In a stunning turn of events, the US Senate has passed a measure forcing the Trump administration to retain an ocean monitoring system. CC-licensed photo by Oregon State University on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Not washed up. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
The smartphone’s days are numbered. Meet the device that could come next • Fortune
Alyson Shontell spoke to Cristiano Amon, CEO of Qualcomm:
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AS: How much longer will we have smartphones as our primary device?
CA: This year will be the year of agents. You’ll start to see more form factors of things people wear. By 2027, 2028, you’ll start to see workload shift [from phones to AI agent devices]. In the next five years, it’s very possible those devices will be in the hundreds of millions, heading toward a billion [agentic AI devices].
AS: What will the future personal AI device will look like?
CA: I am bullish on glasses. Humans are very comfortable with glasses. You turn your head, that’s where the camera is going to see what your eyes are seeing. They’re very close to your ear and very close to your mouth. You’re going to read something and the camera can read it. So glasses, I think, will be the primary form factor.
There are some secret form factors that I cannot tell you about. We’re working with pretty much all of them, from OpenAI to Meta. You have different things that people wear—glasses is the easiest one to understand, but also jewelry, pins, and pendants.
For example, you’ll be walking around with glasses, and you’re going to see something you really like. You’ll say, “I’d like to buy this. How much is it on Amazon?” Or, “Can you render how I’m going to look with this on?” It’s going to be a different kind of low-friction experience, and workloads are going to start to shift. Certain things you’re going to do with an agent.
AS: Which company is best positioned to be the Apple of AI devices?
CA: With wearables, you have a mix of fashion and technology. Eyewear companies, for example, can become technology companies—and their valuations are going to expand, because you’re still going to be buying a fashion device.
Would you believe a consumer electronics company will make one pair of glasses that everyone wears? Or will people pick the brand they want? You’re going to see more things that we wear becoming smart, and it’s going to create a new set of players. One thing I can tell you with precision is that in every new generation of wireless, the players change as the industry changes. So I think we’re going to see that again.
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Why is it that the only scenario these people can imagine is transactions, or potential transactions? And where is the screen for these devices? I wonder about the “shift to AI agents”. It seems like wildly optimistic thinking.
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Snap is finally about to ship AR glasses — and they cost a fortune • The Verge
Jay Peters:
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Snap is finally launching augmented glasses for the public. Specs, which Snap describes as “a wearable computer built into see-through augmented reality glasses,” will cost $2,195. You can preorder a pair of Specs now at specs.com with a $200 refundable deposit, and Snap says they’re expected to ship “this fall” in the US, UK, and France.
This is a big moment for Snap: The company made a big entry into smart glasses with its original Spectacles in 2016, and the company has been toiling away on nonpublic AR versions of Spectacles over the past few years. CEO Evan Spiegel promised the company would launch consumer AR glasses in 2026 and even turned its smart glasses team into a separate business.
The company says that Specs are “fully standalone, with no puck and no tether.” (Which is perhaps a jab at Apple’s Vision Pro, which is tethered to a separate battery pack.) They’ll be offered in two sizes, a 47mm model weighing 132g and a 52mm model weighing 136g, and will have removable inserts that Snap says will support “a wide range of prescriptions.”
You probably won’t mistake Specs, with their wide, bold frames, for any of Meta’s smart glasses — Snap clearly picked a design that it wants to stand out. (They’re not my style — I don’t think I can pull off the “snow goggles, but fashionable” look — though maybe Jony Ive might like them.) They have visible light and infrared cameras, and while the Specs are recording, a little LED bar will glow in the middle of the glasses.
…The Specs have two Snapdragon processors onboard, and while Snap isn’t specifying exactly which ones they are, the company says that one is focused on “computer vision” while the other is focused on running AR Lenses. “Together, they enable fast hand tracking, low latency, and responsive interactions that help digital content feel anchored in the real world,” Snap says.
