Trump’s extremely attentive assistant is … intense

Daily Kos - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 14:00

President Donald Trump loves to keep reaffirming women in his close circle, and it looks like the latest one to come into the public discourse is his assistant, Natalie Harp. The young blonde’s proximity to Trump is nothing new, but following the release of “Regime Change” by journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, her peculiar relationship with the president has garnered some eyes…

Source

Categories: Political News

LEGO Reveals Boba Fett Statue Set to Come in August

The Nerdist - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 13:58
⚡ Quick Take
  • One of LEGO’s newest sets is an homage to one of Star Wars’ most well-known characters.
  • Boba Fett is the bounty hunter who was hired to track down the Millennium Falcon in the original trilogy.
  • Be on the lookout for three new LEGO Star Wars sets coming out this year.

Since the late 90s, LEGO and Star Wars have been inseparable brands. That remains the case today. One of LEGO’s highly anticipated 2026 sets is dropping this August: The Boba Fett statue.

A Boba Fett statue made of LEGO.LEGO, Lucasfilm

Boba Fett is the son and clone of the notorious bounty hunter Jango Fett. His first appearance was in 1980 in The Empire Strikes Back, when Darth Vader assigns him to tracking down the Millennium Falcon. In the prequel trilogy, his backstory is explored. We see him grow up as a clone of his father. After four appearances in the main storyline, Boba Fett has become a beloved character from the franchise.

Boba Fett is no stranger to LEGO and has appeared as a minifig in a variety of sets over the years. There was also a Boba Fett helmet statuette, which is now retired. Now, the bounty hunter returns in the form of a full-body statue.

LEGO, Lucasfilm

Builders will be able to construct Fett’s customized Mandalorian armor, including a torn fabric cape. The set includes a base to stand the statue on, alongside a placard with information about the character. The finished statue, including the base, measures 16 inches tall, and the set includes 1,544 pieces.

Pay tribute to a bounty hunter with real swag: Boba Fett. Recreate Boba’s armored outfit, as seen in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi™. Add his fabric cape and equip him with a blaster. Adjust his head and arms for intimidating battle poses.

This is not the only new Star Wars set coming out this year. Also releasing in August is the Hutt Palace Sentry Droid Showdown set. It chronicles a battle from The Mandalorian and Grogu, which came out this year. In addition, LEGO is putting out a Star Wars Christmas advent calendar this September, which, spoilers, includes a Grogu mini-minifig.

Both the Boba Fett statue and the Hutt Palace Showdown set will come out August 1.

The post LEGO Reveals Boba Fett Statue Set to Come in August appeared first on Nerdist.

Categories: Nerd News

Anthropic is removing its covert code for catching Chinese competitors

The Register - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 13:56
Anthropic says that it plans to remove hidden codes it added to Claude Code several months ago to catch other AI companies that are trying to steal from its models. Thariq Shihipar, an engineer at Anthropic who works on the Claude Code team, said on Tuesday that a fix should appear on July 1. "This is an experiment we launched in March that was meant to prevent account abuse from unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation," Shihipar explained, using the industry term for copying AI models through repeated queries. "The team has landed stronger mitigations since then and we’ve actually been meaning to take this down for a while." He said that the pull request to remove the code has been merged and should appear in Wednesday's Claude Code release. The experiment, as described by a developer who goes by the name Thereallo, consisted of applying steganography – hiding secret data in plain sight – to the Claude Code system context that gets passed to Anthropic's servers. The relevant code checks Claude Code's base URL environment variable, used to route API requests to a proxy or gateway. If the base URL has been overridden, the code goes on to check the system timezone and whether the hostname matches any entry in a list of known Chinese AI labs, other AI companies, account resellers, and gateway domains. Thereallo said that while it makes sense that Anthropic might try to detect a hostname associated with a Chinese AI rival or a reseller, the implementation should not have been concealed. "[Claude Code] silently alters the system prompt using invisible-ish Unicode markers," Thereallo wrote. "It encodes proxy / gateway classification into a sentence that looks like plain English. It hides the domain list behind XOR and base64. This is not a malicious feature, but it is a weird choice for a developer tool that asks for trust." Asked whether Anthropic disclosed its covert usage tracking mechanism in any of its terms of service documents, a company spokesperson pointed to Shihipar's remarks, which did not address that question. Nor did Anthropic's spokesperson immediately respond to a request to specify what "stronger mitigations" have been implemented to prevent unauthorized resellers and distillation. In February, shortly before the implementation of the steganographic codes, the AI biz said that it was investing in defenses against distillation. These included detection via classifiers and behavioral fingerprinting systems, intelligence sharing with other AI labs, access controls, and countermeasures that make it harder to use model output to reproduce the model. One such defense came to light when the company's Claude Code source leaked. The coding agent includes a Typescript file with a flag called ANTI_DISTILLATION_CC. The flag, when set, injects fake tool data into API requests in an attempt to make that data toxic for model training. Even with its technical defenses against competition, Anthropic urged the AI industry, cloud providers, and government to respond to the threat of model distillation. A recent White House Executive Order that articulates the intent to protect US AI from foreign adversaries shows that the feds have some interest in answering that call. ®

The Presidency Is Making Trump Exponentially Richer

Mother Jones - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 13:51

Donald Trump added billions to his net worth in the year and a half since his return to the presidency—much of it paper wealth in the form of cryptocurrency, but plenty of it in hard cash paid to him by business partners, including the investment firm run by the United Arab Emirates’ national security advisor.

In total, it appears that Trump added about $2.2 billion to his net worth in 2025—by far his most lucrative year in the presidency, and far more than in 2024, when he reported earning about $600 million.

