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Blinkit, Zepto, Instamart and BigBasket began selling Apple's iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max in India as soon as they launched, promising doorstep delivery in roughly 10 minutes alongside traditional retail channels. BigBasket reported over 300 units sold in the first hour, while Instamart said Bengaluru led orders, though several platforms saw stock run out within hours.
NASA has expanded its Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract with SpaceX, adding three additional crewed Dragon missions to the International Space Station through 2030. The new award is worth up to $946 million and brings SpaceX's total operational flights under the contract to 17, pushing its cumulative earnings from NASA to $5.92 billion. SpaceX shares ISS crew transport duties with Boeing, whose Starliner is set to begin crewed flights in 2027 after an unpiloted test flight.
According to CNN reporting, a US Special Operations Command Pacific analyst used a generative AI chatbot to draft an intelligence report on a Chinese vessel, and the tool fabricated claims that it was carrying nuclear weapons. That false information was formatted into a standard military intelligence document and acted upon, with planes airborne and troops preparing to board the ship before the error was caught and the operation aborted.
A marketing strategist warns that ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini frequently describe companies inaccurately, citing discontinued products, misattributed positioning, and wrong pricing or locations. He recommends founders run a 'mirror test' by asking multiple AI tools the same questions about their business to see how they're being represented online.
During the recent conflict with Iran, a US special operations analyst used an AI chatbot to help produce an intelligence report claiming a Chinese vessel was carrying nuclear weapons components. The military mobilized to intercept the ship, with armed personnel and aircraft readied, before officials discovered the report was based on a hallucinated AI output and called off the operation.
A New York Times opinion editor defended the practice of publishing op-eds under politicians' names even when the pieces are ghostwritten or assisted by staff, arguing this has long been standard practice. The comment came amid broader discussion about how AI tools are now blurring the line between human and machine-assisted writing in opinion journalism.
A major Wendy's franchisee operating 314 restaurants has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing what it called sustained system-wide headwinds alongside broader struggles facing the parent company. The filing marks a significant setback for Wendy's, which has already been dealing with declining sales and a contracting store count.
California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order directing state experts to examine potential AI oversight measures, including the possibility of a 'kill switch' to halt dangerous AI systems. The move formalizes a process for studying regulatory options rather than immediately imposing new rules.
Security researchers demonstrated that Raspberry Pi's RP2350 microcontroller (revision A4) can have its permanently disabled Secure debug re-enabled through photon-emission microscopy combined with SWD-guided laser fault injection. By pinpointing the exact register controlling debug enablement and firing precisely targeted laser pulses, the team flipped two bits to restore debugger access to the chip's Secure world, later extracting a protected secret from one-time-programmable memory after a rescue reset bypassed the runtime lock.
At the Fast Company Innovation Festival, design executives from Spotify, Block, and Brooks discussed how generative AI has sped up the process of turning ideas into products. During the New Rules of Great Design panel, Spotify's Emily Galloway argued that speed and volume alone don't equal quality, emphasizing that human judgment remains essential to deciding what actually gets built.
Chinese AI startup Manus is reportedly negotiating a $500 million funding round valuing it at $4 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal, after resuming operations as an independent company. Prospective backers include IDG Capital, Boyu Capital, CATL, and returning investors Tencent, HSG and Zhenfund, with the company also weighing a restructuring ahead of a possible Hong Kong IPO.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told a crowd at the Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group he co-founded, that his agency is examining aircraft emissions in relation to so-called 'chemtrails.' The crowd applauded as he described looking into potential health impacts from these emissions, echoing a long-debunked conspiracy theory that planes spray chemicals for population control or weather manipulation.