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Uncle Sam will no longer be hosting his own supercomputers to predict the weather. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has picked Google Cloud to provide the infrastructure for its weather forecasting operations. In an announcement, NOAA boasted that it will be the first national weather prediction center to run on the commercial cloud, though the UK's Met Office is also in the process of moving its own weather prediction system to Microsoft Azure in a hybrid setup. Weather operations are typically run on in-house or government-funded supercomputer systems, which helps drive the HPC (high performance computing) market. General Dynamics held the previous contract for managing NOAA’s weather predicting machines, which most recently were HPE Cray supercomputers running in data centers in Virginia and Arizona. Those machines – Dogwood and Cactus – could crank almost 14 PFlops of weather-predicting prognosis. The plan is to move NOAA’s Weather and Climate Operational Supercomputing System, run by the National Weather Service (NWS) division, over to the cloud by December 2027, along with the software that generates NWS weather data for analysis. Don’t say global warming The agency is hoping that the cloud will make model forecasting more nimble, resulting in earlier predictions and better warnings for all the extreme weather events that seem to keep occurring these days. It was the in-house systems that were holding things back, evidently. “Cloud-based high-performance computing will accelerate the transition of research into operations by eliminating traditional bottlenecks of on-premise systems,” said NOAA Administrator Neil Jacobs in a statement. Jacobs noted that the cloud’s flexibility for providing large amounts of compute is advantageous: the agency can ramp up cycles during tropical storm season, then wind them down during calmer periods. Under the contract, NOAA can also avail itself of Google’s DeepMind set of AI tools to help build out its first AI-driven weather forecasting system, the AI Global Forecast System, which promises to offer accurate weather forecasts using 99.7% fewer computer cycles and take minutes, rather than hours, to produce a forecast. NWS has already been upgrading the software downstream from GFS and GEFS to also work in the cloud. In March, it awarded contracts to Accenture and Booz Allen Hamilton to oversee the development of cloud-based software (HIVE and CIRRUS) for the field offices to analyze data and push out alerts, replacing the in-house software doing these tasks currently. For the job, Google plans to use Google Cloud H4D VMs, built on AMD Epyc processors. Google labels these instances as “virtual machines” because they run under a hypervisor that integrates Google’s networking and orchestration tools. As a result, they can be synchronized to run large jobs the same way supercomputers do. According to Google, customers can access H4Ds for as low as 3 cents per core-hour without long-term commitments. For supercomputing jobs, they can also use Cluster Toolkit to deploy clusters and Cluster Director to maintain them. Google Cloud’s Batch can handle the queuing, scheduling, and resource provisioning. ®

⚡ Quick Take

• The new Pokémon Pokopia Expansion Pass comes with three parts.
• The first of three expansion parts to drop will be Bubbly Basin, an underwater realm where players will meet water-type Pokémon and build on the seafloor.
• Players will meet plenty of water-type Pokémon and unlock new food, fashion, and furniture.

No company out there churns out good games quite like Pokémon—or as quickly. Just over a year after Pokémon Pokopia dropped, the developers are blessing Nintendo Switch 2 owners with a three-part expansion pass, starting with access to the underwater world of Bubbly Basin.

Pokémon

Bubbly Basin is an all-new underwater region to explore in Pokémon Pokopia. Filled with plenty of water-type Pokémon, players will be able to build underwater and learn to grow (under-)watermelons. They will create power in the ocean with the help of Pokémon with the Generate ability, now able to use bubble machines and streetlights, and build a Sharpedo submarine with an interior like a Secret Base.

The expansion perks don’t stop there; new food, furniture, clothing items, and more discoverable Pokémon for Pokémon Pokopia are made available with Bubbly Basin. Underwater building will be enhanced with buoyant blocks to create floating structures. Players will learn how to make smoothies with the watermelon they harvest. Players also receive a recipe for Ditto-print wallpaper and blocks.

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LEGO POKÉMON Minifigures are Here in New Poké Ball Set

Additionally, Pokémon is releasing a free 2.0 update for every player of Pokémon Pokopia. A few underwater abilities will be included in the Pokémon Pokopia update, but not as many as in the Bubbly Basin expansion. Players will learn the Dive function from the mythical water-type Manaphy and will be able to explore beneath the water’s surface in known regions. They will also be able to build structures underwater.

The free update launches automatically for all players on August 5.

Pokémon

Luckily, the expansion parts don’t come separately. The pass will include all three parts. Only Bubbly Basin will launch initially, with the other two parts coming to the game automatically when they release for Pokémon Pokopia. The Bubbly Basin part of the expansion will release on the Nintendo E-Store on August 5, the same day as the 2.0 update. Pokémon also offers 30 rare Pokémetal ingots to players who purchase by August 31.

You can check out the Pokémon Pokopia Bubbly Basin expansion page today.

The post POKEMON POKOPIA Reveals New Expansion, Bubbly Basin appeared first on Nerdist.

