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⚡ Quick Take

• Ellie Farrell is a propmaker from Dublin and has gained virality on social media for her Iron Man suits.
• She has created plenty more impressive builds, from web shooters to shields.
• Farrell says her goal is to positively influence others who are involved or want to be involved with the hobby.

No, you’re not “literally Batman”—but Ellie Farrell might be. Actually, she’s also Iron Man, too. And with a 3D printer and some paint, she could probably become any hero she wants to be. Farrell is a 20-year-old mechanical engineer and a prop designer based in Dublin, Ireland, and her hobby is building suits and gadgets from your favorite superhero comics.

What started as a deep desire to bring small pieces of the immersive worlds she saw onscreen into real life became a complex passion involving robotics, engineering, and design. Farrell is a self-taught propmaker, learning Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and rendering on her own, along with drawing on skills she learned from her dad and at school. Putting together these abilities has allowed Farrell to recreate stunningly realistic (and functional) props from film and TV. Farrell says when she was a kid, things started small.

Ellie Farrell

“When I was a kid, I’d make little costumes for myself,” said Farrell. “I just wanted to replicate movies. I think there was a sense of realism that I couldn’t get just from watching [them], so I wanted to bring it to real life. I’d make little outfits for my stuffed animals.”

Growing up with the urge to bring fantasy into reality was what solidified Farrell’s interest in mechanical engineering. Now, she is majoring in the craft at Technological University Dublin, where she is a 3rd year student.

We became aware of Farrell’s work after she posted her Batman suit build on Instagram. The reel she made detailing the process has 5.1 million views, at the time of this post. The suit’s details are wildly intricate, and it was a great introduction to Farrell’s craftsmanship.

Ellie Farrell

Farrell is not only a propmaker but an influencer, posting short videos of her creative process on social media. Some of Farrell’s well-known builds on the internet include her two Iron Man suit iterations and a Batsuit. She has also made a realistic Captain America shield and functional web-shooters, among many other cool creations.

With 618.6k followers on TikTok and 294k on Instagram, she has grown an audience of like-minded nerds who appreciate seeing their favorite heroes brought into the real world. She says it was her original Iron Man suit build that really boosted her attention on both platforms. After her first Iron Man suit went viral, Farrell took the learned skills to build a second, more detailed version.

Ellie Farrell

“[The second suit is] just much higher quality. Thanks to the internet, I was able to get a better 3D printer, so the quality just went up a lot. I also knew which paints to get, how to layer paints, how to sand better, electronics that I wanted to include, and different moving parts. I wanted to just get a bit more detailed with it. I think [with] the first suit, I was like, ‘Do I really want to do all of that?’ But the second one, I just knew I could, so I decided to go a bit more in depth.”

According to Farrell, she can sometimes bang out a project in a day or two, depending on the size. But suits? Those can take months. Her creative process starts with a sketch and blooms from there.

Farrell cited the first Iron Man suit as her most challenging build. Going in, she only knew how to build the helmet. But she did what she needed to learn: understanding it “by failing first.”

Farrell has big plans for the future, wanting to pursue propmaking either for live theatre or film/TV as a career. However, she says that her most important goal is to positively influence people.

“I think younger people need an outlet now more than ever… I found that [COVID] was a really rough time. You’re very isolated, and I feel like… there’s a lot going on in society where [kids are] not able to communicate really, and I think it can be a great outlet to be able to be in your own space and build things.”

Ellie Farrell

The internet can be harsh. The more people see your work, the more the wrong people will interact with it or leave hateful comments. Farrell said she has struggled with that, but it hardly bothers her anymore.

“[Social media is] an interesting place to be as a girl. I’ve just gotten so used to it now, but it does get annoying, I suppose, when men comment stuff about your abilities as a woman,” said Farrell. “I [barely] look at comments anymore. I’ve put up with it my whole life—I did football for 12 years growing up, and I was on a boys’ team, [the] only girl in the entire league. So I guess I got used to just regulating emotions relating [to] that.”

Farrell said the social media and virality side of her passion felt enjoyably “unreal.” She understands her role as an influencer and the impact she has on other hobbyists. She said she especially wants her content to resonate with young girls. Farrell hopes she can teach them that they can do what she says some people view as “boy stuff.”

“I just want to be a good influence on [young girls] to believe in themselves and believe in their own abilities and develop their own skills, because it is easy to believe that you can only do it if you get a degree… or you’re talented or [a] genius in something,” she affirms. “But I’m not a genius. I’m just a regular person doing something every day and building up those skills… [It] gets me when girls are like, ‘Oh, you, you’re not able to do this,’ because it’s different coming from a girl than a guy, but I hope I’m able to convince girls then that they’re able to do it too. There’s no real restriction other than a mental barrier for most people.”

Surprisingly, Farrell doesn’t see a future in commissioned propmaking. She is currently building a Nightwing suit for a friend, but says it won’t become a regular activity.

“When I’m thinking about someone else seeing my work… I just get very particular about the tiny little details that I know people don’t care about—and they won’t see it, but I see it, and I care about it. I just couldn’t do [commissions] because [I] would get too much in my head. I would not enjoy it.”

