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Someone has traced “8647”—the anti-Trump expression that got former FBI Director James Comey indicted—into the grass on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

It’s still unclear who made the markings, or how. The administration has yet to formally respond.

Reuters photographer Nathan Howard captured a photo of the apparent tracing.

The slogan “8647” has two parts: “86”—originating in restaurants and meaning to nix or cancel—has developed a broader slang usage for cancelling something. In some cases, it has been used to refer to killing or disappearing someone. “47” refers to Trump’s status as the forty-seventh president.

This appears to be an impressively clandestine act of protest right in the middle of preparations for President Trump’s garish “Freedom 250” festival, which begins next week with the already collapsing “Great American State Fair.” The FIFA World Cup Fan Zone also began drawing visitors to the National Mall on Thursday, just in time to see the message.

With the weekend nearly here, check out things to do around Santa Cruz County with a recommendation from Lily Belli and a specially curated list from Lookout’s BOLO events calendar.

ALT

Nightmare Eclipse, the prolific zero-day vulnerability hunter with an axe to grind against Microsoft, released yet another exploit late Wednesday that the researcher claims will spawn a command prompt that provides total access to the BitLocker volume. This bug, called GreatXML, was “an accidental discovery,” according to the researcher, who said it only took four hours to find. They claim this exploit (published on GitHub and Git-based code-hosting platforms) can bypass BitLocker on any system that has ever run a Microsoft Defender Offline scan at any point in the past. GreatXML comes just a day after Nightmare released exploit code for RoguePlanet, which allows local privilege escalation and leads to SYSTEM-level control over an affected machine. This brings the researcher’s zero-day count to eight. The earlier six - RedSun, UnDefend, BlueHammer, YellowKey, GreenPlasma, and MiniPlasma - all have patches as of this week’s Patch Tuesday event. Redmond on Wednesday told The Register that it is aware of RoguePlanet, and “actively investigating the validity and potential applicability of these claims.” The Windows giant didn’t immediately respond to our inquiries about GreatXML, including when it planned to issue a patch. Microsoft has said none of the vulnerabilities were reported via its official channels prior to being made public. The company also banned Nightmare’s earlier GitHub account, and seemingly threatened legal action before dialing back its rhetoric after steep backlash from the security community. Nightmare Eclipse, who some researchers suggest is an ex-Microsoft employee, harbors a very personal grudge against the Windows giant and its communications with bug hunters. They have promised to keep the zero-days coming, but waffle on the timing. Last month, the researcher pledged a big July 14 drop: “I will make sure your bones are shattered that day,” and then added, “nothing will be released this June (or maybe I will release smtg, depending on circumstances).” On Tuesday, they changed course. “I will be unable to mass disclose zerodays in July 14th, RoguePlanet took way more time than expected and truly drained me. I might take a break but I can't say for sure what I will be doing for next month, maybe it's nothing, maybe it's smtg.” A day later, Nightmare released the “accidental” GreatXML BitLocker bypass. According to the researcher, the BitLocker bypass first requires copying “unattend.xml” and the “Recovery” directory to the root of the recovery partition. The next step is rebooting into WinRE by Shift-clicking Restart. “If everything was done correctly, a shell with unrestricted access to the bitlocker volume will spawn,” Nightmare wrote. Also, if the scan hasn’t even been initiated on the Windows system, first you’d need to either log in and initiate it, or “figure out a way to boot into WinRE in offline scan state.” Security sleuth Will Dormann followed Nightmare’s steps to reproduce GreatXML, and said the writeup seems “flawed.” In his testing, Dormann said the command prompt appeared the next time a Defender Offline scan ran. “And in order to trigger a Microsoft Defender Offline scan, you both need to be logged in to Windows, and also have admin credentials,” he wrote on social media. “And if you've already got that level of access, you can just turn off bitlocker.” “The writeup for GreatXML suggests that the prerequisite is that Windows Defender Offline has been executed at some point in the past,” Dormann added. “And that after planting two files in WinRE, all you need to do is [Shift]-reboot into WinRE, and Windows will automatically go into Microsoft Defender Offline scan mode. But this is not the case in any of the 3 lineages of Win11 that I have handy.” ®

Donald Trump has canceled an attack against Iran that was scheduled to take place Thursday evening.

The president in a post on Truth Social suggested that the two countries had come to an agreement.

“Discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved, including the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, and others,” Trump wrote.

“The Naval Blockade will remain in full force and effect until this Transaction is finalized—Time and place of the signing to be announced shortly,” he added.

The markets immediately reacted to Trump’s announcement: Stock indexes soared and oil prices plummeted.

The Trump administration’s negotiating strategy with Tehran has promised peace deals week after week to no avail. The wildly unpopular Middle East conflict is currently in its fourth month.

U.S. forces had already bombed Iran through two consecutive nights this week in the White House’s latest attempt to force Iranian leadership into negotiations to end the war. The attacks occurred despite the obvious risks of escalation.

“If we need to negotiate with bombs, we will negotiate with bombs,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday. “We will strike them hard tonight and hopefully Iran makes a good decision.”

