Within days of joining Meta, Shengjia Zhao, co-creator of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, had threatened to quit and return to his former employer, in a blow to Mark Zuckerberg’s multibillion-dollar push to build “personal superintelligence.”

Zhao went as far as to sign employment paperwork to go back to OpenAI. Shortly afterwards, according to four people familiar with the matter, he was given the title of Meta’s new “chief AI scientist.”

The incident underscores Zuckerberg’s turbulent effort to direct the most dramatic reorganisation of Meta’s senior leadership in the group’s 20-year history.

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Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson accused Google of using "partisan" spam filtering in Gmail that sends Republican fundraising emails to the spam folder while delivering Democratic emails to inboxes.

Ferguson sent a letter yesterday to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, accusing the company of "potential FTC Act violations related to partisan administration of Gmail." Ferguson's letter revives longstanding Republican complaints that were previously rejected by a federal judge and the Federal Election Commission.

"My understanding from recent reporting is that Gmail's spam filters routinely block messages from reaching consumers when those messages come from Republican senders but fail to block similar messages sent by Democrats," Ferguson wrote. The FTC chair cited a recent New York Post report on the alleged practice.

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One of the more curious aspects of the 10th flight of SpaceX's Starship rocket on Tuesday was the striking orange discoloration of the second stage. This could be observed on video taken from a buoy near the landing site as the vehicle made a soft landing in the Indian Ocean.

This color—so different from the silvery skin and black tiles that cover Starship's upper stage—led to all sorts of speculation. Had heating damaged the stainless steel skin? Had the vehicle's tiles been shucked off, leaving behind some sort of orange adhesive material? Was this actually NASA's Space Launch System in disguise?

The answer to this question was rather important, as SpaceX founder Elon Musk had said before this flight that gathering data about the performance of this heat shield was the most important aspect of the mission.

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Today's video game consoles are hundreds of dollars more expensive than you'd expect based on historic pricing trends. That's according to an Ars Technica analysis of decades of pricing data and price-cut timing across dozens of major US console releases.

The overall direction of this trend has been apparent to industry watchers for a while now. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft have failed to cut their console prices in recent years and have instead been increasing the nominal MSRP for many current consoles in the past six months.

If the original Switch followed historic pricing trends, it could be selling for a bargain basement $100 to $150 right now. Credit: Kyle Orland Even accounting for inflation, some PS5 consoles are more expensive today than they were at launch. Credit: Kyle Orland Despite cratering Xbox hardware sales, Microsoft has been unwilling to cut prices on Xbox consoles. Credit: Kyle Orland

But when you crunch the numbers, it's pretty incredible just how much today's console prices defy historic expectations, even when you account for higher-than-normal inflation in recent years. If today's consoles were seeing anything like what used to be standard price cuts over time, we could be paying around $200 today for pricey systems like the Switch OLED, PS5 Digital Edition, and Xbox Series S.

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After 10 generations of Pixels, Google's phones have never been more like the iPhone, and we mean that both as a compliment and a gentle criticism. For people who miss the days of low-cost, tinkering-friendly Nexus phones, Google's vision is moving ever further away from that, but the attention to detail and overall polish of the Pixel experience continue with the Pixel 10, 10 Pro, and 10 Pro XL. These are objectively good phones with possibly the best cameras on the market, and they're also a little more powerful, but the aesthetics are seemingly locked down.

Google made a big design change last year with the Pixel 9 series, and it's not reinventing the wheel in 2025. The Pixel 10 series keeps the same formula, making limited refinements, not all of which will be well-received. Google pulled out all the stops and added a ton of new AI features you may not care about, and it killed the SIM card slot. Just because Apple does something doesn't mean Google has to, but here we are. If you're still clinging to your physical SIM card or just like your Pixel 9, there's no reason to rush out to upgrade.

A great but not so daring design

If you liked the Pixel 9's design, you'll like the Pixel 10, because it's a very slightly better version of the same hardware. All three phones are made from aluminum and Gorilla Glass Victus 2 (no titanium option here). The base model has a matte finish on the metal frame with a glossy rear panel, and it's the opposite on the Pro phones. This makes the more expensive phones a little less secure in the hand—those polished edges are slippery. The buttons on the Pixel 9 often felt a bit loose, but the buttons on all our Pixel 10 units are tight and clicky.

