Feed aggregator

Republicans can’t catch a break at the minute, and it’s all due to their mad, senile king.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump refused to sign a bipartisan housing bill, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which passed both the House and Senate with flying colors— catching members of his own party off guard.

The bill would create new homes and limit corporate investors’ ability to buy single-family residences. Members of the GOP have used it as an example of their concern for working people ahead of the November midterms.

The stage was quite literally set for the signing in the Capitol before Trump threw his hissy fit. With little over an hour before the public signing ceremony, the president said he wants to push through the SAVE Act, Republicans’ faulty voter ID bill, before doing anything about housing.

Republicans then rushed to remove the presidential seal from the podium, as Democrats began using the stage as a backdrop to highlight the president’s sudden flip-flop.

The Presidential seals are removed pic.twitter.com/LcenV4xLDE

— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) June 24, 2026

Following Trump’s public refusal, House Speaker Mike Johnson attempted some damage control in a press conference.

“The president, when we go through the details of the bill, he’s gonna understand that it’s a good product, and certainly something that fulfills his promises,” Johnson said.

The SAVE Act has passed in the House, but does not currently have the votes to pass the Senate. Nor should it—the bill will make it tougher for anyone lacking a paper copy of their birth certificate or passport to vote.

“The SAVE Act will make it exceedingly and unacceptably difficult for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans, to be heard,” Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock told Politico. “If all the people in the election can’t be heard, who are eligible to vote, then that’s something other than democracy.”

“I don’t think the American public knows what is in store for them if [the SAVE ACT] passes,” Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono added. “Millions of people are going to need to re-register.”

Kyle Griffin of MS NOW called the legislation “designed to help rig elections.”

Despite the president’s refusal to sign the housing bill, it could still become law in 10 days if Congress remains in session.

⚡ Quick Take

• Nerdist gives Supergirl starring Milly Alcock and Jason Momoa a 3 out of 5.
• The movie directly adapts Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s fantastic graphic novel Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow.
• Supergirl is the second movie in James Gunn’s DCU.

Sophomore albums are hard. Just ask Weezer (or whatever other example you want). The DCU only kicked off with Superman last year and its success was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it proved James Gunn could run a whole cinematic universe. A curse because it means anyone not named James Gunn making movies in that space would be unfairly compared to him. (We’ll see what happens with Lanterns on the TV side.) Craig Gillespie is the director in that first post-Superman slot with Supergirl. While the movie is perfectly enjoyable enough, it could have (and probably should have) been much more.

Warner Bros.

The movie directly adapts Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s fantastic graphic novel Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which gives it a strong narrative to work from. That it doesn’t have many aspirations beyond adapting that book leaves the movie feeling smaller than its intergalactic setting would lead you to believe. Ultimately, Supergirl hits highs of its own, even if it feels like a bit of a lesser outing.

When we first met Milly Alcock as Kara Zor-El, alias Supergirl, in last year’s Superman, she came across as a drunk party girl who didn’t train her dog. That vibe largely carries over to the beginning of her own movie. Despite her cousin Clark (David Corenswet) trying to make her feel at home on Earth, Kara spends a lot of her time in space, heading to systems with red suns so she can get drunk. She and Krypto bounce around the galaxy, basically doing nothing else.

Warner Bros.

Coincidentally, a young girl named Ruthye (Eve Ridley) happens into the same bar Kara’s in. She announces that she’s looking for a warrior to help her kill the vicious raider Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts) who murdered her whole family. Though Kara really wants nothing to do with any of it, she ends up stepping in when a nasty alien guy attempts to steal from Ruthye. Badda bing, badda boom, Ruthye decides Kara is the warrior she’s looking for. While Kara wants nothing to do with her at first, a particular act of violence leads her to change her tune.

Kara becomes a reluctant protector figure for the girl but continually tells her not to kill Krem, but instead to bring him to justice. The trouble is, Krem and his band of baddies are also kidnapping the galaxy’s young girls for…nefarious purposes. This plot puts Kara and Ruthye in the path of boorish intergalactic bounty hunter Lobo (Jason Momoa). Lobo can only make things more chaotic, as is his way.

Warner Bros.

Amid this narrative, we get flashbacks to Kara’s origin. Her father Zor-El (David Krumholtz) attempted to save a portion of Krypton from destruction and that is where Kara was born. But fate would make it so she, too, would have to leave the same way her cousin Kal-El did. She has the memory of her dying culture when she lands on Earth, making it much more difficult to assimilate into Earth society.

