Photo credit: Max_Tech Dummy units of the iPhone 18 Pro series and a super-sleek new foldable Ultra model have leaked, giving people a good idea of what Apple has in store for the September debut. Case makers received these prototypes based on the final CAD files, thus they are quite similar to the production hardware in terms of shapes, sizes, layout, and so on. Owners of current phones will notice some little but important changes rather than a complete redesign, with one exception that stands out.
Starting with the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, both retain the general look and feel of their predecessors, as well as the elegant titanium frames and flat edges. The Pro version is slightly larger in two dimensions, 0.36 mm taller and 0.39 mm broader than the iPhone 17 Pro, but the thickness remains same. Old cases will still fit nicely, however rubber ones may feel a little loose. The Pro Max follows a similar path, but adds extra bulk where it counts most. The camera area is now 11.54 mm thick, up from 11.23 mm on the previous Max, and the total thickness including those lenses is 13.77 mm, compared to 12.92 mm previously. That extra stuff adds 7 grams to the weight, bringing it to 240 grams, and users who use their phones for extended periods of time will notice the difference in their hands.
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Every single extra millimeter is driven by camera hardware. The rear lenses on the Pro models are noticeably larger than those on the iPhone 17 series, all lined up in the same old square configuration but raised somewhat to accommodate the larger glass pieces. The camera island on the Pro Max appears to be a little more hefty from the side, but this is a purposeful choice to give us a sneak peak at better optics without affecting the phone’s overall design. Buttons and ports are where you’d expect them to be, and the front display notch has dropped in width, allowing for more screen real estate. These dummy models show no substantial changes in materials or colors, so we get the same polished titanium look and glass back.
All eyes are now on the iPhone Ultra mockup, which is Apple’s first attempt at a foldable phone, with a book-style design that folds up like a small little notebook. When closed, it is only 11 mm thick, which is quite slim and feels solid in the hand. The outer screen is about 5.5 inches, which isn’t bad for something that’s supposed to be incredibly portable, and the interior display is 7.8 inches with an aspect ratio similar to a tiny tablet. When folded up, it’s a slim 71 mm tall, with a width roughly equal to an iPhone 17 Pro Max turned on its side, which is really cool given the new hinge.
Material choices are consistent with the Pro series, with polished titanium on the frame, while the Ultra takes a different approach. The typical unibody construction has been abandoned in favor of the fold. A raised part on the back panel holds the two rear cameras, which are perfectly arranged to keep the design from feeling cluttered or unbalanced. On the right side, you’ll find a power button that also serves as a Touch ID sensor for secure, one-touch unlocking, as well as a dedicated camera button that has been intelligently placed so that you can easily access it with one hand. The volume controls are located at the top edge, same as they are on smaller tablets. Wireless charging is still a possibility, but you must purchase a case that supports it because there isn’t enough space inside for the standard built-in magnets. [Source]
As part of the effort to push Large Language Model (LLM) ‘AI’ into more and more places, Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) has been adopted as the standard to connect LLMs with various external tools and systems in a client-server model. A light oversight with the architecture of this protocol is that remote command execution (RCE) of arbitrary commands is effectively an essential part of its design, as covered in a recent article by [OX Security].
The details of this flaw are found in a detailed breakdown article, which applies to all implementations regardless of the programming language. Essentially the StdioServerParameters that are passed to the remote server to create a new local instance on said server can contain any command and arguments, which are executed in a server-side shell.
Essentially the issue is a lack of input sanitization, which is only the most common source of exploited CVEs. Across multiple real-world exploitation attempts on the software of LettaAI, LangFlow, Flowise and Windsurf it was possible to perform RCEs or perform local RCE in the case of the Windsurf IDE. Although Flowise had implemented some input sanitization by limiting allowed commands and the stripping of special characters, this was bypassed by using standard flags of the npx command.
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After contacting Anthropic to inform them of these issues with MCP, the researchers were told that there was no design flaw and essentially had a ‘no-fix, works as designed’ hurled at them. According to Anthropic it’s the responsibility of the developer to perform input sanitization, which is interesting since they provide a range of implementations.
Over 10,000 Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) instances exposed online are vulnerable to ongoing attacks exploiting a cross-site scripting (XSS) security flaw, according to nonprofit security organization Shadowserver.
Zimbra is a popular email and collaboration software suite used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, including hundreds of government agencies and thousands of businesses.
The vulnerability (tracked as CVE-2025-48700) affects ZCS 8.8.15, 9.0, 10.0, and 10.1 and can allow unauthenticated attackers to access sensitive information after executing arbitrary JavaScript within the user’s session.
Synacor released security patches to address the flaw in June 2025, when it warned that CVE-2025-48700 exploits require no user interaction and can be triggered when a user views a maliciously crafted email message in the Zimbra Classic UI.
The U.S. cybersecurity agency also ordered Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to secure their Zimbra servers within three days, by April 23.
On Friday, Internet security watchdog Shadowserver also warned that over 10,500 Zimbra servers exposed online remain unpatched, most of them in Asia (3,794) and Europe (3,793).
This phishing campaign (codenamed Operation GhostMail by security researchers at Seqrite Labs) also targeted the Ukrainian State Hydrology Agency (a critical infrastructure entity under the Ministry of Infrastructure that provides navigational, maritime, and hydrographic support) and delivered an obfuscated JavaScript payload when recipients opened the malicious emails in vulnerable Zimbra webmail sessions.
“The phishing email has no malicious attachments, no suspicious links, no macros. The entire attack chain lives inside the HTML body of a single email, there are no malicious attachments,” Seqrite Labs said at the time.
