Even if you’re not normally interested in what’s happening in low Earth orbit, you probably heard that last week NASA ordered its personnel aboard the International Space Station to button themselves up in the docked Dragon spacecraft and await further instructions should they need to make a hasty departure. Known as Safe Haven, this emergency procedure is performed whenever there’s an elevated risk of damage to the Station.
NASA has provided an update on what happened, but it arguably leaves more questions than answers. Usually, crews go to their Safe Haven because some bit of space junk has wandered to close to the orbiting complex, but this time it was because Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev were getting ready to start cutting into the walls of the PrK transfer tunnel in an effort to address its persistent air leak.
After about an hour and a half, the Russians called off the effort and NASA gave their people the OK to leave the Dragon and return to their normal duties. NASA Press Secretary Bethany Stevens later posted on social media that the space agency would “look forward to working with Roscosmos on a collaborative approach to address the leaks” in the future. There’s currently no word on what a future repair attempt may entail, or when it would be attempted.
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This is one of those things were we might not hear the full story for some time, but it sure does sound like not only did the Russians want to do something that NASA didn’t think was safe, but that the whole thing was sprung on them at the last moment. To give you an idea of how serious Mission Control was taking the situation, they decided to cram five people into a Dragon capsule that only has four seats — it certainly would have made for one wild ride down to Earth if they were given the order to evacuate.
A group of third grade students gather around a board game on a Wednesday afternoon in a Charleston classroom, grabbing game pieces, discussing potential moves and reading out playing cards. The games are not Monopoly, Sorry, or any others of yore – they’re focused on identifying, and boosting, students’ strengths and weaknesses.
It’s part of a shift in school districts’ gifted and talented programs. While many programs focused on a small group of high achieving students, instructors across the nation are now focusing more on inclusion, using data to help them zero in on students’ talents, a method that has the potential of capturing more students for advanced instruction.
For Vanessa Hill, the gifted education coordinator for Amphitheater Public School District in Tucson, Arizona, focusing on strengths and weaknesses helps to solve what she sees as a universal problem with gifted identification.
“Something I’ve been thinking deeply about that tends to be a universal problem is that gifted identification does not match the metrics of your district,” says Vanessa Hill, the gifted education coordinator for Amphitheater Public School District in Tucson, Arizona. “I’m constantly thinking of that, so our demographics can get closer. This new tactic is about exposure to critical thinking and reasoning – what does that look like, how to reason through a problem?”
The gifted and talented programs run the gamut of names and acronyms depending on the district, including advanced learning program, TAG (talented and gifted), LEAP (Learning Enrichment Alternative Program) or REACH (Realizing Excellence through Academic and Creative Help), among others.
Regardless of the name, the program has undergone several major shifts over the last few decades. Schools previously often only selectively tested students, often at the behest of involved parents or by a teacher recommendation. That brought a large amount of inequity in the programs, with many moving to a universal screening practice. Some states, including Washington and Missouri, made it a state mandate to test all students while in elementary school. The screening practice itself evolved from an IQ test to aptitude and ability tests, though how accurate those are is up for debate.
“Society is really unequal along socioeconomic and racial and ethnic lines, and these tests are just reflecting that,” says Scott Peters, director of research consulting at NWEA, a nonprofit education assessment organization. “You can change tests all day long, but at the end of the day, you can’t give some kids three years of $40,000-a-year preschool and also wonder why this kid that’s never been to school until first grade doesn’t do as well.”
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Often, schools’ gifted and talented programs do not represent their overall school population and instead skew heavily toward white and Asian students. Zohran Mamdani, the widely-watched mayor of New York City, made it part of his platform to phase out gifted and talented programs because of the inequity.
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“Ultimately, my administration would aim to make sure that every child receives a high-quality early education that nurtures their curiosity and learning,” he said in a 2025 statement to the New York Times.
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There is no silver bullet test that accounts for inequality and a child’s upbringing, although Peters said when factors such as income, race and other equity gaps are controlled in tests, most inequities disappear.
“This isn’t a factor of, ‘Oh, there are students of color scoring high, but they’re still not getting in,’” he says. “It’s that there’s not enough students of color scoring high because of that larger societal inequality issue.”
