TL;DR
AI executives who funded Trump’s deregulation push now want a formal framework after chaotic export controls and model restrictions.
On Wednesday, Chinese cybersecurity firm 360 reportedly unveiled Tulongfeng, an AI tool it says can go head-to-head with Anthropic’s Mythos. That’s the cybersecurity-focused AI model that is reportedly so powerful, the Trump Administration has currently banned it and its more restricted version, Fable 5, from the hands of non-Americans.
Earlier the same week Sakana AI, a Tokyo-based AI startup launched Fugu, a model named after the Japanese word for blowfish. The company says this frontier AI model “stands shoulder-to-shoulder with leading models like Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos Preview.” It is also designed for agents, with an ability to orchestrate access to other models though their APIs.
The two new Asian model products come as the U.S. government’s ban drags on. It’s order that prevents Anthropic from global access to Mythos and Fable occurred two weeks ago.
A spokesperson at Sakana AI told TechCrunch that release of its new model was “entirely coincidental,” yet that hasn’t stopped it from capitalizing on the moment. It’s website advertises “delivering frontier capability without the risk of export controls.”
“Sakana Fugu is something we have been building since last year — the research behind it was presented at ICLR this spring, and it reflects an approach that is central to how we deliver frontier-level value at Sakana AI. We were confident in the product on its own merits; the timing simply happened to coincide with a moment that brought it more attention than we expected,” the spokesperson said about launching during the Mythos/Fable export ban.
Sakana, co-founded in 2023 by former Google researchers Ren Ito, Llion Jones and David Ha, makes affordable generative AI models that work well with small datasets and are optimized for the Japanese language and culture.
While the company is targeting Fugu at Japanese businesses and government agencies looking to reduce their exposure to tightening export controls, it isn’t yet proclaiming a lasting shift away from U.S. AI in Asia.
“U.S. models remain important to Asia,” the spokesperson said, a view consistent with remarks co-founder Ren Ito made at the G7 summit in Evian last week, where AI access and export controls were one of the central topics. “We’d characterize the current moment in those terms rather than as a permanent realignment toward any one set of players.”
Sakana co-founder Ren Ito elaborated on that view in an op-ed published in the Project Syndicate last week. He urged the US federal government, that consider that its “first priority should be to preserve access,” for America’s closest allies, and argued that “AI should not become a technology that is hoarded; it should be one that is developed together.”
David Ha, co-founder and CEO of Sakana, described Fugu as more than just a land grab during a vulnerable moment for a US competitors. It is designed to coordinate agent usage among many models.
“Orchestration Models are the next frontier, beyond bigger models,” he wrote on X. Relying on a single provider for national infrastructure, he argued, is a risk the recent export controls made impossible to ignore.
“Access to top models can disappear overnight,” he wrote. “Collective intelligence is the practical hedge against this concentration of power.”
While Tokyo-based Sakana positioned Fugu as a hedge strategy, a way to preserve access to frontier AI, not replace it, China’s 360 wasn’t hedging.
The Chinese firm reportedly unveiled two AI security tools. Tulongfeng is designed to automatically discover software vulnerabilities, and Yitianzhen is built to automate cyber defence and incident response.
The product launch, however, came with a message. According to Reuters, 360’s founder Zhou Hongyi described vulnerability-finding AI as a national strategic asset, and flagged what he called the risk of “one-way transparency”, a situation in which some actors could access advanced vulnerability-detection capabilities while others could not.
Anthropic had been on a historic growth trajectory. The US AI lab said its run-rate revenue crossed $47 billion in May 2026. How much of that depends on Asian enterprise customers is not publicly known.
But in the weeks since the export order took effect, at least two companies, one in Tokyo, one in Beijing, have stepped into the space it left behind. Even if US companies could win back trust should this ban ever end, local alternatives, trained to better understand local language and nuance, are already filling the gap.
360 did not respond to a request for comment.
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AI executives who funded Trump’s deregulation push now want a formal framework after chaotic export controls and model restrictions.
The AI industry that donated heavily to elect Donald Trump on the promise he would leave the technology alone is now asking for formal regulation, Politico reported on Friday. Executives at frontier AI companies told the outlet they view the administration’s ad hoc approach to model oversight as more damaging than anything the Biden administration had proposed.
The shift has been rapid. Trump entered his second term after a wave of Silicon Valley donations from billionaires who warned that Biden’s AI safety policies would crush American innovation. He spent his first year focused on stopping states from regulating the technology and signed a voluntary executive order on June 2 that asked companies to submit models for 30-day review before release.
But the voluntary framework was overtaken by events almost immediately. The White House imposed export controls on Anthropic’s Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models on June 12, after Amazon’s CEO raised security concerns with the Treasury Secretary. This week, the administration pressured OpenAI to restrict the launch of its latest model, Sol, to roughly 20 government-approved partners, the first time a US company launched a frontier model under a government-managed access list.