Trump filed required personal financial disclosure forms on Tuesday evening that revealed his earnings, but there are some major caveats—most of the gained wealth is in the form of cryptocurrency or crypto-related businesses, and the crypto industry has had a steep decline since the start of this year, led by crashing Bitcoin prices.

And the forms do reveal some new details. Trump was closely involved with the launching of a Trump meme coin cryptocurrency shortly before taking office, but it wasn’t clear how much that had earned him. On his new forms, Trump disclosed earning $635 million from a company called Celebration Coins, which is believed to be behind his meme coin.

While Trump was paid for the creation of the coins and was awarded a significant number of them, the coin’s price has collapsed from a high of $44 on his inauguration day to $1.69 on Wednesday. No matter the price, Trump’s stake in the coin is all profit to him—but a recent analysis found buyers of the coin had likely lost in the neighborhood of $700 million trying to trade on $Trump coins.

There’s another $290 million in cryptowallets that appear to be associated with Trump’s other crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, but again, the price of the WLFI cryptocoin has also dropped by about 65 percent since the end of 2025. And as with the meme coin, an analysis suggests that investors in WLFI may have lost as much as $700 million.

One very real bit of wealth Trump added in 2025 was $65 million from sale of equity in World Liberty Financial, a deal that was reportedly the sale of 49 percent of the company to a firm controlled by Sheikh Tahnoun bin Mohammed Al Nahyan, the brother of Mohamed bin Zayed, the ruler of the United Arab Emirates. Sheikh Tahnoon is the UAE’s national security advisor as well as the chairman of several of the wealthy country’s investment funds.

Reaping large sums of money from overseas sources was a theme on Trump’s disclosure. In addition to the money from Sheikh Tahnoun’s fund, Trump also reported huge payments for lending his name to a slew of new Trump-branded properties around the world. And it appears he has signficantly upped his fees.

In 2014, Trump signed a deal with a Dubai-based company called DAMAC to build a golf course with his name on it—over the course of the next four years, he earned somewhere between $2 and $10 million for the deal. In 2025 alone, DAMAC paid Trump $12.5 million, including $5 million a piece, just to use his name on two new Trump properties.

And it wasn’t just DAMAC, which is owned by Emirati billionaire Husain Sajwani, who has frequently appeared at Trump’s side at Mar-a-Lago and has been given special access at Trump’s inaugurations. Trump was paid more than $25.2 million by a Saudi development firm for the use of his name on properties in Dubai, Saudi Qatar, and Oman. Partners in India, Vietnam and the Phillipines added even more money to Trump’s pocket for using name there, the reports show.

While those are impressive numbers, Trump’s war in Iran, just across the Strait of Hormuz from his Oman development, has reportedly helped sink other potential deals, including one deal in Australia.

The forms also appear to show a new deal—Trump reports being paid $2 million in a non-refundable development deal by a company called Base Co. LTD. According to a report in a Korean business publication in February, the Trump Organization and a large Korean construction company signed an agreement to work together, and Eric Trump was hosted at a lavish dinner attended by top Korean politicans and business executives.

Trump also listed hundreds of investments in stocks. Many of these appear to be standard blue-chip stocks or municipal bonds that might appear in any diversified portfolio, recent stock trading disclosures show Trump has been investing in companies and then lauding the company’s products in speeches.

While the forms require Trump to disclose earnings, debts and valuations of his businesses, it doesn’t necessarily require him to report profitablity. While crypto has far surpassed Trump’s traditional busineses of hospitality and real estate in terms of importance for his wealth, it’s not necessarily clear whether his Trump properties are thriving.

What is clear is that Trump has taken some of his new cash and used it to get rid of old debts—in the last year, he has paid off mortgages on his Seven Springs golf course and his 40 Wall Street commerical building in New York City. He also paid off a personal mortgage on a house next to Mar-a-Lago, which he purchased from his sister in 2018 for $18.5 million.

That mortgage repayment actually raises another potential caveat about all of Trump’s newfound wealth—Trump loves to say everything is worth more than it is. That house he bought for $18.5 million eight years ago? This year, Trump listed it as being worth an open-ended and optimistic “over $50 million.”

Categories: Political News

Trump Brags About How He Stole Protected Land for Roosevelt Library

The New Republic - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 13:49

President Trump gloated Wednesday about lifting restrictions on 90 acres of protected land so that he could help along the recently finished construction of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota.

“During my first term it was a privilege to sign the bill that helped get this incredible project underway, and transferring 90 acres,” Trump said at the ceremony for the library’s opening Wednesday. “We took it right out of the federal government. We ripped it away from the federal government, they don’t know it’s missing. They still haven’t figured out what the hell happened.”

The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation bought 90.3 acres of protected land from the U.S. Forest Service in 2021, after a bill supported by President Trump triggered the sale in December 2020.

Aside from the sale, Trump has significantly rolled back environmental protections that Roosevelt championed during his tenure, weakening the Endangered Species Act and exposing 86 million previously protected acres to drilling and development.

Trump on taxpayer funds for the Roosevelt library: "We ripped it away from the federal government. They don't know it's missing. They still haven't figured out what the hell happened." pic.twitter.com/vJiwYEC4BS

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 1, 2026
Categories: Political News

Trump on Legal Losing Streak After Birthright Citizenship

The New Republic - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 13:47

President Trump has lost three legal cases in 24 hours.

First the Supreme Court struck down his executive order banning birthright citizenship on Tuesday morning because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Then, hours later, a federal judge dismissed the White House’s effort to acquire New Hampshire’s voter information. After that, two federal judges shut down the president’s restrictions on a student loan forgiveness program.

