TL;DR
Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe says supervised point-to-point self-driving arrives this year on Gen 2 and R2 vehicles, with eyes-off driving in 2027.
Tech
The Digital Accessibility Deadline Is Here. Schools Aren’t Ready.
A big civil rights deadline that impacts schools and vendors will hit this month.
Federal law has required accessibility for people with disabilities for decades, says Glenda Sims, chief information accessibility officer at Deque Systems, a company that specializes in digital accessibility.
But two years ago, the federal government finally gave schools a way to measure whether their websites, mobile apps and digital content were accessible under law when it released a “final rule.”
In essence, the final rule updated 2024 Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, a federal law concerning equal opportunity, setting out standards for public institutions around website and mobile app accessibility. When the deadline was put in place, disability experts told EdSurge that the rules provided clarity for schools and edtech vendors, and also set a ticking clock for when they would have to make changes. The rule set varying deadlines for school districts and state and local governments — in April 2026 or April 2027, based on population size.
On April 24, the first deadline will hit. By then, institutions have to make their web content and mobile apps comply with Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, a widely recognized accessibility standard that includes accommodations such as a minimum contrast ratio and a requirement for audio descriptions.
But with the well-advertised deadline just days away, schools are well behind schedule.
Some advocates worry that digital accessibility is being swept up in broader political trends. So, what happens when the deadline hits?
Not Ready for Prime Time
Only 14 percent of districts had completed the accessibility updates required by law, according to a survey from the National School Public Relations Association released last December. The survey also found fewer than half of districts prioritized digital accessibility or had procedures for vetting vendor accessibility, which is required by the rule.
It’s not just about course content, but also the apps that a school may use, says Sambhavi Chandrashekar, global accessibility lead at D2L, a company that runs a widely used learning management system. “I doubt if a single K-12 district in the U.S. or anywhere else has an inventory today of all the web apps and forms and content that they have that are not accessible,” Chandrashekar says.
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Figuring that out requires performing an audit, which most schools likely haven’t done and which can be expensive, she adds.
At EdSurge’s request, AAAtraq, a company that sells disability-related legal compliance services, surveyed around 20 of the largest schools across a number of states — in California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New York, Texas and Washington state. Many school websites and online PDFs failed along “basic accessibility fundamentals,” based on a benchmark the company uses to assess legal exposure. Alt text was missing, there was not enough color contrast and many websites didn’t have an accessibility statement, the company reports. The company found that 88 percent received an “F,” the lowest possible grade.
The company uses AI in its assessments, which do not cover all of the WCAG technical guidelines, and its assessment was meant only as rough barometer. In some cases, the use of AI in accessibility is controversial.
“Title II should have been a wake up call,” said AAAtraq CEO Lawrence Shaw in an emailed comment, referring to the major disability law behind the “final rule.” Yet many schools, including some of the largest in the country, have left themselves open to legal action.
Digital Exhaustion
Schools’ relationship to technology has also changed since two years ago, from rushing to embrace it to trying to limit it.
These days, beset by digital exhaustion and regret over the reach of tech into children’s lives, schools have sought to restrict screens in schools.
But it’s important for schools and lawmakers to distinguish between meaningful tech and doomscrolling on social media, says Luis Pérez, senior director of disability and accessibility for CAST, a digital access advocacy group. Students are under more pressure to manage their own attention, Pérez says, but those with disabilities and multilingual learners rely on certain digital tools, such as text-to-speech and adjustable text sizing to navigate daily learning. When used correctly, digital tools that expand accessibility can foster a sense of belonging, especially for underrepresented groups.
He worries that screen time laws that lump all screens together could make digital accessibility harder.
K-12 schools may be having the toughest time. Universities are usually more prepared for digital accessibility than state or local governments, which run K-12 public schools, says Sims of Deque. That’s partly because students with disabilities represent a more identifiable group in universities and that allows them to advocate for accommodation, she says.
These schools are heavily reliant on vendors for accessibility, Sims says.
It doesn’t help that there’s uncertainty at the moment.
Old Rules, New Rulers
While the accessibility deadline is still in place, the intentions of the federal government have become murky.
Last year, the Department of Justice signaled that it might issue a new “interim final rule” that would impact the deadline. And recently, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs — a federal agency that is usually not involved with accessibility — has been holding meetings on the rule, as “credible rumors” have circulated that the rule is in danger of getting delayed or scrapped.