One senior AI executive, granted anonymity by Politico, called the result “a de facto European-style licensing regime.” Paul Lekas, head of global public policy at the Software and Information Industry Association, which represents leading AI companies, said there is “a real need for a formal process” and that the industry wants to avoid releases based on “an ad hoc process and a one-off license.”
The industry representatives also told Politico they are afraid to push the White House for clarity. “It feels like they’re walking on eggshells a little bit,” said one AI policy adviser who works with major frontier labs. Companies fear that lobbying too aggressively could invite export controls or other regulatory retaliation.
Saif Khan, who served as senior adviser on critical and emerging technology at the Commerce Department under Biden, called the Trump approach an overreaction born of earlier dismissiveness. “Because there has been some dismissiveness of the risks, there’s been no preparatory work, no hiring of experts,” Khan told Politico, describing the result as “opaque, almost vibes-based.”
Khan said the administration’s actions amount to “an almost complete moratorium on new releases” that will “start seriously impacting companies’ bottom lines,” calling it far more damaging than anything Biden envisioned. The Biden administration’s own final rule would have imposed export controls on chips and AI model weights for certain countries, but never attempted to block domestic releases.
Dean Ball, a former Trump administration official who authored the White House AI Action Plan and is joining OpenAI as head of strategic futures on July 6, acknowledged the tension. He said the administration’s concerns are “100 percent legitimate” but that “they are likely overreacting to these legitimate concerns.” Ball added that he is glad the White House has arrived at taking AI safety seriously, even if the execution is flawed.
On Friday, the administration partially rescinded the Anthropic export ban, allowing Mythos 5 to be shared with more than 100 approved companies. But Fable 5 remains blocked for reasons the government has not explained. An OpenAI executive told Politico the industry expects the administration to finalize its June 2 executive order soon and replace the current crackdown with the voluntary vetting framework it originally outlined.
Lekas said the tech industry is developing “a coordinated push for an actual framework” on advanced AI rules and wants Washington to codify it, whether through executive order or legislation. He warned that if AI companies cannot agree on a standardized approach to safety, they will keep receiving the same unpredictable treatment.
White House spokesperson Liz Huston defended the president’s record, citing fast-tracked permits for AI infrastructure and the executive order aimed at stopping state-level regulation. “President Trump has clearly and repeatedly articulated his goal: ensure continued American dominance in AI,” Huston said.
Pluralsight’s Faye Ellis and Rain Alliance’s Aileen Ryan discuss advanced technologies, the transformation of the workplace and how far women in engineering careers have come.
This past Tuesday (23 June) was International Women in Engineering Day, which recognises the female engineers who have contributed significantly to the growth of the sector.
For Faye Ellis, a principal training architect with Pluralsight, much has changed in the global engineering space since she first established herself professionally. She finds that inclusion and AI have had a lasting impact on careers in this field, leading to better opportunities and increased diversity of thought.
She explained to SiliconRepublic.com that in 2024, women held roughly 32pc of global senior management and leadership roles within the technology sector, noting that while this is still lower than it should be, it is in fact a significant improvement from when she first began her career.
Ellis said, “What has changed for women in the industry is visibility, with women running organisations, founding start-ups and serving on boards. This representation matters because it helps to normalise the idea that leadership is no longer defined by gender.
“Over the past few years, companies have become much more intentional about building inclusive cultures and investing in sponsorship and mentorship programmes. Conversations around diversity and inclusion are far more normalised than they used to be, and the tech sector is beginning to realise that diverse teams drive better outcomes.”
Faye Ellis, principal training architect for Pluralsight
This opinion is shared by Aileen Ryan, the CEO and president of Rain Alliance, who explained that almost 40 years ago, aged just 16, she was inspired by a ‘Year of Women in Engineering’ initiative in Ireland to learn how to make a computer that could ‘do something’.
Ryan told SiliconRepublic.com, “I was one of just 12 girls in a cohort of 120 studying engineering at University College Cork, but after completing my bachelor of engineering, electrical followed by a master of science in computer science, I began my career in engineering and never looked back.”
She finds that progress has been made, particularly in relation to the number of women in the industry; however, “there is still a long way to go when it comes to bringing diverse perspectives into technology and engineering roles”, in her opinion.
“This trend continues at the senior level – the number of female senior leaders and female-founded businesses are slowly but surely increasing, but it’s vital the industry maintains this momentum and continues to present itself as an attractive and exciting sector in which women can pursue a career,” Ryan said.
“The World Economic Forum warns that economic downturns disproportionately affect women’s advancement, with the Covid-19 pandemic setting back progress made on global gender parity by a generation. This highlights the importance of a consistent and continued focus on gender parity to ensure opportunity is available for all.”
In a landscape where the problems facing modern-day engineers are becoming increasingly complex and the systems ever more connected, Ryan is of the opinion that diversity of thought is critical, as are solutions designed to serve a much wider range of people, industries and communities.
