After discontinuing the F-150 Lightning in December, sales of the electric pickup have been in free fall. Ford sold just 884 Lightnings last month, 49% less than it did last April. The Mustang Mach-E isn’t doing much better. Sales fell another 9% year over year in April, to just 2,670 models last month. Through the first four months of 2026, Ford’s EV sales have fallen 61% from last year, with F-150 Lightning and Mustang Mach-E sales down 67% and 50%, respectively. Ford has sold just over 10,500 electric vehicles in total so far this year… For comparison, Toyota sold just over 10,000 bZ models in the first quarter alone. That’s more than Ford’s total EV sales in Q1.

Jarczak’s fork of OrcaSlicer would have allowed users to bypass Bambu Connect, a middleware application that severely limits OrcaSlicer’s access to remote printer functions in the name of security. Jarczak said in a note on GitHub that Bambu Lab threatened him with a cease and desist letter and accused him of reverse engineering its software in order to impersonate Bambu Studio.

Bambu Studio is an open-source project under the AGPL-3.0 license. Anyone can take its code, modify it, and distribute it… That’s what OrcaSlicer does, and 734 other forks do as well. We have no issue with that and never have. At the same time, a license for code is not a pass to our cloud infrastructure… Our cloud is a private service. Access to it is governed by a user agreement, not the AGPL license… [T]he modification in question worked by injecting falsified identity metadata into network communication. In simple terms: it pretended to be the official Bambu Studio client when communicating with our servers… If this method were widely adopted or incorrectly configured, thousands of clients could simultaneously hit our servers while impersonating the official client.

I asked whether I could publish the private correspondence in full for transparency. That request was refused… They also referred to legal materials and stated that a cease and desist letter had been prepared…

I removed the repository voluntarily. That removal should not be interpreted as an admission that all legal or technical allegations made against the project were correct. I removed it because I have no interest in maintaining a prolonged dispute around this particular implementation, and no interest in continuing to distribute it.

A lot of users aren’t that good at predicting the future. They’re losing money at roughly the same rate as online gamblers betting on sports and other real-life events at traditional sportsbooks, according to the U.K. gambling regulator’s analysis of 2024 data. On Polymarket, the odds of making a profit are slightly higher on weather and tech markets — and a little lower on sports…

On Polymarket, just 1,200 people took more than half the profits — $591 million, or more than $100,000 each. [“The top 1% of users capture 76.5% of all trading gains,” the researchers write.] When you dabble in prediction markets, you’re competing against these sophisticated players who consistently win. Most of those 1,200 big winners didn’t place just a few smart bets. They appear to be pros making thousands of trades, mostly in the past year and a half, that were probably automated. One user made $3 million since January on more than a million trades about the Oscars, according to TRM Labs…

The most profitable participants are also just good at picking what to bet on, Akey found, winning so often it was statistically unlikely to be dumb luck. They had some sort of edge — expertise, deep research or, perhaps, inside knowledge.

Then they immediately proceeded to tell the AI-brain-rotted tech bros attempting to justify their vibe-coding nonsense to kick rocks in the replies, which is somewhat less civil but far more entertaining to read…

My favorite one was when someone asked how the team was certain they weren’t rejecting human-written code, to which RPCS3 replied: “You can’t possibly handwrite the type of shit AI slop we have been seeing.”

A newly revealed Honda patent shows the company developing a simulated electronic clutch system for electric motorcycles, complete with torque-boost launches and even haptic feedback designed to mimic the feel of a combustion engine.... Instead of using a traditional mechanical clutch, the system uses electronics to alter how the motor responds based on clutch lever position. Pull the clutch halfway in, and the system proportionally reduces motor output. Pull it fully, and power is cut entirely, regardless of throttle position.

But the more interesting part is how Honda intends to recreate the behavior riders actually use clutches for. According to the patent as reported by AMCN, riders could preload the throttle while holding in the clutch lever, then rapidly release the lever to trigger a burst of torque — essentially simulating the hard launches motocross riders rely on with gas bikes. Honda believes that could be useful in competitive riding situations where precise power modulation matters, especially on loose terrain or during aggressive starts.