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Zimbra flaws are frequently exploited in attacks and have been used to breach thousands of vulnerable email servers in recent years.
For instance, Russian Winter Vivern cyberespies used another reflected XSS exploit to breach Zimbra webmail portals in February 2023 and steal emails sent and received by NATO-aligned organizations and individuals, including military personnel, government officials, and diplomats.
More recently, in October 2024, U.S. and U.K. cyber agencies warned that APT29 (a.k.a. Cozy Bear, Midnight Blizzard) hackers linked to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) were targeting vulnerable Zimbra servers “at a mass scale,” exploiting a security issue that had been previously abused to steal email account credentials.
AI chained four zero-days into one exploit that bypassed both renderer and OS sandboxes. A wave of new exploits is coming.
At the Autonomous Validation Summit (May 12 & 14), see how autonomous, context-rich validation finds what’s exploitable, proves controls hold, and closes the remediation loop.
Samsung’s memory business is central to the current upswing in the chip market. Alongside SK Hynix and Micron, the company is one of the three major producers of DRAM and high-bandwidth memory (HBM). These chips are now critical for AI training and inference systems, where memory bandwidth has become as… Read Entire Article Source link
Editor’s Note: Nick Hanauer is a Seattle entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and founder of Civic Ventures. He was an early investor in Amazon and is co-founder of Second Avenue Partners. This piece is a reply to Chris DeVore’s “Make Democracy Capitalist Again.”
Nick Hanauer. (Civic Ventures Photo)
Chris DeVore and I have been acquainted a long time. We move in the same Seattle circles — investors, founders, civic types who’ve spent careers betting on entrepreneurs. So when he published his GeekWire piece last week arguing that Democrats have lost their minds and declared capitalism the enemy, I read it carefully. Chris is a thoughtful person, and his argument deserves a serious response.
I’ll first acknowledge that I agree with some of Chris’s critiques of the Democratic Party. Many have indeed lost their way, in this state and nationally. Recent efforts to make Washington the least attractive place in the country for wealthy citizens are producing a stampede to other states — virtually every wealthy friend I have has either left or is planning to. It’s a catastrophe.
The most recent legislation to tax income above one million dollars is sensible on its own; it’s the combination of everything piled on top that makes our state so unattractive. Making the total tax burden here 5–10 times the alternatives isn’t progressivism; it’s stupidity.
But I don’t agree with Chris’s basic analysis. He is defending something real, with the wrong argument, in a way that obscures the actual problem we face. The reason he can’t quite see it is the reason many of our friends can’t — we’ve spent our adult lives inside a paradigm so dominant it feels like the weather.
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There is no such thing as “capitalism”
Chris treats capitalism as a single thing. A motive force. A powerplant. Something you either embrace or demonize.
But there is no such thing as capitalism in the singular. There are many capitalisms. The capitalism of 1880s America — child labor, company towns, no weekends — was capitalism. The capitalism of 1955 America — 35% union density, 91% top marginal tax rates, the GI Bill building the largest middle class in human history, GDP growth rates double what they are today — was also capitalism. Denmark is capitalist. Singapore is capitalist. The neoliberal version we have run in America since roughly 1975, delivering four decades of stagnant wages for most workers while routing nearly all productivity gains to the top, is also capitalism.
These systems produce radically different outcomes — in wages, mobility, life expectancy, civic trust, democratic stability. The question is never “capitalism, yes or no.” The only question that has ever mattered is: which capitalism, designed how, for whose benefit?
Once you see that, Chris’s piece stops being a defense of an embattled principle and becomes something much harder to defend: a defense of the particular neoliberal form of capitalism we happen to have. The rules we happen to have written. The distribution we happen to be producing. As if this version were synonymous with the American project itself. It isn’t. And the conflation is the central error of his argument.
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What his piece can’t see
Read Chris’s 1,500 words and notice what isn’t there. The word “inequality” does not appear. Not once. “Wages” does not appear. “Workers” appears once — as a count of people who receive paychecks from founders, never as economic actors in their own right. Monopoly power, corporate concentration, the middle class, housing affordability, life expectancy — none of it.
In Chris’s America, there are founders, consumers, taxpayers, and a state that either facilitates or confiscates. That’s the whole cast.
This isn’t an oversight. It is a worldview — the one producing the carnage Chris seems unable to perceive. When the bottom 90% of a country spends half a century watching productivity double while their wages stagnate, it is not “populist” for them to notice. It is arithmetic.
Since 1975, roughly $79 trillion has been redistributed upward from the bottom 90% to the top 10% — not through theft, but through the steady accumulation of rules written to favor capital over labor, shareholders over workers, assets over wages. If productivity and wages had stayed linked the way they did from 1945 to 1975, the median American household would be earning $120,000 a year today instead of $75,000. In 1985 it took one worker 39.7 weeks of work to pay for the basics of a middle-class life. By 2022 it took 62 weeks.
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American life expectancy is declining — the first sustained decline in a developed nation in a century. Deaths of despair have killed more Americans in the past decade than died in every war we have fought. A generation of young people cannot afford to buy a home.
The small-business owners Chris invokes as victims of “confiscatory taxation” are being crushed — not by taxes, but by monopoly concentration across every sector from retail to healthcare to agriculture, and by a customer base that cannot afford to spend.
Consider our “capitalist” healthcare system — the most market-driven in the developed world. We spend roughly twice as much per person as every other advanced country and get worse outcomes by nearly every measure: shorter lives, higher infant and maternal mortality, more preventable deaths. Medical bills are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in America, a phenomenon that does not exist in any peer nation. If markets were the self-regulating miracle Chris describes, this would be impossible. It is the predictable result of a system designed to extract rents rather than deliver care.