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I don't usually get too excited about user-submitted designs on the Lego Ideas website, especially when those ideas would require negotiating a license with another company—user-generated designs need to reach 10,000 supporters before Lego considers them for production, two pretty high bars to clear even without factoring in some other brand's conditions and requests.

But I'm both intrigued and impressed by this Lego version of Apple's old Bondi Blue G3 iMac that has been making the rounds today. Submitted by a user named terauma, the 700-plus-piece set comes complete with keyboard, hockey-puck mouse, a classic Mac OS boot screen, and cathode ray tubes and circuit boards visible through the set's transparent blue casing (like the original iMac, it may cause controversy by excluding a floppy disk drive). The design has already reached 5,000 supporters, and it has 320 days left to reach the 10,000-supporter benchmark required to be reviewed by Lego.

With its personality-forward aesthetics and Jony Ive-led design, the original iMac was the first step down the path that led to blockbuster products like the iPod and iPhone. It was the company's first all-new Mac design after CEO Steve Jobs returned to the company in the late '90s, and while it lacked some features included in contemporary PCs, its tightly integrated design and ease of setup helped it stand out against the beige desktop PCs of the day. Today's colorful Apple Silicon iMacs are clearly inspired by the original design.

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Welcome to Edition 8.08 of the Rocket Report! What a week it's been for SpaceX. The company completed its first successful Starship test flight in nearly a year, and while it wasn't perfect, it sets up SpaceX for far more ambitious tests ahead. SpaceX's workhorse rocket, the Falcon 9, launched six times since our last edition of the Rocket Report. Many of these missions were noteworthy in their own right, including the launch of the US military's X-37B spaceplane, an upgraded Dragon capsule to boost the International Space Station to a higher orbit, and the record 30th launch and landing of a flight-proven Falcon 9 booster. All told, that's seven SpaceX launches in seven days.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Firefly announces cause of Alpha launch failure. Firefly Aerospace closed the investigation into the failure of one of its Alpha rockets during an April mission for Lockheed Martin and received clearance from the FAA to resume launches, Payload reports. The loss of the launch vehicle was a dark cloud hanging over the company’s otherwise successful IPO this month. The sixth flight of Firefly's Alpha rocket launched in April from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, and failed when its first stage booster broke apart milliseconds after stage separation. This created a shockwave that destroyed the engine nozzle extension on the second stage, damaging the engine before the second stage ran out of propellant seconds before it attained orbital velocity. Both stages ultimately fell into the Pacific Ocean.

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Google is advising users of the Salesloft Drift AI chat agent to consider all security tokens connected to the platform compromised following the discovery that unknown attackers used some of the credentials to access email from Google Workspace accounts.

In response, Google has revoked the tokens that were used in the breaches and disabled integration between the Salesloft Drift agent and all Workspace accounts as it investigates further. The company has also notified all affected account holders of the compromise.

Scope expanded

The discovery, reported Thursday in an advisory update, indicates that a Salesloft Drift breach it reported on Tuesday is broader than previously known. Prior to the update, members of the Google Threat Intelligence Group said the compromised tokens were limited to Salesloft Drift integrations with Salesforce. The compromise of the Workspace accounts prompted Google to change that assessment.

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We tend to lump all mammoths together as big, hairy elephant-like beasts with enormous tusks. But there were a number of mammoth species, including less furry ones that inhabited temperate regions. And the furry ones include at least three species: the Eurasian steppe mammoth, the Arctic-specializing woolly mammoth, and the late-evolving North America-only Columbian mammoth.

Because these species inhabited the Arctic, it has been remarkably easy to obtain DNA from them, providing a genetic picture of their relations. The DNA suggests that the woolly mammoth is an offshoot of the steppe mammoth lineage and was the first to migrate into North America. But the Columbian mammoth was a bit of an enigma; some genetic data suggested it was also a steppe offshoot, while other samples indicated it might be a woolly/steppe hybrid.

But all of that data came from animals living in colder environments. In contrast, the Columbian mammoth ranged as far south as Central America. And now, a group of researchers has managed to obtain a bit of genetic information from bones found in the Basin of Mexico, which includes Mexico City. And these mammoths appear to form a distinct genetic cluster and are all more closely related to each other than to any other woolly or Columbian mammoths.