The development comes in the immediate wake of a violent threat Trump made against Iran earlier Thursday, in which he pledged that the U.S. would strike Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT” and would further take control of Iranian oil assets and infrastructure, including Kharg Island.

Negotiators worked through Wednesday night in Tehran to iron out the specifications of the peace deal, which both Qatari and Iranian leadership believed would satisfy the White House’s expectations, reported Axios. Insiders that spoke with the publication said that the new plan narrowed in on three main issues: focusing on the mechanism for releasing Iran’s frozen assets, arranging to reopen the Strait of Hormuz during a 60-day ceasefire period, and creating a roadmap for negotiating Iran’s nuclear program during the ceasefire.

This story has been updated.

⚡ Quick Take

• Mark Ruffalo voices Nero, a cat regretting his work with the feline mob in Venice, in the first teaser trailer for Pixar’s Gatto.

Toy Story 5 will soon arrive in theaters, but Pixar is already looking ahead to its next featured film. The studio has released its first look at Gatto. It shows that while these Venetian cats might be a lot more sophisticated than your average kitty, they still enjoy typical feline fun.

In fairness, that chain did look awfully enticing. Certainly way more fun than shaking down a little guy over some tuna.

As for the actual film, this teaser gives us an idea what we can expect from the movie’s animation, characters, tone, and sense of humor. It also reveals more about the plot than you might expect. Here’s the film’s official synopsis from Disney and Pixar:

In Gatto, after years of maneuvering the canal-ridden, superstitious city of Venice, Italy, Nero begins to question whether he’s lived the right lives. Indebted to Rocco, the local feline mob boss, Nero finds himself in a quandary and is forced to forge a truly unexpected friendship that may finally lead him to his purpose—unless Venice gets the better of him first.

The studio also released a new poster for the movie and oh Madone! It shows Nero in a less than peaceful situation amid the nighttime beauty of La Serenissima.

Disney-Pixar

Poor little guy. Speaking of Nero, he’s played by someone who usually plays a very big guy for Disney. That’s the voice Marvel’s Hulk, Mark Ruffalo. Laurence Fishburne (John Wick) plays the “ruthless mob boss cat” Rocco. It also comes from a creative team who knows a little something about making Pixar movies set in Venice, Luca director Enrico Casarosa and producer Andrea Warren.

But while Pixar released this teaser ahead of Toy Story 5‘s debut, it won’t be arriving in theaters until next year. Gatto‘s cats will get to have soem big screen feline fun on March 5, 2027.

The post Pixar’s First GATTO Trailer Introduces the Venetian Cat Mafia appeared first on Nerdist.

Team BOLO (Be On The Lookout) is gathering and curating all of Santa Cruz County’s biggest and best happenings from now until forever — or at least until the latest gigs are officially announced.

Latest additions are marked as NEW below.

Use the following links to see the major events happening by month:

• June
• July
• August
• September
• October
• November
• December
• April 2027

And away we go with Down The Line …

June

June 11: Nicole Zuraitis, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

June 11: Rayburger, The Catalyst

June 12: Monolord, The Catalyst

June 12: The Smithereens, Moe’s Alley

June 13: Santa Cruz Symphony: “Movie Night,” Santa Cruz Civic

June 13: Santa Cecelia, Moe’s Alley

June 13: Sin Sisters: Pride, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

June 15: Jason Marsalis, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

June 17: Barbara Higbie & Teresa Trull, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

June 18: Mary Gauthier, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

June 18: GayC/DC, Moe’s Alley

June 18: Lucinda Williams, The Rio

June 19: Phish tribute, Felton Music Hall

June 19: Israel Vibration, Moe’s Alley

June 20: The Joy of Zimbabwean Music, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

June 20: The Verve Pipe, Felton Music Hall

June 21: Death Angels, The Catalyst

June 22: Santa Cruz Guitar Co. tribute, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

June 24: Wallace Baine, Bookshop Santa Cruz

June 25: “Wild Women of the ’60s,” Kuumbwa Jazz Center

June 25: Khemmis, Felton Music Hall

June 27: Santa Cruz Roller Derby, Santa Cruz Civic

June 27: Andre Nickatina, The Catalyst

June 28: Billy Childs, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

June 29: Luciana Souza & Marcel Camargo, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

July

July 7: Taj Farrant, Moe’s Alley

July 7: Angelica Glass, Bookshop Santa Cruz

July 8: TAE & the Neighborly, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

July 9: Beth Stelling, Felton Music Hall

July 9: Mads Tolling, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

July 10: Fleetmac Wood, Felton Music Hall

July 10: Alice Howe & Freebo, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

July 10: Cabrillo Stage opening night: “Sister Act, the Musical,” Crocker Theater

July 11: Depeche Mode tribute, Felton Music Hall

July 11: Santa Cruz Shakespeare opening night: “Much Ado About Nothing,” Audrey Stanley Grove

July 12: Santa Cruz Shakespeare opening night: “Macbeth,” Audrey Stanley Grove

July 13: Maruja Limon, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

July 13: White Denim, Moe’s Alley

July 14: Nation of Language, Felton Music Hall

July 16: RJD2, Felton Music Hall

July 16: Tony Lindsay Quintet, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