Or consider time itself. American workers get less paid vacation, parental leave, and sick leave than workers in any other rich country. A French worker averages 30 days of paid vacation, a German 28, an American roughly 10, and a quarter of us get none. We built an economy in which labor has almost no leverage and capital has almost all of it. The differentials in GDP per capita that many point to as proof the American system works better can almost entirely be accounted for by this.
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None of this happened by accident. Starting in the 1970s, a particular idea took over American business and policy: that the sole purpose of a corporation is to maximize returns to shareholders. Milton Friedman wrote it down. Jack Welch operationalized it. Business schools taught it for 50 years.
And it was a scam — a piece of ideology, dressed up as economic science, that licensed the systematic transfer of wealth from workers, customers, and communities to a narrow class of shareholders and executives. It is the reason insulin tripled in price, and the reason a company can lay off ten thousand workers and see its stock rise the same afternoon. It is not capitalism working. It is a specific ideological distortion of capitalism most of the developed world never adopted.
The defining feature of the paradigm we’ve been operating in for fifty years is not that it is cruel. It is that it is blind. When a paradigm cannot see the crisis, it blames the people pointing at it.
The cycle of renewal is the case for a different capitalism
The single strongest data point in Chris’s piece — the 45 of the top 100 companies that didn’t exist 50 years ago — is actually the best evidence against his argument. Amazon was built on internet infrastructure funded by DARPA. Google’s search algorithm was funded by NSF. The iPhone is a stack of publicly-funded research: GPS, touchscreen, lithium-ion batteries, Siri. Moderna’s mRNA vaccine rested on decades of NIH funding. The AI revolution was built on transformer research funded by federal grants.
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The dynamism Chris celebrates is not capitalism in the abstract. It is the output of a specific mixed economy — a partnership between state capacity and private enterprise that we spent eighty years building and the last forty dismantling. His piece is, without quite realizing it, an argument for the system he imagines he’s defending against.
And about that other administration
Something else worth naming: Chris’s defense of free markets, written in 2026 and aimed at Democrats, contains not a single mention of the administration currently in power.
By any definition Chris himself would recognize, the Trump administration is running the least free-market, most state-interventionist economic regime in a generation. It imposes tariffs — which are taxes, however much the White House insists otherwise — at levels not seen since the 1930s, by executive fiat rather than legislation. It demands direct equity stakes in private companies as the price of regulatory approval. It plays open favorites, rewarding loyalists and punishing disfavored firms with investigations. It governs by slogan and grievance rather than rule of law. If a Democratic administration were doing a tenth of this, Chris would be writing a very different op-ed.
And yet much of the tech world — our world — has embraced it, with founders cheering moves from Trump they would have denounced from a Democrat. The permission structure is frustration with Democrats over taxes, regulation, and cultural politics. I share some of that frustration.
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But frustration is not a principle, and the administration our peers have lined up behind is not capitalist in any meaningful sense. It is crony state capitalism — the kind that has hollowed out economies from Argentina to Russia to Hungary, run by people who have figured out that the fastest way to get rich is to be close to power. You cannot write a credible defense of free markets in 2026 without naming the regime dismantling them in real time.
The democracy problem
Chris titled his piece “Make Democracy Capitalist Again.” But the relationship is exactly backward. The threat to American democracy today comes from fifty years of an economic system that has made a small number of people vastly richer every year while the majority of Americans have grown relatively poorer, less secure, and less hopeful. No democracy in history has survived that arrangement indefinitely.
When economic gains flow overwhelmingly to a narrow elite for long enough, the political system eventually follows the money — through campaign finance, lobbying, regulatory capture, media ownership. Ordinary citizens watch their lives deteriorate while the rules keep getting written for someone else. They lose faith in institutions. They look for a strongman.
Trumpism is not the cause of our democratic crisis. It is the symptom of an economic order that has been hollowing out democratic legitimacy for forty years. The authoritarian turn we are living through is what happens when you run neoliberalism long enough.
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When Chris argues that the path back to a healthy democracy runs through recommitting to capitalism, he has the causation inverted. The capitalism we have been running is what broke the democracy. You cannot have a functioning democracy and a runaway oligarchy at the same time. Eventually, you have to choose.
To Chris, and to people like us
The people working hardest to save American capitalism right now are not the ones defending it as-is. They are the ones willing to change it. The longer the version of capitalism we have chosen keeps failing the majority of our fellow citizens, the more likely it becomes that they will eventually decide to throw capitalism out altogether.
That is the lesson of every historical moment like ours — the 1890s, the 1930s, the late 1960s. When a system stops delivering for most people, most people stop defending it. And what comes next is rarely anything the people at the top of the current system would prefer.
The quicker people of good faith — investors, founders, civic leaders, Democrats and Republicans who genuinely believe in markets and in America — recognize that the form of capitalism we’ve chosen isn’t working for the majority of our fellow citizens and get serious about changing it, the less likely it becomes that those citizens will conclude capitalism itself is the problem.
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That is the actual choice. Not capitalism versus demonization. Reform now, or reckoning later. I’d rather do the reform. I think, if he thinks about it, Chris would too.
General Motors launched the first 6.6L Duramax V8, known among diesel engine enthusiasts as the LB7, in 2001 for its heavy-duty pickup trucks. The LB7 Duramax engine design resulted from a collaboration between GM and Isuzu. The design featured first-of-a-kind diesel engine innovations, such as aluminum cylinder heads and common-rail fuel injection (at least among American-made diesel engines for pickup trucks.
