Clyde Shaffer spent years working on a console that would let people create and play entirely new 8-bit games on real cartridges. He started from the premise that most modern retro devices either replay old titles or rely on programmable chips that hide how the hardware actually works. GameTank takes a different route by using only common, still-available logic chips and two real 6502-family processors.

The finished machine is covered in a bright blue 3D-printed case with a cartridge slot on top and two controller ports visible from the front. A typical RCA jack allows composite video to be sent to antique CRT televisions or any other device that takes that signal. Power is connected via a simple barrel plug. The general design pays homage to classic machines while not imitating any of them.

Inside, the magic happens with a W65C02S CPU chugging away at 3.5Mhz to handle the primary software. Another identical processor running at 14MHz serves as a dedicated coprocessor for the audio side. There’s no FPGA in the mix, and no single microcontroller attempting to do everything. Instead, the design depends on plain old 74-series logic chips and RAM to handle address decoding, timing, and data movement, making it easy to fix and allowing anyone with minimal electronics knowledge to follow the schematics.

Graphics are rendered using a 128 by 128 pixel framebuffer. A clever small blitter circuit handles the difficult task of copying sprite data into the buffer at full clock speed, freeing up the main processor to focus on game logic. Sprite pages are stored in 512Kb of dedicated memory. Each one may be enlarged, turned on either axis, and can have transparency applied to the background. Artists get to work with a 200-color palette, which provides more versatility than many vintage systems. Sound is routed through the audio coprocessor and its own tiny memory. The chip then activates a four-voice FM synthesizer. The game code just passes note, instrument and timing info across a simple link . The result is music and effects that seem right at home in the 8-bit universe yet benefit from the extra processing punch.

Memory banking expands the address space. The top part of the bus maps directly to the cartridge slot. 6522 Versatile Interface The adapter chip swaps 8Kb banks in the bottom cartridge space while also managing the controller input and the back expansion connector. That 26-pin socket on the back accepts GPIO lines and other signals, allowing future add-ons to be easily integrated without the need to rework the mainboard. Cartridges plug in to a unique 36 pin edge connector with a 0.1 inch pitch. Production carts have a massive 2Mb of flash memory. Blank carts come with development kits so creators can load up their own code. Programming is done using a small Arduino-based flasher that connects to a PC. The entire process takes seconds and works with both EPROM and flash versions.

There is no operating system or built-in menu inside the console, as each game loads directly from the cartridge. This keeps the focus on new applications rather than obsolete title libraries. Developers get to write in assembly for maximum speed or mix C and assembly through the open SDK. There’s an emulator that runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, and even mobile phones that closely matches the real hardware, so most code just crosses over with minimal tweaking. A successful crowdfunding campaign on Crowd Supply reached its goal earlier this year. The development kit includes the built console, a matching controller, a blank cart, the flasher, and a physical copy of Accursed Fiend. Units are scheduled to arrive with backers in July.

from the better-than-expected,-but-not-much-better dept

We’ve been waiting for this one for a long time. And while it doesn’t disappoint, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for celebration.

Okello Chatrie has been challenging the geofence warrant that led to his arrest and prosecution since 2019(!). Nearly seven years later, he’s a step closer to… well, maybe setting precedent that will help others? That’s how it usually works in cases like these: the person experiencing a new violation of rights sets the precedent. But because there was no precedent, the government is generally given a “good faith” pass, even when warrants seem so far removed from Fourth Amendment principles even the government should have known its warrants were unconstitutional.

The Fourth Circuit Appeals Court handled Chatrie’s case multiple times. It reviewed it twice and still decided the government didn’t do anything (intentionally) wrong when it used a geofence warrant to narrow down its list of suspect and, finally, put Chatrie on trial.

Don’t let the word “warrant” fool you. There are legitimate warrants that adhere to particularity standards meant to deter officers from just searching wherever, whenever. Then there are geofence warrants, which are more comparable to the “general warrants” the Fourth Amendment was put in place to prevent.

When investigators have no idea who they’re looking for, they stop looking for people and start demanding Google cough up tons of location data. The government argues these warrants are “particular” because they only ask the most likely repository of this data to search for this data. Normal people would argue these are “general warrants” because they force Google to search everyone’s location data on the government’s behalf, in hopes of generating a list of devices that match up with the government’s date/location range inputs — something that’s also often far more vague than it should be.

