Apple sues OpenAI over alleged theft of hardware trade secrets

 

Apple sues OpenAI over alleged theft of hardware trade secrets

Apple has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI alleging the systematic theft of hardware trade secrets, naming OpenAI's chief hardware officer, Tang Tan, a 24-year Apple veteran, as a defendant. According to the filing, Tan directed job candidates still employed by Apple to bring physical parts from the company to their interviews for what the suit describes as "show and tell" sessions designed to extract confidential information. A separate defendant, former Apple employee Chang Liu, is alleged to have stolen an Apple laptop upon departing for OpenAI. Apple stated in a representative's comment to CNBC that significant evidence recently emerged suggesting that individuals at OpenAI wrongfully took secret information about unreleased technologies, processes, and products, with specifics in the filing reaching down to proprietary metal-finishing techniques.

The timing is striking given that the two companies remain active partners, with ChatGPT baked into Apple's iPhone software. The lawsuit lands less than a month after OpenAI was reported to have threatened Apple with its own legal action over the terms of that partnership, a move that, in retrospect, looks like an extraordinary miscalculation. Apple also has reason to be sensitive about OpenAI's broader hardware ambitions, particularly following OpenAI's acquisition of the Jony Ive-founded design firm io, an effort widely seen as aimed at building a device to compete with the iPhone and staffed in no small part with Apple recruits.

If the allegations hold up, the consequences for OpenAI could extend well beyond legal fees, potentially derailing the company's hardware ambitions for years at the precise moment it has assembled the software foundation to support them.

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What’s up with home insurance nonpayment rates?

 What’s up with home insurance nonpayment rates?

If the arrival of the Summer House reunion special didn’t already tip you off, the US is entering disaster season. But, according to the Wall Street Journal, “many Americans face a near flip-of-the-coin chance” that they’ll get relief from home insurance carriers when weather damages their house. Insurance, not assurance In the outlet’s analysis, the five biggest home insurance groups—Allstate, Farmers Insurance, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, and United Services Automobile Association (USAA)—didn’t pay out on more than 44% of claims resolved last year. That’s up from 36% in 2015. Some of the reasons why include: New risk-assessment methods. Traditionally, insurers based underwriting on historical data—what has happened—but are increasingly using predictive models—what they believe will happen—to set premiums. The use of drone footage to calculate a home’s “risk score” is also driving up costs for some customers. Reinsurance costs. The term essentially refers to insurance for insurance companies, and those prices have increased, too. The rise of extreme weather. A report produced by the Treasury Department last year found that the number of weather and climate disasters causing more than $1 billion in damage increased 5x from 2018 through 2022. Covid-19. Yes, really. Experts say that pandemic-era supply chain snarls and insurance companies’ losses from them continue to be a hidden driver of price hikes. But insurance companies want you to know…that people aren’t super good at filling out claim submissions. Several insurers said that the rise in claims filed by text or through an app has led to more submittals that aren’t up to snuff. A USAA spokesperson said that the WSJ’s number-crunching did not account for “losses below a deductible, claims not pursued by customers, or claims later reopened and paid.” With those accounted for, he said, fewer than 6% of USAA claims were denied. Zoom out: In a Pew Research Center survey of homeowners conducted in March, 42% of respondents said that home insurance premiums have increased by “a lot” over the past few years. Since homeowners insurance is required to secure a mortgage, the ramifications impact consumer spending, the housing market, and more

B.C. government approves higher Mount Polley tailings dam, 12 years after disaster - irresponsible?

 

B.C. government approves higher Mount Polley tailings dam, 12 years after disaster

VICTORIA — Ministers in British Columbia have approved plans to increase the height of the tailings storage facility at the Mount Polley copper and gold mine, the site of a catastrophic dam collapse more than a decade ago.

Canadian Pressabout 16 hours agoabout 15 hours ago

An aerial view shows the debris going into Quesnel Lake caused by a tailings pond breach near the town of Likely, B.C., on August, 5, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

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VICTORIA — Ministers in British Columbia have approved plans to increase the height of the tailings storage facility at the Mount Polley copper and gold mine, the site of a catastrophic dam collapse more than a decade ago.

The government says the height increase, which had been subject to a court challenge, is part of an expansion of the mine that will allow production to continue until 2033, protecting 430 jobs.

The plan, approved by Environment Minister Tamara Davidson and Mining Minister Jagrup Brar, will allow the mine to raise the height of the tailings storage facility by 13 metres, bringing the dam height to 77 metres.