Because of the often-skewed gifted and talented population, schools are shifting toward “talent development” with all students, versus focusing on strengthening some students’ already solid skills.
“Because of the baggage of the past, we’re moving toward a new perspective where we’re identifying the strengths of students — whether academic, social or emotional — versus people for a program,” says Kristen Seward, clinical professor in gifted, talented and creative studies at Purdue University. “And I think this twist in how we approach education as gifted researchers is going to benefit everybody.”
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Using Data for ‘Talent Development’
Developing talent for gifted programs, much like the name itself, varies depending on the district. Seward says many teachers have enriched curriculums, which enhance things like vocabulary, science and social studies — topics that have been put on the back burner over the years in favor of standardized testing. Teachers are trained to spot students’ strengths and respond to those, which in turn, helps with students’ weaknesses.
For example, if a student has a strong vocabulary but struggles in math, the teacher might focus on math vocabulary during math class to put the lesson on a level the child understands.
Elementary students play games that help with quantitative, verbal or non verbal skills.
Photo credit/Vanessa Hill
“I don’t want it to turn into a thing where the teacher is the gate, and if they don’t open the gate, then the students don’t get identified – which has been a problem,” Seward says. “We have to train teachers to be talent scouts, presenting the enriched curriculum. Hopefully it’s not something additional, but something they’d naturally do in their role.”
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Elizabeth McLaurin Uptegrove, now the assistant academic director in Charleston County School District, created a “stretch or support” system that involves the games the students played in the aforementioned classroom. When Uptegrove first arrived in Charleston’s school district, South Carolina used to require all second grade students be tested for the gifted and talented program. But after that year, selection changed to a nomination system.
“Which sounds elitist, and it is,” she says, adding white, affluent children were three times more likely to be in the programs.
She pushed for universal testing again for all fourth grade students, which yielded three times as many students identified as gifted, jumping from 40 fourth graders to 150 across the district. Several schools across the country have adopted similar stretch-or-support systems.
But Uptegrove’s efforts go beyond identifying candidates for gifted programs through teacher observation: her game-based system uses data. With the aptitude test, there are verbal, quantitative and nonverbal subsections. The tests indicate if a child is low or high achieving in those areas. Then the children are placed in groups with those of similar abilities to play games that can enhance those skills.
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The Stretch or Support games in Uptegrove’s third grade classroom help children grow or reinforce their skills.
Photo credit/Elizabeth McLaurin Uptegrove
“Typically a teacher is not very well-equipped to come up with activities or lessons that can actually reach their level of thinking ability and games do that really quickly, in a way that’s not as boring for children as a typical worksheet,” Uptegrove says. “That’s where the magic of the games comes in. We’re making rigorous, hard thinking almost irresistible so students are willing to do the activity for longer.”
Hill, the Arizona-based education coordinator, initially implemented Uptegrove’s game strategy across third grade classrooms in five schools: three Title 1 schools and two non-Title 1. She says the schools that have the strength or stretch program in place have higher passing rates of “proficient” or “highly proficient” scores than those who do not.
“To me, it’s the difference between being a passive learner and active learner; by being able to engage in the games, it’s more active learning,” Hill says. “You raise the exposure to critical thinking and are taught to apply those skills to any situation, whether it’s on an achievement test or on the playground with a friend.”
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The Future of the Program
Both researchers and teachers acknowledge the “talent development” approach to gifted and talented programs is far from perfect. It is often costly, whether it is buying the games, instilling teacher training or taking out time from testing. Hill pointed to four schools within her district that are closing this year because of financial constraints.
“Ordering the games is no small cost; I feel so blessed it’s that level of importance that we will find the funds,” she says. “As far as critical thinking games, yes that was missing. It is a hole we were filling. I think that while the core curriculum is doing its best, it can oftentimes be a bit surface level.”
Uptegrove agrees, saying she believes the talent development method is becoming more popular, but “there’s a long way to go in belief and funding for it.”
Peters, who has long studied the best educational methods and practices, believes the shift in gifted and talented is a good step. But he has concerns about the larger moves needed for lasting impact.
