The leaders of OpenAI and Google have been living rent-free in each other’s heads since ChatGPT caught the world by storm. Heading into this week’s I/O, Googlers were on edge about whether Sam Altman would try to upstage their show like last year, when OpenAI held an event the day before to showcase ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode. This time, OpenAI dropped its bombshell the day after.OpenAI buying the “io” hardware division of Jony Ive’s design studio, LoveFrom, is a delightfully petty bit of SEO sabotage, though I’m told the name stands for “input output” and was decided a while ago. Even still, the news of Ive and Altman teaming up quickly shifted the conversation away from what was a strong showing from Google at this year’s I/O. The dueling announcements say a lot about what are arguably the world’s two foremost AI companies: Google’s models may be technically superior and more widely deployed, but OpenAI is kicking everyone’s ass at capturing mindshare and buzz. Speaking of buzz, it’s worth looking past the headlines to what OpenAI actually announced this week: it’s paying $6.5 billion in equity to hire roughly 55 people from LoveFrom, including ex-Apple design leaders Evans Hankey, Tang Tan, and Scott Cannon. They’ll report to Peter Welinder, a veteran OpenAI product leader who reports directly to Altman. The rest of LoveFrom’s designers, including legends like Mike Matas, are staying put with Ive, who is currently designing the first-ever electric Ferrari and advising the man who introduced him to Altman, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. OpenAI’s press release says Ive and LoveFrom “will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI.”When LoveFrom’s existing client work is wrapped up, Ive and his design team plan to focus solely on OpenAI while staying independent. OpenAI, meanwhile, already has open “future of computing” roles for others to join the io team it brought over. One job listing for a senior research engineer says the ideal candidate has already “spent time in the weeds teaching models to speak and perceive.” (Total compensation: $460K to $555K plus equity.)The rough timeline that led up to this moment goes as follows: Altman and Ive met two years ago and decided to officially work on hardware together this time last year. The io division was set up at LoveFrom to work with a small group of OpenAI employees. OpenAI and Laurene Powell Jobs invested in the effort toward the end of 2024, when there were quiet talks of raising hundreds of millions of dollars to make it a fully standalone company. (The OpenAI startup fund, which is bizarrely not owned by OpenAI, also invested around this time.) Importantly, Ive ended his consulting relationship with Apple in 2022, the year before he met Altman. That deal was highly lucrative for Ive, but kept him from working on products that could compete with Apple’s. Now, Ive and Altman are teaming up to announce what I expect to be a voice-first AI device later next year. Early prototypes of the device exist (Altman mentioned taking one home in his promo video with Ive). Altman told OpenAI employees this week that it will be able to sit on a desk or be carried around. Supply chain rumors suggest it will be roughly the size of an iPod Shuffle and also be worn like a necklace. Like just about every other big hardware company, Ive and Altman have also been working on AI earbuds. Altman is set on bundling hardware as an upsell for ChatGPT subscriptions and envisions a suite of AI-first products that help lessen the company’s reliance on Apple and Google for distribution. With his Apple relationship in the rear-view mirror, Ive now seems set on unseating the company he helped build. Google, meanwhile, was firing on all cylinders this week. AI Mode in Google Search is being rolled out widely. Its product strategy is still disjointed compared to OpenAI’s, but it’s starting to leverage the immense amount of personal data it has on people to differentiate what Gemini can do. If Gemini can hook into Gmail, Workspace, YouTube, etc., in a way that people want to use, it will likely keep many people from shifting to ChatGPT — just like Meta did to Snapchat with Stories in Instagram. After meeting with Google employees up and down the org chart, I came away from I/O with the feeling that the company doesn’t see a catastrophe on the horizon like a lot of outsiders. There’s a recognition that the ability to buy out distribution for search on Apple devices is probably coming to a close, but Gemini is approaching 500 million monthly users. ChatGPT is undoubtedly eating into search (it’s impossible to get Google execs to comment on the actual health of query volume), but Google has shown a willingness to modernize search faster than I expected. The situation differs from Apple, which isn’t competitive in the model race and is suffering from the kind of political infighting that Google mostly worked through over the last couple of years.There’s also no question that Google is well-positioned to continue leading on the frontier of model development. The latest Gemini models are very good, and Google is clearly positioning its AI for a post-phone world with Project Astra. The company also has the compute to roll out tools like the impressive new Veo video model, while OpenAI’s Sora remains heavily gated due to GPU constraints. It’s still quite possible that ChatGPT’s growth continues unabated while Gemini struggles to become a household name. That would be a generational shift in how people use technology that would hurt Google’s business over the long term. For now, though, it looks like Google might be okay. ElsewhereAnthropic couldn’t sit this week out either. The company held an event on Thursday in San Francisco to debut its Claude 4 models, which it claims are the world’s best for coding. With OpenAI, Google, and Meta all battling to win the interface layer of AI, Anthropic is positioning itself as the model arms dealer of choice. It was telling that Windsurf, which is in talks to sell to OpenAI, was seemingly intentionally left out of getting day-one access to the new models. “If models are countries, this is the equivalent of a trade ban,” Nathan Benaich wrote on X. (Also, what does it say about the state of the industry when the supposed safety-first AI lab is releasing models that it knows want to blackmail people?) Microsoft Build was overshadowed by protests. There were several interesting announcements at Build this week, including Elon Musk’s Grok model coming to Azure and Microsoft’s bet on how to evolve the plumbing of the web for AI agents. All of that was overshadowed by protestors who kept disrupting the company’s keynotes to protest the business it does with Israel. The situation has gotten so tense that Microsoft tried unsuccessfully to block the ability for employees to send internal emails with the words “Palestine,” “Gaza,” and “Genocide.” I tried Google’s smart glasses prototype. I spent about five minutes wearing the reference design prototype of Google’s new smart glasses. They had a small, low-res waveguide in the center of each lens that showed voice interactions with Gemini, a basic version of Google Maps directions, and photos I took. They were… fine? Google knows this tech is super early and that full AR glasses are still years away. In the meantime, it’s smart of them to partner with Warby Parker, Gentle Monster, and Kering to put Android XR in glasses that I expect to start coming out next year. With Apple now planning a similar pair of AI-powered glasses in 2026, Meta’s window of being the only major player in the space is closing.Personnel logYouTube hired Justin Connolly from Disney as its head of media and sports, a move that Disney is suing over. Tinder CEO Faye Iosotaluno is stepping down. Her role will now be overseen by parent company Match Group CEO Spencer Rascoff. Vladimir Fedorov, a longtime Meta engineering exec, joined Github as CTO.Will Robinson, Coinbase’s former VP of engineering, has joined Plaid as CTO.Stephen Deadman, Meta’s VP of data protection in Europe, is leaving due to “structural changes.”Link listMore to click on:If you haven’t already, don’t forget to subscribe to The Verge, which includes unlimited access to Command Line and all of our reporting.As always, I welcome your feedback, especially if you have thoughts on this issue, an opinion about stackable simulations, or a story idea to share. You can respond here or ping me securely on Signal.Thanks for subscribing.See More:

A Microsoft employee has managed to circumvent a block instituted earlier this week that limited mentions of “Palestine,” “Gaza,” and “Genocide” in email subject lines or in the body of a message. Nisreen Jaradat, a senior tech support engineer at Microsoft, emailed thousands of employees on May 23rd with the subject line: “You can’t get rid of us.”“As a Palestinian worker, I am fed up with the way our people have been treated by this company,” the note, a copy of which was obtained by The Verge, reads. “I am sending this email as a message to Microsoft leaders: the cost of trying to silence all voices that dare to humanize Palestinians is far higher than simply listening to the concerns of your employees.”It’s not immediately clear how Jaradat got around the block. The email calls on Microsoft employees to sign a petition by the No Azure for Apartheid (NOAA) group, which urges Microsoft to end its contracts with the Israeli government. NOAA is behind several high-profile protest actions in recent weeks, and Jaradat, a member, also encourages colleagues to join the group in different capacities. Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw directed The Verge to a previous statement it shared when the block was initially reported, saying that mass emailing colleagues “about any topic not related to work is not appropriate,” and that the company has “taken measures to try and reduce those emails to those that have not opted in.”NOAA organizer Hossam Nasr called Microsoft’s decision to block words “particularly egregious.”“Microsoft keeps telling its workers to go through the appropriate channels, and yet time and time again, those who speak up in ‘appropriate channels’ from viva engage posts to HR tickets are silenced or ignored,” Nasr said in a statement. “What Microsoft is really telling us is: make it convenient for us to ignore you. Nisreen’s email summarizes it: they cannot get rid of us. We will continue protesting in all ways big and small until our demands are met.”Microsoft put this email block into place the same week as its Build developer conference, during which current and former Microsoft employees, as well as hundreds of others, have been protesting against the company’s contracts with the Israeli government. Microsoft employee Joe Lopez disrupted Build’s opening keynote on May 19th and then sent an email to thousands of Microsoft employees. The company fired him the same day.A Palestinian tech worker then disrupted Microsoft’s CoreAI head during his presentation at Build on May 20th. The next day, two former Microsoft employees disrupted a Build session, and a Microsoft executive inadvertently revealed internal messages regarding Walmart’s use of AI moments later. There were also protests outside the conference venue on multiple days this week.This week’s protests and emails come just days after Microsoft acknowledged its cloud and AI contracts with Israel, but it claimed that an internal and external review had found “no evidence” that its tools were used to “target or harm people” in Gaza.Read the full email below:Yesterday, Microsoft chose to utterly and completely discriminate against an entire nation, an entire people, and an entire community by blocking all employees from sending any outbound email containing the words “Palestine”, “Gaza”, “genocide”, or “apartheid”. Microsoft leaders justified this blatant censorship by saying it was to prevent you from receiving emails like the email that you are reading right now. Even though Microsoft SLT are aware that this “short term solution” is easily bypassable, as this email clearly proves, Microsoft still doubled down, insisted on not rolling back the policy, and decided to continue targeting and repressing their Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and allied workers. They refused to revoke this censorship tactic, despite its potential illegality, dozens of employees expressing how racist of a decision it was, and even leaders admitting they see how it can be perceived as discriminatory and targeted. This further proves how little Microsoft values Palestinian lives and Palestinian suffering.As a Palestinian worker, I am fed up with the way our people have been treated by this company. I am sending this email as a message to Microsoft leaders: the cost of trying to silence all voices that dare to humanize Palestinians is far higher than simply listening to the concerns of your employees. Had this useless and discriminatory policy been revoked, as I tried to request numerous times through so-called “proper channels”[1][2], I would not be sending you all this email.Despite claiming to have “heard concerns from our employees and the public regarding Microsoft technologies used by the Israeli military to target civilians or cause harm in the conflict in Gaza” in a statement riddled with lies, admissions, and absurd justifications, Microsoft has shown that they are utterly uninterested in hearing what we have to say.Microsoft claims that they “provide many avenues for all voices to be heard”. However, whenever we try to discuss anything substantial about divesting from genocide in the “approved channels”, workers are retaliated against, doxxed, or silenced. Microsoft has deleted relevant employee questions in AMAs with executives and shut down Viva Engage posts in dedicated channels for asking SLT questions. Managers have warned outspoken directs to stay quiet and have even openly retaliated against them. When my community tries to flag issues and concerns to HR/GER/WIT, we have been met with racist outcomes with double standards. Throughout all this, Microsoft has sent a clear message to their employees: There are no proper channels at Microsoft to express your concerns, disagreements, or even questions about how Microsoft is using your labor to kill Palestinian babies.Over this past week, Microsoft has shown their true face, brutalizing, detaining, firing, pepper spraying, threatening and insulting workers and former workers protesting at Microsoft Build. This email censorship is simply the latest example in a long list of recent extreme and outrageous escalations by Microsoft against my community. Enough is enough.It has become clear that Microsoft will not listen to us out of the goodness of their hearts.Microsoft will not change their stance just because it is the moral or even legal thing to do. Microsoft will only divest from genocide once it becomes more expensive for them to kill Palestinians than not. Right now, Microsoft makes a lot of money from genocide-profiteering, so we must make support for genocide even more expensive.The situation in Palestine is more urgent by the minute. More and more Palestinians are being killed of starvation under the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF)‘s bombing campaign, invasion, and siege that has martyred an estimated 400,000 Palestinians. The IOF have kidnapped over 16,000 Palestinians and placed them in torture and rape camps. 