July 17: Hot Buttered Rum/Tea Leaf Green, Felton Music Hall

July 18: Kr3ture, Felton Music Hall

July 18: Water Tower, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

July 18: Babe Rainbow, The Rio

July 19: Leah Song, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

July 19: Los Tranquilos, Felton Music Hall

July 20: Keshav Batish, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

July 20: Pink Ladies of the Sonnets, Audrey Stanley Grove

July 21: Ocean Vuong, The Rio

July 23: James McMurtry, The Rio

NEW: July 26: Sue Foley, Moe’s Alley

July 27: Ray Obiedo’s Latin Jazz Ensemble, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

July 27: Chloe Chapin, Bookshop Santa Cruz

July 28: Yilian Cañizares, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

July 28: Santa Cruz Shakespeare opening night: August Wilson’s “Fences,” Audrey Stanley Grove

July 29: Monophonics, Moe’s Alley

July 30: Peter Asher & Jeremy Clyde, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

July 31: Maria Muldaur, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

July 31: Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music: “On Freedom,” Santa Cruz Civic

August

Aug. 1: Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, Quarry Amphitheater

Aug. 1: Eileen Jewel, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 1: Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music: “Defiant Dreams,” Santa Cruz Civic

Aug. 2: Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music: Family Concert, Santa Cruz Civic

Aug. 3: Kim Nalley, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 3: Heart tribute, Audrey Stanley Grove

Aug. 6: Sylvia Cuenca’s Bridging Generations, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 7: Bria Skonberg, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 7: ALO, Felton Music Hall

Aug. 8: Shawn Colvin, The Rio

Aug. 8: Mickey Avalon, Felton Music Hall

Aug. 8: Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music: “Control,” Santa Cruz Civic

Aug. 9: Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music: “Hope As Our Banner,” Santa Cruz Civic

Aug. 10: David Bowie tribute, Audrey Stanley Grove

Aug. 12: John-Robert, The Crepe Place

Aug. 13: Marina Crouse, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 14: Death & Saxes, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 14: The Polish Ambassador, Felton Music Hall

Aug. 14: Atmosphere, Quarry Amphitheater

Aug. 15: Snail, The Rio

Aug. 15: Ani DiFranco/Valerie June, Santa Cruz Civic

Aug. 16: The Blues Project, Moe’s Alley

Aug. 17: Jazz Mafia, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 17: Nina Simon, Bookshop Santa Cruz

Aug. 19: Bill O’Connell Trio, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 19: Steve Hawk, Bookshop Santa Cruz

Aug. 20: Jon Dryden, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 21: Oliver Tree, Quarry Amphitheater

NEW: Aug. 22: Earthless, Moe’s Alley

Aug. 24: Keyon Harrold, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 25: La Luz, Felton Music Hall

Aug. 26: Duane Betts, Felton Music Hall

Aug. 26: The Kirtan Love Experience, The Rio

Aug. 26: Built to Spill, The Rio

Aug. 27: Simon Phillips, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 28: Tim Flannery & the Lunatic Fringe, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Aug. 29: Greyboy All-Stars, Moe’s Alley

Aug. 31: Eagles of Death Metal, The Catalyst

September

Sept. 1: Rehash, The Catalyst

NEW: Sept. 3: Paula Arai, Bookshop Santa Cruz

Sept. 4: Santa Cruz Shakespeare opening night: Noel Coward’s “Private Lives,” Audrey Stanley Grove

Sept. 5: Clinton Fearon & the Boogie Brown Band, Moe’s Alley

Sept. 5: Public Image Ltd., The Rio

NEW: Sept. 6: Tommy Castro & the Painkillers, Moe’s Alley

Sept. 7: Tom Petty tribute, Audrey Stanley Grove

Sept. 9: PawPaw Rod, The Catalyst

NEW: Sept. 9: Laurie R. King, Bookshop Santa Cruz

Sept. 10: Nduduzo Makhathini, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Sept. 11: Santa Cruz Shakespeare opening night: Jason Robert Brown’s “The Last 5 Years,” Audrey Stanley Grove

Sept. 12: Black Uhuru, Moe’s Alley

Sept. 14: John Pizzarelli, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Sept. 15: “Smoke Cabaret,” Laurie Rivera, Audrey Stanley Grove

Sept. 17: The Growlers, The Catalyst

Sept. 17: Sarah Elizabeth Charles, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

NEW: Sept. 19: Rayland Baxter, Moe’s Alley

Sept. 20: Vieux Farka Toure, Felton Music Hall

Sept. 22: Al DiMeola, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

NEW: Sept. 22: Welcome Week Rave, Santa Cruz Civic

Sept. 23: Brass Queens, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Sept. 24: Bill Frisell & Harmony Five, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Sept. 28: Linda Ronstadt tribute, Audrey Stanley Grove

Sept. 29: Aldous Harding, The Rio

Sept. 30: Cyrille Aimee & Mathis Picard, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

October

Oct. 1: El Khat, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Oct. 2: Soda Blonde, The Crepe Place

