OpenAI Losses Increased Nearly 8X In 2025, With Spending Hitting $34 Billion

SlashDot - mer, 06/17/2026 - 11:00
An anonymous reader quotes a report from independent journalist Ed Zitron: Today, I can exclusively report, based on audited financial documents viewed by this publication that have been independently verified by the Financial Times, that OpenAI lost around $38.5 billion in 2025, as well as other crucial details about the financial condition of the company. [...] At the end of the year, OpenAI had just over $50 billion in assets, with almost half of that in cash. [...] The financial condition of OpenAI is deeply concerning. $38.53 billion in losses are astronomical, and far higher than most believed it would be. Losses also appear to be mounting year-over-year at a dramatic rate, and I'm not sure how this company finds a way toward any kind of sustainability or profitability. As discussed, I have not editorialized much today. I believe the best thing I can do for the general public is to deliver this news as plainly as possible. Ars Technica's Kyle Orland offers a more editorial take, writing: All told, OpenAI's day-to-day "loss from operations" increased from $8.78 billion in 2024 to $20.92 billion in 2025, a concerning direction for a company that is telling investors it hopes to be profitable by 2030. But measured as a percentage of revenues, the company's operating losses slightly improved year to year, from 237 percent in 2024 to 160 percent in 2025. Operating numbers aside, OpenAI's headline "net loss" number of just over $5 billion in 2024 ballooned to nearly $39 billion in 2025. But the 2025 number includes a significant accounting charge related to investor valuations that shifted amid the company's 2025 conversion to a for-profit structure. The Financial Times cites "a person familiar with the matter" in reporting that this non-recurring charge was approximately $30 billion and that OpenAI's 2025 net loss amounted to a more reasonable-looking $8 billion without it.

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A New Era of Super-Hybrids to Ease Range Anxiety

NY Times - mer, 06/17/2026 - 10:52
Extended-range electric vehicles promise to reduce costs and appeal to America’s appetite for adventure. And they’re coming to showrooms soon.

Stop Killing Games Fails To Secure EU Law Despite 1.3 Million Signatures

SlashDot - mer, 06/17/2026 - 07:00
The European Commission has declined (PDF) to propose a law requiring publishers to keep discontinued video games playable, despite the Stop Killing Games initiative collecting nearly 1.3 million verified signatures. Instead, it plans to develop a voluntary industry code covering end-of-life transparency and preservation. Dextero reports: The Commission's full communication said a legal obligation to keep games playable, as requested by the initiative, "would not be proportionate." It cited concerns about intellectual property rights, confidential business information, publisher costs, and potential cybersecurity or safety risks once games are no longer supported. The code of conduct could include more transparent storefront labeling about possible game discontinuation, along with more partnerships between publishers and cultural heritage institutions to preserve games. However, it would not legally require publishers to provide offline patches, private server tools, or other methods for players to continue accessing games after official support ends. The Commission also argued that existing EU consumer law already provides some safeguards, including requirements around transparency, contract duration, termination conditions, and possible refunds if a shutdown conflicts with the agreement or a consumer's reasonable expectations. [...] Despite the setback, Stop Killing Games has said it is not ending its push for legislation. In a response posted after the Commission's decision, the official Stop Killing Games account said the outcome was "not unexpected" and claimed the campaign had already prepared for the result. The group said it is now pushing for members of the European Parliament to amend Stop Killing Games into the Digital Fairness Act instead. "We can move on without the Commission and their non-decision," the group said, referencing earlier comments from Accursed Farms creator Ross Scott.

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A Tournament on Native Land Makes Millions. A Tribe Wants a Bigger Cut.

NY Times - mer, 06/17/2026 - 03:00
The Shinnecock Hills Golf Club on Long Island earns millions when it hosts the U.S. Open. But the nearby Indian tribe has for years only received a fraction of that.

We Want to Hear from Indigenous People Across New York.

NY Times - mer, 06/17/2026 - 03:00
The New York Times is examining the relationship between New York State officials and Native Americans.

AI and Brain-Computer Interface Allow Speechless ALS Patient To Work a Full-Time Job