In 2001, GM’s 6.6-liter Duramax produced 300 horsepower and 520 pound-feet of torque. While those numbers don’t stack up well against modern HD pickup diesel engines, the LB7’s power was a significant improvement over Ford’s 7.3-liter Power Stroke and the Cummins used by Chrysler in 2001. The Duramax diesel improved over its six generations, gaining more power with each iteration.
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The current Duramax generation, a $9,990 engine option for 2026 known as the L5P, is among the best for the 6.6 Duramax. The L5P Duramax debuted in 2017 with 445 horsepower and 910 lb-ft of torque, but refinements over the years have increased its output to 470 horsepower and 975 lb-ft of torque. Those specs are impressive, especially when compared to 2001 diesel engine specs. However, Ford and Cummins have improved their diesel engines, ultimately surpassing the Duramax diesel’s output.
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The 6.7L Cummins produces more torque than the 6.6L Duramax
A comparison between the 6.6 Duramax and 6.7 Cummins diesel engines concludes that the inline-six-cylinder Cummins produces 100 lb-ft more torque. While defenders of the popular Duramax will quickly point out that the GM diesel engine makes 40 more horsepower than Ram’s diesel, when it comes to providing the most diesel engine power, torque is a key characteristic.
The 6.7 Cummins is available in Ram pickup trucks as well as the chassis cab configuration popular with commercial truck applications. The current High-Output (HO) version of the fifth-generation Cummins 6.7L engine, available as a $12,995 upgrade for some consumer-grade Ram HD pickup models, produces 430 horsepower and 1,075 lb-ft of torque.
When the 6.7 Cummins was introduced in 2007 as the 5.9 Cummins’ replacement, its output was rated at 350 horsepower and 650 lb-ft of torque. Cummins improved the design over the years, incrementally increasing the 6.7’s horsepower with each passing generation while making bigger gains in torque output.
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Ford’s standard output 6.7 Power Stroke is more powerful than the 6.6 Duramax
Ford introduced its 6.7 Power Stroke V8 diesel engine in 2011. That first-generation 6.7, ending with the 2014 model year, ranks among the worst years for the 6.7 Power Stroke engine. Second- and third-generation 6.7 Power Strokes, 2015 to 2019 and 2020 to present, respectively, are generally considered more reliable.
The standard output 6.7L Ford Power Stroke turbo diesel is an $11,495 option for most Super Duty pickups and standard issue for the F-450 and some commercial-grade Super Duty trucks. The latest iteration, available in 2026 Super Duty pickups, produces 475 horsepower and 1,050 lb-ft of torque.
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That’s a sizable improvement over the first-generation 2011 6.7 Power Stroke’s 400 horsepower and 800 lb-ft of torque. Ultimately, the standard-output 2026 6.7 Power Stroke makes only five more horsepower than the 6.6 Duramax, but its additional 75 lb-ft of torque is a notable metric to consider.
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Ford’s High Output 6.7 Power Stroke diesel engine is even more powerful
Ford’s High Output (HO) 6.7 Power Stroke V8 has been the most powerful diesel engine available for consumer-grade heavy-duty pickup trucks since 2023. There are a few differences between the standard and high-output 6.7 Power Strokes, but the power output of the HO 6.7 is substantially higher.
Specifically, the HO 6.7 Power Stroke makes 500 horsepower and 1,200 lb-ft of torque. That gives the HO engine a 25-horsepower and 150 lb-ft of torque advantage over its standard-output stablemate. Compared to the 6.6 Duramax, the HO Power Stroke adds 30 horsepower and 225 lb-ft of torque.
While selecting the optional standard output 6.7 Power Stroke adds $11,495 to the price of 2026 Super Duty pickups, the HO Power Stroke diesel option adds $13,495. Both versions of the 6.7 Power Stroke are available on all Super Duty pickup models; however, the HO 6.7 is required equipment for package options such as the Platinum Plus, Tremor Off-Road, F-250 High Capacity Axle Upgrade, and F-450 High Capacity Gooseneck Tow Package.
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Methodology
In our search for diesel engines with more power than the 6.6-liter Duramax diesel engine used by General Motors, we consulted published specifications and reputable reviews of potentially capable engines. While we found some very powerful units used in large commercial trucks and semi-trucks, we didn’t include them, as comparing commercial big-rigs to consumer pickups is an unfair matchup.
Although the 6.6 Duramax sits at the bottom of the power rankings for diesel-powered pickup trucks, GM loyalists will surely point out that there’s more to owning a diesel pickup than raw power. We won’t dive into the details of the Duramax’s favorable attributes here, leaving that discussion for another time, but we’ll quickly point out that it is the lowest-cost diesel engine option among the four we’ve presented.
Amazon just scored a major coup with Meta thanks, once again, to Amazon’s own homegrown chips. Meta has signed a deal to use millions of AWS Graviton chips to power its growing AI needs, Amazon announced Friday.
Note that the AWS Graviton is an ARM-based CPU, (a central processing unit, the chip that handles general computing tasks) not a GPU (a graphical processing unit).
While GPUs remain the chip of choice for training large models, once those models are trained, AI agents built on top of them are causing a shift in the type of chip is needed. Agents create compute-intensive workloads like real-time reasoning, writing code, search, and the the coordination involved in managing agents through multi-step tasks. AWS’s latest version of Graviton was designed specifically to handle AI-related compute needs, the company says.
This deal brings more of Meta’s cash back to AWS instead of competitors like Google Cloud. Last August, Meta signed a six year, $10 billion deal with Google Cloud, though Meta had, until then, primarily been an AWS customer that also used Microsoft Azure.
