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Can you wear white after Labor Day if your destination is Earth orbit?

ABC News: The US DOJ arrests a soldier involved in the capture of Nicolás Maduro for allegedly making $400K+ on Polymarket by betting on his removal from office  —  The bet was allegedly placed by a commando involved in Nicolas Maduro's capture.  —  Katherine Faulders, Aaron Katersky, Peter Charalambous, and Alexander Mallin

Anthropic denied "nerfing" Claude Code after a week of user complaints about quality. Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto via Getty Images Anthropic found issues with Claude Code after complaints that the popular tool had gotten worse. The company denied "nerfing" or intentionally degrading the model. Users had been complaining for weeks that Claude Code was giving worse responses. If you were one of the users complaining that Claude Code has sucked lately, Anthropic just confirmed it wasn't all in your head. The company wrote in a lengthy blog post that after reviewing user complaints about the quality of Claude Code, one of its most popular products, it identified three issues likely contributing to a worse user experience. "We take reports about degradation very seriously. We never intentionally degrade our models," the Thursday post read. It said the underlying model was not affected; the issues were tweaks made at the product level. As of April 20, Anthropic said, those issues were fixed and that it had taken steps to avoid similar problems in the future. The post came after weeks of user complaints that Claude Code's responses had deteriorated. The complaints followed a series of wins for Anthropic, which has been praised for the technical abilities of its tools and earned a $1 trillion valuation on secondary markets. The issues led some users to speculate that Anthropic had intentionally degraded or "nerfed" the tool, which the company flatly denied. "Claude has regressed to the point it cannot be trusted to perform complex engineering," a GitHub user identified as Stella Laurenzo, senior director of chipmaker AMD's AI group, wrote in a post from early April. Similar complaints were shared on Reddit, where one user said Claude Code had become "lazy," "ignorant," and "degraded and myopic." "Over the past month, some of you reported Claude Code's quality had slipped," Anthropic's developers said in an X post on Thursday. "We investigated, and published a post-mortem on the three issues we found." The company detailed product changes that led to the reported problems: a change to Claude Code's default thinking level, a cache-optimization tweak that introduced a bug, and a system prompt meant to make the tool less verbose. Steps taken to solve the problem include having a larger share of staff use the public build of Claude Code, improving its code review tool, and adding tighter controls to system prompt changes. The company thanked users who submitted feedback and said it is resetting usage limits for all subscribers as of Thursday. Some Claude users expressed feeling validated after Anthropic's announcement. "I can't believe we were right," popular X user @levelsio wrote. "Claude was dumbified on March 4, just when we noticed!" The user reshared their March 4 post — the day Anthropic said it had changed the default thinking level — that said, "Claude Code with Opus 4.6 was so dumb today I finally had to write my own code again." Anthropic also received some scrutiny on Tuesday when it said it was experimenting with removing Claude Code from the Pro plan, its lower-tier paid subscription. The company said it was a test that affected around 2% of new users. Read the original article on Business Insider

