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Congress has until June 12th to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). A deal for a three-year extension was voted down by the Senate, with concerns over surveillance abuses under President Trump's administration. Critics argue that without reforms, the law could be misused. The deadline is just one week away as lawmakers negotiate.
Summer Game Fest Live 2026 starts today at 5PM ET from the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The event will feature an array of new titles and platforms, including a follow-up to Cuphead and Capcom’s Resident Evil: Code Veronica remake. Minecraft Dungeons II is also set for release on September 29th with a $29.99 price tag. If you're into AAA games or classic franchises, this event has something for everyone. Let's dive deeper…
In today's ContentBuffer update:
IBM sued over alleged APT 10 cyber attacks, data theft
Startup Battlefield 2023 Closing Soon, Last Chance to Win Big
Google to Pay SpaceX $920 Million Monthly for NVIDIA GPUs, CPUs
CBS fires Scott Pelley, media consolidation looms large
5 new AI tools & 5 new AI jobs
More tech news
Latest Development
Image source: platform.theverge.com
Summary: Senate rejects Section 702 renewal amid controversy over surveillance powers. Deadline looms: June 12th.
Key Points:
Section 702 reauthorization deadline is June 12th, with the Senate voting down a three-year deal on May 5th.
President Trump's appointment of Bill Pulte as acting director complicates Republican plans to renew Section 702 without reforms.
Critics cite Trump's documented abuses of surveillance powers as reasons against reauthorizing Section 702 without changes.
The Senate voted down the deal with a vote of 52-47, including seven Republicans voting against it.
Trump suggested in an interview that he wants Pulte to gut ODNI and fire intelligence staff from previous administrations.
Why it matters: If Section 702 is not reauthorized by June 12th, federal surveillance programs will face significant disruptions. This affects national security agencies and their ability to conduct lawful surveillance operations. The debate over reforms highlights ongoing concerns about privacy and government oversight.
Image source: platform.theverge.com
Summary: Summer Game Fest Live kicks off today with major announcements like Cuphead's sequel and Resident Evil: Code Veronica remake. Don't miss it!
Key Points:
Studio MDHR is working on a new Cuphead game set in the classic animation-inspired universe, still early in development.
Capcom’s Resident Evil: Code Veronica will be remade for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Steam, and Nintendo Switch in 2027.
Minecraft Dungeons II is launching on September 29th with a price of $29.99.
Paramount Games Studio will develop two titles set in Disney universes and announce a new AAA title at Summer Game Fest Live.
Valve’s Steam Machine, an all-in-one gaming PC, is expected to launch this summer.
Why it matters: If you're a fan of Cuphead or Resident Evil, the upcoming releases are major news. The Cuphead sequel offers more in its classic animation universe while Capcom's Code Veronica remake brings back one of the series' most beloved titles on modern platforms.
Image source: techcrunch.com
Summary: IBM sued for allegedly concealing major cyberattacks by APT 10 from 2013-2016. The company failed to disclose breaches affecting multiple subsidiaries and products.
Key Points:
Former exec sues IBM over alleged hacking by APT 10 between 2013 and 2016, involving 56,000+ network intrusions
At least two IBM subsidiaries were breached without public disclosure of stolen data or government notification
Trusteer, acquired in 2013, allegedly breached by APT 10 in 2018; Truven, bought in 2016, hit multiple times post-acquisition
Five Eyes alliance warned IBM about breaches in March 2017, prompting an internal investigation that concluded over 56,000 potential network intrusions by APT 10
IBM allegedly failed to maintain logs of who accessed its network and when, complicating further investigations
Why it matters: If you're a government agency or company relying on IBM's cybersecurity solutions, this lawsuit raises serious questions about the trustworthiness of your data protection. The alleged breaches span multiple years and affect various business units, indicating systemic issues in IBM's security practices.
Image source: techcrunch.com
Summary: Startup Battlefield closes June 8th. Last chance for early-stage startups to apply for $100K in equity-free funding and massive exposure.
Key Points:
Application window closes on June 8, 2023; thousands of startups have already applied
$100,000 in equity-free funding awarded to one startup; no strings attached
Collective fundraising by alumni exceeds $32 billion with over 250 exits achieved
Selected companies gain free exhibit tables and four complimentary Disrupt passes
Access to founder-only masterclasses, direct feedback from VCs, and live pitch opportunities
Why it matters: If you're a bootstrapped or pre-seed startup with an MVP ready to disrupt an industry, this is your chance. The exposure can lead to significant funding and growth acceleration. However, the competition is fierce, so apply now if you haven't already.
