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The Verge's Version History podcast released a new episode examining how Texas Instruments built and maintained near-total dominance of the graphing calculator business since the early 2000s. Hosts David Pierce, Nilay Patel, and Victoria Song discuss the company's history as part of a back-to-school themed season that will also cover One Laptop Per Child, Chromebooks, LeapPad, and overhead projectors.
A Texas Air National Guard F-16 went down in Michigan on Thursday afternoon during a training exercise, forcing an evacuation of homes and businesses within a mile of the crash site over a chemical spill. The pilot ejected safely and was taken to a hospital, while all Texas Air National Guard aircraft at the site were grounded pending investigation. One pilot reportedly told air traffic control his wingman may have struck a bird before the crash.
Crusoe, the AI infrastructure firm behind Oracle's giant Abilene, Texas campus, has closed a $3.9 billion funding round led by Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners and Mubadala, pushing its valuation to roughly $30.9 billion. The company is using the capital to expand into smaller, factory-built facilities called Spark, designed for AI inference rather than massive training clusters.
SpaceX manager Kyle Gonzalez was arrested after allegedly stabbing a Tesla contractor in the neck during a night out at the Waterhole Saloon near Austin, Texas. Court documents say the confrontation began over a karaoke performance and a pool game, escalating when Gonzalez allegedly threatened to kill the man before attacking him with a pocket knife. The contractor survived after emergency surgery, and Gonzalez was charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon.
Shortly after Tesla began testing its pedal-free, steering-wheel-free Cybercab on Austin streets, the NHTSA opened an audit into whether the vehicle complies with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. The agency has since issued a Special Order demanding Tesla certify under oath that the Cybercab meets these rules by September 30, with noncompliance risking fines up to $139 million and possible prison time for falsified claims.
Startup Rune has deployed a modular data center in southwest Texas that connects directly to a solar farm rather than the electric grid. It runs on solar output that would otherwise go unused, avoiding the need to construct any new power generation to support it.
SpaceX plans to launch its 14th Starship test flight as early as September 22 from Texas, pending regulatory approval, marking the first attempt to send the vehicle into orbit. The mission will carry 26 large V3 Starlink satellites to a 275 km orbit, with the upper stage aiming to complete six orbits over roughly 10 hours.
Major U.S. indexes closed lower for the week as crude oil topped $100 a barrel amid U.S.-Iran tensions and the 10-year Treasury yield hit its highest level since October 2023, reviving fears the Fed will raise rates again. The Dow fell 1.6%, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq dropped 0.8% and 0.7% respectively, despite a Friday rebound. Inflation readings from the producer and consumer price indexes came in largely as expected, but portfolio holdings Meta and Apple offered upbeat signals about their AI prospects.
As Tesla's autonomous Cybercab vehicles begin appearing in cities including Austin, New York, Washington DC, and San Diego, several personal injury law firms are already publishing marketing material aimed at potential accident victims. Firms such as Sarofiem and Antoun, Funes Law, and Angel Reyes and Associates are positioning themselves to handle liability claims even though no confirmed Cybercab accidents have occurred yet.
Google has rolled out a fix for a glitch that left some YouTube users seeing missing thumbnails and YouTube TV users staring at fully blacked-out screens. The company confirmed the issue, which mainly hit users in Texas, is now resolved after previously suggesting a workaround of switching internet connections.
Riders in Austin discovered a hidden on-screen control panel in Tesla's driverless Cybercab, featuring a virtual joystick with forward/reverse toggles, a stop button, horn, and manual door controls. The interface appeared in the lower left of the central display alongside live camera feeds, though passengers who tried to activate it found the controls unresponsive.
Software engineer Kenton Varda and entrepreneur Jade Wang designed and built a house in Austin, Texas from an empty lot, purchased in 2019 with construction beginning in 2021 and finishing in late 2023. The project was led architecturally by Kenton's father Richard Varda alongside RSP Architects, with Kenton personally designing gaming and technical features like the game station cabinetry and conduit routing, while Blue Horse Building & Design served as general contractor.