Author: Thefuturedatainsights

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Elon Musk’s X Corp has filed a lawsuit challenging a New York state law that requires social media companies to report how they moderate hate speech and disinformation. The complaint, filed in a federal court in Manhattan, seeks to halt the law, which X argues violates the First Amendment by forcing platforms to disclose sensitive information about their content moderation practices. “Today, @X filed a First Amendment lawsuit against a New York law, NY S895B,” X’s Global Government Affairs team posted Tuesday, adding that it had successfully challenged a similar law in California. “X is the…

AI companies are battling to dominate the industry, but sometimes they’re also battling in Pokémon gyms. As Google and Anthropic both study how their latest AI models navigate early Pokémon games, the results can be as amusing as they are enlightening — and this time, Google DeepMind has written in a report that Gemini 2.5 Pro resorts to panic when its Pokémon are close to death. This can cause the AI’s performance to experience “qualitatively observable degradation in the model’s reasoning capability,” according to the report. AI benchmarking — or, the process of comparing the performance of different AI models…

Waymo is expanding its robotaxi service area by another 80 square miles in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Silicon Valley, the company announced Tuesday. Waymo’s commercial service area now covers more than 250 square miles across California, pushing the driverless Jaguar I-Pace vehicles into new pockets of three populous metro areas. The expansion comes a little over a week after several Waymo robotaxis were burned and vandalized during protests in Los Angeles over the Trump administration’s immigration raids. The scorched Waymo robotaxis — images that became emblematic of those protests — prompted the company to pull back…

An outbreak of bird flu has been confirmed in a small backyard flock in County Durham, just weeks after the government lifted the mandatory housing order.The case of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 was detected in poultry in Stanhope, Bishop Auckland on 17 June 2025.It comes just days after a small commercial poultry unit in West Yorkshire confirmed an outbreak of avian influenza.“All poultry on the premises will be humanely culled,” Defra stated in its official update on the Co Durham case on Tuesday evening (17 June).The outbreak affected 80 free range chickens, two ducks and two geese.In line with…

Sao Paulo, Brazil – In the far north of Brazil, where the Amazon River collides with the sea, an environmental dilemma has awakened a national political debate. There, the Brazilian government has been researching the possibility of offshore oil reserves that extend from the eastern state of Rio Grande do Norte all the way to Amapá, close to the border with French Guiana. That region is known as the Equatorial Margin, and it represents hundreds of kilometres of coastal water. But critics argue it also represents the government’s conflicting goals under Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva. During his…

Paris uses water from the Seine river to cool a wide range of buildings via a series of underground pipes. As Paris braces for a heat wave this weekend, a little-known network of underground pipes will be cooling the Louvre museum and other storied landmarks using water from the Seine River. Since 1991, the river water has been cooling more than 800 buildings via a humble but hard-working system that is still relatively under-utilized worldwide. Paris boasts the largest such urban cooling network in Europe: 110 kilometers (68 miles) of subterranean pipes criss-crossing the City of Light, reducing its need…

Anysphere launched a new $200-a-month subscription plan for its popular AI coding tool, Cursor, the company announced in a blog post on Monday. The new plan, Ultra, offers users 20x more usage on AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and xAI compared to the company’s $20-a-month subscription plan, Pro. Anysphere also says Cursor users on the Ultra plan will get priority access to new features. Anysphere CEO Michael Truell said in the blog that the Ultra plan was made possible through multi-year partnerships with AI model providers. In the last several months, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind have similarly…

Buzzy autonomous vehicle software company Applied Intuition has closed a $600 million Series F and tender offer, pushing its valuation up to $15 billion. The round was co-led by BlackRock-managed funds and Kleiner Perkins, and included new investments from the Qatar Investment Authority, Abu Dhabi Investment Council, Greycroft, and more. Existing investors General Catalyst, Lux, Elad Gil, and Mary Meeker’s growth fund Bond also participated. Applied Intuition’s raise comes just one year after it completed a $250 million Series E, which put the company at a $6 billion valuation. The company makes software that helps companies and government agencies develop…

The government’s latest consultation reveals strong support for clearer food labelling — but confusing method of production labels could do more harm than good for farmers and shoppers alike.The consultation on fairer food labelling, initiated by the previous government, found widespread backing for transparent country of origin and method of production labelling. However, the NFU has cautioned that while country of origin labels are welcomed, method of production labelling risks causing consumer confusion and placing undue burdens on farms.The consultation sought views on plans to improve transparency in food labelling. The NFU’s response emphasised the need for labels to be…

2026 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1X with Carbon Aero packageGMDETROIT — General Motors is once again expanding its Corvette lineup with a new high-performance, hybrid variant of the quintessential American sports car.The Detroit automaker on Tuesday revealed the 2026 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1X “hypercar” — a souped-up version of the Corvette E-Ray hybrid that went on sale in 2023. It features similar performance outputs to the automaker’s current Corvette ZR1, including a twin-turbo V-8 engine, but has faster acceleration thanks to “electrification” technologies.”It is the most advanced Corvette we’ve ever produced. America’s true hypercar has arrived,” said Megan Dalley, Corvette marketing manager, during…