Feed aggregator

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is warning the public to be wary of scammers spoofing its switchboard number in an attempt to profit by calling marks from a "trustworthy" number. A member of the public reported an attempted scam on Monday afternoon. A phone call came in from what appeared to be the PSNI’s switchboard number, and the caller pretended to be a member of the force inquiring about a case in which the recipient was involved. “The caller told the person there was an investigation linked to their name involving money transfers to narcotic-related countries and was subsequently asked to provide information about their bank cards,” said the PSNI’s Inspector Walker. We don’t have any expert criminals here at The Register, but we think it would be pretty sage advice for someone looking to increasingly pass as a police representative not to be so stupid as to ask for gift cards as “part of the investigation process.” “The caller then asked them to purchase gift cards and send across the codes for those, stating that this was part of the investigation process and that the money would be returned to them,” Inspector Walker added. “This made the reporting party suspicious, however, and thankfully, the victim didn’t share any of their personal or bank details with the caller, who they then blocked.” Officials confirmed to The Register that the police’s number was spoofed, and this case was not instigated by a real member of the switchboard team. Spoofing the switchboard’s phone number marked “a very concerning situation,” Walker said, urging the public to remain vigilant to similar calls. The PSNI is continuing to make follow-up enquiries about the report, but has not yet detained any individual in connection with the attempted fraud. Anyone who falls victim to digital fraud in the UK should contact the police, their bank, and Action Fraud, all of which can offer the necessary assistance. “Our advice is that you should never disclose your personal or financial details over the phone, in person, or by email, to someone you don't know,” said Walker. “Guarding your personal and banking details is essential.” The attempted scam is the second disclosed by the PSNI in as many days. On Monday, it warned of a separate case involving an elderly woman being defrauded of a sum north of £250,000 ($336,000) after being targeted by individuals operating a fake cryptocurrency scheme. “After initially sending a relatively small amount, the woman then ‘invested’ larger amounts on a number of occasions after the criminals convinced her that she needed to send more in order to get her initial investment back,” said Detective Inspector Moffett, of the PSNI’s Serious Crime Branch. “After she unknowingly downloaded malware at their instruction, they were able to gain control of her electronic devices and, we believe, transfer further sums from her account.” Cryptocurrency investment scams are among the most pervasive in the world, with figures from the US suggesting the problem is growing increasingly severe. According to the FBI’s annual digital crimes report, it received 48 percent more complaints about crypto investment scams last year than it did the year before, with losses also rising 25 percent. Much of this pain was shouldered by those aged 60 and over, the agency added. ®

A newly released cache of communications involving Peter Mandelson show the UK former ambassador to the US invited Prime Minister Kier Starmer to meet Palantir founder Peter Thiel in July last year. More than a decade ago, Mandelson co-founded Global Counsel, a lobbying biz which included Palantir as a client. The US spy-tech company – prior to the current administration coming to power in July 2024 – won government contracts, including multi-million-pound deals with the NHS. It signed an agreement with the Ministry of Defence in January. Palantir was awarded more than £60 million in UK health service deals during the Covid era without any competition. It later won the £330 million NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP) deal after a much-criticized procurement the government maintained was fair and open. In an email with the subject line “Peter Thiel,” Mandelson last year addressed Morgan McSweeney, then chief of staff to the Prime Minister. The email said the “celebrated techie” Thiel would be in London during August 2025 and asks whether “the PM would like to meet him.” Another email dated March 2025, from an unnamed third party, which was addressed to Louis Mosley, executive vice-president of Palantir Technologies for UK and Europe, as well as to Mandelson, said that Mandelson himself was set to arrive at The Hill & Valley Forum 2025 event — run by “a private bipartisan community of lawmakers and innovators committed to harnessing the power of technology” — with Mosley. The email suggested inviting Mandelson to the “daytime forum and dinner” and to “grab a coffee or tea sometime in DC.” Some of the references to Palantir in the documents — released in connection with Mandelson’s links with convicted sex trafficker and financier Jeffrey Epstein — have been redacted on the basis of being "prejudicial to UK national security or international relations." Mandelson co-founded Global Counsel in 2010. In 2022, The Register uncovered its role in lobbying on behalf of Palantir in the build-up to the US spy-tech firm winning the £330 million contract for the FDP. Matthew Swindells was national director for operations and information at NHS England and Improvement (NHSE&I), a non-departmental public body under the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), until the end of July 2019. From September 2019, he began working for Global Counsel. The association with Palantir was such that Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, the flagship Palantir user where Swindells is a chairman, said he would be excluded from "any decision making in relation to Palantir [PDF]." The NHS began work with Palantir in March 2020, during the early months of the pandemic, after it was awarded a contract for just £1. It went on to win £60 million in resulting contracts without competition. In December 2021, Global Counsel and Palantir jointly hosted a webinar to consider the "next steps the UK should take in realising UK's life sciences vision." The event also launched Palantir's white paper, titled A National Technical Framework to Underpin the UK Life Sciences Vision. Swindells chaired the webinar meeting. Also speaking were professor Martin Severs, former medical director at NHS Digital, and Dr Claire Bloomfield, then deputy director for value of data, Centre for Improving Data Collaboration, NHSX, the disbanded digital strategy unit under the Department for Health and Social Care. Officials said NHS management might take part in supplier events to ensure the health service is "part of the conversation" in the health tech industry. The Palantir white paper argued for "a logically federated, locally controlled cloud-based data infrastructure," while the later NHS data strategy of June 2022 said the NHS was “looking to develop a federated data platform which will be a system of connected platforms." Palantir won the £330 million Federated Data Platform contract in November 2023 after a procurement process with NHS England, the soon-to-be-defunct health quango, maintained was open and fair. Swindells stepped down from his role in the health service earlier this year after the Financial Times reported that he'd urged colleagues to add more patient data into a Palantir-built platform while he was advising the US spy-tech firm. Swindells told the FT he was stepping down at the “end of my term of office, leaving the hospitals improved on when I started.” ®

As Santa Cruz County faces difficult budget decisions, including using $43 million in reserves to cover deficits, residents have an opportunity to shape what matters most, write three members of advocacy group Care Not Cages. Tamar Ragir, Kathy Lass and Leslie Potenzo argue that protecting healthcare and community support programs is essential to building a safer county. They question why health and human services departments had a decrease of more than 50 positions in the proposed budget while the sheriff’s office and probation face no staff cuts. On Election Day, they remind us to pay attention to county decisions and attend upcoming county budget meetings.