The dream of having a mechanical maid to clean your home is real … sort of. San Francisco residents can now hire a robot cleaner for just $30 an hour, but there's a catch. The robots are at least partially controlled by humans who are watching your home remotely. Tau Robotics cofounder and CEO Alexander Koch announced in a post on X Tuesday that his company was launching the waitlist for its invite-only cleaning services on Tau’s website. Bereft of details like the specifics of the robot’s capabilities, Tau’s website is instead largely devoted to videos of the diminutive, router-headed, frog-eyed robot doing stuff. It’s shown in various videos and still shots hopping out of a minivan and grabbing its work bag, wiping down the inside of a refrigerator, cleaning surfaces, vacuuming, and emptying trash cans with its pincer-like hands. The site also presents three featured house-cleaning robots for San Francisco: "Chelsea," which specializes in cleaning kitchens and bathrooms; "Elon," which Tau says learns where household items belong after a few recurring visits and returns them there; and "Tony," a deep-cleaning specialist. Koch claimed on X that none of the videos of the robot are sped up to make it look more natural, giving it a weirdly human way of moving that suggests Tau has developed a pretty robust robot - if the company is the one that actually designed it. That doesn't appear to be the case, however. Koch told us that the robot's cameras, claws, and onboard compute system were designed in house, but the rest of the hardware comes from Chinese robot maker Unitree. Hopefully Tau has enough spares lying around since the Trump administration just banned imports of foreign robots. Peek-a-boo: Tau operators see you There’s also a big catch to this entire thing, as Koch notes in his post: It ain’t exactly autonomous. “Each humanoid is jointly controlled by a human operator and AI,” the Tau CEO said. An AI policy is always controlling the robot’s motors, Koch explained in a LinkedIn chat, but there’s always a human involved, too. “A human operator is always guiding that [AI] policy, sometimes directly and sometimes through higher-level instructions,” Koch said. “The balance varies by task.” The Tau CEO went on to tell us that he sees the project as “conceptually similar to autonomous driving,” meaning that human operators are fully behind the wheel for now, and over time will only be there for safety before eventually being phased out entirely. As explained further in the company’s service privacy policy, each robot is controlled in real time by a human operator during cleaning visits, although Tau says the robots are jointly controlled by AI and a human operator. Some operators are Tau employees and some are placed through a staffing agency, but all of them are working on-site at Tau’s facility and have been background checked and trained by Tau, the company claims. “We plan to enable remote supervision from other locations in the future,” Koch told us. That said, the robots are still capturing video to train Tau's AI cleaning models that the company said it hopes "will eventually do the job without a human operator." That video is stored indefinitely unless customers request it be deleted. Operators, support staff, engineers, and third-party service providers all have access to those videos even if Tau doesn’t sell them or share anything for advertising purposes, and the company said recordings will include full video of every person in the home as well. Be sure to put some pants on before the thing visits, in other words. If you’re still keen to let a human-operated robomaid into your house, you’d better get in line: Koch told us that each cleaning session is just one hour and so far “several hundred people” have signed up to be granted a spot. ®

President Trump has announced yet another  renovation project that will cost billions, while in the midst of a failing, unpopular war with Iran. 

The president revealed plans for a $22.5 billion renovation of Dulles International Airport  at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon alongside Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby.

“This is all about the Dulles Airport.... It’s considered one of the worst airports anywhere in the world. We’re gonna make it maybe the best, with some hard work and some good thought process,” Trump said to open the presser. He described the plan as a “major, and long overdue renovation and reconstruction of Washington’s really horribly thought of Dulles International Airport.” 

Trump plans to add over 5 million square feet of newly renovated space, replacing the airport’s C and D concourses and constructing a multi-story above-ground parking garage connected to them. He wants a new air train and new restaurants and lounges. Mock-ups of the renovation also feature Trump’s classic gold styling throughout the airport.

Trump claims the airport’s renovation will be bonded and thus not need federal funds, with participating airlines paying for the whole project. “Cost was no object, unfortunately or fortunately,” he said.

“It’s gonna be so efficient. Right now it’s totally inefficient,” he continued. “Between the trams and the Star Wars thing … elevated buses, nobody knows what’s going on, it’s a real mess.”

Regardless of how good or bad you think Dulles is, the level of priority this project has taken on—much like the White House ballroom, the Kennedy Center, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and Trump’s desired “Triumphal Arch”—is very questionable given the state of the war on Iran, the economy, and upcoming midterm elections. Especially at that price. Construction is expected to begin next year. 

Sean Duffy says the redevelopment of Dulles will be bonded at $22.5 BILLION pic.twitter.com/YCQ8ny3U9r

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 29, 2026

⚡ Quick Take

• John Hight is resigning after two years as Wizards of the Coast’s president, following a $56 million impairment on Hasbro’s video game division.
• This comes after unprecedented financial success under Hight’s leadership.
• Despite the shakeup, the company seems to be on good footing in both its Magic and D&D divisions.

After only two years in the position and bringing the company two years of financial success, Wizards of the Coast president John Hight is stepping down. The surprising announcement of Hight’s resignation came soon after the company reported remarkable quarterly earnings, but we still don’t know too much about why the shakeup is happening.

Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro

The company said in a statement that Hight will be “pursuing other creative and professional opportunities he’s passionate about.” Hight came from the video game industry, and some speculate his departure may relate to the $56 million impairment hit that Hasbro took to its video game portfolio.