In terms of future projects, Farrell is not even close to stopping making awesome props. She mentioned a functioning grappling hook/ web-shooter hybrid, able to hold a person’s weight. In addition, she is working on an ECG scanner that controls lights, mimicking telekinesis. Farrell also mentioned that she’s working on something else “really cool,” so keep an eye on her socials.

You can follow Ellie’s work on her Instagram and TikTok pages.

The post This Propmaker’s Passion Is Becoming Real-Life Superheroes appeared first on Nerdist.

President Donald Trump is beginning to show signs of decreased political influence within the Republican Party following a poor showing on Tuesday night for candidates he endorsed. The shortcomings add to recent endorsement failures for Trump and serve as another bad sign for Republicans desperately clinging to power ahead of the midterm elections. Trump’s most spectacular election fail came…

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This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for its newsletters.

In the final few weeks of his last legislative session as California governor, Gavin Newsom is asking lawmakers to help reduce how much profit-making utility companies must pay out after wildfires. 

His administration has for weeks floated to lawmakers a wide-ranging but still-vague package of bills to address the spiraling costs of wildfires that has made a slew of different interests unhappy. 

Insurance companies have launched an ad campaign against what they call a potential “utility bailout,” that would leave them unable to recover from the power companies the costs of paying homeowners’ insurance claims. Attorneys representing fire survivors and other plaintiffs that sue utilities don’t want to see their fees reduced.

Wildfire survivors worry the governor’s proposal would prevent them from being made financially whole for suffering trauma. Local government leaders are demanding that they continue to be paid the full cost to rebuild incinerated infrastructure. 

On the other side are the politically influential utilities, who have drawn fury for their equipment sparking several of the state’s most devastating wildfires. 

The state’s three investor-owned utilities – Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric – aren’t in imminent financial danger, and last year saw profits rise. But fire costs have contributed to Californians paying the second-highest electricity rates in the country, and lawmakers and Newsom’s office worry that if it becomes harder for utilities to borrow money those bills will continue to climb. The utilities together provide power for about three-quarters of the state.

Newsom and the lawmakers say utilities are held responsible for too much after a wildfire and that bad actors like hedge funds are taking advantage to get a cut. If another devastating wildfire triggers damages too high for a utility to pay, the potentially resulting bankruptcy would make it even harder for victims to collect.

“The status quo doesn’t work,” Newsom said at a news conference last week when asked whether his proposal is in the best interests of fire survivors. “And we’re trying to balance all of those needs in a very familiar process that will unfold over the course of the next few months.”

CalMatters asked the governor’s office whether the timeline Newsom mentioned was correct, considering the legislative session ends in three weeks. A spokesperson said the governor meant “the next couple of months of the legislative session,” and did not respond to whether Newsom will call a special session to address the issue.

As he mulls a presidential run, Newsom has political incentive to push through a deal. Opponents from the right are eager to paint California as unaffordable and lurching through disasters; further rate hikes or the specter of a utility bankruptcy wouldn’t help. But backing the utilities also comes with risks: Anger at the companies remains fresh after Edison was last week found by Cal Fire and the Los Angeles County Fire Department to be responsible for the January 2025 Eaton fire that killed 19 people in Altadena. 

The chair of a key Assembly committee, Democratic Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, is generally on board with Newsom’s proposals, but lawmakers in the Senate appear less certain. Fire survivors are urging them to slow down and commit to a more public debate.

“You cannot be ‘there are some bad actors’ and therefore we will have a secret bill,” said Joy Chen, who leads a group of Los Angeles wildfire survivors. “Then your bill is the bad actor.”

A familiar fight

It’s a redux of a bitter fight that has bookended Newsom’s time as governor. 

He stepped into his role in the wake of devastating wildfires that tore through Northern California in 2017 and 2018, several of which PG&E was found to have been responsible for. 

The utility was in a bind: Under California law it was strictly liable for fires that were getting more severe, partly due to climate change, and regulators were no longer letting the companies pass damages onto customers in cases where they were found careless.

Facing mounting suits from victims and insurance companies, the company in 2019 declared bankruptcy. Newsom quickly signed legislation to help buffer utilities from those claims, drawing accusations of a bailout. The state created a $21 billion wildfire fund, paid for half by utility shareholders and half by customers through a $2.50 surcharge on their monthly electricity bills, to pay victims’ claims, provided the utilities follow stricter safety regulations. 

The remaining structure of a building burned from the Eaton fire in Altadena. Jan. 8, 2025. Credit: Ted Soqui for CalMatters

Then in January 2025, during an intense windstorm, electricity arcing from a century-old out-of-service Edison tower in Southern California’s Eaton Canyon set dry brush ablaze. The resulting Eaton Fire, burning at the same time as the deadly Palisades fire, claimed 19 lives and nearly 9,500 homes and other buildings. UCLA estimated losses at between $24 billion and 45 billion.

The state wildfire fund is expected to be drained once the costs of insurance claims, Edison’s multimillion-dollar voluntary settlements with survivors and numerous unsettled lawsuits are tallied. (Lawmakers extended the fund last year to address future fires, adding to electricity customers’ surcharges through 2045.) Profiteering hedge funds have sought to take advantage by buying up insurance claims. 