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“It’s easy to have a 30-minute gifted program; it’s hard to have a second through eighth grade math development pipeline involving everyone in the school,” he says. “And advanced learning isn’t enough of a priority for most schools.”
In May, Ferrari introduced its first entry into the electric vehicle market: the Luce. With an exterior like a Nissan Leaf, and an interior designed by the guy who designed the iPhone, it received a lot of hate. So, if Ferrari can’t make a cool EV, who can?
Enter the Slate truck. It’s a Jeff Bezos-backed, American-made compact truck with no bells, whistles, or even AC — the antithesis of the Tesla Cybertruck. It’s kind of cute. And it might just get more Americans to drive an electric car.
At a time when American manufacturers have fallen far behind countries like China in the automotive industry, companies are still trying to get Americans excited about electric.
Andrew Hawkins is a transportation editor at The Verge who has been following the EV industry in the US. He tells Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram about the problems stopping American drivers from fully adopting EVs and discusses whether this bare-bones truck can fix them.
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Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
There’s another electric truck that we have to talk about.
Oh, yes, indeed. The Slate truck.
This to me represents the dichotomy in the EV market today, right? On the one hand, you’ve got your Ferrari Luce. That is a $640,000 car that no one you will ever meet will probably buy. And on the other hand, you’ve got this Slate Truck that is the most bare-bones two-seater that you could possibly imagine. There’s no radio, there’s no touchscreen, there’s no central screen inside the vehicle. There’s no paint. You even have to opt in to get power windows; otherwise, they will just give you the [window crank].
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I love the idea of an electric truck that has manual roll-‘em-down windows.
When I heard that, that blew my mind. This is a new startup. They’ve got a lot of investment cash from Jeff Bezos and some other people. This is their first vehicle. And the theory behind it is that we will make this thing as stripped-down as we possibly can. Take out all the bells and whistles. People can add a bunch of stuff. They could turn it into a small SUV by adding a back section to it if they want. They could add wrapping decals. You could personalize it and make it look however you want it to look. Or, you could just buy the bare-bones version.
The idea being that electric vehicles, as they stand today, are above the average cost of a new gas-powered vehicle. So, we need to bring this price down. How are we going to do that? Well, still the most expensive part about any electric vehicle is the battery. So, in order to have a good battery while still having a decent car, you need to take out everything else.
That’s how they’re saying that they’re going to sell this thing for under $30,000 when it eventually comes out at the end of this year.
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So, unlike the [Ferrari] Luce, people responded well to this Slate truck. Why is it a truck? Why not a sedan?
Trucks are very popular in the US. They’re amongst the best-selling vehicles, typically. The Ford F-150, for example, was the best-selling vehicle in America for a long time.
But, this is America. We love our trucks. We love our big trucks. This is not a big truck. This is a small truck. And a lot of people have been saying trucks have gotten too big. They’re oversized behemoths out on the road that are dangerous to pedestrians that are out walking around. They don’t offer enough safety protections. And so, maybe we need to come back to more of a midsize or compact.
And then, obviously, gas prices are soaring. People are looking for something that’s a little bit more downsized in general. So, I think the truck prospect is an interesting one. Then again, trucks aren’t for everybody. If you want to turn this thing into a four-seater compact SUV, that’s something that will be an option to you, as well.
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Okay, so this reason to make a little truck seems based on market research. People want a truck, and here’s a very different truck that we can offer them. What about this decision to literally strip away every single feature, including the paint, including the power windows, including the radio?
It’s a real risky bet from Slate. I think what they’re trying to say is that maybe cars have become too bloated, right? We’re starting to see a pullback from too many convenience features, especially in the car market with people feeling a lot of pressure on their pocketbooks and how expensive new cars have become. They’re looking for something that is a little bit more downmarket.
But also, I think it’s a reflection of where the expenses are in building a new car and a realization that you can’t just put out a car, especially an electric vehicle today, without some plan to make it profitable. One of the original mistakes of the auto industry, and especially the American auto industry, was that they could take a lot of their most popular cars, retrofit them to be electric, and that people would respond to them.