Supergirl, unlike Superman, has no intention of introducing six billion new DC characters or furthering a cinematic universe. It’s refreshing to have a comic book movie defiantly against Easter eggs. It’s not a cameo fest. The movie is just a movie, telling a story about these characters. I think that’s both Supergirl‘s biggest strength and potentially its biggest downfall. It means the movie has nowhere to hide when the story and characters aren’t hitting a chord with viewers, it’s likely they’ll tune out.

Woman of Tomorrow is one of my favorite comics of the past 10 years, so my hopes and expectations for this were very high. The story is so compelling and having Supergirl as the main character works in a very specific way. The comic is entirely from Ruthye’s point of view, where she sees Kara as this mythic figure while we, the reader, know she’s definitely not her cousin. The movie, conversely, is told from Kara’s point of view. So rather than have Kara as this often quiet, almost Spaghetti Western-style laconic heroine, whose actions speak louder than her words, she’s a quippy pseudo-Star Lord.

Warner Bros.

This is my biggest issue with the film. Absent is the colorful space opera setting for a nigh-mythological adventure story. Instead we have loads of one-liners and exceedingly dreary space taverns while Kara, for some reason, listens to Earth music on a Walkman. It’s hard not to see Supergirl trying very hard to achieve that Guardians of the Galaxy tone without the vibrancy or, frankly, the level of character charisma. It should have felt like its own thing so much more than it does.

What we do get is perfectly fine. It’s enjoyable enough. The action is decent, the performances are all serviceable with Ridley as a bright spot. It follows the basic throughline of the comic very faithfully. But it’s not a great sign when the far and away best scenes in the movie are the few we have with Corenswet’s Superman. He’s just the most likeable person in the entire world and he really stands out opposite Alcock’s mix of mope and snark.

While I enjoyed the movie well enough and the third act was really well done, I can’t help but question why adapt such a singular and memorable comic if it was just going to end up watered down and homogenized. It’s nowhere near a bad movie, but I wanted Supergirl to bowl me over and it simply did not.

DC Studios

⭐ (3 of 5)

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.

The post SUPERGIRL Doesn’t Quite Fly High Enough (Review) appeared first on Nerdist.

Leave it to President Donald Trump to make oil companies sympathetic. On Wednesday, the wannabe dictator ordered the Department of Justice to investigate oil companies because he’s angry they have not immediately lowered fuel prices following his surrender to Iran. “The big Oil Companies are not dropping their price at the pump commensurate with the sharply lower prices they are paying…

Source

A cartoon by Drew Sheneman. Related | Trump deflects from Reflecting Pool failure by arresting ‘vandals’…

Source

U.S. Representative LaMonica McIver could face up to 17 years in prison if the Justice Department gets its way.

McIver, 40, was charged with assaulting immigration agents outside the notorious Delaney Hall immigration detention center in New Jersey last May. On Wednesday, her case will be argued in a federal appellate court, and will be another test of the Trump administration’s power to go after political opponents, The New York Times reports.

Last year, McIver, who is now pregnant with her second child, was at the detention center with other Democratic leaders to conduct an oversight inspection. When agents attempted to arrest Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka for tresspassing, McIver was allegedly involved in a confrontation where she used her arms to “assault, resist, impede and intimidate” two federal agents, government attorneys say.

No one was injured in the altercation. McIver’s lawyers argue that the DOJ is coming after her because of her political views, citing the many pardons that the Trump administration gave to the January 6 protestors who actually did injure police officers in the 2021 riot.

However, U.S. District Court Judge Jamel K. Semper rejected those arguments in November. She appealed the case, and it will be argued before a panel of three appellate judges Wednesday.

A bipartisan group of former members of Congress wrote a letter in support of McIver, arguing that a win for the DOJ would mean that the executive branch would be able to “behave in a more chaotic and unsafe fashion, and create new, unprecedented tools to block legitimate oversight.”

If she is convicted, McIver could face up to 17 years in prison, and $1 million in legal fees. She is currently running for reelection and her baby is due in the fall.

⚡ Quick Take

• Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom has a new trailer, and its as charming as you’d expect.