Oct. 2: Fruit Bats, The Rio

Oct. 3: The Bends, Felton Music Hall

Oct. 4: Mike Dawes, Felton Music Hall

NEW: Oct. 5: Hiromi, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Oct. 6: Kishi Bashi, The Rio

Oct. 8: Rickie Lee Jones, The Rio

NEW: Oct. 8: Ben Flocks, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Oct. 10: Damien Jurado, Felton Music Hall

NEW: Oct. 10: Banff Center Mountain Film, The Rio

NEW: Oct. 11: Yellowjackets, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

NEW: Oct. 12: Somi, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Oct. 14: Bonnie Raitt, Santa Cruz Civic

Oct. 14: Acoustic Alchemy, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

NEW: Oct. 14: Alborosie & Shengen Clan, Moe’s Alley

Oct. 15: Bumpin’ Uglies, The Catalyst

Oct. 23: Black Flag, Felton Music Hall

Oct. 26: Fonville & Fribush, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

NEW: Oct. 29: Laura Anglade, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

November

NEW: Nov. 1: Andrew Duhon, Moe’s Alley

Nov. 7: Henry Diltz: Behind the Lens, Kuumbwa Jazz Center

Nov. 8: Southern Culture on the Skids, Moe’s Alley

NEW: Nov. 9: Alex Cameron, The Crepe Place

Nov. 12: Jake Xerxes Fussell, Felton Music Hall

Nov. 14: Nick Shoulders, Felton Music Hall

Nov. 14: Jon Spencer, Moe’s Alley

December

Dec. 8: Buck Meek, Moe’s Alley

Dec. 17: Pokey LaFarge, Felton Music Hall

April 2027

April 23: Fashion Teens, The Rio

HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF BOLO

Sign up for Lookout’s Weekender newsletter, sent every Thursday afternoon.

If you’re planning or producing your own event, click CREATE AN EVENT on the calendar.

Questions, comments, concerns? Email bolo@lookoutlocal.com.

The post Down The Line: All the biggest and best shows, gigs & events ahead in Santa Cruz County appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

By integrating an AI assistant directly into Edits, Meta is aiming to keep creators engaged on Instagram as it continues to compete with TikTok and YouTube for creators' attention.

SpaceX, arguably the most legitimate of Elon Musk’s businesses, is set to have the largest initial public offering ever. But even if you’re not someone whose heart goes aflutter at the prospect of a multibazillion-dollar tech deal, and even if you’re not some day-trader wannabe, you apparently get to care about SpaceX. A lot. Why? Because if you’re a normie with a 401(k)…

Source

A cartoon by Clay Bennett. Related | Inflation skyrockets to highest level in years—Trump says all is well…

Source

⚡ Quick Take

• A new report says Doctor Who could be off the air until at least 2028 following the dissolution of the BBC’s partnership with Bad Wolf.

Yesterday’s bombshell announcement that the BBC has canceled the previously greenlit Doctor Who Christmas special, and that they had split with Russell T Davies and Bad Wolf Productions, sent the Whovian community spiraling. What does it mean that the property has no showrunner, or even season order, in place? Who will take over such a massive property? The announcement also came with the promise that the Beeb would take bids from production companies to co-partner on Doctor Who. The series is really expensive and the BBC can’t incur the cost on its own. Today, fans get a little more info, and it’s not the kind of time travel we’d hoped for.

BBC Studios/Bad Wolf

In a piece on Deadline, we’ve learned, via two insiders, that the creative breakup between network and production company was mutual. The show needs a creative overhaul that simply a single Christmas special couldn’t hope to fix. Moreover, this overhaul is “expected to take years, potentially keeping the show off TV until 2028 at the earliest, sources said.”

It’s not a particularly optimistic bit of news, but I wouldn’t say it’s all that surprising. Given the turmoil surrounding the second season of Davies’ second tenure with the show, which saw co-producing partner Disney+ throwing less of its heft behind it and ratings tanking, the special would have been more of a Band-Aid than a way forward. At this point, the notion that, without a script (allegedly) or a lead actor, Doctor Who would be ready for Christmas was more than a pipe dream.

RELATED ARTICLE

DOCTOR WHO’s Billie Piper Stunt Was Never Going to Pay Off

The problem with the BBC putting the series out to creative tender—a process by which the State-run broadcaster takes bids from producers on making the series—is that, from the independent production companies’ perspective, there isn’t much of an upside. One such anonymous producer told Deadline, “you would have to be mad” to take on the show. “[It’s a] bit of a nightmare for any producer in this market with the shadow of the Disney fallout,” was the verdict of another highly-regarded producer.

This person added: “It’s hard to see another major U.S. studio replacing Disney. So the budget would be hard to get above £3M ($4M) [per episode] without significant co-pro or insane investment from the distribution arm [BBC Studios], which they will struggle to recoup on sales.”