That was, I think, a pretty understandable bet from a lot of these companies. But, I don’t think they were really taking costs into effect for a lot of that. And what we ended up with was a lot of cars that were indistinguishable from their gas counterparts, but were 20 to 30 percent more expensive than those gas cars.
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In so many ways, the automotive industry is a stand-in for our whole economy. We hold up the auto industry as being this kind of beacon which represents our innovativeness and our leadership on the global stage. And I think that we’ve ceded that leadership now to China.
China is now leading. They sell the most cars, they export the most cars, and they have the best technology. They’ve cracked the code on cheap EVs. I feel like America is always going to have an outsized reputation, but whether that reputation is actually earned anymore, I think is a very open question right now.
Do the people want EVs in this country yet, or do they still have range anxiety and a preference for the combustion engine? Does the war in Iran factor into how the people feel right now?
People vote with their pocketbooks, right? That’s where their preferences are today. And I think when electric vehicles were first gaining popularity, you heard a lot about charging anxiety. You heard a lot about range anxiety.
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I think those are still considerations, but I feel, right now, the number one consideration for most people is, “I’m living paycheck to paycheck, and it’s costing me $80, $90 to fill up my F-150.” The used EV market right now is extremely attractive to a lot of people. You can get a very good electric vehicle for around $20,000. You take it home, you set up a home charger, you charge that thing overnight. You never have to go to a gas station again. That’s a pretty attractive proposition to a lot of people.
Apple says its upgraded Siri AI can take the stress out of party planning for those of us (myself included) who find ourselves overwhelmed when hosting social events.
As announced at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, an upgraded Apple Intelligence (improved with some help from Google’s Gemini AI models) is designed to help you brainstorm ideas, take action across multiple apps and ask questions that require personal context or current online information.
Launching in English later this year on Apple Intelligence-enabled devices, the conversational Siri AI will have its own dedicated app that works across devices, so you can ask a question on your iPhone and continue the conversation on your iPad. But it will also act across apps like Messages and Reminders to become your AI personal assistant. This could make it an exceptional party planner.
During the WWDC keynote, Justin Titi, Apple’s senior director of intelligent system experience engineering, asked Siri AI on iOS for the schedule of the World Cup’s opening weekend. Then, Siri AI suggested dishes from Brazil and Morocco for a watch party centered on that match, located a dessert their daughter recently mentioned in the Messages app, pulled all those dishes together for a complete menu and sent that menu to a specific group chat to see if its members were up for a watch party.
Apple’s Justin Titi demonstrates on an iPhone how Siri AI can be used to plan a World Cup party menu.
Apple/Screenshot by CNET
That’s just one example, but it shows that Siri AI can take the most tedious tasks out of party planning by telling you when certain events will occur, giving you menu suggestions, searching your device to answer personal questions and even sending the party invite.
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Speaking of invites, there’s a new version of Apple’s AI-generated image app, Image Playground, that uses Apple Intelligence to transform your images. Since the app runs on private cloud compute, images are never stored or shared.
Leslie Ikemoto, Apple’s director of input experience, explains that you can use Image Playground to generate a birthday party invite by taking a photo of a friend from your image library and having it modified to include a birthday cake with a simple description. You can then refine the image further — adding candles to the cake and even changing your friend’s outfit to fit the party theme — by describing the changes you’d like or using touch.
Image Playground helps create a mystery-themed birthday party invite from a person’s photo.
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Apple/Screenshot by CNET
For those who struggle to create or edit images, Apple Intelligence also takes out that guesswork, so you can focus on the more fun aspects of preparing for a party. Personally, I’d rather save that time and effort for cooking.
Every step of party planning can now be executed using Apple Intelligence, down to the most minute details: writing and perfecting the invite message in Messages or Mail, and adding and editing the calendar event based on that invite’s context.
If I could avoid all the frustrating parts of party planning, I would. Starting this fall, with Apple Intelligence’s improvements, I will.
64pc of participating EMEA organisations anticipate an attack in the next year, with 44pc having already experienced an incident over the past 12 months.
According to new research carried out by ESET in the SMB Cyber Readiness Index 2026, “businesses are losing sleep over a high-tech threat that has barely shown up in real attacks”, in a landscape where “everyday scams” are getting through and costing money.
