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AI agents now write code and run tasks at machine speed, and sometimes those same agents delete the wrong thing. AI-enabled attackers can also use AI to find zero-day vulnerabilities more easily. Most recovery systems still run at human speed, which widens the gap between how fast data can be lost and how fast it can be restored. Eon was built to close that gap. In our latest Hot Seat, Tim Phillips talks to Gonen Stein, president and co-founder of Eon, about what recovery should look like in the agentic AI era. Stein and his co-founders previously built CloudEndure, a cloud migration and disaster recovery outfit that AWS acquired. They found that backup had never been redesigned for cloud-native infrastructure: the old model assumed static servers and scheduled maintenance windows, while cloud environments change constantly. There's also a gap between the C-suite's faith in recovery and today's reality. Eon's research found that 98 percent of executives were confident in recovery, while most had suffered three or more failures last year. As Stein puts it, a completed backup is not the same as a tested restore. Configurations drift, new services appear, and backup policies fall behind, so the plan looks fine until you need it. The risk is not hypothetical. In April, an AI agent tasked with resolving a credential mismatch in PocketOS's staging environment deleted the production database and took the attached backups with it. The event took nine seconds. The agent used valid credentials and a legitimate API, so no alert fired. Eon's answer is to hold backups in immutable, logically air-gapped vaults with separate credentials, so that when something goes wrong the restore can target a single table or record rather than rebuild the whole environment. Watch the Hot Seat to hear Stein on AI-augmented attacks, the case for isolated recovery, and the checks to run first. You will learn about: Why confidence outruns evidence: a green tick on a backup dashboard does not confirm that a full recovery has been tested, and most organizations cannot pass that test. AI on both sides: coding agents ship faster than humans can review their work, while AI-augmented attackers shrink the window between finding a vulnerability and exploiting it. Recovery outside the blast radius: backups that share credentials or storage with production are vulnerable to the same attacks and faults, which is why air-gapped vaults matter. Granular restore: why you should be able to recover a specific table or record at a precise timestamp, rather than rehydrating an entire environment. If you are responsible for cloud data, backup policy, or recovery planning, watch this one. Sponsored by Eon.io + Inc.

Netris provides software that runs on network switches, and offers a platform that helps neocloud operators reduce the time it takes to go live.

The Department of Commerce declined to give the Chinese-owned automaker a special authorization to keep selling EVs in the U.S.

Apple raises prices of MacBook Air and Pro along with iPad Air and Pro

The online Apple Store went offline Thursday morning, but instead of such a move marking the launch of upgraded products, it came back online with nothing new to offer but higher prices. The budget-priced MacBook Neo wasn’t even spared from the spike, with its entry-level price climbing from $599 to $699. Along with the Neo, entry-level MacBook Air prices rose by $200 and base MacBook Pro machines increased by $300, putting the lowest-spec machines in the lines at $1,299 and $1,999, respectively. iPads also went up in price, with the base-model iPad Air (11” w/128GB of storage) jumping from $599 to $749 and the basic iPad Pro (11”, 256GB of storage) now priced at $1,199 up from $999. iPhones were spared from the price increase, for now at least, but that may not last either if the current trend in hardware pricing is any indicator. As we’ve been covering of late, and pretty much everyone is well aware, memory prices are skyrocketing thanks to the AI and datacenter boom, leading to shortages, longer lead times, and the need to increase prices on everything that contains even the barest minimum of anything that looks slightly like RAM. With entry-level MacBooks now starting at a minimum of 16 GB of sweet, sweet integrated memory, it’s no wonder the prices are increasing alongside everything else. Terminal Apple CEO Tim Cook even warned that price hikes were coming in an interview with the Wall Street Journal last week, telling the publication that increases were “unavoidable.” “We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable,” Cook told the WSJ in an interview. Cook didn’t give any details on the what or when of Apple price increases, but there’s no reason to guess any longer. Microsoft has been affected by memory crunches too, and quietly rolled out a 12" Surface Pro and 13" Surface Laptop with a paltry 8 GB of memory this week. Given they have half of the minimum RAM spec needed to run Copilot+, the two machines are devoid of the AI marketing suffusing everything else that Microsoft now sells. As for when iPhone price increases may rear their heads, that’s still unclear, but don’t expect it to take too much longer. Micron, one of Apple’s RAM suppliers, said in its Q3 earnings call that it had signed agreements with 16 of its commercial customers to lock in historically high memory prices through 2030 on the back of continued uncertainty. “Our customers are recognizing that supply shortages in memory and storage will take considerable time to improve,” Micron CEO, president, and chairman Sanjay Mehrotra said during this week’s earnings call. “Even as we expect industry supply to improve gradually in 2028, we currently do not have line of sight as to when memory supply will be able to catch up with increasing demand.” In other words, if that iPhone is looking long in the teeth, it might be time to upgrade before those prices, too, begin to climb. We reached out to Apple for comment, but didn’t hear back. ®

