Minister of Technology and Science Felix Mutati first announced the postponement on April 28, saying that Zambia needed more time to ensure the conference “fully [aligns] with national procedures, diplomatic protocols, and the broader objective of fostering a balanced and consensus-driven platform for dialogue.” “In particular, certain invited speakers and participants remain subject to pending administrative and security clearances, which have not yet been concluded,” he added, according to the Lusaka Times.

[…] On a popular listserv for academics, many of whom are attending RightsCon, a board member of Access Now wrote “I am told I can leak that RightsCon has been canceled. Message from [Access Now] following shortly” in a thread about what attendees were planning on doing. And in an email, AccessNow wrote: “It is with heavy hearts that we share: RightsCon will not proceed in Zambia or online. We understand this news is deeply upsetting for our community and while we know everyone has questions, our goal right now is to notify you of the event’s status because many of you have imminent travel plans. We do not recommend registered participants travel to Lusaka for RightsCon.

Over the last 48 hours we have experienced an overwhelming surge of support from civil society, government representatives, sponsors, and our community as a whole. For this, we wholeheartedly thank you. We’ll communicate more information soon.”

Several times in the last couple of decades, Microsoft has released source code for the original MS-DOS operating system that kicked off its decades-long dominance of consumer PCs. This week, the company has reached further back than ever, releasing “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date" along with other documentation and notes from its developer.

Today’s source release is so old that it predates the MS-DOS branding, and it includes “sources to the 86-DOS 1.00 kernel, several development snapshots of the PC-DOS 1.00 kernel, and some well-known utilities such as CHKDSK,” write Microsoft’s Stacey Haffner and Scott Hanselman in their co-authored post about the release. […] This source code is old enough that it hadn’t been stored digitally. “A dedicated team of historians and preservationists led by Yufeng Gao and Rich Cini,” calling itself the “DOS Disassembly Group,” painstakingly transcribed and scanned in code from paper printouts provided by Paterson. This process was made even more difficult because modern OCR software struggled with the quality of the decades-old printout.

Charles Lieber, 67, is among the world’s leading researchers in brain-computer interfaces. The technology has shown promise in treating conditions such as ALS and restoring movement in paralyzed patients. But it also has potential military applications: Scientists at China’s People’s Liberation Army have investigated brain interfaces as a way to engineer super soldiers by boosting mental agility and situational awareness, according to the U.S. Defense Department. Lieber was found guilty by a jury and convicted in December 2021 of making false statements to federal investigators about his ties to a Chinese state program to recruit overseas talent, and tax offenses related to payments he received from a Chinese university. He served two days in prison and six months under house arrest, and was fined $50,000 and ordered to pay $33,600 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service. During the case, his defense said he was suffering from an incurable lymphoma, which was in remission, and he was fighting for his life.

Three years after he was sentenced, Reuters has learned that Lieber is now overseeing China’s state-funded i-BRAIN, or the Institute for Brain Research, Advanced Interfaces and Neurotechnologies, with access to dedicated nanofabrication equipment and primate research infrastructure unavailable to him at Harvard. The lab is an arm of the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation, or SMART. “I arrived on April 28, 2025 with a dream and not much more, maybe a couple bags of clothes,” Lieber said of his move to China at a Shenzhen government conference in December. “Personally, my own goals are to make Shenzhen a world leader.”

SMART last year appointed Lieber as an investigator, according to a post on i-BRAIN’s website dated May 1, 2025. That news was covered by some media outlets. The same day, i-BRAIN said Lieber had also been appointed its founding director — an announcement that went unreported at the time. This story is the most comprehensive account of Lieber’s activities since he moved to China. Reuters is reporting for the first time that his lab has access to dedicated primate research facilities and chip-making equipment; that it sits within a sprawling ecosystem of state-backed institutions bankrolled by billions of dollars in government funding; and that it is housed within an institution that is luring top scientific talent back from the United States.