COMPUTEX 2026 Intel is working with Foxconn and other infrastructure providers to develop rack-scale reference designs based on the chipmaker’s Xeon processors. Announced during Intel’s Computex keynote on Tuesday, these blueprints aim to provide greater CPU compute densities for running AI agents at scale. While AI models predominantly run on GPUs and other AI accelerators, the agent harnesses, like OpenClaw, which are used to connect them to tools, terminal shells, code interpreters, and other APIs, still run on CPUs. “Our customers are asking us to think at the system level to help them serve real agentic workloads at scale,” Intel CEO Lip Bu Tan said. On stage, Tan revealed two examples of these blueprints. One is aimed at latency-sensitive agentic workloads and another designed for maximum density. Both designs support up to 128 of either Intel’s 128-core Granite Rapids Xeon 6 or 288-core Clearwater Forest Xeon 6+ processors, totaling between 16,384 P-cores and 36,864 E-cores, alongside up to 384 TB of DDR5 in a 100kW power envelope. The reference designs come just months after Nvidia announced a similar rack-scale CPU platform packing 256 of its 88-core Vera CPUs. Arm is also working on a pair of rack-scale reference designs for agentic workloads based on its new AGI CPUs: a 36 kW air-cooled system with 8,160 cores and a 200 kW liquid cooled rack with 45,696 cores. Tan expects systems based on these reference designs to be broadly available from its ODM and OEM partners. Alongside agentic AI workloads, the company also revealed that newly launched inference cloud provider Vector Core Compute will be among the first to deploy the platform, and that Together.AI is its first commercial customer. The approach is based on Intel's earlier disaggregated AI blueprint it co-developed with partner SambaNova. The architecture desegregates compute heavy prefill operations to Nvidia GPUs while using SambaNova’s AI accelerators for bandwidth-intensive decode operations to boost per-user token output by between 2-3x. If that sounds familiar it’s not dissimilar to what Nvidia is doing with Groq’s LPUs or what AWS is doing with Trainium and Cerebra's waferscale AI accelerators.®

As bad as things got in Los Angeles in January 2025, when 31 people died and more than 16,000 buildings were destroyed by wildfires roaring into residential neighborhoods, many wildland firefighters look back on the rest of last year as a dodged bullet. 

Across the nation, according to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), which coordinates the federal wildfire response, the total area burned in 2025 was about two-thirds of the average over the past 10 years.

This year is shaping up to be a very different prospect, wildfire experts warn. Key environmental indicators show that the nation is a tinderbox, gripped by widespread drought and with a light snowpack in the mountains that will offer little relief as its remnants melt away. 

At the same time, upheaval in the federal wildland firefighting effort and the loss of many staff qualified to join wildfire incident teams since Donald Trump took power for the second time have left firefighters deeply concerned about their ability to mount an effective response.

“I think this is going to be the year,” warned Timothy Ingalsbee, co-founder and executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. “The conditions are just ripe for some really bad outcomes.”

Indeed, 2026 is already off to an inauspicious start.

As of Friday, the NIFC reported that some 2.4 million acres had burned in wildfires for which it had generated incident reports. That’s almost double the 10-year average for the time of year.

So far, much of the area burned this year has been in the southeast U.S. and Plains states, including Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. For the most part, these have been grass fires.

Now we are moving toward peak wildfire season for much of the West, where the availability of moisture to help prevent forests from igniting across the summer months depends heavily on the slow melting of snow that has accumulated over the previous winter.  

And that’s thin on the ground.

This chart is derived from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Snow Data Assimilation System, which combines satellite data and ground-based observations to estimate the extent and condition of the U.S. snowpack.

Following a mild winter in which precipitation frequently fell as rain, mountain ranges including the Rockies and California’s Sierra Nevada were left with one of the lightest snowpacks in recent history. This means that its continued melting won’t do much to dampen forests on lower slopes that are the focus of concern as the West moves into the peak of fire season.

Soil moisture content across the nation has also been low — although this is a much more volatile measure that can change rapidly with a burst of storms. This chart, derived from data from NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite mission, shows that soil moisture has been low across the year so far.

Indeed, much of the nation remains unusually and worryingly dry.

This chart, showing a U.S. Drought Monitor measure summarizing the extent and severity of drought across the nation, reveals that current conditions are drier for the time of year than they have been so far this century.

As this map shows, the severity of drought varies widely across the nation, with the Southeast, the southern part of the Great Plains and the Mountain West among the most affected. As we move into the summer months, the Upper Colorado Basin and the Four Corners region — where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet — will likely experience the most severe wildfire risks.

California, frequently wracked by drought, looks in better shape this year after some heavy rains, despite its minimal snowpack. “California is a little bit more of a wild card. I’m not sure how it is going to go,” said Daniel Swain, a weather and climate scientist with University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.

While things look primed for a severe Western fire season, Swain and other experts say much will depend on regional weather patterns in the coming months that are very hard to predict. 

“I personally think it’s hard to say, ‘This is what the season is going to be,’” said Craig Clements, director of the Fire Weather Research Laboratory at San José State University.

One big unknown is what will happen with the North American monsoon, which typically brings afternoon and evening thunderstorms to Arizona and New Mexico from July to September. These storms are expected to increase in intensity with emerging El Niño conditions. And while that should bring increased rainfall to the Southwest, reducing fire risk, there is also the possibility in its early stages of storms that feature lightning strikes but little rain, igniting parched vegetation—similar to the dry lightning storms of August 2020 that triggered the most extensive wildfires in California history, including the CZU Lightning Complex fire that devastated the Santa Cruz Mountains.

“It’s a bit of a double-edged sword,” said Swain. “Those early storms could be a big problem. They could ignite many lightning fires.” 

Are federal firefighters ready?

The vagaries of weather systems are not the only unknown. The federal firefighting effort is in the midst of a major shake-up directed by the Trump administration, and its readiness for an unusually bad year is not at all clear. 

While coordinated by the NIFC, for years federal wildland firefighters have worked across multiple agencies. The Forest Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has the biggest firefighting force. Others have been employed by four agencies within the Department of the Interior. 

But in June 2025, Trump issued an executive order directing the secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior to “consolidate their wildland fire programs.”

Fire crews conduct a firing operation to control the Sandy fire on May 18 in Simi Valley. Credit: Ethan Swope / Associated Press

In September, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced plans to unite his department’s programs into a new U.S. Wildland Fire Service. The Forest Service, which would lose a large part of its funding if its firefighting programs were merged into the new Interior agency, is promising to coordinate while retaining its independent workforce. 

