Rows of plain sheds sit on former cattle land near Rockwood in central Texas. During daylight hours they look ordinary enough to store tools or hay. Once the sun drops low, the roofs slide open together and expose long lines of telescopes mounted on solid bases. Owners scattered around the globe then take control from their laptops or phones. They point the instruments, collect images, and gather data on distant galaxies or nebulae without ever leaving home.
Light pollution has a horrible habit of obscuring weak stars and sky details from most people who live in or near a city, especially when streetlights and large buildings light up the night, making the vista a complete wash-out. On the other side, rural areas such as Rockwood remain dark enough to reveal some crisp details that city dwellers cannot perceive. It’s no surprise that amateur astronomers and astrophotographers want to bring their equipment to these ranches so their telescopes may sit permanently beneath those bright sky, eliminating the need to make the trek to some isolated location or even fight the weather on short notice.
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Bray Falls, an amateur astronomer himself, founded Starfront Observatories around 18 months ago and transformed what had previously been open ground into one of the largest operations of its sort. Now he has eleven buildings with over 500 telescopes taking in the view from above, and high-speed fiber internet feeds those large image files directly back to the viewers. The telescopes are all positioned on clever robotic arms that track celestial objects as the Earth revolves, while weather sensors monitor the skies and automatically close the roofs when it rains or a storm is forming. It all works so effortlessly that consumers may plan their sessions from anywhere with an internet connection.
They have customers from all around, including Europe, Asia, North America, and the Middle East. One man who lives near Detroit sends his telescopes since his neighborhood cityscape ruins his attempts at stargazing at home. He live streams to his fans and enjoys the sharp results that a black sky provides, and he isn’t the only one. Monthly rates start around $99 for a basic setup, and if you own some high-end gear worth $10,000 or more, you pay for space and some continuous assistance, and the best thing is that the telescopes stay fixed on their piers, ensuring consistent focus and alignment night after night.
The facilities handle all of the day-to-day operations, such as opening the roofs at dusk, monitoring the conditions, and generally keeping things in order. The crew, sometimes known as telescope ranchers, ensure that the mounts, cameras, and software are all in working order so that remote control is possible. This position is particularly appealing to young astrophotographers who enjoy merging their technological skills with good old-fashioned astronomy. Word has spread, and videos and reports have appeared all over the place, including one by tech journalist Ashlee Vance, all of which show the roofs sliding back simultaneously to display the entire array.
One of Meta’s buildings in Bellevue’s Spring District, where nearly 700 jobs are being cut. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
Facebook parent company Meta is cutting 1,395 jobs in Washington state, about 20% of its local workforce, as part of a companywide effort eliminating about 8,000 positions as part of an aggressive push into artificial intelligence.
Details of the Seattle-area cuts were disclosed in a filing Tuesday morning with the Washington state Employment Security Department. The layoffs impact teams across the company, including those working on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, advertising and infrastructure, according to the filing.
The company employed roughly 7,000 people in the Seattle region before the cuts, spokesperson Tracy Clayton said.
Meta’s office in Bellevue’s Spring District is the hardest hit, with about 699 employees losing their jobs. The filing also lists about 215 cuts at the company’s Dexter Avenue office in Seattle, 206 at its Redmond facility, 44 at a second Seattle office on Utah Avenue, and about 231 remote workers based in the state.
“The changes we are implementing vary by team and include layoffs, open role closures, and moving thousands of employees to business critical priorities across the company,” Clayton said via email.
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The company disclosed the broader cuts in an internal memo in April, saying they were part of an effort to run the company more efficiently and offset heavy investments in AI infrastructure. Meta plans to spend as much as $145 billion on capital expenditures this year.
The Seattle-area layoffs will take effect July 22, according to the notice filed with the state.
This marks the latest round of Meta cuts this year. In January and March, it eliminated roles for a total of nearly 500 workers in Washington state, with its AR and VR-focused Reality Labs particularly hard hit.