Two ICE agents harassed a poll worker on Election Day, demanding she remove social media posts they claimed threatened federal agents, according to Syracuse.com.

Paigelynne Gonyea, a poll worker in Syracuse, New York, said she received a phone call Tuesday from two ICE agents asking to meet with her. Not wanting to meet with them alone, she invited them into her work. “I’ve seen the news, especially in Minnesota,” she said. “And I didn’t want anything to happen to me at all.”

The ICE agents arrived with copies of her social media posts and driver’s license, and handed her a warning notice alerting her that they were investigating her for allegedly threatening ICE personnel. “They tried to scare me into signing it while I was working,” she said. The agents told her to “remove and/or discontinue” the behavior, according to the notice, which Gonyea shared on Instagram.

Gonyea frequently posts about immigration on social media. She believes the investigation was prompted after she shared a news article in January identifying Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good. “I think today is a great day for Jonathan to be indicted,” she wrote in the caption.

Gonyea did not believe that her post or caption qualified as doxxing. “I didn’t dox his personal information, such as address, phone number,” she told Syracuse.com.

Ross, who was only placed on three days of administrative leave for shooting Good in the head, chest, and arm, faced virtually no consequences for killing an innocent woman in broad daylight. It appears that federal law enforcement now view pleas for actual justice as some kind of threat.

“For ICE to come to me over a social media post just feels very 1984 to me,” Gonyea said. “They definitely should have known better to not go into a polling place, even if I said it was OK.”

Kevin Ryan, the Republican Elections Commissioner, spoke with polling employees about whether it was a hoax, and confirmed with the Department of Homeland Security that a visit had been made.

Dustin Czarny, the Democratic Elections Commissioner, said that election law prohibits anyone but poll workers, elections inspectors, and voters from entering a polling place. “There’s no role for law enforcement officials to be inside a polling place unless they are responding to an emergency of some kind,” he told Syracuse.com. “There is no indication of that here.”

Gonyea’s experience is just the latest example of how far federal law enforcement is willing to go to silence critics of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts. Earlier this week in Texas, a man received a 30-year prison sentence for transporting leftwing zines linked to a protest at ICE’s Prairieland Detention Facility. Others involved in the protest received sentences of up to 50 years.

Additionally, the intrusion of ICE agents into a polling place on Election Day should raise serious red flags amid concerns that Trump could use federal law enforcement to intimidate voters in future elections.

Two filings in separate slush fund cases last week threaten to reignite the political firestorm in Congress over the fund and its prospective use to handsomely reward January 6 offenders.

In a case challenging the fund brought in the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge Leonie Brinkema had handed the Department of Justice a clean way to close out Floyd v. Department of Justice, the case challenging Trump’s $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund.

Without exactly ordering Justice to do anything, she offered the department an off-ramp: if Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, Jr., and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent file a declaration, under penalty of perjury, stating that they will not take any action to create or operate the fund and that it “will not proceed in any manner, or under any name,” it would, in her words, “avoid any further litigation in this civil action.”

The alternative, Brinkema made clear, was that she would issue a scheduling order and require DOJ to answer the complaint by July 17.

DOJ filed its response to the offer last Friday. Rather than submit the requested declaration, DOJ argued that the declarations were “unnecessary” in light of Blanche’s unsworn verbal assurances in Congress that the DOJ won’t go forward with the fund. The department argued those words sufficed to moot the case and that Brinkema’s request “implicates serious separation of powers concerns.”

That separation-of-powers argument is the filing’s most blustering move, and its weakest. DOJ leans on so-called apex-doctrine cases holding that senior officials shouldn’t get dragged into litigation when their testimony is available through other channels. That doctrine is meant to keep litigants from harassing busy executives over matters peripheral to their actual duties. It’s not a real separation-of-powers principle.