Forcing consolidation across the Interior Department and the Forest Service would in any case likely require approval from Congress, which has shown little enthusiasm for the Trump administration’s plans and did not appropriate funds for Interior’s Wildland Fire Service for the 2026 fiscal year.

Burgum’s previous efforts to centralize power at Interior drew complaints about the organizational chaos that followed: Some 5,000 staff were moved from the department’s component agencies to his office in May 2025, and almost 1,800 quit, retired or were pushed out afterward. That’s sparked concern about how smooth his overhaul of the department’s firefighting efforts will be. 

“The bottom line is it’s disorganization,” said Ingalsbee.

Beyond the federal reorganization, the main concern is how many staff remain at both Interior and the Forest Service with “red card” certification to work on wildfire incident teams, many of whom provide vital logistic support to those battling the blazes on the fireline itself. 

Data on the number of red-carded staff is not publicly available, but as of the end of March the Department of the Interior had lost about 17% of its total staff during the second Trump administration, while the Forest Service had lost almost 11%, according to an Inside Climate News analysis of federal workforce data. 

A Sierra Hotshots captain directs crew members during a burn operation near Jerseydale as the Ferguson fire burns in the Sierra National Forest in July 2018. Credit: Kari Greer/U.S. Forest Service via Inside Climate News

This loss of staff may help explain why the Forest Service treated roughly 35% fewer acres across the nation last year with prescribed fires, forest thinning and brush clearing to reduce hazardous fuels than in 2024, leaving communities “more exposed to the risk of catastrophic wildfire,” according to an analysis from the Center for Western Priorities in Denver.

The Interior Department did not respond to requests for comment.

As of May 11, the Forest Service announced that it had almost 10,500 wildland firefighters. In a statement to Inside Climate News, the service said it was on track to meet its hiring goals for the peak of the 2026 wildfire season, including dedicated firefighters and red-carded staff: “Across the agency, we have about 10,000 non-fire employees who are also qualified to perform essential roles during wildfire response, even though their everyday job is not firefighting.”

But former wildland firefighters argue that staffing targets have long been too low, given the increasingly severe blazes being driven by climate change. And they worry that 2026 is poised to throw a severe challenge at teams that are overworked and low on morale.

“You’re not talking about firefighters who are making $150,000 a year like a city firefighter,” said Bobbie Scopa, executive secretary of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, which campaigns for the rights of those tasked with battling wildfires. “Their base salaries are like $60,000 to $70,000. So you’re asking an awful lot from a workforce that has not been taken care of.”

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.

The post Why wildfire experts are so worried about this year’s fire season appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

Mobile telcos are linking up with satellite operators to extend coverage beyond their cell towers reach, but actual usage of the technology may fall short of industry expectations. That's the view of Juniper Research, which forecasts monthly active direct-to-cell (D2C) users will grow from 17.4 million in 2026 to 133 million by 2031. Strong growth, but Juniper warns real-world adoption will likely disappoint: D2C is inherently niche, kicking in only when terrestrial signal fails, and it does nothing to solve poor indoor coverage - a complaint that frustrates users day-to-day. “Consumer demand for D2C is currently concentrated to specific trips and travel, such as to national parks and nature reserves, rather than during everyday usage of mobile services,” claimed senior research analyst Alex Webb. Network intelligence biz Ookla reported a few months back that the number of D2C connections rose nearly 25 percent between July 2025 and March 2026. As Reg readers know, D2C lets unmodified smartphones connect directly to low Earth orbit satellites, no specialist hardware required. Satellite companies ally with mobile network operators, borrowing their spectrum to cover areas beyond cell range, essentially like putting a cell tower in space. T-Mobile in the US led the way, offering a D2C capability via SpaceX’s Starlink constellation for roughly a year, and dangling it an an add-on to lure subscribers from rival networks. America is fertile ground for D2C given how quickly signal drops off outside major urban centers. Australia is similarly well-suited. Europe, where terrestrial networks cover most of the continent, was long considered a weaker prospect, though this hasn't deterred operators. Virgin Media O2 has launched its O2 Satellite service in the UK, while VodafoneThree was preparing customers for trials this summer. Juniper predicts the Far East and China will be the biggest market for satellite phone services, followed by India, with Africa, North America, Latin America and West Europe sharing smaller, roughly equal slices. Dense urban settings present a separate problem D2C can't fix. Thick walls, underground spaces and physical obstacles routinely kill signal in cites and no amount of orbital infrastructure changes that, Webb reported. Pricing remains another drag on adoption. The GSMA previously found 40 percent of phone subscribers wouldn't pay anything extra for satellite capability, and another 32 percent would stretch to a 5 percent premium. For now, most D2C services are limited to text messaging and emergency services calls, with voice and full data still to come. Vodafone demonstrated the first mobile video call using a satellite connection using standard 4G/5G handsets in early 2025, showing it is technically possible. The question is when and whether enough users will care. ®

Election season has returned and Lookout is here to help you keep up with all the most important information leading up to Election Day, Tuesday, June 2.

In this guide, we’ll give you the rundown on everything you need to know about the upcoming primary, including candidates, important dates, logistics and more.

Get the latest election updates via email by signing up here for breaking news alerts via email; you can also opt in to breaking news notifications on the Lookout Santa Cruz app – download that here.

Have a question about the election process? Let us know at elections@lookoutlocal.com.

When is the election?

The primary election is Tuesday, June 2.

When/how do I register?

You can register up to the day of the primary, Tuesday, June 2.

May 18 was the last day to register to vote by mail. You now need to complete the same-day voter registration form and request your ballot in person at your county elections office or polling location. You will need to be prepared to vote in person.

In person

You can complete a voter registration card at the Santa Cruz County Elections Office located at 701 Ocean St., Santa Cruz, Room 310. Voter registration cards are also available at many public locations in Santa Cruz County including post offices, libraries and Department of Motor Vehicles offices, as well as many government offices.

Polling places

Click here to find all Santa Cruz County vote centers and drop box locations. As of Tuesday, all voting locations are open. They will all be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Aptos

Cabrillo College Room 2100B (behind Sesnon House), 6500 Soquel Dr.

St. John’s Episcopal Church, 125 Canterbury Dr.

Boulder Creek

Boulder Creek Fire Station, 13230 Highway 9.

Capitola

New Brighton Middle School, 250 Washburn Ave.

Corralitos

Corralitos Community Church, 26 Browns Valley Rd.