Newsom’s goal is twofold: Limit who can make claims to the fund and limit how much they can get. In private briefings last week and a document outlining his package released Tuesday, his office said he would combine the cost reductions with bills to boost home hardening, help homeowners get off the state’s insurer-of-last-resort and re-enter the home insurance market, tie utility executive pay to safety and require shareholders to pay down customers’ rates for two summers. 

Details of the package remain scant. The outline released Tuesday did not include proposed legislative language.

CalMatters contacted the state’s three major utility companies. San Diego Gas & Electric did not respond. PG&E and Edison referred questions to Nathan Click, spokesperson for the utilities’ campaign, which is called Wildfire Victims First and has been blanketing the state with ads telling Californians to urge their lawmakers to act.

Click, who is also a political spokesperson for Newsom, did not answer specific questions, including whether utilities are meeting directly with lawmakers. Instead, he shared statements from a handful of business groups and a powerful electrical workers’ union urging lawmakers to advocate for the proposed liability reduction.

In addition, the chief executives of PG&E and Edison have said they plan to take action to protect their shareholders if California lawmakers do not pass legislation to limit their fire liability. They did not specify what they planned to do.

Over the past four years PG&E, Edison and SDG&E collectively spent $5.2 million on California political campaigns, sponsored travel for lawmakers and donations to officials’ favored charities, according to CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database. 

PG&E also has the fifth-highest spending on lobbying in the 2025-2026 legislative session and was the top spender from April through June. In the first half of this year, the three utilities reported spending nearly $7 million to influence Newsom’s administration, the Legislature and their regulators at the California Public Utilities Commission.

Limiting damages

Newsom suggests chipping away at utilities’ liabilities by limiting attorneys’ fees, reducing the amount of money local governments can recoup to rebuild burned infrastructure and curbing how much some victims can receive in damages.

His proposal would set up a state-administered “fast pay” program to prioritize wildfire fund payouts for survivors whose loved ones are killed, who are injured or whose properties are destroyed. To participate, claimants would likely need to give up their right to sue the utility — trading an often lengthy wait through litigation to get comprehensive damages in exchange for the relief of a quicker payout. 

For other victims “in harm’s way,” the Tuesday outline suggests allowing up to $150,000 in damages. 

Newsom’s office and Petrie-Norris, who generally supports the idea, said they do not intend to limit emotional distress claims for survivors they deem legitimate but those kinds of damages should be curbed for others. 

“If you were part of a disaster no one’s going to say you can’t make a claim,” Petrie-Norris, an Irvine Democrat who chairs the Assembly utilities committee, said. “If you did not actually experience a disaster, what non-economic damages should you be entitled to?”

Petrie-Norris and Newsom are concerned about billboard attorneys who seek clients to file lawsuits against utilities and the wildfire fund; one study has found attorneys are likely to get 30% to 40% of victims’ payouts. Groups representing survivors and attorneys argue it’s not so clear who should count as a victim. Residents who lost no property and stayed in their homes miles away could still be harmed by smoke inhalation, for example. 

Chen said she was “stunned” after she was briefed by the governor’s office last week and was told that only people who are evacuated and have their house burn down would be eligible for non-economic damages.

“Let’s say someone was out of town, but their house burned down so they didn’t evacuate,” she said. “But they lost everything, so they have to rebuild. So you won’t compensate them for pain and suffering?”  

Newsom also wants to stop investors from buying claims and prioritize small business claimants over corporations, but his office has not explained how to accomplish that. 

The proposed bill package has so incensed some wildfire victims that opponents of the plan have shrugged at arguments that some claimants are taking advantage of the Wildfire Fund. 

“The utilities are finding a lot of creative ways to avoid responsibility. That’s it,” said Graham Knaus, chief executive of the California Association of Counties. “We should not be opening the door for them to escape accountability.”

Shifting costs

Another component of the outline released Tuesday could affect homeowners across the state. Newsom is proposing to limit — or eliminate entirely — insurance companies’ right to recoup money from utilities when a utility-caused fire forces those insurers to pay out homeowners’ claims. 

The process is known as subrogation. The two powerful industries have been at odds over it for years.

Utilities and insurance already clashed in 2018 when utilities unsuccessfully backed a bill to loosen a unique California legal doctrine that holds power providers strictly liable for wildfire damages near their equipment even if they aren’t found responsible for the fire. 

“We’re a well-resourced industry, but not like [the utilities],” Rex Frazier, president of the Personal Insurance Federation of California, recalled. “Their lobbying spend was just crazy.”

Denni Ritter, vice president for the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, said eliminating subrogation could impede the progress that has been made due to the regulations California adopted last year to address insurance availability problems. 

“We’re at this precarious time,” Ritter said. Because the state now allows insurance companies to consider catastrophe modeling and reinsurance costs in pricing their premiums, some insurers have resumed writing new policies in California, and the number of policies in the last-resort FAIR Plan is growing at a slower rate, according to the state insurance department.

But if they can’t recover the costs of wildfire claims, Frazier and Ritter said insurance companies will raise premiums, which would affect homeowners even in areas with low fire risk.

“We don’t understand how they’re not embarrassed to suggest that the answer to their problem is to shift their costs over to other people,” Frazier said. “Why should a homeowners insurance customer in a dense urban environment have to pay considerably more?”

