With a new company, Jeff Bezos will become a CEO again

He stepped down at Amazon in 2021 and doesn’t hold a CEO title at Blue Origin.

Jeff Bezos is one of the world’s richest and most famous tech CEOs, but he hasn’t actually been a CEO of anything since 2021. That’s now changing as he takes on the role of co-CEO of a new AI company, according to a New York Times report citing three people familiar with the company.

Grandiosely named Project Prometheus (and not to be confused with the NASA project of the same name), the company will focus on using AI to pursue breakthroughs in research, engineering, manufacturing, and other fields that are dubbed part of “the physical economy”—in contrast to the software applications that are likely the first thing most people in the general public think of when they hear “AI.”

Bezos’ co-CEO will be Dr. Vik Bajaj, a chemist and physicist who previously led life sciences work at Google X, an Alphabet-backed research group that worked on speculative projects that could lead to more product categories. (For example, it developed technologies that would later underpin Google’s Waymo service.) Bajaj also worked at Verily, another Alphabet-backed research group focused on life sciences, and Foresite Labs, an incubator for new AI companies.

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5 plead guilty to laptop farm and ID theft scheme to land North Koreans US IT jobs

Fleets of laptops run from US residences gave appearance workers were in the US.

Five men have pleaded guilty to running laptop farms and providing other assistance to North Koreans to obtain remote IT work at US companies in violation of US law, federal prosecutors said.

The pleas come amid a rash of similar schemes orchestrated by hacking and threat groups backed by the North Korean government. The campaigns, which ramped up nearly five years ago, aim to steal millions of dollars in job revenue and cryptocurrencies to fund North Korean weapons programs. Another motive is to seed cyber attacks for espionage. In one such incident, a North Korean man who fraudulently obtained a job at US security company KnowBe4 installed malware immediately upon beginning his employment.

On Friday, the US Justice Department said that five men pleaded guilty to assisting North Koreans in obtaining jobs in a scheme orchestrated by APT38, also tracked under the name Lazarus. APT38 has targeted the US and other countries for more than a decade with a stream of attack campaigns that have grown ever bolder and more advanced. All five pleaded guilty to wire fraud, and one to aggravated identity theft, for a range of actions.

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UCLA faculty gets big win in suit against Trump’s university attacks

Government can’t use funding threats to override the First Amendment.

On Friday, a US District Court issued a preliminary injunction blocking the United States government from halting federal funding at UCLA or any other school in the University of California system. The ruling came in response to a suit filed by groups representing the faculty at these schools challenging the Trump administration’s attempts to force UCLA into a deal that would substantially revise instruction and policy.

The court’s decision lays out how the Trump administration’s attacks on universities follow a standard plan: use accusations of antisemitism to justify an immediate cut to funding, then use the loss of money to compel an agreement that would result in revisions to university instruction and management. The court finds that this plan was deficient on multiple grounds, violating legal procedures for cutting funding to an illegal attempt and suppressing the First Amendment rights of faculty.

The result is a reprieve for the entire University of California system, as well as a clear pathway for any universities to fight back against the Trump administration’s attacks on research and education.

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Judge smacks down Texas AG’s request to immediately block Tylenol ads

The Texas lawsuit hinges on the unproven claim that Tylenol causes autism.

A Texas Judge has rejected a request from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to issue a temporary order barring Tylenol’s maker, Kenvue, from claiming amid litigation that the pain and fever medication is safe for pregnant women and children, according to court documents.

In records filed Friday, District Judge LeAnn Rafferty, in Panola County, also rejected Paxton’s unusual request to block Kenvue from distributing $400 million in dividends to shareholders later this month.

The denials are early losses for Paxton in a politically charged case that hinges on the unproven claim that Tylenol causes autism and other disorders—a claim first introduced by President Trump and his anti-vaccine health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

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After last week’s stunning landing, here’s what comes next for Blue Origin

“There’s never been such a high demand for launch as there is right now.”