Davenport

Pacific Elementary School, 50 Ocean St.

Felton

Felton Library, 6121 Gushee St.

Los Gatos

Loma Prieta Temp. Community Center, 23845 Summit Rd. (in the community room next to the preschool)

Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz County Clerk/Elections, 701 Ocean St., Room 310

Simpkins Family Swim Center, 979 17th Ave.

Bonny Doon Elementary School, 1492 Pine Flat Rd.

Depot Park, 119 Center St.

Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office, 5200 Soquel Ave.

UCSC Merrill Cultural Center, 641 Merrill Rd.

Masonic Center, 828 N Branciforte Ave.

Christian Life Center, 1009 Mission St.

Scotts Valley

Scotts Valley Public Library, 251 Kings Village Rd.

Scotts Valley High School, 555 Glenwood Dr.

Soquel

Soquel High School, 401 Old San Jose Rd.

Watsonville

Watsonville City Clerk’s Office, 275 Main St., 4th Floor 

Westridge County Building, 500 Westridge Dr.

La Selva Beach Clubhouse, 314 Estrella Ave.

Pajaro Valley Community Trust, 85 Nielson St.

Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds – Heritage Hall, 2601 East Lake Ave.

Drop box locations

Aptos

Aptos Branch Library, 7695 Soquel Dr.

Polo Grounds near the dog park, 2255 Huntington Dr.

Cabrillo College Parking Lot L by Crocker Theater, 2372 Cabrillo College Dr.

Ben Lomond

Highlands Park, 8500 Highway 9

Boulder Creek

Boulder Creek Community Church – 12465 Highway 9

Capitola

420 Capitola Ave. in the city hall parking lot

Mall near the old Sears, 1855 41st Ave.

Capitola Branch Library, 2005 Wharf Rd.

Corralitos

Corralitos Women’s Club, 33 Browns Valley Rd.

Felton

Covered Bridge Park – at Mount Hermon Road and Graham Hill Road

Los Gatos

Summit Store, 24197 Summit Rd.

Santa Cruz

701 Ocean St. in front of the County Government Center

212 Church St. in the public parking lot

Bonny Doon Elementary School, 1492 Pine Flat Rd.

Sheriff’s Office – 5200 Soquel Ave.

Trescony Park, end of Trescony Street

UCSC Quarry Plaza

Scotts Valley

1 Civic Center Dr. in the city hall parking lot

Watsonville

316 Rodriguez St. in municipal public parking Lot 14

County Health Center, 1430 Freedom Blvd.

South County Government Center, 500 Westridge Dr.

Online

Those eligible to vote and those under the age of 18 who want to register for future elections can do so online at the California Online Voter Registration website.

To register online, you will need:

• Your California driver’s license or ID card.
• The last four digits of your Social Security number.
• Your date of birth.

Unsure if you’re already registered? You can check your registration status as well as where you’re registered and your registered party preference on California’s My Voter Status website.

By phone

You can request that a voter registration card be mailed to you by calling the Santa Cruz County Clerk/Elections office at 831-454-2060 or 866-282-5900.

Accessible voting

All voting locations will be compliant with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards. Poll workers will be available to assist voters with disabilities to cast their vote using either a paper ballot or an ADA-compliant tablet.

To read about all the options that are available to make voting accessible, you can visit Santa Cruz County’s Voters With Disabilities page and learn about options for accessible voting from home.

You can also find information about voting while homeless.

What’s on the ballot? Local races

Click here to find the candidates’ statements, contact information, and link to their websites on the county elections department. Candidate statements are linked to their names, if they have filed one.

Federal races

U.S. Representative in Congress, 18th District

Zoe Lofgren, Democratic Party, incumbent and chair of the California Democratic Congressional Delegation

Chris Demers, no party preference, sustainable technology director

Luis Arreguín, Democratic Party, former agricultural lab technician and current community college mathematics professor

Shane Lewis, Republican Party, engineer and former U.S. Marine

U.S. Representative in Congress, 19th District

Jimmy Panetta, Democratic Party, incumbent

Sean Dougherty, Democratic Party, software engineer

Thomas D Coxe, no party preference, contractor

Peter Coe Verbica, Republican Party, business owner and former chairman of the Santa Cruz County Republicans

Tuka Gafari, Republican Party, small business owner

Lars Mapstead, Libertarian Party, late-stage investor and tech entrepreneur

Ana Luz Acevedo-Cabrera, no party preference, nonprofit board member and Hartnell College professor

State races

Governor

Incumbent Gavin Newsom is terming out.

The governor’s race is extremely crowded, with more than 50 candidates appearing on the ballot, although some of the candidates have dropped out of the race. Click here for more from our content partners at CalMatters about the leading candidates and the others appearing on the ballot.

State Assembly, 28th District

Gail Pellerin, Democratic Party, incumbent, chair of the Select Committee on California’s Mental Health Crisis and former Santa Cruz County clerk

Carol Pefley, Republican Party, owner of real estate business Realty World Dominion

State Assembly, 29th District

Robert Rivas, Democratic Party, incumbent, speaker of the California State Assembly

JW Paine, Republican Party, teamster truck driver

Dennis P. Sanchez, Republican Party, small business owner

State Assembly, 30th District

Dawn Addis, Democratic Party, incumbent, chair of the Budget Subcommittee No. 1 on Health, chair of the Select Committee on Serving Students with Disabilities, and member of the Budget, Health, Business and Professions, and Insurance Standing Committees 

Susannah Brown, Democratic Party, data scientist

Shannon Kessler, Republican Party, former Arroyo Grande Parks and Recreation commissioner and PTA president

Santa Cruz County races

County supervisor, 3rd District

Justin Cummings, incumbent and former Santa Cruz City councilmember and mayor. He is running unopposed.

County supervisor, 4th District

Felipe Hernandez is the incumbent and a former Watsonville city councilmember, mayor and Cabrillo College trustee.

Elias Gonzales is a longtime community advocate and the associate director of movement building for Hollister-based nonprofit Youth Alliance and a member of Santa Cruz County’s juvenile justice delinquency prevention commission.

Tony Nuñez is a former journalist and editor of The Pajaronian, board chair of the Pajaro Valley Health Care District and the communications director for nonprofit Community Bridges.

Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge

Bryan Hackett is a criminal defense attorney based in Santa Cruz County.

