Nvidia competitor Etched announced this week that TSMC had manufactured its first chip earlier this year. While the four-year-old startup valued at $5 billion is getting ready to ship systems powered by that chip to customers later this summer, scaling production may prove challenging. Like other chip designers, Etched must compete for limited capacity at TSMC’s Taiwan factories.

Copper Sky Capital, one of Etched’s early investors, is hopeful that the chipmaker will find a solution to its manufacturing constraints by eventually producing chips at Arizona’s TSMC facility. When the four-year-old VC firm invested in Etched’s $120 million Series A two years ago, founder Jack Selby secured an allocation in part by promising to help the startup eventually reshore its chip fabrication to Arizona.

Selby, a former PayPal exec and longtime managing director to Peter Thiel’s family office, Thiel Capital, founded Phoenix-based Copper Sky in 2021 (formerly known as AZ-VC). The firm’s first $115 million fund focused primarily on startups based in Arizona and the Southwest. Selby’s thesis was that most coastal startups, particularly those based in California, Massachusetts, and New York, are grossly overpriced compared to companies popping up in his region. However, Selby saw an opportunity to bridge the gap in the other direction by helping California-based hardware startups move their production to Arizona.

Selby credits Copper Sky’s investment in Etched — an otherwise hard-to-access startup — to his influential role in Arizona’s economy. As a board member of the Arizona Commerce Authority, Selby is deeply involved in recruiting out-of-state businesses to set up manufacturing operations in the region.

“When Copper Sky invested with Etched, the company clearly understood our connectivity to the Arizona semiconductor industry, and in particular the local TSMC GIGAFAB,” Selby told TechCrunch.

While Copper Sky has recently expanded its focus beyond the Southwest to include nontraditional venture hubs nationwide, Selby said that the firm is also interested in backing hardware companies, including in the defense sector, that can set up manufacturing operations in Arizona. 

The firm is expected to soon have more capital to invest in those higher-priced coastal companies, and those throughout the United States. Copper Sky is currently raising a $300 million second fund, according to a regulatory filing.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is a real challenge. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Supportive emotions.

Green group hint: Totally tubular would be another one.

Blue group hint: Gifts no one wants.

Purple group hint: Earl Grey, hot.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Positive feelings.

Green group: Retro expressions of approval.

Blue group: Bad things to give someone.

Purple group: What things pronounced “T” might refer to.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is positive feelings. The four answers are bliss, felicity, happiness and warm fuzzies.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is retro expressions of approval. The four answers are cool beans, far out, groovy and right on.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is bad things to give someone. The four answers are cold shoulder, dirty look, hard time and runaround.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is what things pronounced “T” might refer to. The four answers are golf accessory, gossip, hot drink and shirt.

Toughest Connections puzzles

We’ve made a note of some of the toughest Connections puzzles so far. Maybe they’ll help you see patterns in future puzzles.

#5: Included “things you can set,” such as mood, record, table and volleyball.

#4: Included “one in a dozen,” such as egg, juror, month and rose.

#3: Included “streets on screen,” such as Elm, Fear, Jump and Sesame.

#2: Included “power ___” such as nap, plant, Ranger and trip.

#1: Included “things that can run,” such as candidate, faucet, mascara and nose.

Jon Prosser has formally responded to Apple’s lawsuit over alleged iOS leaks, claiming that he is entirely innocent and that colleague Michael Ramacciotti is solely responsible for any alleged trade secret theft.

Apple’s now year-long case against Prosser had initially seen the YouTuber repeatedly ignoring court deadlines. He began responding in April 2026, and his lawyers have now formally filed his rebuttal to Apple’s accusations that he and Ramacciotti conspired to steal trade secrets from Apple employee Ethan Lipnik.

“Ramacciotti’s is [sic] responsible for all harm caused to Prosser and should indemnify him for all harm caused,” says the filing. “Ramacciotti’s act of displaying the features was not induced by Prosser and, as such, Ramacciotti is completely responsible for the disclosure of Apple’s alleged trade secrets, if any.”