“By continuing to attract and support people from different backgrounds across the engineering ecosystem, we can ensure their voice is heard and inspire the next generation of engineers to ensure that the technologies of tomorrow are more innovative, inclusive and impactful for everyone,” said Ryan.
“Organisations need to move beyond just having good intentions and focus on creating systems which consistently support women’s growth and advancements”, said Ellis, who believes that this starts with giving women more opportunities from the get-go, not just as they edge towards senior leadership positions.
“Organisations also need to examine their existing processes and challenge any barriers that may limit advancement. This includes looking at hiring practices, promotion criteria, pay equity and how leadership potential is identified and assessed,” she said.
“Fostering an inclusive culture is just as important, and businesses should provide flexibility and support for different life stages and responsibilities.”
Aileen Ryan, the CEO and president of Rain Alliance
But it isn’t only increased diversity and greater opportunity for others that have transformed the workplace. Both Ellis and Ryan find that advanced technologies have irrevocably changed how engineers engage with the profession and the wider ecosystem. And for Ellis, this comes with both positive and negative consequences.
She said that, as with everything, there are pros and cons, “with the biggest positives being AI’s ability to automate time-consuming repetitive tasks, enabling engineers to focus on high-value work. But there are also significant challenges, with many organisations shrinking the number of roles available.
“Entry-level roles are being reshaped, and the traditional pathways into engineering careers are changing rapidly. For established engineers, expertise built over many years remains valuable, but it must be continually refreshed and expanded to prevent falling behind as automation progresses.”
For young professionals, she explained, “AI can be an incredible learning tool and productivity enhancer, but can also change the nature of entry-level roles. Employers are looking for engineers of all levels who can work effectively with AI and continuously evolve alongside it, developing expertise in areas including AI systems, data, security and leadership.”
She added, “There is no doubt that some opportunities will disappear as automation advances, and adaptability is more important than ever when it comes to engineering skills.
“Engineers who invest in developing new skills and learn how to leverage AI as a force multiplier will continue to find opportunities and create value, while those who don’t will see their roles become increasingly disrupted.”
She also finds that AI presents an ideal opportunity for women to reassign work of a lesser value to automated systems with the intention of then turning their attention to more meaningful or important tasks.
“A shift towards automation enables female engineers to spend more time on higher-value tasks, like strategic thinking, innovation, architecture, leadership and decision-making, creating opportunities for women to focus on the skills that underpin senior and strategic roles, including leading teams and making complex decisions.
“AI has the potential to improve diversity within leadership roles, but also to introduce new risks. Women are overrepresented in functions which include routine and administrative tasks, and these are the most likely to be automated, leaving women at a higher risk of redundancy than their male counterparts.”
For Ryan, who has always been environmentally conscious, especially since experiencing motherhood, technological advancements have resulted in more opportunities to champion sustainability within her professional life, as she finds tech can drive sustainable and resource-efficient consumption.
She said, “I have also co-founded Preoptima, a generative AI company applying ‘carbon twins’ technology and real-time data to empower low-carbon design decisions and reduce whole-life carbon in the built environment.
“These initiatives reflect how technological innovation has a huge role to play in making the people and planet of the future more sustainable.”
Ryan concluded, “Working in tech and engineering is so much more than just a job. It gives us the opportunity to have a tangible impact on the world around us, championing the innovations that meet the needs of the people around us and helping build a connected, sustainable future.”
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If you ever cracked open one of those Magic 8-Ball toys, you found little more than a polyhedron floating in some dark-colored fluid. It was a quasi-random way of asking the universe to answer crucial questions like “will Mom and Dad get a divorce?” and “does Bethany like me?” even if the results were seldom accurate (sorry about your parents, kid). If you want a more reliably random 8-ball that is not even slightly more truthful, you might like this recent build from [David Noel Ng].
The concept is simple enough — leverage quantum effects that provide truly random results to seed run a random number generator that determines the outcome of a software magic 8-ball. [David] tried a few ways to build something along these lines, and eventually settled on a setup that he felt suited the task at hand.
In the final rig, a light source spits out photons, and is attenuated to the point where effectively only one photon is running through the light path at a time. Each photon passes through a beam splitter, and either passes through the mirror and hits photomultiplier A, or bounces off and hits photomultiplier B. This creates a truly random yes/no result for every photon that passes through. [David] does a great job of explaining the low-level physics at play, as well as the supporting electronics and code that turns this into a usable magic 8-ball that actually answers questions.
We’ve seen other magic 8-ball builds before, too. Few come with quite the same tactile wonder created by the original toy, but they nonetheless do the job of answering questions that are too frivolous to take to a tarot reader or local divining bog witch. If you’re whipping up your own way to deduce the wills of the fates, don’t hesitate to let us know on the tipsline.
