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AUUUUUGH | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Index funds are touted as one of the safest ways to invest. Rather than picking and choosing individual stocks, index funds let you bet on the market as a whole. So what happens when a company like SpaceX - a giant gamble , and, in my opinion, terribly overpriced - is fast-tracked into the Nasdaq-100? Does it suddenly threaten the stability of index funds based on the Nasdaq-100? Can a $1.77 trillion IPO crater the retirement funds of regular people who would ordinarily have no interest in investing in Elon Musk's meme stock? The answer has less to do with SpaceX and more to do with index funds - how they work, their history, and why they've … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/pUePqOW

The end of the Ford F-150 Lightning was also the start of a new era for the automaker. After failing to capture the market with the electric version of its popular F-Series truck, Ford is going back to the drawing board with its Universal Electric Vehicle Platform. The first offering will be a $30,000 electric truck, engineered for efficiency and also — perhaps most importantly — profitability. The truck will be revealed in 2027, but Ford plans on building a whole family of low-cost electric vehicles at its Kentucky assembly plant. The heavily camouflaged truck has already been spotted out in the wild, with observers noting that it seems even smaller than the Maverick. Success isn’t guaranteed. Ford has struggled to make profitable EVs, forcing the company to take  a staggering $19.5 billion hit on its EV investments  in 2025. But Ford still sees EVs as the future — just not oversize ones with “no path to profitability,” as executives say. ...

The fine is more than double the penalty that Temu was slapped with for similar DSA violations. | Illustration: The Verge AliExpress has been hit with a €550 million (about $629 million) fine for violating Europe's Digital Services Act (DSA) rules by failing to prevent illegal, unsafe, or counterfeit products from being sold on the e-commerce platform. The European Commission ruled that AliExpress didn't take effective measures to reduce the dissemination of illegal products, noting the company "allocated insufficient staff" to verify products, and failed to remove unsafe toys and dangerous cosmetics for "multiple weeks" after they were detected. "The spread of counterfeit clothing, unsafe toys, dangerous cosmetics and other illegal and harmful products is not … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/IHtC6r8

China's leading AI companies are ramping up the pressure on Silicon Valley, as Moonshot and Alibaba unveiled models they claim can go toe-to-toe with the best from OpenAI and Anthropic at a fraction of the cost. The rapid-fire releases suggest America's lead at the AI frontier is increasingly tight, just as the technology is becoming central to national security, economic power, and geopolitical influence. The opening salvo came from Beijing-based Moonshot AI, one of China's leading AI model developers, which unveiled Kimi K3 on Friday. Moonshot claims its own testing ranks it consistently above nearly every US system, trailing only OpenAI … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/5qIlC02

Sure is a lot of porcelein in there. | Image: Kieran Hebden Just why? ʅ͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡(̸̢̛̼̞̭͋ͅ)̸͚̰͛̔̾̀̿͒͂:̴͓̞̑̌̂̆̊͋̀:̸͎̟̯̂̓̌　҉　　　　　͡　͞　͞　͞　҉● ࿀ ●  ࿀  ●　　　҉⃝ 　　　⃝͢ ͞　　　͘　͞⃝̕ ͢　　　　̛　⃝ 　　　̸　̡　　͢⃝̧ 　͡　͡　　̀　̧　̢⃝͜ 　 　҉　　͞...

I’m partial to that avocado green one. | Image: Reto Project Following the success of its $99 Kodak-branded Snapic A1 , Reto Project is releasing the Kodak EC35 , an even more affordable 35mm film camera for just $34.99. The EC35 certainly isn't fancy. Its 25mm acrylic lens with a fixed f/10 aperture and 1/100 shutter speed basically put it on par with a drugstore disposable. The fact that it has a manual wind and rewind only emphasizes that. And you can really lean into that disposable aesthetic thanks to its built-in automatic flash. Unlike the A1, there's no double exposure feature here or zone focusing. The EC35 is designed to require almost no thought to use. Its one special feature is the sliding … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/KDSWR1q