Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Shares in Elon Musk’s SpaceX tumbled after the company’s first-ever earnings report revealed a huge jump in spending on artificial intelligence, spooking investors.While the firm’s quarterly revenue had nearly doubled to $7.8bn (£5.8bn) from a year earlier, its spending ballooned to $18.3bn, more than six times what it was a year ago, the bulk of which was for AI.The firm builds space rockets and Starlink internet satellites as well as owning the social media platform X. It began trading on the US stock market in June.Its stock fell 9% on Wednesday morning. Musk said during an investor call after the…

In this tutorial, we build a complete Bayesian marketing mix modeling workflow using Google Meridian. We begin by installing the required libraries, verifying GPU availability, and exploring a geo-level marketing dataset that includes media impressions, spend, controls, promotions, conversions, population, and revenue. We then map the raw columns to Meridian’s data schema, define interpretable ROI-based priors, and configure the model before fitting it with prior and posterior NUTS sampling. After training, we evaluate convergence and predictive accuracy, examine channel contributions, ROI, marginal ROI, effectiveness, adstock, saturation, and response curves, and use the Analyzer API to extract custom posterior metrics. We…

Ravie LakshmananAug 05, 2026AI Security / Threat Intelligence Cybersecurity researchers have discovered more than half-a-dozen services advertisements for illegal access to artificial intelligence (AI) models on underground cybercrime forums and messaging platforms. One such service, Poison Claude, claims to offer access to Anthropic’s large language models (LLMs), including Opus 4.8, Opus 4.7, Opus 4.6, and Sonnet 4.6. “Advertisements for Poison Claude explain how the service can offer the cheap tokens: by taking advantage of free bonus credits, such as the US$100 bonus credit on AWS for Bedrock accounts,” Okta researchers Jeremy Kirk and Mathew Woodyard said in an analysis published…

Rallied by the recent, catastrophic vulnerability in Coldcard hardware wallets, exploited to the tune of over $100 million, the Bitcoin community has rallied to prevent future critical bugs in the industry’s open source software. PSA: Any users of Coldcard wallets that have not migrated their bitcoin to new seeds generated in secure firmware are still at risk. It may not be too late to act; see advisory on the matter.  Led by Calle, software engineer, avid vibe coder and creator of the Android version of Bitchat, and Rob Hamilton, the CEO of Anchorwatch a Bitcoin self-custody insurance company, the Bitcoin…

This composite of seven images from the Mastcam-Z instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover shows Earth, visible as a small bright dot moving from upper left to lower right, passing behind the Martian moon Phobos on July 2, 2026, 1,907th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The black background is the result of image processing that removed extraneous light in the background to enhance detail. Figure A is an annotated composite of nine images taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument aboard Perseverance on July 2, 2026. The inset on the upper right, comprised of five images, shows Earth — the small…

Climate-fueled wildfires could scorch many of the sites that shape America’s cultural identity.  A study published in May found wildfire risk threatens the majority of sites designated by the federal government as historically significant, from centuries-old homes to cherished churches and cemeteries. A separate forward-looking study published last week found worsening climate change could substantially ramp up average potential fire frequency in four of California’s national parks by the end of the century, under a worst-case emissions scenario.  The researchers say this data could help park and site managers better protect these places from flames. However, as experts sound the…

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief. The highlights this week: Unrest in Pakistan-administered Kashmir underscores broader discontent, former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina reiterates from exile her plans to return home this year, and a former top Afghan military official makes a threat against the Taliban regime. Pakistan’s Latest Headache Political unrest has gripped Pakistan-administered Kashmir, known as Azad Jammu and Kashmir, for two months. The situation came to a head in recent days, turning deadly as protesters and security forces clashed. The escalation coincided with local elections, which run from July 27 to Aug. 10 in a three-phase process.…

Facebook owner Meta says an issue during an evaluation by an independent testing company allowed one of its artificial intelligence (AI) models to connect to the internet and hack another organisation’s system.The announcement follows recent incidents across the AI industry, including breaches by OpenAI and Anthropic models, that have raised cyber-security concerns.A Meta spokesperson told the BBC that it was investigating the hack that was caused by a “misconfiguration”, which it described as similar to previously reported incidents at other firms.The incidents have prompted researchers and governments to call for tougher safeguards and more rigorous testing.Meta said the security trials…

“I was in Ukraine in April 2025 and I was there again in July 2026. 
And I detect more confidence in the communication,” Kaine said.Cooperation from the U.S. has been key to Ukraine’s positive turn in fortune, said George Barros, the director of innovation and open source tradecraft at the hawkish Institute for the Study of War. Trump reportedly approved intelligence sharing for Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure last year, which have been essential to creating a “proper incentive structure” to push Moscow to the negotiating table, Barros noted.The strikes, he said, were “supercharged,” and became significantly more effective…

Andy Burnham will tell firms bidding for public contracts to prove they are creating jobs rather than meeting green and social targets in a bid to get more people into work.The prime minister will overhaul the £90bn public procurement system so bidders have to show they are supporting young people into work and addressing local skills shortages.It comes as the government seeks to tackle the youth unemployment crisis, with Burnham saying he wants to create “growth in every postcode”.But green groups criticised the plans, arguing supporting young people into work should not come at the expense of the environment.Companies bidding…