But Blanche and Woodward aren’t peripheral here. Woodward signed the settlement agreement himself, an unusual move clearly meant to impress Trump, and Blanche put his own name on the filings defending it. Having made themselves the line attorneys on this deal, they can hardly now claim their testimony is marginal.

Moreover, DOJ’s obstreperous response keeps the focus on the question it doesn’t want to answer rather than the question it does. Although Brinkema entered a preliminary injunction not long after receiving the complaint, the five plaintiffs have an uphill road to climb to establish standing. The plaintiffs are two individuals, a city (New Haven), and two public-interest organizations. They’ve been harmed by the administration’s zealous immigration initiative but their claims of individualized injury based on the slush fund itself are tenuous.

On the other hand, the administration has a weak hand to play for the mootness argument. Their adamant, repeated contention is Blanche’s unsworn verbal assurances that the DOJ won’t go forward with the fund suffice to moot the case. Under any conventional mootness analysis, this isn’t a moot settlement agreement. The test is whether the defendant has shown it is “absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur.” And the burden falls on the party asserting mootness and is especially “heavy” if based on voluntary dismissal, as it was here.

Blanche’s unsworn assurances, coupled with the refusal to formalize them, don’t begin to cut it legally. For starters, Blanche already has made clear that Trump’s every wish is his command. And Trump continues to insist that he favors the fund: He recently told Meet the Press that “if it was up to me, I’d pay them the kind of money that they deserve.”

Trump here isn’t simply the final authority. He is also the beneficiary of a supposed settlement agreement, which is akin to a contract. That makes it his prerogative to enforce. Until Trump, the actual beneficiary of the settlement, agrees to rescind it, DOJ’s say-so doesn’t make the fund disappear as a legal matter.

More fundamentally, the legal question on the table is not what Blanche said to Congress. It’s whether those words, combined with DOJ’s adamant refusal to put anything in writing, are enough to make the settlement agreement moot as a matter of law. Brinkema is well within her rights to conclude they are not. The same day DOJ filed its response to her, a group of 35 retired federal judges filed a brief replying to a brief Trump had filed for the plaintiffs in the case, including his sons and companies.

That case sits before Judge Kathleen Williams in the Southern District of Florida, where Trump’s original lawsuit against the IRS was dismissed in May after a “settlement” that conjured the Anti-Weaponization Fund into existence.

The 35 judges’ reply brief treats DOJ’s abandonment of the fund not as evidence the dispute is over, but as fresh proof that it was never real to begin with. As they put it, the fact that one “side” of the supposed dispute could unilaterally scrap a $1.776 billion settlement term without so much as a revised written agreement makes it clear the parties colluded, in which case a federal court can’t hear it. In other words: The very retreat DOJ is offering Brinkema as proof of mootness, retired judges in Florida are offering Williams as proof of collusion.

Far worse for DOJ and Trump’s lawyers, Williams is weighing whether both sides defrauded her with the contrived filing and settlement, a finding that could brand the agreement bogus and expose the lawyers who signed it to sanctions. She hasn’t ruled yet, and she may stop well short of taking on such a bitter fight, with the 11th Circuit in a position to countermand her. But the question is now squarely hers to answer.

Two weeks ago, in a separate filing opposing the plaintiffs’ TRO motion, DOJ made essentially this same mootness case on the same Blanche testimony, and I wrote at the time that the argument was headed straight into a buzzsaw. Its strategy since has been to tell Congress and the courts “no worries” because the fund is dead. But that’s far from true as a legal matter, and it’s also no response to the possible fraud on the court that the lawyers perpetrated.

The fund collapsed last month under bipartisan political pressure, after Republican senators balked at funding compensation for people who assaulted police officers on January 6. Enough of them seemed willing to take Blanche’s word for it and drop the subject. But if the courts reject DOJ’s mootness claim, that reopens exactly the controversy Blanche’s testimony was supposed to close. The fund would be undead, again the living nightmare that Republicans and the administration thought they had buried.

