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Adobe brings its Firefly AI Assistant inside of Premiere, Photoshop and Illustrator Jun 22, 2026

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The company is also previewing an upgraded creative AI studio experience.

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Has Polymarket been paying creators to post fake betting videos? Norway is imposing broad restrictions on AI for school kids, and Chinese-style EV battery swap stations coming to Europe Jun 22, 2026

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-The Wall Street Journal has found that the company is paying social media creators to post misleading content promoting the prediction market.

-Norway is imposing a strict ban on the use of generative AI tools by elementary school kids.

-Octopus Energy, the UK's largest energy provider, has teamed up with CATL, the world's biggest EV battery maker, to bring Chinese-style battery swap stations to Europe.

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Summer Game Fest 2026 Jun 19, 2026

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The year's biggest gaming show had plenty of titles worth playing.

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Amazon is investigating 3 employees who spoke out against building more AI data centers, one UK government department is done with X, and Rivian faces a class action lawsuit over self-driving in its early vehicles Jun 19, 2026

Show notes

-Five members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice previously testified at Seattle city council meetings about AI data centers. Now, three of them are apparently under investigation by the company.

-Richard Hermer, the Attorney General for England and Wales and Advocate General for Northern Ireland, has reportedly told his department to stop posting official updates on X.

-Rivian has been sued on allegations that it made misleading statements about the self-driving capabilities of its R1T truck and R1S SUV.

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The all-new Google Home speaker has finally arrived for $100 Jun 18, 2026

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Upgrades include 360-degree audio and deeper integration with Gemini.

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Waymo recalled over 3,800 robotaxis, NASA is sending an orbiter to Mars with Eric Schmidt's Relativity Space, and Tim Cook says that Apple price increases are 'unavoidable' Jun 18, 2026

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-Waymo told Engadget that it identified an area of improvement regarding performance around freeway construction zones, adding that the company voluntarily restricted freeway operations last month.

-Relativity Space will provide spacecraft, rocket and cruise operations to deliver the agency's science instruments to Mars.

-Apple's outgoing CEO Tim Cook all but confirmed that higher prices are on the way for the company's products, saying "price increases are unavoidable.

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SpaceX is buying AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion Jun 17, 2026

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The all-stock acquisition concludes an agreement the two announced in April.

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Commodore made a social media-banishing flip phone, WhatsApp is testing read-once disappearing messages, and The White House app will reportedly be auto-installed on Homeland Security staff’s device Jun 17, 2026

Show notes

-The recently resurrected Commodore is getting back into phones, but rather than taking on the likes of Apple and Samsung at their own game, the Commodore Callback 8020 is a proudly non-conformant flip phone that wouldn't have looked out of place in the '90s.

-WhatsApp is finally offering what most of its contemporaries already have: disappearing (view-once) texts.

-The White House app is reportedly coming to all devices managed by the Department of Homeland Security, whether the user wants to download it or not. GovExec that it was a "cause for alarm," as any app installed on government-issued devices can "potentially create backdoor access to government networks behind the firewall."

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EA created an entire division to push more in-game ads Jun 16, 2026

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Branded content and ad campaigns, it’s in the game.

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India temporarily blocking Telegram to prevent exam fraud, Google Earth's flight simulator is now available, and millions of songs were used for AI music training Jun 16, 2026

Show notes

-The government recently annulled the results of a key medical school entrance test because it said that the answers were leaked ahead of time on Telegram.

-The Atlantic has published four searchable databases of music that has been used to train AI models. The scope is pretty staggering, with 12 million tracks in one database, 9 million in another, and the two final ones each containing about 100,000 songs.

-Google Earth has a flight sim mode of its own, and it can now be accessed by anyone globally via their browser.

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