Shaun the Sheep is one of the most hilarious and frankly adorable stop-motion animated characters to ever exist. We love his facial expressions, fear of many things, and general vibe for real. Now, it’s time for him and his flock to get their time to shine in a new film. We learned during Studio Canal’s panel at CinemaCon 2026 that the new film, Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom, is on target for its upcoming September 18, 2026, release date, and early footage shows a scary monster. Enjoy the film’s adorable latest trailer:

While the clip that we saw from it at CinemaCon is not online yet, we can tell you exactly what happened. In our sneak peek at Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom, the residents of Mossy Bottom Farm contend with a big old beast coming over the horizon. They go inside of a house in a panic and barricade themselves in, only for the beast to somehow get in.

Aardman/Studiocanal

There are a few funny moments, like a cuckoo clock scaring everyone and the beast standing outside of the shower where they are hiding in a very Psycho-like manner. He reaches in, but thankfully everyone stays safe… for now. You can check out the Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom teaser trailer below, and maybe that clip will appear before its release.

It’s lovely to see classic characters continue to get new stories for generations to enjoy.

Originally published on April 13, 2026.

The post SHAUN THE SHEEP New Movie Trailer Is Incredibly Charming appeared first on Nerdist.

You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack. You can read a transcript here.

The swing districts in the midterms this year aren’t just suburban areas with lots of white college graduates and rural and exurban places with lots of whites without degrees. Carrie Dann, managing editor of the Cook Political Report, says that districts with large numbers of minorities in states such as Texas and Florida could flip to the Democrats because of President Trump’s declining support among Latino voters in particular. Overall, Dann says that Democrats are favorites to flip the House, because of Trump’s deep unpopularity. The Senate will be much more challenging for the party, which must flip four seats in the chamber. She named Alaska, Maine, North Carolina, and Ohio as the places Democrats are mostly likely to flip a seat, arguing that Texas and Iowa will be more challenging. She said Democrats were strongest in North Carolina, because of their candidate, former Governor Roy Cooper.

⚡ Quick Take

• Netflix announced Dan Aykroyd has joined the streamer’s upcoming 3D-animated Ghostbusters series, debuting in 2027, as an executive producer.

In the summer of 2024, Netflix announced it was officially developing a new 3D-animated Ghostbusters series. Since then we haven’t learned much more about the show, including when we would see it. But now we at least know what year it will debut. More importantly, we know the most important member of pop culture’s most famous specter hunters will be prominently involved. Netflix has revealed that Ghostbusters creator, Ray Stantz himself, Dan Aykroyd has joined the show, titled Ghostbusters: Night Shift, as an executive producer.

Netflix provided a rundown of what fans can expect from the streaming site at this summer’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival. We not only got a first look at Ghostbusters: Night Shift but also a logline to give us a synopsis about what will happen.

Netflix

The streamer will debut footage from the show at the Théâtre Bonlieu on Wednesday, June 24. Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan, who have led the two recent sequels, will be in attendance. They are both executive producers on the series, which also comes from Sony Pictures Animation. Here’s the logline for this show:

New York City, 1994 — Five years after the Ghostbusters took the Statue of Liberty for a walk, a new wave of supernatural terror hits the Big Apple, forcing a group of scrappy, young New Yorkers — untrained, underappreciated, and kinda sorta responsible for the problem — to put on proton packs, face their fears, and bust some ghosts.

Now Netflix has shared that Aykroyd is also taking on an official positions. He will also fill an EP role on the show. Ben Hibon, Elliott Kalan, and Amie Karp also serve as executive producers. And that’s as much as we know beyond the small description Ntflix provided. It says the show is a “high end animated series based on the beloved Ghostbusters IP” that will arrive in 2027.

That’s still a long time to wait for a show that’s been in development for years. But maybe that’s a good thing. It gives Ghostbusters‘ creator more time to work on it.

Originally published on May 7, 2026.

The post Netflix’s GHOSTBUSTERS: SHIFT Series First Look and Synopsis appeared first on Nerdist.

President Donald Trump abruptly canceled the signing of a bipartisan housing bill Wednesday, insisting that he would not make it law without his voter ID legislation, the SAVE America Act. But not everyone on Capitol Hill got the memo that the housing reform effort was a dud.

Arkansas Representative French Hill was already in a news conference when Trump axed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. Hill unknowingly celebrated a dead proposal that Republicans had hoped would bolster their reelection efforts ahead of November.

Standing beside House Speaker Mike Johnson, Hill said it had been his “top goal” to lower the cost of housing.

“This bill does that, so I’m proud of the work that both chambers have struggled through,” Hill said Wednesday morning. “But it’s successful today, and I’m proud of the work of the House and Senate to get people to ‘yes’.”