Alisa Thomas is an immigration attorney based in Santa Cruz County

Other county races

There are a number of unopposed races for county offices. Faris Sabbah is running unopposed for county superintendent of schools, Sheri Thomas is running unopposed for assessor-recorder, Laura Bowers is running unopposed for auditor-controller-treasurer-tax collector, and Tricia Webber is running unopposed for county clerk.

Santa Cruz city races

Santa Cruz mayor

Incumbent Fred Keeley is not seeking reelection after serving one four-year term.

Ryan Coonerty is a longtime politico and a former Santa Cruz city councilmember, mayor and county supervisor.

Ami Chen Mills is a lecturer, educator and activist who has most recently been one of the leaders of the grassroots coalition Get The Flock Out, which opposes the use of automated-license plate readers.

Gillian Greensite is a retired UC Santa Cruz educator and an environmental activist.

Chris Krohn is a former Santa Cruz city councilmember and mayor. He was the subject of a recall in 2020, when he most recently served, and did not finish his term.

Joy Schendledecker is a shelter operations manager and former Santa Cruz City Council and mayoral candidate.

District 4 Santa Cruz city councilmember

Scott Newsome is the incumbent and a UC Santa Cruz educator.

Hector Marin is an English language development and special education aide at Harbor High School. He also ran against Newsome in 2022 and against District 2 City Councilmember Sonja Brunner in 2024.

District 6 Santa Cruz city councilmember

Renée Golder is the incumbent and the principal of Bay View Elementary School.

Gabriella Noack is a graduating UC Santa Cruz senior and member of a team developing tech education for previously incarcerated adults at Barrios Unidos.

Campaign finance

Local candidates and ballot measure committees are required to file campaign statements by certain deadlines, disclosing contributions they have received and expenditures they have made. Those reports, filed as Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) Form 460s, apply to all candidates and committees that have raised or spent at least $2,000 in a calendar year.

The first filing date was Feb. 2 and covered the period beginning when the candidate or committee first began raising or spending funds through Dec. 31, 2025. The first pre-election filing date followed on April 23, and covered the period from Jan. 1 through April 18. The second pre-election filing date is on May 21, and covers the period from April 19 through May 16. There is one post-election filing date, on July 31, that covers the period from May 17 through June 30.

You may find campaign finance filings for county candidates and committees here. Click the respective links for campaign finance filings for candidates and committees in the cities of Santa Cruz, Capitola, Scotts Valley and Watsonville.

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.

The post Election Day in Santa Cruz County: How and where to vote and what to know about all the races appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

In a letter to the editor, a Santa Cruz resident takes issue with a recent Lookout op-ed on the city’s mayoral race and outlines her support for candidate Ami Chen Mills.

The Vampire Lestat is going to hit you like a wrecking ball of attitude, atmosphere, music, emotions, and deep vibes. If the first two seasons of the narrative, titled Interview with the Vampire, were an orchestration of tense strings, beautiful though sedate, pulling the viewer toward a masterful crescendo, The Vampire Lestat is an unyielding rock show, a buffet of sight, sound, and tragedy, that cackle unapologetically as wave after wave of emotion crash into you… And we haven’t even yet seen the final episode.

Although the story can become hard to discern at times, the season’s important vision is not necessarily about the cold, hard facts of exactly what happened to Lestat in his complex past. No, it’s about being inspired by the haunting muses that his music unleashes, and letting them guide you on a melodious journey through what Lestat feels over anything else. And despite his gleeful front to the world and those around him, oh, he feels. And you will feel too. Join us on our spoiler-free review of The Vampire Lestat, episodes 1-6.

AMC

As the title of this review suggests, The Vampire Lestat is unlike anything else on TV right now. When I envision what it was like to watch the series, the image of a stained-glass window, smashed up and then turned into a mosaic that we try to parse, comes to mind. Maybe we don’t fully understand every facet of the design, but we are aware it’s beautiful. The Vampire Lestat is not a simple watch, if that’s what you’re looking for.

We’re in Lestat’s head now, and Lestat is a dramatic, intense, intelligent, petty, twisted, and beautiful creature. And Lestat is thinking about many things. But chiefly, Lestat is thinking about great matters of love and death. So you know, we’re at once floating in a space that’s incredibly superficial and incredibly complex, and are being led through it by a narrator who has no desire, or maybe no power, to control the places his mind takes him.

Interview with the Vampire had all the gravitas of a deliciously dense play. And there was so much to analyze and unearth from its depths, so much beauty in its volleying prose. But it was a linear narrative with a beginning, a middle, and an end, save for a few obfuscations thrown in by the vampire Armand. The Vampire Lestat is not that. Even as a person with a working knowledge of Lestat’s history, born of reading The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice, following the exact timeline and roster of events in Lestat’s life became a bit difficult to keep track of in The Vampire Lestat series. But as I watched the season, I realized that was okay. It wasn’t truly that important to know every last fact about Lestat’s backstory. More critical are the overt emotional resonances that do come in loud and clear.

Lestat’s nauseous reckoning with the perspective of his maker, Magnus, his grief over Claudia’s death, his vision of the endless vampire loneliness, and his love of Louis, all of these things burned brightly in my awareness as I watched. And in the volatile world of Lestat, as he tries to reckon with his immortality, his heartbreak, and the truth of himself, those sharp glimpses, wrapped up in incredible music, are what count. I urge viewers to let go of the specifics of the story and lose themselves in the feeling of the world, its rhythms, harmonies, and dissonances. It’s an experience worth undergoing.

The Vampire Lestat may not offer a conventional season of TV, but it challenges you to keep up. And in a world where characters often say everything out loud in the clearest possible way, just in case someone is looking down at their phone, it is a refreshing, much-needed work of art. The series is an ambitious adventure worth supporting.

Additionally, The Vampire Lestat remains one of the queerest series on our TV screens. And we fully applaud that. Few shows can say they are as proudly representative as The Vampire Lestat in this regard. After all, Lestat is an immortal, vampire rock star, and that means he’s not afraid to enjoy anyone of any gender in the elevator. It would NOT make a lick of sense in any other way. We even get a non-binary vampire with they/them pronouns using the men’s room because it’s their preference. We will say there was a bit too much about the vampiric urination structure in this season for our taste, but we accept it! A minor complaint. Louis also has an incredibly hot, new, emotionally unavailable vampire friend-with-benefits played by Moses Sumney, who is a great addition. But sadly, we don’t actually get to see them together too much.