On New Hampshire, U.S. District Judge Joseph LaPlante found the administration’s request to get the state’s voter registration list infringed the Civil Rights Act’s provisions on federal election records. LaPlante also ruled that the Justice Department couldn’t find any real violations of the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which created standards for states’ voter registration lists and voting systems, to merit access to the voter rolls.

It’s the tenth time the DOJ has lost a case in which it sought voter information from a state government. Judges have ruled against the Trump administration in Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin, and dismissed a Georgia effort because it was filed in the wrong city.

On student loans, federal judges appointed by President Biden in Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts blocked Trump’s attempt to reshape the Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which helps those who work for the government or nonprofit organizations. Trump attempted to prevent public service workers from getting student debt relief if their work had a “substantial illegal purpose” in the eyes of the administration. A coalition of nonprofit organizations joined 20 states to file a lawsuit against the rule, claiming that Trump’s Department of Education could target organizations that go against the president’s personal views, such as those dedicated to immigrant rights and transgender health care.

“The Department cannot create new criminal prohibitions through rulemaking,” U.S. District Judge Myoung Joun ruled in Massachusetts, stating that the department didn’t have legal authority and could be violating the Constitution’s First Amendment. “Indeed, the record further demonstrates ‌that the ⁠Final Rule has already chilled protected speech.”

In Washington, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali struck down the rule in a case brought by four nonprofits that work for immigrant rights. The Trump administration’s response to the student loan rulings seemed to prove the judges’ point.

“The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program is intended to support Americans who serve the public good, not to subsidize organizations that engage in terrorism, facilitate illegal immigration, or support the mutilation of children,” Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent complained in a statement.

In all, these rulings show Trump’s contempt for the Constitution and that federal courts seem to be the only branch of government willing to prevent the administration from flouting it, as Republicans in Congress are unwilling to stand up to the president. Trump will have to come to terms that some of his favorite policies aren’t backed up by U.S. law.

Categories: Political News

Trump Tries to Ignore Supreme Court on E. Jean Carroll

The New Republic - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 13:30

Donald Trump is still trying to stiff E. Jean Carroll, according to the columnist’s attorney.

Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s lawyer, wrote in a court filing Tuesday that Trump’s legal representative had called her the day prior asking for another delay to the $5 million sum Trump owes the writer. Later Monday, Kaplan said she informed Trump’s team that “Carroll does not consent,” and asked whether Trump would comply with the immediate disbursement of funds.

Carroll has a long and unfortunate history with the president. Trump was found liable by a jury in May 2023 for having sexually assaulted Carroll in the mid-1990s, for which she was awarded $5 million in damages.

He subsequently lost his defamation case against her the following January, when a judge ruled that Trump had continued to defame the advice columnist by denying the assault on the basis that she wasn’t his “type,” and by accusing her of making up the allegations against him for the benefit of her book. A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in that case.

But Carroll hasn’t yet seen a dime from either case. In May, a federal appeals court allowed Trump to continue staving off his payments until the Supreme Court decided whether or not to pick up the case. The court made their decision Monday, rejecting Trump’s challenge and allowing the verdict to stand.

In a separate filing Tuesday, Kaplan asked a judge to implement an expedited payment schedule for the sum that Trump owes Carroll. She referred to a June 2023 filing in which both parties agreed that Carroll could collect if the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

Kaplan added that, by this point, the $5 million sum had accrued an additional $779,783 in interest, raising Trump’s initial debt to nearly $5.8 million.

Nonetheless, Trump has continued to make a target out of Carroll. In May, the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into the writer, probing whether Carroll committed perjury in her previous cases against Trump.

Categories: Political News

Godot says bye bye AI, bans vibe-coded contributions

The Register - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 13:29
Vibe coders apparently don't understand what their AI servants write - at least that’s what the team behind open-source game engine Godot seems to be implying with a new policy that cracks down on AI-generated contributions. The Godot team announced on Tuesday that they were in the process of rewriting their contribution policy to prohibit almost all use of AI from contributors, citing an overwhelming number of pull requests that have poured in, many of which appear to be AI-generated. Nor, the maintainers suggested, can many heavy AI users be relied on to respond meaningfully to review feedback. “AI cannot take responsibility, and we can’t trust heavy users of AI to understand their code enough to fix it,” the Godot maintainers said in their announcement. Ouch. The maintainers described AI pull requests as “demoralizing” for the Godot team, echoing comments made earlier this year when maintainer Rémi Verschelde said AI pull requests were increasingly draining and demoralizing wastes of time. AI PRs, one game studio that uses Godot noted earlier this year, are largely garbage, come from users who don’t understand what they’re proposing, and are largely “a total shitshow.” The Godot team said that it now recognizes the problem isn’t going away, so it’s time to do something about it. “Accordingly, we are in the process of updating our contribution policies, including adding a stricter policy on AI contributions,” they said. For starters, new contributors (defined as anyone with three or fewer merged pull requests) will be required to get explicit permission from maintainers if they want to submit new features or significant refactoring to Godot's codebase. This, the team said, is a bid to exclude vibe coders and AI agents and nurture a group of contributors who understand the Godot codebase and are willing to communicate with the team to learn more about it. On that note, contribution discussions will be required to remain human-to-human, too: No AI agents or bots clogging up the comms channels, unless they're being used to translate between languages. “We need to ensure that people who choose to review PRs feel their time is well spent,” the Godot maintainers explained. As for AI code itself, any autonomous agent-authored contributions or vibe-coded garbage will continue to result in an auto-ban from the team’s GitHub repo, and the team is extending that ban on AI code to include a prohibition on the use of AI to generate any substantial piece of code. “AI assistance should be limited to menial things (like code completion, regex, or find and replace),” the team explained. “If you do use AI in some capacity to author code, you must disclose it in the PR discussion.” The policy has yet to be formally amended, and the Godot maintainers didn’t say when exactly they’d release the update. Needless to say, vibe coders and AI agents aren’t welcome even now, so don’t push your luck. Vibe coding has shown other signs of falling out of favor lately as horror stories about deleted databases and wiped drives continue to pile up. Just last week, the chairman of IT consulting service Infosys predicted that vibe coding wasn’t something professionals should be worried about as there’s more to writing good software than coding. “Given that AI is a much larger and disruptive technology transition than ever before, the questions are louder and the doubts are more insistent,” Nandan Nilekani said in a speech at the company’s AGM last week. “While we will embrace the best coding tools and improve our productivity, there is much more to do in the software development life cycle.” Context, Nilekani said, is paramount in software development. Based on the vibe-coded disaster that Godot has dealt with, AI doesn’t seem quite capable of grasping that important element. ®