Sen. Ben Allen, the Democratic chair of the Senate utilities committee and a candidate for insurance commissioner, said he doesn’t want to make that tradeoff if the package doesn’t include other benefits for consumers or taxpayers. 

Petrie-Norris said it could be worth it. 

“If I can save you $2 on your utility bill and your insurance bill goes up by $1, that seems like a smart thing for us all to do,” she said. But we’ve got to make sure that’s true and whether there are unintended consequences.”

Jeremia Kimelman and Digital Democracy engineer Andrew Chan contributed to this story.

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

The post Newsom makes last-minute push to help California utilities facing wildfire bills appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

Mesh, an AI-powered contacts app and relationship manager from Automattic is now an Android app.

A new project aims to build a shared, open source AI training dataset that anyone can contribute to, much like an open source software project. It aims to make training data more transparent than that of many open-weight models that have recently taken the industry by storm. CentOS and Rocky Linux founder Gregory Kurtzer is behind the effort, dubbed Open Weights, Artifacts, Licenses, Data, Origins (OpenWALDO), and it's funded by CIQ, his AI infrastructure company, which also sponsors Rocky Linux. Kurtzer described the effort as trying to bring the open-source ethos to AI model design, which has yet to be truly open – even downloadable open-weight models still have closed-source training data that is unknown to users, alongside other limitations that make them less than truly open source. “I’ve spent my career watching open source turn users into builders, competitors into collaborators, and shared problems into common infrastructure that operates at massive scale,” Kurtzer said in the announcement. “OpenWALDO brings that proven model to AI. Let’s work together, build its foundation in the open, and collaboratively take AI to the next level.” CIQ, which authored the announcement, argues that open-weight models keep that foundation a secret because of where it comes from: Copyrighted data, responses distilled from other models, user-generated content that may not have been given in a truly open manner, and the like. “There is often no way to know what data trained a given model, under what license, or with what consent,” CIQ said, adding that hidden training data content could taint models, putting customer software stacks at risk. In addition to that, there’s the simple fact that, when everyone is training their AI models in secret, a lot of duplicate work is happening that wastes lots of time and computing resources. A single, shared set of public training data, the OpenWALDO team argues, would not only make training more efficient across the industry, but also mean that every improvement to the dataset could benefit future models trained on it. “A lab or company can take the corpus and its bill of materials as a verified baseline, add its own proprietary data, build, and ship, with a clear, auditable line back to its sources,” CIQ explained. With prices steep and ROI still largely absent, open AI models (not to be confused with OpenAI models) have risen to prominence in the AI zeitgeist lately. Models out of the home of open-weight AI, China, are closing in on the capabilities of closed-source frontier lab models like ChatGPT and Claude, leaving many businesses wondering why they ought to pay through the nose for AI services they don’t own, can’t truly control, and have no visibility into. Some frontier labs have warned that open-weight models pose security and misuse risks. Kurtzer argues that open source software faced similar concerns. “Open source has won this argument before,” he said, pointing to similar arguments made about open code, namely that it’s insecure, impossible to trust, and the like. “Linux didn't win by being certified safe. It won by being inspectable, forkable, and community validated.” “AI is missing that same property, and OpenWALDO is how we build it,” Kurtzer said. Turning to open-source training datasets is a big ask for an industry already so far down the closed training data path, of course, and only time will tell if OpenWALDO is a revolution or another obscure OSS project that gets minimal attention from the AI community. So far, the OpenWALDO dataset contains 167.3 billion reference tokens pulled from things like government records, open-source academic papers, mailing lists, and public domain literature - a drop in the bucket next to the tens of trillions of tokens used to train frontier AI models and their open-weight counterparts. We asked if anyone has trained a model on the OpenWALDO set yet, but CIQ didn’t respond. Those interested in contributing to, or making use of, OpenWALDO can find more on the project’s website (linked above) and its GitHub page. ®

AI notetaking hardware has taken off over the past couple of years, with credit-card-sized devices, pendants, pins, and even transcribing earbuds all promising to capture your meetings and turn them into summaries and action items. Now, a whole wave of wearables — rings especially — are betting people want to capture stray thoughts and ideas the same way.  One of […]

Conditions have reportedly gotten so bad aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier deployed to the Persian Gulf since November, that some sailors have tried to jump overboard.

The Military Times reported Tuesday night that in multiple instances, some of the 5,000 military personnel on the ship have tried to jump off before being stopped by other crew members. Family members of those stationed on the ship are concerned about the mental health, exhaustion, and safety issues affecting their loved ones.

“He’s scared,” Annabelle Loma told the Times about her husband, who reportedly tried to jump overboard. “He thinks he’ll get a dishonorable discharge, and just because he was burnt out, his 13-year career is ruined, just like that. That’s not fair, that’s not right. That’s not what he should be worrying about right now.”

In recent town hall meetings with military leaders, including acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao, things have gotten heated, with family members expressing fear and worry over mental health and the risk of self-harm for the ship’s personnel. One spouse reportedly told officials at a meeting Thursday that her husband had messaged her earlier that day saying “he hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow.”

One woman at a town hall in San Diego told Cao it was difficult to feel proud of her relative because she believed the military was “killing innocent civilians,” and her relative had expressed guilt about what he was doing, which drew applause from the audience.