Image source: techcrunch.com
Summary: Google and SpaceX inked a $920M/mo compute deal for NVIDIA GPUs and CPUs. This is half what Anthropic pays. Why? Google's cloud division needs more hardware firepower to compete in AI.
Key Points:
Google will pay SpaceX $920 million monthly from October 2026 through June 2029, similar to the deal with Anthropic worth $1.25 billion/mo for access to NVIDIA GPUs and CPUs
The agreement includes a cancellation clause after December 31, 2026, allowing either party to terminate if SpaceX fails to deliver committed GPUs by September 30, 2026
Alphabet has committed over $180 billion in capital expenditures this year, with significant increases expected in 2027; the company recently announced an $80 billion equity sale for spending
SpaceX aims to raise around $75 billion at a valuation of about $1.75 trillion, making it the largest IPO ever, and Google's stake is projected to be worth over $100B post-IPO
The companies are reportedly discussing building orbital data centers as part of SpaceX's future plans after its anticipated IPO
Why it matters: Google's cloud division needs more hardware firepower for AI workloads, and this deal with SpaceX provides a significant boost. If you're running large-scale machine learning projects on Google Cloud, expect better GPU access starting in late 2026. However, the $920M/mo price tag means smaller teams might not see immediate benefits unless they can justify the cost.
Image source: platform.theverge.com
Summary: CBS fires Scott Pelley amid media consolidation concerns, threatening journalistic independence. Stay tuned for more on this developing story.
Key Points:
Legendary journalist Scott Pelley was terminated by CBS on October 19th, 2023.
Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim declared their commitment to preserving the legacy of 60 Minutes despite recent turmoil.
Nick Bilton, a newcomer with no broadcast journalism experience, has been appointed as the new executive producer at 60 Minutes.
The Nexstar-Tegna deal is enabling media consolidation, leading to concerns over editorial control and journalistic integrity.
Management reportedly instructed Pelley to inject political bias into reporting, undermining long-held standards of impartiality.
Why it matters: If you're a journalist or work in broadcast media, the firing of Scott Pelley signals a troubling shift towards corporate dominance. This impacts the editorial independence and integrity of long-standing programs like 60 Minutes, affecting millions who rely on unbiased reporting.
New Tools & Job
note.md - note.md is a private, local-first markdown workspace for macOS built for focused writing, research, and structured thought. It supports GitHub Flavored Markdown, complex tables, and LaTeX math, with bidirectional links and a visual graph to connect ideas. Smart citations and research-table extraction are powered by local AI models that keep your data on-device, and you can import scientific papers and PDFs directly. Markdown is the storage format - no proprietary lock-in.
Genpire - Genpire is an AI-native product design and manufacturing platform. It turns any idea, sketch, or prompt into factory-ready output in minutes - design visuals, technical specs, bills of materials, graded size specs, construction notes, materials, and manufacturer matching - all in one workflow. Built for fashion, apparel, and consumer-goods brands, it compresses development timelines that previously ran four to eight weeks.
PollyReach - PollyReach gives every AI agent its own phone number and the ability to make and receive real calls. Its human-like AI voice agents automate lead qualification, customer support, and appointment booking, and can serve as a 24/7 AI receptionist. Polly finds the number, dials, navigates phone menus, handles the conversation, and confirms bookings, syncing with Google Calendar, Outlook, and Calendly to check availability.
Contextberg - Contextberg is a local memory app for AI coding agents. It watches your screens, agent transcripts, and browser activity in the background, then serves both short-term and long-term memory to agents like Claude Code, Cursor, and OpenClaw over the Model Context Protocol (MCP). It is privacy-first and Windows-first - your data never leaves your machine - and installs from the Microsoft Store.
Nota: AI Notes & Voice - Nota is an AI notes and voice app for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. Capture your way - type, dictate, sketch, scan, or upload images - and let built-in AI clarify, shape, and organize your notes. Its scanner extracts text from documents, whiteboards, business cards, signs, photos, and textbooks, and Apple Pencil support adds handwriting and drawing with tags, pins, search, and visual organization.
Software Engineer, Secrets Infrastructure (Remote) - Fully remote team building Stripe's internal secrets/credentials infrastructure.
Software Engineer, New Grad - New grad SWE role spanning Stripe's payments, money-movement and platform teams.