The government likes to say it doesn’t even need a warrant. Location info generated by phones is “third party” data “voluntarily” relinquished by phone users. The problem with that argument is that the Supreme Court — via its 2018 Carpenter decision — has already made it clear there is at least some expectation of privacy in that data, especially when the government is capable of gathering it en masse.

The time stamp on the Carpenter ruling works a bit in Okello Chatrie’s favor because the alleged crime happened after that ruling. The Supreme Court majority also agrees with Chatrie’s other arguments, including those pointing out geofence warrants cannot possibly satisfy probable cause/particularity requirements generated by Fourth Amendment case law.

Here’s the briefest description of the Supreme Court’s ruling [PDF], as delivered by SCOTUS itself:

Police officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they acquired Chatrie’s location data from Google because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information.

More specifically, the Court points to its own precedent:

Everything Carpenter relied on to find that law enforcement officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they accessed CSLI records applies as well or better to the police’s accessing of Location History data. First, Location History provides an even more fine-tuned picture of a person’s movements, pinpointing location within around twenty meters rather than within sectors of one-eighth to four square miles; it records location every two minutes or so for a daily average of 720 chartings rather than 101; and it can estimate elevation to reveal which floor of a building a phone is on.

Second, Location History allows police to reconstruct “retrospective[ly],” and with no real effort, people’s comings and goings in any area, enabling “tireless and absolute surveillance” of any number of people in any number of places. Carpenter, 585 U. S., at 312.

And third, Location History implicates personal privacy interests even more than CSLI, because Location History is more the cell-phone user’s own. Most cell-phone users have no awareness of CSLI records, and would never try to retrieve them; by contrast, Google users regularly employ Location History as a personal journal. In that way, Location History resembles other private materials—e.g., emails, documents, photographs, or calendars— that even if stored on Google’s servers, a user reasonably views as his own and expects to be shielded from the “inquisitive eyes” of the government.

While this is a good ruling, it also does little more than tell the Fourth Circuit to do what it has already done: rule the warrant a search under the Fourth Amendment but still give the government a pass for not knowing its warrant was unconstitutional. A concurrence written by Justices Jackson and Sotomayor says the Court should have gone further, declaring this warrant (and any like it — which would be most of them) so unconstitutional the government couldn’t possibly claim to have obtained them in good faith.

Geofence warrants generate waves. The first one is the vaguest. Once more information comes in, investigators approach Google with narrowed lists. These repeat visits are almost never brought to the attention of magistrate judges. If a judge OKs the first search, the government just keeps going back to the well without bothering to seek judicial approval.

This “uncommon, multi-step” process, ante, at 30, meant that officers conducted key portions of the search outside the supervision of “a neutral and detached magistrate,” Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 14 (1948). Put differently, officers could obtain additional, sensitive information at steps two and three without having to convince a magistrate that there was probable cause to believe this particular information would uncover evidence related to
the crime. In this way, the warrant left “too much to the discretion of the officer[s] executing the order,” giving them a “roving commission” to collect more data absent any justification to a magistrate.

The facts of this case illustrate why the lack of magisterial oversight is dangerous. When executing steps two and three, law enforcement initially sought unbounded data and account information from all 19 devices identified at step one. Nothing in the warrant prevented officers from obtaining this broad set of data; they narrowed the list only because Google insisted on it.

Because that’s only a dissent, it won’t be taken into consideration when the Fourth Circuit takes its third look at the case. That should have been a point raised by the majority. As it stands, it just means the government will take its good faith ruling and sprinkle it generously on the further unconstitutional acts it engages in while holding a single geofence warrant.

There’s a dissent, of course. And if you can guess two of the three authors, you won’t win anything. No one is going to offer those odds.

JUSTICE ALITO, with whom JUSTICE THOMAS joins as to Part I and with whom JUSTICE BARRETT joins as to Parts II–B, II–C–1, and II–C–2, dissenting.

As is always the case when something isn’t about what this president wants to do/get away with, Alito and Thomas are there to LiveJournal their complaints about constitutional rights:

Eight years ago, I warned that this Court’s decision in Carpenter v. United States, 585 U. S. 296 (2018), would produce one of two outcomes. Either the Court would need to clarify Carpenter’s limits in a future decision, or Carpenter would usher in “revolutionary developments” in our doctrine by giving criminal suspects a “protected Fourth Amendment interest in any sensitive personal information about them that is collected and owned by third parties.” Id., at 385 (ALITO, J., dissenting). Today, the Court takes the country down the latter path. In doing so, the Court sheds Carpenter’s self-imposed boundaries and further destabilizes longstanding Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.