<p>LlamaIndex have a most excellent open source project called <a href="https://github.com/run-llama/liteparse">LiteParse</a>, which provides a Node.js CLI tool for extracting text from PDFs. I got a version of LiteParse working entirely in the browser, using most of the same libraries that LiteParse uses to run in Node.js.</p> <h4 id="spatial-text-parsing">Spatial text parsing</h4> <p>Refreshingly, LiteParse doesn't use AI models to do what it does: it's good old-fashioned PDF parsing, falling back to Tesseract OCR (or other pluggable OCR engines) for PDFs that contain images of text rather than the text itself.</p> <p>The hard problem that LiteParse solves is extracting text in a sensible order despite the infuriating vagaries of PDF layouts. They describe this as "spatial text parsing" - they use some very clever heuristics to detect things like multi-column layouts and group and return the text in a sensible linear flow.</p> <p>The LiteParse documentation describes a pattern for implementing <a href="https://developers.llamaindex.ai/liteparse/guides/visual-citations/">Visual Citations with Bounding Boxes</a>. I really like this idea: being able to answer questions from a PDF and accompany those answers with cropped, highlighted images feels like a great way of increasing the credibility of answers from RAG-style Q&amp;A.</p> <p>LiteParse is provided as a pure CLI tool, designed to be used by agents. You run it like this:</p> <pre><code>npm i -g @llamaindex/liteparse lit parse document.pdf </code></pre> <p>I <a href="https://claude.ai/share/44a5ed86-e5b5-4e14-90be-1eba1e0acd13">explored its capabilities with Claude</a> and quickly determined that there was no real reason it had to stay a CLI app: it's built on top of PDF.js and Tesseract.js, two libraries I've used for something similar in a browser <a href="https://simonwillison.net/2024/Mar/30/ocr-pdfs-images/">in the past</a>.</p> <p>The only reason LiteParse didn't have a pure browser-based version is that nobody had built one yet...</p> <h4 id="introducing-liteparse-for-the-web">Introducing LiteParse for the web</h4> <p>Visit <a href="https://simonw.github.io/liteparse/">https://simonw.github.io/liteparse/</a> to try out LiteParse against any PDF file, running entirely in your browser. Here's what that looks like:</p> <p><img src="https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/liteparse-web.jpg" alt="Screenshot of the LiteParse browser demo web page. Header reads &quot;LiteParse&quot; with subtitle &quot;Browser demo of LiteParse — parse PDFs in your browser. Nothing leaves your machine.&quot; A dashed-border drop zone says &quot;Drop a PDF here or click to choose / Your file stays in your browser.&quot; with a file pill labeled &quot;19720005243.pdf&quot;. Below are a checked &quot;Run OCR&quot; checkbox, an unchecked &quot;Render page screenshots&quot; checkbox, and a blue &quot;Parse&quot; button. Status text: &quot;Parsed 86 pages.&quot; Two side-by-side panels follow. Left panel titled &quot;Text&quot; with a Copy button shows monospace extracted text beginning &quot;Apollo 5 was an unmanned system, both propulsion systems ascent and descent stages&quot;. Right panel titled &quot;JSON&quot;, also with a copy button, contains JSON showing the dimensions and position and detected font of each piece of text." style="max-width: 100%;" /></p> <p>The tool can work with or without running OCR, and can optionally display images for every page in the PDF further down the page.</p> <h4 id="building-it-with-claude-code-and-opus-4-7">Building it with Claude Code and Opus 4.7</h4> <p>The process of building this started in the regular Claude app on my iPhone. I wanted to try out LiteParse myself, so I started by uploading a random PDF I happened to have on my phone along with this prompt:</p> <blockquote> <p><code>Clone https://github.com/run-llama/liteparse and try it against this file</code></p> </blockquote> <p>Regular Claude chat can clone directly from GitHub these days, and while by default it can't access most of the internet from its container it can also install packages from PyPI and npm.</p> <p>I often use this to try out new pieces of open source software on my phone - it's a quick way to exercise something without having to sit down with my laptop.</p> <p>You can follow my full conversation in <a href="https://claude.ai/share/44a5ed86-e5b5-4e14-90be-1eba1e0acd13">this shared Claude transcript</a>. I asked a few follow-up questions about how it worked, and then asked:</p> <blockquote> <p><code>Does this library run in a browser? Could it?</code></p> </blockquote> <p>This gave me a thorough enough answer that I was convinced it was worth trying getting that to work for real. I opened up my laptop and switched to Claude Code.