PVUSD, teachers union enter fact-finding after mediation stalls

The Pajaronian - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 13:28

Contract negotiations between the Pajaro Valley Unified School District and the Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers have reached another impasse, with both sides now entering the formal fact-finding process after mediation failed to produce an agreement.

Fact-finding is a dispute resolution process used after a union and employer reach an impasse in contract negotiations. A neutral panel reviews evidence and arguments from both sides before issuing non-binding recommendations aimed at resolving the dispute.

The process is the final formal step in California’s impasse procedures before additional legal options become available to both parties.

In a message to union members following mediation, PVFT President Brandon Diniz said the district remained unwilling to move away from its proposal to cap district contributions toward employee health benefits.

“A few hours into the second day of mediation, we were informed that Kit Bragg had spoken with our superintendent,” Diniz said. “The superintendent, via the district’s negotiation team, made it clear that despite the concessions we were willing to make on salary in order to preserve our benefits, the district is unwilling to show any movement without an agreement to place a cap on benefits.”

The union has consistently opposed the proposed cap, saying it would shift rising health care costs onto employees.

“Our membership has made it clear from the beginning of this process that health and welfare benefits must be protected,” negotiations team member Emily Halbig said. “We presented proposals that would have protected our benefits while mitigating the rising cost of health care, keeping the district fiscally solvent. We worked as hard as we could, but in negotiations, it takes both parties.”

Member Minc Brooker said the district’s latest proposal reduced its health benefit contribution even further.

“The district came to mediation with proposals that contribute even less to our benefits than what they proposed months ago when they first put the cap on the table,” Brooker said.

In an email sent to media, district officials said the fact-finding panel will include a neutral chairperson, one representative appointed by the district and one appointed by the union. The panel will review information from both sides and issue recommendations intended to move negotiations toward a resolution, the district said.

“Although we are entering this next phase, our commitment to reaching a fair and sustainable agreement remains unchanged,” the district said. “We value our certificated employees and deeply appreciate the dedication they bring to our students and families every day. The district remains committed to providing competitive compensation and benefits while maintaining the fiscal responsibility necessary to serve more than 14,000 students now and into the future.”

While the fact-finder’s recommendations are not binding, they mark the final step before the district could impose its last, best and final offer. Under California labor law, the union could then choose whether to strike, although negotiations may continue throughout the process.

The district and union have been at odds for months over wages and health benefits. The district has proposed a three-year salary increase totaling 7.77% while seeking to cap its contribution toward employee health insurance. The union has argued the cap would leave teachers responsible for increasingly expensive premiums and has made preserving current health benefits a central issue in negotiations.

PVFT leaders said they will hold a bargaining information session for members next week to discuss the fact-finding process and possible next steps.

Trump Team Panics Over July 4 After Tiny Fair Crowd Sent Him Raging

The New Republic - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 13:11

White House staff are reportedly concerned that Donald Trump’s Fourth of July rally is a recipe for disaster—one that will send the president into yet another meltdown. 

The remarkably low turnout for Trump’s Great American State Fair has sparked serious worries that the president’s massive rally planned for Saturday will also be a dud, multiple sources told CNN Wednesday.  

The rally is scheduled to take place outside on the National Mall, as temperatures in Washington are forecasted to reach a stifling 100 degrees. 

One official familiar with the event told CNN that there would likely be large groups of people who reserved tickets for Trump’s address but don’t end up attending. Empty seats means that viewers are likely in for another presidential temper tantrum—a sorry celebration for the country’s 250th anniversary. 

The rally will be punctuated by a massive fireworks display currently scheduled to begin at 11:00 p.m. And unlike in past years, attendees will not be able to bring coolers to help beat the heat. 

“I do not understand why we are doing this so late,” one White House official told CNN, adding there were still ongoing efforts to fix the timing. “I’m really not sure who thought this was a good idea.”

So far, Trump’s Great American State Fair has been supremely underwhelming, and beset by technical difficulties, lame programming, and disappointing weather delays. Trump has raged in the face of bad reviews and lied about the visibly low attendance.

Internally, those in Trump’s orbit have begun pointing fingers about the president’s own Fyre Festival (except people actually went to Fyre Festival). “The mistake here was not driving attendance,” one person close to the White House told CNN. “It was an ‘if you build it, they will come’ mentality that failed.”

Categories: Political News

Venezuela’s Earthquake-Hit Health System Is in Crisis

Mother Jones - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 13:08

It’s been a very long week for Beatriz Armada, the Venezuela operations manager for the humanitarian nonprofit Humanity and Inclusion. Hers is just one of many non-governmental organizations that have been responding to the devastation of two massive earthquakes that struck Venezuela last week, which have left, by a conservative estimate, some 1,700 people dead and thousands injured, with more than 15,000 displaced from their homes.