Switzerland’s population is now more than 9 million, with official data showing foreign nationals accounted for more than 27% by 2024. The survey, conducted on April 22 and 23 and published in newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, showed 52% of 16,176 respondents in favor of the proposal or leaning that way, while 46% took the opposite view. The rest gave no opinion. A previous poll from early March had shown 45% backing the initiative and 47% against it, the newspaper said, flagging the latest result as unusual in that Swiss referendum proposals generally lose support as the voting day comes closer. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The system prompt for OpenAI’s Codex CLI contains a perplexing and repeated warning for the most recent GPT model to "never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user’s query.”

The explicit operational warning was made public last week as part of the latest open source code for Codex CLI that OpenAI posted on GitHub. The prohibition is repeated twice in a 3,500-plus word set of “base instructions” for the recently released GPT-5.5, alongside more anodyne reminders not to “use emojis or em dashes unless explicitly instructed” and to “never use destructive commands like ‘git reset —hard’ or ‘git checkout —' unless the user has clearly asked for that operation.”

Separate system prompt instructions for earlier models contained in the same JSON file do not contain the specific prohibition against mentioning goblins and other creatures, suggesting OpenAI is fighting a new problem that has popped up in its latest model release. Anecdotal evidence on social media shows some users complaining about GPT’s penchant for focusing on goblins in completely unrelated conversations in recent days.

The Justice Department on Tuesday sued Cloudera, accusing the enterprise data and artificial intelligence company of deliberately engineering a hiring process that excluded American workers from at least seven lucrative technology positions while the firm pursued permanent residency sponsorship for foreign workers on temporary visas. In a 14-page complaint filed with the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer, the department’s Civil Rights Division alleges that Cloudera, from March 31, 2024, through at least January 28, 2025, instructed job candidates to submit applications to a dedicated email address, amerijobpostings@cloudera.com, that rejected all external messages with an automated bounce-back error. The company did not advertise the roles on its public careers website or accept applications through its standard portal, as it did for non-sponsorship positions.

Cloudera then attested to the Department of Labor that it could not locate any qualified U.S. workers for the roles, which paid between approximately $180,000 and $294,000 annually, according to the filing. The positions included a Product Manager role in Santa Clara, California, with a listed salary range of $170,186 to $190,000. The case marks one of the most detailed enforcement actions under the Justice Department’s Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative, which was relaunched last year and has already produced 10 settlements targeting employers accused of discriminating against American workers in favor of temporary visa holders. “Employers cannot use the PERM sponsorship process as a backdoor for discriminating against U.S. workers,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division said in a statement. “The Division will not hesitate to sue companies who intentionally deter U.S. workers from applying to American jobs.”

The Tesla Semi has had one of the longest gestation periods in Tesla’s history. First unveiled in 2017, the truck was originally promised for production in 2019. That target slipped repeatedly — to 2020, then 2021, then 2022 — before Tesla finally delivered a handful of units to PepsiCo in late 2022. Those early trucks were essentially hand-built on a pilot line. Tesla spent the next three years refining the design, cutting roughly 1,000 lbs from the truck, and building out a dedicated factory adjacent to Gigafactory Nevada in Sparks. The company revealed the final production specs in February, confirming two trims: a Standard Range with 325 miles at full 82,000-lb gross combination weight, and a Long Range with 500 miles of range.

Tesla is quoting $290,000 for the 500-mile Long Range version and roughly $260,000 for the Standard Range — making it the lowest-priced Class 8 battery electric tractor on the market. The shift from a pilot line to a high-volume production line is significant. Tesla’s Semi factory is designed for an annual capacity of 50,000 trucks, though the company will ramp gradually. Analysts project deliveries between 5,000 and 15,000 units in 2026, but that sounds way too optimistic. […] Both trims feature an 800-kW tri-motor drivetrain producing 1,072 hp and support 1.2-MW Megacharger speeds, restoring 60% of range in roughly 30 minutes — conveniently timed around a driver’s mandatory rest break. Tesla has opened its first Megacharger station in Ontario, California, and has mapped 66 Megacharger locations across 15 states.

