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Grok's AI chatbot now includes companions for you to 'romance'

Grok, xAi's chatbot most famous for going on an antisemitic spree last week, has now added the ability to perform as a synthetic companion for your enjoyment. Elon Musk announced the new feature, available to paid subscribers, which will take the form of animated characters Ani and Rudy. Both are distinctly not safe for work, with the former operating as a digital waifu for you to, uh, romance. Rudy, on the other hand, is a red panda with a smart mouth who likes to get rude with the people he's

US probes imports on drones and a raw material used in chips and solar panels

The Department of Commerce has opened national security investigations into imports of drones and polysilicon , a raw material used in chips and solar panels. Among other things, officials are looking into "predatory trade practices" and the capacity of other countries to "weaponize their control over supplies" of drones, drone parts and polysilicon, as well as derivatives of each. The DoC commenced the investigations on July 1, but has only just disclosed them publicly. The probes could lead t

Praise and Addiction Fears: Musk’s AI Girlfriend Sparks Fierce Debate

How do you bury a controversy? If you’re Elon Musk, you drop an anime waifu into the middle of a scandal and watch the internet do the rest. Just days after xAI’s chatbot Grok sparked outrage for spouting anti-Semitic rhetoric and praising Adolf Hitler, the billionaire shifted the narrative by unveiling a new feature called Companions, which lets users interact with flirty, customizable AI avatars like Ani, a goth anime girl, and Rudy, a red panda. The feature went instantly viral. While xAI ha

Beware! Research shows Gmail’s AI email summaries can be hacked

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority TL;DR A researcher recently demonstrated a Gemini flaw that could be exploited to inject malicious instructions while using Gmail’s email summary feature. These instructions were hidden in plain text under the body of the email. Google responded to the research, stating that it had updated its models to identify such prompt engineering measures and block phishing links. Big tech companies have been billing AI as the ubiquitous tool that frees us from munda

When Sigterm Does Nothing: A Postgres Mystery

In my opinion, the worst bugs are the ones you decide not to look further into. Maybe the problem only manifests 2% of the time, or when you run the code on a particular brand of toaster. Maybe the customer doesn't supply enough information to begin narrowing down the cause. Maybe you just don't have enough time to track the issue down fully. And everyone eventually moves on. But when you see the same bug strike again months later, you quietly mutter to yourself and wish you'd been persistent

DEWLine Museum – The Distant Early Warning Radar Line

Typical DEWLine Stations There were two types of stations, Main and Auxiliary. The sites were placed approximately 100 miles (160 KM) apart, along the 69th parallel about 200 miles inside the Arctic circle. Originally, there was a third type of station called an Intermediate site (I-Site), located midway between each of the Main and Aux sites, and would have been home for about 5-people. The 28 I-Sites proved ineffective and were abandoned in 1963.

Today's NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for July 15, #765

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. Today's NYT Connections puzzle had some fun categories, and wasn't too tough. It helps to know your scary movies. Read on for clues and today's Connections answers. The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric

Today's NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for July 15, #295

Looking for the most recent regular 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 and Strands puzzles. It helps to have an interest in UK sports for today's Connections: Sports Edition. And as is often the case, the purple-group words have an unexpected link between them. Keep reading for hints and the answers. Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sund

Elon Musk’s AI bot adds a ridiculous anime companion with ‘NSFW’ mode

is a news editor covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme. People who pay for access to SuperGrok can now try the AI chatbot’s new “Companions” avatars, xAI owner Elon Musk announced Monday morning. The companions available currently include Ani, an anime avatar, and Rudy, a cartoony red panda. Ani also has what TestingCatalog describes as an “NSFW” mode where the character wears lingerie. (And just a warning: if you search for posts

East Asian aerosol cleanup has likely contributed to global warming

RAMIP simulations and recent emissions changes in East Asia We first document the emissions perturbation applied in the RAMIP baseline and East Asia simulations21 (see “Methods”), and compare them to the actual emissions reductions from the same region since around 2010. Briefly, RAMIP isolates the climate effects of aerosol emissions in one region by comparing two sets of transient emission simulations; one following a global, high emissions pathway (SSP3-7.0, which assumes weak air quality po

Trump administration to spend $1 billion on ‘offensive’ hacking operations

The Trump administration, through the Department of Defense, plans to spend $1 billion over the next four years on what it calls “offensive cyber operations.” The provision in Trump’s landmark One Big Beautiful Bill does not say what those “offensive cyber operations” are, nor what specific tools or software would qualify. The budget does note that the money will go towards enhancing and improving the capabilities of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, which operates in the Asia-Pacific region, incl

East Asian air cleanup likely contributed to acceleration in global warming

RAMIP simulations and recent emissions changes in East Asia We first document the emissions perturbation applied in the RAMIP baseline and East Asia simulations21 (see “Methods”), and compare them to the actual emissions reductions from the same region since around 2010. Briefly, RAMIP isolates the climate effects of aerosol emissions in one region by comparing two sets of transient emission simulations; one following a global, high emissions pathway (SSP3-7.0, which assumes weak air quality po

Today's NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for July 14, #294

Looking for the most recent regular 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 and Strands puzzles. Today's Connections: Sports Edition might be tough, if timely. I guess I'm not up on the 2025 HR Derby, but maybe you are. Read on for hints and the answers. Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 9. That's a sign that the game has earned e

Show HN: A Raycast-compatible launcher for Linux

Raycast for Linux An open-source, Raycast-inspired launcher for Linux. For more background on this project, I have a post here. Disclaimer: This is a hobby project and is not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, the official Raycast team. ✨ Features This launcher aims to recreate most of Raycast's core features on Linux: Extensible Command Palette : The core of the application. Search for and launch applications, run commands, execute quicklinks, and more. : The core of the application. Sear