LMAO -- GOP Rep. French Hill is literally right now during a news conference touting the bipartisan housing bill and the president's support for it, unaware that Trump moments ago angrily announced he won't sign it pic.twitter.com/NqizOMVDyR

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 24, 2026

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act was drafted to address the U.S. housing crisis, which has entailed bottlenecked supply, stalled family growth, and surged home and rental prices across the country. The bill would have funneled resources toward increasing housing supply and streamlined environmental reviews, and would have forced the Department of Housing and Urban Development to address red-tape issues related to zoning and land-use that have historically posed barriers to housing development.

“This is a very rare occurrence to have successive bipartisan votes across both chambers on versions of this bill, and it finally seems to be reaching the finish line,” Francis Torres, housing and infrastructure director at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told TIME earlier this week. “This bill is the most serious that Congress has gotten about housing reforms in a generation.”

The House passed the bill by a vote of 358–32 on Tuesday. The day before, the Senate had passed it by a measure of 85–5. It only needed the president’s signature to become law—but that apparently won’t happen unless Congress caves to his unpopular voter ID demands.

The Save America Act sparked nationwide controversy earlier this year, particularly over a detail in the bill that would have made it more difficult for married women to vote. The backlash on Capitol Hill was grave, so much so that it gummed up efforts to fund Homeland Security for several months. Republicans eventually had to bail on the package to end the congressional gridlock.

The Save America Act suggests numerous amendments to the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, including line items that would abolish mail-in voting, require voters to bring proof of citizenship and proof of residency to register to vote, require voter ID, and mandate voter roll purges every 30 days, an enormous bureaucratic task that would place undue burdens on local election officials. The measure would also add a federal law to prevent men from competing in women’s sports and a ban on “transgender mutilation surgery.”

The next major release of Deno, a JavaScript/TypeScript runtime, will include new commands to build cross-platform desktop applications using web technology. Deno desktop will compile an application from a plain TypeScript file or from frameworks such as Next.js, Astro, Deno Fresh, TanStack Start or Vite SSR (server-side rendering). A distinctive feature is that the native WebView is used by default, rather than bundling the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF). The advantage is much smaller applications. In our quick test, a compiled application using WebView on macOS was around 68.5MB, whereas using CEF, which is also an option, the size was 308.9MB (though the docs suggest 150MB as typical) and startup was slower. The trade-off is that CEF provides all the features of Chromium and consistent rendering across platforms. Without CEF, it is a challenge to ensure the WebView on all supported platforms will work as expected, particularly since users may install on older machines with out-of-date native web browsers. This is a particular problem with macOS and Safari. Deno desktop has a further option, called Raw, which has no web engine. Developers get window management and can draw a user interface with WebGPU, the Skia library, or their own custom rendering. A Deno desktop application, other than one using Raw, includes a local web server, which means that developers can easily port web applications. According to the docs, the cost of "a single network hop" is negligible in most cases. That said, there is also an option for in-process binding, which exposes a Deno function directly to the WebView or CEF. Deno Desktop supports native menus and context menus (right-click), native dialogs for alerts and confirmations, and notifications via the Web Notifications API, which appear as native notifications. File picker dialogs are not yet supported, other than by the web file input type, or drag and drop. There is no separate clipboard API yet. Mobile applications are not yet supported, though it is planned. There are plenty of existing options for building desktop applications with web technology, including the popular Electron used by many well-known applications but sometimes disliked for its high resource usage. The Deno desktop docs include a comparison with Electron, Electrobun, Tauri, and Dioxus. Deno desktop looks well thought-out, though it is not yet stable, and we noticed issues such as the window close button not working in macOS using WebView, as well as friction trying to get it working with some web frameworks. The broader question, perhaps, is whether this will help the Deno project gain market share. It began as an effort to improve on Node.js, and has been somewhat upstaged by the Bun project now owned by Anthropic. One of the problems for Deno is that the Node.js ecosystem is so entrenched that the project has had to retrofit Node.js compatibility, diverting engineering time from other potential features. One Deno user, Hong Minhee, posted that they liked Deno initially because it avoided the pain of Node.js. "No configuration files, no node_modules, no agonizing over which package manager to use." Now though, "Deno is spending more and more of its energy catching up to Node.js," while on the other side of the camp, Node.js has added features such as TypeScript compatibility. "Why didn't Deno hold the course?" they ask. The quick answer is that the pull of the established Node.js ecosystem was too strong. Deno desktop looks promising and could provide another reason to use Deno if it works well, though there is also a risk of further diluting the resource available for the core runtime.®

State and national Republican groups have developed a new midterm strategy after the left’s big wins in New York City on Tuesday: fearmongering about communism and the death of the nuclear family. (Oh, wait, that’s actually not a new strategy at all.)

The chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, Representative Richard Hudson, reportedly compared the primary wins to “a Bolshevik revolution” on Wednesday, in a meeting with GOP House members. The NRCC also made a slightly cringy X post referring to the progressive winners as “America-hating Socialists.”

A few MAGA House members spoke out individually against the election results, including Randy Fine and Anna Paulina Luna of Florida.

“What is happening in New York tonight should scare every American,” Fine, who is no stranger to promoting hateful rhetoric, said. “The Democrat Party there no longer seeks to make America prosper. It seeks to destroy it.”

The fearmongering comes after New York’s democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, proved his November victory was no fluke on Tuesday. The three progressives Mamdani endorsed all won their primaries, knocking off establishment Dems and sometimes other progressives.

Former City Comptroller Brad Lander knocked off incumbent Representative Dan Goldman in New York’s 10th district; Democratic socialist Claire Valdez, an artist and assemblywoman, defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso in the 7th; and in possibly the biggest upset of the night, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a little-known democratic socialist, bested incumbent Representative Adriano Espaillat in the 13th.

“New York Democrats just elected three socialists in primaries,” raged the New York state GOP on X. “Their party has been taken over by radicals who support Islamic terrorism and want to dismantle the nuclear family.”

Centrist Democrats also felt a sense of foreboding on Wednesday upon seeing the success of leftists.

“Republicans will very quickly seek to elevate, as they always do, the most radical voices in the Democratic Party,” Howard Wolfson, a Democratic strategist and adviser to former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, told The New York Times. “And after tonight, they will have more radical Democrats to choose from.”

Representative Greg Meeks, who chairs the Queens Democratic Party, was a bit more diplomatic. “It was a tough night,” he said.

This post is updated throughout the day to reflect the latest incidents. It was last updated at 9:02 a.m..

Here’s what’s happening on the roads this morning…

▼︎ new incidents

Road incidents as of 9 a.m. on June 24

• A traffic hazard was reported at Glen Canyon Rd and Glen Canyon Ct in Eastside / Live Oak on June 23 at 2:06 p.m. Low-hanging wires about 20 feet above the road were blocking trucks from passing. AT&T was notified and sent a technician. The incident was first reported as a possible collision with unknown injuries but was later identified as a traffic hazard.
   
• Defective traffic signals were reported today at the intersection of Green Valley Rd and Carnation Dr in Watsonville / Pajaro. The issue was reported to NETCOM and is being handled by the county.
   
• There are alternating lane closures on both northbound and southbound Highway 9 at Pool Drive in San Lorenzo Valley because of bridge work. This will continue until April 30 at 6:59 a.m.
   
• There is one-way traffic on Highway 9 at Cascade Avenue in San Lorenzo Valley because of ongoing work. This is expected to last until 7:01 a.m. on August 31.
   
• A lane on westbound SR-152 at Clifford Drive/Ohlone Parkway in Watsonville and Pajaro is closed for asphalt paving. The closure will last until 5:59 a.m. on July 3.
   
• CHP helped with construction work as part of the Safety Service Program at 11570 Highway 9, near 195 Capitola Rd Ext, San Lorenzo Valley. The work was scheduled from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. today.
   

Disclosure: Traffic incidents are partially generated by artificial intelligence. We are constantly working to improve the accuracy and quality of our AI-generated content. However, there may still be errors or inaccuracies. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us.

The post Wednesday morning traffic: Low wires block trucks on Glen Canyon Rd; lane closures on Hwy 9 appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

President Trump has cancelled the signing of the largest housing affordability bill in decades unless Congress passes his voter-suppressing SAVE Act.

“Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump wrote on Wednesday.

This is a very last minute cancellation, as the signing presentation was set to happen Wednesday, an hour after his post.

“So…. Looks like they’re going to have to dissemble this stage here at Statuary Hall in the Capitol,” Scott MacFarlane of Meidas Touch wrote on X. “Trump has cancelled his signing of a housing bill… which truly jams up his fellow Republicans who wanted to campaign on it.”

The 21st Century Road to Housing bill, sponsored by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. The legislation aims to make housing easier to build and more affordable by blocking corporate entities from buying up single family homes, among other methods. Trump, a former slumlord, has also downplayed the significance of this bill.