Yet, the federal government has not publicly released information about its intentions, according to Jarret Cummings, senior adviser for policy and public relations at Educause.
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs did not immediately respond to a question from EdSurge about whether a delay is expected.
However, some documents related to the meetings are publicly accessible, giving a glimpse into what they are hearing.
A group representing more than 800 Minnesota cities argued in written testimony that none of the Minnesota cities that would be impacted by the rule are fully compliant with the law. The letter states that the cost of compliance would squeeze small government budgets. In a similar argument, testimony from the National Association of Counties estimated that it would cost small counties about $32,000 to fix problems with accessibility on their sites, and large counties as much as $700,000.
Cummings’ organization, Educause, has also argued that two years was not enough time for most higher-ed institutions to make changes. It suggested that the government alter the timeline.
In contrast, Mark Riccobono, president of the National Federation of the Blind, testified that the rulemaking process has been ongoing for decades, with ample time for comment. The bill represents a compromise that clarifies rules, while reducing the burden of those under the law by providing exceptions and generous timelines, Riccobono argued.
Politically, the national mood has changed since the rule was issued a couple of years ago.
The affiliation of accessibility with diversity, equity and inclusion has politically backfired under the Trump administration. The administration has shredded grants it has identified with “radical” DEI ideology, and mass firings have gutted agencies like the Education Department, which the administration is actively trying to dismantle.
For students with disabilities, it means that there’s no guarantee of federal support, even when a federal complaint is filed.
“I would say that so many of the places that were reasonably staffed… have been reduced to almost bare bones, nothing. And so even if there are complaints coming in, there’s no way to truly handle them,” says Sims, of Deque.
Indeed, mass firings have led to 90 percent of all student civil rights complaints, including from students with disabilities, being dismissed by the federal government in the second half of last year, according to a nonpartisan government watchdog report published in January.
In the absence of federal help, people with disabilities have turned to the courts. There were more than 3,000 accessibility lawsuits filed in federal court last year, according to legal analysis of court data.
Long-term Goals
Pérez of CAST maintains that advocates should keep on track, focusing on long-term strategy, no matter what happens at the federal level. Accessibility benefits everyone, regardless of their background or disability status, he says.
Sims, of Deque, has also made a “business case” for considering accessibility during the design of products, suggesting that as schools embrace accessibility, the vendors that can show they build accessibility into their products will be rewarded.
Some hope that artificial intelligence tools will help students with disabilities access information on their own, and point toward tools like Aira, an AI tool that aids in remote video interpretation for people with visual impairment.
But even there, disability law experts insist that the federal rule hasn’t actually changed. “The rule is the rule until it isn’t,” wrote Lainey Feingold in early March.
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Tech
Ultra Compact M5StickC Plus Delivers a Fake Windows XP Boot on Hardware You Can Hold in One Hand
Small enough to disappear into a pocket or clip onto a keychain, the M5StickC Plus from M5Stack feels more like a finished gadget than a bare development board. Its bright orange plastic shell measures just 48 by 24 by 13.5 millimeters and weighs under 17 grams with the internal battery installed. A 1.14-inch color TFT screen sits on the front, surrounded by two programmable buttons and an M5 logo on the side. Flip it over and the back carries clear pin labels plus a Grove expansion port that accepts a wide range of cheap add-on modules.
A 120mah lithium battery powers the device, and it can be charged using the USB-C connector. Real-world battery life varies based on screen brightness and wireless usage, but most users can get a few hours out of it before needing to charge it again. The device wakes up like a flash, literally, only a couple of seconds after you press the reset button, and shuts down just as rapidly once you hold it down for six seconds, so unintentional shutdowns are uncommon.
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At the heart of things is an ESP32-PICO-D4 CPU, which can run at up to 240mhz and includes WiFi and Bluetooth. You have 4MB of flash memory and half a megabyte of RAM to deal with, so whether you’re scripting basic tasks or working on anything more ambitious, you’ll have enough of power to get the job done. There are also lots of extras built in, including a six-axis motion sensor, a microphone, a real-time clock, a red LED, an infrared transmitter, and a passive buzzer that can produce brief little songs.
One of the cool things about this board is that the programming won’t be too difficult for newbies to the game, as you can simply drag and drop blocks around with the free UiFlow tools, which is a quick way to start. More experienced developers can use the Arduino IDE, PlatformIO, or Espressif’s native ESP-IDF environment to create regular C or MicroPython code as usual. The upload happens via the same USB-C cable used to charge the battery, and no extra drivers are required; simply install the normal FTDI virtual COM port package.