I caused a great deal of commotion yesterday with the unfortunately titled piece, “Why Democrats need their own Trump.” Many people understandably never got past the headline. The point wasn’t that Democrats need a Trump-like figure. It was that Trump has exposed just how much power the presidency actually has once you stop treating norms and traditions as untouchable. But others read the…

Source

Users with hopelessly borked Windows devices have a new avenue of recovery in the form of point-in-time restore for Windows 11. The service is designed to restore a Windows 11 PC to its exact state at an earlier point in time and is accessed through the Troubleshoot menu in the Windows Recovery Environment. According to Microsoft, each restore point covers the operating system, apps, settings, and local files. It is stored locally and automatically deleted after 72 hours or when free disk space falls below 20 GB. New points are created approximately every 24 hours by default, although the interval can be configured. Like the existing System Restore functionality, point-in-time restore uses the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to get a device back to a previous state. However, there are differences. Point-in-time restores are scheduled, whereas System Restore requires an event or manual intervention to trigger a restore point. Point-in-time restore mitigates storage impact by using reserved storage and also has a maximum retention period of 72 hours for each restore point. Point-in-time restore is on by default on devices with an OS volume size of 200 GB or greater and not under enterprise management, such as Windows Home and Pro. It'll be off by default on managed systems until Windows 11 26H2 arrives. There are some downsides. A restore can only be triggered locally, although Microsoft plans to add remote initiation via Intune in the future. The upshot is that it has limited utility for administrators. There is also the potential for problems with Outlook, where a data file (.ost) mismatch might occur after a restore, necessitating the deletion or renaming of files, and Windows Recall may be disabled after a restore. Some might argue the latter is more of a feature than a known issue. "Point‑in‑time restore is an important foundation for the future of Windows recovery," Microsoft said, labeling it part of the company's Windows resiliency initiative. It's been in public preview for some time and is enabled on more than two million devices. However, nagging questions remain. Why has it taken so long to add this capability to Windows, and why does the operating system allow updates that can leave users needing to restore their PCs in the first place? ®

⚡ Quick Take

• Focus Features shares the trailer for Sense and Sensibility at CinemaCon 2026. Daisy Edgar-Jones exudes yearning in this exclusive first look.

Sense and Sensibility brought much yearning to CinemaCon 2026. Coming later this year, Focus Features is adapting Jane Austen’s classic and beloved novel. Nerdist caught the exclusive trailer, which shows the beloved Dashwood family as they vacate their home. Daisy Edgar-Jones is set to play the beloved heroine Elinor Dashwood. Love and yearning is at an all-time high when Elinor becomes taken with the very handsome Edward.

Focus Features’ exclusive look of the upcoming adaption is short and sweet. We see the Dashwood family as they are forced out of their lovely estate. Soon after, Mrs. Jennings (Fiona Shaw) arrives and sets out to have the Dashwood girls married. Edward appears next, struck by Elinor’s beauty and grace, while Marianne falls in love with the handsome John Willoughby. Much yearning follows, including a shot of Mr. WIlloughby carrying Marianna home after hurting her ankle.

Columbia Pictures

Sense and Sensibility is a classically beloved tale about love and heartbreak. When news broke that Focus Features is adapting its own version of the story, hopeless romantics everywhere rejoiced. Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles will play the lovely Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. Elinor is rational and composed, while Marianna is much more emotional and romantic. George MacKay and Frank Dillane will play the girls’ handsome suitors, while Caitriona Balfe is Mrs. Dashwood.

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Daisy Edgar-Jones has proven her romantic acting chops in the past, starring alongside Paul Mescal Normal People (which is arguably more of a horror story than a romance, but I digress). Emma Thompson first portrayed Elinor in the 1995 film, lending Daisy some pretty big shoes to fill. But, with a reportiore like Daisy’s, we have no doubt that she’ll be able to step up.

Columbia Pictures/Mirage

Sense and Sensibility calls viewers to open their hearts and tune into their sense. We can’t wait to see how Focus Features will bring this classic tale of yearning to life. The film hits theaters on October 16, so we will see if it is yet another successful adaptation.

Originally published April 16, 2026.

The post Daisy Edgar-Jones Exudes Yearning in SENSE AND SENSIBILITY Trailer appeared first on Nerdist.

Darren Jackson announced Monday morning that he is stepping down as head coach of the Pajaro Valley High girls basketball team four months after he led the program to a league championship.

“It was a tough decision to make,” Jackson said. “I really was grateful for the opportunity the administrators and athletic director gave me. It was just time to move on.”

Jackson was hired in September to help rebuild a program that hadn’t had a winning season in seven years since they captured the Pacific Coast Athletic League’s Santa Lucia Division title in 2018-19.

In just one year at the helm, he led the co-Cypress Division champion Grizzlies to their second league title in the program’s history, and his 13th overall. 

“I wasn’t surprised,” PV athletic director Joe Manfre said. “He was put into a hard situation with participation for girls with our numbers in our girls basketball program. They’ve been declining the last couple of years.”

