• Hacktron chained a libheif heap overflow, reached through ImageMagick on OpenAI’s Discourse forum, leveraging an OpenAI SSO flaw to briefly take over employee ChatGPT and Codex accounts
• The researchers themselves invoked XKCD #2347, whose 2020 alt text happens to name ImageMagick as the dependency that will one day break
• ImageMagick served as only the pathway to the actual vulnerable component, libheif, an obscure decoder pulled in indirectly across Slack, Meta, and GitHub Enterprise amongst other mediums

When Hacktron AI recently disclosed its months-long libheif research, the researchers reached for a familiar picture that also, to some degree, hints at what let them break into OpenAI in the first place.

They pointed readers to xkcd #2347, Randall Munroe’s 2020 iconic web cartoon of all modern digital infrastructure balanced on a single load-bearing block that some random person in Nebraska has been thanklessly maintaining.

The Cricut StickerPix Print and Print + Cut could birth a generation of sticker moguls. 

Rolling down a hallway with a shirt slung over its neck, Goose looks less like a factory demo and more like a small appliance that decided to grow a personality. Prototype 1 from San Francisco’s The Robot Works is a white, low, rounded base with a long articulated neck, camera eyes set in a bonnet so you can see where it is looking, and a bright orange beak that doubles as a gripper. A blue polka-dot wrap gives the machine a costume instead of a chassis. Founders posted the first public clip this week with a simple brief: tidy, play, live.

Richard Wei has spent months sitting down with families to discuss what they really need from a robot in their house, and the team has used that information to create something they would like to have themselves. Humphrey Hu, who formerly worked with Anki on making highly expressive robot faces, will join him on this project. After considering all of the jobs that tend to build up around the house, as well as how a machine might interact with children and grandparents, they decided against a human-shaped body. Instead, the design features a wide stance close to the floor to keep the creature low to the ground, as well as a long neck that allows it to reach for items such as a sock, a wall outlet, a door handle, or a pile of laundry without having to stand on two legs and tower over the space.

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They also kept the hardware minimal on purpose, resulting in a robot that rolls, looks around, and then moves on to complete its job. It analyzes its blind spots before moving, and the motors are meant to give way if something like a foot, a chair, or a child gets in the way, and the ability to halt and send it somewhere else was purposefully built in, so it wasn’t an afterthought. A video released shows the robot performing things like placing a man’s foot onto an ottoman, gathering clothes off the hardwood floor, reaching up to a kitchen counter, inserting a plug into a wall outlet, and even pulling open a door when some relatives arrive with children.

Some early write-ups also highlighted some low-key jobs for older individuals who may be less mobile, such as fetching something you’ve tagged, bringing a walker over to the bedside when it’s time for bed, lighting the route to the toilet, keeping an eye out for falls, and sending a ping to family members. Some early elevator and door operations still need a human on the other end of the line, but on the positive side, autonomy is real in some areas and borrowed in others. Which is reasonable for the first version of the product.

The concept is for the robot’s capabilities to evolve as a library rather than coming with a predefined set of talents when you buy it, and they intend to vet each new software before it is released, allowing you to choose what it can see and do. The company is now selling services such as a full-room tidy, checking in on Grandpa, being a companion during story time, taking a look around the house while you’re away, checking the stove, and bringing a parcel inside. The pitch is that life evolves, thus the machine should be able to continually adding new jobs to its repertoire rather of becoming locked in one specific role. That’s the whole point of “built to grow.” They also claim that any household data will remain under your control, rather than being a default action that occurs automatically when the robot arrives.

Unfortunately, orders are currently closed because the initial prototype is still pre-production, with no price or commercial warranty available. Wei says the company is looking for “foster families” that will let Goose learn on real floors, real clutter, and real schedules. You can contact them at therobotworks.ai, while more information will be provided as the device gets closer to launch.

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Washington this week for talks with President Donald Trump in the same custom state limousine that has followed him on foreign trips since 2022. Hongqi N701 is an internal project code more than a dealer name, and FAW Group’s Hongqi division built it for China’s top leadership rather than any public buyer. Hongqi means red flag, a name the brand has carried since 1958, when First Automobile Works first assembled luxury cars for senior officials.