RELATED ARTICLETHE VAMPIRE LESTAT’s Music Will ‘Span Time’ Share IWTV’s Showrunner and ComposerAnother interesting point of queerness lies in the Vampiress Gabriella. For decades, Anne Rice fans have read Gabrielle/Gabriella as a trans man, and the books’ texts seem to support this interpretation. Sadly, I would not call The Vampire Lestat‘s Gabriella trans or even masc. Although she does suggest to me a kind of relatable/palpable queerness in which she sheds the traditional trappings of what we might call “femme” for something quite indiscernible to society, where she centers herself and solely herself in her own experience. Is that far enough? It’s not a question that has an answer.AMCOverall, queerness definitely thrives in The Vampire Lestat, and the romance between Lestat and Louis is PALPABLE at all times. We do allow that the story sometimes does not demand or allow physicality between its main characters, for instance, if they are broken up at the present time, and we have faith The Vampire Lestat and its team want to make things as queer as possible. And so, without judgment, we say that a bulk of the romantic screentime this season is between Lestat and Gabriella. And it is one of the most important relationships featured in The Vampire Lestat. Although ultimately, Louis and Lestat are undoubtedly one another’s great loves. And yes, Gabriella is Lestat’s mother, and yes, they sleep together, but if you’re really so bothered by that, you might need to try a different show on for size.AMCAs for the narratives of the other characters in the world of The Vampire Lestat—as the name suggests, this season largely tells the story of The Vampire Lestat. With that said, Louis has a fair bit to do in the present day, and many of his various arcs are new to the show and don’t come from the source books. Some might be glad for it, and some may not, but Louis is on a largely solo journey this season. Louis’ tale largely explores his grief over the death of Claudia and the different, often destructive paths it leads him down. It’s definitely an intense and harrowing ride, and whatever Louis had to say about owning the night in Interview with the Vampire season two’s finale, it’s clear he’s struggling in The Vampire Lestat. From the first six episodes we’ve seen, it’s clear Louis has a long way to go before he achieves true healing. But would we love a vampire if they weren’t a hot mess? With all that said, the times when Lestat and Louis do reunite on screen are absolute magic. Whether there’s ire between them, the ghost of old wounds, or the utmost tenderness, our hearts ache for their partnership and long for their total reconciliation.AMCWe know also know that Delainey Hayles returns to the series this year. And we can’t say much about the shape her performance takes in the story, only that it’s a clever addition to the narrative of The Vampire Lestat at every turn. And, of course, that Hayles crushes her performance, as always.Which brings us to Armand and Daniel. But don’t Armand and Daniel deserve their own special review, since this one is so much about Lestat? I think so! Join me for my non-spoilery review of the season as a Devil’s Minion lover over at this piece. There I’ll shed a little more light on how Armand and Daniel fit into the world of The Vampire Lestat.Ultimately, The Vampire Lestat is a riveting, chaotic, and incredible ride. And the end of episode six will leave you gasping. We both can’t wait and are deeply afraid to see what episode seven has in store. In the meantime, we can only invite you to watch The Vampire Lestat when it premieres on June 7 on AMC and AMC+ and enjoy the fangulous journey for yourself.The Vampire Lestat ⭐ (Youtube Video)

The post THE VAMPIRE LESTAT Is Unlike Anything Else on TV (Review) appeared first on Nerdist.

My minions, sit by me, and let’s have a non-spoilery review of how Armand and Daniel’s relationship looks in The Vampire Lestat series. And just to clarify, I use the phrase “Devil’s Minion” in this piece as a shorthand for the overall relationship between the pair in all its forms, and for what lies between the two characters in this season, not specifically as a confirmation of the shape their relationship takes.AMC

Of course, I don’t want to spoil anything from the season for my fellow Devil’s Minion enthusiasts. But here is what I can say. The scenes that Armand and Daniel share are beautiful and emotional. And, although the emotion between them is not necessarily positive, it is always strong. But as Eric Bogosian and Assad Zaman have noted before, “It’s a thin line between love and hate… And Daniel hates Armand.”

AMC

From even before their first meeting, in just the barest of mentions that Daniel makes to an unimpressed Louis about his connection with Armand, the depth of feeling between the pair absolutely aches. And, interestingly, in The Vampire Lestat, their vampiric bond manifests in a unique way that I won’t go into too specifically. But the manifestation resonated with me (again, me as a viewer interpreting the narrative, who is preexistingly inclined toward the idea of their romance) as both twistedly dark and gorgeously romantic. And I will say this, there is a moment later in the season, one of my favorites, that could have been plucked from a Devil’s Minion fanfic. Where I was like, “Omg, Daniel, just…” And Daniel did! We love to see it.

AMC

But I will caution that this is The Vampire Lestat and so Lestat’s story. Armand and Daniel are players in the tale, but not THE players. But I think that Devil’s Minions lovers will ultimately feel happy with the moments that do present themselves this season, at least as far as episodes one through six are concerned. Although I beg the writers to stop using “Dad” and start using “Daddy” when discussing Armand as Daniel’s maker. But I guess in a season where Lestat is constantly kissing his mother, maybe it’s a harbinger of good fortune.

RELATED ARTICLE

Assad Zaman on What Love Means to Armand From THE VAMPIRE LESTAT

All in all, the relationship between Daniel and Armand was the one I was most excited to see unfold, and I wasn’t disappointed by what I received from the first six episodes of The Vampire Lestat. And it leaves me fascinated to see what will become Devil’s Minion in the finale of the season. The Vampire Lestat premieres on June 7 on AMC and AMC+. You can also check out our review of the season as a whole here.

The post THE VAMPIRE LESTAT Review: Devil’s Minion Edition appeared first on Nerdist.

And the Lord said unto Satan, “Whence comest thou?”

Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, “From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.”

—The Book of Job

In late April, I wrote about Peter Thiel’s decision to temporarily move to Argentina with his family. It seemed like an odd development, since Thiel’s allies and ideas form a core part of the Trump regime.

At the height of his power and influence, with his companies raking in multibillion-dollar contracts, why would the PayPal and Palantir billionaire “decamp” to South America?

Last week, the New York Times followed up on Thiel’s move:

Mr. Thiel, who has a history of collecting backup countries as he hedges his bets against the United States, is considering making Argentina another Plan B, according to two people familiar with his thinking. Born in Germany and raised in the United States, he received citizenship in New Zealand in 2011, and applied for a passport in Malta in 2022.

 His new roots in Argentina are partly motivated by his concerns about the direction of the United States, the people familiar with his thinking say, particularly California, where an initiative on November’s ballot could lead to a significant tax on billionaires.