Prosser specifically denies offering money in return for the information Ramacciotti showed him. He also denies knowing how his co-defendant got his information, or conspiring ahead of time to gather it.

Ramacciotti unlocked Lipnik’s iPhone, which had an early release of what was then called iOS 19, and shared confidential details. Prosser claims no knowledge of whose iPhone it was, and denies knowing that Ramacciotti was in the Apple employee’s apartment.

Prosser does admit to sharing with Ramacciotti a portion of the revenue his YouTube video brought in, and said this was to secure exclusivity. “Once Prosser learned how Ramacciotti acquired the proprietary information, he disconnected communication with Ramacciotti,” says the filing.

At one point the filing says that Prosser “has not [sic] knowledge if iOS 19 was in fact ‘unreleased’.” But later it says “Prosser admits that the information was unreleased software.”

That contradictory claim appears to mean that it was during the demonstration of iOS 19 that Prosser did not know it was iOS 19 that he was being shown.

Prosser’s filing, as first spotted by MacRumors, requests trial by jury.

Apple has not responded publicly to the filing.

Separately, Michael Ramacciotti has been cooperating with the courts since at least October 2025, and provided Apple with his emails, computers, and archives. Ramacciotti’s lawyers have claimed that he did not appreciate the value and nature of what he showed Prosser.

Owning a US electric vehicle dealership has been a wild ride in the 2020s.

Since Polestar Short Hills opened in northern New Jersey in 2021, it went through a Covid-era demand spike and EV shortage that left some used electrics with higher valuations than new ones; a new federal tax credit of up to $7,500 that brought a new wave of drivers in the door; lower sales volumes after the rollback of that federal tax credit, and the snipping of a state one; and then another wave of buying when EV-curious drivers began running from Elon Musk’s Tesla because of the CEO’s involvement with the Trump administration.

Now, Matthew Haiken, who owns that Polestar dealership along with three other (non-Polestar) dealerships in the Prestige Collection Auto Group, faces another and more serious challenge. Polestar said in late June that the US Commerce Department had denied an authorization that would have allowed the brand to continue selling cars in the US despite a federal rule restricting the sale of vehicles with Chinese-made connected-vehicle technology. The company, which is majority-owned by China’s Geely Holding and its founder Li Shufu, says it will stop selling Polestar vehicles in the US beginning with the 2027 model year.

“It’s so unfortunate,” Haiken says. “It’s hard for my customers who have been reaching out; it’s hard for my staff.” He says he and the owners of the US’s other 31 Polestar dealerships have invested “many millions” in selling the cars and called the authorization decision “a shock to me and all the dealers.”

Volvo, which is also majority-owned by Geely, received authorization from the Commerce Department in March, allowing it to continue selling its vehicles in the US, despite its Chinese connections. Volvo said at the time that it held “constructive discussions” with the department about the automaker’s “governance, technology and data security.” (When asked about the discrepancy, a Polestar spokesperson said that the company “cannot comment on how legislation applies to other manufacturers.”)

“I am very frustrated in Polestar, globally,” Haiken says. “I think they really dropped the ball, and I blame them. I don’t blame the government.”

The Commerce Department under the Biden Administration officially approved the connected-vehicle rule in January 2025, after government officials argued that a ban on Chinese- and Russian-made automotive hardware and software was necessary for national security reasons. The federal government said that internet-connected automotive cameras, microphones, and GPS equipment threatened US safety. “It doesn’t take much imagination to understand how a foreign adversary with access to this information could pose a serious risk to both our national security and the privacy of US citizens,” Commerce secretary Gina Raimondo said at the time.

The US Commerce Department did not respond to WIRED’s questions.