The company canceled several planned games and, as of now, doesn’t have many on the horizon, noting that it is seeking to focus instead on proven long-term, proven successes for the brand. Of course, this doesn’t mean all digital games have come to a close at Wizards of the Coast. Hasbro said in a statement, “We remain highly confident in our digital games portfolio. Exodus and Warlock, slated for 2027, both meet the bar we are setting for owned publishing: big audience potential, strong genre fit, franchise potential, and meaningful opportunities beyond the initial game.”

In addition to these, success, of course, comes from the the continued positive performance of Magic: the Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, and more. And so, we assume the vacant position of Wizards of the Coast President will likely need to be filled as soon as possible.

Dungeons & Dragons

Looking forward, Dungeons & Dragons will be at Gen Con 2026, bigger and better than ever. Their D&D Vision Keynote event on July 30 will reveal the company’s new products and first looks at future content. The company went big this year, reserving the Indiana Repertory Theatre for a six-floor D&D experience. They are bringing music, drinks, and plenty of panels and special guests.

From how it looks now, the company is only moving up. Their recent reveal of a collaboration expansion with The Hobbit adds yet another franchise to their Universes Beyond collection. Their wildly popular Lord of the Rings collection in 2023 became their second-best-selling collab. With that, there is little doubt Tolkien fans will be able to stay away from the new collection.

While Wizards of the Coast searches for a new president, things still seem to be going in a positive direction. After September 1, Hight will take a consulting-only role with Wizards of the Coast. We look forward to seeing the future directions the company will take.

The post Wizards of the Coast President Resigns Despite Massive Success appeared first on Nerdist.

President Donald Trump’s last-minute endorsement of Ken Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn in Texas’ GOP Senate runoff increasingly seems like a pyrrhic victory. With about three months left before Election Day, Paxton is trailing Democratic nominee James Talarico in multiple polls ahead of the general election. Paxton’s long history of scandals has also left him in a fundraising hole.

Source

⚡ Quick Take

• During an interview for Brand New Day, Kevin Feige confirmed that Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin could appear in an upcoming Spider-Man film.
• Feige noted that the rights to Kingpin appearing in a Spider-Man movie are NOT complicated; they just need to be worked through.
• This differs from what actor Vincent D’Onofrio has said, but we guess if anyone knows, it’s Kevin Feige.

For years now, actor Vincent D’Onofrio has said that there are complex legal reasons why his version of Wilson Fisk/the Kingpin from Daredevil can’t appear in any Spider-Man live-action movie. After all, it’s a question fans have often asked him. Because every Marvel fan wants to see Kingpin vs. Tom Holland’s Peter Parker/Spider-Man. But now, Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige has said that those Kingpin rights are not as complicated as D’Onofrio might think. Josh Horowitz of the Happy Sad Confused podcast asked him directly about the Kingpin holdup. And here’s what Feige said on whether Kingpin could ever appear in a Spider-Man movie and the state of the rights in question:

They’re not, they’re not [complicated]. There are things to navigate, like everything else. We talked about all those characters at some point.

Nerdist Take: Kingpin Having Rights So Complicated He Couldn’t Appear in a Spidey Movie Never Made Any Sense to Us

D’Onofrio’s comments never made much sense to us. After all, Marvel licensed the character of Wilson Fisk/Kingpin to Twentieth Century Fox for the 2003 Daredevil movie, so the Sony Spider-Man films could not use the character in the early 2000s films. But since that time, Disney bought Fox. So there doesn’t seem to be any reason why Sony couldn’t use the character of Kingpin in a movie, Spider-Man or otherwise. This feels especially true since Kingpin already appeared in a major piece of Spider-Man media, 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. More likely, D’Onofrio just got his wires crossed.

Sony/Marvel Television Here’s Why We Want to See Spider-Man and Kingpin Meet on the Big Screen

Kingpin originally appeared in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man back in the ’60s, before writer/artist Frank Miller positioned him as a major Daredevil foe. But his roots as a bad guy really began with Spidey. We think fans would love to see perhaps the final battle between Daredevil and Kingpin as part of a Spider-Man team-up movie of some sort. After all, Peter Parker already knows Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock from Spider-Man: No Way Home. Now, how fun would it be if these two teamed up to take down Fisk once and for all? There’s your pitch for a Spider-Man 6 movie right there.

The post Kingpin Can Appear in SPIDER-MAN Film After All (And It’s Not Complicated) appeared first on Nerdist.

Another way to think about the whole thing is to picture a bear at a campsite. (Really, we are going there.)

A 16-year-old rookie California State Parks lifeguard who helped rescue a 10-year-old boy swept under by a wave at Seabright State Beach on July 25, has been invited to the White house to be honored.

In a post on X, President Donald Trump praised Ryder Williams.

“We’re going to bring this heroic young man, and his family, into the White House with, perhaps, the boy he saved, to give him a High Civilian Honor. Very brave, he deserves it,” Trump wrote.