Argentina, a nation relatively insulated from potential conflicts in the Northern Hemisphere, also fits as a potential escape hatch from other risks that Mr. Thiel has publicly warned about — nuclear war and runaway artificial intelligence.

The NYT piece spurred a new round of interest in Thiel’s globetrotting from people who had apparently missed the New York Post’s exclusive story on April 24. As with the NYT story, the Post story pointed out that Thiel’s purchase of a $12 million mansion in Buenos Aires is part of a “meticulously constructed global hedge,” noting that “Thiel has spent years assembling a portfolio of residences, passports, and legal presences across multiple continents.”

Neither story mentioned Thiel’s decades-long fascination with The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State. The 1997 book urges wealthy individuals—so-called “Sovereign Individuals”—to seek escape routes from democratic nation-states, obtain multiple passports, and acquire personal security services as the world devolves into chaos.

From The Sovereign Individual:

This will mean intensified shopping among jurisdictions for protection services, passport and consular services, and the provision of justice.

In the long run, of course, Sovereign Individuals will probably be able to travel on nongovernmental documents, issued like letters of credit by private agencies and affinity groups. It is not farfetched to suppose that a group will emerge as a kind of merchant republic of cyberspace, organized like the medieval Hanseatic League, to facilitate negotiation of private treaties and contracts among jurisdictions as well as to provide protection for its members. Imagine a special passport issued by the League of Sovereign Individuals, identifying the holder as a person under the protection of the league.

This “merchant republic of cyberspace” is essentially the goal of the Network State movement, which was founded by Thiel protégé Balaji Srinivasan (to whom Thiel recommended the book). Srinivasan calls The Sovereign Individual “the most prescient thing in the world.” The book’s main thesis—that “cyber currency” (crypto) and advanced automation (AI) will crumble the world order in the 21st century—is catnip to the cult of radical venture capitalists who have sprung up around Thiel. (Well-read people understand that The Sovereign Individual took many of its ideas from science fiction and earlier tech movements.)

Until the nation-state system falls to the supposed tech apocalypse and the Network State emerges as a world power, however, these roaming oligarchs will need temporary hiding places. As I mentioned in my April piece, The Sovereign Individual specifically listed Argentina and New Zealand as choice locations for bunker-mentality billionaires. Thiel obtained New Zealand citizenship in 2011, and the NYT reports that he is exploring the possibility of an Argentine passport as well.

Thiel’s passport-collecting spree reflects his apocalyptic psyche. But it connects directly to Thiel’s political project, which sees technology as an “incredible alternative to politics” (as Thiel put it in a 2010 speech). This means technology—or the vast sums of money amassed by tech barons—will allow them to escape democracy.

How? Either by destroying democratic governments (as we are seeing in the United States), by creating new democracy-free territories (proposed tech utopias in Gaza or Greenland), or by taking over countries where democracy is weak and vulnerable (El Salvador and Honduras). Proponents of the Network State have also proposed building settlements in Cuba and Venezuela, both countries Trump has targeted with military aggression.

Argentina is a friendly locale for Thiel because the country’s current president, Javier Milei, is a chainsaw-waving anarcho-capitalist zealot who largely shares his crypto-inflected politics. But it’s not clear how long Milei will stay in power. Argentina remains a democracy and Milei’s poll numbers have fallen dramatically (crypto anarcho-capitalist fantasy works better in the billionaire imagination than in reality).

Tech billionaires have set their sights on Latin America, where they see weaker governments that are easier to buy. But Latin American countries have also resisted and overthrown many bloody right-wing dictatorships. The people of Latin America know a thing or two about resisting imperial aggression from norteamericano capitalists with colonial aspirations.

So, don’t expect Thiel to find happiness in Argentina, but do expect his global search to continue. More important than any particular location is the paranoid fantasy underlying it—the dream of a collapsing world order in which savvy billionaires may convert distressed countries into techno-fascist fiefdoms. That is the vision Thiel has pursued for decades, and he is not alone in his billionaire escape anxiety.

Business Insider reports that Thiel’s Argentina move “fits a larger pattern” in which “the rich are treating their lives in America like part of an investment portfolio: still worth betting on, but increasingly in need of a hedge.”

“There's a clear trend toward sovereign diversification,” Charlie Garcia, founder of centimillionaire membership club R360, said, including “multiple passports, multiple tax regimes, and at least one 'Plan B' jurisdiction in the Southern Hemisphere.”

Anyone wishing to understand the full scope of this deranged trend should add The Sovereign Individual to their summer reading list.

I recommend the 2020 reissue version—with a foreword by Thiel.

(The first chapter of my forthcoming book is titled “The Sovereign Individual: Peter Thiel and the Politics of Apocalypse.” Click here to pre-order it. Every purchase supports this newsletter AND independent bookstores!)

Tech Apocalypse in Rome

I just returned from Rome, where I participated in a small conference on the subject of “Tech Apocalypse.” I am working my notes into a short essay that I will share with our paid subscribers. They pay the bills and keep this newsletter afloat! Join them today!

If you want to now how Thiel’s Antichrist obsession connects to the Network State, and why tech fascism is indeed fascism, stay tuned.

Spotted in Rome.

As a movie dork, one of the most fun things you can do is log the billion things you watch in a month on Letterboxd. The app for cinephiles has become the must-visit home for people who want to say one to seven thousand things about new and old movies. Plus, it’s a very helpful way to check if you’ve seen something. Me? I one time couldn’t remember if I’d seen the movie The Vampires Night Orgy. I may be one of one in the list of people who couldn’t remember if they had or had not seen that. (At the time I hadn’t; I now have.)

At any rate, it’s fun. So intrinsic has Letterboxd become for the movies and moviegoing, studios have started actively marketing to Letterboxd users. That’s just good business, really. So, for that reason, I’m not surprised the marketing people for Paramount thought doing so for the upcoming sixth Scary Movie was a good idea. Their scheme was to make a Letterboxd account for the fictional character Brenda Meeks, as played by Regina Hall. She’s the spoof franchise’s resident movie buff (and pirate), so why not? Because it’s deeply unfunny, that’s why.

Paramount Pictures

Brenda (username itsbrendabitch) has a Patron account, which is the highest paid tier membership for the site. It costs $49.99 per year. The account has logged 24 movies to date (all on May 28, to be precise) and each features a one-line review. Now, look, I’m not saying everyone on Letterboxd is Dave Barry (what a reference) nor that I’m humorist of the year. But what I am saying is that people promoting a comedy movie might want to come up with not the most obvious or old things about some of these movies.