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Anyone who wears these looks like Brains from Thunderbirds (or possibly Joe 90). Hard to see these as anything but the nichiest of niche sales.
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AI nose uses ‘Smell Language Model’ to sniff out signs of disease • The Register
Dan Robinson:
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Many people worry about what AI knows, but what about an AI Nose that can smell what disease you might have?
Ainos, an AI and biotech company that is developing smell technology, is working with National Taiwan University (NTU) to explore whether its platform can help diagnose patients by analyzing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath.
The year-long research effort, which starts in July, will examine individuals who present with dyspnea, or shortness of breath, said to be one of the most common symptoms seen in emergency departments.
Dyspnea can be a symptom of many conditions, including acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD) and acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF), each of which requires different treatments.
Ainos and NTU hope to develop and evaluate a system to analyze VOC-based breathprints to detect AECOPD and/or ADHF in patients.
Ainos’s Smell AI platform relies on an AI Nose module that features multiple micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) sensors and an integrated digital processor. Sensor resistance increases in the presence of detectable gases, and this is converted to a digital signal that is interpreted in much the way the human nose interprets scents, according to Ainos.
That interpretation is handled by by a proprietary Smell Language Model that has been developed to learn, classify, and contextualize complex scent patterns.
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High likelihood of success: dogs (and cats?) can diagnose illness, though they’re terrible at telling us what it is. And there are humans who can detect diseases by smell – such as Joy Milne, famous for being able to sniiff out Parkinson’s.
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Florida’s TikTok lawsuit could signal wider social media crackdown • POLITICO
Andrew Atterbury:
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Florida’s move to crack down on TikTok for allegedly defying the state’s law blocking kids from social media is the state’s latest warning for Big Tech.
So far, Meta, the outfit behind platforms like Facebook and Instagram, is the only major tech company complying with Florida’s restrictions on children using social media, according to state Attorney General James Uthmeier. That leaves some heavy hitters open to the same potential legal risk as TikTok, which state officials contend could be on the hook for “billions” of dollars in damages for allegedly deceiving families about the risks posed by the content on its app.
“Mark my words, we’re going to go after anybody that’s going to hurt our kids — anybody and everybody,” Uthmeier said during an event Monday announcing the TikTok lawsuit.
Florida’s GOP-dominated Legislature passed its strict social media law in 2024 prohibiting children younger than 14 from using many platforms while requiring parental approval for 14- and 15-year-olds. The online restrictions aligned Florida with several other states attempting to limit minors using “addictive” apps they consider harmful to their mental health.
By design, Florida’s regulations don’t name any social media applications, instead targeting “addictive features” like infinite scrolling and platforms on which 10% or more of users are under 16 years old and spend more than two hours on average engaged.
The state, however, was unable to enforce these policies until November, as tech firms fought the law in court, contending it amounted to a free speech violation for users.
And it wasn’t until April that Uthmeier ultimately signalled Florida would soon be dropping the hammer on apps, warning that fines of $50,000 per violation were coming.
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Interesting dynamic: TikTok in the US is now owned by Larry Ellison, who acquired it because he’s a Trump donor, while Florida is a state that Trump needs to remain Republican. Who wins?
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Apple patches eavesdropping vulnerability in Beats Studio Buds • Ars Technica
Dan Goodin:
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Apple has updated its Beats Studio Buds wireless earbuds to patch a high-severity vulnerability that could be exploited by nearby hackers to eavesdrop on users.
The vulnerability, CVE-2025-20701, allowed improper authentication in the firmware running on the Bluetooth-related chips, enabling people within signal range to impersonate devices that had previously been paired with the earbuds. The researchers demonstrated this in a series of end-to-end attacks that allowed them to eavesdrop on conversations or sounds within earshot of the phone microphone.