BBC

Doctor Who also badly needs a creative refresh. Since returning in 2005, Doctor Who has not gone a single calendar year without at least one episode. Even during the COVID years. In the 21 years since Davies’ first series, we’ve had 197 episodes. A staggering 123 of those were written or co-written by only three men. Those are the showrunners, Davies, Steven Moffat, and Chris Chibnall. That is an exceedingly small creative pool. I would posit that for any new producers to come on board, they’d want to drastically revamp the show and not merely continue on in the same direction of the past two decades.

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 DOCTOR WHO Will Reportedly Stay Off the Air ‘For Years’ appeared first on Nerdist.

Datacenters got you down? Worried that even the most innocuous questions will spin up AI models running in water-guzzling, energy-sucking, planet-destroying hyperscalers? You need CrankGPT. No, we’re not talking about surrendering to AI psychosis: we’re talking about a literal hand-cranked machine loaded with a voice agent that can respond to questions and even translate speech into other languages, provided someone keeps the power flowing. There’s an onboard custom-built capacitor board to store some juice, mind you, but it only provides around 20 seconds of crank-free runtime before you’ve gotta keep crankin’ to keep it alive. That, and it takes a bit of time to get it running - according to the documentation website, it’s a 30-second process “from the moment you start cranking to the moment you’re having a conversation with CrankGPT.” According to the AI expert duo behind the device, computer scientist Katrin Tomanek and former Google Advanced Technology and Projects Group technical project lead Alex Kauffmann, CrankGPT still delivers impressive results despite the need to perform some hard physical labor for your tokens (though we’d argue some exercise for your AI might not be a bad thing). “Asking Claude to add two numbers for you is like swatting a fly with a wrecking ball,” Kauffmann told The Register in an email. This tongue-in-cheek demonstration, Kauffmann said, may be a bit of light fun, but it’s an exercise in demonstrating what his and Tomanek’s AI company, Squeez, is all about: small, private specialized AI models that, in a pinch, might not even need very much energy or a connection to the web to operate. “Squeez produces customized, efficient, and private models that can run on small, inexpensive hardware to solve specific problems,” Kauffmann explained, citing tasks like voice recognition for someone with a strong accent or speech impediment, or specially-trained, local AIs that are subject matter experts in topics like gardening or auto repair, but won’t touch subjects outside their wheelhouse. Contrary to the flashy dot-com for CrankGPT the pair have set up, Kauffmann told me, Squeez has no plans to pursue spin cycle class-powered AI stacks for dev teams, though he said if anyone wants to foot the bill, he'd be happy to give it a shot. "Off-the-shelf bike generators are shockingly expensive and they're fussy to build," Kauffmann said. Still, "a good biker can maintain a steady 120W output, so a class of twenty could power a Blackwell." Speaking of wheelhouses, what’s inside that box? If there’s a tiny computer in a 3D-printed box with a crank attached, there’s a good possibility it’s going to be a Raspberry Pi, and that’s the case here. CrankGPT’s brain is built on a stock RPi 5 with 8 GB of RAM and a cooling fan HAT, and audio input and output are handled by a dedicated I/O HAT designed for voice assistants running RPis. Power comes from the aforementioned crank, which is actually an off-the-shelf 20W switchable voltage hand crank unit built for emergency USB device charging, and is stored in the custom capacitor unit the duo built. “The neatest part of the whole thing is that you can actually feel the inference,” Kauffmann told us. “The amount of resistance the crank presents varies depending on the amount of work the board is doing, so when it's really working (generating words for instance), the crank becomes much harder to turn than when it's idling waiting for you to say something.” As for software, the device is running the most stripped-down, bare bones instance of DietPi the pair could compile, which is able to boot into a functional userspace in about three seconds. The voice agent is the truly original piece of work done for the project, as detailed in the documentation page, and was built entirely from scratch. “We wanted to understand the system end to end and have as few dependencies as possible,” the documentation page notes. It’s available on GitHub for those interested in trying it out. Speech recognition is handled by the Moonshine automatic speech recognition engine, chosen for its speed, while text-to-speech synthesis is handled by Piper, chosen again for its low-resource edge inference capabilities. As for the models running on the thinking itself, there are a few that are behind CrankGPT, with Liquid LFM2 1.2B providing a general-purpose voice agent, and Gemma 3 1B being used for translation. CrankGPT can switch between translation and various prompts (e.g., general question answering and games like two truths and a lie) via a knob on the side of the enclosure. “It’s entirely configurable,” Kauffmann told us. “We added a couple of physical inputs (the knob, a button, a switch) to make experimentation easier.” Kauffmann added that he and Tomanek were surprised by how well the translation function worked. “We did no fine tuning, it's just a two-line prompt and it works really well for high-coverage languages,” he explained. While the demonstration focuses on audio prompts and responses, Kauffmann explained that the device supports all sorts of different models, with the only real limitation being inference time and the amount of hand cranking one wants to do to get their response. “We’ve generated images (small), made poetry (bad), and written code using the same setup,” the CrankGPT makers wrote in their documentation, all with “a hand crank, a little computer, and a small stack of speech and language models running locally.” If you’re interested in building your own CrankGPT model, keep an eye on the documentation page we linked earlier in this story, as Kauffmann told us he and Tomanek are planning to release all the plans and schematics in the coming days, while the aforementioned custom voice agent is already available for tinkering. “It's a pretty straightforward setup, the only tricky part is that SBCs like the Raspberry Pi will sometimes draw enough current to trigger a little generator's overcurrent protection,” Kauffmann told us. If you have a spare $300 lying around (that’s what Kauffmann estimates the RAM pricing surge has driven the build cost up to, from the $150 he spent when building CrankGPT last year), then you, too, may soon be able to build your own completely off-grid, standalone AI box so you can keep chatting with your favorite micro LLM if and when its bigger cousins knock the grid offline. ®