Applied Scientist / Research Engineer, AI4Engineering - Apply Mistral's models to coding, software engineering, and developer workflows.
AI Scientist - Research scientist role on Mistral AI's research org — onsite, hybrid or remote.
Research Engineer, Machine Learning - Build and optimize large-scale learning systems powering Mistral's open-weight models.
Machine Learning Engineer, Fast Optimized Inference (EMEA Remote) - Build the fastest open-source inference stack — quantization, kernels, serving — at Hugging Face.
Cloud Machine Learning Engineer (US Remote) - Build Hugging Face's cloud ML offerings — inference endpoints, training infrastructure, and customer-facing tooling.
SDE AI/ML II — ML Inference Apps, AWS Neuron - Performance tune and enable ML model families (Llama2, GPT-class) on AWS Neuron / Trainium inference accelerators.
Annapurna Labs at AWS — Early Career (US): ML Systems & Silicon Innovation - Multiple technical tracks across ML Systems & Compilers, Distributed Training Systems and ML Infrastructure on AWS's silicon team.
Machine Learning Research Engineer, Generative AI (Siri) - Build infrastructure, datasets and models that empower Siri across NLU, dialog generation, speech synthesis and multi-modal interaction.
AI Research Scientist — Safety Alignment Team - Research and develop safety-alignment techniques for Meta's frontier AI systems.
AI Research Scientist, Language — Generative AI - Conduct research on generative language models within Meta's GenAI org.
Senior Deep Learning Algorithm Engineer - Develop and optimize deep learning algorithms for NVIDIA's accelerated computing platforms.
Deep Learning Software Engineer, TensorRT Performance — New College Grad 2026 - Integrate TensorRT into open-source frameworks and implement graph compiler algorithms across NVIDIA's inference ecosystem.
Research Engineer, Pretraining - Build and optimize pretraining systems and pipelines for frontier models at Google DeepMind.
Research Engineer, World Models - Implement core infrastructure and conduct research to build generative models of the physical world.
Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Virtual Collaborator - Lead ML engineering for the Virtual Collaborator product line at Anthropic.
Research Engineer, Cybersecurity Reinforcement Learning - Safely advance model capabilities in secure coding, vulnerability remediation, and defensive cybersecurity.
Research Engineer / Research Scientist, Pre-training - Develop the next generation of large language models on Anthropic's Pre-training team.
Research Engineer / Scientist, Alignment Science - Contribute to exploratory experimental research on AI safety with a focus on risks from powerful future systems.
QUICK HITS
GM Invests $900M in Battery Cell Center for Lower-Cost EVs - GM invested $900 million in its Battery Cell Development Center for cheaper EV batteries, aiming to cut costs by at least $6,000 per vehicle. Key for staying competitive in the EV market.
Lectric Launches Three New Brands, Hits Record Sales of 30K Bikes - Lectric eBikes launches three new brands this year with a $10 million investment, hitting record sales of almost 30,000 bikes. Despite the downturn in the e-bike market, Lectric thrives without VC funding.
AI Funding Breaks Records; New Trends Emerge - The AI funding frenzy continues to break records while startups pivot towards more human-centric technologies like social gaming and nature-focused computing projects. Worth a listen: @EquityPod on YouTube or Apple Podcasts.
The Vergecast Dials Up Daily Tech Talks - The Vergecast is now daily, covering AI, gadgets, and more. Tune in or call 866-VERGE11 with your thoughts.
Supabase Raises $500M in Series F at $10B Valuation - Supabase just raised $500M at a $10B valuation, doubling down on its Postgres-based services. If you're using Supabase for your database needs, this is a big deal.
Woman Sues CBP After Phone Seizure at Border - Corcelius sues CBP for seizing her phone at the border; highlights ongoing debate over digital privacy and government surveillance.
THAT'S A WRAP
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Summer Game Fest Live 2026 kicks off with announcements including a new Cuphead game, Resident Evil Code Veronica remake, and the launch of Valve's Steam Machine. Minecraft Dungeons II also set for September.
Cyberdecks, once resembling laptops, are now being built inside unconventional containers like purses and toys. DIY enthusiasts use recycled parts and artistic designs, turning single-board computers into mini Linux machines for specific tasks.
Anduril's valuation has doubled while Mach Industries' quadrupled. The U.S. proposes a 40% defense budget increase, yet startups face hurdles moving from prototypes to production deals.