ESET, which is a Slovakia-based global cybersecurity company, partnered with Esomar member Go4insight to collect data from 4,400 organisations with 25 to 1,000 endpoints across 13 countries.
This included Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the US. Contributors were the main decision-makers on, or key influencers of, organisational cybersecurity decisions.
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What was discovered in the research is that 64pc of participating organisations dispersed across Europe, the Middle East and Africa anticipate an attack in the next year, with 44pc having already experienced an incident over the past 12 months.
31pc are of the opinion that the single greatest threat is AI-powered malware, despite ESET’s findings stating that across its managed detection and response service (MDR), not one incident involved generative AI “in any meaningful way”. Rather, among the threats that posed the most risk, were phishing (27pc), unpatched software (23pc), lack of security monitoring (20pc) and weak passwords (20pc).
Commenting on the report, Michal Jankech, the vice-president of enterprise, SMB and MSP at ESET, said: “While 78pc of SMBs recognise cybersecurity’s strategic importance, inconsistent understanding of key threats, technology and terminology, including MDR and security posture, suggests there is still room for improvement. Any improvement will have to start with a reality check.
“We’ve found SMBs’ concerns are often shaped by headlines on emerging threats like AI-driven attacks, while more routine risks, phishing, unpatched vulnerabilities and lack of monitoring, are underestimated. This hints that many respondents misperceive their security posture and resilience.”
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Invest in safety
ESET’s research also highlighted the need and desire for significant training among participating EMEA organisations.
87pc explained that they believe training to be either critical or important and 51pc train several times a year, while 12pc train monthly. Only 43pc however, were found to be using quality training programmes such as phishing simulations.
Meanwhile, 83pc view their cybersecurity budget as being sufficient or more than sufficient and 39pc expect a budget increase next year.
Of the future investment into their organisation, 40pc are planning for increased engagement in employee training and awareness, 33pc have a future strategy for cloud security and one-quarter intend to invest in backup and recovery. The main barriers are currently budget limits (26pc), complexity and integration challenges (20pc), and a shortage in talent and skills (18pc).
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“As it stands, meeting cybersecurity challenges in 2026 means understanding the intersection of your business needs, human behaviour, the democratisation of powerful technologies like AI, regulatory priorities, and the rather volatile threat landscape – that’s a lot,” said Jankech. “Therefore, to face all of these, there is but one choice – to become more resilient, starting with charting one’s own state of readiness.”
Though Ireland-based organisations were not included in ESET’s survey, George Foley – a cybersecurity specialist for ESET Ireland – offered his opinion as to what Irish organisations should expect.
“Irish businesses are bracing for a Hollywood version of cybercrime while the side door is left wide open,” he said. “The attack that empties your account is not some self-driving AI super-virus. It is the same dodgy invoice email we have warned about for years, except now it is word-perfect and there are thousands of them.
“Spend your worry and your budget on the basics. Train your staff to pause before they pay, keep your systems patched and stop reusing passwords. That is what stops the money walking out the door.”
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Updated, 5.31pm, 9 June 2026: This article was amended to fix some statistical errors.
The Seattle skyline. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
Seattle declined in a new ranking of the best places in the U.S. to attract foreign businesses and investment, drawing fresh concern and criticism in the ongoing debate about the business climate in both the city and Washington state.
The fifth annual list compiled by British newspaper Financial Times and stock market index Nikkei ranks Seattle 13th among 95 U.S. cities — a drop of 11 places from last year’s second-place position.
The ranking measures cities across more than three dozen metrics that FT-Nikkei call important to foreign investors, including energy resilience, trade war resilience, workforce and talent, openness, business environment, foreign business needs, quality of life, and investment trends. (See more on the methodology here.)
Seattle’s average score was 62 out of 100. No. 1-ranked Boston jumped 10 spots with a score of 73.
Seattle scored 65 last year to jump eight spots to No. 2 on a list that clearly has some yearly fluctuation. This year, the city dropped slightly in a number of categories, but its score actually rose in investment trends, a category that looks at how much foreign and domestic investment a city attracted in 2025, as well as its annual GDP per capita.