We can’t forget about the self-contained sketch that takes the small screen through the entire Windows XP launch routine. The iconic startup logo appears first, followed by a short loading animation and the famous startup tones played by the buzzer. Then the desktop appears, replete with a start bar and a My computer icon, and pressing a button causes a blue screen error, after which the device “reboots” back to the desktop and plays the iconic Windows XP sound. All of the graphics and animations were reduced to small little data arrays that fit into the board’s limited memory, and the little color screen is realistic enough to make you double take.
This is still a visual and aural display, rather than a comprehensive operating system, because the ESP32 just cycles through a collection of recorded images and tones in response to button presses or timers. What’s truly telling is how much attention to detail the inventor has put in; it demonstrates what you can cram into even the most basic of hardware when you set your mind to it. While it’s nice to see nostalgia demos like this, the M5Stack is capable of much more. Some people use it as a portable network tester, scanning WiFi networks and pretending to be another device. Others will connect it to a watch strap and write some code to create a custom wearable that displays information such as step counts or heart rate from add-on sensors.
The reason it’s so simple to add to is that the Grove connectors in the entire M5Stack world follow the same standard, so all you need is a single wire to connect the stick to a module that provides more display power, motors, a camera, or a radio transmitter. The best aspect is that no soldering is required, so prototypes may be assembled in minutes rather than hours. You can get one for roughly $30, or a little less if you’re purchasing on a larger marketplace.
Evolving Rodents: An upcoming crowdfunding campaign aims to introduce a novel approach to mouse interaction. The Rotary Mouse replaces the traditional scroll wheel with a rotating mechanism, which, according to its developers, is designed to feel as natural as possible.
The Rotary Mouse from Airra Labs will debut on Kickstarter at a significant discount and with free shipping to early backers. The company says there is real demand for the product, despite its unconventional design.
The campaign is scheduled to open on June 17. The device replaces the traditional vertical scroll wheel with a built-in rotary mechanism, which it claims delivers up to 2.5x faster scrolling compared to a standard mouse. The company also says the system is smoother and more natural than conventional scrolling wheels.
While the rotary design may appear unfamiliar, it is intended to improve scrolling performance and ergonomics. The wheel includes tactile feedback and supports both traditional vertical scrolling and a counterclockwise rotation mode. Additional features include a range-of-motion function designed to reduce finger strain.
Airra Labs argues that the mouse wheel has remained largely unchanged for the past 30 years. Users still flick small wheels to browse web pages, documents, spreadsheets, source code, and more. In recent years, some mice have adopted “infinite scroll” modes, but the company describes them as slow, repetitive, and difficult to control.
Indeed, using the wheel on my Logitech G502 Hero felt weird and cumbersome at first, but I have since adapted my scrolling habits and I don’t plan on changing anytime soon.
The Rotary Mouse is intended to reduce scrolling strain and make content navigation significantly faster. Airra claims the rotary wheel can outperform infinite scrolling by offering more precise control across different use cases, including video editing, software development, spreadsheets, document work, and long-form web browsing. The wheel can also function as a miniature steering control for driving simulators.
The project appears to be ready for production, but Airra is turning to crowdfunding to cover costs such as injection molding, certification, packaging, and warranty support. The company says mass production is expensive and requires additional operational expertise.
The Rotary Mouse is expected to be priced between $49 and $109. However, early crowdfunding backers will receive a discount of up to 65% off the final retail price. The wireless mouse supports a DPI range of 800 to 1600, suggesting it may have limited appeal among competitive gamers.
A Chinese Zhuque-2E rocket’s upper stage broke apart shortly after last week’s June 9 launch, likely creating 100 to 150 pieces of debris in a busy region of low-Earth orbit crossed by the ISS and lower-altitude Starlink satellites. Most fragments should reenter within months because of atmospheric drag, but experts say the incident adds to a worsening trend as China leaves more large rocket bodies in orbit while expanding its launch rate. Ars Technica reports: The US Space Force confirmed the breakup event in a post on space-track.org, a website used by the military to distribute orbit data to the public. “The tracked pieces are being incorporated into routine conjunction assessment to support spaceflight safety,” the Space Force wrote in an advisory. “There are currently no threats to human spaceflight. Analysis is ongoing.” So far, the Space Force has not added any of the debris fragments to the official catalog of human-made space objects.