Honda also appears to be working on recreating the feel of a gas bike, not just the control inputs. The patent describes multiple vibration motors placed in the handlebars and near the clutch lever to provide haptic feedback that simulates engine vibration and even the “bite point” sensation of a clutch engaging. In other words, Honda may be trying to make an electric dirt bike feel mechanically alive, or at least the old-school idea of what a breathing dirt bike used to feel like.

The data centers serve customers in more than 190 countries, processing transactions, storing files, and running applications for businesses and individuals from Latin America to South Asia. When Iranian drones struck Amazon’s facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on March 1, the effects spread across the region. Apps of major banks in the UAE, including Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, stopped working. Payment and delivery platforms went offline. Snowflake, a U.S. enterprise software company used by thousands of businesses globally, reported Middle East service disruptions tied directly to the Amazon Web Services outage. Amazon told its customers to migrate their workloads out of the Middle East…

[Data from] banking, payment, and enterprise platforms normally travels to Europe through cables running under the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz, then connects onward to users across the world. The war has put those cables at risk. The overland route through Iraq is meant to serve as a backup if the sea cables are disabled. The overland route through Iraq is meant to serve as a backup if the sea cables are disabled… [Martin Frank, strategic adviser for IQ Networks, the company that built the network, told Rest of World this overland route is already carrying live traffic.] The company, based in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, runs fiber from the southern tip of Iraq to the Turkish border. It is now extending the network through gas-pipeline corridors across Turkey to the European border, with the first link expected early next year, Frank said. When that extension is complete, cloud providers will — for the first time — have the option of an unbroken land-based fiber path from the Gulf into the European network, connecting onward to Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London, and Marseille, from where their data connects back to U.S. users.

The advantage of this alternative route is that oil and gas pipelines come with their own security perimeters, access roads, and maintenance corridors already built around them, allowing a telecom company to lay fiber without digging new trenches through difficult terrain. Iraq avoided the fate of earlier overland routes that collapsed because of a sustained period of stability, and because existing pipeline infrastructure provided ready-made corridors for laying fiber, Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at network intelligence firm Kentik, told Rest of World… IQ Networks’ route, called the Silk Route Transit, has been running since November 2023. The network currently carries enough data to stream about 400,000 high-definition videos simultaneously, Frank said.

The land route is faster. Data traveling through submarine cables from the Gulf to Europe takes about 150 milliseconds. The Iraqi terrestrial route cuts that to roughly 70 milliseconds — a difference that matters for video calls, financial transactions, and applications that run on artificial intelligence, according to IQ Networks.

Initial customers include Procter & Gamble, which is using Amazon’s freight network to transport raw materials; 3M, which is using it to move products to distribution centers; Lands’ End, which is fulfilling orders across sales channels from Amazon’s warehouses; and American Eagle Outfitters, which is using Amazon’s parcel service for last-mile delivery. The service can fulfill orders placed through platforms that compete with Amazon’s own marketplace, including Walmart, Shopify, TikTok, and others… Peter Larsen, vice president of Amazon Supply Chain Services, compared the launch to the origins of Amazon’s cloud business…

In addition to putting Amazon in competition with existing players in the logistics industry, the move also raises questions about data privacy. Amazon has faced accusations of using nonpublic seller data to compete against merchants on its marketplace, which it has denied. Larsen told the Wall Street Journal that the company prohibits using supply chain customer data for its own marketplace decisions, noting that hundreds of thousands of Amazon sellers already trust the company to fulfill orders placed on rival platforms.

The settlement announcement from Bonta’s office similarly alleges that GM sold “the names, contact information, geolocation data, and driving behavior data of hundreds of thousands of Californians” to Verisk Analytics and LexisNexis Risk Solutions, which are both data brokers. Bonta’s office further alleges that this data was collected through GM’s OnStar program, and that the company made roughly $20 million from data sales.

However, Bonta’s office also said the data did not lead to increased insurance prices in California, “likely because under California’s insurance laws, insurers are prohibited from using driving data to set insurance rates.” As part of the settlement, GM has agreed to pay $12.75 million in civil penalties and to stop selling driving data to any consumer reporting agencies for five years, Bonta’s office said. GM has also agreed to delete any driver data that it still retains within 180 days (unless it obtains consent from customers), and to request that Lexis and Verisk delete that data.