Many survivors who were pulled from the rubble needed amputations, Armada told me, a further challenge for Venezuela’s health care system—and health care workers in Caracas were affected as well, making it “very complicated to be able to give medical attention,” she said.

Armada told me that around 38 structures related to health care infrastructure had been decimated by the earthquakes, including one that specifically provided help for disabled people, who are disproportionately impacted by earthquakes.

“There was nothing left of the entire building, and so many people with disabilities who lost their lives in this, in this particular space,” Armada said.

One disabled man and his family that Armada spoke to lost everything in their home, including hard-to-replace equipment “that he would normally need to be able to have dignity.”

“We’re mobilizing resources to be able to more directly support people with disabilities,” Armada said, including with mobility devices and rehabilitation, “which is also quite a main need at the moment.”

Armada says she’s heartened by the responses of people across other parts of Venezuela, where people are also being transferred for medical care, and by international support. She hopes it doesn’t end prematurely.

“We need this [support] to continue in the upcoming months, because I think it’s going to take months, or even years, to be able to fully recuperate from,” Armada told me.

Categories: Political News

HELLRAISER Coming to Universal Halloween Horror Nights 2026

The Nerdist - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 13:06
⚡ Quick Take
  • Hellraiser is coming to Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights Orlando and Hollywood.
  • Universal has released an announcement trailer starring Pinhead and the Cenobites.
  • HHN merch launched Wednesday, July 1 at 9 am PST.

“We have such sights to show you.” Those were the immortal words of Pinhead, leader of the demonic Cenobites, in Clive Barker’s original Hellraiser. And soon, he’ll be able to show these terrifying sights to horror fans in person. Yes, for the first time ever, a Hellraiser-themed haunted house is coming to both Universal Studios in Orlando and Universal Studios in Hollywood for this year’s Halloween Horror Nights.

This new experience will transport fans into Clive Barker’s dark imagination, where “desire, suffering, and the unknown collide.” This all begins on Friday, August 28, in Orlando, and Thursday, September 3, in Hollywood. You can check out a teaser video from Universal Halloween Horror Nights’ new Hellraiser experience down below.

The new Hellraiser haunted house will be based on the first three (and best) movies in the franchise. Clive Barker’s Hellraiser from 1987, Hellbound: Hellraiser II from 1988, and Hellraiser III from 1992. Hopefully, the inclusion of the latter means we’re going to see the CD head Cenobite. The coolest aspect of this new haunted house, however, is that Doug Bradley himself will lend his voice to Pinhead for the attraction. The original film introduced audiences to the chilling mythology of the Lament Configuration puzzle box. When an unsuspecting person solved the puzzle box, it opened a portal to another dimension inhabited by the ritualistically torturous beings, the Cenobites, and their leader, the iconic Pinhead. You can read the official description for the new Hellraiser haunted house below:

The terrifying experience begins as guests enter the iconic Lament Configuration puzzle box, unwittingly summoning the Cenobites and opening a gateway to a diabolical dimension where unspeakable horrors await. From the shadowy attic in Frank Cotton’s family home where he was first cast to Hell, to the disturbing Channard Institute where the legendary box lures guests with its promise of forbidden pleasures, fans will encounter haunting moments and settings from the Hellraiser franchise at every turn. Their unnerving journey ultimately lands them in The Labyrinth where Pinhead and the Cenobites lie in wait for new souls to torment for eternity.

Universal Halloween Horror Nights' Hellraiser haunted house art.Universal Studios

New limited-release merchandise inspired by the Hellraiser haunted house, including a T-shirt and a Pinhead acrylic figure, are now available at Universal Orlando Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood and will launch Wednesday, July 1 at 9 am PST on shopUniversal.com. To purchase tickets to Halloween Horror Nights, be sure to click here.

The post HELLRAISER Coming to Universal Halloween Horror Nights 2026 appeared first on Nerdist.

Categories: Nerd News

CYBERPUNK: EDGERUNNERS 2 Anime Reveals Action-Packed Trailer

The Nerdist - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 13:01
⚡ Quick Take
  • The anime, based on the Cyberpunk games, had incredible audience ratings for its first season.

Four years after the release of its first season, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners has revealed its season two trailer, with this next season’s title as Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2. The anime is one of Netflix’s highest-rated series ever, with a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. On June 29, fans saw, for the first time, the cast of characters of the second season, and have already started making speculations.

Edgerunners is an anime based on the video game Cyberpunk 2077, set in a futuristic world full of cyborgs. Season one followed David Martinez, who was a student before becoming a cyborg mercenary.

A Street Kid trying to survive in a technology and body modification-obsessed city of the future. Having everything to lose, he chooses to stay alive by becoming an Edgerunner, a Mercenary outlaw also known as a Cyberpunk.

Now, season two introduces an entirely new group of characters to follow. The trailer for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 tells us almost nothing about them, only made up of colorful, bloody, action-filled clips set to a nu-metal-esque song.

CD PROJEKT RED

When Cyberpunk 2077 came out in 2020, it was met with a wave of negative audience ratings. After a long wait for what seemed to be a great game premise, the game’s quality left users upset. The player experience was… not good. Bugs ran rampant, and the developers had not had the time to perfect the mechanics.

According to Jade King from The Gamer, CD PROJEKT RED “rushed [it] out in unfinished form after several delays to appease shareholders,” despite protests from stressed game developers.

Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world, action-adventure RPG set in the dark future of Night City — a dangerous megalopolis obsessed with power, glamor, and ceaseless body modification.

However, the game had its redemption arc. Developers fixed in-game bugs, resolved the constant crashes, and perhaps the largest part of the shift was the release of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, an anime based on the game.