Paul Meade, the Apple vice president in charge of the Vision Pro headset, is leaving the company to join OpenAI’s hardware team, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
Meade also reportedly led the development of the AI-powered smart glasses that Apple plans to launch next year. The costly Vision Pro was not a hit, but Apple is hoping that more affordable smart glasses will help it compete with wearable devices from Meta.
Gurman frames this departure as a byproduct of John Ternus’ imminent elevation to Apple CEO, and of Ternus’ decision to shake up the hardware engineering team, which left some of the company’s vice presidents feeling like they’d been demoted.
OpenAI, meanwhile, is already working with Apple’s former chief design officer Jony Ive on an AI device that CEO Sam Altman has claimed will be more peaceful and calm than an iPhone, though reports last fall suggested the company was struggling to get the details right.
TechCrunch has reached out to Apple and OpenAI for comment.
Just a couple weeks ago, the European Commission put out its plan for “European tech sovereignty.” It’s not surprising that Europeans are looking at their internet platform options and seeing a choice between US companies and Chinese companies as something that isn’t that appealing. Of course, Europe has mostly itself to blame for this mess. As an Economist piece in April noted, the EU effectively regulated its own internet ambitions to death:
Here is an uncomfortable truth for hand-wringing policymakers in Paris, Berlin and beyond: Europe’s dependency on America Inc is in no small part Europe’s own fault. Decades of over-regulating the old continent’s economy left businesses there unable to compete with American firms, which went on to trounce European ones even in their own backyards. What Europeans could not build quickly for themselves, due to a thicket of regulations, they often imported just as quickly from abroad….
Tech is where the dependency seems most acute. Europe has few firms at the forefront of AI, space or high-end computing (one notable exception is ASML, a Dutch firm globally vital to chipmaking). Even governments often have little choice but to use the likes of Microsoft or Amazon for cloud services, Palantir to sift through data or SpaceX to launch military satellites. Quixotic attempts to shake off big tech abound, for example by having civil servants ditch Windows for some clunky substitute. Too often the European alternatives are lacking anyway. It turns out that boasting about regulating AI before the public had made their first ChatGPT query—as the European Union did in 2021—is not conducive to home-growing AI champions.
Yes, EU rules often applied to American firms, insofar as they wanted to offer their wares in the bloc. But regulation in practice hit European firms harder. The costs of administering complex data-protection rules, say, could easily be absorbed by a Google or OpenAI, with their hordes of compliance staff. Not so their European rivals, which have usually lacked scale (if only because the EU’s fragmented single market made it harder for them to grow beyond their home country). The EU thus generated barriers to entry that often ended up protecting American giants.
And so the EU is going back to the drawing board, once again thinking that it can technocrat its way to technical competence, and that seems unlikely. After all, weren’t the EU’s two biggest pieces of signature tech legislation — the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA) — supposed to solve all of this already?
I’ve long been a critic of both laws that were in some ways too vague and in other ways too restrictive all along, but at the very least they were the product of a fairly lengthy process, in which EU regulators were made well aware of the tradeoffs of various approaches. And they chose to land where they landed. This new move by the European Commission isn’t quite an admission of failure, but it sure is a sign that what they insisted would create the right incentives for local competition hasn’t yet worked.
But, of course, none of that may matter if the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) — the highest court across the EU — continues to YOLO its way through internet law. Back in December we wrote about its deeply problematic ruling in the Russmedia case, which more or less ignored the fragile balance that the DSA had set forth regarding intermediary liability for third-party speech, by insisting that any platform operator must scan any user generated content for “sensitive personal data” about anyone else and block it. It effectively required full scanning of every piece of uploaded content, a ban on anonymous speech, and a requirement that “bad” posts somehow be blocked from anyone copying them.
And now it’s taken that up a notch in its new WebGroup ruling (full ruling currently only available in French, but Google translate works, at least while Google can still operate in the EU). While the headline regarding the ruling is that the CJEU says that age verification mandates are fine regarding pornographic content (matching the US Supreme Court on that one), the ruling goes even further, and suggests that any website that has algorithmic recommendations for content should take on liability for the content it recommends.
I recognize that some people are cheering this on because they hate “big tech” and think this will somehow damage it. That’s wrong. It will damage smaller tech players (such as the ones the EU is trying to encourage companies to build in the EU) way, way more. I’ve written before, in the US Section 230 context, why it’s a terrible idea to make recommendation algorithms liable for the content they recommend, and that reasoning applies equally in the EU.
Recommendation algorithms actually do, on the whole, make the internet experience much more bearable. I get that more and more internet users grew up in an era dominated by the algorithm, but it was not better before that. The internet was so filled with nonsense and junk that people begged for better algorithms. And in this new era, with the rise of AI slop, it would be even worse.