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We couldn’t help but notice that AWS timed the announcement of this deal right as the Google Cloud Next conference wrapped up, like a virtual smirk at its cloud rival. Google, of course, also makes its own custom AI chips and announced new versions of them at the show.
True, Amazon makes its own AI GPU as well: the Trainium, which, despite its name, is used for both training and inference — the stage that happens after a model is trained, when it’s actively processing prompts.
But Anthropic had already swooped in with a deal announced earlier this month that commandeered many of those chips for years to come. The Claude maker agreed to spend $100 billion over 10 years to run its workloads on AWS — with a particular focus on Trainium — while Amazon agreed to invest another $5 billion (bringing its total to $13 billion of investment) into Anthropic in return.
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San Francisco, CA | October 13-15, 2026
Ultimately, the Meta deal is allowing Amazon to showcase a huge AI customer as a proving point for its homegrown CPUs. These are chips that compete with Nvidia’s new Vera CPU, which is also ARM-based and designed to handle AI agentic workloads. The difference, of course, is that Nvidia sells its chips and AI systems to enterprises and cloud providers (including AWS). AWS only sells access to its chips through its cloud service.
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Earlier this month Amazon CEO Andy Jassy took aim at Nvidia and Intel in his annual shareholder letter, saying that enterprises want better price-performance ratios for AI, and that he intends to win deals on that basis. This also means the pressure couldn’t be higher on Amazon’s internal chip building team to deliver, a team that we visited last month in an exclusive tour of their lab.
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JP Morgan & Chase, BlackRock, DST Global and Arch Venture Partners have reportedly invested in the lab.
Jeff Bezos’s physical AI lab Project Prometheus has closed a $10bn funding round at a valuation of around $38bn, Bloomberg has confirmed.
A sources has told the publication that JP Morgan & Chase, BlackRock, DST Global and Arch Venture Partners are among those participating in the round. Speculation around the closure of the round was reported earlier this week by the Financial Times (FT).
The company builds AI that assists engineering and manufacturing in a number of sectors, including in computers, aerospace and automobiles.
The lab reportedly amassed an initial $6.2bn in November, partly from Bezos himself. Although demand has further extended the raise, FT reported.
The co-founders are also reportedly leading efforts to raise “tens of billions of dollars or more” for a holding company to acquire parts of other companies likely to be disrupted by AI.
Meanwhile, Prometheus also held talks with sovereign investment funds, including from Singapore and Gulf nations. Additionally, it plans to collect stakes in companies across its target sectors for AI training data.
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Prometheus had already hired around 100 employees across San Francisco, London and Zurich by November last year, including researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Meta. FT sources said that the company is hiring people with experience “building out massive infrastructure projects”.
I’m separating the Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones (yes, that’s the full name) because, while it’s still a stick vacuum, its design is so different that it stands apart from any other stick vacuum I’ve tried.
The primary difference is that the motor, dustbin, and battery are all contained in the slim handle. No more bulky, top-heavy build that these cordless vacuums are known for. The body and feel remind me of using a Swiffer, but it’s a vacuum instead of just a slapdash mop. The PencilVac uses Dyson’s Hyperdymium motor—the same one that’s usually in the brand’s hair tools—and has a tiny 0.08-liter dustbin, but compacts the debris to make that small amount of space last. It also has a short battery life of only 30 minutes.
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It has much lower power than the other vacuums in Dyson’s lineup and can only be used on hard floors. It has four fluffy rollers, aptly named Fluffycones, on the cleaner head, and they’re designed to keep hair from getting tangled. It works, but instead of getting tangled, the vacuum sometimes balled up my hair and spat it back out instead of sending it into the dustbin. It was great for quick cleans for things like litter, dust, and cereal, but it’s a high price to pay for something that’s more limited than cheaper vacuums.
Still, I think there’s a use case here, especially from an accessibility perspective. This is a good option for households where someone might not be strong enough or have the mobility to easily push and hold up a top-heavy stick vacuum, and the charging base makes it easy to quickly store and grab without putting it down or bending over. The compact size is also an argument for small homes, and it did fit into smaller crevices better than standard-sized stick vacuums (think the space between the toilet and wall). The Dyson V15 is a better all-around buy, but I think there are people to whom this specific vacuum could really appeal. Dyson also launched the PencilWash last month, a similar design but a wet vac, which I’m testing next.
Honorable Mentions
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We haven’t tried a vacuum yet that we absolutely hate. The ones below are solid vacuums and, in some cases, much cheaper than our top picks, but we didn’t like them quite as much.
Bissell IconPet Turbo Edge for $200: Bissell’s OG stick vacuum is a popular model that’s been around for a while. It does a good job picking up hair and cat litter, and easily turns into a handheld vac too. The battery lasts a little longer, but former WIRED reviewer Medea Giordano wasn’t impressed by its Cheerio-gathering skills, and it can’t stand up on its own.
Bissell’s PowerClean FurFinder for $200: This is a great stick vacuum, and it was our previous top pick. It does an all-around good job on all kinds of flooring, comes with a nice range of accessories, and has the FurFinder tool to help with pet hair. It’s still a great vacuum, especially if you have pets, but unless you’re using the FurFinder tool frequently, you can get the slightly cheaper regular Bissell PowerClean for a similar experience.
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Bosch Unlimited 10 Cordless Stick Vacuum for $699: This vacuum has six cleaning modes and can bend in the middle, but it didn’t always contain the debris after I was done cleaning. It does have a 10-year warranty on the motor, which is more than other brands offer.