Stars and Stripes spoke to several sailors and their family members, who describe declining morale and exhaustion on the Abraham Lincoln, which was only supposed to deploy to the Middle East until May this year. The ship left port in San Diego in November for a deployment to the Pacific Ocean, but was diverted to the Gulf because of Donald Trump’s Iran war. Combat operations have been extended with no return date.

The ship has experienced food shortages, with pictures of meager and tasteless-looking meals going viral. Supplies are also running short, and the ship has experienced water contamination, plumbing problems, and disruptions in mail delivery. All of this is wearing on the discipline and mental health of those aboard as Trump’s pointless war with Iran drags on without end.

Trump, for his part, seems either unaware of how dire things are among servicemembers or simply doesn’t care. He touted the U.S. naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz Wednesday and bragged about how successful it is.

⚡ Quick Take

• You will never sit on the Iron Throne or on a dragon, but your furry friend can, thanks to these Paw of Thrones’ adorable pet beds. 
• There are two types of beds: the Iron Throne and a dragon
• You can buy single beds or a set of two for a discounted price.

Do you have what it takes to sit upon the Iron Throne? That coveted seat in the Game of Thrones universe has cost countless lives and caused a lot of drama for many, many years. You have to be charismatic, a little ruthless, and a shrewd decision-maker, among other things, to rule in Westeros. If that’s not you, then that’s too bad. You need a dash of Valyrian blood to be a dragonrider, unfortunately. While you may never get to sit on the Iron Throne or on the back of a mythical beast, your dog or cat can do it, thanks to these Paw of Thrones’ adorable pet beds. 

Pawora

There are two different yet equally awesome beds to choose from for your furry friend. First, there’s a plushy replica of the Iron Throne that makes for quite the cute pet bed. Unlike the one in the HBO universe, this one is not sharp enough to pierce the skin. It has a seat that allows your pup or kitty to sink into its cushion and rule the kingdom of your abode. This bed is currently up for pre-order for $119 for one or $229.98 for two if you have multiple rulers. 

Pawora

The second bed is a big ole dragon who, like a dog, is curled up and comfy. The center space is for your dog or cat to hang out in as they keep their human subjects in line. This bed retails for the same prices above. 

Yes, these beds are super cute. But, the only thing that seems to be missing/unclear is the size of the bed. It doesn’t come in a variety of sizes and, although the logo features a big ole German Shepherd, it isn’t clear if a larger animal could fit. As someone who has a Shepherd/Golden mix who weighs over 100 pounds, I am not sure if my dog could fit or not. It is pretty hard to tell based on the pictures. 

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Every dog and cat deserves a dragon, indeed. So make sure that you grab your pre-order and let your pet rule in style. 

The post Your Pet Can Rule the Realm With These GAME OF THRONES Beds appeared first on Nerdist.

Rumors of President Trump’s king-making abilities seem to have been greatly exaggerated.

Republican candidates Amir Hassan of Michigan, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Mike Lindell of Minnesota, and Darline Graham of South Carolina were all endorsed by Trump ahead of their primaries. Hassan, Lindell, and Ogles each lost their race, while Graham is nowhere close to the fifty percent she needs to avoid a runoff.

In Michigan, Hassan—possibly doomed by his own base’s bigotry—lost handily to Thomas Smith by over 10,000 votes, even as Smith dropped out of the race last month and ceased all campaigning. Tennessee incumbent Representative Ogles was defeated by Charlie Hatcher after suffering through scandal and redistricting. And Lindell—known mostly as the MyPillow Guy—lost to Minnesota House Speaker Lisa DeMuth by about 11 percentage points and more than 45,000 votes. He refused to concede at the time, in true Trump fashion. And Graham, who was essentially anointed after her brother’s death, is now struggling against Ralph Northam.

These are primary races—in theory the most concentrated MAGA voting bloc in which any candidate endorsed by Trump should expect to have an upper hand (maybe except Hassan). A bigot like Ogles and a crank like Lindell should feel more than welcome in a primary on paper. Instead they—and Trump—have been rejected by Republican voters. This is yet another awful warning sign for the GOP as midterms approach in November.

Tesla wants to build a massive solar factory in Texas, but first it wants the state to chip in to defray the costs.

Form Energy has landed Google and Crusoe as customers. Now, it has raised $750 million to expand manufacturing to deliver its massive, 100-hour batteries.