According to California State Parks, the rescue by happened at 3:32pm Saturday while a lifeguard was making a safety contact at the beach, State Parks said. During that contact, the child lost his balance, was knocked down by a wave and was swept into the ocean by heavy surf.

State Parks said one lifeguard made contact with the child until another lifeguard entered the water to assist. The boy was pulled from the ocean with no serious injuries and was released to his parents.

State Parks said the incident highlights the role its lifeguards play in both rescues and preventative safety work.

“Our State Park lifeguards courageously risk their own lives every day to keep our visitors safe,” the department said in information provided about the rescue. “Their dedication never goes unnoticed and they are truly heroes to their local communities, Californians and the nation.”

California State Parks employs about 600 seasonal lifeguards each summer and about 70 permanent lifeguards statewide. On average, State Parks lifeguards perform 1 million preventative actions and 10,000 rescues each year, according to the department. Since July 1, 2026, lifeguards have performed 110,000 preventative actions, 3,600 rescues and more than 1,600 medical aids.

In the Santa Cruz District, State Parks lifeguards performed 34 rescues over the weekend, including rescues on and off department property, officials said. Lifeguards also made more than 5,000 preventative contacts during that time.

State Parks urged visitors to be cautious at beaches during summer south swells, when long intervals between wave sets can create a false sense of calm despite dangerous surf conditions. Officials advised beachgoers to check ocean conditions before entering the water, stay near a lifeguard, keep children within arm’s reach at the shoreline and call 911 immediately if someone appears to be in distress.

Texas’s Republican Senate nominee, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, is struggling to raise funds thanks to his scandal-laden career and a nasty primary.

The New York Times reports Wednesday that major Republican donors have so far refused to spend money on Paxton’s campaign, where he is polling behind James Talarico, who could be the first Democrat Texas sends to the Senate since 1993. Those donors had spent money in the state’s Republican primary, which placed a spotlight on Paxton’s extramarital affair and criminal charges over alleged state securities fraud.

After Paxton narrowly secured the GOP nomination following a runoff with incumbent Senator John Cornyn, these donors’ opinions haven’t changed, especially since the attorney general has been seen traveling with his mistress and now has been accused of committing voter fraud.

Two of the GOP’s biggest money committees, the Senate Leadership Fund and MAGA Inc., haven’t spent any money on Paxton’s campaign despite President Donald Trump backing him. It’s become an open secret that each is waiting for the other super PAC to pony up millions of dollars, according to the Times. The former is run by people close to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and who backed Cornyn in the primary, while the latter is run by Trump advisers.

“Somebody is going to have to spend big money,” Dan Eberhart, an oil executive raising funds for Paxton, told the Times. “We’ll see who blinks.”

Other national Republican groups plan to spend money on other Senate races in Ohio and Kansas, even though those races aren’t as close as Texas. As of early July, Talarico has nine times as much cash in his main campaign account as Paxton does, and has already spent $12 million in ads. He also continues to rake in money from wealthy Democrats in places such as Chicago and Martha’s Vineyard. Will Trump and the GOP step up to bail out Paxton?

American taxpayers are about to get hit with additional charges for the Trump administration’s Great American State Fair.

The Department of the Interior asked Congress for an additional $10 million to cover portions of the Freedom 250 event, including the state fair, a prayer event, and a massive July 4 fireworks display that tried to break the world record (but has still not been recognized by Guinness three weeks after the fact).

Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee, told The Washington Post Wednesday that the administration had initially presented the funding need as part of a broader stopgap funding measure for the whole government. It asked for an unspecified amount of funding “to recoup costs associated with support of events celebrating America’s semiquincentennial,” according to Merkley.

But that only raised questions about the administration’s spending habits—particularly since Trump’s One Big Beautiful Act set aside $150 million last year specifically to cover the semiquincentennial’s expenses. Most of that financial support was redirected to Freedom 250, a Trump-backed public-private partnership that largely replaced the congressionally created bipartisan America250 group that was organizing the historic anniversary celebration, according to the Post.

But that’s not all the money that went into funding the president’s highly politicized, poorly attended 250th celebration. In June, Trump officials diverted roughly $90 million away from the National Park Service, utilizing entry fees to some of the country’s most popular parks—such as Yellowstone and Yosemite—to fund anniversary related projects.

Private donors also contributed a significant sum to the event: Freedom 250 has accepted donations from corporate sponsors that are currently doing business with the Trump administration, including Palantir, Boeing, Chevron, Lockheed Martin, and more, according to the Freedom 250 website.

Administration officials offered up more details about the new funding request in a follow-up meeting with Merkley’s office, clarifying that they needed the money to cover routine National Park Service costs incurred during the events.

But the Department of the Interior offered a different reason entirely to the Post. When reached for comment, the agency claimed that the funding was needed to address heightened security needs in light of recent threats levied at the president, citing the Ultimate Fighting Championship event held on the White House lawn in June and the assassination attempt during the White House correspondents’ dinner in April.

“Given the elevated security threats against high-profile events in Washington, D.C. … an elevated security posture was needed to ensure the safety of the public at these events. This funding would help address the expenditures associated with the elevated security posture,” the department wrote in an email.

