Tech News — 2026-06-06#

Story of the Day#

Google has signed a staggering $30 billion deal to pay Elon Musk’s SpaceX $920 million a month for access to xAI’s data centers. The massive agreement highlights the extreme financial lengths tech giants are willing to go to secure the computing power necessary for the AI arms race ahead of SpaceX’s initial public offering.

Top Stories#

Trump Admin Pushes for OpenAI Equity and Military AI Integration · TechCrunch President Donald Trump is exploring an unprecedented deal for the US government to take an equity stake in OpenAI, while concurrently issuing a memo that forces the “most advanced AI in the world” into military hands. The memo restricts companies from altering AI models used by the military without prior approval, signaling a tight fusion of commercial AI and national defense. Amidst this policy overhaul, top White House AI advisor Sriram Krishnan is stepping down from his post.

Meta Pivots to AI-Generated Clickbait News Feeds · The Verge Meta has replaced the public “Discover” feed in its standalone Meta AI app with a “For You” section entirely populated by AI-generated clickbait stories. The topics, images, and text are entirely synthetic and highly questionable, demonstrating Meta’s willingness to automate engagement-bait at the expense of human-created content.

Ladybird Browser Bans Public Pull Requests Over AI Sludge · Slashdot The maintainers of the Ladybird browser announced they will no longer accept public pull requests because it has become too cheap and fast for bad actors to generate “serious-looking” contributions with AI. The policy shift highlights a growing crisis in open-source development, where the burden of verifying AI-generated code has broken the traditional model of community trust and contribution.

First New Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Design Reaches Criticality · Slashdot Antares successfully reached criticality with its Mark 0 test reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory, becoming the first new reactor design to do so under an accelerated federal mandate. While the current unit isn’t generating electricity, the milestone provides crucial physical validation data for licensing the startup’s mobile nuclear technology.

Scientists Ejected from Conference for Protesting Trump Science Policies · Ars Technica Five prominent scientists were forcibly removed from the American Diabetes Association conference in New Orleans and stripped of their credentials. Their offense was distributing journal reprints outside an NIH director’s talk that criticized the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on scientific research, raising stark alarms about censorship in the medical and scientific communities.

Bank of England Warns AI Could Face Energy Rationing · Bloomberg Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey cautioned that artificial intelligence deployment might need to be actively rationed. The warning underscores a looming reality: the sheer lack of electrical grid capacity could fundamentally restrain the broader economy’s ability to roll out and scale new AI technologies.

EU Commits to Open Source in Tech Sovereignty Package · Slashdot The European Union has unveiled a tech sovereignty package that promises to make the public sector an “anchor consumer” for open-source software. The initiative aims to overhaul restrictive public procurement rules and establish a new funding instrument dedicated to the security and maintenance of essential open-source components.

Also Worth Knowing#

• GOG Apologizes for Emailing Nazi Symbols (The Verge): The gaming storefront blamed understaffing and QA miscommunications after accidentally including SS-associated runes in a newsletter promoting a Slavic mythology game.
• OpenAI Unveils Lockdown Mode (TechCrunch): ChatGPT is getting a new feature designed to restrict sensitive data sharing and mitigate the likelihood of successful prompt injection attacks.
• US States Plan Suit to Block Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger (Engadget): Led by a probe from California’s attorney general, multiple US states are reportedly preparing legal action to stop the massive proposed media consolidation.
• Hospital Ordered to Pay $13M Over Nichelle Nichols’ Death (Slashdot): A New Mexico jury found Gila Regional Medical Center negligent for missing a fatal heart attack when treating the 89-year-old Star Trek icon in 2022.