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China may have accessed Mythos

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According to a new report from Semafor , the White House's decision to impose export restrictions on Anthropic's Mythos was driven in part by fears that it had been accessed by a group linked to China. If the Chinese government actually had access to Mythos 5 or Fable 5, it would present a serious national security risk. The government could also attempt to reverse engineer the model through distillation , a method in which a "student" AI is trained on a more advanced model to replicate its behavior. The White House has not confirmed this report, and a post on X by Trump advisor David Sacks did not mention China. Instead, Sacks focused on a r … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/5YT8wvX

Solid-state batteries still aren’t ready, but gels are

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This is The Stepback , a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on e-bikes, power stations, and how to work anywhere , follow Thomas Ricker . The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here . How it started Lithium-ion batteries are everywhere as we enter the second quarter of the 21st century, and that's a problem. From exploding e-bikes in stairwells to lithium-ion power banks combusting midflight , the volatile nature of traditional liquid electrolytes has become an undeniable public safety hazard. In 2025, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) i … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/lVk4Rbf

Amazon security research reportedly led to the White House’s Anthropic Fable ban

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According to the Wall Street Journal , the export control directive that led to Anthropic cutting off access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 was triggered in part by cybersecurity research from Amazon and conversations between CEO Andy Jassy and the White House. According to the report, the paper from Amazon claims that, through a series of prompts, it was able to get Fable 5 to serve up information that could be used in cyberattacks. Amazon has yet to respond to a request for comment. Shortly after Jassy shared the company's findings with the government, it made the call to block its use by foreign nationals. Complicating this issue is that many of … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/IJjhdRQ

X-Men ’97 has what Master of the Universe is missing

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In 2026, Marvel and Mattel are both releasing projects designed to capitalize on people's love for iconic animated heroes from their childhoods. Masters of the Universe has put a live-action He-Man on the big screen, and the second season of X-Men '97 is about to fling some of Charles Xavier's mutants into an apocalyptic future . Both projects were clearly made by people who love the source material, and they are similarly filled with nerdy Easter eggs meant to get hardcore fans hyped up. X-Men '97 and Masters of the Universe are both nostalgia plays, but the biggest difference between the two - and arguably the reason one of them hasn't been … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/qhNKXwS

Sealed Super Mario Bros. sells for a record $3 million

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You know this came for free bundle with the console for $150, right? | Image: Heritage Auctions A copy of Super Mario Bros. , still in the box and sealed with its original sticker, just sold at Heritage Auctions for $3 million . That absolutely crushes the previous record of $2 million , also for a copy of Super Mario Bros. , in 2021. That sale also came hot on the heels of a controversial auction of Super Mario 64 for $1.56 million . Part of what drove the price of this particular copy so high is that, according to Heritage Auctions, instead of shrink wrap, this 19895 second run was sealed with a glossy sticker, which was discontinued shortly after. The site claims it's the earliest known sealed copy of the game in existence. It's also gr … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/gxrdjno

The future of Hollywood isn’t feeding prompts into vanilla gen AI models 

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Concept art from Dear Upstairs Neighbors that used to train custom builds of Google’s Veo and Imagen models. | Image: Google DeepMind For all the noise that's been made about how generative AI is poised to revolutionize the filmmaking industry, there haven't really been any projects created with the technology that felt like the sort of entertainment people would pay to see. Most AI firms' video models are still only capable of churning out short bursts of visually inconsistent footage . And some of Hollywood's biggest AI partnerships have suddenly evaporated in ways that make it seem like studios might not be able to rely on the new technology coming out of Silicon Valley. For the most part, short-form video slop appears to be the only thing that major production houses ar … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/GxBiFCz

Valve just imported 13 tons of VR headsets in one day

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On June 10th, the German container ship Posen docked in Los Angeles after a two-week voyage from Shanghai. As Valve watcher Brad Lynch notes , it was almost certainly carrying the first mass production shipments of the Steam Frame , Valve's new gaming headset. Import records show that Valve's distribution partner Ceva offloaded nearly 32 metric tons of "Virtual Reality Devices" on Valve's behalf - or roughly 13 tons of actual product, after you subtract the roughly 3,700 kilogram weight of five 40-foot shipping containers. That's the same math we used to estimate that Valve imported 50 tons of game consoles in two days last month - and sin … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/XJodYkG