To make matters worse, the majority does all this in an advisory opinion. Although today’s decision will send seismic waves through our Fourth Amendment doctrine, not one iota of the majority opinion will affect the outcome of this case. The Court knows this and does not claim otherwise. Indeed, by refusing to review the one question that could have at least theoretically given Chatrie some hope of relief, the Court carefully set the stage for its planned performance: striking a pose as a great champion of privacy in the digital age. I cannot support this irresponsible escapade.

Note the loaded language, where Alito attaches “giving criminal suspects” to his complaint about recognizing the Fourth Amendment needs to be interpreted in conjunction with today’s realities, not left to be a dusty relic that cannot be expanded to cover things that were impossible to envision more than two centuries ago.

Note also that Alito, et al. bitch about the majority not addressing the one thing that might have helped Chatrie: a ruling on the good faith exception itself. And while I have the same complaint, I would have limited myself to asking the court why it didn’t do this, rather than immediately pivot in the very next paragraph to saying the Court should never have taken this case up in the first place.

The Court should not have granted certiorari in this case, and under any faithful application of our precedents.

Right after that Alito immediately says “Fuck Chatrie,” only sentences after (disingenuously) expressing concern for the Court’s unwillingness to tangle with the “one question” that could have given Chatrie “some hope of relief.”

[I[t should now either dismiss this petition or affirm the decision below based on the “good-faith exception” to the exclusionary rule.

I agree with the dissent in terms of the Court’s unwillingness to draw a bright line that will guide future rulings. But I say that because I think this will just allow law enforcement to roll the dice on questionable searches and hope the muddied water will get them forgiven for willfully bypassing the spirit of this ruling, which unfortunately hasn’t carried over to the letter of the ruling.

But these motherfuckers — Justices Alito and Thomas — think the real harm is that the government won’t be able to engage in as much warrantless surveillance as it would like to:

If the Court maintains its unwillingness to engage with such “line-drawing questions,” ante, at 21, n. 9, Carpenter’s warrant requirement might soon come for all forms of digital surveillance.

Take a long walk off a short pier, boys. You are the worst people to be entrusted with standing as a bulwark against government excess. You welcome it. You absolutely crave it when its one of your boys sitting in the Oval Office. You’re supposed to be serving the entire United States, not just those in the ruling class. But you’d clearly rather give the government unlimited power, rather than ensure the only people guaranteed rights — WE, THE PEOPLE — are allowed to use them.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, carpenter v. us, csli, general warrants, geofence warrants, location tracking, okello chatrie, privacy, reverse warrant, scotus

Anthropic is now rolling out Sonnet 5, and it’s almost as good as the Opus range, but it is designed to be cheaper than the company’s flagship model.

In a blog post, Anthropic said Claude Sonnet 5 is “built to be the most agentic Sonnet model yet,” and added that it comes with advanced features, such as the ability to make plans and use tools like browsers and terminals.

Previously, these features were mostly locked to Opus 4.8, but now Sonnet 5 can do almost everything the flagship model can.

According to Anthropic, Sonnet 5 is a big upgrade, especially for those who rely on Claude for coding, research, automation, document work, and other multi-step tasks.

“Sonnet 5 narrows the gap,” Anthropic said, confirming the new model is a step closer to the expensive Opus 4.8 model.

Claude Sonnet 5 is designed for more agentic work

I personally found the Sonnet 5 experience similar to Opus, which means it’s better at creating plans or calling tools, and it’s also surprisingly good at verifying its own work.

In other words, it handles “Can you fix your code?” queries much better, almost closer to Opus.

Anthropic argues that the agentic AI era began with Sonnet-class models, referring to earlier models such as Claude Sonnet 3.5, 3.6, and 3.7. 

However, more recently, the largest gains in agentic capability had been limited to its Opus-class models.

Anthropic no longer wants to limit agentic gains to just the Opus-class or more expensive models. That’s why Sonnet 5 is meant to bring some of those improvements back to the cheaper Sonnet tier.

Anthropic said testers described Sonnet 5 as “much more agentic than its predecessors,” and noted that it can check its own output without always being explicitly asked.

