Tootfinder

Nothing won't launch a new phone this year in its budget-focused CMF Phone series due to RAM prices (Ben Schoon/9to5Google)
https://9to5google.com/2026/06/19/nothing-cmf-phone-ram-costs/

Nothing CMF Phone is a RAMageddon casualty, memory now the most expensive component
Nothing’s CMF Phone series has released two models thus far and, at least for now, won’t be getting a third,...

People who don't mind driverless cars will find all sorts out reason to brush off this kind of news:
https://flipboard.social/@TechDesk/117135628617386440
It was moving slowly already to be safe, it did brake before the collision, the injuries were minimal, the child is at fault, etc.
In the end, a lot of people will shrug and say: human drivers also make mistakes like this, so what's the big deal if a robot does? Maybe the robot even has a better safety record on average than humans. You can't ask for perfection!
Here are three related reasons why you shouldn't buy these arguments:
1. The crash statistics for the "average human driver" include (and are probably significantly driven by) impaired human drivers, like drunk drivers or people on their phones. When driverless car companies put "as good as the average human driver" as the goal, they're saying that they're okay with their systems being just as bad as drunk or distracted drivers sometimes. That's not the right goal at all! We should demand that driving robots perform at least as well as non-distracted human drivers, which is significantly *better* than the average human driver when it comes to things like crashes.
2. Mistakes made by a robotic system are fundamentally different in nature from mistakes made by humans, because the robot mistakes ate *systematic* across all robots in similar-enough situations. If a human looking at their phone slows down too late and hits a child, that's tragic, but it doesn't mean that *every* human driver put into the same situation would make the same mistake. In fact, many of them probably wouldn't be looking at their phone and thus would avoid the accident, *even given the exact same situation in which to react.* In contrast, *every Waymo taxi running the same software* will make exactly the same mistake in that situation. In other words, this kind of event will definitely repeat whenever a similar-enough situation arises around a Waymo taxi. That's why news like this should be scary, even though the accident was a minor one.
3. Some might claim that it's good that a software upgrade could potentially fix the issue that caused this accident. It's sort of true that there's an upside there (although any behavior updates can cause errors in other situations). But the question we should be asking is: why wasn't this already fixed before the vehicle was approved for testing on real roads with real children and people in harm's way? Why wasn't there a stimulation scenario for this exact kind of situation, so that the system already knew what to do? Why should it take a child getting injured for a fix to be developed v(if one in fact will be)? In theory, of course, it's possible that this was a truly exceptional situation where even an alert human couldn't have done better. I'm sure what's what the company is telling the investigators. It's also possible that the designers are following the Silicon Valley motto of "move fast and break things", which reaches an entirely new level of frightfulness when the thing that's moving fast is a car and the thing being broken is a child. "I'll just deploy it now and as test cases when I see what really breaks in production" is an attitude I've been guilty of, but then I make videogames, not deadly robots.

Some students are directing AI agents to “take” entire online courses for them,
letting the software run in the background while they focus on better uses of their time,
--like doomscrolling on their phone or gaming.
The New York Times unpacked the trend in a recent story,
and it’s a testament to how extreme AI-enabled cheating has become,
but also of the perils of getting an education in a virtual environment instead of a physical one.
Professors can’t re…

A.I. Agents Are Taking Entire Online Courses for Cheating Students
As colleges and students embrace virtual classes, the ease of A.I. cheating is raising questions about the value of an online degree.

Looking at maybe 400k UK phone lines not getting switched to digital before the 2027 deadline?
https://broadbandswitch.uk/reports/the-last-dial-tone/#:~:text=Thirty-three weeks, three trajectories

The Last Dial Tone | Report No. 26 | BroadbandSwitch.uk
Independent analysis of the PSTN and WLR switch-off, the 31 January 2027 deadline, eVAC, and what to do now.

Podcast: The Government Wants to End Anonymity on Phones https://www.404media.co/podcast-the-government-wants-to-end-anonymity-on-phones/

A colleague mentioned out of the blue that he had bought the new Commodore phone — and his only connection to the brand was having a C64 back in the 80s. He’s not buying it for anything but getting away from normal smartphones. And even though I had decided not to get one, I feel some amount of envy sneaking up on me after all…

Because I prefer to own my own data, I've just had to struggle through the phone setup routine of installing fdroid and then the passwordstore app, then getting my pgp key onto the phone and generating a GitHub token. All this stuff should be easier for normal people, even I had a moment where I looked at the phone and went "how do these pieces go together, again? ..."

So much is going politically right for Democrats these days.
Trump’s approval is down,
gas prices are up
and an unpopular war with Iran drags on.
But dysfunction and debt inside one of the party’s key institutions
— which is getting crushed in fund-raising by its Republican counterpart
— are creating rising anxiety for top Democrats.
The Democratic Party is so short on cash that leaders at its headquarters have undertaken a new gambit to mask the se…

Inside the Phone-Throwing Drama at the Troubled, Broke Democratic Party
The Democrats should be well positioned to make gains in this year’s midterms. But inside party headquarters, every week brings paranoia, worries about money and, on occasion, emotional eruptions.

I spent $1899 on pre-ordering a new phone but I’m getting $750 off of it from the carrier and $150 off of it from trading in my Pixel 9a (The last non-folding phone I own). A $1899 phone with $900 erased from the price is still a lot of money.