“The Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren centric housing bill, which is of minor importance compared to lower interest rates, and even FISA, pales in comparison to passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT. That is what Americans, both Dumocrats, Republicans, and everyone else, care about,” Trump wrote shortly before cancelling his signing of the bill. “Get the bad Republicans to approve it or, better yet, Terminate the Filibuster and approve it, AND EVERYTHING ELSE REPUBLICANS HAVE EVER DREAMED OF.”

This is a developing story.

Prestigious journal Nature has published a peer-reviewed critique of Microsoft's claims to have made quantum computing breakthroughs – and the scientist who wrote the paper has essentially said Redmond got it wrong. Microsoft made its claims of a quantum breakthrough in February 2025 when it revealed tech called Majorana and predicted "this breakthrough will allow us to create a truly meaningful quantum computer not in decades, as some have predicted, but in years." The software giant's approach to quantum computing involves Majorana particles, subatomic particles that scientists have not observed directly. The company has pursued this approach for years, but experienced reversals that led to the retraction of some papers. Last year, however, Microsoft claimed it had both observed Majorana particles and harnessed them in a quantum computer. Criticism of that claim was swift and sharp: we reported boffins willing to go on the record as describing Microsoft's work as "unreliable" and perhaps even "fraudulent." Microsoft insisted its work is sound and in early June 2026 announced Majorana 2, a "next-generation topological quantum chip" it developed with the help of its own agentic AI. The Windows giant revealed that work after being given a right to reply to a critique of its 2025 Majorana announcement by Dr Henry Legg, a lecturer at the University of St Andrews. Nature accepted Legg's paper on April 20 and scheduled it for publication on June 24. Titled "On the robustness of topological gap detection via transport," Legg's analysis suggests Microsoft got it wrong. "Last year they claimed to be years, not decades from a 'topological quantum supercomputer,'" Legg told The Register in an email. "My feeling is that they are centuries, not decades away. If it works at all – and, based on what I have seen, the most likely scenario is that it doesn't work." Based on his analysis of the research Microsoft published in 2025, Legg argues that the company's claims about finding and being able to control the elusive Majorana particle to build a topological superconductor do not withstand scrutiny. "I demonstrate that Microsoft's tune-up software is flawed and that coding errors resulted in incorrect statements to peer reviewers," said Legg. "Raw data, which was omitted from the original paper, also appears to indicate Microsoft's devices contain considerable disorder and are not compatible with the existence of a topological gap. In other words, the prerequisites for Microsoft's claims do not appear to be met, but this was obscured because this data did not appear in the original publication." Essentially, Microsoft has proposed a Topological Gap Protocol (TGP) that can be used to detect the phase transition deemed to be a prerequisite for conducting quantum calculations using Majorana particles. Legg argues that based on his analysis of underlying transport data (measurements of particle change) – omitted from the original publication – Microsoft chose to focus on results that supported its thesis and ignored data that could be interpreted as a negative result. As he notes in his critique: "The TGP plotting code was set to highlight only the largest purportedly topological region." "The primary consequence was the omission of other regions that passed their tune-up protocol (the TGP)," said Legg. "When peer reviewers asked if other regions existed, Microsoft inaccurately stated that they had investigated the only region passing the protocol within the explored range. This was not correct." Legg also argues that Microsoft mishandled its code. "The code antisymmetrized bias voltage based on array index rather than physical value," his analysis says. In other words, Microsoft's researchers made a basic programming mistake by evaluating the array index – the number identifying a value's position in an array – instead of the value to which the index refers. "There were two pretty basic Python programming errors that hid these alternative regions," Legg explained. "Their plotting software was hardcoded with a filter (zbp_cluster_numbers=[1]) that forced it to display only the single largest region, concealing other successful results from their phase maps. Changing this to zbp_cluster_numbers=[1,2] shows already a second region." Legg added: "The TGP software transformed the data by simply reversing a Python array (x[::-1]) based on its index position, ignoring the actual physical bias voltages." In a statement provided to The Register, Dr Chetan Nayak, technical fellow and corporate vice president of Microsoft's quantum hardware group, said: "We stand by our results and our roadmap." "At the end of the day, success is the delivery of a scalable quantum computer. We are confident in our ability to execute against our roadmap and proud of our continued engagement with DARPA, which moved Microsoft into the final phase of its Quantum Benchmarking Initiative after independently evaluating our results – those in the public realm and proprietary – with a team of highly qualified experts. Skepticism and rigor are hallmarks of the scientific process, which we appreciate and have supported from various academics. We have participated in dialogue and our thorough rebuttal was accepted and published by Nature." Microsoft's rebuttal disputes the validity of Legg's analysis. The software colossus argues its signal measurements were not intended to be exhaustive and that the "minor off-by-one-pixel bug in our TGP processing" is inconsequential. The response concludes: "In summary, Legg centers on a selective examination of transport tune-up procedures and narrow interpretations of isolated phrases in our referee correspondence, rather than the physical mechanisms underlying the experiment. It relies on unsubstantiated claims about our transport spectra while not engaging with the capacitance measurements at the core of our study, and its alternative treatment of the transport data is inconsistent with more rigorous analyses of the same datasets. Critically, Legg offers no alternative physical model capable of reproducing the capacitance signal or the RTS phenomenology, and does not constitute a substantial scientific challenge to our findings." Legg thinks that criticism is unfounded. "They attempt to dismiss these issues as minor bugs, and retrospectively adjust their evidence hierarchy," he said. "In short, Microsoft's reply essentially argues that because they observed a specific capacitance measurement, the prerequisites to do so must have been met. I hope, despite the complexity of the topic, their circular reasoning is clear." The announcement of Majorana 2 has not changed Legg's assessment of Microsoft's work. "Majorana 2 is not available to customers and it is not proven to even be a single qubit," Legg said. "Their preprint, which should not really be given any credence given that it is based on a single device, does not even claim an X-measurement (which they did eventually for Majorana 1 last year, but that preprint has also not yet been published). Essentially, their claim of '1,000 times more reliable' refers to the lifetime of a classical bit (the parity of the state). There is no evidence this is a qubit and can hold a superposition. The classical bits in my computer have very long lifetimes (years!), but it does not make them good qubits." "For Majorana 2, one has to ask why they do not report the X-measurement, since Microsoft were obviously aware it was so important for their claims last year. I think it's very reasonable to assume that they did attempt the same supposed X-measurement with their Majorana 2 device and it didn't work out. That's not surprising because, based on everything I have seen, it all looks like disorder physics and they have not shown any kind of control over even a single qubit." ®

