quite baseless. Musk has asserted that Apple and OpenAI worked together to prevent other AI solutions from being viable alternatives on Apple’s platforms.

ChatGPT does frequently chart in the top five free apps on the App Store, but other AI apps overtake it from time to time. xAI, X, and other Elon Musk properties never chart as high simply because they’re not as popular.

In fact, X is a shadow of what used to be Twitter due to the extremist views and sometimes illegal content that persist on the platform.

The claims are even more absurd given that OpenAI is reportedly unhappy with how its partnership with Apple turned out. Also, Apple is also now working with Google to use Gemini as the foundation of its future models.

It seems that Musk could have saved everyone a lot of time and money and focused on building more desirable platforms. Instead, we all have to watch the world’s richest man throw tantrums about perceived slights.

Operating systems are great things to have for general purpose computing, but sometimes they can just get in the way. There’s RAM overhead and processor cycles required for all that operating, after all. For something like a game system, it seems unnecessary. The NES certainly did well enough without an OS, as did its various successors for several console generations.

[Inkbox] wanted to get back to those heady days by programming bare-metal games for a Rasberry Pi 3 that had sat unused since 2016. Games are on cartridge, running bare metal, in assembly — as God and Masayuki Uemura intended. Also, the console is a dodecahedron, because the name GameCube was already taken.

The GitHub link above doesn’t exactly have documentation, at least as of this writing, so you’ll need to watch the video to get the full details. The dodecahedron form factor might not be ideal for packing away in a bag, but as a handheld we have to admit it does look comfortable to hold. Two faces of the dodecahedron get a half-dozen buttons each, which are wired to a GPIO pin on the Pi via a Schmitt trigger for hardware debounce. Like all good consoles, it uses cartridges, these ones being adapted from SD cards on large PCBs derived from a project we featured before.

That all sounds great, but it’s the assembly programming we’re really interested in — skip to around the seven-minute mark in the video for that. Ultimately it’s a build video, so not the ideal tutorial for ARM assembly programming, but it might not be a bad introduction for some. Unfortunately you don’t get line-by-line of the PacMan game he put together — but he does have it in the repository for you to examine. The repo also has STLs if you want to make a dodecahedron of your own.

Of course he’s got a RetroPi cartridge as well, loaded with emulators, and we suspect that’s mostly how this GameDodecahedron will get used. Still, we’ll always have a soft spot for assembly code and projects that use it — be it on ARM, good old 6502, the open-source RISC V architecture, or even the absolute monster of op codes that is x86.

The initiative is based on agreements with the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, Munster Technological University, LuxProvide and ICHEC, Ireland’s national high performance computing centre.

The Kerry-based innovation nonprofit RDI Hub will aim to help Irish firms and public bodies move faster from AI experimentation to deployment through a new partnership initiative with organisations in Ireland and Luxembourg.

The ‘AI Gateway’ collaboration is based on agreements with the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), Munster Technological University (MTU), LuxProvide and ICHEC, Ireland’s national high-performance computing centre.

The bodies will facilitate the building, testing and securing of AI systems and create a cross-border pathway linking Irish demand with Luxembourg’s ‘AI Factory’, sandbox and sovereign infrastructure capabilities, as well as providing opportunities for Irish research and cybersecurity expertise to contribute into that wider European ecosystem, RDI Hub said.

Ireland’s European commissioner Michael McGrath said the gateway would assist in “breaking down barriers, ending fragmentation and giving Irish companies access to cutting-edge AI to scale, grow and succeed as European companies with global reach”, and would aid “founders, scaling companies and established corporates”.

The gateway, claimed to be the first of its kind in Ireland, will offer Irish organisations computing power and infrastructure to build AI, sandbox access to test systems for trustworthiness and regulatory readiness, and cyber resilience capability to test and secure AI-enabled products before launch, to help them deploy AI systems while staying compliant with national and European laws.

Fergal Brosnan, the CEO of RDI Hub, said: “Most AI sandboxes do one thing. The RDI AI Gateway does three. We’ve brought together access to infrastructure to build AI, a sandbox to test and validate it, and cyber resilience capability to test resilience and secure it before deployment.

“That combination is what organisations have been asking for, and it can help turn AI pilots into systems that are ready for real-world use.”

RDI Hub, based in Killorglin, Co Kerry, offers supports to start-ups, SMEs, corporates, public bodies and research-led innovation in sectors such as fintech, sustainability, travel and tourism, and emerging technology, with AI seen as a “core crosscutting capability”.

Dr Hazel Murray, chair of cybersecurity at MTU, said: “This collaboration combines MTU’s research and cybersecurity infrastructure with RDI Hub’s industry network and delivery model.

“Together, we can help turn specialist technical capability into practical support for trusted AI and cyber resilience, while also strengthening links between Ireland and Luxembourg.”