Netflix, CD PROJEKT RED, TRIGGER

If the show follows the style of the trailer, a large portion of it may be from the perspective of a camcorder, held by an unnamed kid silently documenting the bloody events around him. However, that style could have definitely just been used to up the cool, retro vibe of the trailer. Despite being set in the future, the show does have a distinctly 90s/early 2000s style.

And man, did season one scar the audience. Spoiler: most of the top comments on the new trailer allude to characters’ tragic ends in the first season. Here are some of my favorites:

  • “Can’t wait to get emotionally attached to new characters just so Night City can delete them like a corrupted save file.” @RoninPirate
  • “I’m sure this crew will meet a very happy ending.” @clydecash7124
  • “The VICTIM CAST of season 2 looks amazing” @deepakdolwani9466

So, to say the least, fans think they know how the season will end. But nobody knows, because the trailer itself is certainly vague.

The season has no specific release date, but the trailer says it will be coming to Netflix this Fall.

The post CYBERPUNK: EDGERUNNERS 2 Anime Reveals Action-Packed Trailer appeared first on Nerdist.

Categories: Nerd News

Somebody told DeepSeek to build in-browser ransomware and it gleefully complied

The Register - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 12:57
You can't ask most models to help you make "ransomware" directly, but many will be more than willing if you give them the right prompt. DeepSeek and other LLMs with fewer safety and security controls make theoretical cyberthreats - like browser-only ransomware - much more likely to be used in real-world infections, according to Check Point researchers. The Israeli cybersecurity company analyzed a DeepSeek-generated sample in a Wednesday report that its threat hunters describe as in-browser ransomware. Over the past year, the team has tracked almost 3,000 files attributed to DeepSeek, and classified nearly half (1,383 files) as malicious or dangerous using VirusTotal or static source analysis. “Within this dataset, we found a sample that implemented a dangerous browser-native technique we have not observed exploited in the wild,” researcher Alexey Bukhteyev wrote. And while the sample was incomplete, and unable to pull off an in-the-wild infection, the security shop’s testing showed “little effort” would be required to make it attack-ready. “Our research shows that the original incomplete DeepSeek sample can be transformed into a fully functional attack with minimal effort,” Pedro Drimel Neto, malware analysis team leader at Check Point Research, told The Register. “Very little effort is needed,” Neto said. “Low-level expertise is sufficient. You don't need to be a sophisticated cybercriminal or advanced persistent threat group. In fact, we've already observed evidence of actual threat actors attempting this attack using straightforward LLM prompts.” Known threat gets an AI boost The risk ransomware poses to browsers isn’t a new idea. The File System Access specification lists ransomware as a security consideration, and a 2023 USENIX Security paper on Ransomware over Modern Web Browsers described how File System Access API could be abused to encrypt local files from a malicious web application. The File System Access API is a browser capability, primarily supported by Chrome and Chromium-based browsers, that allows developers to build web applications, such as editors, IDEs, and creative tools, that can read, write, and manage files on the user’s local device. “Even though it can be used to develop rich web applications, it greatly extends the attack surface, which can be abused by adversaries to cause significant harm,” Google’s Güliz Seray Tuncay and Florida International University researchers Harun Oz, Ahmet Aris, Abbas Acar, Leonardo Babun and Selcuk Uluagac wrote in 2023, long before LLMs could develop working malware and attack chains. What’s new, according to Check Point, is that an AI model put these previously documented ideas into a “realistic and enforceable attack scenario leveraging a method that defenders had originally thought was unfeasible due to browser sandboxing limits: a DeepSeek-attributed malicious sample, generated as an all-in-one malware fantasy, connected this documented platform risk to a realistic phishing-style web application, demonstrating a viable end-to-end attack chain.” This technique is especially appealing to attackers because it doesn’t require a native payload, APK installation, browser exploit, or root access to a compromised device. Instead, it uses social engineering - tricking a user into clicking on a malicious button - combined with a legitimate permission prompt exposed by the File System Access API in Chrome. Meet InfernoGrabber 9000 This particular sample that Check Point uncovered is a Python Flask application that targets Android users. It’s named InfernoGrabber 9000, and VirusTotal calls it a “fully functional information stealer and ransomware toolkit.” While the security sleuths don’t have the prompt submitted to DeepSeek to produce the malware, they speculate it was something along the lines of: “create a universal malicious tool that runs through the browser and collects as much victim data as possible, encrypts files, and demands ransom. In a single front-end, the generated code assembled routines and stubs for keylogging, clipboard monitoring, form and network-request interception, Discord-token collection, crypto-wallet and payment-card discovery, geolocation requests, webcam and microphone access, screenshots, local-file access, Chrome exploit stubs, ‘persistence,’ and a ransomware-style overlay.” To be clear: the sample doesn’t actually do all of this. “A more accurate reading is that it is an AI-generated blueprint in which the model tried to translate familiar capabilities of native stealers and ransomware tools into a web page opened in the browser,” Bukhteyev wrote. The code presents a victim-facing lure disguised as a Discord avatar AI upscaler. Clicking on the lure is intended to execute a slew of silent, harmful actions that run entirely inside the browser process. These include stealing Discord tokens, harvesting credit card numbers and cryptocurrency seed phrases, logging keystrokes, and capturing unauthorized webcam and microphone feeds. The code also includes specific routines for browser exploitation (such as targeting CVE-2023-4863), uses a hardcoded Discord webhook for data exfiltration and displays a ransomware WinLocker screen demanding Bitcoin. The good news for defenders is that the sample was incomplete, and the browser's built-in security model successfully prevents most of this functionality. However, Check Point was able to create a working proof-of-concept for the browser-native attack using the latest DeepSeek model V4. The team had to remove some of the more explicit terms - like ransomware - from the prompt, but ultimately produced the same functionality: “a web page that asks the user for access to local files, processes them inside the browser, and leaves the user unable to recover the original content.” AKA: browser-only ransomware. Neto told us that this type of LLM-generated code and in-browser attack is “likely happening now.” “We expect to see this activity in the short term, if we haven't already,” he added. While traditional ransomware and extortion groups target enterprises and critical infrastructure organizations, as opposed to Android-device users, which was the focus of this research, “we have seen increased end-user ransomware activity recently,” Neto said. “What's most concerning is that code obfuscation used in these attacks makes them difficult to spot, so there's a real possibility that attacks using this technique are already occurring in the wild but going unnoticed.” ®