“Following months of public debate and protests against American IT giant Kyndryl’s proposed acquisition of Solvinity, a Dutch cloud provider that hosts the Netherlands’ online identity platform, the Dutch government has decided to block the acquisition,” writes longtime Slashdot reader rastakid. “The deal triggered fears that it would mean that ‘DigiD’ data would fall under foreign control, and could be demanded by U.S. authorities.” Politico reports: In a letter to the national parliament published on Tuesday, State Secretary for Digital Economy Willemijn Aerdts said the national authority charged with screening investments had advised the government to block the acquisition. The purchase was seen as posing “a possible risk to the public interest.”
The government on Monday decided to adopt the advice and block the acquisition, Aerdts said. “The Netherlands attaches great value to the presence of foreign, especially U.S.-based tech companies, and their added value to the Dutch economy and digital infrastructure, but it maintains, at the same time, an independent investment screening framework aimed at protecting the public interest and which applies equally to all investors, independent of their country of origin,” the letter read. Kyndryl said in a statement it was “extremely disappointed” about the decision. “The politicization of this process has overshadowed the clear and important benefits this transaction would have brought to Solvinity’s customers and Dutch citizens.”
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Ride-share drivers for app-based companies such as Uber and Lyft have unionized in Massachusetts, forming what state officials and labor leaders said was the first officially recognized organization in the U.S. to represent such gig workers. The newly formed App Drivers Union received certification from the Massachusetts Department of Labor Relations on Friday to represent nearly 70,000 ride-share drivers operating as independent contractors in the state.
“It changes the game for ride-share workers across this country,” Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, a Democrat, said at a rally with drivers and labor activists in Boston on Tuesday. The certification occurred after voters in November 2024 approved a ballot measure that created a novel framework to allow drivers for companies like Uber and Lyft to organize and bargain collectively over pay and benefits. That vote followed a years-long, nationwide battle over whether ride-share drivers should be considered independent contractors or employees entitled to benefits and wage protections.
After more than 2,000 hours of government-imposed connectivity blackouts, there were signs on Tuesday that Iran’s internet is coming back—at least at very low levels.
Iran’s more than 90 million citizens have been without internet for the overwhelming majority of 2026, between the current blackout that began on February 28, when Israel and the United States attacked the country, and a previous internet shutdown enforced after widespread protests in January. The reconnection appears to have been ordered by officials in Iran’s government—but could only be temporary.
Though some Iranian networks appeared to be connecting to the global internet on Tuesday, researchers cautioned that the level of access was far below even the partial restoration that Tehran allowed at the end of January and throughout February—and it was drastically below Iran’s typical baseline of global internet connectivity from December 2025. Internet monitoring experts at Kentik, NetBlocks, and Cloudflare began documenting the partial restoration of connectivity in Iran beginning in the early afternoon local time on Tuesday.
“We do see some traffic coming from Iran,” says Amir Rashidi, a cybersecurity expert with the internet freedom organization Miaan Group. “Some providers have come back online, but it is still too early to say exactly what will happen. After the January protests, some providers were also reconnected, but around 50 percent of the country’s traffic remained down.”
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Doug Madory, the director of internet analysis at Kentik, says, “We’re not seeing much change for the mobile networks.” Instead, he says, some fixed-line providers have appeared to be restoring their services, with the Telecommunication Company of Iran’s fiber-optic service around Tehran showing the “biggest gain.”
At the start of January, the Iranian regime entirely shut down internet connectivity as the state killed thousands of protesters who took to the streets demanding improvements to economic conditions in the country. The government then entirely cut connectivity again at the end of February when the United States and Israel went to war in Iran—leaving millions of Iranians unable to contact their families, damaging the local economy, and prohibiting news and video footage about the war from getting into and out of the country. The limited reconnection of internet services on Tuesday comes as the US government continues to negotiate with Iran about a permanent end to the war.