Black & Decker Powerseries Extreme Max for $169: The Black & Decker Powerseries Extreme Max is a great stick vacuum at a lower price than most others. It stands up on its own, has three power levels you can easily control from the handle, and handles well on the different surfaces in my home. I liked this vacuum a lot, but it wasn’t as stable as the Bissell above, and the handle felt a little plasticky compared to it and other vacuums I tested. It did have a larger-capacity dustbin, though.
Dyson V12 Detect for $550: The V12 Detect is worth considering if you want something even slightly cheaper and lighter than the V15 (though it’s less powerful and has a smaller bin).
Eufy Robot Vacuum 3-In-1 E20 for $500: WIRED reviewer Adrienne So was stoked to try Eufy’s E20, which is a stick vacuum, handheld vacuum, and robot vacuum all in one. It’s a handy, well-designed device, but it’s only good for light cleaning.
Eureka Stylus Elite for $280: This is a good stick vacuum with a self-emptying bin at a reasonable price. It cleaned up a litter mat especially well, and there are specific settings for carpet and hardwood. However, to suck up larger pieces like Cheerios, I had to lift the vacuum up and place it directly on top of them.
Levoit LVAC-300 for $270: This is a well-rounded stick vacuum that has a good price point (and often on sale). It has an hour of battery life, comes with a couple of accessories, and has similar specs to our favorite Dyson vacuum. The 6.6-pound weight also made it fairly easy to clean the three sets of stairs in WIRED reviewer Luke Larson’s home, and it has HEPA filtration. While it can stand on its own, it easily tips over in the process.
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Ryobi 18V One+ HP Advanced Stick Vacuum Kit for $399: This is our runner-up cordless vacuum pick for the best pet hair vacuums. It has powerful suction, cyclonic filtration, a brushless motor, an easily removable roller bar, and lights on the vacuum head to better see pet hair and dander.
Tineco Pure One Station 5 for $459: I love that this vacuum has a self-emptying base station. It’s a solid vacuum overall, but my favorite part about it was the docking station. You don’t need to choose Tineco to get that, though; Shark has a few models now with self-emptying stations, and Dyson has one due out this year.
Cordless vacuums, also known as stick vacuums, are what the name suggests: They don’t need a cord to work. Instead, they have a battery you need to charge and are designed with a battery and motor at the top with a long, thin, sticklike body connecting that to the head of the vacuum. They’re much lighter than an upright vacuum and have become popular since they’re much easier to store and move around the house. I especially love using one as someone who lives in a three-story home. Stick vacuums also can usually have the stick portion removed to transform into a handheld vacuum, though they’re much heavier than a true handheld vacuum (but the battery life is much better).
How Long Do Cordless Vacuums Last?
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Overall, vacuums tend to last around five years, but that depends on the frequency with which you vacuum and the vacuum’s build quality. Some cheaper stick vacuums might last only about a year or two, though, according to Eufy, so it’s worth investing in a good-quality stick vacuum. If you’re curious what signs might indicate your vacuum needs replacing, check out our guide to how long vacuums can last. If you’re curious whether you’re vacuuming enough, check out our guide to how often you should vacuum.
How Does WIRED Test Cordless Vacuums?
The best way to test a vacuum is to use it like you usually would. So, for a few months, we lived with these cordless vacuums, rotating through them to handle day-to-day messes and weekly deep cleans on hardwood floors, area rugs, and carpets. We charged them, asked our partners to use them, and even took some to a retail store to clean up after antique furniture and heavy foot traffic.
We also performed head-to-head testing, comparing how each picked up piles of Cheerios and cat litter, seeing if they blew debris around or needed several passes. We also took heaps of already matted dust and dirt from inside the vacuum bins to see how easily the vacuums could suck them back up in their thickened state.
There’s some endless, curious tensions within the corrupt Trump administration when it comes to their effort to completely destroy the government’s ability to hold corporations accountable for dodgy, nefarious, or even illegal behavior. Their own, lazy, circular logic and bad faith legal interpretations are creating vast new legal minefields we’ll be untangling for decades.
The wireless industry is a prime example.
For decades, major wireless carriers AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile collected vast troves of sensitive user location and movement data, then sold access to any random nitwit with two nickels to rub together. The result was a parade of scandals wherein everybody from stalkers, law enforcement (or people pretending to be law enforcement), car companies, governments (foreign and domestic), and right wing extremists all happily abused the data in myriad, dangerous ways never made clear to the end user.
Though this behavior had been going on for years generating untold millions, it only gained mainstream attention thanks to a 2018 New York Times story showcasing how police and the prison system routinely bought access to this data and then failed completely to secure it. In 2024 the Biden FCC finally proposed fining wireless carriers $196 million ($91 million for T-Mobile, $57 million for AT&T, $48 million for Verizon).
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Those fines have been winding through the courts ever since, with wireless carriers (with varying degrees of success) insisting that the FCC lacks the authority to do, well, anything they don’t like. Like most corporations, wireless giants have been broadly helped in that endeavor by Supreme Court rulings dismantling regulatory authority across several different pillars of consumer protection law.
AT&T was also helped dramatically by a 5th Circuit ruling last year declaring that the FCC fines somehow violated wireless carriers’ Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. This was one of several specious arguments telecom lawyers threw at a wall to see which one would satisfy the Trump-addled court system. The 5th Circuit was happy to oblige, vacating the FCC’s long-percolating fines of AT&T.
You were to ignore that AT&T has been at the vanguard of making jury trials impossible for customers through its use of fine print forcing users to pursue binding arbitration, a lopsided system that finds in favor of corporations a vast majority of the time. Or that AT&T spends millions of dollars annually successfully lobotomizing the entirely of telecom oversight, be it congressional, legal or regulatory.