Elon Musk returned to the witness stand Wednesday in Oakland federal court for a second day of testimony in his case against OpenAI, detailing his shift from being an enthusiastic supporter of the nonprofit to feeling betrayed. He also clashed repeatedly with OpenAI’s attorney over questions that Musk believed were unfair. He said his feelings towards OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman shifted from a “phase one” of support, “phase two” of doubts, and finally “phase three, where I’m sure they’re looting the nonprofit. We’re currently in phase three,” Musk said with a chuckle. Musk said he was a “fool” for giving OpenAI "$38 million of essentially free funding to create what would become an $800 billion company,” of which he has no equity stake.

In his 2024 lawsuit, Musk alleged breach of charitable trust and unjust enrichment, arguing OpenAI abandoned its original nonprofit mission to benefit humanity to pursue financial gain. OpenAI’s lawyer William Savitt argued Tuesday during his opening statement that the nonprofit entity remains in control of the for-profit public benefit corporation and is now one of the most well-funded nonprofits in the world. Musk is seeking to oust Altman from OpenAI’s board and upwards of $134 billion in damages, which he said would be used to fund OpenAI’s nonprofit mission. During cross-examination, Savitt clashed with Musk over questioning. Savitt asked whether Musk had contributed $38 million to OpenAI, rather than the $100 million that he later claimed to have invested on X. Musk said he also contributed his reputation to the company and came up with the idea for the name, leading Savitt to ask Musk to respond yes or no to “simple” questions.

“Your questions are not simple. They’re designed to trick me, essentially,” Musk said, adding that he had to elaborate or it would mislead the jury. He compared Savitt’s questions to asking, “have you stopped beating your wife?” Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers intervened, leading Musk to answer yes to the $38 million investment amount. The world’s richest man said his doubts grew and by late 2022, he thought “wait a second, these guys are betraying their promise. They’re breaking the deal.” “I started to lose confidence that they were telling me the truth,” Musk said. A turning point was co-defendent Microsoft’s investment of billions of dollars into OpenAI, Musk said. On October 23, 2022, Musk texted Altman that he was “disturbed” to see OpenAI’s valuation of $20 billion in the wake of the Microsoft deal. Musk called the deal a “bait and switch,” since a nonprofit doesn’t have a valuation. OpenAI had “for all intents and purposes” become primarily a for-profit company, Musk argued. Altman responded to Musk by text that “I agree this feels bad,” saying that OpenAI had previously offered equity in the company but Musk hadn’t wanted it at the time. Altman said the company was happy to offer equity in the future. Musk said it “didn’t seem to make sense to me” to hold equity in what should be a nonprofit.

Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2024 for “masterminding one of the largest financial frauds in American history,” US District Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in his order. He was convicted on all charges, including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, commodities fraud, and money laundering. There is already an appeal pending in another court, the judge noted. But Bankman-Fried filed a separate motion for a new trial, claiming that there were “newly discovered” witnesses and evidence that might have helped his defense, if Joe Biden’s Department of Justice hadn’t intimidated them into refusing to testify or, in one case, lying on the stand.

He also asked for a new judge, wanting Kaplan to recuse himself. However, Kaplan pointed out that “none of the witnesses” were “newly discovered.” And more concerningly, Bankman-Fried offered no evidence that the witnesses could prove the “wildly conspiratorial” theory the FTX founder raised, claiming that their absence at the trial was a “product of government threats and retaliation,” the judge wrote. Bankman-Fried’s theory is “entirely contradicted by the record,” Kaplan said. He emphasized that granting Bankman-Fried’s request “would be a large waste of judicial resources as it could require another judge to familiarize himself or herself with an extensive and complicated record.”