A statement from the Environmental Assessment Office says the ministers agreed that the proposed changes are not likely to result in significant new impacts compared with the existing approved operations.

A similar storage site at the mine in B.C.'s Cariboo region collapsed in August 2014, spilling about 25 million cubic metres of water and tailings into nearby waterways in one of the worst environmental disasters in the province's history.

A B.C. Supreme Court judge dismissed efforts last year by the Xat'sull First Nation to put a stop to plans to increase the level of the dam by four metres after the nation unsuccessfully argued that it had not been properly consulted.

The plans still need the appropriate permit amendments to be approved under the Mines Act.

The government statement says the overall mine area for Mount Polley remains unchanged, but raising the dam will increase the footprint of the tailings storage facility by approximately 28 hectares.

In their reasons for the decision, the ministers acknowledge that the Xat'sull First Nation has appealed the court decision and "remains concerned about the use of this process while the appeal is ongoing."

They say the First Nation views the process as "inadequate and inconsistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples."

Davidson and Brar write that they are satisfied that regulatory mechanisms provide appropriate oversight to respond to issues raised by the nation around potential effects on water quality, aquatic health, fish and fish habitat, and closure and reclamation.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 9, 2026.

Finance Interactive Dictionary

  Finance Interactive Dictionary

Author: R.G.Richardson
Finance Interactive Dictionary - multi-language search updated 2026. Balancing the definitions between the old and the new! A biannual updated series of economics, Markets, Finance, money, and Banking. Available on Amazon and Kobo/Rakuten.

This search is in English, Chinese, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Indian, Portuguese and Japanese!
Economic Interactive Notes, Financial Market, Money and Banking terms and definitions with over 9900 quick links! Great for students or anyone who wants to keep up with all the terminology. This is a live interactive series that helps guide you and keeps you up to date on all the economic terminology past and present, including access to charts, graphs and video presentations on the subject. An educational learning tool that keeps businesses and students on the same page! This is all about pick and click, no more typing, with over 9900 preset searches for 8 search engines, including Qwant! These guides never go out of date due to the power of the internet! You can now avoid spelling mistakes and language difficulties, making the guide simple enough even for those with learning disabilities to use. Pick and click on the icon, never goes out of date! Interactive internet pages!

RG Richardson Interactive Money and Banking is a must-have for ever-changing financial definitions between the old and the new!
Since 2003

DuckDuckGo's Doing Numbers After Pitching Itself as the Home of AI-Free Web Searches

 DuckDuckGo's Doing Numbers After Pitching Itself as the Home of AI-Free Web Searches

DuckDuckGo’s Doing Numbers After Pitching Itself as the Home of AI-Free Web Searches
AI haters are leaving Google in droves.
BY JUSTIN CAFFIERPUBLISHED JUNE 1, 2026, 6:35 PM ET

READING TIME 3 MINUTES

© sdx15 (Shutterstock)
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As AI is increasingly injected into every facet of our lives whether we like it or not, it seems we can only watch in a mixture of horror and frustration as so many of our once-reliable institutions become unusable husks of their former selves. Take, for instance, Google. The search engine’s PageRank algorithm was such a massive hit when it launched that it wasn’t long before contemporary competitors like WebCrawler, Lycos, and AskJeeves were swept into the dustbin of history and Google experienced brand verbification, its name now synonymous with online queries.


Cut to the sorry state of affairs a quarter century later. Google Search is still the top website in the world in terms of page visits, but the bloom is clearly off the rose, and AI seems to be the source of customer dissatisfaction. After Alphabet began injecting artificial intelligence summaries at the top of its search results, users started noticing some weird answers that ranged from innocuously funny to downright dangerous. Google AI claimed that not a single country in Africa begins with the letter K. It also suggested one could improve a pizza recipe by adding glue to the cheese, and cited the health benefits of eating rocks. While many of these hallucinations have been reined in by Google devs, the AI just keeps coming. Last month, Google announced that even more AI was coming Google Search:




Users have started leaving the search giant in droves.

The exodus from Google Search can also be attributed to frustration with an apparent dip in search result quality, but it comes at a time when the masses are turning on AI writ large. It turns out that the brave new world being forced, top down, from the Silicon Valley bubble has little appeal to the average person. The prospect of eliminated jobs, endless slop made from stolen art, and a planet-destroying data center in every town somehow just isn’t appealing to the masses. It’s no wonder that one of Google’s competitors, DuckDuckGo, is leaning heavily into anti-AI rhetoric, hoping to establish itself as an AI-less promised land for those who yearn to be free.