In a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum shared with the Post, Merkley wrote that it is “unacceptable to ask the American people to bail out Freedom 250.”

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Residents living on Coral Street share about their experiences since Day Services were ended in April by Housing Matters. Since then, Housing Matters has opened a transitional housing program with 20 beds. Santa Cruz Local spoke to people at both sites on July 28. (Amaya Edwards — Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local)

SANTA CRUZ >> On a recent Tuesday afternoon in July, Santa Cruz Local went to Coral Street to hear from people after Housing Matters closed its Day Services program. The nonprofit organization ended the program on April 1, which served dozens of homeless residents on any given day. Now, people there shared they’re still struggling and feel forgotten by local leaders.

Housing Matters said they ended the Day Services program to redirect the nonprofit’s efforts toward temporary shelters and permanent supportive housing. Santa Cruz County had an estimated 1,473 homeless residents in 2025, according to that year’s point-in-time count.

In an effort to focus on more permanent housing solutions, Housing Matters sees Live Oak Landing as one of those solutions. After repeated delays, the referral-based interim housing program opened in July and offers 20 beds. People can stay up to six months, with the end goal being they move into a more permanent housing environment. It’s part of the Encampment Resolution Program to support people transitioning off the streets into more permanent housing. The waitlist to move into Live Oak Landing is referral-based only.

Since the program’s closure, people on Coral Street said they haven’t had daily access to running water, electricity or other hygiene products for almost six months. Many who spoke to Santa Cruz Local said they weren’t aware that Housing Matters opened Live Oak Landing this month.

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Homeless people living on Coral Street have not had regular access to basic services since the closure of the Day Services program in April, operated by nonprofit Housing Matters. (Amaya Edwards — Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local)

Nebosia Freeman, 60, has been living on Coral Street for four years and has been homeless for close to 15 years. He said they deal with near-daily harassment and are asked to move at least twice a week, with nowhere else to go. He, like others on Coral Street, said he hasn’t heard of Live Oak Landing nor has he been refereed to a transitional housing program.

“Being homeless has put us in a situation where things just are set up to get worse,” Freeman said. “We’re trying to be homeless and do it with a little dignity, but we got to deal with the police, and we also have to deal with the fact that we have no hygiene, no facility, no access to maintaining hygiene, which I would think is a concern, due to the fact that there’s no public restrooms.”

Chaka Khan, 60, has been living on Coral Street for more than a decade and said he hasn’t yet gotten help to find a pathway to more permanent housing. Before ending up on the streets, he said he worked at the Tannery for 11 years.

Khan said despite the efforts by city and county leaders, it’s not enough.

“Homelessness doesn’t discriminate. They take all comers. You know, I wasn’t born homeless. I’ve worked in this town,” Khan said. “I’ve got skills, but once you get down in the toilet, you can’t get up. It’s really hard.”

The city and county provided Coral Street residents a list of nearby parks and beaches with bathrooms, but Freeman and Khan said they aren’t able to travel to those locations everyday.

Chaka Khan has been homeless in Santa Cruz for 10 years, predominantly living on Coral Street. He said local leaders are not doing enough to address the problem. (Amaya Edwards — Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local)

Felicia Lightfoot was living on Coral Street for a little over a year before getting an opportunity to join the waitlist at Live Oak Landing. She moved in less than two weeks ago. For Lightfoot, just having access to electricity, a shower and hot running water to wash her hands has been the best thing about moving into the facility.

”I was on the waiting list for like ever, but they hadn’t even finished the place yet,” Lightfoot said. “And I talked to the main director, and we texted back and forth. He said, ‘You know, Felicia, as soon as it opens, you’re first on the list.’ I was in the hospital nine times in one year because of living on Coral Street.”

Felicia Lightfoot was given a bed at Live Oak Landing, a transitional housing program operated by Housing Matters in collaboration with the city and county. (Amaya Edwards — Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local)

Despite Lightfoot getting access to a bed, people still living on Coral Street said they are struggling more than ever. For Khan, he is hoping elected officials and other leaders working on the issue of homelessness don’t forget about them.

“I’m not looking for a handout, but I don’t need to be starting over every week. Doesn’t matter how I’m homeless. How do I get un-homeless?” Khan said.

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The post “Doesn’t matter how I’m homeless. How do I get un-homeless?” appeared first on Santa Cruz Local.