Public sightings of the mysterious sedan began in July 2022, when Xi visited Hong Kong for the 25th handover anniversary. Since then, the long sedan has appeared in Russia, Egypt, and San Francisco last year, New Delhi for the BRICS summit a few weeks ago, and most recently in Washington. These trucks, you know, the ones who drive the leader about, frequently arrive ahead of the big cheese, often with black covers draped around a flatbed so all you see is fabric instead of the spaces between the panels. Surprisingly, manufacturing is carefully controlled; they reportedly only make approximately 50 of them per decade, or five per year, on a budget of around 572 million yuan ($85.2 million).

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It’s 5.5 meters long, or around 18 feet, and has a large towering vertical chrome grille that reminds me of the Hongqi H9 sedan. There is also a red flag insignia slapped on the hood. Smaller flag poles sit on the front tire arches, and the side windows extend far back from the B-pillars, giving the second row passengers more freedom to move around, making it feel more like a genuine cabin back there. The back appearance is rather basic, with only some rectangular lights, some chrome on the tailgate, and two large exhaust pipes. Unfortunately, the actual weight, engine, and any armor plating specifications remain top secret. According to insider reports, it weighs more than 3 tons and features a large V8 or 6.0-liter V12 engine with 400 horsepower, as well as 21-inch run-flat wheels and some rather strong bullet-proof glass. It also appears to feature a separate air filtration system and a sealed cabin, as well as an encrypted link back to Beijing, but none of this has been confirmed by FAW.

Joe Biden caught a glimpse of it three years ago in San Francisco. He described it as a real beauty, and Xi was quick to point out that it was manufactured in China, before opening the rear door to allow Biden to look inside. Biden compared it to the American Cadillac, and now Washington can see the similarity up close. The Cadillac One, or the Beast, is built on a heavy truck chassis and is expected to weigh between 7 and 9 tons. The Hongqi N701 has the proportions of a long luxury sedan, but both automobiles are meant to protect a head of state from small arms fire, bomb fragments, and chemical threats while also serving as a mobile office.

Mao Zedong began hammering on about a Chinese state car in the 1950s. The early CA72 and CA770 Hongqis made the rounds of parades and whatnot, but were later supplanted by imported limousines. However, Xi had different plans when he began flying Hongqi L5s to New Zealand in 2014, later upgrading to the N501 and now the N701. Each time one of these sedans travels abroad, it gets to see the open road, but the whole specification sheet remains locked away with the individuals who created it.

If there was one thing that was obvious this from Meta Connect this year, it’s that the social media giant is all-in on its burgeoning line of smart glasses.

Indeed, the glasses were pretty much everywhere at the annual event, where Meta shows off its newest hardware and AI products. Both Meta staff and the flocks of influencers who frequent the event seemed to arrive with the glasses glued to their faces. Most of the demos the company offered this week also involved the glasses.

I swiftly joined the bespectacled masses and found myself trying on pair after pair of Meta’s high-tech specs.

One of the more notable products I had an opportunity to demo were Meta’s new, still-unreleased, audio-only smart glasses. News of these glasses emerged not long after the company weathered accusations that it was selling “pervert glasses,” with critics alleging that its camera-equipped specs could be used for nefarious surveillance purposes.

The new glasses come equipped with six microphones, but no camera, and they have no native way to record your surroundings, which should go a long way toward easing privacy concerns. They are significantly lighter than any of the other smart glasses I’ve worn, and they were quite comfortable.

The Meta staffer I talked to emphasized the glasses’ entertainment and communication options: you can listen to music easily (they’re more comfortable than earbuds) and take phone calls without reaching for your phone.

The glasses will also integrate with Muse, Meta’s personal agentic system, which can carry out tasks on the user’s behalf. The new integration, which isn’t yet available to the public, lets wearers speak to Muse and give it commands verbally. Meta also plans to personalize the agent, letting users pick from an assortment of cute digital avatars that can represent the agent when it communicates with them.

I was given an opportunity to try this out, which was fun but also somewhat comical. You have to be very direct with the agent, and you can’t talk to anyone else at the same time or it will get confused. Problematically, I kept chatting intermittently with the Meta staffer who’d given me the glasses, and the agent kept thinking I was speaking to it, so it would talk over her.