“Impact: An attacker within Bluetooth range may be able to listen through the microphone of a device which is not yet paired and actively seeking pair requests,” Apple said in a Tuesday security advisory. The fix is contained in Beats Firmware Update 1B211, which is delivered automatically while headphones are paired with and within Bluetooth range of a user’s iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Users can check their firmware version by going to Settings on their device, navigating to Bluetooth, and tapping the info button next to the headphones.
Carrying a severity rating of 8.8 out of 10, CVE-2025-20701 was one of three vulnerabilities resulting from last year’s disclosure by researchers Dennis Heinze and Frieder Steinmetz of security firm Insinuator about chips made by Airoha Systems.
…Heinze and Steinmetz said last year that the full chain of attacks gave attackers the ability to do other malicious things, including retrieving call history and contacts, and even calling arbitrary numbers. Many of those capabilities are dependent on the specific devices being paired, since the functionality built into them differs from platform to platform.
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That’s a pretty dramatic vulnerability in what one would normally think of as an essentially dumb device.
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America is headed toward the infinite workweek • The Atlantic
Lila Shroff:
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Last year, Steve Yegge started “suddenly getting pounded by nap attacks in the middle of the day.” Without fail, Yegge—a programmer and tech blogger—would “hit a wall, fall over, and sleep for 90 minutes,” he told me. Like many developers, Yegge no longer writes code by hand; instead, he manages a legion of bots to do that for him. His productivity has skyrocketed, but so too has his exhaustion. “I’ve fallen asleep slower at the anesthesiologist,” he recently wrote on his blog.
In theory, handing tasks off to coding agents should free up time, allowing larger blocks for deep work and rest. But some developers are having the opposite experience. Instead of allowing for greater focus, the latest AI tools are overwhelming workers, frazzling minds and shredding attention spans. Although agents can do plenty more work now than they could a year ago, they still need human oversight. Like toddlers, AI agents ask endless follow-up questions, require detailed instructions—and, if you leave them unsupervised, are liable to make a huge mess. Once you get several running simultaneously, there’s no time for breaks. As Yegge puts it on LinkedIn, his job is to be an “AI babysitter.”
Plenty of people are seemingly starting to feel like depleted AI babysitters. When Boston Consulting Group recently surveyed roughly 1,500 workers across several roles at major American companies, the firm found that many workers were experiencing “mental fatigue from excessive use or oversight of AI tools beyond one’s cognitive capacity.” Respondents described a “buzzing” and “fog”-like feeling, sometimes accompanied by headaches, slower decision making, and trouble focusing. One engineering manager told the researchers that managing multiple bots at once was like having “a dozen browser tabs open in my head, all fighting for attention.” In the survey, 18% of developers reported AI-induced exhaustion. But in other roles, too, such as HR and marketing, where AI is also taking over, rates of reported fatigue were even higher.
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We did not expect that the AI tsunami would lead to us being exhausted as well as unemployed, did we?
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HPV vaccine means young women now have ‘close to zero’ risk of cervical cancer death • BBC News
Sophie Hutchinson:
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Children vaccinated at age 12–13 against HPV (human papillomavirus) have close to zero risk of dying from cervical cancer before the age of 30, landmark new research reveals.
The first study of its kind shows deaths have fallen sharply since school-age girls began being offered it in 2008, and around 200 lives have been saved in England so far thanks to the vaccine.
Between 2020 and 2024, no cervical cancer deaths were recorded in women aged 20 to 24 – the first time that had happened over a five-year period. Without vaccination, around 23 deaths would have been expected.
“It’s incredible to think that a single jab can almost eliminate a particular type of cancer,” said Prof Peter Sasieni, the lead researcher at Queen Mary University of London.
Overall, cervical cancer is still the 14th most common cancer among females in the UK, with 3,300 people diagnosed every year.
It is thought HPV, a virus which is spread through close skin-to-skin contact, causes 99% of those cases. Most HPV infections clear up without any problems, but some cause abnormal cell changes and can lead to cancer years later. The report’s authors expect the numbers dying from the disease to continue to fall as more are given a HPV jab and vaccinated people grow older.