Neocloud operator CoreWeave remains bullish about its prospects, claiming that changing patterns of AI use will create sustained demand for its cloud services. The New Jersey firm is among the most prominent rent-a-GPU businesses spawned by demand for AI training infrastructure, but is now attempting to move up the technology stack – a shift consultants at McKinsey said neoclouds would need to make to survive. "AI is no longer confined to frontier model labs. It is becoming embedded in software, industrial systems, financial markets, enterprise workflows, and national security missions," claims CoreWeave co-founder and CEO Michael Intrator. Intrator also claimed that deploying AI applications is turning compute from a large upfront requirement into a recurring expense. "For the last several years, many organizations treated a model like a deliverable. Train it, deploy it, and move on. Enterprises no longer operate that way," Intrator told analysts on a conference call for CoreWeave's financial results for the second quarter ended June 30. "Training, inference, evaluation, and improvement now form a single continuous loop. Models and agents in production generate real-world data. That data informs evaluation, driving new experiments, which improve the model or application before being redeployed into production." CoreWeave's pitch is that this continuous cycle is changing both the demand curve and the economics of AI. "Compute is no longer a one-time requirement concentrated at the beginning of a model's life. It becomes an ongoing requirement that grows with every application in production and every cycle of improvement," Intrator said, adding: "Our AI native platform was built for this." CoreWeave expects its managed inference services, launched only a few months ago, to reach an annual recurring revenue run rate of at least $250 million by the end of 2026. Yet all is not rosy. Revenue rose 112 percent year-on-year to $2.575 billion, but operating expenses reached $2.624 billion, resulting in a $49 million operating loss. Interest and other costs helped widen the net loss to $626 million. Most of that growth also came from existing clients rather than new ones. According to CoreWeave's Form 10-Q [PDF] filed with the SEC, approximately 93 percent of the revenue increase was attributable to expansion within its existing customer base, with the remainder attributable to new customers. In fact, the firm concedes that just three customers accounted for 36 percent, 26 percent, and 10 percent of quarterly revenue respectively – 72 percent between them. It also warns that "while we have historically experienced significant growth in revenue over the last three years, we cannot predict whether we will maintain this level of growth or when we will achieve positive net income." The company is also carrying substantial debt. As of June 30, total indebtedness stood at $35.6 billion, helping to push quarterly net interest expense up 140 percent to $640 million. CoreWeave also had $10 billion available to borrow under its revolving credit and delayed-draw term loan facilities, according to its Form 10-Q. Nor can it stop spending on infrastructure. CoreWeave expects 2026 capital expenditure of between $35 billion and $39 billion. CoreWeave also warned that it faced competition from much larger and more established cloud operators, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google, "a number of which are also our current customers," which it may not be able to compete with because of the resources they can bring to bear on building infrastructure and AI development. Investors nevertheless welcomed the results, sending CoreWeave's shares up almost 19 percent in early Wednesday trading, according to MarketWatch. "The opportunity ahead is generational. CoreWeave is the essential cloud for AI," stated Intrator. "Our conviction in our strategy has never been stronger, and our execution continues to reinforce it." ®

This new funding comes after Lovable hit $500 million in annualized run rate revenue in June, the startup told TechCrunch.

Wisconsin’s wild and messy gubernatorial primary came to a stunning close Tuesday night, when Democratic voters rejected progressive Francesca Hong in favor of moderate Democrat David Crowley by the narrowest of margins. To say that Crowley’s win was a shock is an understatement. Crowley had dropped out of the race in July but reentered 10 days later at the urging of outgoing Democratic…

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⚡ Quick Take

• At last, we’ll see the adventures of Captain Seven of Nine and the crew of the Enterprise-G in a new ongoing Star Trek comic.
• The series will take place five years after the finale of Star Trek: Picard
• Characters from Picard, like Jack Crusher and “Crash” La Forge, will feature heavily.
• Nerdist’s Take: This is the sequel to Star Trek: Picard that Trekkers have waited years for.

At the end of the much-loved third season of Star Trek: Picard, the U.S.S. Titan becomes the new starship Enterprise, NCC-1701-G. And her commanding officer is none other than Voyager’s iconic ex-Borg, Seven of Nine, played by Jeri Ryan. The finale of the series promised adventures that sadly never happened on screen. But they will happen in a new ongoing comic book series from the folks at IDW, titled, simply enough, Star Trek. (Really, you can’t go wrong keeping it simple with that title.) What better way to celebrate the franchise’s 60th anniversary? (And just a reminder that if you’d like to snag a pre-order for Star Trek #1, pre-orders close on 8/17. And trust us, you’ll want to after seeing our exclusive preview pages of the Star Trek comic below.)

Star Trek #1 Exclusive Preview Pages: Catch Up with Seven of Nine and the Enterprise-G Five Years After Picard IDW/Paramount

You can check out several exclusive preview pages and covers from the all-new Star Trek #1, written by Christopher Cantwell, with art by Dennis Menheere, and letters from Jodie Troutman, below:

Click To View Gallery IDW/Paramount IDW/Paramount Paramount/IDW IDW/Paramount IDW/Paramount Paramount/IDW IDW/Paramount Paramount/IDW IDW/Paramount Paramount/IDW IDW/Paramount Paramount/IDW IDW/Paramount

In our exclusive look at the pages of Star Trek #1, we see Captain Seven of Nine, five years after the events of the Picard finale. She’s speaking to a Lt. Commander Sato, a likely descendant of Star Trek: Enterprise’s Hoshi Sato. Seven is clearly missing her former first officer, Raffi Musiker. But now, Seven has lost Raffi to her own command. However, she still has her special counselor, Jack Crusher, son of Jean-Luc Picard and Dr. Beverly Crusher. And he even shares a Borg telepathic link with her, which is a new wrinkle. But Seven feels the weight of her upcoming mission. Not to mention the weight of the Enterprise and her many iconic Captains looming large. She reflects on Captains Pike, Kirk, Rachel Garrett, and, of course, Picard. Can she and her Enterprise crew live up to their incredible legacies? We have faith in our favorite ex-Borg and her stalwart crew and can’t wait to follow their adventures in the new Star Trek comic.