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(Financial Times Graphic)
The report and Seattle’s place on it managed to send another shock wave — at least on LinkedIn — through a tech community that has been up in arms of late over Seattle’s perceived anti-business image.
Kirby Winfield, founder of Seattle venture capital firm Ascend, shared the graphics on LinkedIn showing Seattle’s slide and said, “As a Seattle native it kills me to see reports like this.”
The reactions in comments on Winfield’s post were varied, with some questioning “fuzzy” measurement definitions and weightings in the rankings. Others shrugged off any list that could rank New York (28) and San Francisco (33) so far down.
But a familiar tone was present among those who say Seattle and the state are inviting this kind of ranking with policies that are pushing business and tech leaders out.
“I have never seen a city government so hostile to business, especially small businesses,” wrote tech vet Charlie Anthe.
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“Seattle’s drop is not random,” wrote Michael Hatch, a private wealth manager. “It is the result of years of policy decisions that have made it harder for businesses, large and small, to function here — the cumulative weight of new city taxes, a minimum wage at the top of the national range, and a level of street-level chaos no business can absorb.”
Some mentioned moving out of Washington to places like Dallas or New York, echoing a trend that has seen other prominent entrepreneurs decamp in recent years: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos moved to Miami; former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz also went to Miami; and Expedia and Zillow co-founder Rich Barton just left for Las Vegas.
While Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson took heat in April for offering a literal hand-wave and saying “bye” to wealthy residents threatening to leave, some in the comments on Winfield’s post this week expressed a desire to rally the community and fix what needs fixing.
“Seattle’s innovation changed the world. From the devices we use daily, to how we shop, and communicate,” wrote startup founder Curtis Crimmins. “The kneecapping of this culture has been swift and cruel. I’m obsessed with how we get it back, and I’ll do anything to help us get there.”
Merch on Demand taps into Alexa for Shopping for new AI-generated designs
Consumer-targeted upgrade works on the app or website, available with Prime shipping
Only US customers will get it for now – Etsy and others could suffer
Amazon has launched a new feature within Alexa for Shopping that enables customers to generate their own merch designs from AI prompts, which they can then have printed on physical products like hoodies and T-shirts.
Senior Editor Jacquelyn Smith said in an announcement that users may wish to print “a group chat’s funniest inside joke… shirts for an upcoming family reunion… [or] a beloved pet reimagined as a cartoon,” implying the new feature is designed primarily for consumer markets.
The new AI upgrade will be powered by the company’s existing Merch on Demand platform, which means Amazon is behind the manufacturing, fulfillment, shipping and customer service.
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Available on the app, customers can tap the Alexa icon or search for ‘customize’ to describe an idea, refine with follow-up prompts and order the merch immediately. It’s also available on the website for PC users.
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With the new tool, Amazon directly targets other on-demand print platforms like Printful, Shutterfly, Etsy and more, and democratizes access to custom merch with all the benefits of Amazon, like fast Prime shipping.
This comes shortly after the company rolled out Alexa for Shopping, which upgrades the previous Rufus assistant with newer Alexa+ capabilities for an overall slicker experience.
Smith noted that the current product range, which is mostly apparel-dominated, includes T-shirts, V-necks, long-sleeve shirts, polo shirts, quarter zips, jerseys, hoodies, sweatshirts, tank tops and raglans. Tumblers and water bottles are also available.
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And as with any new feature, US customers will be the first to benefit. Amazon did not mention any plans to expand to other geographies at this point.
The FIFA World Cup starts in just two days – and if you’re preparing to travel to the US, Canada, and Mexico for the games, you’ll want the best World Cup eSIM deals covering all three host countries.
I’m expecting plenty more providers to offer deals for international football fans flying to the US and beyond. The final whistle blows on this year’s tournament in New York on July 19, and I’ll be here throughout highlighting the all the World Cup eSIM deals I can find (well, when I’m not watching the matches anyway).
We’ve tested all the best eSIMs for international travel, and they’re a great way to stay in touch your friends, family, and other fans while traveling without worrying about unpredictable data and roaming charges, or having to switch between physical SIM cards. And if you’re not traveling to the US, Canada, or Mexico to support your team, you can check out the full fixtures list and where to stream the games with our World Cup 2026 Match Finder.