Sonnet 5 gets closer to Opus 4.8, but costs less

As a developer, I love Opus 4.8, and I still strongly believe nothing comes close to Fable, which was recently pulled after orders from the United States government. But Sonnet 5 is one of those models that becomes a better cost-performance option compared with Opus 4.8 or Fable.

I personally pay for the Max subscription, which costs $200, and I often run out of my usage because Opus can use more tokens than Sonnet, and it costs far more. But even as a heavy user, I like to interact with the model to understand my own code, and in those cases, it makes sense to use a cheaper model.

However, Sonnet 4.6 wasn’t a great model at planning or understanding a massive code base. That seems to have changed with Sonnet 5.

In my tests so far, I’ve found Sonnet 5 to be far better than Sonnet 4.6 at following instructions, and also for agentic search.

These performance gains are also justified by benchmarking companies, including BrowseComp and OSWorld-Verified.

Anthropic says users can adjust effort levels between Sonnet 5 and Opus 4.8 depending on whether they want lower cost or maximum performance.

The company says Sonnet 5 is launching with introductory API pricing of $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens through August 31, 2026.

After that, Sonnet 5 will cost $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens.

That is still cheaper than Opus 4.8, which Anthropic lists at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens.

For regular users. Sonnet 5 is available to everyone with Free, Pro, and Max subscriptions.

Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.

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from the maybe-he-should-stop-making-up-history dept

Call me crazy, but I tend to think when Supreme Court Justices make a big sweeping statement in one case, they should actually follow it through with other cases. You may recall, for example, that in the Dobbs case, where the right to an abortion was overturned, Justice Samuel Alito took the ‘history and tradition’ test and made it the centerpiece of modern conservative jurisprudence — using it to wipe out a 50-year-old precedent. Specifically, his reason for overturning Roe v. Wade was that he, a very weak amateur historian, could find no support for such a right in the history at the time the 14th Amendment was passed.

That very bad amateur historian shtick was on display again this week in the (otherwise good) decision in Watson v. the Republican National Committee, regarding whether or not the federal government could invalidate mail-in ballots received after election day. The majority, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and joined by Chief Justice Roberts, along with Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson, pointed out that (duh!) while the federal government sets the date of the presidential election, the states get to determine how those elections are run, including how the ballots are counted, including absentee ballots.

Barrett goes through the history of how absentee and “mail-in” ballots have been used since the Civil War, and for over a century many states have allowed them to be counted, so long as they were post-marked by election day. And democracy has survived without any indication of any problem with those mail-in ballots arriving after election day.

But, to Justice Alito, this is the end of democracy. In a typically overwrought dissent, he claims that this move (which again, many states started doing over a century ago), upsets the entire concept of an election.

The acceptance of these late-arriving ballots effectively postpones the date on which the electorate’s choice is made, and federal law precludes that postponement.

But as Barrett notes in the majority opinion, federal law sets the date of the election, not the date of the vote counting, or the date results get announced. Those are different things, and Alito pretending they’re the same is bizarre for someone who seems to think history should be his guide in legal issues. The majority points out:

The Constitution requires the “Day on which [the electors] shall give their Votes” to be “the same throughout the United States.” Art. II, §1, cl. 4. But it says nothing about the day for receipt, and, of course, 18th-century modes of transmission did not offer same-day delivery. The Constitution therefore envisions a system in which receipt is necessarily divorced from voting, and it sets the crucial, uniform day as the day of voting, leaving receipt to happen down the line. The federal election-day statutes follow the same pattern: They set when the people “shall give their Votes,” ibid., but leave open when those votes must be received.

And here, Alito’s complete ignorance of the history of American elections shines through. All we need to do is go back to the very first presidential election of George Washington, in which election day was set as February 4th, 1789, but Congress waited until April 6th of that year to fully gather and actually count and certify those votes — over a month past the originally planned March 4 inauguration date. The votes were all technically “submitted” — you could loosely say “mailed in” by election day — but it took two months to actually count them (and then over a week for anyone to tell George Washington he’d been elected).

So, I’m sorry, but Alito can spare me with the idea that counting ballots that arrive after election day somehow “postpones the day on which the electorate’s choice is made.” That’s just utter bullshit and wholly inconsistent with the history of this country and the way elections work. The actual election day can be a single day, but the votes can be counted way later, and the results announced even later. Saying that it violates the historical concept of “election day” to allow mail-in ballots that are post-marked by election day makes zero sense at all.