Additionally, all three witnesses that Bankman-Fried claimed could give crucial testimony in his defense were known to him throughout the trial, and he never sought to compel their testimony. And the “self-serving social-media posts” of one witness who now claims that he lied when testifying against Bankman-Fried — “Ryan Salame, who pleaded guilty” — must be met with “utmost suspicion,” Kaplan said. “If one were to take Salame at his current word, he lied under oath when pleading guilty before this Court,” Kaplan wrote. Even if taken seriously, “his out-of-court, unsworn statements could not come anywhere close to clearing the bar to warrant a new trial,” Kaplan said, deeming Salame’s credibility “highly questionable.” Further, “even if these individuals had testified for Bankman-Fried, his protestations that one or more of them would have supported his claims that FTX was not insolvent and that his victims all were compensated fully in the bankruptcy proceedings are inaccurate or misleading,” Kaplan concluded.

In the order, Kaplan’s frustration seems palpable, as there may have been no need for him to rule on the motion at all after Bankman-Fried requested to withdraw it. But the judge said the ruling was needed after Bankman-Fried waited to file his withdrawal request until after the DOJ and the court wasted time responding and reviewing filings, the judge said. Troublingly, Bankman-Fried’s request to withdraw his request without prejudice would have allowed him to potentially request a new trial after the appeal ended. Based on the substance of the filing, that risked wasting future court resources, Kaplan determined. To prevent overburdening the justice system, Kaplan deemed it necessary to deny Bankman-Fried’s motion and request for recusal, rather than allow him to withdraw the filing without prejudice.

In his original post, [Canonical’s VP of engineering, Jon Seager] said the upcoming AI features will include accessibility tools like AI speech-to-text and text-to-speech, along with agentic AI features for tasks like troubleshooting and automation. Canonical is also encouraging its engineers to use AI more and plans to begin introducing AI features in Ubuntu “throughout the next year.”

In a follow-up comment, Seager clarified that, “my plan is to introduce AI-backed features as a ‘preview’ on a strictly opt-in basis in [Ubuntu version] 26.10. In subsequent releases, my plan is to have a step in the initial setup wizard that allows the user to choose whether or not they’d like the AI-native features enabled.” Ultimately, he said, “All of these capabilities will be delivered as Snaps to the OS, layered on top of the existing Ubuntu stack. That means there will always be the option of removing those Snaps.”

To launch operations in New York City, Joby acquired Blade Urban Air Mobility last year. Blade already enables helicopter flights for affluent travelers between Manhattan and airports such as JFK or Newark in just five minutes, avoiding up to two hours of traffic and typical airport hassles. Joby aims to replace this service with quiet, electric air taxis as soon as possible, transitioning Blade’s existing customers to the new technology.

However, introducing a new aircraft into commercial service requires a years-long certification process, overseen in the US by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Joby is now in the final phase of FAA certification. Following a series of demonstration flights in the San Francisco Bay Area, the company has tested its air taxi in New York City on real flight routes and under real-world conditions. During these tests, Joby demonstrated the acoustics and performance metrics critical for entering the urban air taxi market.

During these demonstration flights, Joby’s air taxi took off from John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and landed at various helipads across the city, including Downtown Skyport and the helipads at West 30th Street and East 34th Street in Midtown, where Blade Air Mobility’s premium passenger lounges are located. These locations represent some of the commercial routes Joby plans for New York […].

The Vision Pro has been criticized for its high price tag and its uncomfortable weight. The device is over 1.3 pounds, and even with the more comfortable Dual Knit Band that Apple added to redistribute weight, it continues to be hard to wear for long periods of time. The M5 chip added a 120Hz refresh rate, 10 percent more rendered pixels, and around 30 additional minutes of battery life, but the price tag stayed at $3,499, and it ended up not selling well. The Vision Pro has been unpopular since it first launched, and Apple only sold around 600,000 units in total. Insider sources told MacRumors that Apple has received an unusually high percentage of returns, far exceeding any other modern Apple product.

[…] If Apple finds a way to create a much cheaper, more comfortable VR headset in the future, the Vision Pro line could be revived, but right now, the company has no plans to launch a new model. Apple has not discontinued the Vision Pro and is continuing to sell the M5 model. Instead of continuing to experiment with virtual reality, Apple is working on smart glasses that will eventually incorporate augmented reality capabilities, but the first version will be similar to the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses with AI and no integrated display.