Sadie Sink Didn’t Have to Audition for BRAND NEW DAY Role

The Nerdist - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 12:30
⚡ Quick Take
  • Sadie Sink’s role in Spider-Man: Brand New Day was so secretive that she didn’t do an audition and got the script on the way to filming.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day hits theaters in just a couple of weeks. And somehow, despite living in a world where pretty much everything is spoiled somehow, we still do not have a definitive answer about who Sadie Sink is playing in the movie. Is she Jean Grey or another character that will be completely new to the Marvel Universe? We will see soon. In fact, things were so secretive with Sadie Sink and this role that she didn’t audition for it and did not receive a script until she was flying to London for filming. 

Stranger Things 5, Volume 1,, MaxNetflix

Nylon posted this information in a profile piece featuring Sink, where she said it was easy to simply keep her mouth shut. If someone paid me millions of dollars to play a role and keep quiet about it, I’d do that, too. Even Tom Holland, who is known for accidentally spilling the beans, hasn’t said anything about it. Apparently, Brand New Day director Daniel Destin Cretton offered Sadie Sink the role directly with no audition necessary, which makes sense considering they’ve collaborated before. Sink is no stranger to a fervent fanbase after Stranger Things but the Marvel world is something far bigger. 

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“I knew that Marvel was a big deal and had a big brand, especially Spider-Man,” Sink told Nylon. “I know there’s a huge fan base, but it feels really big. I think these blockbuster movies are a whole different beast.” 

Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into theaters on July 31.

The post Sadie Sink Didn’t Have to Audition for BRAND NEW DAY Role appeared first on Nerdist.

Categories: Nerd News

Trump says he isn’t corrupt—he’s just lucky

Daily Kos - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 12:30

President Donald Trump is downplaying the more than 235% increase in his annual income since his second term began, a clear attempt to obscure the pattern of corruption among his administration. According to newly released financial disclosures, Trump reported $622 million in revenue in 2024. That jumped to more than $2.2 billion last year. But when he was asked about the massive…

Source

Categories: Political News

MAGA Considers Banning Pregnant Foreigners—or Just Sterilizing Them

The New Republic - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 12:18

The MAGA-verse has begun to attack pregnant women in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 5–4 ruling to uphold the birthright citizenship clause of the Constitution, which holds that nearly anyone born on U.S. soil is an American citizen, regardless of where their parents are from.

Their new suggestion: Ban all pregnant foreigners from entering the country.

“If you have birthright citizenship, it means if a person comes here nine months pregnant to go look around at some things, in a couple of weeks that is the mother of a lifetime American citizen—and a direct line into American cash and welfare for the rest of that child’s life,” White House adviser Stephen Miller hollered at Jesse Watters on Fox News Tuesday evening.

“Mr. Miller, are we banning pregnant women from America? Are we banning foreign pregnant women?” Watters asked with a laugh.

“Well, what I’m saying, Jesse, is that you have to now think very carefully about who you let into your country, even on a temporary basis, because the possibility [for] birth tourism … when people come here just to have babies on American soil.”

Watters: Are we banning pregnant women from America?

Miller: You have to think carefully on who you let into the country. There’s a lot of things we have to take a hard look at. pic.twitter.com/mazrvtLhxa

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 1, 2026

“Everybody should agree that it’s a violation of our laws if your intent in coming here if you’re pregnant is to have a child to become a United States citizen,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Wednesday, calling birth tourism a “booming industry.”

“Just saw a pregnant Haitian woman at the grocery store. Called ICE immediately,” right-wing content producer Matt Morse wrote. “Can’t take any chances, these days.”

“The State Department should IMMEDIATELY cease to give out visas to pregnant applicants,” MAGA Representative Lauren Boebert said. “Sorry, Birth Tourism cannot continue.”

Some took the suggestion to an even more extreme level, calling for sterilization of all foreign visitors.

“Several ways forward here  given the choice of Roberts/Barrett to nullify the 14th Amendment and extra-constitutionally replace it with their own language,” The Federalist co-founder Sean Davis wrote on X. “Deny entry to all pregnant foreigners.… Deny entry to all female foreigners.… Require sterilization of all foreign visitors prior to entry.”

The same party that harangues single women about the low birth rate is now threatening any pregnant woman in this country who isn’t a citizen—the consequences of which could be devastating.

Categories: Political News

Apple’s Hide My Email feature has a bug that’s been exposing real email addresses, researcher claims

TechCrunch - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 12:18
Research appears to reveal a bug that could render the feature effectively useless.
Categories: Nerd News

Former CIA Director John Brennan Sues Trump Over Shoddy Revenge Probe

The New Republic - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 12:11

Former CIA Director John Brennan is suing the Trump administration, claiming that their investigation into him is a vindictive prosecution.

Brennan, who is under investigation by the Justice Department, is seeking to make sure the administration preserves all records pertaining to that investigation. In the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court, he expressed concern that the DOJ wouldn’t preserve records and communications that would allow him to take legal action in the future if the administration decides to prosecute him.