1.93 million Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced, and over 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced in the West Bank.While a hostile work environment is difficult, it cannot compare to the horrors taking place in Palestine - horrors that we as Microsoft employees are complicit in. These futile attempts to silence our community, while painful at times, are evidence that the pressure we are applying is working. This is not the time for baby steps or gradual progress. Starving infants cannot wait any longer. We, as a company of over 200,000 employees, are providing the technological backbone for Israel’s genocidal war machine in Palestinian. We, as employees of this company, have a responsibility to end our employer’s complicity in this AI-assisted genocide! Now is the time to escalate against Microsoft and end this Microsoft-powered genocide!I am calling on every employee of conscience to:Sign No Azure for Apartheid’s petition calling for a termination of all Microsoft contracts with the Israeli military and government: https://noaa.cc/petitionStrongly consider whether you want to stay in the company and fight for change from within, or if you want to leave and stop contributing labor to genocide.If you choose to leave Microsoft to no longer be complicit in genocide, do not go quietly. The No Azure for Apartheid campaign is ready to help you make an impact on your way out for Palestine, and we will also do our best to provide you support before leaving. Reach out to us expressing your interest to leave here.If you choose to stay, continue to fight from the inside to end Microsoft’s, and your own, complicity in war crimes, join the No Azure for Apartheid campaign. If you are worried about being public with your affiliation, rest assured that as a worker-led grassroots movement, we have members with all levels of anonymity and risk level. Some of our members are publicly visible and will even publicly confront our war-criminal executives, such as Satya Nadella, Mustafa Suleyman, and Jay Parikh at major Microsoft events like the 50th Anniversary celebration and Microsoft Build. Other members choose to stay completely anonymous and still contribute to the critical work of the campaign. There is room for everyone: https://noaa.cc/joinWhile I do understand that as Microsoft employees, we cannot fully boycott Microsoft, most of us can focus on the priority targets set by the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement, which recently set Microsoft as a priority target. The main target of the boycott is Microsoft Gaming, especially X-Box. We can also encourage our friends and family to boycott Microsoft where possible.To Microsoft Senior Leadership team specifically:You cannot silence Palestine.You cannot silence Gaza.You cannot hide your involvement in genocide and apartheid.Fre e PalestineNisreen JaradatSee More:

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Meet Cathy Tie, Bride of “China’s Frankenstein” Since the Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui was released from prison in 2022, he has sought to make a scientific comeback and to repair his reputation after a three-year incarceration for illegally creating the world’s first gene-edited children.One area of visible success on his come-back trail has been his X.com account. Over the past few years, his account has evolved from sharing mundane images of his daily life to spreading outrageous, antagonistic messages. This has left observers unsure what to take seriously.Last month, in reply to MIT Technology Review’s questions about who was responsible for the account’s transformation into a font of clever memes, He emailed us back: “It’s thanks to Cathy Tie.” Tie is no stranger to the public spotlight. A former Thiel fellow, she is a partner in a project which promised to create glow-in-the-dark pets. Over the past several weeks, though, the Canadian entrepreneur has started to get more and more attention as the new wife to He Jiankui. Read the full story. —Caiwei Chen & Antonio Regalado Anthropic’s new hybrid AI model can work on tasks autonomously for hours at a time Anthropic has announced two new AI models that it claims represent a major step toward making AI agents truly useful. AI agents trained on Claude Opus 4, the company’s most powerful model to date, raise the bar for what such systems are capable of by tackling difficult tasks over extended periods of time and responding more usefully to user instructions, the company says. They’ve achieved some impressive results: Opus 4 created a guide for the video game Pokémon Red while playing it for more than 24 hours straight. The company’s previously most powerful model was capable of playing for just 45 minutes. Read the full story. —Rhiannon Williams The FDA plans to limit access to covid vaccines. Here’s why that’s not all bad. This week, two new leaders at the US Food and Drug Administration announced plans to limit access to covid vaccines, arguing that there is not much evidence to support the value of annual shots in healthy people. New vaccines will be made available only to the people who are most vulnerable—namely, those over 65 and others with conditions that make them more susceptible to severe disease.The plans have been met with fear and anger in some quarters. But they weren’t all that shocking to me. In the UK, where I live, covid boosters have been offered only to vulnerable groups for a while now. And the immunologists I spoke to agree: The plans make sense. Read the full story. —Jessica Hamzelou This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Thousands of Americans are facing extreme weatherBut help from the federal government may never arrive. (Slate $)+ States struck by tornadoes and floods are begging the Trump administration for aid. (Scientific American $) 2 Spain’s grid operator has accused power plants of not doing their jobIt claims they failed to control the system’s voltage shortly before the blackout. (FT $)+ Did solar power cause Spain’s blackout? (MIT Technology Review) 3 Google is facing a DoJ probe over its AI chatbot dealIt will probe whether Google’s deal with Character.AI gives it an unfair advantage. (Bloomberg $)+ It may not lead to enforcement action, though. (Reuters) 4 DOGE isn’t bad news for everyoneThese smaller US government IT contractors say it’s good for business—for now. (WSJ $)+ It appears that DOGE used a Meta AI model to review staff emails, not Grok. (Wired $)+ Can AI help DOGE slash government budgets? It’s complex. (MIT Technology Review)5 Google’s new shopping tool adds breasts to minorsTry it On distorts uploaded photos to clothing models’ proportions, even when they’re children. (The Atlantic $)+ It feels like this could have easily been avoided. (Axios)+ An AI companion site is hosting sexually charged conversations with underage celebrity bots. (MIT Technology Review) 6 Apple is reportedly planning a smart glasses product launchBy the end of next year. (Bloomberg $)+ It’s playing catchup with Meta and Google, among others. (Engadget)+ What’s next for smart glasses. (MIT Technology Review) 7 What it’s like to live in Elon Musk’s corner of TexasComplete with an ugly bust and furious locals. (The Guardian)+ West Lake Hills residents are pushing back against his giant fences. (Architectural Digest $) 8 Our solar system may contain a hidden ninth planetA possible dwarf planet has been spotted orbiting beyond Neptune. (New Scientist $) 9 Wikipedia does swag nowHow else will you let everyone know you love the open web? (Fast Company $) 10 One of the last good apps is shutting downMozilla is closing Pocket, its article-saving app, and the internet is worse for it. (404 Media)+ Parent company Mozilla said the way people use the web has changed. (The Verge) Quote of the day “This is like the Mount Everest of corruption.” —Senator Jeff Merkley protests outside Donald Trump’s exclusive dinner for the highest-paying customers of his personal cryptocurrency, the New York Times reports. One more thing The iPad was meant to revolutionize accessibility. What happened?On April 3, 2010, Steve Jobs debuted the iPad. What for most people was basically a more convenient form factor was something far more consequential for non-speakers: a life-­changing revolution in access to a portable, powerful communication device for just a few hundred dollars.But a piece of hardware, however impressively designed and engineered, is only as valuable as what a person can do with it. After the iPad’s release, the flood of new, easy-to-use augmentative and alternative communication apps that users were in desperate need of never came.Today, there are only around half a dozen apps, each retailing for $200 to $300, that ask users to select from menus of crudely drawn icons to produce text and synthesized speech. It’s a depressingly slow pace of development for such an essential human function. Read the full story. —Julie Kim We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.) + Dive into the physics behind the delicate frills of Tête de Moine cheese shavings.+ Our capacity to feel moved by music is at least partly inherited, apparently.+ Kermit the frog has delivered a moving commencement address at the University of Maryland.+ It’s a question as old as time: are clowns sexy?