And it’s not like the Washington situation was a one-off of a young country trying to sort out its presidential election system. Four elections later, in the infamous 1800 presidential battle between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, the US had to wait until months later when the matter went to the House to resolve (perhaps Alito should rewatch the musical Hamilton, which dramatizes this moment).

Or the elections of John Quincy Adams, which was also sent to the House to decide long after election day. Or the infamous Hayes-Tilden fight in 1876, where many of the votes were disputed and it took a specific (and possibly corrupt) “Electoral Commission” to sort things out and give the election to Hayes just days before the inauguration was set to take place.

No matter how you look at it: the US has a long “history and tradition” of voting on election day, and then (sometimes) taking a great long while to sort out who actually won, including waiting to count all the ballots. Mail-in ballots that are post-marked by election day and counted later are perfectly within that tradition, no matter what Alito has to say.

Alito’s entire jurisprudential brand is built on the idea that history and tradition should constrain what courts can do. He made that the centerpiece of Dobbs. But when that same history turns around and bites him — when it turns out the United States has a long, consistent tradition of counting ballots well after election day — suddenly history doesn’t matter anymore. What matters, apparently, is whether the outcome suits the narrative. That’s Alito retrofitting a legal standard to reach an outcome he desires. It should be seen as an embarrassment for a Supreme Court Justice to do so, but as we’ve all learned, Alito has zero shame in cooking up pretenses to reach his desired outcome.

Filed Under: absentee ballots, amy coney barrett, counting ballots, election day, history, missisippi, samuel alito

After a closer look at some new data, Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro modem situation may not be cut-and-dried. Here’s what the latest leaks say is in store for cellular connectivity, the A20 chip, and possible camera improvements.

On June 25, AppleInsider exclusively revealed that iPhone 18 Pro schematics and documents were among the more than 630GB of files taken from Tata in a cyberattack.

An initial analysis of the leaked documentation uncovered Apple’s plans to use its proprietary C2 modem in the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. Additional details have since come to light, thanks to new research conducted by us and an analyst we’ve worked with in the past.

Qualcomm chip in the U.S. and Apple C2 elsewhere

Our findings suggest Apple may implement a region-based modem approach and a split release, with some iPhone 18 Pro models using the C2 chip and others a Qualcomm modem.

While all models of the iPhone Air use an Apple-designed mode, that may not be the case with the iPhone 18 Pro.

For the U.S. variant of the iPhone 18 Pro, which will feature mmWave compatibility, Apple seemingly plans to use Qualcomm modem hardware.

Multiple Qualcomm components, including the SDX80M, SDR875, QDM8771, QDM8720, PMK75, PMX75, and QET7100A, are referenced in a bill of materials related to the iPhone 18 Pro model Apple plans to sell in the United States.

As for the iPhone 18 models which will be sold elsewhere, Tata documentation suggests these configurations will use Apple’s proprietary C2 modem. While this approach may sound unusual, there is at least one possible explanation.

Apple’s current in-house modems, the C1 and the C1X, do not support 5G mmWave, and it looks as though the C2 will continue this trend. Until Apple develops a modem compatible with mmWave, it looks as though the company will offer mmWave support to iPhone 18 Pro users by using Qualcomm hardware.

With the iPhone 17 range, Apple already offers a mixed bag in terms of cellular hardware. The iPhone Air and iPhone 17e use Apple-designed modems, while the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max use Qualcomm hardware.

This split-release strategy will likely become more complex, as the iPhone 18 Pro now factors region into the equation. iPhone 18 Pro board schematics reinforce this idea, as two separate part numbers and logic board variants exist.

820-04340-06 corresponds to the iPhone 18 Pro logic board with a mmWave connector and Qualcomm modem hardware. The non-mmWave iPhone 18 Pro logic board, meanwhile, bears the part number 820-04305-06.

With Apple’s current iPhone 17 lineup, some cellular features already vary by region.

iPhone models sold in mainland China, for instance, do not use eSIM, instead offering support for two physical SIM cards. That may change in the near future, as Tata’s documentation suggests iPhone 18 Pro models sold in China might gain eSIM support.

“No more dual PSIM starting in V64 P2,” reads a region-based configuration list for the iPhone 18 Pro Max, up to the Proto2 stage of development. The document outright mentions eSIM and physical SIM support for a configuration labeled CN, more than likely referring to mainland China.