[…] The bad news is that the Zhuque-2E’s breakup is the latest chapter in China’s growing contribution to the space junk problem. After decades of leaving spent rocket bodies in orbit, launch operators in most countries now reserve enough fuel to steer their upper stages back to Earth for controlled reentries. Rocket bodies attributed to Russia and the former Soviet Union account for the bulk of the launch-related debris in long-lived orbits, followed by China and the United States. But the Russian and American numbers are declining or holding steady, while the mass of Chinese rocket bodies in these long-lived orbits has grown by more than 150 percent in the past five years, according to a new analysis by Space Domain Awareness expert Jim Shell. The increase comes as China ramps up launches of its own megaconstellations designed to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink.
Rocket bodies are the most concerning sources of space debris because they are typically fairly large in size and mass, often with residual propellant and high-pressure gases that can trigger an explosion. There is no way to maneuver or dispose of them if left abandoned in orbit after releasing their payloads. McKnight characterized the recent breakup of the Zhuque-2E rocket as a “slight space safety issue,” but the trend is not good. China’s Long March 6A rocket has an especially bad track record, including two explosions that littered a higher-altitude low-Earth orbit with more than 1,000 debris fragments, where they will remain for decades or centuries. “Three of the top four breakup events in LEO are of Chinese origin, with two of these events being from Chinese (rocket body) explosions in the last four years,” McKnight said.
Something to look forward to: Competition in the APU market could intensify when Intel and Nvidia reveal the fruits of their announced collaboration against AMD. While no official timeline has been confirmed, reports suggest users could get a first look at Intel-Nvidia chips within the next 18 months.
Tech journalist Erdi Özüağ reports that Intel’s current roadmap targets the first quarter of 2028 for its initial x86 processors with Nvidia RTX graphics, with a possible reveal at CES. The long-anticipated chips are expected to challenge AMD’s high-end mobile APUs and bolster both companies’ broader platform ambitions.
Intel’s plans are likely still in flux this far out, but its current roadmap puts the chips in early 2028 barring delays. Intel and Nvidia officially confirmed they were developing these chips in September 2025, though specific details have been scarce since.
– Erdi Özüağ (@fx57) June 15, 2026
What is known is that the x86 SoCs will combine Intel CPU cores with Nvidia RTX GPU chiplets – likely using a high-bandwidth interconnect – across a range of devices. Reports suggest Serpent Lake will pair Intel’s Titan Lake CPU cores with a GPU based on Nvidia’s next-generation Rubin architecture.
The chip is rumored to be fabricated on TSMC’s N3P process node and is expected to support LPDDR6 memory, providing the bandwidth necessary for both high-end gaming and AI workloads. Its primary target appears to be AMD’s Strix Halo APUs in the high-end laptop segment.
Intel and Nvidia’s partnership could also shake up the mobile gaming market. AMD’s Hawk Point, Strix Point, and Strix Halo chips have powered the category in devices like the Steam Deck, Asus ROG Xbox Ally, and Lenovo Legion Go. More recently, however, MSI’s Claw 8 EX AI+ marked the debut of Intel’s Arc G3 Extreme – a Panther Lake design built on the 18A process node – giving Intel a foothold in the handheld gaming space. The chip also supports Intel’s XeSS upscaling technology.
Özüağ also reports that Apple’s negotiations with Intel over the use of its 18A foundry node are progressing, with the Cupertino company looking to reduce its dependence on TSMC and respond to political pressure to expand domestic manufacturing.
Initial shipments are not expected before the second or third quarter of 2027, and all plans remain subject to Intel’s ability to improve yield, performance, and cost competitiveness on its 18A process.
In 2017, Respond.io set out to solve a simple problem: businesses couldn’t keep up with customers who had moved to messaging apps. Today Respond, with its customer conversation management software, has become one of the tech success stories of Malaysia.
The startup, headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, has raised a $62.5 million Series B round led by Camber Partners, with participation from Endeavor Catalyst and existing investors. It last raised a $7 million Series A in 2022. The company has grown to $35 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), growing 169% year-over-year, at a 30% profit margin, it tells TechCrunch.
Co-founder and CEO Gerardo Salandra, who worked at IBM and Google before joining Runtastic, a fitness tracking app that was sold to Adidas in 2015, founded Respond in Hong Kong in 2017 alongside Hassan Ahmed (CTO) and laroslav Kudritskiy (COO). The team relocated the business to Malaysia two years later.