⚡ Quick Take

• If you feel like you’ve been personally victimized by SantaCon, you can now let the FBI know in service of its federal criminal indictment.
• SantaCon has terrorized cities for years, but it turns out it was also committing actual crimes.
• Money earmarked for charity raised by SantaCon went to its organizer instead.

If you’ve ever lived in NYC, Seattle, San Francisco, LA, Portland, and many other places, or even if you haven’t, you probably know the terror that is SantaCon. Every December, a band of roving, drunken revelers dressed in Santa, elf, or Christmas-adjacent costumes take to the streets in a massive bar crawl, purportedly for Charity, and menace the citizens of whatever town they’ve overrun. But it turns out, SantaCon isn’t just spiritually a villain, it’s literally one. And if you feel like you were personally victimized by organizer Regina George, we mean, Stefan Pildes, you can let the FBI know today.

Cineverse

Evidently, Pildes, who sold ticketed entry to SantaCon events, claimed that profits would go to charity, but Gothamist revealed that “less than a fifth of that money has gone to registered nonprofits.” And instead, as U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton shares, “Pildes promoted SantaCon as an event grounded in charitable giving, but instead of donating the millions of dollars he raised, he ran his own con game.” Among other things, Pildes used the SantaCon money earmarked for charity to “pay for extensive renovations to a lakefront property in New Jersey, luxury vacations in Hawaii, Las Vegas, and Vail, Colorado, concert tickets, extravagant meals, and a luxury vehicle, prosecutors said.

Phew, we knew SantaCon was rotten through and through. While you can’t legally complain about being hassled on the subway, if you feel you were in some way victimized by SantaCon in a way pertinent to the federal criminal indictment, you can share your information with the FBI.

The official Santa Con investigation page notes:

The FBI’s New York Division is seeking to identify potential victims of Stefan Pildes, who organized and operated the annual SantaCon event in New York City, from at least 2019 to present. Pildes was recently charged with wire fraud. The FBI believes Pildes primarily targeted SantaCon attendees who purchased tickets to the event, as well as bars that participated in the event, between the timeframe of October 2019 to present.

If you were victimized by Stefan Pildes, please fill out this short form.

If you know of someone else who has possibly been victimized by Stefan Pildes, please encourage them to complete the form themselves.

The FBI is legally mandated to identify victims of federal crimes it investigates. Victims may be eligible for certain services, restitution, and rights under federal and/or state law. Your responses are voluntary but may be useful in the federal investigation and to identify you as a potential victim. Based on the responses provided, you may be contacted by the FBI and asked to provide additional information.

RELATED ARTICLE

What Makes THE SANTA CLAUSE a Christmas Classic?

Well, godspeed to all. Hopefully, no successor will rise to take SantaCon’s place. Even if it was actually for charity, we think EasterBunnyCon would be too much for us.

The post If SantaCon Has Personally Victimized You, the FBI Wants to Know appeared first on Nerdist.

Trump officials are secretly telling Trump’s supporters that his $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund is still on, even as they publicly say that it’s dead.

The Atlantic reports that staffers in the Justice Department and White House are still telling Trump allies that they will get some form of payment, looking at ways to activate parts of the slush fund and alternative methods of compensating Trump loyalists at the same time, even though last week, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said publicly that “we are not moving forward with the fund.”

The DOJ has refused to put the fund’s demise in writing, even after being pressed by a federal judge on Wednesday. When asked why they were refusing, DOJ lawyers replied, “I don’t know,” suggesting that work is going on behind the scenes. Judge Richard Leon warned the administration that if they say the fund is dead, they had better not be lying.

Inside the administration, officials are reportedly divided on whether the fund will come to fruition. Anonymous sources told The Atlantic that the administration is continuing to work on the fund quietly, hoping the objections will dissipate and the story will leave the news cycle.

“Trump didn’t want to fight this out in public,” one DOJ official told the publication. Blanche’s nomination as attorney general is already facing opposition from some Senate Republicans, like Thom Tillis and John Curtis, who are threatening to hold it up to ensure the Anti-Weaponization Fund is officially killed. The fund faces legal challenges, as well, with Republican Senator Bill Cassidy joining his Democratic colleague Cory Booker in a court filing supporting a lawsuit against the fund.

A White House official told The Atlantic in an email that “any speculation about potential future actions is just that—speculation. President Trump remains committed to addressing Biden-era weaponization.”

As the midterms approach, the fund will be politically toxic for Republicans, and Democrats will certainly be using it as campaign fodder. The Trump administration has to know this, but will it take the safe option and kill it, or try to keep its efforts hidden until after November?

