I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 AWS is recovering from a major outage
It’s racing to get hundreds of apps and services back online. (The Verge)
+ Snapchat, Roblox and banking services are among those affected. (The Guardian)
2 OpenAI made—then retracted—a claim it had made a major math breakthrough
After math experts and rival AI firms ridiculed its poorly-worded declaration. (TechCrunch)
+ What’s next for AI and math. (MIT Technology Review)
3 The grave costs of Trump’s war on climate science
It’s affecting the accuracy of forecasting systems globally, not just in the US. (FT $)
+ Trump himself led an effort to derail plans to tax shipping pollution. (Politico $)
+ How to make clean energy progress under Trump in the states. (MIT Technology Review)
4 China claims the US is behind a cyberattack on its national time center
It says it has years’ worth of irrefutable evidence of data stealing. (Reuters)
+ US experts allegedly exploited vulnerabilities in mobile phones belonging to National Time Service Center workers. (Bloomberg $)
5 Is AI-generated art real art?
It’s a question gallery and museum curators across the world are debating. (NYT $)
+ Artisan craftmakers are happy to resist the pull of AI. (FT $)
+ This tool claims to trace how much of an AI image has been drawn from existing material. (The Guardian)
+ From slop to Sotheby’s? AI art enters a new phase. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Chipmaker Nexperia has accused its ousted CEO of spreading falsehoods
Zhang Xuezheng reportedly claimed it was operating independently in China. (Bloomberg $)
7 This whistleblower raised concerns about the safety of US data under DOGE
And says the hostile reception to his complaint led to him leaving his dream job. (WP $)
+ DOGE’s tech takeover threatens the safety and stability of our critical data. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Aid agencies have been criticized for using AI “poverty porn”
But the NGOs say its use protects the identities of real people in social media campaigns. (The Guardian)
9 EVs lose their value much faster than gas-powered cars
Which isn’t exactly an incentive for prospective first-time buyers. (Rest of World)