Still, in the right context, it’s easy to see how this new integration could be incredibly useful. If you don’t mind being seen in public talking to your own sunglasses, you’ll be able to ask Muse to take care of various digital tasks for you, like sending emails or reciting to-do lists, and it will handle them while you’re out grocery shopping or having a beer. You can also ask the glasses anything, and like a mobile version of ChatGPT, they’ll spit out an answer. (I asked the glasses a question about World War II, and they gave me a succinct and historically accurate response.)

Finally, I also got to test-drive a second audio-only pair: Meta’s new glasses for the hearing impaired. Given that hearing loss affects many families (some 50 million Americans are said to have some level of hearing loss), this device, unlike a lot of other modern tech gadgets, serves a clear and practical purpose.

I spoke briefly with a member of Meta’s research team who said the glasses had been in development for some five years, and he pointed out a price difference that could make them appealing: whereas a lot of hearing aids can run as high as $1,600, the glasses will sell for $150.

The experience of wearing these glasses was interesting. Meta had me put earplugs in before trying them on to simulate the hearing loss that the glasses are meant to help users overcome. Once the glasses were on, they seemed to amplify the voice of the person I was talking to. Users can switch the amplification from focused, which zeroes in on the person in front of them, to omnidirectional, which picks up sound from all around them, depending on how they want to experience their surroundings.

Mark Zuckerberg has made it clear that he believes smart glasses are the future, and it’s evident that his company is doing its best to fulfill that mandate. But smart glasses remain a niche that has yet to truly find its footing. What was most obvious at Connect is that Meta has — in an attempt to succeed where others have failed — cast a very wide net, trying to make its glasses stylish, functional, and, most of all, useful.

Is this the future? Unsurprisingly, everyone at Connect seemed to think so. I suppose we’ll have to see if the rest of the world follows suit.

The company is still paying for the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Tesla has begun volume production of the Semi at Gigafactory Nevada with first deliveries this week, nine years after showing the truck, and rates it at 500 miles of range and 1.2 megawatts of charging. It has already installed more than 100 megawatt-capable stalls at 21 European sites, although the truck is not due in Europe until 2027.

Tesla has started volume production of the Semi at Gigafactory Nevada, with the first deliveries this week, InsideEVs reported. The Class 8 truck was first shown in 2017, nine years ago. It charges at up to 1.2 megawatts, which Tesla says adds 60% of range in 30 minutes.

The range comes with conditions.

Tesla rates the Long Range at 500 miles and the Standard Range at 325, both at 1.7 kWh per mile, and publishes the conditions alongside them. They are measured at 82,000 pounds gross, 55 miles an hour, 20 degrees Celsius, on flat ground, with a tandem axle aero kit and a compliant dry van trailer. Drive power is up to 800 kW from three motors.

Europe waits until 2027.

Tesla is installing more than 100 megawatt-capable stalls across 21 European sites in Germany, France, Britain, Sweden and the Benelux countries. The truck itself is not due here until next year. Both truck and charger use the MCS 3.2 connector.

European law asks for less.

Charging points of at least 350 kW must sit every 60 km along the core European network for heavy goods vehicles, as the ICCT has documented. The megawatt layer above that is commercial rather than required. Tesla built it before it had a truck to sell here.

The battery figures are not Tesla’s.

A filing with the California Air Resources Board gives 822 kWh of usable capacity for the Long Range and 548 kWh for the Standard, neither of which Tesla has published. The Semi uses Tesla’s own 4680 cells from Gigafactory Texas. Those cells have underperformed supplier cells in its passenger cars.

The biggest buyer is Swedish.

Einride ordered 500 Semis last month, the largest deployment announced anywhere, to run freight in California, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois and Georgia. A Swedish company is putting American trucks on American roads. Amazon holds warrants over about 12% of it.

Diesel is doing the selling.

Pump prices are averaging over $6.50 a gallon in the United States, a record driven by the wars in Ukraine and Iran. A coalition of shipping companies ordered 2,500 Semis this week, which would roughly double the American electric truck fleet. Tesla wants 50,000 a year once Nevada is at full capacity.