IDW/Paramount Star Trek #1 Sees the Enterprise-G on a “Desperate Mission”

Additionally, you can explore the official solicitation for IDW’s Star Trek #1, along with a special cover gallery, which includes many variant covers featuring characters from the series.

Their mission is new. Their legacy is not. From the pen of fan-favorite writer Christopher Cantwell (Star Trek: Defiant, Star Trek: Red Shirts) and the brush of psychedelic standout Dennis Menheere (Etheres, Little Nightmares) comes the launch of an all-new flagship…and this time, we’re busting out of the four quadrants. The Enterprise-G is on a desperate mission beyond the known galaxy to relocate the dying Revlavan people when its crew finds a perfect new home in a region of unknown space called the Epsilon Corridor. Three pristine Class-M worlds—the Trinity—await the refugees.

No signs of civilization. No detectable threats. A colonist’s dream. But the dream fractures fast.
When Captain Seven of Nine and her divided, fast-tracked crew begin exploring the Trinity, they
uncover disturbing contradictions: vanished structures, inexplicable artifacts, time skips, and
evidence of a presence Starfleet’s century-old probes never detected. Each world houses a
different ecosystem, different physics problems, and different secrets—as if they’ve been
curated…or quarantined. But from who? Or what? The first arc of Star Trek delivers a prestige, mystery-driven, high-stakes psychological thriller of an opening salvo—new worlds, new species, new existential threats—anchored by Seven, Jack, and Crash La Forge fighting to keep the mission together as the Galaxy’s oldest ghosts awaken.

Paramount/DW Star Trek Writer Christopher Cantwell Shares the Question of This Comic Is ‘How Do We Survive’ Paramount/IDW

Here’s what Star Trek writer Christopher Cantwell has to say about this exciting new launch, and the continuing voyages of the new Federation flagship:

“This newest launch of Star Trek is all about looking FORWARD. Boldly going. We can’t
ignore the past and won’t — there’s sixty years of history here and in story time within the Trek
universe, multiple centuries. But this story is very much about how we carry ourselves and our
pasts with us ever forward into the future. The question is: how do we survive? How do we
evolve? It’s a question for our characters and Star Trek as a whole as we cross the halfway
point of 2026. Star Trek has always been about heading into the (at times frightening!)
unknown of the future because we believe a good one is still possible. That’s something that
keeps me going in my life on a daily basis these days, and I’m so eager to imbue this latest
Trek chapter with that core essence alongside Dennis, Charlie Jane, Isaac, and our incredible
IDW team.

Star Trek #1 warps into comic book shops on September 23, 2026, just a few weeks after the franchise’s 60th anniversary. Pre-orders for Star Trek #1 are due August 17.

The post Exclusive Preview Pages: STAR TREK #1 Comic Stars Captain Seven of Nine appeared first on Nerdist.

The new app launches with Facebook's AI creator assistant built into it, providing creators with personalized recommendations based on their content style, performance, audience engagement, and goals.

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Investors are still waiting for their share of the $250 million windfall, and VideoVerse co-founder Vinayak Shrivastav is now at the center of multiple legal cases.

⚡ Quick Take

• John Stewart has long been one of the most prominent members of DC Comics’ Green Lantern Corps.
• John Stewart’s history goes back over fifty years, and he’s one of DC’s most important characters.
• In the upcoming DCU series Lanters, John Stewart will make his live-action debut as a Green Lantern.

A Green Lantern series has been in the works since 2019. It was originally meant to focus on many members of the intergalactic Green Lantern Corps. Now, the final iteration of an HBO Green Lantern series has arrived. As part of their master plan for the on-screen DC Universe, James Gunn and Peter Safran announced a new DC television series called Lanterns. This live-action Green Lantern DCU entry will star Hal Jordan and John Stewart. According to the DC duo, this is “a True Detective-type mystery with our two Lanterns. A terrestrial-based mystery… that leads into the overall story… We find this ancient horror on Earth, and these guys are basically supercops on ‘Precinct Earth.'” And playing John Stewart is the star of the Netflix film Rebel Ridge, Aaron Pierre. James Gunn congratulated the actor via social media.

Welcome to DC, Aaron Pierre. After a long and grueling series of auditions I am absolutely sure we’ve found an incredible John Stewart. #Lanterns pic.twitter.com/1grFjppkQe

— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) October 9, 2024

Many of you out there might think Green Lantern is just that guy infamously played by Ryan Reynolds once, and soon, Friday Night Lights star Kyle Chandler. But that’s test pilot Hal Jordan. We’re here to tell you all about the 50-year legacy of John Stewart and why he’s one of DC Comics’ most important characters.

John Stewart’s Green Lantern is DC’s Most Prominent African-American Superhero DC Comics

John Stewart, contrary to popular belief, was not DC Comics’ first Black superhero. That honor belongs to Mal Duncan, one of the early members of the Teen Titans. A few months before Stewart appeared, Jack Kirby’s Forever People hit newsstands, which included the character Vykin the Black. Regardless, it’s safe to say that John Stewart’s Green Lantern is DC’s most prominent African-American superhero today. He has totally eclipsed the earlier debuting characters.