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If a family of anthropomorphic mice were to meet around a TV, I imagine they'd gather around something like TinyCircuits’ TinyTV 2. The gadget sits on four slender, angled legs with its dials and classic, brown shell beckoning viewers toward its warm, bright stories. The TinyTV’s screen is only 1.14 inches diagonally, but the device exudes vintage energy.

In simple terms, the TinyTV is a portable, rechargeable gadget that plays stored videos and was designed to look and function like a vintage TV. The details go down to the dials, one for controlling the volume and another for scrolling through the stored video playlist. Both rotary knobs make an assuring click when twisted.

Musing on fantastical uses for the TinyTV seems appropriate because the device feels like it's built around fun. At a time when TVs are getting more powerful, software-driven, AI-stuffed, and, of course, bigger, the TinyTV is a delightful, comforting tribute to a simpler time for TVs.

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The maker of Passwordstate, an enterprise-grade password manager for storing companies’ most privileged credentials, is urging them to promptly install an update fixing a high-severity vulnerability that hackers can exploit to gain administrative access to their vaults.

The authentication bypass allows hackers to create a URL that accesses an emergency access page for Passwordstate. From there, an attacker could pivot to the administrative section of the password manager. A CVE identifier isn’t yet available.

Safeguarding enterprises’ most privileged credentials

Click Studios, the Australia-based maker of Passwordstate, says the credential manager is used by 29,000 customers and 370,000 security professionals. The product is designed to safeguard organizations' most privileged and sensitive credentials. Among other things, it integrates into Active Directory, the service Windows network admins use to create, change, and modify user accounts. It can also be used for handling password resets, event auditing, and remote session logins.

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My two-year-old daughter clearly loves music. She dances to everything, and she sings with abandon. Although I'm married to a musician and live nearby to one of the top music schools in the world, I have been blessed with only an average aptitude for making the stuff. I'm a poor guide for my daughter as ...

CATRA is an invention of MIT's Media Lab which uses a cellphone and a cheap plastic eyepiece to detect cataracts. Not only is it cheaper and easier to use than existing solutions, it actually provides much better results. Cataracts cause blindness by fogging the lens of the eye, scattering light before it reaches the retina. Normally, ...

If you've played Portal 2 solo mode all the way to the end, you've heard the excellent end-credits song "Want You Gone," Jonathan Coulton's follow-up to "Still Alive," his justly famous song from the first Portal. Well, a fan named Pedro Calvo has made a music video based on the song and the ending of the ...

A number of Apple TV customers are unable to stream Netflix movies to their devices, according to several user reports posted over the weekend. A Netflix spokesman confirmed to Wired.com that a small number of Apple TV devices were experiencing technical issues with the service, and the company claims the issue has been fixed. "Now I have ...

IPad-owning photographers should stop reading right now (well, not right now, or you won't know what to do next) and go download PhotoForge 2, a rather splendid update to the already decent photo-editing app. Better still, if you already bought the iPhone version, the update is free -- the app is now universal. The biggest differences ...

Like all genres of music, the genre of nerdcore has it's annual gathering, the apex of live performances in a 2-day music festival called Nerdapalooza. Regardless of the genre classification, Nerdapalooza is a high energy gathering with a solid and continuous line-up of musical performances and straight up fun. Over the past couple years, attendance ...

It would be hard to say anything good about the iPad 2's speaker. It is tinnier-sounding than the surprisingly good speaker on the first iPad. It faces backwards, firing all sound away from you. It is far too easy to cover it with a hand or a Smart Cover and -- worst of all -- it is about the ugliest piece of design to come out of Apple since that stupid hockey-puck mouse that shipped back in 1998. Luckily, there's a fix.

Sure, you love to watch a crash-bang firework show while you sip a cold beer on July 4th, but did you ever think about how the poor firework feels? Well did you, you callous spectator, you? No, you didn't, which means that Jeremiah Warren is a much better man than you. Not only did he ask ...

I can think of precisely one use for a headphone jack splitter, and that's for watching movies on the iPad when I'm on a plane or train, traveling with The Lady. However, I am also aware that there are couples whose individual musical tastes don't make each other physically sick, and who might like to ...