Over the last decade, the Iranian regime has undertaken a massive project to control connectivity and censor content in the country while also building out a national intranet meant to essentially replace the global internet. This includes homegrown, surveillance-heavy tech such as search engines, messaging apps, and ride-hailing platforms. In practice, though, the regime’s digital mechanisms for control are often wielded as brute-force tools rather than precision instruments. It is unclear whether this is the result of technical limitations, political instability, or both.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council seemingly ordered the current internet shutdown at the end of February as the war with the US started. A different group formed by current Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian—known as the Special Headquarters for Organizing and Governing the Country’s Cyberspace—reportedly ordered connectivity restoration on Monday, though the move drew a legal challenge in Iran’s High Court. Nevertheless, the Iranian communications minister said that the reconnection would move forward per the president’s order, and that the process is underway to restore connectivity within 24 hours.
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“What we are seeing now is an increase in traffic from Iran, but we need to wait and see the outcome of the power struggle,” Miaan Group’s Rashidi says. “Challenging the president’s order in court, given Iran’s political culture, was in a way a humiliation of Pezeshkian. So we should wait and see how this power struggle plays out.”
Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt recently sat down with NBC News, and he said something that has been percolating in my mind. When asked about AI-written books, Daunt said, “Yes, I have actually no problem selling any book, as long as it doesn’t masquerade or pretend to be something that it isn’t, and that it has an essential quality to it, and that the customer, the reader, wants it.”
On the surface, that sounds perfectly sensible. As long as readers can clearly see the label, they can make a choice. But if you take a moment to think about it, there are important questions that this approach leaves unanswered.
Is “just label it” really good enough?
Barnes & Noble is one of the most powerful retailers in the publishing world. When the largest retail bookseller in the United States signals that AI-written books are welcome on its shelves, it sends a message to publishers, agents, and authors alike that this is a legitimate product category.
Think about what a real book represents. A writer spent months, sometimes years, researching, writing, revising, creating a concoction, and then pouring it onto a page. Not only that, everything a writer puts on the page is colored with the lens they formed with their life experiences. That’s what makes books human, and why we sometimes read books covering the same topic from different writers.
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Aaron Burden / Unsplash
AI, on the other hand, takes everything it learned from the generation of human experience, strips the humanity, and serves the slop. Yes, the book might have the best grammar, the best plot structure, and even a good story. But will it have the human touch that makes a book special? I think not. At best, it can pretend, using the knowledge it stole from the great books written by human authors.
The moment a major retailer shrugs and says AI books are fine as long as they’re labeled, it starts chipping away at the understanding that a book is a human endeavor. Also, who decides what constitutes an AI-written book and what the label looks like? Is it enough if the label is hidden obscurely on some page, where no one can find it unless they are looking for it?
Galina Nelyubova / Unsplash
Even if they have a clear label, so what? Will you let a thief enter your home, as long as they wear a label saying they are one? It’s ridiculous. And make no mistake; any AI-written book, no matter how good it is, is a thief parading in costume, which has stolen the stories from human-written books, without consent.
The human cost of letting AI books in our bookshops
Every bookshop has a limited space. If we allow AI books to enter our bookshops, it doesn’t create a space out of a vacuum. Every AI book taking a shelf space is replacing one written by a human. And without a proper system in place, which Barnes & Noble doesn’t seem to have, it would be hard for a reader to differentiate between a human and an AI-written book.
Daunt even acknowledged that Barnes & Noble might already be selling AI-written books without knowing it. “We have 300,000 titles across all of our stores. Do we think that some of those may be AI? The chances are that they are, but we’re not really conscious of them,” he said in the NBC News interview. That is not the reassuring admission he thinks it is.
NBC News
What you see is what you buy. If thousands of readers walk into the store and see AI books prominently placed, some of them are bound to pick one up. It will make money for some mega corporation or AI-bro who has started treating books as his new side business. That’s a sale that could have gone to an author who actually deserved it.
I am not saying all human-written books are great. I have written some bad ones myself. But even if a book is bad or just not your taste, you know someone put real effort into it, so the hit on the purse doesn’t sting that much.
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Think how you will feel if your books were written by a prompt? Also, since AI can generate books at a much faster rate than we can write them, if we open the doors to these books, the market will be flooded. The e-book market is already filled with AI slop; we don’t want our bookstores to look the same.