</p> <p>I forked the original repo on GitHub, cloned a local copy, started a new <code>web</code> branch and pasted that last reply from Claude into a new file called <a href="https://github.com/simonw/liteparse/blob/web/notes.md">notes.md</a>. Then I told Claude Code:</p> <blockquote> <p><code>Get this working as a web app. index.html, when loaded, should render an app that lets users open a PDF in their browser and select OCR or non-OCR mode and have this run. Read notes.md for initial research on this problem, then write out plan.md with your detailed implementation plan</code></p> </blockquote> <p>I always like to start with a plan for this kind of project. Sometimes I'll use Claude's "planning mode", but in this case I knew I'd want the plan as an artifact in the repository so I told it to write <code>plan.md</code> directly.</p> <p>This also means I can iterate on the plan with Claude. I noticed that Claude had decided to punt on generating screenshots of images in the PDF, and suggested we defer a "canvas-encode swap" to v2. I fixed that by prompting:</p> <blockquote> <p><code>Update the plan to say we WILL do the canvas-encode swap so the screenshots thing works</code></p> </blockquote> <p>After a few short follow-up prompts, here's the <a href="https://github.com/simonw/liteparse/blob/web/plan.md">plan.md</a> I thought was strong enough to implement.</p> <p>I prompted:</p> <blockquote> <p><code>build it.</code></p> </blockquote> <p>And then mostly left Claude Code to its own devices, tinkered with some other projects, caught up on Duolingo and occasionally checked in to see how it was doing.</p> <p>I added a few prompts to the queue as I was working. Those don't yet show up in my exported transcript, but it turns out running <code>rg queue-operation --no-filename | grep enqueue | jq -r '.content'</code> in the relevant <code>~/.claude/projects/</code> folder extracts them.</p> <p>Here are the key follow-up prompts with some notes:</p> <ul> <li> <code>When you implement this use playwright and red/green TDD, plan that too</code> - I've written more <a href="https://simonwillison.net/guides/agentic-engineering-patterns/red-green-tdd/">about red/green TDD here</a>.</li> <li> <code>let's use PDF.js's own renderer</code> (it was messing around with pdfium)</li> <li> <code>The final UI should include both the text and the pretty-printed JSON output, both of those in textareas and both with copy-to-clipboard buttons - it should also be mobile friendly</code> - I had a new idea for how the UI should work</li> <li> <code>small commits along the way</code> - see below</li> <li> <code>Make sure the index.html page includes a link back to https://github.com/run-llama/liteparse near the top of the page</code> - it's important to credit your dependencies in a project like this!</li> <li><code>View on GitHub → is bad copy because that's not the repo with this web app in, it's the web app for the underlying LiteParse library</code></li> <li><code>Run OCR should be unchecked by default</code></li> <li> <code>When I try to parse a PDF in my browser I see 'Parse failed: undefined is not a function (near '...value of readableStream...')</code> - it was testing with Playwright in Chrome, turned out there was a bug in Safari</li> <li><code>... oh that is in safari but it works in chrome</code></li> <li><code>When "Copy" is clicked the text should change to "Copied!" for 1.5s</code></li> <li> <code>[Image #1] Style the file input so that long filenames don't break things on Firefox like this - in fact add one of those drag-drop zone UIs which you can also click to select a file</code> - dropping screenshots in of small UI glitches works surprisingly well</li> <li><code>Tweak the drop zone such that the text is vertically centered, right now it is a bit closer to the top</code></li> <li> <code>it breaks in Safari on macOS, works in both Chrome and Firefox. On Safari I see "Parse failed: undefined is not a function (near '...value of readableStream...')" after I click the Parse button, when OCR is not checked</code> - it still wasn't working in Safari...</li> <li> <code>works in safari now</code> - but it fixed it pretty quickly once I pointed that out and it got Playwright working with that browser</li> </ul> <p>I've started habitually asking for "small commits along the way" because it makes for code that's easier to understand or review later on, and I have an unproven hunch that it helps the agent work more effectively too - it's yet another encouragement towards planning and taking on one problem at a time.</p> <p>While it was working I decided it would be nice to be able to interact with an in-progress version. I asked a separate Claude Code session against the same directory for tips on how to run it, and it told me to use <code>npx vite</code>. Running that started a development server with live-reloading, which meant I could instantly see the effect of each change it made on disk - and prompt with further requests for tweaks and fixes.