Heazy IT Tech Verified Oct 28, 2017 4,643 London, UK Nintendo Switch 2 UK £395.99 / £429.99 (w/ Mario Kart World) original screenshot dead From Nintendo UK site  Last edited: Apr 11, 2025 NippleViking Member May 2, 2018 4,702 Jesus. $800 AUD then?   Doctor_Thomas Member Oct 27, 2017 11,467 Ooof.   raspberrymousse Member Mar 19, 2021 5,302 Cheaper than I thought   Stitch AU Member Oct 29, 2017 581 Brisbane, Australia What the fuck, thats $880AU for the mario kart edition.   Type VII Member Oct 31, 2017 2,977 I was expecting £425 so not too bad. At least we know when the preorders go live.   CasuallyDressed Member Jan 13, 2020 1,497 Eek.   Helix Mayor of Clown Town Member Jun 8, 2019 27,003 i thought it was going to be 50 quid cheaper   xendless Teyvat Traveler Member Jan 23, 2019 13,720 Nintendo UK store crashed already it's utterly fucked when preorders drop   Fevaweva Member Oct 30, 2017 7,589 That is about what I expected to be quite honest.   Hutchie Member Oct 27, 2017 1,791 London Decent but will wait n see how much cex sell em so can get rid of my remaining voucher   Charlie0108 Member Oct 29, 2017 4,600 I have £460 set aside for it so ok for me but I was expecting it to be about £50 cheaper.   discogs Member Oct 28, 2017 516 London When are UK preorders coming?   xendless Teyvat Traveler Member Jan 23, 2019 13,720 Hutchie said: Decent but will wait n see how much cex sell em so can get rid of my remaining voucher Click to expand... Click to shrink... On the Switch 1 launch it was way above rrp discogs said: When are UK preorders coming? Click to expand... Click to shrink... The OP image dude....  Swarming1182 Member Jan 14, 2018 534 Hell yeah.   Hutchie Member Oct 27, 2017 1,791 London xendless said: Only Switch 1 launch it was way above rrp Click to expand... Click to shrink... Looks like im waiting 6 months  DECK’ARD Creator of Worms Verified Nov 26, 2017 7,157 UK What I was expecting. Now open the preorders someone!  ItsBradazHD Member Nov 21, 2018 835 35 quid extra for mario kart is crazy value   J Snow Member Oct 25, 2017 452 About what I expected Hutchie said: Decent but will wait n see how much cex sell em so can get rid of my remaining voucher Click to expand... Click to shrink... I was thinking this but I went in today and they're selling second hand games more expensive than Argos a few doors down, I would really love to know what "algorithm" they use to calculate pricing   Tora The Enlightened Wise Ones Member Jun 17, 2018 8,983 Easily justifiable   Ara63 Member Nov 21, 2023 1,185 Given the other pricing news, if you care about Mario Kart at all buying that UK bundle is likely the cheapest deal for anyone worldwide.   Lowrys Member Oct 25, 2017 14,664 London discogs said: When are UK preorders coming? Click to expand... Click to shrink... 8 April. Gives all the scalpers and bots time to get ready ans vacuum them all up. Ridiculous. Just make them live now and let consumers have a chance.   Hutchie Member Oct 27, 2017 1,791 London Anyone got software prices? Apparently mario kart is €90 physical   Raiden Member Nov 6, 2017 3,032 Okay i'll take it. Do we have a official release date?   Axe Member Oct 27, 2017 3,590 United Kingdom I honestly was bracing for worse pricing for us.   geehepea Member Aug 5, 2024 358 about what I expected   Byron Hinson Member Nov 14, 2017 1,361 UK It'll be the cart pricing that's the killer   Swarming1182 Member Jan 14, 2018 534 Annoyed they chose to delay pre-orders. it just lets scalpers and bots grab them. The price is incredibly reasonable given the evident horsepower of this device, and especially with the Mario Kart World bundle, crazy good value.  Gowans Moderator Oct 27, 2017 5,833 North East, UK What about UK games prices?   Helix Mayor of Clown Town Member Jun 8, 2019 27,003 ngl though i'm not keen on getting MK World, it's crazy not to get that bundle cuz MK is just expensive on its own lol   harry the spy Member Oct 25, 2017 3,376 Do we know where we will be able to preorder from   Mutedpenguin Member Dec 5, 2017 1,392 Obviously I'll get the Mario Kart bundle(if I can)...but I feel it would be a much easier sell to the masses, if it was £399 including the game.   GovernWort Prophet of Truth Member Feb 20, 2020 1,093 Gowans said: What about UK games prices? Click to expand... Click to shrink... View: https://imgur.com/yzDDQ4Y   Bishop89 What Are Ya' Selling? Member Oct 25, 2017 42,772 Melbourne, Australia Stitch AU said: What the fuck, thats $880AU for the mario kart edition. Click to expand... Click to shrink... More than a ps5, crazy.   Willy Member Oct 27, 2017 402 I said £379 at the lowest previously so I wasn't far off. Honestly, not the worst price if you want Mario Kart World in the bundle. I think I'll be waiting for more first party games to come out though. edit - £75 physical games. Ouch.  cursed beef Member Jan 3, 2021 946 so physical is just dead dead huh? nintendo said fuck families   Gowans Moderator Oct 27, 2017 5,833 North East, UK Thank you, £75 seems wild esspecially in an age of cheap PC games and Game Pass.  GovernWort Prophet of Truth Member Feb 20, 2020 1,093 This is on the Nintendo UK site. Pro controller is £75 and the GC controller is £59  IIFloodyII Member Oct 26, 2017 27,432 Was expecting 400 so not too bad ther. But they can absolutely fuck off with the £75 for games.   Helix Mayor of Clown Town Member Jun 8, 2019 27,003 75 quid for flagship Nintendo games?…..   geehepea Member Aug 5, 2024 358 Prices for all accessories and software announced in the direct Edit: also noticed this smallprint on the page Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 digital games, upgrade packs and amiibo will open on My Nintendo Store from 24/04.  Koukalaka Member Oct 28, 2017 10,399 Scotland ItsBradazHD said: 35 quid extra for mario kart is crazy value Click to expand... Click to shrink... Yeah, I expect the bundle will fly off the shelves considering it's a £30 saving  Snarfington Avenger Oct 25, 2017 3,154 GovernWort said: This is on the Nintendo UK site. Pro controller is £75 and the GC controller is £59 Click to expand... Click to shrink... Hmm I think I qualify but will have to check on the emails, wonder where I can do that? Hope it's not some rando newsletter  GokouD Member Oct 30, 2017 1,348 Game prices could be worse really, given the euro/dollar prices. And that's from the Nintendo store, you can probably knock £10 off at Amazon or Smyths.   shadowman16 Member Oct 25, 2017 41,549 Not super happy about the prices... but Im a fool and will be getting DK and MK for sure... ANd Yakuza and SF...   jazzfunkgreats Member Oct 7, 2019 307 I fit the criteria for the invitation thing on playtime and subscription length but I've only just turned on newsletters now, so I'm not expecting much. I knew I should have just embraced the spam   JayCB64 Member Oct 25, 2017 11,418 Wales Honestly I thought it would be a little worse lol   IDreamOfHime Member Oct 27, 2017 16,363 I don't actually mind that price, especially the Mario Kart bundle price. Hoping to buy from Amazon....kept my Xmas gift vouchers for this. My plan this gen is digital only, I don't have the space for boxes anymore.  Ocarina_117 Member Oct 26, 2017 9,887 Not as angry as others with this pricing to be honest. I get a tonne of time out of Nintendo games and their first party releases are spaced out nicely.  LewieP Member Oct 26, 2017 19,822 I was expecting £399 for the system to saved a cool £4.  