As reported in TechCrunch, DuckDuckGo’s newly launched browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox allow users to set the site’s AI-free experience at noai.duckduckgo.com as their default. On this page, users won’t be bothered by AI-assisted answers or prompts to chat and their image search results will contain fewer images generated by AI, according to the company. And unlike with Google, those who opt for DuckDuckGo’s AI-free experience won’t find it mysteriously keeps reverting back to the AI-filled option.

Since Google announced it were essentially pot-committed to AI-first search results at their developer conference in early May, DuckDuckGo has reportedly experienced an explosion in traffic, with week-over-week installs of their app up 18.1% between May 20 and 25 and visits to their AI-less search page up 22.7% in that same timeframe.

Though it is primarily positioned as a privacy-focused company and not outright against AI, by courting the AI weary, DuckDuckGo’s seems to be savvily reading the writing on the wall, making itself a welcome sanctuary to at least a few of those posting about it online.
“Genuinely one of the only ad[s] i actually liked and upvoted,” commented Reddit user Ass_Lover136 in a glowing r/antiai post of one of DuckDuckGo’s ads on the platform. At time of publication, the comment had received 454 upvotes of agreement.

While seeking refuge from AI and the entities coercing us to use them is all well and good, let’s not go overboard or forget that none of these companies, DuckDuckGo, Google, or whoever comes next, regards its users as anything beyond a vehicle to make money.

Study reports inconsistencies in the Canadian Youth employment process

Study reports inconsistencies in the Canadian Youth employment process



Sherbrooke Record · 16 hours ago
by Matthew Mccully · Demographics

Young people job-searching and business owners not on the same page

Record Staff (HB)

A new report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) reveals fundamental discrepancies at every stage of the hiring process in Canada. These include how employers recruit and how young people look for work; their respective expectations of employment; the positions young people are willing to take; and the skills employers seek. This report is based on a survey of small business owners (SBO) and a public opinion poll of young Canadians, according to the press release.

The survey reported that 62 per cent of small business owners rely primarily on their personal contacts to recruit employees, as candidates benefit from the credibility of the person who recommends them. Meanwhile, 73 per cent of young people primarily use job search websites, and only half turn to their personal networks. This disconnect means that employers are recruiting from networks where young people are not actively seeking employment. Work-study programs and internships, which lead to permanent employment in 73 per cent of cases, are used by 25 per cent of young people, and by only 1 in 5 small businesses, indicating a missed opportunity to recruit young people ready to work.

When hiring young people, SBOs place more importance on “soft” skills, such as a positive attitude (91 per cent), motivation (84 per cent), and professionalism (76 per cent), than on degrees, experience, or formal training. These qualities are primarily found in the service sector, skilled trades, and physically demanding jobs, which are precisely the positions that many young Canadians reject. Nearly 50 per cent refuse to consider jobs requiring significant physical effort or night shifts, while almost two out of five do not consider working outdoors.

“The reality is that there are jobs that young Canadians don’t want, can’t, or aren’t willing to take. Whether it’s a resort in northern British Columbia or a restaurant in rural New Brunswick, businesses need workers to maintain their operations and support their local economy. Many young people cannot or do not want to relocate or work the required hours, especially if they are students. If businesses cannot fill these positions, they may have to close,” explained Bérengère Fouqueray, CFIB research analyst, in the release.

Tight margins and persistent economic uncertainty make it more difficult for SBOs to hire new, inexperienced workers. Although most SBOs offer wages above the provincial minimums, which ranges from $15 to $18 per hour, more than a third of young people say they are not interested in minimum-wage jobs.

Additionally, more than two-thirds of SBOs are unaware of government hiring assistance programs. Those familiar with these programs describe them as poorly adapted to the operational realities of SBOs, whose application processes are complicated and deadlines inconvenient. Fouqueray elaborated: “Young workers often need additional training and mentoring, which reduces the time they can dedicate to running the business. This time represents a real cost that should be factored into any public policy aimed at combating youth unemployment.”

The CFIB is calling on governments to reduce payroll taxes, introduce permanent refundable tax credits for hiring young people through work-study programs and internships, and streamline programs like Canada Summer Jobs to reduce red tape.

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College Professors Say Incoming Students No Longer Understand Middle School Math and Science

College Professors Say Incoming Students No Longer Understand Middle School Math and Science
"We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics."