Jackson began the season with 15 girls on the roster, but ended up with eight after PV finished with a 16-8 overall record while sharing the league championship with Pacific Collegiate as both teams went 12-2 in league play.

“But, obviously, he did a great job with the group of girls that he had,” Manfre said.

Jackson was the former head coach at North Salinas for 24 years before being released from his duties in October 2024. He led the program to 469 total wins, 12 league titles and three Central Coast Section crowns.

It didn’t take long for Jackson, who currently sits with 485 career wins as a head coach, to find a new home. He was officially introduced as the new girls basketball head coach at Carmel High this week.

Manfre said anyone interested in the vacant position can apply on the EDJOIN website at https://www.edjoin.org/Home/JobPosting/2238692.

⚡ Quick Take

• The critically acclaimed live production of Paranormal Activity is now heading to the Broadway stage for a limited 20 week run.

When the found footage supernatural horror movie Paranormal Activity came out back in 2009, who could have believed this little movie that cost $15K would lead to an ongoing franchise? Now Paranormal Activity‘s stage production is coming to Broadway, according to a report from The Hollywood Reporter. This will be a limited 20-week engagement. Previews for Paranormal Activity – A New Story Live on Broadway begin August 14, with the official opening night performance on August 25 at the August Wilson Theatre. That opening date is a couple of week earlier than the original September date. Right now, the August Wilson Theatre is home to a new revival of Dog Day Afternoon starring Jon Bernthal.

Polk & Co

Paranormal Activity is written by Levi Holloway (Grey House) and directed by Felix Barrett (Sleep No More). Previously, this stage version played to audiences in London’s West End, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. But a run on Broadway was always the ultimate goal for the show. The play isn’t a direct adaptation of any of the movies or characters from the film. Instead, it’s an all-new supernatural story, in the same vein as the films. Jason Blum, whose Blumhouse Productions made a name for itself with the original film, has come on board as a producer. Down below is the official synopsis for the stage version:

James and Lou move from Chicago to London to escape their past, but they soon discover that places aren’t haunted, people are. With an original story inspired by the film franchise, Paranormal Activity reimagines the modern ghost story with an intimacy that only live theatre can provide.

Audiences have called the previous versions of Paranormal Activity the scariest horror-themed stage production of all time. With its arrival on Broadway, it will no doubt reach its biggest audience yet. With the play hitting Broadway and a reboot of the film coming in 2027, it looks like this franchise may be heading into a new era of prominence once again.

Originally published May 14, 2026.

The post PARANORMAL ACTIVTY Stage Production Heading to Broadway appeared first on Nerdist.

The Swift Package Index (SPI), a search engine for open source packages for the Swift programming language, is now part of Apple, though it will remain open source. Dave Verwer, who created SPI over six years ago along with Sven A. Schmidt, said on Mastodon that "I'll be joining Apple to continue working on everything related to Swift packages." Apple senior product manager Dave Lester said that SPI has become an "essential part of the Swift ecosystem" and referenced the intent to build a comprehensive package registry for Swift. The news follows Apple’s sponsorship of SPI back in March 2023. SPI is open source on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license and Verwer, Schmidt, and Swift Core Team member Ted Kremenek said that it will remain open source and continue to operate as it does today, though they also promised accelerated development. New capabilities are promised, including package signing and identity to improve "robustness and security." Currently anyone can add a package to SPI, and developers are reliant on metadata to judge the reliability and trustworthiness of a package. Each package in the index shows information, including the number of contributors; how long the project has been in development; the number of open issues; how many dependencies it has; the project README from GitHub; release notes; and a Use this package button, which shows how to use it from Xcode (the official Apple IDE) or using the Swift Package Manager. On its launch in 2020, SPI contained around 2,500 packages, and now has over 11,000: significant growth, but miniscule in comparison to the likes of PyPi (Python Package Index), which has over 8 million, the main reason being the niche status of Swift outside development for Apple platforms. That said, SPI has some strong features including that it runs compatibility-testing builds against each version of every package on a range of operating systems, including macOS, iOS, WatchOS, VisionOS, Linux, Wasm, and Android. A snag is that many packages report no compatibility information along with the message "we are currently processing a large build job backlog," making the feature useless for recent releases. A common complaint about SPI is that it only supports packages hosted on GitHub. Soon after the project launched, a user asked for GitLab support to be added. Verwer said "I would definitely like to get to it one day," but two years later admitted that "the situation has only got worse and we are more tightly coupled to GitHub than we were at the start." In May this year, another user remarked that "being attached only to GitHub is not good for the wider Swift community," but Verwer said that "this isn’t a current priority for us." The Apple move appears to signal a change of direction though. On Hacker News, Verwer said that "the great thing about a registry is that it doesn't care where the original source is hosted. We will be moving away from that model completely as we work towards this." Verwer’s remark suggests that, despite the news announcement emphasizing that SPI will remain as-is for now, big changes are planned. Apple’s resources may fix issues such as long waits for build results, though developers will also be wary of the implications of a well-liked independent package index coming under the company’s full control.®