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Best World Cup 2026 eSIM deals
World Cup 2026 eSIM deals: FAQs
When does this year’s World Cup start and end?
The FIFA World Cup 2026 kicks off on June 11, with Mexico, one of the host nations, playing against South Africa at the Estadio Azteca. The final, held in New York, takes place on July 19.
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Can I purchase a World Cup eSIM deal now and activate it later when I travel?
Yes, almost all eSIM providers let you set an activation date, so you can set-up the eSIM at home, and it’ll kick in once you land at your destination.
Typically, after purchase, your provider lets you know the activation window – it varies depending on which eSIM service you’re using, though.
Are the World Cup eSIM deals available for all countries/regions?
Yes, all eSIM providers offer coverage across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, alongside global plans for frequent travelers.
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How can I check if my phone supports eSIM technology?
If you see “Digital SIM”, “eSIM”, or an EID number, your device supports eSIM
Then check if your phone is unlocked
Go to Settings>General>About>Carrier Lock
If it says “no SIM restrictions”, your iPhone is unlocked and ready for an eSIM
For Android devices, the method can vary depending on the phone and operating system, but the general steps are:
Go to Settings> Connections (or Network & Internet)
Look for SIM options
Tap SIM Manager, Mobile Network, or SIM Cards depending on your phone
Search for “eSIM”, “Add eSIM”, or “Download SIM”
If you see “Add eSIM”, “Add mobile plan”, or “Download SIM”, your device supports eSIM
Make sure your device is unlocked
In Settings>About phone>Status, look for information on carrier lock
How do I set up and activate the eSIM on my device?
Once you’ve purchased an eSIM, you’ll receive an onboarding email with clear, step-by-step instructions on how to set it up.
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If you buy your eSIM directly through the provider’s app, the activation process is even easier as you’ll be guided through everything on screen.
Typically, you’ll be asked to install the eSIM first. After installation, you can activate it in your phone’s settings. Make sure your device is connected to the internet and has enough battery before you begin. Most eSIMs can only be activated once, so it’s important to follow the steps carefully.
Activation usually takes just a few minutes. Once complete, you’ll see the new plan under your mobile services, and you can rename it if you prefer.
Early Prime Day savings are in effect on Amazon’s Eero Max 7 Mesh Wi-Fi system, matching the lowest price on record.
Prime members can take advantage of Prime deals on Amazon’s Eero Max 7 Mesh Wi-Fi system, with prices starting at $419.99. This matches the lowest price on record for Amazon’s latest model, which supports wired speeds of up to 9.4 Gbps and wireless speeds of up to 4.3 Gbps.
In our hands-on Eero Max 7 review, the mesh router earned a solid 4 stars out 5, with the MSRP being a little high in our opinion. But with today’s 30% discount, the Eero Max 7 is a worthy buy.
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You can save 30% on the single pack, 2-pack, and 3-pack, so if you have an abundance of square footage to cover, the system can support up to 7,500 square feet with the 3-pack.
Anthropic is bringing its most powerful AI model to the general public for the first time, but it’s doing it with guardrails.
On Tuesday, the AI firm launched Claude Fable 5, the first publicly available version of its Mythos model. Anthropic says Fable 5 excels at software engineering, knowledge work, and vision, but it comes with hard safety limits. In high-risk areas like cybersecurity, biology, chemistry, and distillation, the model blocks responses and falls back to Claude Opus 4.8.
Launched as a preview in April, Mythos was initially limited to a handful of partners due to cybersecurity concerns. Last week, Anthropic expanded access to hundreds of organizations across 15 countries, again focusing on organizations that manage critical infrastructure.
Now, a version of that technology is available to anyone through Anthropic’s Claude API and consumption-based Enterprise plans. Access on subscriptions will roll out in stages: through June 22, Fable 5 is be included in Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise plans at no extra cost. On June 23, Anthropic will pull Fable 5 from those plans, requiring usage credits going forward, with plans to restore it as a standard subscription feature as soon as possible.
