Tech News — 2026-03-27#

Story of the Day#

OpenAI has abruptly pulled the plug on Sora, its highly hyped AI video generator, after just five months. The sudden shutdown exposes the staggering compute costs and copyright nightmares of generative video, cementing CEO Sam Altman’s pivot toward enterprise AI agents over flashy consumer toys.

Top Stories#

[Pentagon’s Ban on Anthropic Blocked in Court] · The Verge A federal judge has granted Anthropic a preliminary injunction, halting the Trump administration’s attempt to blacklist the AI company as a “supply chain risk”. Judge Rita F. Lin blasted the Department of Defense’s move as “classic illegal First Amendment retaliation” designed to punish the company for its public criticism of the government’s military contracting. The ruling allows Anthropic to continue operating while the lawsuit proceeds, keeping them in the lucrative federal contracting game ahead of a rumored October IPO.

[Sony Hikes PlayStation 5 Prices to Eye-Watering Levels] · Engadget Blaming a pressured “global economic landscape,” Sony is jacking up the price of its PS5 consoles by as much as $150 in the US. Starting April 2nd, the base PS5 will cost $650, the Digital Edition hits $600, and the PS5 Pro balloons to an astronomical $900. The aggressive price hike—the second in less than a year—reflects ongoing component shortages and inflation, but risks alienating players at a time when the console cycle is rapidly aging.

[Meta Turns to Natural Gas for its Massive AI Data Center] · Bloomberg Meta has struck a deal with Entergy to fund the construction of seven new natural gas power plants to fuel its $27 billion AI data center in Louisiana. The move will add 5,200 megawatts of power to the grid, as tech giants increasingly lean on fossil fuels to satisfy the insatiable energy demands of AI models. The agreement attempts to head off growing public backlash by forcing Meta to foot the infrastructure bill, avoiding a spike in local consumers’ utility rates.

[Apple Finally Kills the Mac Pro] · Ars Technica Apple is pulling the plug on the Mac Pro desktop, ending a years-long struggle to adapt its ultimate professional workstation to the Apple Silicon era. The company confirmed the M2 Ultra model released in 2023 will be the last of its kind, with no future iterations planned. With the Mac Studio offering massive power in a smaller footprint, the highly expandable tower was trying to fill a niche that no longer exists, effectively closing the book on an iconic hardware lineage.

[FBI Director’s Email Hacked by Iran-Linked Group] · TechCrunch The pro-Palestinian hacking group Handala, widely believed to be affiliated with Iranian cyberintelligence, successfully breached the personal email account of FBI Director Kash Patel. The hackers published hundreds of personal emails and photos—including one of Patel taking a mirror selfie with rum—to prove the compromise. The FBI confirmed the hack but noted the stolen data is “historical in nature” and does not contain classified government information.

Also Worth Knowing#

• [SoftBank Secures $40B Loan for OpenAI] (TechCrunch): SoftBank took out a record $40 billion bridge loan to finance an investment in OpenAI ahead of the AI firm’s highly anticipated 2026 IPO.
• [Sony and Honda Scrap the Afeela EV] (Engadget): Sony and Honda are killing off their joint “PlayStation Car” electric vehicle project, canceling the Afeela 1 and 2 amidst a tough global market for EVs and massive financial losses.
• [Supply Chain Attack Hits Popular AI Package] (Slashdot): The massively popular “LiteLLM” Python package on PyPI was compromised with an infostealer backdoor, potentially exposing API credentials across hundreds of thousands of devices.
• [Apple Hands Over “Hide My Email” User Data] (Slashdot): Apple provided the FBI with the true identity behind an iCloud “Hide My Email” address, demonstrating the limits of the service’s anonymity features during criminal investigations.
• [AMD Unveils 208MB Cache Processor] (Ars Technica): AMD introduced the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition, which stacks 3D V-Cache on both CPU dies to deliver an absurd 208MB of total cache for a 10% boost in gaming performance.