Coinbase's agent can use x402 protocol to get access to data and APIs.

Quantum Space says SPACs aren't dead as it seeks a $1.2 billion deal to build military spacecraft.

Amazon, along with the rest of the industry, has gotten so used to framing everything that happens through the context of AI that it has lost the plot on their Graviton chip lineup, and along with it their own credibility. Which is a shame, because it's actually a triumph of a chip. First, the Wall Street Journal breathlessly reported that Snowflake's $6 billion AWS commitment was "for agentic computing chips." Then AWS's own press release heralded the release of their latest chips "for the Agentic AI era." In both cases, they were referring to their Graviton line. You could be forgiven for thinking this was some kind of GPU. No, that's Trainium. (Technically, Trainium isn't a GPU, nor is it a CPU, but rather a systolic array. Don't worry; most AI engineering software doesn't know what the hell that is, either.) Graviton is AWS's general purpose Arm CPU, which can be used for AI in much the same way as Excel can be used as a database. But that's far from its only, or even primary, purpose. Let's dive into what Graviton actually is. Price / Performance / Reality For the longest time, Amazon refused to issue benchmarks, competitively positioning its then-nascent Arm line against Intel. Many of us thought this meant that the results would underwhelm — so you can imagine my surprise when real-world workload tests showed 35 percent to 40 percent better performance in a wide variety of situations. It was as if Amazon had built something amazing, but was somehow embarrassed to admit it. Those days are long behind us; they trumpet in the subhead of their announcement that Graviton 5 means "apps run 35% faster, ML inference is 35% faster, and databases are 30% faster." To their credit, I was expecting those numbers to be against something ancient, but in a refreshing bout of honesty, they're comparing them to Graviton 4, itself no slouch. They are also 9 percent more expensive. Once upon a time, new generations of AWS instances were notably less expensive than their predecessors. Going from a c4.large to a c5.large meant you'd get better performance, and the instance itself was a whopping 15 percent cheaper. Upgrading was a no-brainer! That started changing, and now upgrading means the instance becomes more expensive. AWS's position is that this is an incomplete analysis, since the improved performance means you'd pay less for a given workload. In some cases, this is correct, but in others, it's akin to saying that a Ferrari offers better price performance than my Honda CR-V because I can drive it to work three times faster. Logic, as well as traffic lights, disagree. Amazon's contention is correct for customers who have large fleets of nodes that they run at high degrees of CPU utilization. Switching those fleets to the new hotness will absolutely result in a price performance improvement, provided the workload and the stars both align. However, for customers who need a fixed number of nodes (think database companies, who offer each customer of theirs a set number of replicas, or workloads of the form "each environment gets three nodes, one in each AZ"), this represents a pure 9 percent price hike going from old generations to new ones. That puts many customers in a pickle: upgrade to new instance families, or stay on the old ones and watch availability become constrained in the coming years as AWS stops racking old chips. (Hi, Amazon PR! If you're about to pop into my inbox to tell me that won't happen, I have a customer I'd love for you to have a chat with!) But this price hike isn't happening in a vacuum. It's happening against a backdrop of "an 8GB Raspberry Pi is now $175, over twice its launch price of $85." Components have become fiendishly expensive across the board as giant companies compete for capacity, and AWS has to be feeling that pressure. Two companies each asked to buy all of AWS's Graviton capacity for the year; AWS clearly has room to kick their prices into the stratosphere! Somehow, they're not only resisting the siren song of "please gouge me, business daddy," but also managing to keep availability strong for customers of all stripes; I upgraded my developer node in my tiny unremarkable AWS account yesterday, and it Just Worked. And so... Despite the nonsense marketing, I don't want to detract from just how amazing Annapurna Labs (Amazon's chip division) has been at churning out wildly performant silicon year over year. Their chips are legitimately great, and the Graviton 5 numbers are a triumph. Lost against the backdrop of "Agentic AI," the stuff underpinning all of it continues to work, improve, and largely pass by unremarked. Keep going. ®