By Frank Landymore


Published Jun 3, 2026 3:01 PM EDT
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Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Shutterstock




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As rampant AI use accelerates a crisis in education, University of California professors are pleading with leadership to reinstate college-entrance exams, The Wall Street Journal reports, claiming that incoming students barely have a middle-school level understanding of math and other subjects.

Their request, made in a letter last week, will be a controversial one. Entrance exams like the SAT and ACT have long been criticized for exacerbating racial inequality. Taking them isn’t free, and nor is participating in rigorous preparation courses, with wealthier and usually white children thirteen times likelier to get a high score on either test than kids from low-income families, one study led by Harvard researchers found.

Nonetheless, UC math and science professors find the situation on the ground to be untenable, with the letter claiming that nearly a third of students taking their first semester calculus course at UC Berkeley are now displaying “severe preparation deficits.”

“We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields,” the faculty wrote, as quoted by the WSJ. “UC has finite resources and can help only so many students.”

As the COVID pandemic gripped the US in 2020, many schools, UC included, began making SAT and ACT exams optional. Today, more than 90 percent of schools don’t require them, Harry Feder, executive director of educational policy group FairTest, which advocates against the exams, told the WSJ.

But elite colleges have been reversing course. MIT reinstated its SAT requirement in 2022, as did Harvard and Dartmouth College in 2024, and Yale University last month. UC has stood its ground, encouraging prospective students to study, write essays, and take up extracurricular activities instead, according to the reporting.

One thing that’s undeniable: the education landscape is drastically different to what it looked like just a few years ago. AI chatbots and other AI tools have ushered in rampant cheating. Where its use is considered within ethical academic bounds, many educators are skeptical that AI facilitates actual learning, with numerous studies linking heavy AI use to impaired critical thinking skills and memory loss. One found that students who used ChatGPT to help write essays had lower brain activity in areas corresponding to creativity compared to students who only used a traditional Google search or didn’t look up information at all.

All the while, grade inflation has skyrocketed across the country since the mainstream adoption of ChatGPT and other AI tools, with recent research showing that the share of A grades in courses more vulnerable to AI cheating — typically in the humanities and engineering — surged by about 30 percent since 2023.

But is the answer to these deeply-rooted issues reinstating mandatory testing? It’s debatable, and you could argue that it’d be the equivalent of slapping on a band-aid to treat a disease. It’s clear that the education system is failing young students, and unless serious conversations are had about myriad systemic issues, plus the incursion of AI — which is fueled by institutions happy to take Big Tech money — the situation isn’t going to improve.

More on education: Major Teachers Union Pleads With Elementary Schools to Stop Giving Young Kids AI




Frank Landymore
Contributing Writer


I’m a tech and science correspondent for Futurism, where I’m particularly interested in astrophysics, the business and ethics of artificial intelligence and automation, and the environment.

June home sales disappoint as prices reach an all-time high

  June home sales disappoint as prices reach an all-time high

June home sales disappoint as prices reach an all-time high
Published Thu, Jul 9 202610:00 AM EDT

Diana Olick@in/dianaolick@DianaOlickCNBC@DianaOlickWATCH LIVE

Key Points
Sales of previously owned homes in June dropped 2.4% from May.
Inventory at the end of June was 1.56 million units, down 0.6% from May but 1.3% higher than June 2025.
One quarter of all sales were all-cash, down from 29% last year.


A for sale sign is posted in front of a home on April 13, 2026 in Pasadena, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images


High mortgage rates coupled with record-high prices is causing homebuyers to pull back.

Sales of previously owned homes in June dropped 2.4% from May to 4.09 million units on a seasonally adjusted, annualized basis, according to the National Association of Realtors. Housing analysts were predicting a slight gain month over month.


June sales were, however, were 2.8% higher than the same month a year prior.

“The back-and-forth in monthly home sales activity, driven by mild fluctuations in mortgage rates, shows how sensitive home buyers are to affordability conditions,” said Lawrence Yun, the Realtors’ chief economist, in a release. “However, job gains—more than half a million since the beginning of the year—will continue to provide support for the housing market.”

This count represents closed sales, so contracts that were likely signed in May, when the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage was still moving higher. It began rising sharply at the start of March at the start of the Iran war.

Inventory at the end of June was 1.56 million units, down 0.6% from May but 1.3% higher than June 2025. At the current sales pace, that represents a 4.6-month supply. The market is considered balanced between buyer and seller at a 6-month supply.