This is not happening in a vacuum
It would be one thing if Barnes & Noble were making this call in isolation. But this is part of a much larger and deeply troubling pattern.
AI licensing deals are now becoming a big source of revenue for publishers. So publishers are getting paid, and that money is making these deals feel justified. As for the writers whose work is being used to train these models? Most of them are seeing nothing.
The pattern is clear here. First, media companies license their content to AI. Then AI uses that content to generate new content. Then retailers agree to sell that AI-generated content. This will repeat until all human writers are fired and all of us are left with a steaming pile of AI slop in our hands, wondering how we got here.
Books are one of the last places where human creativity has not been fully colonized by AI. Opening that door, even with a label slapped on it, is a precedent the industry will struggle to walk back. Some doors should remain closed, no matter how lucrative the prize behind them seems to be.
Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.
Wow, today’s NYT Connections puzzle has a really intriguing purple category. Hint: Look for words that use the same exact letters. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.
The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.
Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.
What will you miss most about Hacks? Ava (Hannah Einbinder) is furthering the queer agenda? Deborah’s (Jean Smart) sharp tongue? Or the fact that Meg Stalter won’t be as ever-present in our minds unless you’re chronically on Instagram?
Regardless, Hacks season 5 is going down in a blaze of glory. Last week, we saw Deborah on a ‘non-press tour press tour’ — and by that I mean that she appeared everywhere she could without explicitly promoting her Madison Square Gardens show.
My personal favorite was appearing on a social media mukbang with Trisha Paytas after they made friends in episode 5’s version of The Amazing Race.
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Now, we’re getting ready to tune in for one last time. But when is Hacks season 5episode 10 dropping on HBO Max?
What time can I watch Hacks season 5 episode 10 on HBO Max?
Hacks Season 5 | Official Trailer | HBO Max – YouTube
For US viewers, Hacks season 5 episode 10 will drop on Thursday, May 28, at 9 pm ET.
Internationally, you’re looking out for these timings:
US – 6pm PT / 9pm ET
Canada – 6pm PT / 9pm ET
India – Friday, May 29 at 6:30am IST
Singapore – Friday, May 29 at 9am SGT
Australia – Friday, May 29 at 11am AEDT
New Zealand – Friday, May 29 at 12pm NZDT
In the UK, Hacks season 5 is running a week behind elsewhere on Sky and NOW TV, having started on April 17. There’s currently no confirmation on when it will come to HBO Max UK.
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When do new episodes of Hacks season 5 come out?
(Image credit: HBO)
Hacks season 5is back to its weekly scheduling following double-episode drops on April 30 and May 7.
Autonomous shuttle’s second passenger trip ends with rear-end collision and a tow truck
A new self-driving bus service in the Swedish city of Gothenburg got off to a rough start this week when one of its vehicles was hit by a tram on its second passenger-carrying trip.
The autonomous bus, running on route 169 between Gothenburg Central Station and Liseberg, opened to passengers on May 25. It was struck from behind shortly after setting off on its second run, resulting in damage to both vehicles and the bus enduring the ignominy of being towed away.
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According to reports, the bus braked and was rear-ended by the tram. A spokesperson for Västtrafik, the bus operator, told The Register: “A small number of passengers were on board. No one was seriously injured, and that is the most important outcome. Both the bus and the tram sustained minor damage.”
The autonomous bus project began in 2024, and trials were scheduled to conclude by 2027 [PDF]. At present, a driver is still required, although the controls are not touched during normal operation.
However, someone else driving into it is a whole different challenge. On the rear of the Karsan bus was the warning “Keep your distance! The bus can brake sharply!” but that did not appear to deter the tram. As a rule of thumb, trams tend to have the right of way since they cannot swerve around a suddenly slowing vehicle.
Self-driving public transport remains a challenge. Elon Musk’s Cybercab is beginning to trundle onto the streets after a 2024 announcement, and Waymo’s taxis have been rolling around cities such as San Francisco for a few years now, although it yanked thousands of vehicles off the road over fears they might drive headlong into floods on high-speed roads.