Today's NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for July 14, #764

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. There are some TV and movie references in today's NYT Connections puzzle. If you spent your childhood in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, you're sure to get one of them. That purple category, though ... good luck! Read on for clues and today's Connections answers. The Ti

Species at 30 makes for a great guilty pleasure

Earlier this month, Hollywood mourned the passing of Michael Madsen, a gifted actor best known for his critically acclaimed roles in Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, and Donnie Brasco, among others. Few obituaries have mentioned one of his lesser-known roles: a black ops mercenary hired to help hunt down an escaped human/alien hybrid in 1995's Species. The sci-fi thriller turns 30 this year and while it garnered decidedly mixed reviews upon release, the film holds up quite well as a not-quite-campy B

Study warns of ‘significant risks’ in using AI therapy chatbots

Therapy chatbots powered by large language models may stigmatize users with mental health conditions and otherwise respond inappropriately or even dangerously, according to researchers at Stanford University. While recent coverage in The New York Times and elsewhere has highlighted the role that ChatGPT may play in reinforcing delusional or conspiratorial thinking, a new paper titled “Expressing stigma and inappropriate responses prevents LLMs from safely replacing mental health providers” exam

Show HN: Learn LLMs LeetCode Style

TorchLeet is broken into two sets of questions: Question Set: A collection of PyTorch practice problems, ranging from basic to hard, designed to enhance your skills in deep learning and PyTorch. LLM Set: A new set of questions focused on understanding and implementing Large Language Models (LLMs) from scratch, including attention mechanisms, embeddings, and more. Note Avoid using GPT. Try to solve these problems on your own. The goal is to learn and understand PyTorch concepts deeply. Table o

Hill Space: Neural nets that do perfect arithmetic (to 10⁻¹⁶ precision)

When understood and used properly, the constraint W = tanh(Ŵ) ⊙ σ(M̂) (introduced in NALU by Trask et al. 2018 ) creates a unique parameter topology where optimal weights for discrete operations can be calculated rather than learned . During training, they're able to converge with extreme speed and reliability towards the optimal solution. Most neural networks struggle with basic arithmetic. They approximate, they fail on extrapolation, and they're inconsistent. But what if there was a way to m

Today's NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for July 13, #293

Looking for the most recent regular 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 and Strands puzzles. Today's Connections: Sports Edition has some fun categories. There's only one requiring last names, and one requiring teams, so if you can sort those easily, you should be in good shape. Read on for hints and the answers. Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Sup

Legendary Entertainment May Have Lionsgate in Its Acquisition Sights

Studios have been threatening to acquire each other the past couple years, and now it seems to be Legendary Entertainment’s turn. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the studio behind recent hits like A Minecraft Movie and the Dune trilogy is potentially snatching up Lionsgate, best known for the John Wick and Hunger Games series. At the moment, the two companies are considering a team up on some films, and if things go well, that’ll blossom into a “more complete offer.” There weren’t any spec

Today's NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for July 13, #763

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. Today's NYT Connections puzzle wasn't as tough as some puzzles are. I spotted the four purple category words right away. Read on for clues and today's Connections answers. The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a n

Horrifying Research Finds Melting Glaciers Could Activate Deadly Volcanoes

Scientists are warning that glaciers melting due to global warming could trigger explosive — and potentially deadly — volcanic eruptions around the world. As detailed in a new study presented at the Goldschmidt international geochemistry conference this week and due to be peer-reviewed later this year, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison analyzed six volcanoes in southern Chile to study how retreating ice sheets may have influenced past volcanic behavior. Using advanced argon

Reverse proxy deep dive

Reverse proxy deep dive mitendra mahto 8 min read · Jun 25, 2025 -- Listen Share This post was originally published on my personal blog. A Deep Dive into Reverse Proxy A reverse proxy is a critical piece of software commonly found in various setups within a distributed system. You may have encountered it as a proxy enabling service mesh, a load balancer distributing the load among different database instances, or an edge proxy hiding the complexity behind a site. Several excellent reverse pr

Today's NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for July 12, #292

Looking for the most recent regular 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 and Strands puzzles. Today's Connections: Sports Edition has one of those classic purple categories, where you probably won't figure it out before you've answered all the others. Need help? Read on for hints and the answers. Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sunday, Fe

Today's NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for July 12, #762

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. The purple group in today's NYT Connections puzzle was easier than some of the other groups, I thought. Read on for clues and today's Connections answers. The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and

Android 16 totally changes how notifications work on your phone, thanks to two new features

Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Android 16 officially rolled out a few weeks ago, and in addition to enhanced protection and productivity enhancements, the latest OS introduced several changes to how notifications are received. If you're anything like me, you get so many notifications that you occasionally miss important ones. Google has made two changes to your Android notifications, both aimed at keeping things easier to find. Also: Updating to Android 16 gives you 2 useful security features -

Join Our Livestream: Inside the AI Copyright Battles

What's going on right now with the copyright battles over artificial intelligence? Many lawsuits regarding generative AI’s training materials were initially filed back in 2023, with decisions just now starting to trickle out. Whether it’s Midjourney generating videos of Disney characters, like Wall-E brandishing a gun, or an exit interview with a top AI lawyer as he left Meta, WIRED senior writer Kate Knibbs has been following this fight for years—and she’s ready to answer your questions. Bring

How two new Android 16 features totally change the way notifications work on your phone

Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Android 16 officially rolled out a few weeks ago, and in addition to enhanced protection and productivity enhancements, the latest OS introduced several changes to how notifications are received. If you're anything like me, you get so many notifications that you occasionally miss important ones. Google has made two changes to your Android notifications, both aimed at keeping things easier to find. Also: Updating to Android 16 gives you 2 useful security features -