This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Meet Cathy Tie, Bride of “China’s Frankenstein” Since the Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui was released from prison in 2022, he has sought to make a scientific comeback and to repair his reputation after a three-year incarceration for illegally creating the world’s first gene-edited children. One area of visible success on his come-back trail has been his X.com account. Over the past few years, his account has evolved from sharing mundane images of his daily life to spreading outrageous, antagonistic messages. This has left observers unsure what to take seriously.Last month, in reply to MIT Technology Review’s questions about who was responsible for the account’s transformation into a font of clever memes, He emailed us back: “It’s thanks to Cathy Tie.”Tie is no stranger to the public spotlight. A former Thiel fellow, she is a partner in a project which promised to create glow-in-the-dark pets. Over the past several weeks, though, the Canadian entrepreneur has started to get more and more attention as the new wife to He Jiankui. Read the full story. —Caiwei Chen & Antonio Regalado Anthropic’s new hybrid AI model can work on tasks autonomously for hours at a time Anthropic has announced two new AI models that it claims represent a major step toward making AI agents truly useful. AI agents trained on Claude Opus 4, the company’s most powerful model to date, raise the bar for what such systems are capable of by tackling difficult tasks over extended periods of time and responding more usefully to user instructions, the company says. They’ve achieved some impressive results: Opus 4 created a guide for the video game Pokémon Red while playing it for more than 24 hours straight. The company’s previously most powerful model was capable of playing for just 45 minutes. Read the full story. —Rhiannon Williams The FDA plans to limit access to covid vaccines. Here’s why that’s not all bad. This week, two new leaders at the US Food and Drug Administration announced plans to limit access to covid vaccines, arguing that there is not much evidence to support the value of annual shots in healthy people. New vaccines will be made available only to the people who are most vulnerable—namely, those over 65 and others with conditions that make them more susceptible to severe disease. The plans have been met with fear and anger in some quarters. But they weren’t all that shocking to me. In the UK, where I live, covid boosters have been offered only to vulnerable groups for a while now. And the immunologists I spoke to agree: The plans make sense. Read the full story. —Jessica Hamzelou This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Thousands of Americans are facing extreme weather But help from the federal government may never arrive. (Slate $)+ States struck by tornadoes and floods are begging the Trump administration for aid. (Scientific American $)2 Spain’s grid operator has accused power plants of not doing their job It claims they failed to control the system’s voltage shortly before the blackout. (FT $)+ Did solar power cause Spain’s blackout? (MIT Technology Review)3 Google is facing a DoJ probe over its AI chatbot deal It will probe whether Google’s deal with Character.AI gives it an unfair advantage. (Bloomberg $)+ It may not lead to enforcement action, though. (Reuters) 4 DOGE isn’t bad news for everyone These smaller US government IT contractors say it’s good for business—for now. (WSJ $)+ It appears that DOGE used a Meta AI model to review staff emails, not Grok. (Wired $)+ Can AI help DOGE slash government budgets? It’s complex. (MIT Technology Review)5 Google’s new shopping tool adds breasts to minorsTry it On distorts uploaded photos to clothing models’ proportions, even when they’re children. (The Atlantic $)+ It feels like this could have easily been avoided. (Axios)+ An AI companion site is hosting sexually charged conversations with underage celebrity bots. (MIT Technology Review)6 Apple is reportedly planning a smart glasses product launchBy the end of next year. (Bloomberg $) + It’s playing catchup with Meta and Google, among others. (Engadget)+ What’s next for smart glasses. (MIT Technology Review) 7 What it’s like to live in Elon Musk’s corner of TexasComplete with an ugly bust and furious locals. (The Guardian) + West Lake Hills residents are pushing back against his giant fences. (Architectural Digest $)8 Our solar system may contain a hidden ninth planetA possible dwarf planet has been spotted orbiting beyond Neptune. (New Scientist $) 9 Wikipedia does swag now How else will you let everyone know you love the open web? (Fast Company $)10 One of the last good apps is shutting down Mozilla is closing Pocket, its article-saving app, and the internet is worse for it. (404 Media)+ Parent company Mozilla said the way people use the web has changed. (The Verge)Quote of the day “This is like the Mount Everest of corruption.” —Senator Jeff Merkley protests outside Donald Trump’s exclusive dinner for the highest-paying customers of his personal cryptocurrency, the New York Times reports. One more thing The iPad was meant to revolutionize accessibility. What happened?On April 3, 2010, Steve Jobs debuted the iPad. What for most people was basically a more convenient form factor was something far more consequential for non-speakers: a life-­changing revolution in access to a portable, powerful communication device for just a few hundred dollars. But a piece of hardware, however impressively designed and engineered, is only as valuable as what a person can do with it. After the iPad’s release, the flood of new, easy-to-use augmentative and alternative communication apps that users were in desperate need of never came.Today, there are only around half a dozen apps, each retailing for $200 to $300, that ask users to select from menus of crudely drawn icons to produce text and synthesized speech. It’s a depressingly slow pace of development for such an essential human function. Read the full story.—Julie Kim We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet 'em at me.) + Dive into the physics behind the delicate frills of Tête de Moine cheese shavings.+ Our capacity to feel moved by music is at least partly inherited, apparently.+ Kermit the frog has delivered a moving commencement address at the University of Maryland.+ It’s a question as old as time: are clowns sexy? 🤡

Love crossword puzzles but don’t have all day to sit and solve a full-sized puzzle in your daily newspaper? That’s what The Mini is for! A bite-sized version of the New York Times’ well-known crossword puzzle, The Mini is a quick and easy way to test your crossword skills daily in a lot less time (the average puzzle takes most players just over a minute to solve). While The Mini is smaller and simpler than a normal crossword, it isn’t always easy. Tripping up on one clue can be the difference between a personal best completion time and an embarrassing solve attempt. Recommended Videos Just like our Wordle hints and Connections hints, we’re here to help with The Mini today if you’re stuck and need a little help. Below are the answers for the NYT Mini crossword today. NYT Mini Crossword answers today New York Times Across Chooses to receive marketing emails, with “in” – OPTS Buck ___, first Black coach in Major League Baseball (1962) – ONEIL Like your epidermis? – SKINNY Like the element Fe? – IRONY Quite a lot of – MANY Down Bulb in the kitchen – ONION Like an ink-filled writing tool? – PENNY Microscopic – TINY Acting deviously – SLY Green gumbo ingredient – OKRA ___ card (smartphone chip) – SIM