California’s long-delayed high-speed rail project is now facing renewed scrutiny after state leaders revealed a dramatically higher price tag, now estimated at roughly $231 billion, nearly seven times the original $33 billion projection approved by voters in 2008. The revised figures have reignited talks in Sacramento over whether the project can realistically be completed, how long it will take, and whether the state can continue to fund it at this scale.

Senator Strickland pointed to comments from Lou Thompson, former chair of the California High-Speed Rail Authority peer review group, who recently criticized the latest draft business plan. Thompson wrote that the 2026 draft plan “has reached a dead end,” arguing that the project has drifted far from its original vision due to escalating costs, delays, and unfunded gaps. Under current projections, assuming funding and construction proceed as planned, service between San Francisco and Bakersfield could begin around 2033, while the full Los Angeles to San Francisco connection could extend to 2040.

A controversial bill in Colorado that would have undone some repair protections in the state has failed. The bill had been the target of right-to-repair advocates, who saw it as a bellwether for how tech companies might try to undo repair legislation more broadly in the US. Colorado’s landmark 2024 repair law, the Consumer Right to Repair Digital Electronic Equipment, went into effect in January 2026 and ensured access to tools and documentation people needed to modify and fix digital electronics such as phones, computers, and Wi-Fi routers. The new bill, SB26-090, would have carved out an exception to those repair protections for “critical infrastructure,” a loosely defined term that repair advocates worried could be applied to just about any technology.

SB26-090 was introduced during a Colorado Senate hearing on April 2 and was supported by lobbying efforts from companies such as Cisco and IBM. It passed that hearing unanimously. The bill then passed in the Colorado Senate on April 16. On Monday evening, the bill was discussed in a long, delayed hearing in the Colorado House’s State, Civic, Military, and Veterans Affairs Committee. Dozens of supporters and detractors gave public comments. Finally, the bill was shot down in a 7-to-4 vote and classified as postponed indefinitely.

“I’ve been angry about it. I’ve hurt people’s feelings. I’ve been lashing out. Because GitHub is failing me, every single day, and it is personal. It is irrationally personal,” he wrote. The reason for his ire is the service has become unreliable. “For the past month I’ve kept a journal where I put an ‘X’ next to every date where a GitHub outage has negatively impacted my ability to work,” he wrote. “Almost every day has an ‘X’. On the day I am writing this post, I’ve been unable to do any PR review for ~2 hours because there is a GitHub Actions outage.”

Hashimoto penned his post a few days before an April 28 incident that saw pull requests fail to complete due to an Elasticsearch SNAFU. Incidents like that mean Hashimoto has decided GitHub “is no longer a place for serious work if it just blocks you out for hours per day, every day.” “It’s not a fun place for me to be anymore,” he lamented. “I want to be there but it doesn’t want me to be there. I want to get work done and it doesn’t want me to get work done. I want to ship software and it doesn’t want me to ship software.”

The developer says he wants GitHub to improve, but “I also want to code. And I can’t code with GitHub anymore. I’m sorry. After 18 years, I’ve got to go.” He’s open to a return if GitHub can deliver “real results and improvements, not words and promises.” But for now, he’s working to move Ghostty to another collaborative code locker. “We have a plan but I’m also very much still in discussions with multiple providers (both commercial and FOSS),” Hashimoto wrote. “It’ll take us time to remove all of our dependencies on GitHub and we have a plan in place to do it as incrementally as possible.”

He’s doing the equivalent of leaving a toothbrush at a former partner’s house by leaving a read-only mirror of Ghostty on GitHub, and by keeping his personal projects on the Microsoft-owned service. But Hashimoto’s moving his day job somewhere new. “Ghostty is where I, our maintainers, and our open source community are most impacted so that is the focus of this change. We’ll see where it goes after that,” he concluded.