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Anthropic is also deploying a new version of Mythos, called Mythos 5, to organizations that have already been approved to access the advanced model.
Fable’s launch comes as Anthropic prepares to enter the public markets, alongside OpenAI and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. It also follows the AI firm’s plea urging major global AI labs to establish a coordinated brake pedal on frontier AI development. Anthropic warned that systems are advancing so rapidly that they may soon achieve recursive self-improvement (RSI), autonomously improving themselves without human intervention.
Wary of what a Mythos-class model could do in the wrong hands, Anthropic says it stress-tested its classifiers with jailbreak attempts before releasing Fable 5.
“Internally, we ran an external bug bounty that produced no universal jailbreaks in over 1,000 hours of testing. We then worked with external red-teaming orgs which also failed to find universal jailbreaks.”
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That said, there could still be novel attacks remain possible. As a result, with the launch of Fable 5 and Mythos 5, Anthropic said it will require a 30-day retention on all traffic, even if enterprises previously had zero-retention agreements. Anthropic said it won’t use the data for training, only to “defend against complex and novel attacks, including new jailbreaks,” and “identify and reduce false positives.” The policy could set an industry precedent in which access to increasingly powerful models comes with mandatory data retention policies framed as a safety measure.
For those that continue to use the model, not every question will get a Fable 5 answer. Anthropic says the cases in which Fable has to defer to Opus 4.8 are rare, with early data showing at least 95% of Fable sessions running entirely on the model’s own responses.
In third-party testing, analytics company Hex said in a statement that Fable was the first to get a 90% on its core analytics benchmark of complex, long-running analytical tasks.
“On the hardest questions, it shows strong judgement and attention to nuance,” Hex said.
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Vibe-coding platform Base44 noted in a statement that Fable is better at “one-shotting full apps” and has excellent tool-calling. AI-powered workspace and agent platform Genspark said Fable beat every other model in its evaluations, and performed significantly better on tasks like UI design and game coding.
Pricing for both Fable 5 and Mythos 5 is $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens, double the price of Opus 4.8. That price alone might serve as a deterrent for widespread use.
Many enterprises are growing critical of AI costs after seeing the bills come in or blowing through their yearly AI budgets early. Advanced models like Opus 4.8 can exacerbate those issues, with advanced reasoning skills that can split a single request into multiple tasks.
Anthropic said it expects demand for Fable 5 to be very high and difficult to predict. And indeed some, like shopping rewards platform Rakuten, might think the upside is worth the price point.
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“At the highest effort, Fable reflects on and validates its own work,” Rakuten said in a statement. “For us, that’s what makes highly autonomous operations possible — the extra thinking pays for itself.”
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So last week we noted how Meta’s AI support assistant doled out access to high-profile Instagram accounts after hackers simply asked for it. Outside of using a VPN to match the account holder’s region, the hackers didn’t have to do literally anything of note to convince the Meta AI chatbot to provide access, suggesting like so many AI offerings, Meta incompetently rushed undercooked software to market.
Meta has subsequently confirmed the issues and outlined the full scope of the problem. In a data breach notice filed with Maine’s attorney general’s office late on Friday and noticed by Techcrunch, Meta notified at least 20,225 people that their accounts had been compromised, including 30 people in Maine.
“The compromises allowed the hackers to take over the person’s entire Instagram and any linked accounts, including obtaining contact information, dates of birth, and profile information, as well as the ability to access the person’s posts, direct messages, and account activity, the notice reads.”
Meta’s notice confirmed the problem began with “a vulnerability in an AI-assisted account recovery system for Instagram,” that was exploited to “perform password resets on Instagram user accounts.” Fortunately, the “trick” didn’t work if users had two-factor authentication enabled.
The company also claims it’s “unaware” of specifically what information was compromised during the three-week long hacking spree. Which is to say that, as with so many security breaches, the full scope of this could be worse than what’s been revealed.
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Meta/Facebook is, so we’re clear, a company with 70,000 employees and a $1.57 trillion market cap. That they rushed an AI support chatbot into widespread service across roughly 3 billion active Instagram accounts is just a stunning level of incompetence.
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