The US government has signed a letter of intent to provide GlobalFoundries with $300 million in CHIPS Act funding and, at the same time, receive a one percent stake in the company worth roughly $269 million. The money's supposedly not a tit-for-tat, but an investment designed to spur development of silicon photonics networking technologies that the AI industry needs for datacenters. “With today’s compute supply chain investments, the Trump Administration is accelerating America’s innovation engine,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a canned statement. “These strategic investments will enhance our country’s domestic capabilities, create high-paying jobs and keep America at the forefront of the semiconductor industry.” GlobalFoundries’ previously announced Silicon Photonics Co-Packaged Advanced Light Engine (SCALE) is one of the technologies it’s pushing in order to support 400 Gb/s per lane connectivity, which is about the speed at which copper interconnects become problematic for large scale systems. Both CPO, where optical engines are integrated directly into the compute logic, and NPO, where the optics reside in a module adjacent to the compute, are expected to be big business over the next couple of years. At Computex in Taipei last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang quipped that these technologies would make Marvell Technology the next trillion dollar company. Over the past two years, system designs from Nvidia and AMD have grown from eight GPUs in a box to rack systems packing six dozen accelerators into a single machine. To meet growing AI demand, the chip designers are plotting even larger row-scale systems using optical interconnects. Since its spinoff from AMD, GlobalFoundries has moved away from leading-edge CMOS technologies in order to focus on more specialized processes. The company has become a leading producer of silicon photonics used in modern AI datacenters. In addition to next-gen silicon photonics tech, GlobalFoundries says the CHIPS Act funding will also support the development of novel optical materials, advanced packaging capabilities like 3D hybrid bonding, which will support the rollout of domestically manufactured near-packaged optics (NPO) and co-packaged optics (CPO). And thanks to the Trump administration, regular Americans will have a stake in the success of these technologies — or at least the ones GlobalFoundries ends up manufacturing. GlobalFoundries would not be the first American fab operator that Uncle Sam has secured equity from in exchange for CHIPS Act funding. Last summer, the Commerce Department converted $5.7 billion in previously awarded but not yet disbursed CHIPS Act grants, along with $3.2 billion awarded under the Secure Enclave program, into roughly a 10 percent stake in the struggling chipmaker. Bootnote: On Tuesday, Intel announced the Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes - Commercial (RAMP-C) program had reached its conclusion. The Department of Defense (DoD)-sponsored program offered incentives to industry partners to develop test chips in Intel fabs on the company’s 18A process technology. The program’s end comes as Intel shifts its manufacturing might to a new government program called the Secure Enclave, which will manufacture semiconductors for use by US defense industrial base (DIB) customers. “Early access to Intel 18A has positioned DIB customers to leverage Secure Enclave while meeting critical size, weight and power requirements,” the company wrote. ®

Perhaps it’s best that the quiet part is pretty much being screamed now, and it’s all just out in the open that President Donald Trump is using the federal government to punish blue states without even the fig leaf of pretending it is about fraud or immigration or whatever. Politico recently obtained emails showing that Trump personally overruled Federal Emergency Management Agency officials…

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Andon Labs' latest vending machine simulation shows Opus 5 lied and colluded its way to become the best AI capitalist ever.

Arturs Medveds was on a mission to defend his championship at the 54th running of the Wharf to Wharf race on July 26. 

And just like the breeze that steadily flowed in from the Pacific Ocean, the 26-year-old Latvian native stayed cool and calm en route to winning the “six-mile” race in 27 minutes, 21 seconds in dominant fashion.

Medveds crossed the finish line at the Capitola Village well ahead of runner-up Anthony Raftis, who placed second in 27:48, followed by Nicholas Brichta (28:22) in third, Foster Wilfong (28:34) in fourth and Nolan Hosbein (28:37) in fifth. 

“It felt a little bit easier because it wasn’t that competitive this time,” said Medveds, who had just raced in Fresno the day before the Wharf to Wharf. “But at the same time I made sure to win, so I pushed a little bit more than I should.”

Due to ongoing construction on the Murray Street Bridge in Santa Cruz, Medveds and the other 16,000 participants took off from the alternate starting line on Portola Drive instead of the traditional start point in front of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. 

The new course is now a total of 5.91 miles, which was slightly shorter than the traditional six-mile course participants are accustomed to running on. 

Medveds, a California Baptist University alumnus, and Raftis ran side-by-side during the first two miles of the race while building a large gap of about 120 meters from the rest of the pack.

“Once your legs start going, it gets more comfortable to push and run fast,” Medveds said. “But before starting, my legs felt heavy because of all the traveling.”

After the third mile mark, the defending champion began to pull ahead of Raftis, who kept wiping away the sweat from his forehead. 

Medveds surpassed the fourth mile in 4:21, and at that point it was smooth sailing for him.

“At the end of the day, I’m not the best,” he said. “I want to be the best, and I want to compete in the Olympics. But I know I’m still far from it, so there’s always room to work harder.” 

Medveds added, “Especially because running is not an individual sport; it’s mainly a team sport. I always look for the team who can support and help me to achieve my goals.”

Medveds was presented with the Mayor’s Cup and a $1,200 payday, while Raftis and Brichta earned $600 and $300, respectively.

Sean Riedel, 27, of Santa Cruz also defended his title as the top local men’s finisher by placing 29th overall in 30:12.

“A little unexpected, honestly, but I’m glad,” he said. “A little slower than last year for top local, but I still got it, so pretty stoked.”

Riedel said most of his training this year has been focused more on trail marathon distance, but still believed he was in good shape to compete in the annual Wharf to Wharf race.

“I surprised myself with how fast I went,” he said. “I was 40, 50 seconds slower than last year, but faster than I thought I was going to be this year.”

Riedel attempted to go with a conservative pace in order to jump out in a good spot while also keeping his options open. Just past the third mile, he was clocking in at an average of a 5:08-mile pace.