⚡ Quick Take

• Millie Bobby Brown and the Duffer Brothers have a secret pact to not reveal the truth about Eleven’s fate in the Stranger Things finale.
• Brown revealed on the Happy Sad Confused podcast that they are the only three people who know the truth
• The audience was hopeful that Eleven survived but Brown didn’t confirm nor deny their thoughts.

Stranger Things wrapped up its fifth and final season at the very end of 2025. For some reason, that feels like a lifetime ago. Maybe it is because some fans are still somehow holding out hope that Conformity Gate is real and that another episode is coming, despite being told many times that this theory is bogus. Or perhaps it’s the ongoing debate about what really happened to Eleven at the end of the series. Did she actually die or is she living someone in solitude and peace to keep her friends safe? Well, there are only three people who really know the answer to that. Millie Bobby Brown said that she has a secret pact with the Duffer Brothers to never, ever reveal the truth about what happened to Eleven in the Stranger Things series finale. 

Netflix

Deadline reports that Brown opened up about this on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. She’s currently on the interview circuit to promote her next project with Netflix, Enola Holmes 3. When speaking with podcast host Josh Horowitz in front of an audience, she said that she’s sworn to secrecy by the Duffers about what happened to Eleven. 

“They were like, ‘Do not tell anyone. Because we made it a secret kind of pledge,’” Brown said. “No one else knows. It’s just us three. And what we do with that information, it’ll be up to them.” 

When asked what they believed Eleven’s fate was, the majority of the audience decided to go the Mike Wheeler route and stay hopeful. This delighted Brown, but she stuck to her pact and did not confirm nor deny any definitive truth.

In my sensitive heart and based on the fact that the Duffer Brothers have a hard time killing kids, I’d like to think that she’s out there somewhere. And who knows? Maybe a reunion special or reboot years down the line could reveal that information. But, for now, we will have to continue to be in the dark about Eleven’s actual ending.

The post Millie Bobby Brown Is Sworn to Secrecy About Eleven’s STRANGER THINGS Fate appeared first on Nerdist.

2 days left to lock in your spot at TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 and save up to $190 before Early Bird rates expire on June 26 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Register here.

The Department of Transportation wants to remove the brake-pedal requirement for vehicles "designed to be driven exclusively by automated driving systems."

⚡ Quick Take

• HALO fans built an enormous version of Reach‘s New Alexandria out of LEGOs, and debuted it at Brickworld Chicago this weekend.

Over 20 people contributed to an enormous LEGO build of New Alexandria, a level from Halo: Reach. The finished product debuted this weekend at Brickworld Chicago. It showcases a glassing attack by the Covenant on the “Reach City,” civilians running for their lives, and rescue efforts.

The city serves as the setting for the eighth level of Halo: Reach, and the LEGO build certainly does it justice. There are plenty of moving parts, with Falcons “flying” above the water, their rotors spinning continuously, and minifigs looking like they were frozen in action, fleeing or in battle.

The build is also well-lit, with interior beacons making the panic of the covenant attack feel real, along with glowing lasers and buildings illuminated from inside, adding to the scene. The builders even added music to pull the piece together and make it immersive.

A post from Instagram user and build collaborator David Ainza (@ainza_builds) lists out the collaborators’ handles.

This comes at a perfect time—Halo: Campaign Evolved comes out next month. The game will be a remake of the 2001 game Halo: Combat Evolved. It will include a revamped version of the old campaign, with improved graphics alongside additional missions and gameplay.

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Brickworld Chicago is an annual, massive showcase of elaborate LEGO builds as well as workshops and panels related to LEGO. The convention began in Chicago but now boasts four locations annually.