In November, Amazon leaders sent an internal memo to employees, pushing them to use its in-house code generating tool, Kiro, over third-party alternatives from competitors. “While we continue to support existing tools in use today, we do not plan to support additional third party, AI development tools,” the memo read, as quoted by Reuters at the time. “As part of our builder community, you all play a critical role shaping these products and we use your feedback to aggressively improve them.”

It was an unusual development, considering the tens of billions of dollars the e-commerce giant has invested in its competitors in the space, including Anthropic and OpenAI… Half a year later, Amazon is singing a dramatically different tune. As Business Insider reports, Amazon is officially throwing in the towel, succumbing to growing calls among employees for access to OpenAI’s Codex and Anthropic’s Claude… Given the unfortunate optics of opening the floodgates for Codex and Claude Code, an Amazon spokesperson told the publication in a statement that teams are still “primarily using” Kiro, claiming that 83 percent of engineers at the company are leaning on it.

Rocket Lab’s stock has more than quadrupled over the past year, benefiting from skyrocketing demand for businesses tied to the space economy ahead of SpaceX’s hotly anticipated IPO later this year. Demand for space systems and satellites is also escalating as President Donald Trump pursues his ambitious Golden Dome missile defense project and NASA’s crewed Artemis missions rev up.

Rocket Lab said Thursday that it signed its largest contract ever with a confidential customer for its Neutron and Electron rockets through 2029, weeks after landing a $190 million deal for 20 hypersonic test flights… “The demand signal is clear,” CEO Peter Beck said on an earnings call with analysts, calling the pace of new product releases from the company this year “relentless”.... Rocket Lab’s good news lifted other space companies. Firefly Aeropspace and Intuitive Machines both jumped more than 20, while Redwire gained 19%. Voyager Technologies rose 14%.

On Friday, the department said the economy added 115,000 jobs, buoyed by gains in industries including retail, transportation and warehousing and healthcare. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.3%. But the information sector lost 13,000 jobs in April.

While it’s still too early to say exactly how AI is affecting employment overall, some businesses, especially in the tech industry, have said it’s part of the reason they’re cutting staff. In April, Meta Platforms said it would lay off 10% of its staff, or roughly 8,000 people, as it seeks to streamline operations and pay for its own massive investments in AI. Nike will reduce its workforce by roughly 1,400 workers, or about 2%, mostly in its tech department, as it simplifies global operations. And Snap is planning to eliminate 16% of its workforce, or about 1,000 positions, as it aims to boost efficiency. In other areas of IT, which includes telecommunications and data-processing, employment is now down 11%, or 342,000 jobs, from its most recent peak in November 2022.

But there’s not just AI to blame. Inflation and economic uncertainty linked to the Iran conflict is giving some chief executives and tech leaders reason to pull back or pause their IT hiring, said Janco Chief Executive Victor Janulaitis.

The European Union is considering rules that would restrict its member governments’ use of U.S. cloud providers to handle sensitive data, sources familiar with the talks told CNBC.

The European Commission — the EU’s executive branch — is expected to present its “Tech Sovereignty Package” on May 27, which will include a range of measures aimed at bolstering the bloc’s strategic autonomy in key digital areas. As part of preparations for that package, discussions are taking place within the Commission around limiting the exposure of sensitive public-sector data to cloud platforms provided by companies outside of the EU, two Commission officials, who asked to remain anonymous as they weren’t authorized to discuss private talks, told CNBC… “The core idea is defining sectors that have to be hosted on European cloud capacity,” one of the officials said. They added that companies providing cloud solutions from third countries, including the U.S., could be impacted. Proposals would not prohibit overseas companies’ cloud platforms from government contracts entirely, but limit their use in processing sensitive data at public sector organizations, depending on the level of sensitivity, they added. The officials said that talks are ongoing and yet to be finalized…

The officials told CNBC there are discussions around proposing that financial, judicial and health data processed by governments and public-sector organizations require high levels of sovereign cloud infrastructure.