</p> <p>Towards the end I decided it was going to be good enough to publish. I started a fresh Claude Code instance and told it:</p> <blockquote> <p><code>Look at the web/ folder - set up GitHub actions for this repo such that any push runs the tests, and if the tests pass it then does a GitHub Pages deploy of the built vite app such that the web/index.html page is the index.html page for the thing that is deployed and it works on GitHub Pages</code></p> </blockquote> <p>After a bit more iteration <a href="https://github.com/simonw/liteparse/blob/web/.github/workflows/deploy-web.yml">here's the GitHub Actions workflow</a> that builds the app using Vite and deploys the result to <a href="https://simonw.github.io/liteparse/">https://simonw.github.io/liteparse/</a>.</p> <p>I love GitHub Pages for this kind of thing because it can be quickly configured (by Claude, in this case) to turn any repository into a deployed web-app, at zero cost and with whatever build step is necessary. It even works against private repos, if you don't mind your only security being a secret URL.</p> <p>With this kind of project there's always a major risk that the model might "cheat" - mark key features as "TODO" and fake them, or take shortcuts that ignore the initial requirements.</p> <p>The responsible way to prevent this is to review all of the code... but this wasn't intended as that kind of project, so instead I fired up OpenAI Codex with GPT-5.5 (I had preview access) and told it:</p> <blockquote> <p><code>Describe the difference between how the node.js CLI tool runs and how the web/ version runs</code></p> </blockquote> <p>The answer I got back was enough to give me confidence that Claude hadn't taken any project-threatening shortcuts.</p> <p>... and that was about it. Total time in Claude Code for that "build it" step was 59 minutes. I used my <a href="https://github.com/simonw/claude-code-transcripts">claude-code-transcripts</a> tool to export a readable version of the full transcript which you can <a href="https://gisthost.github.io/?d64889bfc1b897fea3867adfec62ed89/index.html">view here</a>, albeit without those additional queued prompts (here's my <a href="https://github.com/simonw/claude-code-transcripts/issues/98">issue to fix that</a>).</p> <h4 id="is-this-even-vibe-coding-any-more-">Is this even vibe coding any more?</h4> <p>I'm a pedantic stickler when it comes to <a href="https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/19/vibe-coding/">the original definition of vibe coding</a> - vibe coding does <em>not</em> mean any time you use AI to help you write code, it's when you use AI without reviewing or caring about the code that's written at all.</p> <p>By my own definition, this LiteParse for the web project is about as pure vibe coding as you can get! I have not looked at a <em>single line</em> of the HTML and TypeScript written for this project - in fact while writing this sentence I had to go and check if it had used JavaScript or TypeScript.</p> <p>Yet somehow this one doesn't feel as vibe coded to me as many of my other vibe coded projects:</p> <ul> <li>As a static in-browser web application hosted on GitHub Pages the blast radius for any bugs is almost non-existent: it either works for your PDF or doesn't.</li> <li>No private data is transferred anywhere - all processing happens in your browser - so a security audit is unnecessary. I've glanced once at the network panel while it's running and no additional requests are made when a PDF is being parsed.</li> <li>There was still a whole lot of engineering experience and knowledge required to use the models in this way. Identifying that porting LiteParse to run directly in a browser was critical to the rest of the project.</li> </ul> <p>Most importantly, I'm happy to attach my reputation to this project and recommend that other people try it out. Unlike most of my vibe coded tools I'm not convinced that spending significant additional engineering time on this would have resulted in a meaningfully better initial release. It's fine as it is!</p> <p>I haven't opened a PR against the <a href="https://github.com/run-llama/liteparse">origin repository</a> because I've not discussed it with the LiteParse team. I've <a href="https://github.com/run-llama/liteparse/issues/147">opened an issue</a>, and if they want my vibe coded implementation as a starting point for something more official they're welcome to take it.</p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/javascript">javascript</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ocr">ocr</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/pdf">pdf</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/projects">projects</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai">ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai">generative-ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms">llms</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/vibe-coding">vibe-coding</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/coding-agents">coding-agents</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/claude-code">claude-code</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/agentic-engineering">agentic-engineering</a></p>