For decades—yes, literally decades—it has been easy to dismiss Blue Origin as a company brimming with potential but rarely producing much of consequence.

But last week the company took a tremendous stride forward, not just launching its second orbital rocket, but subsequently landing the booster on a barge named Jacklyn. It now seems clear that Blue Origin is in the midst of a transition from sleeping giant to force to be reckoned with.

To get a sense of where the company goes from here, Ars spoke with the company’s chief executive, Dave Limp, on the eve of last week’s launch. The first thing he emphasized is how much the company learned about New Glenn, and the process of rolling the vehicle out and standing it up for launch, from the vehicle’s first attempt in January.

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Digitaler Souveränitätsgipfel: Vorteile für EU-Firmen bei IT-Ausschreibungen geplant

Der morgige Souveränitätsgipfel in Berlin fordert Eigenständigkeit bei Cloud, KI und Satellitennetzen. Wie das erreicht werden soll, bleibt unklar. (Bundesministerium für Digitalisierung un, Supercomputer)

Der morgige Souveränitätsgipfel in Berlin fordert Eigenständigkeit bei Cloud, KI und Satellitennetzen. Wie das erreicht werden soll, bleibt unklar. (Bundesministerium für Digitalisierung un, Supercomputer)

Report claims that Apple has yet again put the Mac Pro “on the back burner”

Mac Pro was last updated in mid-2023, one of the last Macs to switch from Intel.

Apple’s Power Mac and Mac Pro towers used to be the company’s primary workstations, but it has been years since they were updated with the same regularity as the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. The Mac Pro has seen just four hardware updates in the last 15 years, and that’s counting a 2012 refresh that was mostly identical to the 2010 version.

Long-suffering Mac Pro buyers may have taken heart when Apple finally added an M2 Ultra processor to the tower in mid-2023, making it one of the very last Macs to switch from Intel to Apple Silicon—surely this would mean that the computer would at least be updated once every year or two, like the Mac Studio has been? But Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says that Mac Pro buyers shouldn’t get their hopes up for new hardware in 2026.

Gurman says that the tower is “on the back burner” at Apple and that the company is “focused on a new Mac Studio” for the next-generation M5 Ultra chip that is in the works. As we reported earlier this year, Apple doesn’t have plans to design or release an M4 Ultra, and the Mac Studio refresh from this spring included an M3 Ultra alongside the M4 Max.

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Report claims that Apple has yet again put the Mac Pro “on the back burner”

Mac Pro was last updated in mid-2023, one of the last Macs to switch from Intel.

Apple’s Power Mac and Mac Pro towers used to be the company’s primary workstations, but it has been years since they were updated with the same regularity as the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. The Mac Pro has seen just four hardware updates in the last 15 years, and that’s counting a 2012 refresh that was mostly identical to the 2010 version.

Long-suffering Mac Pro buyers may have taken heart when Apple finally added an M2 Ultra processor to the tower in mid-2023, making it one of the very last Macs to switch from Intel to Apple Silicon—surely this would mean that the computer would at least be updated once every year or two, like the Mac Studio has been? But Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says that Mac Pro buyers shouldn’t get their hopes up for new hardware in 2026.

Gurman says that the tower is “on the back burner” at Apple and that the company is “focused on a new Mac Studio” for the next-generation M5 Ultra chip that is in the works. As we reported earlier this year, Apple doesn’t have plans to design or release an M4 Ultra, and the Mac Studio refresh from this spring included an M3 Ultra alongside the M4 Max.

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U.S. Office of Government Ethics: Trump kaufte persönlich Anteile an T-Mobile US und Intel

US-Präsident Donald Trump investierte privat in Firmen, die von seiner Industriepolitik Vorteile haben. Darunter ist die Deutsche Telekom-Tochter T-Mobile US. (Donald Trump, Intel)

US-Präsident Donald Trump investierte privat in Firmen, die von seiner Industriepolitik Vorteile haben. Darunter ist die Deutsche Telekom-Tochter T-Mobile US. (Donald Trump, Intel)