Polestar said in a statement last week that US dealerships would sell “existing stock” of the Polestar 3 and Polestar 4, and that a US service network would “continue to support customers.” It framed the move as “increasing its strategic focus on Europe,” and said that 94 percent of Polestar’s first quarter 2026 sales took place outside of the US.

Haiken calls that statistic misleading because the brand’s newest offering, the Polestar 4 coupe, went on sale in Europe in January 2024 but wasn’t available in the US until December 2025.

Some Polestar dealerships handle service issues through Volvo centers, but Haiken said his stand-alone Polestar service center will continue fixing and servicing the EVs. “We have the volume to justify it,” he says. “We have to be around to perform that work.” Not all dealerships might make the same decision, he said, though vehicles will likely be sent to the closest service center for tune-ups and fixes.

ON-PREM

Report says proposed rewrite gives operators more freedom to shop around for a greener grade

The European Union’s proposed environmental rating system for datacenters may be amended in response to lobbying from IT industry heavyweights, making it easier to offset greenhouse gas emissions using clean energy certificates.

According to the Financial Times, the European Commission is weakening its original proposals after pressure from datacenter operators and tech giants. The newspaper claims to have seen the revised draft of the regulations, set to be discussed by representatives of member states on Thursday.

We asked the Commission for comment on the leaked draft.

The Commission published a draft regulation in March proposing an A-to-G rating scale for datacenters, based on their energy and water efficiency. The system is intended to incentivize greater sustainability in their operations, especially as bit barn capacity is expected to expand greatly over the next decade, thanks to huge demand for AI and cloud services.

That earlier draft specified that facilities could offset greenhouse gas emissions by investing in clean energy certificates, but only if the projects concerned were in the same region as the data campus itself.

It is understood that this has been amended so that facilities operating in one country can offset their emissions by obtaining certificates from renewable projects in a different EU state. The proposed change was made at the behest of companies and lobby groups that argued it would increase their operating costs.

The EU’s efforts to press datacenters and other large energy users into adopting greater efficiency and sustainability measures have met with varying degrees of pushback.

Last year, the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact (CNDCP) expressed concerns about standards for data campus efficiency the European Commission was considering, based on feedback from mandatory reporting introduced in the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED).

The group lists tech giants AWS, Microsoft, and Google among its signatories, as well as datacenter operators like Digital Realty, NorthC, and Vantage Data Centers.

Also last year, the Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) trade body was critical of the EU’s Water Resilience Strategy, warning that burdensome regulatory demands regarding water use might prompt operators to build outside Europe.

Another body, the European Data Centre Association (EUDCA), issued a statement this week affirming its “unwavering commitment” to climate-neutral datacenters and sustainable digital growth.

But it warned that Europe will not be able to “unlock the digital infrastructure capacity required for its AI and digital ambitions” without addressing structural challenges in the electricity system, including expansion of transmission and distribution grids, faster and more transparent permitting processes, and stable access to low-carbon electricity.

Meanwhile, Europe needs a policy framework that integrates water and energy efficiency if it wants to keep growing datacenter capacity to support its AI and cloud computing ambitions, according to a recent report.

The proposed environmental rating system is still listed as due for adoption in the third quarter of this year, but debate over the changes may push that back further. ®

It can start with something as mundane as dragging a link into your browser. Three seconds later, a threat actor has the tokens needed to take over your Microsoft 365 account, and you never did anything that traditional security awareness training would flag. You just followed what looked like a normal set of instructions.

That’s the defining characteristic of modern cybercrime: it doesn’t force its way in. It steps quietly into the middle of an everyday workflow and turns a routine action into the moment everything goes wrong.

Why These Attacks Keep Working

These attacks work because of habits we’ve all built up online. Clicking through CAPTCHAs, accepting cookie prompts, pressing a key combination to move a process along. That trained reflexiveness is exactly what attackers are counting on.