The FCC is kind of defending the Biden era fines (Brendan Carr wants to retain some FCC authority to force corporations to bend the knee to authoritarianism). But here’s the fun thing; even if the justices disagree with the wireless carriers (which can certainly change after a few late night chats with telecom lobbyists), the FCC’s inclined to change the language of their forfeiture orders anyway:
“But even if AT&T and Verizon lose this case, they could get a victory of sorts because the FCC and justices seem to agree that FCC fine decisions are nonbinding and require a court decision to enforce them. A government lawyer told justices that the FCC may change the language of its forfeiture orders to make it clearer that fines don’t have to be paid until after a jury trial.
“It seems like you’ve won on the law going forward, one way or the other,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh told attorney Jeffrey Wall, who represents AT&T and Verizon. “Your reply brief begins, ‘the government’s in retreat.’ That’s absolutely correct.”
With the Supreme Court poking holes in regulatory autonomy across countless fronts (SEC v. Jarkesy, Loper Bright), there’s no limit of options for corporate lawyers looking to avoid regulatory accountability. Nearly any serious attempt by a regulator to hold corporations accountable for pretty much anything can now pretty easily be bogged down in years of litigation, quite by design.
You’d think the broad, dire impact of that would be of more interest to journalists and policy folk.
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This whole Ars Technica article by Jon Brodkin is worth a read, and is a good demonstration of (1) how the Trump administration’s legal lackeys have to trip over themselves to pretend they’re engaged in good faith, non-corporatist, non-corrupt interpretation of consumer protection law, (2) how all the weird holes created by Supreme Court rulings aimed at demolishing even basic corporate oversight have created a vast minefield it’s a nightmare for everyone to navigate, and (3) how the press likes to pretend this is somehow normal behavior by a serious country and not a byproduct of abject corruption.
But in short it’s likely that AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile will never have to actually pay any fines related to their decade+ decision to spy on users and monetize their sensitive movement data. That’s not only an act of overt corruption (dressed up as serious, furrowed-brow legalese), but also the failure to hold wireless carriers accountable for privacy and security issues will pose a lasting cybersecurity threat.
It genuinely doesn’t get enough attention that the Trump administration (specifically the Trump-friendly Supreme and circuit courts) have delivered a killing blow to the federal government’s already shaky ability to hold corporations accountable for anything. People and the press deny, ignore, downplay, or normalize it, but these choices will range from massively problematic to fatal, and will reverberate for a generation.
I’m trying to think of what the twisty Aurzen Zip Cyber most looks like. Perhaps a new ultra-foldable phone. Or a little robot snake. Maybe the Zat gun from Stargate. What it doesn’t look like is a projector. Well, except for the light which blasts from the front of it. With its cyberpunk-inspired decorations, the Aurzen looks quite futuristic.
With its 720p resolution and a claimed 100-lumen brightness, its performance matches its diminutive size. Then again, it’s one of the only projectors I’ve seen that can literally fit in your pocket. With a 5,000-mAh battery, it can give you a TV-sized screen just about anywhere. Anywhere that’s fairly dark.
The main issue with the Zip is its lack of an HDMI input. Some devices can connect to the Zip wirelessly, but are limited to non-copyrighted content (so no Netflix, etc). For that, you’ll also need to get either the CastPlay Pro or CastPlay HDMI wireless dongles. For a pocket-sized PJ, though, the Aurzen Zip Cyber is still pretty neat.
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Specs and such
Resolution: 720p
Lumens spec: 100 (claimed)
Zoom: No
Lens shift: No (though you can tilt the sections)
Battery: 5,000 mAh, 1.5h claimed playtime
Light source type and life: Not listed, likely LED
Cyberpunk is one of my favorite genres of sci-fi, and having recently re-read Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy for the 4th or 5th time, played about 250 hours of Cyberpunk 2077, plus enjoying countless other media, I am certainly, let’s say “predisposed,” to like the aesthetic. The Zip Cyber’s looks are preem, choom, though it’s basically cosmetic with a really good sticker and a different colored power button compared to Aurzen’s regular Zip. The suggested retail price is $30 more for the Cyber, or 7.5%. Personally, I’d pay the extra for the look, but as mentioned, I’m into it.
Geoffrey Morrison/CNET
Stickers aside, it’s the form of the Zip that is unique. This is a squat little box that expands via two hinges that can rotate roughly 90 degrees each. Fully upright, the projector forms a right-angled “Z” or “S” shape depending on your perspective. Adjusting the two non-base segments is how you angle the projector, and automatic keystone correction tries to maintain a rectangular image. This feature can be disabled in the menu.
There are control buttons up top, which can be duplicated in the Aurzen app (which annoyingly requires you to create an account). Next to the power button on one side are volume controls, and on the other is a toggle for the high brightness mode. The latter kicks the fans into overdrive, making them quite noticeable, but results in an about 40% increase in brightness. This sounds like a lot, but subjectively it’s just a bit brighter.