Trump-Xi summit may be rocked by US mulling huge sanctions.

Australia was the first country to issue a ban in late 2025, aiming to reduce the pressures and risks that young users may face on social media, including cyberbullying, social media addiction, and exposure to predators.

JPMorgan Chase named 135 executives in global banking and markets to the rank of managing director, part of a larger class of employees raised to the title this week. Bloomberg/Getty Images JPMorgan elevated a class of global executives to the rank of managing director this week. Among them were 135 people in global banking and markets who handle trading and dealmaking. Business Insider obtained the list of execs who got the bump to MD in those groups — see it below. A small circle of JPMorgan employees is likely having a very, very good week. JPMorgan Chase promoted a large swathe of executives to managing director, the highest title at the firm outside the C-suite, according to screenshots of the company's intranet announcement seen by Business Insider. The group spans dealmaking, wealth management, technology, and support roles, reflecting the diverse businesses inside America's biggest bank by assets. The promotions were global, with employees from Switzerland and Luxembourg to Singapore and Hong Kong receiving new titles. JPMorgan declined to comment. Within the divisions housing the firm's M&A and IPO bankers, as well as the traders who run its high-profile markets business, 135 people scored the bump to MD. This year's class is larger than last year's, when JPMorgan promoted 118 employees in global banking and markets to MD, as part of its annual springtime promotion ritual. JPMorgan reported $16.5 billion in net income for the first quarter, up 13% year-over-year. Its commercial and investment bank generated about $9 billion in net income, up 30%, as dealmaking improved across Wall Street. The stronger backdrop comes as the firm names a larger class of managing directors this year, though executives, including CEO Jamie Dimon, warned about the effects of ongoing instability. Business Insider obtained the list of the 135 new managing directors in global banking and markets — their names are below. Have a tip? Contact these reporters via email at ralexander@businessinsider.com or SMS/Signal at 561-247-5758 or atecotzky@insider.com or Signal at alicetecotzky.05. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely. See the names of the 135 newly promoted banking and markets execs who made the cut. Anand Agarwal — Global Investment Banking Tamo Arends — Global Investment Banking Carlos Aspillaga — Global Corporate Banking Ali Bach — Global Investment Banking Kelly Becker — Global Investment Banking Varun Behl — Global Investment Banking Jeremy Berntsen — Global Investment Banking Hunter Bollman — Global Investment Banking Alessandro Caramanica — Global Investment Banking Anthony Carpentieri — Commercial Banking Chris Cassidy — Commercial Banking Glenn Chernyak — Commercial Banking Casey Chopek — Global Investment Banking Robby Cohenour — Commercial Banking Ryan Conlon — Global Corporate Banking Tim Cornelius — Global Investment Banking Nick Cribb — Global Investment Banking Courtney Culliton — Commercial Banking Kevin Curtin — Global Investment Banking Bridget Dalton — Global Investment Banking Juan De Yeregui Guillen — Global Corporate Banking Michael Esposito — Commercial Banking Julie Farrell — Commercial Banking Khalid Fayez — Global Corporate Banking Joe Ferraiolo — Global Investment Banking Miguel Fornies — Global Investment Banking Atul Garg — Global Investment Banking Derek Robert Garman — Global Corporate Banking Christine Gay — Global Services Raphael Gindre — Global Investment Banking Brandt Matthew Grobeis — Global Corporate Banking Susan Grossman — Global Services Mike Guttilla — Commercial Banking Sam Hallowell — Commercial Banking Boy Hartsuiker — Global Corporate Banking Hiroshi Hattori — Global Corporate Banking Becca Hesser — Global Services Steven Matthew Hodapp — Commercial Banking Will Holyoak — Global Investment Banking Benoit Hourdain — Global Corporate Banking Juan Huertas — Global Investment Banking Michael Janik — Global Investment Banking Henrik Jansen — Global Investment Banking Shawn Jiang — Global Investment Banking Sam Johnson — Global Investment Banking Rohit Kumar — Global Corporate Banking Nigel Kwok — Global Investment Banking Eduardo Landaburu — Global Investment Banking Steven Lau — Product & Experience Jack Levendoski — Global Investment Banking Gissell Lopez E — Global Investment Banking Sherrill Lu — Global Investment Banking Joseph Luna — Commercial Banking Sean MacGregor — Global Investment Banking Mike Manna — Commercial Banking Javier Martinez — Global Investment Banking Natasha Masand — Commercial Banking Georges Massoud — Global Investment Banking Jeff McCullough — Global Services Andrew McEvoy — Commercial Banking Maximilian Meyer — Global Investment Banking Yuval Millet — Global Investment Banking Maryna Muntian — Global Investment Banking Chris Ng — Global Investment Banking Hiroki Ochiai — Global Investment Banking ByungKyu Park — Global Investment Banking Joe Peddicord — Commercial Banking Carlos Perez — Commercial Banking Miles Perkins — Global Investment Banking Florian Plath — Global Investment Banking Jenn Plominski — Commercial Banking Nathalia Ramos — Global Corporate Banking Dennis Regalado — Commercial Banking Dan Rufo — Global Investment Banking Tomiwa Sadipe — Global Investment Banking Anna San Juan — Commercial Banking Michael Schwandt — Global Corporate Banking Antoine Sellam — Global Investment Banking John Shane — Commercial Banking Jeremy Sipzner — Global Investment Banking Brandon Speck — Global Investment Banking Guido Starna — Global Investment Banking Seitaro Tahara — Global Corporate Banking Jon Tarnow — Commercial Banking Raphael Taubenfeld — Global Investment Banking Brad Taylor — Global Investment Banking Michael Tham — Global Investment Banking Stephanie Tubiello — Commercial Banking John Ulrich — Global Investment Banking Bram van Aalten — Global Investment Banking Allie Veselka — Global Corporate Banking Mario Vivancos — Global Investment Banking Ian Walsh — Commercial Banking Connor Wiginton — Commercial Banking Alan Wong — Global Corporate Banking Stella Wong - Global Corporate Banking Angela Wu - Global Investment Banking Ye Xia - Global Investment Banking Melissa Yan - Global Investment Banking Ned Yetten - Commercial Banking Markets Steve Baker Mohit Bhargava Simon Burce Michael Captain Angelo Carnevali Robert Chambers George Deves Brian Dunlap Drew Engelhardt Valerio Gaspari Elie Gittler Peter Grant Anuj Gupta Terry Harcott Mohamed Hemissi Pierre Jonathan Elie Khalfa Raj Kothari Chun Li Vivian Li Marie Linehan Lily McGettigan James Millard Sam Nian Mark O'Sullivan Rob Palladino Triyog Pandya Kevin Plunkett Ioannis Rallis David Ruso Frederick Salt Jonas Troeber Jonathan Tucker Andrew Wright Peter Yip Read the original article on Business Insider