RDI Hub said the gateway is aimed at “large corporates, SMEs, pillar banks and regulated financial institutions; fintech firms; AI start-ups and scale-ups; government departments; public bodies; local authorities; research-led innovation projects; and organisations exploring sovereign cloud, EU AI Act readiness or access to European compute”.

Daniele Pagani of LIST said: “This collaboration with the RDI gives Irish organisations a trusted route into LIST’s AI sandbox at exactly the moment they need it, as Europe moves from preparing for the EU AI Act to applying it.

“It is a practical model for cross-border cooperation, and a real strengthening of the innovation link between Luxembourg and Ireland.”

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Global ICT experts gather in Shenzhen to master cutting-edge engineering practices and foster international collaboration

Partner Content ZTE successfully co-organized the graduation of the 2026 Engineering Capacity Building Program (Information & Communication Engineering) in Shenzhen. Under the theme “Wisdom Leading Communication Frontiers, Empowering Engineering Practice”, the program was hosted by the Chinese Society of Engineers, organized by the China Institute of Communications, and co-organized by the Guangdong Institute of Communications and ZTE.

The initiative brought together over 60 ICT engineers from more than 20 countries, including Indonesia, Uzbekistan, South Africa, the Czech Republic, Colombia, Peru and China. Through a diverse range of activities, including reports, technical exchanges, and interactive workshops, the program explored global digital and intelligent engineering practices to enhance the professional capacities of domestic and international engineers.

During the organizational and technical reporting sessions, experts from the Secretariat of the Chinese Society of Engineers (CSE) , the China Institute of Communications, the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), and ZTE shared insights on innovative practices in engineering capacity building, ICT frontiers, and the evolution of global project management, sparking active interactions among attendees. Magendaran Kaliaperumal, an engineer from Indonesia, shared his profound experience: “Participating in our country’s network integration project, I have truly felt the transformative power of cutting-edge digital and intelligent technologies. From digital project management to the precise optimization of resource scheduling, these technologies have significantly enhanced delivery efficiency and quality.”

Speaking on the transition of digitalization and greening, Prof. Gong Ke, Chairman of the ECBAP (Engineering Capacity Building for Africa Programme) of WFEO (World Federation of Engineering Organizations) in Africa, emphasized: “Engineering is a key force in achieving sustainable development goals for society.” This exchange of ideas laid a solid theoretical foundation for subsequent practical sessions and inspired a sense of responsibility among engineers to collectively drive innovative industry development.

During the site visits, the engineers toured ZTE’s headquarter, experiencing immersive digital and intelligent engineering practices. At the museum, exhibition halls, and smart production lines, participants witnessed the technological leap from 5G to 6G, as well as the deep integration of lean production and intelligent manufacturing. An Algerian engineer expressed his excitement: “We just commercialized 5G last year, and today, seeing the forward-looking breakthroughs of 5G-A and 6G in Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) and intelligent economic foundations makes me highly optimistic about the future.”

The engineers also visited SenseTime to learn about its leading Artificial Intelligence Data Centers (AIDCs) , exploring innovative applications in urban governance, environmental monitoring, and smart healthcare. An Ethiopian engineer remarked: “This program has redefined my perception. The deep integration of cutting-edge technology with real-world scenarios truly demonstrates the potential of technology to drive high-quality social development.”

In the workshop sessions, engineers gained hands-on experience with ZTE’s enterprise-level AI agent, Co-Claw, and collaborated to develop various models based on real business scenarios. At Shenzhen Polytechnic University, they studied new energy vehicle and drone application technologies, personally operating and debugging industrial-grade drones with independent intellectual property rights.

At the closing ceremony, Hu Lihua, Vice President of ZTE, delivered a speech, stating: “ZTE will, as always, open its technological platforms to empower the growth of engineers, working together to build a global engineering community featuring collaborative technology research, shared achievements, and win-win industry growth.”

Participants enthusiastically shared their experiences and insights. “This program not only showed us the potential of cutting-edge technologies but also sparked new thinking on how to enhance our capabilities and adapt to future technological trends,” they noted. A representative from Peru stated they would bring these “genes of innovation” back home to foster further international cooperation. The engineers agreed that open collaboration and mutual recognition of professional capacities are crucial to achieving sustainable development in engineering technology and global digital inclusion.

The China Institute of Communications will continue to leverage its platform advantages to gather high-quality industry resources, actively promote international mutual recognition of engineers, and enhance the professional and international standards of engineers in the ICT and digital technology fields, thereby supporting enterprises in their global expansion.

As a co-organizer of the event, ZTE will leverage its deep expertise in information and communication engineering to continue partnering with all sectors. ZTE remains committed to nurturing global “digital craftsmen” with international vision, digital literacy, and innovative capabilities, contributing to bridging the global digital divide and achieving sustainable development.

Contributed by ZTE.