This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Meet Cathy Tie, Bride of “China’s Frankenstein” Since the Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui was released from prison in 2022, he has sought to make a scientific comeback and to repair his reputation after a three-year incarceration for illegally creating the world’s first gene-edited children. One area of visible success on his come-back trail has been his X.com account. Over the past few years, his account has evolved from sharing mundane images of his daily life to spreading outrageous, antagonistic messages. This has left observers unsure what to take seriously.Last month, in reply to MIT Technology Review’s questions about who was responsible for the account’s transformation into a font of clever memes, He emailed us back: “It’s thanks to Cathy Tie.”Tie is no stranger to the public spotlight. A former Thiel fellow, she is a partner in a project which promised to create glow-in-the-dark pets. Over the past several weeks, though, the Canadian entrepreneur has started to get more and more attention as the new wife to He Jiankui. Read the full story. —Caiwei Chen & Antonio Regalado Anthropic’s new hybrid AI model can work on tasks autonomously for hours at a time Anthropic has announced two new AI models that it claims represent a major step toward making AI agents truly useful. AI agents trained on Claude Opus 4, the company’s most powerful model to date, raise the bar for what such systems are capable of by tackling difficult tasks over extended periods of time and responding more usefully to user instructions, the company says. They’ve achieved some impressive results: Opus 4 created a guide for the video game Pokémon Red while playing it for more than 24 hours straight. The company’s previously most powerful model was capable of playing for just 45 minutes. Read the full story. —Rhiannon Williams The FDA plans to limit access to covid vaccines. Here’s why that’s not all bad. This week, two new leaders at the US Food and Drug Administration announced plans to limit access to covid vaccines, arguing that there is not much evidence to support the value of annual shots in healthy people. New vaccines will be made available only to the people who are most vulnerable—namely, those over 65 and others with conditions that make them more susceptible to severe disease. The plans have been met with fear and anger in some quarters. But they weren’t all that shocking to me. In the UK, where I live, covid boosters have been offered only to vulnerable groups for a while now. And the immunologists I spoke to agree: The plans make sense. Read the full story. —Jessica Hamzelou This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Thousands of Americans are facing extreme weather But help from the federal government may never arrive. (Slate $)+ States struck by tornadoes and floods are begging the Trump administration for aid. (Scientific American $)2 Spain’s grid operator has accused power plants of not doing their job It claims they failed to control the system’s voltage shortly before the blackout. (FT $)+ Did solar power cause Spain’s blackout? (MIT Technology Review)3 Google is facing a DoJ probe over its AI chatbot deal It will probe whether Google’s deal with Character.AI gives it an unfair advantage. (Bloomberg $)+ It may not lead to enforcement action, though. (Reuters) 4 DOGE isn’t bad news for everyone These smaller US government IT contractors say it’s good for business—for now. (WSJ $)+ It appears that DOGE used a Meta AI model to review staff emails, not Grok. (Wired $)+ Can AI help DOGE slash government budgets? It’s complex. (MIT Technology Review)5 Google’s new shopping tool adds breasts to minorsTry it On distorts uploaded photos to clothing models’ proportions, even when they’re children. (The Atlantic $)+ It feels like this could have easily been avoided. (Axios)+ An AI companion site is hosting sexually charged conversations with underage celebrity bots. (MIT Technology Review)6 Apple is reportedly planning a smart glasses product launchBy the end of next year. (Bloomberg $) + It’s playing catchup with Meta and Google, among others. (Engadget)+ What’s next for smart glasses. (MIT Technology Review) 7 What it’s like to live in Elon Musk’s corner of TexasComplete with an ugly bust and furious locals. (The Guardian) + West Lake Hills residents are pushing back against his giant fences. (Architectural Digest $)8 Our solar system may contain a hidden ninth planetA possible dwarf planet has been spotted orbiting beyond Neptune. (New Scientist $) 9 Wikipedia does swag now How else will you let everyone know you love the open web? (Fast Company $)10 One of the last good apps is shutting down Mozilla is closing Pocket, its article-saving app, and the internet is worse for it. (404 Media)+ Parent company Mozilla said the way people use the web has changed. (The Verge)Quote of the day “This is like the Mount Everest of corruption.” —Senator Jeff Merkley protests outside Donald Trump’s exclusive dinner for the highest-paying customers of his personal cryptocurrency, the New York Times reports. One more thing The iPad was meant to revolutionize accessibility. What happened?On April 3, 2010, Steve Jobs debuted the iPad. What for most people was basically a more convenient form factor was something far more consequential for non-speakers: a life-­changing revolution in access to a portable, powerful communication device for just a few hundred dollars. But a piece of hardware, however impressively designed and engineered, is only as valuable as what a person can do with it. After the iPad’s release, the flood of new, easy-to-use augmentative and alternative communication apps that users were in desperate need of never came.Today, there are only around half a dozen apps, each retailing for $200 to $300, that ask users to select from menus of crudely drawn icons to produce text and synthesized speech. It’s a depressingly slow pace of development for such an essential human function. Read the full story.—Julie Kim We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet 'em at me.) + Dive into the physics behind the delicate frills of Tête de Moine cheese shavings.+ Our capacity to feel moved by music is at least partly inherited, apparently.+ Kermit the frog has delivered a moving commencement address at the University of Maryland.+ It’s a question as old as time: are clowns sexy? 🤡

With pretty much everything getting more expensive, locking in a lifetime license to Microsoft Office for $50 feels too good to be true. But that’s exactly what’s happening—for now. The deal ends in just a few days, and there’s no telling if it’ll ever be back, or what the price will be when it returns. No wonder people are panic-buying it while they still can. Grab your 77 percent discount on Microsoft Office 2021 for Windows before this deal expires! The Mac version is also available at a slightly higher price. Everything you need to know This version of Office includes lifetime licenses for MS Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook, Publisher, OneNote, and the free version of Teams. So you’ll have everything you need to do business, all in one suite. From working with documents to wrangling data and creating powerful presentations, you’ll find plenty of new features to help you be more productive at all stages. Many of the tools within the suite were redesigned to be equally useful for data analysts mining enormous sets of data for company reports, designers seeking inspiration on how to present their work, and more. These applications haven’t left anything out. The familiar ribbon-based user interface offers quick access to its available tools, features, and customizations. Details such as the indentation size of type in documents, layout, fonts, and much more can be easily customized by users. You no longer need to sacrifice work-related functionality to create more aesthetically pleasing documents, even when creating presentations, formatting emails, and more. A one-time purchase with no fees Now you can say goodbye to monthly or annual software fees. All languages are supported; naturally, only the best support, such as free customer support, is provided. Updates are included, too. This is a one-time purchase for a license that can be installed on one Windows PC for use at work or home. It will be associated with the actual device rather than your Microsoft account. Your download links will be delivered instantly after purchase, so you can access your software license keys immediately. Get a Microsoft Office lifetime license for Windows while the price is dropped to $49.97, a 77% discount off the regular $219.99 retail price. No coupon is needed. StackSocial prices subject to change. _ Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows: Lifetime License See Deal