The platform helps mid- to large-sized B2C businesses drive revenue from customer conversations across multiple messaging channels including WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Messenger, Line, Telegram, WeChat, voice calls and web chat. It also uses AI agents to automatically handle high volumes of customer inquiries, qualify leads and close sales without human intervention.
Salandra described its core customers as “high-consideration” businesses, where customers need to talk to someone before buying, such as healthcare, automotive, retail, education and travel. “You don’t go to a website, put your credit card, and buy a car; you chat with someone, you ask a lot of questions,” he said. Its sweet spot is companies with 200 to 10,000 employees.
The rise of AI has raised an obvious question for platforms like Respond: Can tools like ChatGPT simply replace what they’ve built?
Salandra thinks his foothold is strong enough to stop such encroachment, should it come. The company is currently processing 2 billion messages per quarter.
“If I just look at the numbers, every day that AI becomes more prominent, we grow faster,” he told TechCrunch. “We are not seeing what the public SaaS markets are seeing.”
Part of that comes down to pricing, he said. Unlike enterprise software competitors that charge per seat, Respond charges based on the volume of customer conversations, meaning it doesn’t matter whether a human or an AI is answering. “When fewer humans use your product, they make less money,” he said. “But we don’t charge like that.”
The incumbent platforms, particularly those dominant in North America and Europe, were built around email and phone calls. “The platforms that exist, they bolted on messaging as a second thought. They’re very email focused, they’re very call focused, but when it comes to messaging, it’s an afterthought,” Salandra said.
That volume of message data creates a feedback loop, according to the CEO. More messages mean better AI. Better AI attracts more customers. More customers generate more messages. “This is what we call the data flywheel,” Salandra said. He added that the head start matters for any upstart AI company, as well. “Because we started so long ago and we have such a strong foundation, we can provide better AI compared to someone who just entered into the messaging space.”
With the new capital, Salandra said the company plans to pursue hiring, organic growth and acquisitions. The CEO has two types of buying targets in mind: bolt-on technology that fits into its existing ecosystem, and established teams with strong customer bases in strategic markets like Europe and North America. “Imagine how many months I can save if I find the right company that maybe already has the clients and the team,” he said. “I can save myself six months to a year through an acquisition.” He confirmed the company is already in talks with a couple of potential targets.
The geographic push makes strategic sense. Respond currently generates roughly 30% of its revenue from APAC, 30% from Latin America, and 20% from the Middle East and Africa, leaving North America and Western Europe at just 20%. But Salandra says those regions are now its fastest-growing. “They took longer to make the change, but now they’re moving very rapidly into messaging channels,” he said, adding that he expects both regions to become the company’s largest segment within two to three years.
Despite the fresh injection of capital, Salandra is cautious about what comes next. “We don’t want to be a growth at all costs company,” he said. “Even with this money, we’re going to be very disciplined.” But Salandra has bigger plans in mind. “My favorite outcome?” he said. “Ringing the bell at Nasdaq.”
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Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.
Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.
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Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword
Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.
The completed NYT Mini Crossword puzzle for June 16, 2026.
Mini across clues and answers
1A clue: Worker who sticks a thick mix on bricks
Answer: MASON
6A clue: Volvos or VWs
Answer: AUTOS
7A clue: “Wow, that’s wild!”
Answer: CRAZY
8A clue: Peaceful place
Answer: HAVEN
9A clue: Key above ~ on a Mac
Answer: ESC
Mini down clues and answers
1D clue: ___ 1 (speed of sound)
Answer: MACH
2D clue: Emanating glow
Answer: AURA
3D clue: Fend (off)
Answer: STAVE
4D clue: Seeps slowly
Answer: OOZES
5D clue: Boy band with the 2000 hit “It’s Gonna Be Me”
Answer: NSYNC
offbeat
Worried that an unexpected strike could take out critical orbital systems, Pentagon researchers want to know how fast the industry thinks it could launch replacements
War may never change, but its domains evolve, and DARPA is looking for ideas to ensure space infrastructure destroyed in future orbital skirmishes can be rapidly replaced.
DARPA, on Friday, put out a request for information for an initiative to develop what it’s calling Rapid Reconstitution of Space Capabilities.
“Other nations seek to position themselves as leading space powers while undermining the stability and tranquility that allows space to benefit all nations,” DARPA said, suggesting that the US would never dare deploy space weapons that could destabilize the tranquility of Earth orbit.