SlashDot - mer, 06/17/2026 - 03:00
UC Davis researchers say an implanted brain-computer interface has allowed Casey Harrell, an ALS patient who cannot speak, to synthesize sentences from brain activity with 99% accuracy in controlled tests and about 92% accuracy in everyday use. The Register reports that the system has remained usable at home since 2023, helping Harrell communicate naturally, control a computer, and return to full-time work without researchers needing to supervise each session. The Register reports: A team of scientists from the University of California, Davis, published a paper Monday detailing a years-long study of a brain computer interface (BCI) system implanted in a patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease), which destroys motor neurons and causes loss of motor control and eventual paralysis. According to the team, their patient, Casey Harrell, has been living with BCI implants since 2023 that are still working today, giving him the ability not only to control a computer cursor with his thoughts, but also to speak. [...] Davis neurosurgeon David Brandman, co-principal investigator and co-senior author of the paper published Monday, as well as the surgeon who placed Harrell's implant, described the results his team published as the crossing of a threshold in BCI technology: Not only has Harrell's implant been working well with daily use since 2023, but it's also incredibly accurate. In controlled tests, the system managed to synthesize sentences from Harrell's brain activity with 99 percent accuracy; outside of the lab in daily use, Harrell still assessed it as being accurate 92 percent of the time. "The key thing to me is that it's enabling everyday communication for a guy who wants to talk but can't," Brandman told The Register in an interview. "Despite being paralyzed [Harrell] has gone back to work full time and has meaningful conversations with his daughter who's never heard the sound of his voice." Prior work in the BCI space, Brandman told us, has either required researchers to be in a patient's home whenever they're using the tech, or for the patient to come to the researchers. That's not the case here, with the system allowing Harrell's home care team to hook him up to the system themselves, enabling him to use the device for more than 3,800 hours in the past few years. Based on the time the study was filed (It published Monday but went into peer review in July 2025) that would mean Harrell was using the device for more than five hours a day, on average. "It is a life that is more full of dynamic action and with friends and family, with colleagues, and it is something that allows me to communicate more in my natural way of communicating than any other technology that I have experienced," Harrell told UC Davis via his BCI system.

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We Just Learned the Limits of American Power

NY Times - mer, 06/17/2026 - 01:00
How did the world’s richest nation, armed with the most powerful military, arrive at this strategic defeat?

America’s First Pope Pays Homage to Its First Saint

NY Times - mer, 06/17/2026 - 01:00
When Pope Leo visits Mother Cabrini’s birthplace, the message will not be their shared American nationality but a rebuke of American exceptionalism.

Georgia Vexes Trump Yet Again: 6 Takeaways From Tuesday’s Primaries

NY Times - mer, 06/17/2026 - 00:54
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones lost the Republican runoff for governor to the health care executive Rick Jackson despite the president’s endorsement. Mr. Trump’s picks won in other races.

Can a Trump-Modi Meeting Reset U.S.-India Relations?

NY Times - mer, 06/17/2026 - 00:30
Despite mutual praise between the two leaders, there has been a series of setbacks to U.S. relations with India since they last met more than a year ago.

HPE Tempts VMware Users, Partners With Year of Free Virtualization Software

SlashDot - mar, 06/16/2026 - 23:30
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE) new virtualization software promotion will likely pique the interest of end users and resellers who are unhappy with Broadcom's pricing of VMware. During its HPE Discover event in Las Vegas this week, HPE announced that customers could use its "HPE Morpheus Software -- VM Essentials" offering for free for "up to one year," per a press release. HPE's website describes its virtualization platform as a "VMware alternative." It includes a hardware virtual machine (HVM) hypervisor and unified management and lets users "manage VMware ESXi and HVM clusters from one console and migrate when you're ready," HPE's website says. "New VM Essentials customers can receive up to one free year of licenses for VM Essentials, a year of HPE Zerto for $1 to support non-disruptive migration to HPE virtual machines, and 0 percent interest on software through HPE Financial Services," HPE's announcement reads, referring to HPE's group for helping IT teams manage funding. Free for a year is cheaper than what Broadcom has charged for VMware vSphere since taking over. VMware prices have skyrocketed due to VMware's parent company eliminating perpetual licenses and bundling products into expensive packages. Notably, per its website, HPE recommends charging $600 per CPU socket per year for VM Essentials; Broadcom has controversially shifted vSphere licensing pricing to a per-core basis. "Customers are feeling quite a bit of pain in the change that some of the virtualization companies have put there, specifically Broadcom," Jeremiah Jenson, VP of HPE's North American channel and partner ecosystem, told CRN. The executive claimed that VM Essentials could bring up to 90 percent cost savings compared to VMware while also helping to "eliminate vendor lock-in and simplify hybrid IT." From March 1 to June 30, HPE has also been offering a free year of VM Essentials via rebate to customers who buy an AMD server and a one-year VM Essentials license. VM Essentials is only available through channel partners, a stark contrast from Broadcom's VMware approach, where the chip giant has drastically reduced the number of resellers that can sell VMware products. HPE's new promotion aims to entice customers to more deeply consider migrating off VMware. [...] HPE also announced that it would give 600 reseller partners who earn the HPE partner program's Private Cloud with Virtualization competency by the end of the year free VM Essentials software licenses for three years. Partners still have to pay support costs, though. The benefit is "a step in the correct direction," said Dean Colpitts, CTO of Canadian managed services provider (MSP) Members IT Group (MITG), which VMware cut from its reseller program after 19 years of partnership a year ago. However, limiting the promotion to 600 partners is "very shortsighted." He believes that HPE should give all of its partners VM Essentials "to facilitate getting [VM Essentials] into customer sites and displacing the competitors." "They need to fling [VM Essentials] as far and as fast as they possibly [can] to immediately gain traction and draw ISVs to them, which will increase adoption even more," he said.