More than a decade ago, researchers at antivirus company Kaspersky identified suspicious internet traffic of what they thought was a known government-backed group, based on similar targeting and its phishing techniques. Soon, the researchers realized they had found a much more advanced hacking operation that was targeting the Cuban government, among others. Eventually the researchers were able to attribute the network activity to a mysterious — and at the time completely unknown — Spanish-speaking hacking group that they called Careto, after the Spanish slang word (“ugly face” or “mask” in English), which they found buried within the malware’s code.  Careto was never publicly linked to a specific government. But TechCrunch has now learned that the researchers who first discovered the group were convinced that Spanish government hackers were behind Careto’s espionage operations. When Kaspersky first revealed the existence of Careto in 2014, its researchers called the group “one of the most advanced threats at the moment,” with its stealthy malware capable of stealing highly sensitive data, including private conversations and keystrokes from the computers it compromised, much akin to powerful government spyware today. Careto’s malware was used to hack into government institutions and private companies around the world. Kaspersky avoided publicly blaming who it thought was behind Careto. But internally, according to several people who worked at Kaspersky at the time and had knowledge of the investigation, its researchers concluded that Careto was a hacking team working for the Spanish government.  “There was no doubt of that, at least no reasonable [doubt],” one of the former employees told TechCrunch, who like other sources in this story agreed to speak on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Careto is one of only a handful of Western government hacking groups that has ever been discussed in public, along with U.S. government units such as Equation Group, widely believed to be the U.S. National Security Agency; the Lamberts, believed to be the CIA; and the French government group known as Animal Farm, which was behind the Babar and Dino malware. In a rare admission, Bernard Barbier, former head of the French intelligence service DGSE publicly confirmed the French government was indeed behind Babar.  The Spanish government now joins this small group of Western government hacking groups. A screenshot of Careto’s malware code, which inspired the name of the hacking group. (Image: Kaspersky) Early in its investigation, Kaspersky discovered that the Careto hackers had targeted a particular government network and systems in Cuba, according to a second former Kaspersky employee.  It was this Cuban government victim that sparked Kaspersky’s investigation into Careto, according to the people speaking with TechCrunch. “It all started with a guy who worked for the Cuban government who got infected,” the third former Kaspersky employee, with knowledge of the Careto investigation, told TechCrunch. The person, who referred to the Cuban government victim as “patient zero,” said that it appeared the Careto hackers were interested in Cuba because during that time there were members of the Basque terrorist organization ETA in the country. Kaspersky researchers noted in a technical report published after their discovery that Cuba had by far the most number of victims per country at the time of the investigation into Careto’s activities, specifically one unnamed Cuban government institution, which the report said showed “the current interest of the attackers.”  This Cuban government victim would prove key to link Careto to Spain, according to the former Kaspersky employees. “Internally we knew who did it,” the third former Kaspersky employee said, adding that they had “high confidence” it was the Spanish government. Two other former Kaspersky employees, who also had knowledge of the investigation, said the researchers likewise concluded Spain was behind the attacks.  The company, however, decided not to disclose it. “It wasn’t broadcast because I think they didn’t want to out a government like that,” a fourth former Kaspersky researcher said. “We had a strict ‘no attribution’ policy at Kaspersky. Sometimes that policy was stretched but never broken.” Apart from Cuba, other Careto targets also pointed to Spain. The espionage operation affected hundreds of victims in Brazil, Morocco, Spain itself and — perhaps tellingly — Gibraltar, the disputed British enclave on the Iberian peninsula that Spain has long claimed as its own territory. Kaspersky declined to answer questions about its researchers’ conclusions. “We don’t engage in any formal attribution,” Kaspersky spokesperson Mai Al Akkad told TechCrunch in an email. The Spanish Ministry of Defense declined to comment. The Cuban government did not respond to emails sent to its Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The discovery of Careto After Kaspersky discovered the group’s malware in 2014 and, as a result, learned how to identify other computers compromised by it, the researchers found evidence of Careto infections all over the world, compromising victims in 31 countries spanning several continents.  In Africa, the group’s malware was found in Algeria, Morocco, and Libya; in Europe, it targeted victims in France, Spain, and the United Kingdom. In Latin America, there were victims in Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, and Venezuela.  In its technical report, Kaspersky said that Cuba had the most victims that were being targeted, with “all belonging to the same institution,” which the researchers perceived as of significance to the hackers at that point in time.  Spain had its own particular interest in Cuba in the preceding years. As an exiled Cuban government official told the Spanish daily El Pais at the end of 2013, there were around 15 members of the terror group ETA who lived in Cuba with the approval of the local government. In 2014, a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable noted that Cuba had given refuge to ETA terrorists for years. Earlier in 2010, a Spanish judge ordered the arrest of ETA members living in Cuba. When covering the news of the discovery of Careto, the Spanish online news outlet El Diario noted that targeting countries such as Brazil and Gibraltar would favor the Spanish government’s “geostrategic interests.” The Spanish government had been pushing for a consortium of government-owned and private companies to win a bid to build a high-speed railway in Brazil from Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo.  Aside from targeting government institutions, embassies, and diplomatic organizations, Kaspersky said the Careto group also targeted energy companies, research institutions, and activists.  Kaspersky researchers wrote that they were able to find evidence that the Careto malware existed as far back as 2007, and found subsequent versions of Careto capable of exploiting Windows PCs, Macs, and Linux computers. The researchers said they found possible evidence of code capable of targeting Android devices and iPhones. While Kaspersky didn’t make its internal attribution public, its researchers left clear hints that pointed to Spain.  First, the company researchers noted that they found a string in the malware code that was particularly interesting: “Caguen1aMar.” That string is a contraction for the popular Spanish expletive, “me cago en la mar,” which literally means “I sh–t in the sea,” but roughly translates to “f—k,” a phrase typically used in Spain, and not in other Spanish-speaking countries.   When Kaspersky announced its discovery of Careto in 2014, the company published a map showing all the countries that the hacking group had targeted. Along with the map, Kaspersky included an illustration of a mask with bull’s horns and a nose ring (the bull is a national symbol of Spain), castanets or clackers (an instrument used in Spanish folk music), and the red and yellow colors of the Spanish flag.  A detail in the map revealed how important Cuba was for Careto. For certain countries, Kaspersky added icons specifying what type of targets it was able to identify. The map showed Cuba had a single hacked victim, marked as a government institution. Only Gibraltar, Morocco — whose proximity and territorial disputes make it a strategic espionage target for Spain — and Switzerland were the other territories with a government victim. a map of careto’s victims along with An illustration of a mask (Image: Kaspersky) Kaspersky said in 2014 that the Careto group’s malware was one of the “most advanced threats” of the time for its ability to grab highly sensitive data from a victim’s computer. Kaspersky said the malware could also intercept internet traffic, Skype conversations, encryption (PGP) keys, and VPN configurations, take screenshots, and “fetch all information from Nokia devices.” The Careto group relied in large part on spearphishing emails that contained malicious links impersonating Spanish newspapers like El País, El Mundo, and Público, and videos about political subjects and food recipes. One of the former Kaspersky employees told TechCrunch that the phishing links also included references to ETA and Basque news, which Kaspersky’s report omitted.  When clicking on these malicious links, the victim would get infected using an exploit that hacked the user’s specific device, then redirected to a legitimate web page so as to not raise suspicions, according to Kaspersky’s report.  The Careto operators also took advantage of a since-patched vulnerability in older versions of Kaspersky’s antivirus software, which the company said in its 2014 published report was how it first discovered the malware.  