John Stewart’s Historic DC Comics Debut DC Comics

The creative power duo of writer Denny O’Neil and artist Neal Adams created John Stewart, appearing in 1971’s Green Lantern/Green Arrow #87. This creative team reinvigorated the Green Lantern comics starting in 1970, making it more socially relevant (and allowing DC to compete with Marvel). Despite the existence of the Black superheroes previously mentioned, there was no one headlining a book, even for an issue. John Stewart did that, making his debut historic as Green Lantern.

The story “Beware My Power” introduced John Stewart as a headstrong young man, an architect who had a distaste for authority. So Green Lantern Hal Jordan and John butted heads from the very start. Especially seeing as how Hal was essentially a space cop. But because of John Stewart’s fearlessness, the Guardians of Oa chose him as Hal’s backup Green Lantern. Hal’s backup at the time, Guy Gardner, sustained serious injuries and couldn’t fill the role.

DC Comics

One of John Stewart’s first assignments as Green Lantern was to protect a racist politician. Despite his personal issues with the politician, Stewart completed the mission successfully. And he exposed the same politician for various crimes while doing so. This impressed Hal Jordan, who then realized the Guardians of the Universe made the right choice in selecting Stewart as Green Lantern. Sadly, readers wouldn’t see much of John Stewart after this debut on a regular basis. At least not for some time.

John Stewart Becomes Earth’s Primary Green Lantern in the DC Universe DC Comics

After that issue, for much of the 1970s, John Stewart only appeared sporadically. DC had created a cool new character but didn’t seem to know what to do with him. Finally, in the early 1980s, Hal Jordan quit the Green Lantern Corps. This meant John Stewart became the Green Lantern for Sector 2814 full-time. John Stewart headlined the Green Lantern series and was the prominent Green Lantern of Earth during Crisis on Infinite Earths. It was during this time that John ditched the mask and secret identity. And he let the entire world know who he really was. He also began a romance with a fellow Lantern, Katma Tui, from the planet Korugar.

DC Comics

After this point, no one would ever sideline John Stewart again at DC Comics. John Stewart headlined the Green Lantern Corps team book, which put him side by side with Hal Jordan and other Lanterns. After his wife Katma was murdered, John lost his way. In his arrogance, he accidentally let a planet die during the DC event series Cosmic Odyssey. The weight of these actions would bear heavily on him for years. He finally headlined his own series in the early ’90s, Green Lantern: Mosaic. There he became the guardian of the patchwork world of Oa. And he achieved nearly godlike powers. Although it only lasted 18 issues, this series was critically acclaimed.

From Green Lantern to Darkstar, and back to Green Lantern Again DC Comics

In the mid-’90s, John Stewart and all other Green Lanterns became depowered, when Hal Jordan lost control and became the villain Parallax. He destroyed all the power rings but one, which went to a new character, Kyle Rayner. For a few years, Rayner was the only Green Lantern in the universe. But as Green Lantern, he sought mentorship from John Stewart, preserving his presence in the DC Universe. Stewart was now part of another intergalactic peacekeeping force, the Darkstars. But When Rayner decided to create new rings and expand the Corps, one of the first people to get a new ring was Stewart.

Justice League and Mainstream Stardom for Green Lantern John Stewart DC/WB

John Stewart’s biggest boost in popularity came in 2001. After several years of waiting, the creators of Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series brought the DC heroes together for Justice League. When they were deciding which Green Lantern to use for the team, series creator Bruce Timm chose John Stewart. He reinvented the character, making him a no-nonsense ex-marine. (The comics would later adopt this aspect of John Stewart’s backstory.) The popularity and wider reach of the TV series made it so, for many kids, John Stewart was the Green Lantern. After nearly 30 years since his creation, John Stewart finally broke into the mainstream consciousness,

An Entire Generation’s Green Lantern DC Comics

The arrival of the Justice League cartoon coincided with a surge in popularity for the Green Lantern brand at DC Comics. Stewart became the lead in a new Green Lantern Corps series and was a central figure in company-wide events like Sinestro Corps War and Blackest Night. Using his architectural skills, he even designed the new Hall of Justice for the Justice League. Although he was only mentioned at the end of the only season of Green Lantern: The Animated Series, John Stewart appeared across other media, such as in Young Justice, Teen Titans Go!, and several animated films. Just this year, he starred in his own movie, Green Lantern: Beware My Power. Interestingly, Aldis Hodge, who played another DC hero, Hawkman, in Black Adam, provided his voice.

Warner Bros. Animation John Stewart as a Live-Action DC Universe Green Lantern

When John Stewart’s Green Lantern arrives on HBO as part of the DC Universe, it could be the biggest spotlight the character has ever had in media. We don’t know too much about who John Stewart will be in Lanterns. But it sounds like he’ll be part of an epic adventure.

John P. Johnson/HBO

A well-deserved reward for a character who was once just thought of as another hero’s “backup guy.” John Stewart long ago outgrew that and is now one of the most prominent heroes of the DC Universe.

Lanterns premieres on Sunday, August 16, on HBO Max.

Originally published on October 26, 2022.

The post The History of Green Lantern John Stewart, Explained appeared first on Nerdist.

This is the latest zero-day released by security researcher Nightmare Eclipse, despite Microsoft publicly threatening to take legal action against them.