“Space is an increasingly contested environment, presenting a multitude of threats to U.S. space assets,” DARPA added. “Therefore, there is a strategic need to be able to quickly respond to disrupted assets and reconstitute degraded space capabilities.”
While we don’t know if the US has any weapons in space – we asked but didn’t get a response – other countries certainly are striking an aggressive posture.
Both Russia and China have reportedly blown up their own defunct satellites in recent years to demonstrate their space warfare capability, and the US Space Force has noticed what appears to be China experimenting with orbital satellite dogfighting maneuvers. The US has also accused Russia of developing anti-satellite weaponry that may or may not involve orbital nukes, leading the US to update its fleet of satellites designed to keep an eye out for potential nuclear launches.
“U.S. competitors are implementing a sustained effort to develop a broad range of offensive counterspace capabilities through a variety of anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons, including direct attacks on satellites, jamming and spoofing of signals, and continued cyberattacks on satellite and ground infrastructure,” DARPA noted in Friday’s announcement.
Pointing to the 2023 Space Force tactically responsive space exercise Victus Nox, which saw the USSF launch a space vehicle into orbit just 27 hours after getting the word, DARPA said it wants more of the same, but hopefully faster.
“DARPA Strategic Technology Office seeks information supporting technical solutions and operational concepts and strategies to enable rapid, responsive, cost-effective reconstitution of any lost or degraded space capabilities resulting from attacks,” DARPA explained, adding that it’s not looking for anything more than ideas at this point, but is willing to entertain anyone in the US with a good idea, be they laboratory or private outfit.
According to the announcement, DARPA wants ideas that would get degraded operations restored in “hours to weeks,” and offer the same turnaround time for cases of surging demand as well as asset loss.
“Possible solutions could be realized with reconfigurable, software-defined, multifunctional, and multi-mission payloads, as well as proliferated/mesh architectures and rapid on-orbit deployment concepts,” the Pentagon research arm said.
“Rapid space capability reconstitution is a complex task,” DARPA added, so don’t expect this research to move anywhere near the speed of DARPA’s eventual rapid reconstitution rockets.
Then again, America just minted the world’s first trillionaire, and he’s a space guy – maybe ask him how to launch rockets quickly? Surely his ideas would be grounded in good sense, right?
alternative_right shares a report from The Hill: The FBI released an urgent security warning to the public about a fast-acting scam targeting Microsoft 365 users on Teams, Outlook and OneDrive. The agency warned that the hacking platform Kali365 seeks out OAuth device codes, allowing scammers to sneak past multi-factor authentication codes, and without the need for a password, to access Microsoft accounts. Scammers will send a phishing email impersonating a trusted document-sharing service with a device code and instructions on how to verify, according to the FBI.
“Kali365 lowers the barrier of entry, providing less-technical attackers access to AI-generated phishing lures, automated campaign templates, real-time targeted individual/entity tracking dashboards, and OAuth token capture capabilities,” the FBI stated. The platform is sold to scammers with a $250 per month subscription. The FBI, which first detected Kali365 in April, described the hacking platform as an “emerging Phishing-as-a-Service platform.” Hackers with limited skills can access advanced phishing tools through the platform, according to NordPass.
Tech
Rivian CEO says supervised point-to-point self-driving will arrive this year, and he’s comparing it directly to Tesla’s FSD
Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said the company will ship supervised point-to-point self-driving on all of its second-generation vehicles and the R2 later this year, describing the capability as “very similar to Tesla’s FSD.” Speaking at the Masters of Scale event in Anaheim on Thursday, Scaringe laid out a three-stage autonomy roadmap: supervised point-to-point driving in 2026, eyes-off unsupervised driving in 2027, and a commercial robotaxi service with Uber beginning in 2028.
The announcement represents a significant jump from Rivian’s current driver-assistance system. Universal Hands-Free, which rolled out in late 2025, handles steering and speed on roughly 3.5 million miles of marked roads in the US and Canada. It does not navigate turns, traffic lights, roundabouts, or parking lots.
Point-to-point driving would extend the system’s capabilities to handle complete journeys from origin to destination, similar to what Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Supervised already attempts. The leap from highway lane-keeping to full urban navigation is the hardest problem in autonomous driving, and no company has solved it without significant constraints.