But, more to the point, a recommendation algorithm is simply stating an opinion of “this is what we think you should look at next.” We can debate the purpose of that opinion, and whether it is solely to extract more attention or money from users, or to actually provide them value. But that doesn’t matter. Nothing in “this is what we think you should look at next” is (by definition) a full-throated endorsement of the content. It’s literally “based on other stuff you’ve looked at, and our own weights and priorities, here’s what you should look at next.” It has no way of reviewing the actual quality of the content, determining if it’s helpful or not, factual or not, or nonsense or not.
That’s just not how any of this works.
But once you put liability just for recommending “this is what the algorithm thinks you should look at next” you make it ridiculously expensive to offer any sort of algorithm — even in situations like Bluesky where anyone can create and share their algorithms for others.
The end result is that the only companies who will be able to recommend content — which, by every possible measure in every possible study, we’ve seen the vast majority of internet users prefer — will be the largest companies in the world: Google, Meta, TikTok. All of the upstart competitors, all of the services the EU now says it wants to grow at home, would find it impossibly difficult to offer such a feature, because the risk of liability would be way too intense.
For all the many problems I had with the DSA, on this it mostly got the equation right, recognizing that pinning liability on platforms in this manner could have really negative effects. And while I still think the DSA should have gone much further in protecting intermediaries, the CJEU interpretation here basically takes a sledgehammer to the attempted balance within the DSA.
The mistake the CJEU is making here, as highlighted by expert Daphne Keller, is that in thinking that this will “make big tech more responsible” it actually empowers them, encourages them to engage in constant monitoring and surveillance, and basically appoints them as the speech police. What could go wrong?
Some of us have been making this point for years. And the results of earlier laws (like the GDPR) showed exactly how this would play out, entrenching the largest companies and leaving the EU once again flailing around demanding new laws to fix the situation their old laws created.
It’s understandable that the EU doesn’t like its tech platform choices. But it’s now in a loop of its own making. Fail to understand the technology, fall prey to a moral panic, over regulate… and then wonder why no one is building and the big American tech companies just get bigger. Rinse and repeat. The CJEU’s latest ruling undermines the attempt at balance laid out by the DSA and completely sabotages the “homegrown” sovereign competitors the Commission so desperately claims it wants to cultivate — while handing the surveillance infrastructure bill to the only players big enough to pay it. The Commission can call it tech sovereignty all it wants. The CJEU just made vassalage structural.
Filed Under: age verification, algorithmic recommendations, algorithms, cjeu, digital services act, dma, dsa, eu, eu commission, france, intermediary liability
Companies: webgroup
An agentic coding tool tasked with cloning and setting up a seemingly benign GitHub repository could execute a malicious payload that remains invisible to security scanners, AI agents, and human reviewers.
Researchers at Mozilla’s Zero Day Investigative Network (0DIN) AI security platform say that the compromise happens with “no exploit code, no warning, no suspicious command anyone had to approve.”
They demonstrated how an attacker could plant an interactive shell on a developer’s device by using Claude Code to run a cloned project without malicious code in the repository.
The new attack method relies on three components, which separately represent no threat and raise no suspicion:
0DIN researchers explain that this approach requires no malicious component in the cloned repository, and the agent automates the entire attack chain, including a step that mimics a common user error.
If successful, the attacker would obtain a shell running with the developer’s privileges, giving them access to environment variables, API keys, local configuration files, and the opportunity to establish persistence.
“Claude Code never decided to open a shell. It decided to fix an error. The reverse shell is three indirection steps away from anything Claude Code actually evaluated: an error message it trusted, a script that fetched a value, and a DNS record it never saw,” 0DIN researchers say.
“The attacker now has an interactive shell running as the developer’s own user.”
While the attack method is currently just a concept, 0DIN warns that threat actors could easily distribute such GitHub repositories through fake job postings, tutorials, blog posts, or direct messages.
To prevent such exploitation, 0DIN suggests that AI agents should disclose the full execution chain of setup commands, including scripts and code fetched dynamically at runtime.
Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.
The Picus whitepaper shows how breach and attack simulation tests your SIEM and EDR rules so threats stop slipping by detection.
With AI undoubtedly revolutionizing the way many office jobs get done, the effects new technology is having on blue-collar jobs often flies under the radar.
But it is in these hands-on industries where AI can really make a difference, boosting not only productivity and efficiency, but also improving safety and worker welfare.
At its recent Samsara Beyond 2026 conference, I saw first-hand some of the new AI-powered tools and services which could revolutionize the operations industry in years to come – but also heard why the human connection will always remain vital.
“Humans are extremely capable – and I don’t see the machines or AI replacing that anytime soon – I see it augmenting us, and helping us,” Johan Land, CPO at Samsara tells me at the event.
We’re speaking after a jam-packed keynote which saw the company reveal a host of new AI-empowered tools and services, from a smart shipping label sticker, to a 360-degree camera which can help truck drivers navigate cramped delivery yards.
But it was the new AI tools which drew a lot of attention, including the ability for drivers to talk directly to their manager or an AI agent remotely, as well as a new AI Studio which lets customers create bespoke offerings for specific use cases – so why such a big focus on AI right now, I ask Land.