Google is introducing a new Android security feature that will detect and flag phone calls in which scammers use artificial intelligence to impersonate a user’s personal contacts.

Called “fake call detection,” the feature is rolling out globally this month to Android 12 and later devices, starting with Pixel devices, and will be enabled by default.

Once activated, it works automatically when both a caller and recipient are using Phone by Google: when a contact places a call, their device sends a silent, encrypted confirmation signal to the recipient’s device in real time. 

If that signal is not sent (indicating the call may be spoofed), the recipient’s device will instead ping the contact’s actual phone to verify the call’s authenticity. If the contact’s device confirms it is not placing a call, the recipient receives an on-screen warning to hang up immediately.

“If a scammer tries to impersonate your contact, that initial confirmation signal will be missing. Your device will instantly notice this and ping your contact’s actual device to double-check,” Google said.

“If their real device says, ‘I’m not making a call right now,’ you’ll get a warning on your screen advising you to hang up immediately. This proactive alert helps you avoid falling victim to deepfake impersonation and call spoofing in real time.”

This new security feature is built on top of the Rich Communication Services (RCS) open standard and will only work on Android devices where the Phone by Google, Contacts, and Google Messages (with RCS enabled) apps are installed.

According to Google, this addresses two widespread fraud tactics: scammers spoofing a familiar contact’s phone number while simultaneously using AI voice-cloning technology to mimic that person’s voice.

Last year, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) warned that reported losses from impersonation scams reached $2.95 billion in 2024 alone, while INTERPOL’s March 2026 Global Financial Fraud Threat Assessment flagged impersonation fraud as one of the leading threats contributing to more than $440 billion in global losses last year.

“For years, people have relied on caller ID to know who is on the other end of the line, but this is no longer sufficient due to scammers’ new tactics,” Google added.

“If your device uses a different app, you can install Phone by Google from the Play Store and set it as your default phone app to help protect yourself from fake calls.”

In December, Google also expanded support for Android in-call scam protection to multiple banks and financial apps in the United States, including Cash App (with 57 million users) and the JPMorganChase mobile banking app (with over 50 million downloads).

Automated pentesting tools deliver real value, but they were built to answer one question: can an attacker move through the network? They were not built to test whether your controls block threats, your detection rules fire, or your cloud configs hold.

This guide covers the 6 surfaces you actually need to validate.

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Mitsu Makes spent six months on one of the more unusual 3D printer projects in recent memory. The result stands as a working machine with a frame constructed primarily from wood rather than the aluminum or steel common in most DIY and commercial designs. An interest in exploring alternative materials drove the effort. Standard builds lean heavily on rigid metals to maintain alignment under the forces of rapid movement and heating cycles. This project tested whether careful design and added supports could let wood succeed in the same role.

Cutting the first layer of wood was necessary, so he began with massive, thick solid wood stock and then put unique drawings through a CNC machine to create the frame components. Hand sanding was a labor of love that took seven hours to complete, as he needed to ensure a flawless fit and no flex in the finished structure. He used conventional wood glue as the primary bonding method for the frame and avoided using screws throughout the vital drying period to guarantee everything was secure. Clamps were needed to maintain the structure square for a few days, as he wanted to ensure that the enormous assembly did not warp. We didn’t begin staining until it was finished, and even then, he tested the finish on some spare pieces before applying it to the rest of the frame, top plate, steel backer sections, and bed mount.

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Steel backing plates were utilized to reinforce the points where the linear rails met the wood. These were laser cut and pre-drilled by Justway, adding much-needed stiffness to the wood sections, which can be rather thin in places (about 3mm). The printer’s mobility is caused by a cross-gantry setup. We have two stepper motors for the X and Y axes, and a third for the Z axis, which powers the lead screws (150mm long). This gives us 110mm of vertical travel and the ability to automatically tram the bed, which is a game changer.

On the control electronics front, he went with a BigTreeTech Manta M8P board with Klipper firmware. This combination gave him various advanced tuning options and made it much easier to maintain the wiring clean. Regarding the toolhead, he modified an Annex Engineering K3 carriage and fitted a Dragon UHF hot end and a Sherpa Mini extruder, which is a wonderful piece of kit. He also has a Beacon RevH probe, which helps with accurate bed mapping.

Turning on the power gave him quick smooth mobility, as well as useful functions like auto homing, Z axis tilt adjustment, and entire bed mesh probing. His initial test prints, a Voron calibration cube, were quite impressive, and he refined things a bit to improve the output even more, but one thing that really stood out was how quiet the printer was running, as the wood helps to dampen vibrations, which is far superior to your average metal frame.
[Source]

Compliance builds trust. Done right, it doesn’t limit enterprise choice or burden IT teams. And it supports innovation where it matters: in the real world, at scale, under scrutiny.

Somewhere in your organization, a procurement process is stalled. A vendor passed the technical evaluation. The security team has questions. Legal is reviewing a data processing agreement.