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While this material degrades over time, it could point to better ones.

Sierra, the AI customer service agent startup founded by technologist Bret Taylor, announced today that it has acquired the YC-backed French startup Fragment.

Such experiments bring "order to the universe, whether or not the number agrees with the expected value.”

China's state-backed groups are now using covert networks of compromised devices to execute attacks in a low-cost, low-risk, and deniable way.

The aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush is the third aircraft carrier to arrive in the CENTCOM area of responsibility. US Central Command US Central Command announced the arrival of a third aircraft carrier in its area of responsibility. The command, which oversees US forces in the Middle East, said the Bush is in the Indian Ocean. The other two carriers are the Ford in the Red Sea and the Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea. The US military command overseeing American forces in the Middle East just picked up a third aircraft carrier, increasing its available firepower. The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush is currently in the Indian Ocean and within US Central Command's area of responsibility. The other two carriers in the area are the first in a new class of carriers, USS Gerald. R. Ford, and USS Abraham Lincoln. The new carrier's arrival in the area comes amid faltering negotiations between Iran and the US and continued challenges in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a major oil artery. CENTCOM, which largely oversees American forces in the Middle East, announced the Bush's arrival in the Indian Ocean on Thursday. The carrier departed Virginia in late March and sailed around the coast of Africa. Meanwhile, the first-in-class Ford returned to the Red Sea after repairs in Croatia, continuing its record-breaking deployment after a serious fire. The Abraham Lincoln is in the Arabian Sea supporting the US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The blockade is being enforced by over 10,000 US troops, over 100 fighters, rotary wing aircraft, surveillance planes, and over 17 warships, including guided-missile destroyers. So far, the US has redirected over 30 vessels to turn around or return to port. Most of those boats have been oil tankers. The US has also interdicted non-compliant Iranian-flagged vessels. On Sunday, Navy destroyer USS Spruance turned its deck gun on the M/V Touska, disabling it by putting several rounds through the cargo ship's engine room. Both the Lincoln and Ford, the latter of which was involved in Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela, were in CENTCOM's area of responsibility during the initial weeks of the US war against Iran, generating aircraft sorties and supporting US strikes on Iranian targets, including command and control, missile and drone systems, and defense industrial base infrastructure. US Navy aircraft carriers bring the combat power of their air wings to any fight. They're capable of launching dozens of strike aircraft carrying precision-guided munitions, which are backed by electronic warfare jets, early warning aircraft, and, in many cases, a carrier strike group's missiles and defenses. The US military began moving combat vessels and aircraft into and around the Middle East before the start of Operation Epic Fury, marking the largest buildup of American forces in the region since 2003 amid efforts to pressure Iranian leadership. It remains unclear whether the US will resume combat operations against Iran. Negotiations collapsed this week, leaving a fragile ceasefire in doubt as Iran renewed attacks on commercial vessels and the US continues its blockade of Iranian ports. Tehran has said the blockade is an obstacle to further talks. Beyond the blockade, the US military is also engaged in mine-clearing operations in the Strait of Hormuz. On Thursday, President Donald Trump said he had ordered the US military to "shoot and kill" any Iranian boats laying mines in the strait. Trump also said there's "no time pressure" in talks with Iran and "no time frame" on ending the war. Read the original article on Business Insider