In an internal post last month, Meta told its U.S. employees that it was making a change that would affect tens of thousands of them. What employees typed into their computer, how they moved their mouse, where they clicked and what they saw on their screen would be tracked, Meta said. The goal, the company said, was to capture employee data so Meta’s artificial intelligence models could learn “how people actually complete everyday tasks using computers.” Many workers immediately revolted. In online comments, they blasted the tracking as a privacy violation, calling it antisocial and callous… [One engineering manager even asked “How do we opt out?”] “There is no option to opt-out on your corporate laptop,” replied Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer. Employees reacted by posting more than 100 angry and surprised emoji, according to the messages....

Meta is pushing its 78,000 employees to adopt AI tools and factoring their use of the technology in performance reviews. The company is also tracking employees’ computer work to feed and train its AI models. And it is cutting jobs to offset its AI spending, saying last month that it would slash 10% of its workforce. That has led to anger and anxiety as employees await news of whether they are affected by the layoffs, which are slated to be carried out May 20, according to 11 current and former Meta employees. Some said they no longer saw Meta as a place for a long career. Others were looking for new jobs or trying to signal that they wanted to be laid off so they could receive severance pay, the current and former employees said. “It’s incredibly demoralizing,” an employee who does user research wrote in an internal post, which was reviewed by the Times…

Meta also introduced internal dashboards to track employees’ consumption of “tokens,” a unit of AI use that is roughly equivalent to four characters of text, four people said. Some said the dashboards were a pressure tactic to encourage competition with colleagues. That led some employees to make so many AI agents that others had to introduce agents to find agents, and agents to rate agents, two people said.

Chipmakers Advanced Micro Devices and Intel notched gains of about 25%, while memory maker Micron jumped more than 37% and fiber-optic cable maker Corning climbed about 18%. All four of those companies have more than doubled in value this year, with Intel leading the way, up well over 200%. Nvidia, meanwhile, is only slightly ahead of the Nasdaq in 2026, gaining 15% for the year, aided by an 8% rally this week. In spreading the wealth to a wider swath of hardware companies, investors are clearly betting that the bull market in AI has long legs and that data centers are going to need a wider array of advanced components for years to come.

Memory has been the biggest theme of late due to a global shortage that’s driven up prices and turned Micron, a 47-year-old company tucked in a sleepy corner of the semiconductor market, into one of the hottest trades over the past 12 months. Micron blew past an $800 billion market capitalization for the first time this week, and the stock is now up over 750% in the past year. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra told CNBC in March that key customers are only getting “50% to two-thirds of their requirements” because of supply issues. The memory market is largely dominated by Micron, along with Korea-based Samsung and SK Hynix, which are also both in the midst of historic rallies…

Bank of America estimates the data center CPU market could more than double from $27 billion in 2025 to $60 billion in 2030. AMD’s quarterly results this week underscored the emerging trend, as earnings, revenue and guidance sailed past estimates on strong data center growth. The company has long led the CPU charge, and CEO Lisa Su said on the earnings call that AMD now expects 35% growth over the next three to five years in the server CPU market, up from a forecast of 18% growth that the company provided in November.

• Intel “is in the midst of a revival sparked by a major investment from the U.S. government last year. Intel’s stock had its best month on record in April, more than doubling, and has continued notching massive gains, rising 33% in the early days of May.”

• Nvidia still remains the world’s most valuable company “and is expected to show revenue growth of 70% this fiscal year,” the article points out — adding that companies like Corning are also benefiting from Nvidia partnerships. “Glass maker Corning, which celebrated its 175th anniversary this week, signed a massive deal with Nvidia on Wednesday that involves the development of three new U.S. factories dedicated entirely to optical technologies… likely a major step in Nvidia’s move away from copper cables and towards fiber-optic cables as it builds out its rack-scale systems.”

The idea is to give operators a neutral forum to discuss money, governance, and shared operational burdens openly. Once that’s dealt with, they’ll coordinate how to explain those realities back to companies and organizations that have long assumed registries are “free.” No, they’re not. They never were. As the Linux Foundation pointed out, “Registries today run primarily on two things: (1) infrastructure donations and credits; and (2) heroic efforts from small paid teams (themselves funded by donations and grants) and unpaid volunteers that operate and maintain registry services. The bulk of donations and grants comes from a small set of donors and doesn’t scale with demands on the registry.”

The working group is explicitly positioned as a venue where registry leaders and ecosystem stakeholders can align on “practical, community-minded” ways to sustain that infrastructure, rather than each operator improvising its own survival plan in isolation.