Also displayed there this year was a model white house, accompanied by a massive bald eagle, a “framed” Monet’s Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies, and various other scenes set everywhere from the Wild West to space.

Brickworld brings LEGO conventions to Chicago, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, and, this September, the next will appear in Grand Rapids.

The post Fans Built a Huge LEGO Version of HALO’s New Alexandria appeared first on Nerdist.

⚡ Quick Take

• Netflix’s The One Piece anime remake will set sail in February 2027, and there’s new information about what it will show.
• In June 2026, The One Piece finally dropped its first trailer to show off a sleek yet not overly polished animation style.

It is safe to say that Netflix is all in on the One Piece universe. The streaming service’s successful One Piece live-action series made its debut in 2023 and it is already gearing up for a third season, titled The Battle of Alabasta, that’s coming in 2027. A while ago, we got news that Netflix would also have its own anime adaptation for One Piece, and that’s moving forward in a big way. The One Piece will adapt the original manga from the beginning of the East Blue saga and will release on Netflix in February 2027. 

Now, we finally have our first trailer for The One Piece, which looks like a ton of fun. This is a great way for new fans to get into the franchise and for old fans to relive all those early glory moments in a fresh format.

In addition to that trailer, The One Piece also dropped a few first images of some of our favorite characters.

Click To View Gallery Netflix Netflix

This series will have production by WIT Studio and we already know some tidbits about it. Netflix’s The One Piece anime series season one will cover approximately the first 50 chapters of the original manga. It will have seven episodes that lead up to Luffy’s encounter with Sanji, the sous chef of the floating restaurant Baratie. 

Netflix

Additionally, there’s new key art for The One Piece. In it, we see a scene in Windmill Village, where Monkey D. Luffy spent his childhood. It shows Luffy enjoying a lively time at the village bar, aptly titled Party’s Bar, alongside the visiting Red-Hair Pirates captain Shanks and first mate Benn Beckman, and the bar’s owner, Makino. 

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We cannot wait for this fresh take to set sail when The One Piece hits Netflix in February 2027.

Originally published May 5, 2026.

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Amazon has promised a $13 billion chunk of its mammoth capex plans to build AI and cloud infrastructure in India. The cloud services and software giant has said it expects $200 billion capex for 2026 as, like other vendors in the market, it struggles to build compute capacity to support the expected explosion in demand for AI services. Having announced a $35 billion investment in India in 2025, Amazon's commitments in the country between 2010 and 2030 total more than $88 billion, some of which is for new retail fulfillment centers and delivery stations. The new $13 billion is earmarked for AI and cloud infrastructure, including additional AWS datacenter capacity in Mumbai and Hyderabad. AWS promises startups, enterprises, and government organizations access to custom AI chips, managed AI services, cloud technologies, and developer tools. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced the news following a meeting with Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. "As we grow Amazon in India, our business priorities align with India's priorities of democratizing access to AI, digitizing small businesses, creating jobs, and enabling exports, and we are investing over $48 billion in the coming five years to meet the strong demand across our business in India and to help India achieve these priorities. We are inspired by Prime Minister Modi's vision of a Viksit and Atmanirbhar Bharat [Developed and Self-Reliant India], we are committed to being a long-term partner in India's growth story," Jassy said. Speaking to CNBC, Jassy said the capital investment plans were designed to capture an inflection point in cloud and AI markets. "When you have shifts that are this momentous, you want to make sure that you invest in such a way that you can pursue the opportunity as broadly for your customers as possible," he said. In January last year, Amazon proposed an $11 billion investment in the US state of Georgia. AWS indicated the funds would be directed toward datacenters in Butts and Douglas counties. In July last year US president Trump described India as a "dead economy," claiming that India's purchasing of energy from Russia had fueled Putin's war on Ukraine and instituting retaliatory tariffs among other trade restrictions. The tariffs were imposed under emergency-power (IEEPA) laws and were to be paid by US importers, of course, not Indian exporters. US importers and shippers last month began receiving tariff refunds after a Supreme court ruling that Trump overstepped his authority in enacting them. US Customs and Border Protection has not released specific data detailing exactly how many individual importers claimed refunds on goods shipped from India, but many have applied. In November last year, Amazon said it would invest up to $50 billion to expand AI and supercomputing capabilities for US government customers of AWS. This would add nearly 1.3 gigawatts of additional compute capacity across AWS Top Secret, AWS Secret, and AWS GovCloud (US) Regions, it said. ®

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