“By then I knew if I could just hold on and close, I could do pretty well,” Riedel said. “I just tried to start picking people off. I was right behind the top female for the first four or five miles, then I finally got her around four or five miles, and then just tried to close hard.”

American runner Paige Wood, 30, was the top women’s finisher in 30:34, followed by Lauren Hagans (31:18) in second, Gillian Meeks (32:08) in third, Khia Kurtenbach (32:42) in fourth and Jennifer Cardenas Sandoval (33:04) in fifth.

“It’s super special,” said Wood, who competed for her first time two years ago and had an eight-month old baby boy at the time. “So to come back two years later and win it is really special.”

Wood was presented with the Mayor’s Cup and a $1,200 payday, while Hagans and Meeks earned $600 and $300, respectively.

This year’s strategy for Wood was to feel out the race as it progressed only because she didn’t know what to expect competition wise. 

“I was just gonna see if there were any other ladies around, and if not, then try to find a group of men that I could maybe run with,” Wood said. “I was trading off back and forth with a couple guys, which was fun.”

Aptos High graduate Maya Schiro, 18, was hoping to just set a personal record going into her third Wharf to Wharf race. Instead, she wound up as the top local women’s finisher by placing 16th in 35:12, and 204th overall.

“I was really shocked because there’s so many amazing women who come out here,” Schiro said.

Schiro said she felt a lot stronger going into Sunday’s race due to an increase in training sessions as she prepares to run at Chico State in the fall. One of her favorite parts about participating in the event is having people cheer throughout the course.

“There were little girls yelling ‘Girl Power,’ just really cute, really fun,” Schiro said.

First-time runner Teresa Balcazar, 50, of Cupertino won the Golden Bib raffle award of $1,000 during the award ceremony at Capitola Beach. She was walking toward the stage when her bib number was being called out.

“We’re going out to dinner,” said Balcazar, who ran the race with her best friend Melissa Ruiz. “I want to do a little more shopping. I wanted Birkenstocks, I’ll probably buy some of those. Otherwise, I’ve got bills to pay.”

Balcazar, who wound up running more of the race than walking it, enjoyed her first experience of the Wharf to Wharf.

“Just being here at the beach and running along the wharf, the camaraderie with everyone there cheering you on, I think, it’s awesome,” she said.

#tdi_1 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item1 { background: url(https://pajaronian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/PAJ2631-58th-Wharf-to-Wharf-WEB-2-80x60.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; } #tdi_1 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item2 { background: url(https://pajaronian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/PAJ2631-58th-Wharf-to-Wharf-WEB-3-80x60.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; } #tdi_1 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item3 { background: url(https://pajaronian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/PAJ2631-58th-Wharf-to-Wharf-WEB-4-80x60.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; } #tdi_1 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item4 { background: url(https://pajaronian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/PAJ2631-58th-Wharf-to-Wharf-WEB-5-80x60.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; } #tdi_1 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item5 { background: url(https://pajaronian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/PAJ2631-58th-Wharf-to-Wharf-WEB-6-80x60.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; } #tdi_1 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item6 { background: url(https://pajaronian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/PAJ2631-58th-Wharf-to-Wharf-WEB-7-80x60.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; } #tdi_1 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item7 { background: url(https://pajaronian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/PAJ2631-58th-Wharf-to-Wharf-WEB-1-80x60.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; } #tdi_1 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item8 { background: url(https://pajaronian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/PAJ2631-58th-Wharf-to-Wharf-WEB-8-80x60.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; } #tdi_1 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item9 { background: url(https://pajaronian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/PAJ2631-58th-Wharf-to-Wharf-WEB-10-80x60.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; } #tdi_1 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item10 { background: url(https://pajaronian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/PAJ2631-58th-Wharf-to-Wharf-WEB-9-80x60.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; } #tdi_1 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item11 { background: url(https://pajaronian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/PAJ2631-58th-Wharf-to-Wharf-WEB-11-80x60.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; } 1 of 11 Paige Wood, right, was the top women's finisher in 30 minutes, 34 seconds at the 54th running of the Wharf to Wharf race on July 26. (Juan Reyes/The Pajaronian) Teresa Balcazar of Cupertino won the Golden Bib raffle award of $1,000 after her name was called during the Wharf to Wharf award ceremony at Capitola Beach on July 26. (Juan Reyes/The Pajaronian) Arturs Medveds, right, and Anthony Raftis run side-by-side during the 54th running of the Wharf to Wharf race on July 26. Medveds won the race in 27 minutes, 21 seconds, while Raftis placed second in 27:48. (Juan Reyes/The Pajaronian) Arturs Medveds, left, pulls ahead of Anthony Raftis during the 54th running of the Wharf to Wharf race on July 26. Medveds won the race in 27 minutes, 21 seconds, while Raftis placed second in 27:48. (Juan Reyes/The Pajaronian) Arturs Medveds has a huge lead during the 54th running of the Wharf to Wharf race on July 26. Medveds won the race in 27 minutes, 21 seconds, while Raftis placed second in 27:48. (Juan Reyes/The Pajaronian) Arturs Medveds has a huge lead during the 54th running of the Wharf to Wharf race on July 26. Medveds won the race in 27 minutes, 21 seconds, while Raftis placed second in 27:48. (Juan Reyes/The Pajaronian) Arturs Medveds was the first runner to cross the finish line at the 54th running of the Wharf to Wharf race on July 26. Medveds won the race in 27 minutes, 21 seconds. (Juan Reyes/The Pajaronian) Anthony Raftis crosses the finish line during the 54th running of the Wharf to Wharf race on July 26. Raftis placed second in 27 minutes, 48 seconds. (Juan Reyes/The Pajaronian) Sean Riedel of Santa Cruz was the top local men's finisher in 30 minutes, 12 seconds at the 54th running of the Wharf to Wharf race on July 26. (Juan Reyes/The Pajaronian) Gillian Meeks, right, and Khia Kurtenbach placed third and fourth, respectively, in the women's division at the 54th running of the Wharf to Wharf race on July 26. (Juan Reyes/The Pajaronian) Allen Bjur, No. 302, and Chafik Azerki, No. 203, cross the finish line during the 54th running of the Wharf to Wharf race on July 26. (Juan Reyes/The Pajaronian)