The new version has more cushioning, lighter colors, and a better microphone and speaker for communicating with Zoox Support.

AI models used to help diagnose medical conditions have a problem: They’re ready and willing to identify patients whose data was used to train them. German researchers reported in a Nature paper published Wednesday that discriminative AI models - those used to classify data and make predictions about new inputs based on their training sets - are particularly susceptible to membership inference attacks (MIAs) that query the models in an attempt to figure out whether a particular datapoint is included in their training sets. What that means for medical AI models is that any patient whose data is used to educate the bot could be exposed, leading to details about their medical history and diagnoses being leaked. In an analysis of seven medical AI datasets consisting of images, ECG records, and general electronic health records, the team determined that individual patients targeted by such attacks can be identified with “near-perfect attack success,” which they explain flies in the face of how such models are evaluated for safety. “The fact that MIAs can achieve near-perfect success rates for individual patients is not adequately captured by the standard evaluation protocol, which measures attack success in aggregate across records,” the researchers said. Based on their findings, they conclude, reporting standards for AI privacy audits need to change. It gets worse, too: Patients in the dataset are generally easy to identify and, unsurprisingly, those underrepresented in medical AI training data are even easier to finger than those whose data doesn’t stand out. Underrepresented groups can include those in a number of sensitive categories: Race, insurance status, sex, the protocol used to conduct medical imaging, and certain disease statuses can all function as outliers that make it easier to identify individuals. “Generally speaking, privacy risks from MIAs become more severe as a model’s training cohort becomes more specific,” Technical University of Munich AI in Healthcare and Medicine chair and paper lead author Moritz Knolle told The Register in an email conversation. “You could imagine … scenarios where membership in a training dataset reveals that someone has a dormant genetic condition such as Huntington's disease, depression, or attended a specific, specialised treatment clinic.” In other words, exposing healthcare AI training data could be used to identify those with sensitive health conditions, spill secrets they may not want public, or otherwise fuel discrimination. To make things even worse again, the larger the dataset, the easier it is to expose records, and “the magnitude of this change in patient-level risk was previously unknown” in larger models. The privacy devil in the data details This is bad and all, but it’s not necessarily the end of the world, as performing an MIA attack on a medical AI model supposes the attacker already has a few things at their disposal, namely at least some medical data belonging to the people they want to identify. “To conduct a MIA an attacker needs access to a target data point,” Knolle confirmed to us while also noting that their paper revealed access to a full patient data point isn’t needed, in contrast to what was previously believed. “In our paper we show that an attacker with partial access can still successafully conduct MIAs.” The MIA attack itself, as detailed in the paper, relies on medical AIs being more certain of their predictions if the input data is already part of their training set. A potential attacker, then, simply peppers an AI model with obtained patient data, checks the confidence level, and surmises that said patient is part of the training data. “An attacker conducting a MIA does not need to know who the data belongs to that they are trying to conduct the MIA with,” Knolle explained. “In fact, all the dataset we use in our study were anonymized.” Anonymized in the datasets, but not the target data, that is. As explained in the paper their MIA attacks were largely error-free at the individual patient level, meaning confidence levels are an accurate way to figure out if a particular patient's data is part of a training set. “The attacker would simply need access to someone’s blood test results, or part of these results” in order to infer