With the market still lean, prices continue to rise. The median price of an existing home sold in June was $440,600, an increase of 1.8% from the year before and the highest on record. June is usually the strongest month for both sales and prices.


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“Progress on long-term housing affordability could be hampered if inventory growth continues to stall. Without consistent gains in inventory, home prices can accelerate. It is critical to introduce more supply to the market to widen the opportunity for homeownership,” Yun said.

Sales continue to be strongest on the higher end of the market. Sales of homes priced below $100,000 were down 1.7% from a year ago, and sales of those priced between $100,000 and $250,000 were up less than 1%. Meanwhile sales of homes priced between $750,000 and $1 million were up nearly 14% from the year before, and sales of homes priced above $1 million were up 18%.

Regionally, home sales were down in June month over month everywhere except in the Northeast.

One quarter of all sales were all-cash, down from 29% last year. First-time buyers made up 33% of sales, up from 30% a year ago.

My last dance at Race Week

 My last dance at Race Week

The phrase, "If you build it, he will come", is from the 1989 movie Field of Dreams. Over time, this evolved into the popular idiom "If you build it, they will come", but this is typically naive.

Simply creating something great isn't enough; you still need to build and support the audience. When recreational sailing succeeds, there tends to be someone leading the charge. In this report by Schelleen Rathkopf, she reflects on her journey in the Pacific Northwest, and her hope that someone carries on the effort:

---

Twenty-five years is a really long time. A quarter of a century. That's how long I've attended Race Week. My kids grew up with it, and we built our summer vacations around it. On Race Committee, I was the official timer, and I was once compared to a metronome in Sailing World magazine!

I took the helm of Race Week in 2014, and have been producing the event ever since.

I've raced, partied, and played and I've had some of my best weeks of summer with my family at Race Week. But the time is right to pass the Race Week torch on to someone new! This summer will be my last dance at Race Week, and my hope is that someone will step up and carry the torch forward! (PM me if this is you!)

Since its inception on Whidbey Island in 1983, Race Week has been important to so many in the sailboat racing community. To celebrate, I've extended the 2026 registration deadline to June 15, hoping that more of you will join our Race Week family to mark the end of an era!

Thank you to all of you who have supported Race Week over the years!

 Japanese Airport Trialing Humanoid Robots as Baggage Handlers

Japanese Airport Trialing Humanoid Robots as Baggage Handlers

No pressure, since they'll be working at one of the busiest airports in the world.

By Frank Landymore

Published May 1, 2026 1:16 PM EDT

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The future is truly upon us — because the next time your check-in luggage gets battered, you could be blaming a robot.

Starting in May, Japan Airlines, in partnership with GMO AI & Robotics, will start trialing humanoid robots to help baggage handlers at Tokyo’s Haneda airport, it announced Monday, in the hopes that they could one day alleviate a labor shortage.

In a demonstration held in front of the media, one of the mechanical helpers built by the Chinese Robotics company Unitree gently pushes — or should we say barely touches — a metal container stacked with suitcases towards a passenger jet. Its contribution is entirely perfunctory, though, since the container is actually being moved by a conveyor belt; the robot didn’t “help” with anything at all.

Not that the robot’s aware. Oblivious, the Unitree machine proudly waves to his human colleague controlling the belt, who kindly returns a thumbs-up.

The stunt is clearly not a serious demonstration of the robots’ capabilities — if it does have meaningful capabilities at all — but Japan Airlines certainly sounds serious about the experiment, since it’s planning for it to run until 2028. 

It will be a trial by fire for the androids. Serving more than 60 million passengers per year, Haneda is easily one of the busiest air travel hubs in the world. Slip-ups could lead to luggage being lost or damaged, or costly delays.

They’ll also face steep competition. We’re not trying to launder Japan’s PR any more than it already gets, but its baggage handlers are pretty lauded for being thorough and gentle, and going above and beyond. That’s kind of remarkable, since the only other time baggage handlers make the news is for piling together your fragile belongings like sandbags.

How capable the bots prove remains to be seen. It could go horribly wrong, given the number of robot flameouts we’ve witnessed. But in theory they’ll help Japan’s baggage handlers deal with the influx of tourists, seven million of whom visited in the first two months of this year alone.

“While airports appear highly automated and standardised, their back-end operations still rely heavily on human labour and face serious labour shortages,” GMO AI & Robotics’ president Tomohiro Uchida told reporters, per the BBC.