It’s the core mechanic behind ClickFix attacks. Victims are shown a fake prompt instructing them to press a sequence of keyboard shortcuts, which pastes and executes attacker-supplied commands on their own machine. There’s no vulnerability to exploit and no firewall confrontation. Just a convincing lie inserted at the right moment.

ClickFix surged in 2025 and remains active, but attackers have already evolved the concept into something more sophisticated.

Figure 1 below shows the ClickFix-style fake verification prompt.

A New Attack Variant Targeting Microsoft 365 Sessions

The newer variant, ConsentFix, shifts the attack surface to Microsoft 365’s OAuth consent flows, the sign-in prompts that users have learned to breeze through without much scrutiny.

The setup is deceptively clean. A phishing lure arrives, often delivered through trusted platforms like Dropbox or DocSend, sometimes behind a password that also makes it harder for security tooling to inspect.

The victim clicks through, encounters what looks like a standard Microsoft authentication screen, and is asked to complete the process by dragging a localhost callback link into the browser.

That drag-and-drop step is the trap. Rather than finishing a harmless authentication step, the user unknowingly surrenders OAuth tokens, handing the attacker session access to email and other Microsoft 365 services without a password and MFA bypass.

The victim isn’t typing credentials into a fake form. They’re completing what appears to be a legitimate authentication flow, and the session itself is what gets stolen.

Figure 2 below shows how ConsentFix turns what looks like a normal Microsoft 365 sign-in step into session theft.

Criminals Are Sharing the Blueprint Openly

By early March 2026, a detailed walkthrough of ConsentFix had been posted to a public Russian cybercrime forum. It included working code, infrastructure screenshots, and a video tutorial showing exactly how to build and deploy the attack.

The infrastructure leaned on free or widely available services, and the post also outlined how attackers profile targets before sending a single phishing message, using LinkedIn and similar tools to map organizations and tailor lures to real people.

What was once a technique requiring meaningful technical skill now comes packaged with documentation and step-by-step guidance. The barrier to entry keeps dropping.

How to Reduce Your Exposure

Awareness still has a role. These attacks depend on people moving through familiar workflows without pausing. Asking why a website wants you to press hotkeys or drag a strange link into a browser is often enough to short-circuit the whole thing.

But awareness alone won’t close the gap, because these attacks are specifically engineered to look routine. Defenders also need detection coverage for the traces they leave behind: unusual PowerShell activity originating from normal user processes, or new session logins from unexpected locations.

Endpoint and identity monitoring can surface those signals before a brief lapse in judgment snowballs into a full account compromise.

The attacker’s job is to interrupt a normal workflow at exactly the right moment and let the victim do the rest. Understanding that pattern is the first step toward stopping it.

Tradecraft Tuesday: No Products. No Pitches. Just Hacks.

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• Detailed briefings on emerging threat campaigns and ransomware variants
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Sponsored and written by Huntress Labs.

Samsung has begun teasing its upcoming foldable phones, which are scheduled to launch in July. With the theme “New Shape, New Joy,” Samsung has launched its teaser campaign hinting at the Galaxy Z Fold 8 redesign. Meanwhile, leaked images of official cases have offered an early glimpse of the phone’s design, giving a better idea of what Samsung may announce in the coming weeks. Unlike in earlier years, Samsung is building curiosity around the device before fully announcing the launch event.

The latest teaser images suggest Samsung is giving its next foldable a fresh design. The company repeatedly uses phrases like “new shape” and “cuts to what matters.” Another teaser shows purple, pink, and gold shades that could match the upcoming phone’s color options. Samsung also briefly reveals a wallpaper featuring the number “8,” hinting at the Galaxy Z Fold 8.

Leaked Images Reveal Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Other Foldables

New leaked images have provided an early look at Samsung’s upcoming foldable phones. The leaks include official protective cases for the Galaxy Z Fold 8, Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, and Galaxy Z Flip 8. Some images also show the phones inside the cases, making their designs easier to understand. This gives a clearer view of the new designs teased by Samsung.