inclusion, Knolle said. Of course, they have to get that data first, but given how frequently healthcare data is exposed in breaches, it’s not exactly hard to imagine a bad actor getting ahold of something they can use. “Given that medical data is not always securely stored it is not unthinkable that an attacker could get access, for example, by gaining unauthorized access to the database of your general practitioner after they performed a routine blood test,” Knolle said. How to protect patient data? Asked what he hopes this research accomplishes, Knolle told us he just wants the medical world to understand that AI training data needs to be better secured. “I hope that the medical AI community will start to take privacy risks seriously and that risk mitigation techniques are used in situations where they are necessary,” Knolle said. The researchers make several recommendations for how to do this, like through the use of differential privacy frameworks that are designed to mathematically guarantee training data remains anonymous - a key consideration if medical AI firms want patients to trust them with their data. As mentioned above, the team also wants to see privacy audit standards change to consider individual-level data, not just aggregate privacy risks. Alternatively, medical AI training data could just be compiled so that underrepresented groups are better represented, Knolle said. “There are many situations where a successful MIA represents a small or negligible privacy violation,” Knolle noted. “These are situations where AI models are trained on large, general populations in which both healthy and diseased individuals are represented in sufficient numbers.” Representation, in other words, definitely matters when it comes to keeping patient data private. ®

Immigrants who experience human rights abuses by the U.S. government already face a mountain of challenges in seeking justice—but the Supreme Court just made that legal road even more difficult. In their ruling blitz to get out as many decisions as possible before taking off for their summer break, justices sided with Cisco Systems on Tuesday in a case filed on behalf of the Falun Gong…

Source

The Samsara Tracking Label hides a BLE system that can offering real-time location in a disposable package.

The U.S. lifted its naval blockade over the Strait of Hormuz last week, but the returning commercial trade has not been a return to normal—and Americans are still feeling it at the gas pump.

In a Truth Social post addressing the discrepancy, Donald Trump announced late Tuesday that he had directed the Department of Justice to investigate oil companies, accusing them of “gouging” customers based on the persisting inflated prices.

“The big Oil Companies are not dropping their price at the pump commensurate with the sharply lower prices they are paying for Oil,” Trump posted just after midnight. “Those prices are dropping like a rock! In other words, customers are being ‘gouged.’”

“I have instructed the DOJ to immediately start looking into this. Gasoline prices better start going down a lot faster than what I’m seeing!” he added.

While crude oil and gas prices have both fallen since Iran and the U.S. signed a tentative peace deal last week, the drop in gas prices has been relatively minimal. Crude was down over 5 percent between June 18 and 24, but gas was down by half of that—2.5 percent—in the same period, according to data from the AAA gasoline price tracker.

Trump had promised throughout the war that gas prices would plummet “like a rock” once the violence concluded, but that has clearly not been the case, much to the chagrin of his vulnerable Republican allies in Congress who will have to rationalize the dampened economy to voters come November. Trump and his team have also promised that Americans could expect lower gas prices than the average from even before the war began—around $2.98 per gallon. At the time of publication, the cost of gas is $3.92 per gallon across the country, though some areas in California such as San Luis Obispo are still seeing prices around $5.78 per gallon, according to the AAA tracker.

Over the last month, crude oil prices have dropped by 27 percent while gas prices were down by just 13 percent, reported Yahoo Finance.

Named Jalapeño, the new processor was designed specifically for the unique needs of OpenAI's inference systems.