Tech News — 2026-03-28#

Story of the Day#

OpenAI abruptly killed its highly anticipated video-generation model, Sora, and scuttled a $1 billion Disney partnership to stem massive compute costs. At the exact same time, the company raked in another $10 billion in funding, signaling a frantic pivot toward immediate profitability as it tries to justify a staggering $120 billion valuation.

Top Stories#

Uterus kept alive outside the body for the first time · MIT Technology Review Researchers at the Carlos Simon Foundation in Spain successfully maintained a freshly donated human uterus outside the body for 24 hours using a custom perfusion machine nicknamed “Mother”. The breakthrough could eventually extend the notoriously short viability window for organ transplants and allow scientists to study human embryo implantation in a living organ.

Anthropic and the Pentagon clash over autonomous weapons · Bloomberg Anthropic is fiercely objecting to the use of its AI models in fully autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance, sparking a major rift with the Pentagon just as hostilities commence in Iran. The conflict underscores the growing tension between AI safety-focused startups and the US military’s aggressive push to integrate generative tech into modern warfare.

Global regulators crack down on kids’ social media access · Engadget Indonesia just became the first Southeast Asian country to enforce a nationwide social media ban for users under 16, while Austria is preparing legislation to block kids under 14. These legislative moves arrive as platforms like Meta and YouTube face hundreds of millions of dollars in liability following devastating US jury verdicts over child safety harms.

NASA scraps lunar space station for a $20 billion moon base · Engadget NASA is officially pausing its international Lunar Gateway orbital station, redirecting its budget toward establishing a permanent $20 billion moon base. The major pivot, aimed at cementing an enduring human presence on the moon before the end of the Trump administration, will rely on commercial contractors to build semi-habitable infrastructure ahead of a crewed landing planned for 2028.

Samsung brings banner ads to its smart fridges · Slashdot Owners of Samsung’s $1,400 Family Hub smart refrigerators are furious after a software update began serving ads for water filters and Apple TV shows directly on their kitchen displays. The banner ad widget is part of a broader “Screens Everywhere” initiative, proving that even luxury home appliances are no longer safe from post-purchase monetization.

Sony hikes PS5 prices as AI eats the memory supply · Slashdot Sony is raising the US price of all PlayStation 5 models by $100 to $150, pushing the base disc model to $650 and the PS5 Pro to an eye-watering $900. The culprit is a severe shortage of RAM and flash memory chips, as manufacturers shift production lines away from consumer tech to feed the insatiable demand for AI data center accelerators like Nvidia’s H200.

Also Worth Knowing#

• OpenAI’s US Ad Pilot Exceeds $100 Million In Annualized Revenue In Six Weeks (Slashdot): OpenAI’s new foray into advertising inside ChatGPT has rapidly hit the $100 million annualized mark, with a broader self-serve platform coming in April.
• UK Startup Ignites Plasma Inside Nuclear Fusion Rocket (Slashdot): Pulsar Fusion successfully ignited plasma inside its prototype fusion exhaust system, a major propulsion milestone that could eventually cut Mars travel time from months to just weeks.
• SystemD Contributor Harassed Over Optional Age Verification Field (Slashdot): An open-source engineer faced doxxing and death threats after adding an optional birth date field to systemd to help corporate Linux distributions comply with looming government age-verification laws.
• Meta’s next AI glasses are reportedly designed with prescription lenses in mind (Engadget): Meta is preparing to launch new variants of its Ray-Ban AI smart glasses specifically catered to the prescription eyewear market, though they will lack built-in displays.
• Discord Engineers Add Distributed Tracing to Elixir’s Actor Model (InfoQ): Discord built a custom library to wrap Elixir messages in trace contexts, enabling zero-downtime distributed tracing for millions of concurrent users without crippling system performance.