“First of all, the AI has got so much better over time – but then in addition to that, our customers want it,” he notes, highlighting how Samsara can help customers on how to best plug AI into their systems.
“Physical operations is tough! It’s very labor-intensive, there are many tasks that are very repetitive and it’s hard to hire people – so this solves a really acute problem in that sense.”
Ryan Yu, VP of Product at Samsara, agrees with Land, telling me Samsara’s goal, “is to be the operating system for physical operations.”
When it comes to improving the efficiency of customer’s workflows, “there’s so much low-hanging fruit”, he notes, highlighting the importance automating the big things, in a way that makes sense.
Samsara’s customer base is everyone from mining operations to building firms, from school districts to logistics firms, so I ask Land how important AI will be as a selling point over its competition – and how eager these more “traditional” industries are to get working with AI.
“The hardest thing with AI is probably making it work for people in their real life and to create true value,” he says, “it can easily become vaporware, it looks good on the surface”
“Sometimes they get it (AI), and sometimes they don’t,” he adds, “but it doesn’t matter – and it might be even better if you don’t understand it, because their expectations are super high…that’s the empowerment, they expect it to just work.”
“We need to provide the rails,” Yu adds, “and we also need to provide guidance to what types of use cases are best served…because the underlying technology is still evolving.”
So how long will it be before even the most hands-on industries are fully embracing AI to get their work done? Land notes that the work is already well underway.
“Overall, we see the AI augmenting humans, taking care of some tasks,” he says, “but overall it’s making humans more empowered, stronger and capable.”
Yu notes the immediate future will be dominated by the themes of “discovery, education and adoption” by customers, and the role Samsara can play in this.
“We want to make sure we meet them where they are, and provide the right templates,” he notes, “and the good thing is we know what their most important use cases are, and what they struggle with…when we talk about reducing manual drudgery, we understand deeply how customers engage with their products.”
“This is a time of distractions,” Land laughs, “but for us it’s very simple, we follow our customers, we just talk to them, understand what their problems are, what they need from us, and then that’s how we prioritize literally everything we do.”
“The direction this is going is that a job site or workplace of the future will have all kinds of things inside of it…the way we see ourselves to be is as the connecting tissue – the agentic platform that ties all of this together.”
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How long have we been hacking routers? To some of you who’ve been in the Hackaday audience for a while, the answer is “nearly forever”. In the early 2000s, they were one of the few consumer gadgets that had the trifecta of hackability: WiFi and networking built in, a user-friendly Linux operating system, and a few spare GPIOs that could control from the OS. Back when the Linksys WRT54GL was the king of the hill, we saw some pretty absurd hacks.
Take this example robot from October 2008. Link-rot hasn’t been kind to the original project, but from what we can tell, it used the GPIOs to drive servo motors hacked for continuous rotation, and features the equally anachronistic CD-ROM wheels. Where would you even get those today?
But the OS that this 18-year-old hack uses is still around: OpenWRT Linux. Although it still takes its name from the lovable purple router of old, it hasn’t supported that particular model in over a decade because of growing memory requirements. But it’s still the go-to distro for any modern router hacks, and it provides a lot more general-purpose Linux than you might expect on otherwise constrained platforms. As Tom pointed out in the podcast, if you see a used router for cheap, see if it’s supported by OpenWRT, and if it is, buy it.
While the project that got us thinking about routers again, Al’s recent networking hack, basically uses the router as a souped-up router, that’s by no means a given. OpenWRT is a real Linux OS, and can make use of most peripherals that your router find has available. Networking? Of course. USB? No problem. If you find a serial port and some GPIOs, you’re most of the way to a Linux SBC, although very likely a headless one.
There are a lot of hacks we see go in and out of style, and we see software projects come and go. But here we tip our hat to the router hacks, and to the plucky Linux OS that’s been ported to them all. Long may it keep old devices out of the landfill!
Featured image: My old baby, about a year or so before something in the radio modem finally gave up the ghost.
Amazon’s Kindle AI features help you read beyond the lines, so long as you have the right ereader.
Amazon is going all-in on bringing artificial intelligence to your reading experience, adding several new smart features to its famed Kindle ereaders. Officially announced in June 2026, the conglomerate frames its AI add-ons as “making it easier to stay immersed in your books” by offering spoiler free recaps and AI assistants capable of bringing context to your reading experience. When combined with your Kindle’s previous smart features, which allowed users to do everything from look up definitions to translate foreign languages, the rollout is indicative of an publishing landscape searching for new ways to incorporate emerging technologies into your reading experience, whether you asked for it or not.
Unfortunately, not every reader will have access to Kindle’s AI infusion. As it stands, Amazon has rolled out its new recap features to newer Kindle devices and American iOS users. However, its Ask this Book AI chatbot will only be available on the the US-version of its iOS Kindle application, for now. Kindles will be receiving the Ask this Book feature later this year. Likewise, both recaps and Ask this book functionalities are expected to come to Android applications by the end of 2026.