The logs are a mix of older and newer movies, with the vast amount going to horror movies. Here are some of the “highlights” from Brenda’s reviews.

• Smile – “too much teeth”
• The Fugitive – “Idc what he says about being innocent, the husband always did it”
• The Ring – “Another little white girl fell down the well” (Some of that topical Baby Jessica humor. Baby Jessica, who is now 40 years old.)
• Weapons – “RUN KIDS RUN!!!”
• Sinners – “Two michael b jordans? This was a fantasy film for ME”
• M3GAN – “just take her batteries out damn!”
• Backrooms – “Just stop going in there wtf”

Paramount Pictures

Okay, you get the idea. Incredibly route-one stuff here. It would surprise me if this realistically took the person in charge of making it more than 10 minutes total. Now, I’m aware Brenda as a character isn’t the most media savvy or deep person, but it speaks to the level of non-effort on display.

I will cop to chuckling at two entries. One was the movie Ma, to which Brenda wrote “her hair was on point.” Brenda’s look in the new movie is inspired by Octavia Spencer’s in Ma. The other was that each review of three Jackie Chan movies—Rush Hour, Shanghai Noon, and Rumble in the Bronx—was simply “I liked when he did a flip.”

I know this probably reads like Old Man Yelling at Clouds. But, I just get so tired of brands trying to be cool without any of the knowledge to back it up. It’s real “Hello, fellow kids” or “Pokemon Go to the polls!” energy. Your mileage may vary of course.

Scary Movie but the sixth one hits theaters this Friday, June 5.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.

The post SCARY MOVIE 6 Gave Brenda Her Own Deeply Unfunny Letterboxd appeared first on Nerdist.

Every founder who applies to Startup Battlefield wants the same thing: the Disrupt Main Stage. Here’s how to get there and why the opportunity starts well before the main stage.

Developers seem to hate Microsoft’s new usage-based billing policy for GitHub Copilot as they report burning through a month's worth of credits in hours. “This is a staggering shift from a 'predictable subscription' to a 'stressful meter-based' service that hinders my productivity rather than helping it,” wrote one developer on GitHub's user forum who said they were paying for Microsoft's $39-per-month Copilot Pro+ plan but burned through about 8 percent of their monthly AI Credits allocation in two hours under the new billing system. “At this rate, my 7,000-unit quota will be depleted in less than two days.” Their outrage is a consistent and growing theme among the business users of AI who suddenly see eye-popping bills after years of experimenting with a nearly free service. One GitHub Copilot developer requested a single change to their project and burned more than $6, they wrote. “Not after a day of usage. Not after dozens of prompts. After ONE request,” the developer stated on GitHub’s user forum. “I understand that large projects require context, but this level of consumption feels completely unreasonable and impossible to predict. How are individual developers supposed to budget for this when a single feature request can consume such a large portion of the monthly allowance?” The changes went into effect across the site on Monday. In GitHub’s April post announcing the new billing scheme, Microsoft said the change was made from monthly billing to usage-based because GitHub Copilot is “not the same product it was a year ago.” “It now powers far more complex, agentic workflows that consume far more compute. This change is designed to deliver a more sustainable and reliable product experience by aligning pricing to actual usage and costs,” the post to its user community reads. “We believe GitHub Copilot remains the best value and experience for agentic coding. Usage-based billing aligns cost more closely to actual usage and value, while continuing to offer developers the freedom to choose the models and agents that work best for them.” GitHub Copilot lets developers access a range of AI models from within their development tools. That had allowed some users to make large numbers of requests across multiple models while paying as little as $10 per month for Copilot Pro, or $39 per month for Copilot Pro+. Now, each request from users is dynamically priced depending on the model used, the request, and the amount of material submitted by the user, as well as the complexity of the answer returned. “Woke up to the new billing UI this morning. Figured I'd test it out on some actual work — just needed Claude 4.8 to help fix a couple things on a site I'm editing,” one Reddit user posted. “It gave some pretty mediocre suggestions. Didn't really solve the problem, I still had to do most of the work myself … Then I checked the actual usage page. 1,180 credits used. 16% of my monthly Pro+ allowance. Gone. For basically nothing.” The comments online have been overwhelmingly negative, with users on GitHub’s forum and Reddit vowing to abandon the product and move their work directly to Anthropic, OpenAI, and some creating their own workarounds through a series of free or cheaper AI vendors, like RooCode, LM Studio, or OpenRouter. “I’ve opted to stick to Pro+, burn through my allocated credit in a week, and then pivot to using OpenRouter for the remainder of the month,” one user posted. “OpenRouter offers a similar set of advantages that Copilot has over other providers. It can be used within the same VS Code interface. Plus it has more models and credit rolls-over for up to a year." The Register asked Microsoft about the user complaints and a GitHub spokesperson responded with a statement saying it had introduced a new billing policy, and provided a link to a FAQ. "Usage-based billing is now in effect. Pricing for GitHub Copilot now reflects actual usage with spending limits, usage dashboards, and model selection available to help manage costs. We're also introducing Copilot Max for users who need more capacity," the statement reads. ®

“Hi, I am here to do whatever it takes to help you become our governor,” Gris Vogt, a part-time content creator, wrote in a direct message to Xavier Becerra’s Instagram account. She wasn’t expecting a response. He’s a Democratic candidate, onetime California attorney general, and the former secretary of health and human services, while Vogt “didn’t have that many followers.

Source

A daily roundup of the best stories and cartoons by Daily Kos staff and contributors to keep you in the know. No fatties or poors allowed near Trump at White House cage fight Trump’s ringside qualifications are getting more and more specific. Trump team: ‘Relax,’ gas costs more now Sure, this is what the American people want. Happy Pride Month! These states are just …

Source

The Google parent company plans to raise the funds by selling stock.

The GOP-controlled Congress returned to Washington on Monday in the same horrible position they were in when they skipped town over a week ago: mired in infighting as they try to figure out how to handle President Donald Trump’s corrupt $1.8 billion slush fund for the traitors who violently tried to help him steal the 2020 election. Senate Republicans fled town on May 21 after they came to an…

Source

In another bit of progressive excellence, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday signed a very special executive order: He officially repealed children’s bedtime so they can watch the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals. “Okay, my friends,” Mamdani said, surrounded by children. “Executive order is signed. Bedtime is repealed. All of you can watch the finals.

Source

Watsonville Community Hospital CEO Stephen Gray will be stepping down from his role in early July, according to hospital leadership. The search for an interim replacement is currently underway.