Software update likely caused US flight halt

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Software update likely caused US flight halt LINK

• A software update is the likely cause of the nationwide US flight ground stop on Friday, officials believe, after finding no sign that hackers were behind the outage that disrupted thousands of flights.
• The FAA issued the halt yesterday after a communications failure hit its air traffic control centers, lifting the order at 8:15 pm ET more than four hours later, with delays expected to continue for several days.
• CBS News reported the outage followed an update to the private network run by L3Harris, which rebooted and crashed, while officials said neither the week's Microsoft outage nor the FAA's new AI systems played any part.

Starship reaches orbit despite booster failure LINK

• SpaceX's Starship reached orbit on its 15th test flight even though the Super Heavy booster failed during its return and exploded in the Gulf of Mexico about 27 minutes after liftoff from Texas.
• Once in orbit, the Starship fired its engines with permission from mission controllers and deployed 26 Starlink satellites, meeting the main goals SpaceX set for the test flight.
• The Super Heavy booster was meant to return to the launch tower at Starbase for a catch by two mechanical arms called Chopsticks, but an automatic abort sent it into the sea instead.

Tesla Cybercab needs $299 monthly subscription LINK

• Tesla has started selling the $29,990 Cybercab to a handful of Austin-area customers, but the two-seat Robotaxi has no steering wheel and its touchscreen controls only let owners creep it along at about 2 mph.
• The car won't move at all without an active $299-a-month Autonomy Subscription, and buyers are limited to personal use inside Tesla's Robotaxi geofences, with commercial ride-hailing, delivery, or renting requiring separate written permission.
• Reselling or transferring the Cybercab without Tesla's approval triggers damages of at least $50,000, while Elon Musk said on X that the subscription is too high and should instead match FSD's roughly $115 monthly cost.

Google's smart glasses blur faces from Gemini LINK

• Google's upcoming Android XR smart glasses will automatically blur or redact people's faces in photos and video before those images are sent to the company's servers for the Gemini assistant to analyze.
• The blurring kicks in whenever a wearer asks Gemini something, like translating a menu or identifying an object, and it also hides the wearer's own face when they point the glasses at a mirror.
• Google says these images won't be saved in Gemini's history or used for AI training or ads, and Play Store apps are barred from real-time facial recognition, live-streaming, or disabling the recording light.

OpenAI disbands its robotics team LINK

• OpenAI is breaking up its robotics team for the second time, moving researchers into its main research group under Mark Chen and sending applied robotics and hardware staff to Greg Brockman's Applied organization.
• The shift reflects OpenAI's belief that general models like GPT-6 Astra can control robots directly; in an Nvidia test, an Astra agent hit a 74.8 percent success rate on simulated tasks versus 51 percent for specialized models.
• The change came so quickly that OpenAI left a booked booth empty at the Conference on Robot Learning in Austin, even as Sam Altman reportedly aims for a first public robot demo in 2027.

Nvidia approached Arm CEO to succeed Huang LINK

• Nvidia's board has reached out to Arm CEO Rene Haas as it looks for someone to replace Jensen Huang, the Financial Times reported yesterday, though Haas is one of several people under consideration with no offer made.
• Huang stepped down on Thursday after revelations of extramarital affairs, including one involving a suspected Chinese spy, throwing the chipmaker into crisis; after the report, Arm's US-listed shares fell more than 5% and Nvidia's dropped about 2%.
• Haas spent seven years at Nvidia before joining Arm in 2013 and becoming its CEO in 2022; other names analysts mention include AMD's Lisa Su, Micron's Sanjay Mehrotra, Apple's Johny Srouji, and internal picks Ian Buck and Kress.

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