The ubiquity of Kaspersky’s software in Cuba effectively made it possible for Careto to target almost anyone on the island with an internet connection. (By 2018, the Russian antivirus company controlled some 90% of the island’s internet security market, according to Cuba Standard, an independent news website.) The antivirus is so popular across the country that the company’s name has become part of the local slang. But soon after Kaspersky published its research, the Careto hackers shut down all of its operations discovered by the Russian firm, going as far as wiping its logs, which researchers noted was “not very common” and put Careto into the “elite” section of government hacking groups. “You can’t do that if you’re not prepared,” one of the former Kaspersky employees told TechCrunch. “They systematically, and in a quick manner, destroyed the whole thing, the whole infrastructure. Boom. It was just gone.” Careto gets caught again After Careto went dark, neither Kaspersky nor any other cybersecurity company publicly reported detecting Careto again — until last year.  Kaspersky announced in May 2024 that it had found Careto’s malware once again, saying it saw the group target an unnamed organization in Latin America that was “previously compromised” by the hacking group most recently in 2022, again in 2019, and on another occasion more than 10 years ago. Careto also hacked a second unnamed organization, located in Central Africa, said Kaspersky. In a blog post later in December 2024, Kaspersky’s researchers attributed the new hacks to Careto “with medium to high confidence,” based in part on filenames that were “alarmingly similar” to filenames found in Careto’s activities from a decade ago, as well as overlapping tactics, techniques, and procedures, or TTPs, a cybersecurity expression that refers to the unique behaviors of a certain hacking group. Kaspersky researchers Georgy Kucherin and Marc Rivero López, who wrote a paper and presented their research at the Virus Bulletin security conference in October 2024, said Careto “has always conducted cyber attacks with extreme caution,” but still “managed to make small but fatal mistakes during their recent operations” that matched activity from Careto a decade earlier. Despite that, Kucherin told TechCrunch that they don’t know who, or which government, is behind the Careto hacking group.  “It’s likely a nation state,” said Kucherin. “But what entity it was, who developed the malware? From a technical perspective, it’s impossible to tell.” Contact Us Do you have more information about Careto (aka The Mask), or other government hacking groups and operations? From a non-work device and network, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email. According to Kaspersky’s most recent report, this time the Careto hackers broke into the unnamed Latin American victim’s email server and then planted its malware.  In one of the hacked machines the researchers analyzed, Kaspersky found that Careto’s malware could surreptitiously switch on the computer’s microphone (while hiding the Windows icon that normally alerts the user that the mic is on), steal files, such as personal documents, session cookies that can allow access to accounts without needing a password, web browsing histories from several browsers, and more. In the case of another victim, according to the report, Careto hackers used a set of implants that work as a backdoor, a keylogger, and a screenshot-taker.  Despite the fact that they got caught, and compared to what Kaspersky found more than a decade ago, Kucherin said that the Careto hackers are “still that good.” Compared to the larger and more well-known government-backed hacking groups, like the North Korean Lazarus Group and China’s APT41, Kucherin said Careto is a “very small [advanced persistent threat] that surpasses all those large ones in complexity.” “Their attacks are a masterpiece,” said Kucherin.

Welcome back to This Week in Stratechery! As a reminder, each week, every Friday, we’re sending out this overview of content in the Stratechery bundle; highlighted links are free for everyone. Additionally, you have complete control over what we send to you. If you don’t want to receive This Week in Stratechery emails (there is no podcast), please uncheck the box in your delivery settings. On that note, here were a few of our favorites this week. Will AI Kill the Web, or Save It? The original web that we know and love was the human web; that’s why advertising was the preferred business model, and Google was the big winner. So what happens when AI Agents are the preferred means to gather information? AI’s don’t care about ads, which means the web needs a new business model; I’ve been a long-time critic of micro-transactions, because they are anti-human, but they might be the solution to an AI-mediated future. Or, to put it another way, AI won’t just save AR and VR, it might save crypto as well. — Ben Thompson Slam Dunks and Moonshots at Google. Google I/O in 2025 was classic Google in two respects. On one hand, it featured a spate of great demos and jaw-dropping displays of new features and capabilities that may or may not ever find a market among mainstream users. That’s become something of a Google I/O tradition. On the other hand, Google also introduced “AI Mode” for search, a collection of AI-powered features that will lean into Google’s advantages in audience and infrastructure and allow the company to gradually integrate more AI features into search. This, too, is classic behavior from a company that for all its excesses and eccentricities still understands its core business and how to move when it’s time to leverage and preserve search dominance. Wednesday’s Daily Update broke it all down, highlighting questions that still linger, as well as AI hardware and software possibilities in Mountain View and beyond. — Andrew Sharp OpenAI Enters the Hardware Business. On Wednesday OpenAI interrupted Google’s big week when it announced plans to acquire Jony Ive’s hardware startup for $6.5 billion worth of stock, telling the world that the company will work with the Apple legend to develop a family of AI-powered devices and design “the coolest piece of technology that the world has ever seen.” If you’re looking to process that news, start with Ben’s analysis on Thursday, which comes with a bonus section on Apple’s dwindling options in AI (and a withering parenthetical on the “Tim Cook Doctrine”). Then head to Sharp Tech, where we had a great time talking through the logic of this move for OpenAI, challenges that lay ahead for Ive’s team, and a few emails from haters who are skeptical of this roadmap and/or despise the aesthetics of the OpenAI PR blitz. All of it was great fun, and whatever happens from here, the next few years just got a lot more interesting. — AS Stratechery Articles and Updates An Interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang About Chip Controls, AI Factories, and Enterprise Pragmatism — An interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about new problems, including chip controls and China, and new opportunities, including AI Factories and enterprise pragmatism. The Agentic Web and Original Sin — Microsoft is putting forth compelling proposals for the Open Agentic Web. However, the proposal needs digital payments, which will be key to creating a new content marketplace for AI. Google I/O, The Search Funnel, Product Possibilities — Google I/O was impressive and overwhelming, but the only product that impressed was Search. OpenAI Acquires io, OpenAI’s Strategic Positioning, Apple’s Worsening AI Problem — OpenAI is acquiring io, Jony Ive’s hardware company. Is the company actually focused on displacing Apple? Apple needs to spend big in response. Dithering with Ben Thompson and Daring Fireball’s John Gruber Apple Alarm io Asianometry with Jon Yu EUV Photoresists: The Next Generation? The Long, Hard End of the Chilean Nitrates Industry Sharp China with Andrew Sharp and Sinocism’s Bill Bishop Chips and the Geneva Consensus; US Policy and the Chinese Century; Controversy Over Solar Power Inverters Greatest of All Talk with Andrew Sharp and WaPo’s Ben Golliver OKC Survives and Looks Dominant, A New Era in the West, Revisiting the Lottery and Ideas for the Spurs Emergency Pod: A Bing Bong Nightmare, Haliburton Heroics and a Stunning Game 1 in New York City Sharp Tech with Andrew Sharp and Ben Thompson The U.S. Partners with the Middle East in AI, Why OpenAI Is Acquiring Windsurf, Google’s Side of the Platform Wars OpenAI Enters the Hardware Business, The Challenges and Opportunities for Jony Ive, Takeaways from Google I/O 2025 This week’s Sharp Tech video is on Apple’s risks as their App Store battles continue.