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Campaign finance filings reviewed by the Washington Post show 39 congressional candidates paid for OpenAI subscriptions, with some acknowledging use for advertising and message drafting despite OpenAI's rules barring political ad generation. Roughly 30 PACs and parties also reported OpenAI payments, led by the Republican National Committee at about $9,700.
Researchers from Google and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus have finished mapping every neuron and synaptic connection in the brain of a male fruit fly. This male connectome joins a female Drosophila map completed earlier this year, giving scientists two complete wiring diagrams of the same species' brain for comparison. The project combined Janelia's imaging expertise with Google's computational tools to process hundreds of millions of synapses.
Candidates across parties are campaigning against Flock Safety's AI-powered license-plate camera network, which operates in thousands of U.S. communities and lets police search shared vehicle data. Politicians in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida have called for bans, funding cuts, warrant requirements, or campaigned directly against the surveillance system. Flock defends the technology, citing its role in solving roughly a million crimes and reuniting thousands of missing people with families.
As Trump publicly warned communities against opposing AI data centers, a group called Build American AI—backed by the PAC Leading the Future—is rolling out a large ad campaign in battleground states like Kansas, Ohio and Wisconsin to build public support for new AI infrastructure. The push comes as an Annenberg Public Policy Center study found 61% of US adults now oppose new data centers near their homes, driven by concerns over rising utility costs, environmental impact and general distrust of AI.
GuidePoint Security's research team found that attackers have breached at least 31 organizations—spanning e-commerce, professional services, and retail logistics—using a ClickFix campaign that leverages the Polygon blockchain to conceal command-and-control infrastructure. The technique, dubbed EtherHiding, lets attackers dynamically update C2 server locations via blockchain transactions instead of relying on a single fixed address.
A back-to-school roundup recommends various personal transportation devices, including unicycles, bicycles, and other wheeled options, to help students move around campus more efficiently. The guide focuses on practicality and enjoyment for daily commutes between classes.
Microsoft has identified a new ClickFix-style social engineering campaign called TerminalFix, which uses fake Cloudflare CAPTCHA prompts to trick users into pasting malicious commands into Windows Terminal or PowerShell. Once executed, the command triggers a multi-stage attack chain designed to give attackers a persistent foothold inside enterprise systems.
OpenAI announced its advertising unit, launched within ChatGPT in February, now generates $1 billion in annualized revenue run rate. The ads are now live in over 40 countries, with self-service access expanding Monday to India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, primarily reaching free-tier and Go subscription users.
A newly minted PhD in Arithmetic Geometry from the University of Florida writes candidly about choosing not to pursue an academic mathematics career, describing years of quiet, unhurried study under an advisor who never pushed toward the professor track. The essay explores the gap between the intense passion typical of career mathematicians and the author's own more ambivalent relationship with the field.
Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell and other music publishers have filed suit against Anthropic and its co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann in a California federal court, accusing the AI company of torrenting and scraping copyrighted song lyrics and sheet music to train its Claude models. Anthropic says it disagrees with the claims and plans to fight the case in court.
The person behind nine days of leaked Grand Theft Auto VI gameplay clips cashed out of the Solana-based $CYBERLEEK token just hours before Rockstar's official Extended Look premiered on Netflix. On-chain data shows the wallet withdrew about $146,000 in wrapped SOL plus millions of accumulated tokens, then sold everything for roughly $125,000, with total proceeds across four wallets estimated near $250,000. The token has since collapsed from a peak of about $0.0344 to roughly $0.002725.
Apple has launched a new promotional video for the Mac mini built entirely using claymation, a stop-motion technique using physical clay figures rather than digital animation. The ad depicts the Mac mini transforming into several clay characters, including a bodybuilder, a race car, and a rocket ship, to visually represent the device's performance and versatility.