Geoffrey Morrison/CNET
As you’d probably expect, given the size and price, that brightness isn’t going to set any records. I measured approximately 88 lumens, which, given the differences in measurement techniques, is pretty close to their claims. Also, I wasn’t able to do my usual measurement suite because of the Zip’s main drawback, which is…
Connections
HDMI inputs: 0
USB port: 1 USB-C
Audio output: 2 speakers, 1-watt total
Internet: None
Streaming interface: None
Remote: N/A
There’s no HDMI input, just a single USB-C connection, which is also how you charge the battery. You can cast wirelessly to the Zip, or at least some devices can. Certain devices just can’t. For those devices, Aurzen also sells the CastPlay Pro, a USB-C dongle that connects to a source like your phone or tablet and streams its screen to the Zip. This is also the only way to send DRM-enabled (copy-protected) content like Netflix, Disney+, HBO and so on. Most USB-C iPhones and iPads should work; some Switch tablets work, as do many laptops. If you know your device supports video output from the USB-C connection, it should work. My Pixel 9 Pro, for example, wouldn’t cast to the Zip directly, but worked just fine with the dongle. My TCL tablet wouldn’t work with the dongle, but did cast directly, though not with DRM content.
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Geoffrey Morrison/CNET
Aurzen also has a CastPlay Wireless HDMI Dongle, which connects to an HDMI source to broadcast to the Zip, but this wasn’t available during my review, and as of this writing is sold out in most regions.
So the Zip is a bit odd to review because, depending on your devices and what accessories you add, you’ll have a radically different experience. I made a chart:
Aurzen Zip Compatibility
System
Compatability
Result
Zip
Most devices that can cast/mirror their display, but not Google Cast-enabled devices
No DRM-enabled content (Netflix, Disney Plus, etc)
Zip + CastPlay Pro USB-C
Most USB-C devices with video out (DisplayPort Alt Mode)
Any content
Zip + CastPlay Wireless HDMI
Any device with HDMI
Any content
Basically, most modern iOS and non-Google devices should work with the Zip by itself, though you can’t watch DRM-enabled, copyrighted content (like what you get from the major streaming services). YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and similar will work fine, however. To connect other phones and devices, as long as it can output video via USB-C, the CastPlay Pro dongle will let you watch Netflix and other DRM-enabled streaming services (basically anything that’s not user-created). If you want to connect to a gaming console like a PlayStation or a streaming device like Roku, you’ll want the CastPlay HDMI. I think a lot of this confusion would have been solved with the addition of a Micro HDMI input somewhere, but I’m sure that would have added cost.
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Picture quality
Due to the compatibility challenges mentioned above, I wasn’t able to do my full measurements with the Zip. I’m confident these results are close, though, especially since they’re pretty similar to those of other inexpensive portable DLP projectors I’ve measured, like Anker’s Nebula Capsule Air.
Geoffrey Morrison/CNET
While light output, in the high-brightness mode, was around 88 lumens, it was around 63 in the much quieter, lower-brightness mode. This is within a few lumens of the Capsule and Capsule Air, close enough that you’d be unlikely to notice any difference in light output. These are all small, dim projectors, among the dimmest I’ve tested. That’s fine, as it’s an understandable consequence of the size and price. As long as you keep the projected image to around TV-sized, it’s bright enough to enjoy in a dark room.
Contrast is also fairly low, but within the same range as the competition. I measured an average contrast of approximately 401:1, which is about the same as the Capsules as well as some larger, more expensive portables like the Mars 3 Air (405:1). This is only slightly less than standouts like the TCL PlayCube (492:1) and even full-size projectors like the Epson Flex Plus (468:1). So while the image doesn’t pop as much as higher-end, and much larger/more expensive projectors, it’s still contrasty enough that it doesn’t look overly washed out. Again, size and price are the main attributes of the Zip, so it’s great to see that it also looks decent, graded on a curve with other small portables.
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The TCL PlayCube, Aurzen Zip Cyber, and Anker Nebula Capsule Air.
Geoffrey Morrison/CNET
Color is a bit of a mixed bag, however. The overall color temperature is a little on the cool/blue side, but not enough that it’s distracting. Some colors, like blue and cyan, look fine. Greens are quite accurate too, which is a surprise. Most projector companies sacrifice a realistic green for more light output. Anything involving red is a bit off, however, with red itself being quite undersaturated, magentas are somewhat blue, and yellows are rather green. The most noticeable result is that many skin tones look a little pasty, and anything that should have a solid red looks more pastel.
Perhaps the most useful feature in the Zip speaks to how Aurzen expects people to use it. If you lay the Zip on its side, it will rotate the image 90 degrees. This means if you’re primarily watching 9×16 content like TikTok, it will fill the DLP chip, and you can take advantage of the entire 720p resolution. This makes watching vertical content much more satisfying compared with a heavily letterboxed image that only takes up the center portion of the projected image. Flipping it sideways does make it harder to position correctly, since there’s no rotation in the hinges in that direction, but oh well. Easy enough to just prop the front up with whatever’s handy.
The unit’s two tiny speakers don’t play particularly loudly, nor do they have any bass, no surprise there, but as long as you’re sitting close, they get the job done.
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Blade running
Geoffrey Morrison/CNET
For the most part, I really like the Aurzen Zip Cyber. It’s a clever design that looks futuristic even without the cyberpunk clothing. It’s one of the smallest projectors I’ve ever tested, and it performs similarly to its slightly larger portable competitors. The colors it produces aren’t great, but they’re better than many small, inexpensive projectors I’ve tested, like the various AAXA models.
My hesitation is with the connectivity. I think I have a worse perspective on this than most people since I have a Pixel phone and a tablet without DisplayPort Alt Mode, so neither works entirely with the Zip. Depending on your gear, you’ll have different luck. The lack of an HDMI input also means that to watch content from the main non-YouTube streaming providers, you have to get one of the dongles, adding $100 to the total price.
That said, if you’re expecting to watch an endless scroll of TikTok or YouTube videos, and you have a device that will cast without the dongle, the Zip is a cool-looking gadget that can fit in a pocket and give you a TV-size image in rooms, vans or anywhere it’s fairly dark.
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