A20 Pro chip may use WMCM packaging

As AppleInsider originally pointed out, among the files leaked from Tata were documents related to the upcoming A20 Pro chip, codenamed Borneo.

Further analysis of the more than 630GB worth of files has revealed new details about the A20 Pro system-on-chip. The documentation appears to suggest Apple will use a WMCM-style package for the A20 Pro chip, with the AP and memory side-by-side, unlike in the standard InFO-PoP packaging.

WMCM is short for Wafer-Level Multi-Chip Module, while InFo-PoP stands for Integrated Fan-Out Package-on-Package. Both are chip packaging processes, but the two are quite different.

With InFo, Apple uses a single die housing the CPU, GPU, and the Neural Engine, and limited memory configurations. Non-CPU components, like the memory, are added to the chip package rather than being an external component.

By using WMCM, meanwhile, Apple could have separate dies for the CPU, the GPU, and the Neural Engine. This means the company might be able to better mix and match the combinations of each, increasing the number of different chip configurations available to consumers.

Rumors of Apple using WMCM date back to at least August 2025. Tata’s files appear to corroborate these claims, at least regarding the A20 Pro chip.

Additionally, some of the iPhone 18 Pro board schematics suggest the system-on-chip will move closer to the outer edge of the dual-layer board. The storage of the device will seemingly sit deeper between the two board layers, though.

This design decision could ultimately impact thermal performance and repairability, though the exact impact remains to be seen.

iPhone 18 Pro may get upgraded rear camera

Diagnostic data, which compares the iPhone 17 Pro to the iPhone 18 Pro, reveal that the ID of the Wide sensor has changed from 0x903 to 0x905. This more than likely means the main rear camera of the iPhone 18 Pro is changing.

The iPhone 18 Pro might offer an upgraded rear wide camera.

To be more specific, the wide or main camera of the iPhone 17 Pro uses the Sony IMX-903 image sensor. Our findings would thus suggest that the iPhone 18 Pro will use the Sony IMX-905, a new custom-made image sensor.

As for what the upgrade itself might entail, rumors from October 2025, February 2026, and April 2026 claim the iPhone 18 Pro will get a rear camera with a variable aperture. If implemented, a variable aperture would reduce the need for computational photography to accomplish bokeh effects.

Though the documentation taken from Tata reveals a multitude of information about the upcoming iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, the documents themselves detail prototype hardware in various stages of development. It’s not yet clear if these are final schematics, or interim ones.

from the well-that’s-a-choice dept

It should be obvious at this point that JD Vance is a purely political creature. There’s no virtue to find in there, no moral stances firmly taken, nor anything resembling a true political ideology. There is only the attainment and retention of more and more power. You need look no further than Vance’s prior status as a self-affirmed “never Trumper” that compared the current president to Hitler, only to flip-flop completely and become both Trump’s greatest defender and running mate. He wants to be president, of course, and will take whatever action or stance he thinks gives him the best chance to sit behind the Resolute Desk.

Now, I’m not particularly keen on giving free political advice to someone so loathsome, but I don’t think I’m breaking new ground when I say it’s not a great idea for Vance to brag about how this administration has so perfectly neutered the free press that they could do a bunch of Watergates and it wouldn’t be a major issue for them.

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday said the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon would have been a blip in today’s news cycle, and he drew parallels between Nixon and President Donald Trump — arguing that both were targeted by “deep state” forces.

“If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy,” Vance said.

He went on: “If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration.”

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On this, Vance is sadly correct on multiple fronts, while incorrect on others. A Watergate scandal today probably wouldn’t get as much attention as it did in the 70s, in large part due to the bifurcation of our news media into one traditional media wing and one plain propaganda wing for the proverbial right. But that’s not a good thing. It’s bragging about the culmination of a long term plan to subjugate the press being that you can pull off wild scandals and get away with it. And if you need proof of that, you need only remember that January 6th happened, Donald Trump attempted to pull off a coup to retain the presidency over the clear will of the voters, and then managed to get elected to office again.

Vance’s comparison of Trump to Nixon is also quite apropos, though it’s quite incredible to see him willing to make it voluntarily. Once again, if you’re making a list of the worst political scandals in United States history, Watergate and January 6th are 1 and 1a, with the only argument being in which order you place them.