“Later this year, we’ll have full supervised point-to-point, which will be very similar to Tesla’s FSD,” Scaringe said. “And that’ll roll out to all of our Gen 2 vehicles and, of course, R2.” He did not specify a month or quarter for the rollout, and Rivian has not publicly demonstrated the point-to-point system in an uncontrolled environment.
The comparison to Tesla is deliberate but architecturally inexact. Tesla’s FSD relies exclusively on cameras, while Rivian’s platform integrates 10 external cameras, five radar units, 12 ultrasonic sensors, and a high-precision GPS receiver. Rivian began delivering R2 SUVs earlier this month, and future R2 models will add a roof-mounted LiDAR sensor and the company’s custom RAP1 processor, a 5nm chip delivering up to 1,600 trillion operations per second.
The pricing undercut is sharper than the technology comparison. Rivian’s Autonomy+ package costs $2,500 as a one-time purchase or $49.99 per month, compared with Tesla’s FSD at $8,000 or $99 per month. Whether the lower price reflects a competitive strategy or a difference in capability remains to be seen, given that Rivian’s point-to-point system does not yet exist as a shipping product.
Rivian’s autonomy software is built around what the company calls a Large Driving Model, a foundational AI system trained end-to-end through reinforcement learning. The LDM maps raw sensor input directly to vehicle trajectory, analysing multiple driving paths and selecting the optimal one using a technique called Group-Relative Policy Optimization. The approach mirrors the end-to-end neural network philosophy Tesla adopted with FSD v12, though Rivian’s multi-sensor hardware gives the model a wider range of input data to work with.
The 2027 eyes-off milestone is where the roadmap becomes commercially consequential. Supervised driving, regardless of how capable, still requires a human to watch the road. Tesla has been promising unsupervised FSD for years and has pushed the timeline repeatedly, most recently to Q4 2026 at the earliest. Scaringe has said Rivian targets Level 3 autonomy by 2028 and Level 4 by 2030, timelines that no autonomous driving company has consistently met.
The commercial centrepiece of the roadmap is the $1.25 billion deal with Uber announced in March. Uber committed an initial $300 million investment, with the remainder contingent on Rivian hitting autonomous performance milestones through 2031. The deal calls for Uber or its fleet partners to purchase 10,000 fully autonomous R2 robotaxis, with an option for up to 40,000 more beginning in 2030. Commercial deployment is planned for San Francisco and Miami in 2028, expanding to 25 cities by 2031.
Those targets depend on Rivian achieving something it has not yet demonstrated: a vehicle that can drive itself without human supervision. The company’s Gen 3 autonomy platform, which will power the robotaxi programme, is still undergoing validation. The initial R2 production run launched without the Gen 3 hardware, meaning the robotaxi-grade vehicles are at least one hardware generation away from production.
Scaringe framed the self-driving push as essential to Rivian’s long-term economics. The company posted a net loss of $3.63 billion in 2025 despite achieving its first full-year positive gross profit at $144 million. Autonomy, if it works, transforms the revenue model from selling cars to operating a transportation platform. But the gap between announcing a roadmap at a conference and shipping a reliable autonomous system is where most self-driving timelines have historically broken down.
In case Microsoft Flight Simulator is a little too realistic for your tastes, there’s a new way you can take to the virtual skies. Google Earth has a flight sim mode of its own, and it can now be accessed by anyone globally via their browser. Android Police spotted a social media post from the Google property announcing this update.
Prepare for takeoff. ✈️ Flight simulator is now available globally on web to all users. https://t.co/jV5ZW7BZeW
We’ve recently added many our most powerful professional desktop features to web. Elevation profiles, new import types, but there’s always been one other feature… pic.twitter.com/s11NDaCx60
— Google Earth (@googleearth) June 12, 2026
Google Earth seems to be the area where the massive company remembers that tech can be cool and downright fun. In 2024, it added an option for seeing historical recreations of select times and places. This is the sort of clever curio we love, and Google delivered even more the following year.
Once you have Google Earth open, go to Explore Earth, then the Tools menu to find the Flight Simulator mode. There’s an FAQ for you newbie virtual pilots to help you get acclimated to the Google Earth simulation. Just bear in mind two caveats. For one, this is an experimental feature, so you might have some wonky moments with the flight simulator. And second, Google wants to be very clear that this isn’t enough to put you in the cockpit of an actual 747: “The flight simulator is designed for casual exploration rather than high-fidelity aerodynamic training,” it notes. Happy travels!
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