The additions come as Amazon pushes users towards newer models of their flagship ereader. Earlier this year, the Seattle company announced it would discontinue support for its earliest Kindle models. To assuage concerns, Kindle assured users that their older models will continue to function. However, users won’t be able to import new titles to their libraries.
In a similar vein, Amazon will not be pushing its latest features update onto its older Kindle models. Instead, the contextual tools will only be available to Kindles released in 2024 or after. With that in mind, the phone application proves a useful workaround, allowing readers to test whether AI functionality is really worth the upgrade.
Amazon pitches its new Recaps functions as something akin to the “previously on …” segments of popular television shows. Readers can seamlessly return to their favorite series without missing a beat through “quick refreshers” of previous installments, including key plot points and character developments. It’s important to note that these recaps are anything but spoiler-free. As someone who judges those that skip to the back of the book, the thought of accidentally reading a recap of a book I’ve yet to devour sends a cold shiver down my spine. Proceed with cautious.
Readers can discover if Recaps are available for their favorite series in both their Kindle and iOS app. If using your ereader, simply visit the series’ page in your Kindle Library and select the “View Recaps” button above the listed books. From there, select the book you’d like a refresher on. You can also select the “View Recaps” via the three dotted menu at the upper righthand corner of your screen. If using your phone, the same option will appear once you select and hold the book grouping in your library.
A new addition to Recaps’ functionalities is Amazon’s Story So Far feature, which allows readers the option of receiving spoiler free summaries “tailored to your current position in the story.” American users can access the feature on all Kindle Scribe devices, as well as any Kindles, Kindle Colorsofts, or Kindle Paperwhites released in 2024 or afterward. Readers married to their older Kindle products can access the upgrade through the iOS app.
It’s important to note that these updates are not available for all Kindle books. To learn whether your read is included in the “thousands of best-selling English-language eBooks” eligible for Amazon’s newest feature, look for the “Read recap” button when you press and hold a book in your Kindle. To access the feature while reading your book, tap the three-dot menu at the top right corner of the screen.
A new AI assistant will be added to your reading experience. In its press release, Amazon states that its chatbot, dubbed Ask this Book, will instantly answer “questions about plot details, character relationships, and thematic elements without disrupting your reading flow.” Although these responses will be tailored to your current place in a story, users can also ask the chatbot about the entirety of the book. You can also ask text-specific questions by highlighting passages in your Kindle.
Ask this Book is available on Kindle’s iOS application for US customers. The chatbot will be extended to Amazon’s newer Kindle devices and Android OS app by the end of 2026. But not all books are eligible for the tool. To learn if your text is within Amazon’s AI tutor’s wheelhouse, simply highlight any selection of text in your book, where you will see an “ask” symbol besides features like “highlight,” “look up,” “copy” and “note.”
Users can access their Ask this Book assistant in one of several ways. First, you can find the feature in the application’s in-book menu. You can find the chatbot in your in-book menu, or access it whenever you highlight a passage in your selected text. From there, tap “ask” and a prompt of suggested questions will appear on the bottom of your screen. You can also type your own question in the grey space below. From there, you can interact with your book assistant exactly like you might any chatbot.
Unsurprisingly, Amazon’s latest AI features have sparked controversy, as authors, publishing houses, and readers alike criticized the conglomerate for potential copyright infringements. As the Authors Guild points out in a statement, Amazon did not receive prior licensing permission from authors and their publishers to include their work in its chatbot feature. As the Guild argues, the addition of AI features “turns books into searchable, interactive products akin to enhanced ebooks or annotated editions—a new format for which rights should be specifically negotiated.”
Amazon, for its part, responded to the Authors Guild by stating that Ask this Book “only uses content from the book as a prompt,” rather than to train its underlying LLM. Amazon also noted that the function serves as “a natural language expansion of the search functionality that already exists in Kindle apps and for which no license is required,” likening Ask this Book to the internet searches users make throughout their reading processes.
As it stands, authors and publishers have no control over whether their books are included in Amazon’s chatbot toolkit. In response to the publishing industry newsletter Publishers Lunch, an Amazon spokesman said that the conglomerate did not provide the ability to opt out of the tool in order to maintain “a consistent reading experience.” Moreover, Amazon’s dominance of the ebook market further constrains author’s ability to opt out of the feature, as Amazon holds an estimated three quarters of the ereader market. On balance, the Authors Guild said the feature “sets a dangerous precedent for the future of licensing for AI features.”
Ultimately, the controversy speaks to the ongoing legal battles raging throughout the AI space. Will authors be compensated for their role in AI models? Or will it simply be considered the cost of doing business in an ever-changing ebook landscape? No matter where you fall on the issue, Amazon’s latest AI features reflect the forces shaping the next era of book publishing. Whether Amazon’s customers feel that the benefits of AI are worth the moral ambiguity it engenders will remain center stage.