But it’s what he gets wrong about Watergate that explains why Vance somehow thinks these are good words to say out loud. The Nixon resignation from office was most certainly not the work of some “deep state.” Quite the opposite, in fact. Nixon used what might be called the deep state, or at least government intelligence services and the Justice Department, to attempt to evade accountability for breaking into the DNC headquarters and bugging them. He was caught attempting to hide and destroy evidence of his involvement in this crime. He’s on tape ordering an end to an investigation into his own reelection campaign. He resigned instead of being impeached. None of the above is a matter of debate.

Which is why, when Vance goes even further and happily compares himself to Nixon, I suggest we take him at his word.

Vance then noted his own similarities with Nixon.

“Young senator, vice president, writes some bestselling books, is hated by the media,” he said. “It kind of sounds like JD Vance. I’ve always liked Richard Nixon.”

Nixon was not a perfectly terrible president, but nobody serious wants to compare themselves to Mussolini over the apocryphal claims that he kept the trains running on time. Until the current president, Nixon was clearly the most disgraced American president ever. Again, I don’t really think that is a matter for debate.

What this smells like instead is Vance attempting to will into existence the “renaissance” he claims Nixon’s legacy is undergoing at the moment. I have not heard of this renaissance until Vance decided to talk about it. Normalizing a scandal-plagued president must surely serve some purpose, but I can already see campaign ads in a few years asking the public if they really want another Nixon president, since that was Vance claims to be.

These are not the most talented people, it is clear. I can’t possibly see the percentage for Vance in trying to frame himself as a modern day Nixon. But I suppose there is some honesty in the claim, for what it’s worth.

Filed Under: jd vance, politics, richard nixon, scandals

Anthropic is restoring full access to Claude Fable 5 starting tomorrow, weeks after a US government directive forced the company to suspend the model for all users. The government order arrived on June 12 and required Anthropic to block foreign nationals from using Fable 5 and its more capable Mythos 5 model. Since the rule took effect immediately and Anthropic had no way to verify a user’s nationality in real time, the company suspended both models entirely rather than risk a violation.

What triggered the shutdown

The restrictions followed a report from Amazon researchers, who found a way to prompt Fable 5 into identifying software vulnerabilities its safeguards were designed to block. In one instance, the model generated code showing how a flaw could be exploited.

Anthropic says it later confirmed that several less capable models, including Opus 4.8 and competing models, could produce similar results, which suggests the bypass didn’t hinge on capabilities unique to Fable 5.

Return terms and new safeguards

Fable 5 will be available globally starting July 1 to users on the Claude Platform, Claude.ai, Claude Code, and Claude Cowork. Pro, Max, Team, and select Enterprise plans will get the model included for up to half their weekly usage limits through July 7, after which usage will draw from credits. Access on AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Foundry will follow.

Mythos 5 already returned earlier for a limited set of approved US organizations, and Anthropic says it has received further government clearance to expand that access on June 26. The company has revealed that it built a new safety classifier that blocks the flagged technique in more than 99 percent of cases and is working with Amazon, Microsoft, and Google on a shared industry standard for grading the severity of AI jailbreaks going forward.

Apple CEO Tim Cook will soon be Executive Chairman and handle government interactions, but that isn’t stopping him from taking a phone call today with a European Commission head over Apple AI in the EU.

WWDC 2026 was focused on system optimization, child safety, and the new Apple Foundation Models. Apple Users in the EU were cut off completely from that last third of the keynote, as those features can’t launch in the region as they exist today.

According to a report from The Financial Times, first shared by 9to5Mac, Apple CEO Tim Cook had a virtual meeting with Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice President of the European Commission, which reportedly was “constructive.” People familiar with the exchange said that the conversation centered around how Apple might launch its revamped AI tools in the EU without violating the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

For anyone paying attention, such a phone call was inevitable. It could be months or years of back and forth before Apple and the EU find a compromise here.

What’s actually interesting here is Tim Cook himself being on the other end of the phone. He’s still CEO, but will be stepping down on September 1 to take over as Executive Chairman with John Ternus taking on the CEO role.

Normally, such things would have involved Eddy Cue or a similar senior executive. It seems that Cook is taking on his role as a government liaison sooner than expected.

Of course, Cook has already acted as a buffer between the United States administration and Apple in the past. That role is expanding with his position as Executive Chairman.

It isn’t clear who might budge first in these negotiations. The problem is that Apple likely won’t be materially affected by this delayed launch and the EU seems rather stubborn in its demands.

In the end, it is the Apple customers in the EU that lose the most.