Cancer Research UK, which funded the research, described the findings as an “incredible milestone” but warned that vaccination rates in England were running below recommended levels.
…Data from the UK Health Security Agency shows that 76% of girls in England were vaccinated by the age of 15 in 2024-25, well below the 90% that the World Health Organization (WHO) says is needed to eliminate cervical cancer.
…Boys have also been given the HPV vaccine since 2019, which helps to protect them against anal, penis, throat and mouth cancers, and reduces the risk of them passing the virus on to girls.
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Trump administration backs off plan to end ocean monitoring system • The New York Times
Maxine Joselow:
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The Trump administration is abandoning its plan to dismantle a $368m ocean monitoring system critical to understanding climate change and marine ecosystems, bowing to a bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill.
The National Science Foundation had said in May that it would begin removing hundreds of underwater instruments this month that collect data on coastal flooding, marine heat waves and other climate and weather events.
But the agency announced on Thursday that it will pause efforts to take apart the system, known as the Ocean Observatories Initiative, while convening an expert panel to determine its future.
“Effective immediately, N.S.F. will not proceed with further removal or de-scoping of equipment,” the agency said in a statement.
The Senate passed a measure Wednesday that would block the government from dismantling the system, with lawmakers in both parties warning that the action would be illegal and would threaten the safety of coastal communities. The Trump administration had also tried to cut the program’s funds the last two years, but Congress restored the money both times.
In May, the science foundation had said it would send ships to start pulling up instruments anchored to the sea floor off the coasts of Oregon, Washington State, Alaska, North Carolina, and an area between Greenland and Iceland known as the Irminger Sea.
For the past decade, scientists have used data from these instruments to understand how the ocean is absorbing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, how marine heat waves could affect fisheries and how soon a vital ocean current could collapse.
Fishermen have also checked the real-time, publicly available data on wind and wave conditions before heading to sea. And meteorologists have used these observations to improve forecasts of disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis.
The National Science Foundation said on Thursday that it already had pulled some buoys, sensors and other instruments from the water off the coasts of Oregon and Washington State, but it was “developing plans to redeploy the equipment after servicing.”
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Two astonishing things: the Trump administration actually listening to an opposing opinion; and the Senate passing something.
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A new era of Midjourney • Midjourney blog
The company you think of as “those people who make AI pictures” has decided to move into medicine:
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When you step into the water, you’re standing on top of a platform. The platform is connected to rails and begins to descend into the water – an elevator gently lowering you at around 2 inches, or 5 centimeters, per second.
As you descend you pass through a ring made of half a million tiny squares each the size of a fine grain of sand, and each capable of acting as both a tiny speaker and a tiny microphone.
Each square creates ultrasonic waves and records the ripples back at millions of times per second. Together they act as both a choir and an audience – producing terabytes of data each second. If we converted that data into HD internet video you’d need to watch 500 hours of footage for every 1 second of scan data.
The sheer number of mechanical elements, the inconceivable volume of data, and the computational power required for this to all come together is one reason why no such machine was ever made – until now.
As you descend into the water, hundreds of thousands of tiny elements take turns, sending out waves, listening together, compressing and then streaming data to a massive cluster where thousands of computers split the task.
The major computational task is figuring out how to change waves into images. Basically – as waves travel through the water and your body they change shape. The shape of these waves changes whenever there is a change in density or stiffness (i.e., going from water to skin to fat to muscle to bone). By looking at how the shapes of all the waves change, we reconstruct a detailed map or ‘image’ which basically lets us figure out what’s in there.
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It’s like a whole-body ultrasound system, rather than an MRI (which relies on high powered magnets to image inside the body). Will it work? Can it tell you anything useful? Might be fun to find out. And for Midjourney, definitely a much bigger potential moneyspinner than making AI images.
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
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The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 