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The UK’s first registered autonomous bus route was unveiled in 2023. However, operators reportedly decided to end the service in 2025 due to a lack of passengers. The service ran over a 14-mile journey in Scotland and also required drivers on board.
As for Gothenburg, the Västtrafik spokesperson told El Reg: “We are now conducting a thorough analysis of the incident together with relevant parties to better understand what happened as soon as possible.”
One of the goals of the project was to “gather and share knowledge about how autonomous mobility works in practice.” To which the answer, at least initially, appears to be: “Great! Until a tram enters the chat.” ®
Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.
Today’s NYT Strands puzzle threw me a bit — the theme seemed clear, but there were so many different words that could serve as answers. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.
If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Touch some grass.
Clue words to unlock in-game hints
Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:
These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:
MOSS, ACORN, DAISY, PUDDLE, FEATHER, PAWPRINT
Today’s Strands spangram
The completed NYT Strands puzzle for May 26, 2026.
NYT/Screenshot by CNET
Today’s Strands spangram is SCAVENGERHUNT. To find it, start with the S that is the first letter on the top row, and wind down and over.
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Toughest Strands puzzles
Here are some of the Strands topics I’ve found to be the toughest.
#1: Dated slang. Maybe you didn’t even use this lingo when it was cool. Toughest word: PHAT.
#2: Thar she blows! I guess marine biologists might ace this one. Toughest word: BALEEN or RIGHT.
#3: Off the hook. Again, it helps to know a lot about sea creatures. Sorry, Charlie. Toughest word: BIGEYE or SKIPJACK.
Apple’s AI-powered health coach has apparently been delayed
It’s now not expected until “later in the iOS 27 update cycle”
The news arrives in a new report from a reputable source
Apple’s WWDC event is just around the corner, which means we can expect a host of software announcements from the tech giant on June 8. One thing fans of the best Apple Watches might have been excited for is Apple’s long-rumored AI health coach (AI) — but a new report has just put a dampener on those expectations.
According to Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman, Apple’s AI health coach — apparently dubbed ‘Project Mulberry’ inside Apple — might not be revealed at WWDC after all. That will come as a blow to anyone looking forward to this feature, but it’s not all doom and gloom.
Past rumors have suggested that Apple is building an AI helper that can study your fitness metrics and identify key areas of improvement, then give you tips and plans to help you get there. Another feature might involve using your device cameras to monitor your workouts and give you pointers to step up your posture and performance.
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However, Gurman says this fitness coach won’t be shown off at WWDC. Instead, the reporter now doesn’t expect any of Project Mulberry’s features to arrive until “later in the iOS 27 update cycle,” meaning a key delay for the mooted health tools.
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Rivals pushing ahead
(Image credit: Future)
This news comes after Gurman previously reported that Project Mulberry had been “scaled back,” with the company planning to include its features in its existing tools rather than offering a standalone app. Yet even that delay and restructuring wasn’t enough to get the feature ready for WWDC, at least according to Gurman.
It stands in stark contrast to the Fitbit Air and its Google Health companion app, which features an AI-based Google Health Coach that absorbs your health metrics, sleep data, nutritional intake, medical records and more in order to build a personalized plan to help you feel healthier, sleep better, and more. While Google’s effort has rolled out around the world, Apple’s is nowhere to be seen.
Still, Gurman has some more positive news for fitness fans who live in the Apple ecosystem. For one thing, he believes that watchOS 27 will bring improved heart-rate tracking, which could make the Apple Watch an even better fitness tracker for those who need these features.
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As well as that, Apple is expected to overhaul its Health app at WWDC, and while Gurman said the AI fitness coach has been pushed back, he made no mention of similar delays to this Health revamp. That could mean the app gets a little more useful this summer, even if Project Mulberry is nowhere to be found.
Regardless, we’re hoping that Apple’s improved fitness offerings aren’t held up for too long. With rival companies pushing ahead with their own personalized metrics and analyses, Apple has its work cut out to draw level in this area.
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