ZTE has won three prestigious awards at Selular Award 2026, held on June 8, 2026, at Menara Peninsula Hotel, Jakarta. The awards recognize ZTE's contributions and innovations in advancing artificial intelligence (AI)-powered network technologies amid the acceleration of digital transformation and 5G development in Indonesia. ZTE's contributions to advancing AI-powered network innovation have been recognized by Selular Media Network (SMN), a leading telecommunications and technology media organization in Indonesia, through three awards at Selular Award 2026. ZTE received honors in the categories of Best AI Technology Fixed Wireless Access, Best AI Network Ecosystem, and Best Native AI Baseband. These awards reflect ZTE's capabilities across network access, ecosystem development, and core infrastructure, further strengthening its position as a technology partner supporting digital transformation and the evolution of AI-driven networks in Indonesia. The Selular Award is an annual appreciation program organized by Selular Media Network (SMN) to recognize outstanding achievements and contributions across Indonesia’s ICT and digital technology industry. As the first and most consistent telecommunications industry award since 2003, the Selular Award serves as a benchmark for excellence, honoring companies and brands that demonstrate innovation, strong performance, and meaningful contributions to Indonesia’s digital transformation. Through this award, the public and business community can identify industry leaders that continue to create value and drive progress in the digital ecosystem. This year's Selular Award carries the theme "Leading The Future: Building Exponential Value in 5G-Advanced and AI Economy", highlighting the convergence of AI and 5G-Advanced as key drivers of digital economic growth. Kevin Fang, Marketing Director of ZTE Indonesia, said: "Digital transformation today is no longer driven solely by connectivity, but also by the ability of networks to operate more intelligently, efficiently, and adaptively. Through the AI-powered innovations we have developed—from broadband access to core infrastructure—ZTE is committed to delivering network solutions that are ready to meet connectivity demands in the AI and 5G-Advanced era. These awards motivate us to continue delivering meaningful innovations that create value for the industry, our customers, businesses, and society." Indonesia's telecommunications industry is currently entering a critical phase in its digital transformation journey. According to the e-Conomy SEA 2025 report by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company, revenue from AI-powered applications in Indonesia grew by 127% year-on-year, the highest growth rate in Southeast Asia, with 80% of users interacting with AI applications daily. This momentum reflects the growing demand for network infrastructure that is not only fast and reliable but also capable of supporting AI workloads. On the infrastructure side, GSMA Intelligence projects that 5G investment in Indonesia could contribute up to USD 41 billion to the national GDP between 2024 and 2030. This projection highlights the strategic role of 5G as a connectivity foundation that supports digital transformation and the growth of the digital economy. At the same time, the increasing adoption of AI and data-driven services is driving demand for networks that are faster, more reliable, and capable of handling greater capacity. As part of its commitment to supporting these developments, ZTE continues to deliver innovations across the entire network technology value chain, from broadband access to core infrastructure. On the access side, ZTE provides AI-powered Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) solutions designed to expand high-speed connectivity more efficiently and flexibly. The solution serves as a strategic approach to supporting broadband inclusion while addressing the growing demand for connectivity across different regions. In addition, ZTE is building an open ecosystem that integrates AI, connectivity, cloud computing, and various digital technologies within a collaborative framework involving operators and enterprises. At the core infrastructure level, ZTE embeds AI capabilities natively into the baseband, the key component responsible for network signal processing. By integrating AI directly into the baseband from the design stage, networks can analyze, optimize, and adapt operations more intelligently and in real time. This approach enables more autonomous and efficient network operations while preparing networks for the demands of the 5G-Advanced era. Moving forward, ZTE will continue to deepen collaboration with operators, enterprises, and industry partners in Indonesia while strengthening its technology portfolio, ranging from wireless access solutions and optical transport to data center infrastructure and telecommunications energy solutions. In line with Indonesia's vision of becoming one of Southeast Asia's leading digital economies, ZTE remains committed to accelerating the nation's digital transformation through AI-driven innovation, intelligent connectivity, and next-generation network technologies that benefit more industries and regions across the country. Contributed by ZTE.

⚡ Quick Take

• Are we at the advent of a fandom coffin craze? Titan Casket is imagining a line of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle caskets for every fan.
• There are so many fandom collaborations, we’re not surprised to see a fandom casket/coffin industry pop up.
• But, we feel like maybe that money is better spent buying fandom merch in the hear and now.

Listen. Fandom touches our lives deeply. That’s just a fact. For some of us, our love of nerd culture touches us from the moment we take our first breaths… and it turns out it could follow us into the afterlife. Titan Caskets, a purveyor of “high-quality caskets,” is getting into the fandom business… Or at least, is using fandom to allow you to dream about a coffin inspired by your favorites. Titan Casket doesn’t exactly have a line of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fandom coffins, but it wants you to consider how its coffins can send you sailing into the great beyond in full Cowabunga form. They share that they have “colors for every character” and reveal how you might style their various coffins to achieve the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles casket of your dreams.

Titan Casket

And listen, we’re never here to yuck anyone’s yum. If folks feel a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles coffin is the way to go for themselves or their loved ones, we bless it. Although we might opine you’d be better off spending that money on something in the here and now. Recently, Titan Caskets collaborated with the streetwear brand Supreme on a $3,798 “Supreme” coffin. And now, it looks like they’re angling for even more fandom collabs for their coffins. For now, you can’t buy a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles coffin off the shelf, but you never know what tomorrow will bring in the world of fandom merchandise.

Click To View Gallery Titan Casket Titan Casket Titan Casket

We’ve seen fandom collaborations of every kind in recent times. And fandom is a great way to get people to spend a lot of money on something they might not ordinarily have purchased. We guess we should have seen fandom coffins coming. We guess we’ll have to wait and see which IP will be the first to get into this lucrative (?) business. Maybe it will be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles coffins to start, or maybe something more like The Walking Dead would make more sense.

The post TMNT Fandom Coffins Sure Are an Enterprising New Venture appeared first on Nerdist.

Deezer introduced a tool that scans playlists from Spotify, Apple Music, and other platforms to identify AI music.