Tesla changed the language around its robotaxi launch in five cities during its Wednesday earnings. Bloomberg/Getty Images Tesla removed a timeline for several planned robotaxi launches in its latest earnings report. The company previously said those cities would launch in the first half of 2026. An analyst says the change may be about "framing." Tesla quietly changed how it describes its US robotaxi rollout. In its first-quarter report on Wednesday, Tesla listed its robotaxi services in Phoenix, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, and Las Vegas as "preparations underway," without a defined timeline. That's a change from its last quarterly update, where it described the same cities as "planned" for "1H 2026" (or, first half of this year). The company did not explain the change in language and didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. Tesla's January robotaxi timeline Tesla described its planned robotaxi coverage in seven cities as "1H 2026" during its January earnings release. Tesla Tesla's April robotaxi update removes timeline In its latest update, Tesla revised the language for five cities and no longer included a specific launch window. Tesla Expanding the ride-hailing service is a key part of Tesla's broader push into autonomous driving and AI-powered transportation. The company said it plans to spend $25 billion in capital expenditures this year to build out AI infrastructure, including support for those efforts. Tesla has a history of missing timelines set by CEO Elon Musk. The Cybertruck and Semi were both delayed for years before reaching customers, while the Roadster and full self-driving technology have slipped past earlier targets and remain in development. Musk has said he can be overly "optimistic" when setting product timelines. Tesla has already begun rolling out robotaxi services in limited markets. It operates or is ramping up service in parts of Texas, including Austin, Dallas, and Houston, and offers rides in California's Bay Area with a safety driver to comply with local regulations. Rolling out — carefully Analysts say the updated robotaxi language doesn't necessarily mean a firm delay. "I view this as more of a framing change from Tesla," Seth Goldstein, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar who follows Tesla, told Business Insider. The five cities affected are all in states where Tesla has not yet launched autonomous ride-hailing services, he said. "There are likely some regulatory hurdles to navigate that could ultimately push the launches back to the third quarter," Goldstein added. During Tesla's earnings call, CFO Vaibhav Taneja said the company is taking a cautious approach to launching in new markets, focusing on ensuring its systems can handle complex driving scenarios. "For example, you do not want the robotaxi to be stuck blocking intersections, or do not want to be dropping people off at slightly incorrect locations," he said. Read the original article on Business Insider

Technically speaking, there's no practical benefit to use PQC. So why is it being used?

America’s nuclear scientists plan to break ground on an AI data center next week, but the Township where it’s being constructed just put a 365 day hold on providing it with water.

Katie Tarasov / CNBC: Texas Instruments stock rose 19% on Thursday, its best day since 2000, after upbeat Q2 guidance driven by high demand for analog chips used in AI data centers  —  Texas Instruments had its best day on Wall Street since 2000 after the chipmaker reported better-than-expected quarterly results …

The Robot Report: Shenzhen-based Pudu Robotics, which makes commercial service robots, raised ~$150M, bringing its total funding to $300M+, and says its valuation exceeds $1.5B  —  Pudu Technology Inc. today said it has it raised nearly $150 million in a new funding round.  Following this round …

As the platform expands abroad, it’s taking steps to separate Chinese users from the international audiences it once brought together.