The latest leaks also highlight the key design changes across Samsung’s upcoming foldable lineup. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 appears wider than earlier Fold models. It includes a dual-rear-camera setup and a punch-hole selfie camera. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra retains a taller design and a triple-camera rear setup. The Galaxy Z Flip 8 maintains its classic flip-style design with dual cameras.

Case Options and Color Choices

Samsung seems ready to offer multiple official case options with its new foldable lineup. The collection includes kickstand cases, aramid-fiber-style finishes, and solid-color covers. Buyers may choose from purple, white, and dark gray. The company could also introduce cartoon-style cases for users who want a unique look.

Expected Launch Timeline

The date of release is still being kept secret. But the latest news indicates the devices could launch on July 22. The company is likely to release teaser information before making an official announcement. These updates should reveal more about the upcoming devices.

Deliveries will begin in September.

Militaries routinely send satellites to fly by rival vehicles and suss out their capabilities, but scaling up this kind of reconnaissance is increasingly seen by the U.S. military as a challenge best handled by the private sector.

That’s why two space startups, True Anomaly and Rocket Lab, completed a rendezvous mission for the U.S. Space Force last week so complex, it was like something out of “Top Gun.” Their two rival satellites met up in orbit, close enough for one to capture imagery of the other.

The exercise, dubbed Victus Haze, demonstrated the close inspection of a space vehicle soon after it arrived in orbit, a necessity in a world where the U.S., Russia, and China are deploying novel space weapons.

“China and Russia launch capabilities to space on a regular basis, and part of the Space Force’s job is to understand what those capabilities are,” True Anomaly CEO Even Rogers, a veteran of the U.S. military’s space efforts, told TechCrunch. “Right now we have gaps in our collection capability.”

The June mission saw Rocket Lab, a rocket-building rival to SpaceX that recently announced its acquisition of Iridium, launch a spacecraft called Puma just 16 hours and 42 minutes after receiving notice, which is notable because most rocket launches are buttoned up months in advance.

A Jackal spacecraft built by True Anomaly was waiting in orbit to intercept it. As part of the exercise, the company didn’t know where Puma would arrive in space but used onboard sensors to find and identify its target from 2,000 kilometers away. The Jackal then flew close to the target — exactly how close is classified — and orbited it, capturing imagery of different parts of the vehicle, before returning to its starting point in orbit.

True Anomaly’s CEO said that, outside of NASA and Space Force space flight missions with humans, “this is probably the most complex rendezvous and proximity operation between two spacecraft in modern history.”

Bringing together two spacecraft in orbit, where they’re both moving at speeds approaching 17,500 mph, is no easy feat. Previous private demonstrations, like those performed by Northrop Grumman’s maintenance satellites or Astroscale’s orbital garbage hunting missions, operate on slower time frames.

And now things get interesting: The two companies are prepared to perform new exercises in the weeks ahead with increasing difficulty, which could include Rocket Lab’s Puma trying to evade True Anomaly’s Jackal and performing its own inspection maneuvers.

Founded in 2022 by Rogers and a cadre of former military space experts, True Anomaly planned to build both the hardware and software to enable the new tasks assigned to the U.S. Space Force when it was created in 2019. After several years of development missions, last month’s demonstration has begun to realize that vision.

“That’s the secret sauce of this company,” said Seth Winterroth, a partner at Eclipse Ventures who sits on True Anomaly’s board. “It’s not one spacecraft architecture or one piece of software or a certain set of payloads — it’s a deep, deep understanding of what tactics and doctrine look like in this domain.”

True Anomaly has raised just over $1 billion, including a $650 million round in March. Now the company will look to compete for a number of task orders, particularly in the Space Force’s $6.2 billion Andromeda program, which looks to the private sector for exactly this kind of maneuverable reconnaissance.

“Flight heritage is everything, and demonstrated capability is what speaks the loudest with these opportunities,” Rogers said.