The guardrails that prevent closed-source, frontier models from aiding threat actors have turned into handcuffs that prevent those bots from helping to find and fix serious vulns. Daniel Fox Franke, principal security researcher at Akamai Technologies, was recently trying to track down the source of a segmentation fault in ripgrep, and found OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol wouldn't cooperate. "OpenAI's cybersecurity classifier is a huge pain when you're trying to track down a segfault," he wrote in a social media post on Sunday. "...The classifier won't even let it answer what entrypoints from rg into musl lead to allocations on the mallocng heap." And just like Hugging Face in the case of OpenAI's accidental attack, Franke ended up having to use open weight models from Chinese AI providers – Z'ai GLM 5.2 and Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 – to complete his analysis of what appears to be a Linux kernel bug. In an email to The Register, Franke explained, "It started out from a pretty anodyne prompt: I noticed that ripgrep had segfaulted repeatedly during a long-running Codex session, so I instructed the root agent to spin off a subagent to investigate what was happening. "A few minutes later I hit the first classifier trip, which the root agent told me was the result of a subagent pursuing an inappropriate line of inquiry and that it was steering it away from that." Even so, he said, the classifier balked several times in quick succession. "It seemed that attempts to produce the crash and analyze the heap were mostly responsible, so I started up a fresh context in which I warned that these trips had happened previously, and that its task should be strictly scoped to analyzing ripgrep and musl source code (not kernel, because I had no inkling at this point that this was a kernel bug): it must not attempt to reproduce the crash or to analyze core files," he explained. "Nonetheless, the classifier kept tripping despite its adherence to those instructions, and that's when I gave up on getting any useful work out of it." Franke said that given how much more restrictive Anthropic's models have been, he didn't even bother trying any of the Claude model family. "OpenAI's cybersecurity classifier is a separate system which censors output from the generative model, and the classifier is the only thing which gave me a problem," he said. "I never encountered any refusals from Sol itself: it knew that most of the classifier trips were inappropriate and always continued working with me in good faith to work around the problem." Franke said that while OpenAI's error messages directed him toward the Enterprise Trusted Access program, he didn't bother to apply because he's ineligible. What he didn't realize until recently, he said, is that there's a separate Trusted Access program for individuals. "I still haven't signed up for that, because I regard the verification procedure as a bit of an indignity," he explained, echoing similar sentiment The Register has heard from other security researchers. "I'll put up with it if I'm ever forced to, but not for as long as open models remain a practical alternative." Two open models did prove practical for this bug hunt: GLM 5.2 and Kimi K3. Franke said each served a distinct purpose. "K3 made the initial breakthrough with the key bit of evidence that I was dealing with a kernel bug, but its subsequent investigative work was sloppy: jumping to unfounded conclusions and spoiling its own evidentiary record, and it went totally off the rails when its context got large," he said. "GLM-5.2 is what finished the job for me, re-auditing K3's work and putting together an airtight case." Franke said it was frustrating to wrestle with defiant tooling and expressed skepticism about model access limitations given the availability of open source alternatives. "From my perspective, an uncooperative tool is simply a broken one," he said. "And no, I don't believe this is sustainable in the face of open-weight competition. I'm a total pragmatist about open source and don't mind at all working with proprietary products as long as they get the job done. But with proprietary software, there's a much greater hazard of it being built to serve the vendor's priorities rather than the customer's. Open source has a natural advantage in preventing that." Franke said that there's still work to be done on the Linux bug, which doesn't yet have a patch and doesn't appear to represent an exploitable vulnerability. "Where my investigation stands is that I know two things confidently," he said. "First, that the crashes are caused by a kernel bug. Second, that I've identified a kernel bug. But that this bug is causing these crashes is still just a conjecture, and I have a lot more investigation to do before I can think about shipping anything to [the Linux Kernel Mailing List]." Last week, much of the US tech industry came out in support of open weight models in response to protectionism promoted by Anthropic and OpenAI. The US government has yet to articulate a coherent AI policy with regard to open weight models. ®

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