“Administration officials from the Acting Attorney General to the FBI Director and the Counselor overseeing the Brennan investigations have been publicly declaring Director Brennan a criminal, not only before securing a conviction in court but even before a full investigation and an indictment,” Brennan’s attorneys wrote. “And, certain officials in the Department of Justice are engaging in demonstrably irregular prosecutorial activity in order to gin up a case that will satisfy the President’s direction.”

Brennan wants President Trump, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, federal prosecutors in Miami who have investigated him, and intelligence officers to preserve any records related to him. The Southern District of Florida U.S. Attorney’s Office is reportedly involved in investigating Brennan and has hired John Yoo, a former DOJ official from the Bush administration famous for legally defending torture after 9/11, to consult on a case that may concern Brennan.

One DOJ prosecutor who expressed doubts about the investigation into Brennan, Maria Medetis Long, was removed from the case in April. Long is chief of the national security section for the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami, and would normally be involved in a case concerning intelligence. This suggests that Brennan may have a point about the DOJ’s interest in him having to do with Trump wanting to punish anyone he perceives as an enemy.

Categories: Political News

An artificial cell with a full lifecycle has been created for the first time

The Register - Wed, 07/01/2026 - 12:10
A group of scientists in a Minnesota laboratory have made history, creating the first artificial cell with a complete life cycle. SpudCell, as the team behind it has dubbed the creation, is built entirely from known chemical components, and can grow, replicate its genome, divide into new generations of cells, and even demonstrate natural selection and competition as its genes change. That’s not to say SpudCells are alive, mind you, as the team behind it aren’t claiming to have become gods. What they have done, they note in a preprint paper [PDF] published while awaiting peer review, is to give new insights into the minimal qualifications for what it actually takes for something to be alive. That, and they’ve created what they say could be a “chassis” that could be adapted for everything from formulating new drugs to the actual creation of artificial organisms. “SpudCell is not a ‘finished’ cell, and it is far simpler than anything in nature,” biochemist, University of Minnesota professor, and SpudCell project leader Kate Adamala told The Register in an email. “SpudCell is proof of what is possible. It proves that non-living, defined molecules can be assembled into a cell capable of functions that previously were exclusively reserved for natural life.” For those wondering where the name came from, Adamala told us that it was originally dubbed “Potato Cell” as a nod to her Polish heritage, before the name was shortened to SpudCell. In terms of those minimal qualifications, one of the things that SpudCell suggested was how few kilobase pairs (kbp - one kbp represents 1,000 base pairs) a genome may need to support a complete synthetic cell cycle. Prior scientific work estimated a minimal genome could be as small as 113 kbp (human genomes contain around 3 million kbp), but SpudCells only contain 90 kbp. SpudCells are also able to divide without the need for a cytoskeleton, the internal scaffolding that gives many cells their structure and helps coordinate cell division, side-stepping what the team said has long been a bottleneck in synthetic cell research due to the cytoskeleton's complexity. Instead, SpudCells divide when proteins used to grow the cell crowd together at the membrane surface of the cell until mechanical stress forces it to split. As mentioned above, SpudCells also demonstrate competition and natural - or unnatural, in this case - selection. “When researchers introduced a genetic change that increased production of the fusion protein, cells with that change grew faster and produced more offspring,” the team explained. “After five generations, the faster-growing variant had outcompeted the original.” As a rather primitive cell without the full complement of features needed to sustain life, SpudCell does have its limitations. “SpudCell has a very primitive metabolism, and it cannot yet build its own ribosomes,” Adamala told us. Because SpudCells can't yet build their own ribosomes, researchers have to keep 'em fed with liposomes carrying ribosomes, enzymes, lipids, and other molecular components needed to keep the synthetic cells functioning. That’s good news for anyone worried about the little creatures escaping the lab and wreaking havoc on the outside world: Their biology precludes survival outside very specific lab conditions. The artificial cellular future The potential uses of things like SpudCell, which is in essence an artificial proto life form with biology that’s entirely known, understandable, and manipulable, are vast. As Adamala explained it to us, medicines, materials, industrial chemicals, and other manufactured products the world relies on are created via molecular transformation in natural living cells we manipulate to produce desired products, or from industrial processes with huge energy and environmental costs. “Cells built from scratch could perform molecular transformations industrial chemistry cannot,” the biochemist told us. Using biology in such a way requires far more understanding of cellular structures and processes, Adamala added, and to do that we need cells we fully understand - like SpudCell. “I’m a chemist, and ever since I started working on biology, I’ve been frustrated by our inability to fully describe and characterize any natural living cell,” Adamala said. “To understand and routinely use biology, we need engineerable and fully defined cells.” That’s where the second part of her team’s work comes in: Together with a group of colleagues, Adamala is taking her work out of the university lab and into a public-benefit institution called Biotic. The outfit intends to do its work publicly and openly in a bid to standardize artificial cell research and speed up whatever societal benefits the project could help create. “Every lab in this field is solving the same problems from scratch, and little of that institutional knowledge is carrying over to the next group,” Adamala explained in an email. “That is the problem I want Biotic to solve: How to turn a field of one-off accomplishments into a real engineering discipline, built on shared, open foundations, so the ability to engineer biology is not something only a few private hands ever hold.” There’s a lot of work to be done before SpudCell takes Biotic and the artificial cell research world beyond the basics, but it’s a start that SpudCell has contributed to, Adamala said, making a number of long-standing challenges tractable instead of far-future dreams of labcoat-bedecked boffins. “My personal immediate to-do list includes ribogenesis, better metabolism, and more robust division,” the professor told us. “Those three things, with the support of the community built by Biotic, will go very far towards making it a viable platform for practical applications.” ®

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