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As Mourning Begins, Deadly B-52 Crash Highlights Age of Bomber Fleet

NY Times - mar, 06/16/2026 - 21:05
Investigators are just beginning to determine what went wrong, but the Air Force has struggled to maintain the planes, which were first introduced in 1955.

Washington’s Reagan Airport Will Ground Flights for July 4 Events

NY Times - mar, 06/16/2026 - 20:38
The runways at Ronald Reagan National Airport will be closed after noon on July 4, and for several hours on July 3. Other celebrations surrounding the nation’s 250th birthday are also expected to cause disruptions.

Tell Us Why Taylor Swift’s Wedding Is Meaningful to You

NY Times - mar, 06/16/2026 - 19:59
For an upcoming story, we want fans to talk to us about the journey they have been on with Swift through the years and how they feel about her big day.

Obama’s Nuclear Deal Looms Over Trump’s Iran Negotiations

NY Times - mar, 06/16/2026 - 19:53
President Trump is under pressure to significantly improve upon the Obama-era deal in order to justify the huge human and economic cost of taking the United States to war.

Internal Emails Raise Questions About D.H.S. Ending Haiti Protections

NY Times - mar, 06/16/2026 - 19:10
Newly released documents could complicate deliberations by the Supreme Court over whether the Trump administration can immediately cancel deportation protections for some migrants.

Beijing’s New Message to Its Citizens: Your Money Belongs at Home

NY Times - mar, 06/16/2026 - 19:00
Eager to keep capital within its borders, China is restricting the ways individuals can engage with global markets.

Commodore's Callback 8020 Is a $499 Flip Phone That Blocks Social Media and Browsers

SlashDot - mar, 06/16/2026 - 19:00
Commodore has unveiled the Callback 8020, a $499 Sailfish OS flip phone that runs most Android apps but deliberately blocks social media, browsers, email, and workplace apps to discourage doomscrolling. The "not dumb dumbphone" still supports messaging, music, maps, ridesharing, hotspots, a removable battery, and plenty of Commodore nostalgia. "The phone uses T9-style texting with predictive input, includes Commodore SID ringtones, ships with a selection of Commodore and Sailfish games, and even includes Snake," reports TechSpot. From the report: Commodore says it has developed patent-pending technology that prevents browsers and social media apps from being sideloaded, while DNS-level blocking should stop them from working even if someone finds a way to install them. Users can still sideload nearly anything else if it's not available on the Commostore, but apps designed for doomscrolling remain off limits. That means useful services such as WhatsApp, SMS, Signal, Telegram, WeChat, Spotify, Uber, Lyft, maps, podcasts, QR scanning, voice notes, and hotspot support work, but the likes of Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Gmail, and browsers do not. The Callback 8020 has a 3.25-inch 480 x 640 internal display, a MediaTek Helio G81 chip, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, a 48MP Sony rear camera, an autofocus front camera, dual SIM support, USB-C, a headphone jack, FM radio, and something many of us miss from flagships: a removable battery. There's no 5G as Commodore argues that 4G VoLTE and Wi-Fi better fit a device meant to discourage constant streaming and scrolling. [...] The main screen is touch-capable but disabled by default, while the outer display keeps things deliberately sparse, showing basics such as time, battery, signal, and notifications via dome LEDs. The 8020 name is a nod to Commodore's 8010 modem from 1980. The phone comes in ProtoPET White, SX Silver, BASIC Beige, a translucent Starlight Edition, and a gold Founders Edition with a 24-karat gold-plated Commodore button. Standard models start at $499, the Starlight version is $549.99, and the Founders Edition costs $640. Preorders open June 30, with shipping targeted for winter. You can watch the launch ad on YouTube.

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Who Are the Leaders at the G7 Summit in France?

NY Times - mar, 06/16/2026 - 18:58
On a roll or against a wall, Group of 7 leaders bring sharply different agendas. The leaders of some other nations are also attending to press their own interests.

Claiming an Antifa Plot, U.S. Charges 15 in Minneapolis With Conspiracy

NY Times - mar, 06/16/2026 - 18:27
The conspiracy indictment was filed as federal prosecutors in Minnesota had trouble sustaining many criminal cases filed against Immigration and Customs Enforcement protesters.

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