Audio Advice is not merely adding another pin to its map. Following its acquisition of The Sound Room in St. Louis and plans for a new Las Vegas location, the Raleigh-based retailer has acquired Miami’s Sound Components, extending its reach into another affluent, design-conscious market where custom installation, serious two-channel audio, and luxury home theater can all coexist under the same very expensive roof.
Founded in 1978, Audio Advice has grown from a respected regional specialist into one of America’s most influential audio and home theater retailers, combining deep technical knowledge, award-winning showroom experiences, a substantial e-commerce operation, and its increasingly prominent Audio Advice Live Home Audio & Video Experience.
The strategy is becoming difficult to miss. Audio Advice is acquiring established retailers in markets with wealth, luxury real estate, population growth, and a customer base willing to invest in properly designed entertainment spaces rather than another soundbar mounted beneath an oversized television. St. Louis brings a respected Midwest foothold, Las Vegas offers access to one of the country’s most active luxury-development markets, and Miami places the company directly in the path of South Florida’s continuing appetite for high-end residential technology, along with its far friendlier tax environment.
Just as notable is where Audio Advice is not expanding: the Northeast. That is not an empty market, but it is a more mature and fragmented one, crowded with legacy dealers, entrenched relationships, and expensive suburbs. Miami, Las Vegas, and St. Louis offer a different kind of opportunity: recognizable local brands, room to scale, and markets where the next generation of high-end AV customers is still arriving.
The addition of Sound Components to its portfolio means another dealer and installation powerhouse has joined the growing Audio Advice “empire,” which now includes company stores in Raleigh, Charlotte, and Wilmington, North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; and St. Louis, Missouri, formerly known as The Sound Room.
The Las Vegas location represents Audio Advice’s first move into the growing Southwest. With Phoenix and Scottsdale continuing to attract affluent residents and luxury development, can an Arizona location be far behind?

“For over five decades, Sound Components has delivered superb audio, video, and personalized service to our clients,” said Bill Petters, president of Sound Components. “I’ve known the Audio Advice team for decades. Their national reputation, customer service, software systems, and worldwide YouTube, social media, and website following are best in class. These resources and access to additional product lines will enable our team to bring even more value to our loyal customer base.”
“We are thrilled to welcome Sound Components into the Audio Advice family,” said Scott Newnam, CEO of Audio Advice. “I’ve admired Bill and the team at Sound Components since I met them nearly two decades ago. Our shared value of excellence and passion for delivering happiness make this a natural partnership. Together, we will continue to raise the bar for what customers can expect from an audio, video, and automation company.”
Sound Components will continue operating from its South Miami location, with its current team providing the same level of service and expertise, now under the Audio Advice umbrella. The showroom is expected to double in size, allowing customers to experience even more lighting, shades, audio, video, and home theater solutions firsthand. Customers will also gain access to Audio Advice’s nationwide team, award-winning online resources, design tools, and expanded product lines.

Audio Advice’s acquisition of Sound Components matters because it signals that the high-end AV business is becoming more organized, better capitalized, and more geographically ambitious at a moment when affluent homeowners are spending heavily on custom installations, dedicated theaters, whole-home control, lighting, shading, and serious two-channel systems.
For customers in South Florida, the immediate benefit should be broader product access, a larger showroom, deeper technical resources, and the continuity of a local team that already understands the market. For manufacturers, it creates another powerful retail and installation partner with the scale to support complex demonstrations, dealer training, national marketing, and long-term customer service.
The broader industry impact is harder to ignore. Independent specialists remain essential to high-performance audio and custom integration, but the cost of operating a serious showroom, retaining capable installers, and supporting increasingly complicated smart-home ecosystems is not getting any cheaper. Audio Advice is building a larger platform around respected regional dealers rather than trying to replace their local expertise with a corporate logo and a call center.
Its growing footprint across the Southeast and Midwest, the forthcoming Las Vegas location, and the continued expansion of Audio Advice Live suggest a company looking well beyond Raleigh. Whether the next move is Phoenix, Scottsdale, or another luxury-growth market remains to be seen, but Audio Advice is clearly positioning itself as one of the most consequential brick-and-mortar high-end audio, home theater, and custom-installation retailers in America.
That expansion also raises a larger question: could Audio Advice Live eventually become a regional event platform rather than a single Raleigh-area destination? Florida already has an established audio show in Tampa, but South Florida is a very different market. A Miami, Fort Lauderdale, or Palm Beach-area event would sit far enough from Tampa to attract a large and affluent audience from Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade without merely duplicating what already exists on the Gulf Coast.
Las Vegas presents a similarly intriguing possibility, with the potential to draw customers and industry partners from Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and Southern California. Audio Advice has announced no such plans, but its growing retail footprint makes the prospect more credible than idle trade-show speculation.
For more information, shop Audio Advice online now.
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