Desk
Broad artificial intelligence coverage.
Microsoft’s first streaming STT model tops Artificial Analysis for accuracy and partials — faster words for voice agents, at a premium to xAI and Meta.
Decision models return choices and calibrated probabilities, not paragraphs — TypeSafe’s Jev set the category, and Fastino plus open-source forks arrived within weeks.
Ars Technica reports Apple is changing macOS Full Disk Access after a columnist said Meta’s Muse referenced a Messages thread he never knowingly unlocked. Meta CTO David Singleton says access requires both FDA and a Messages connector; Apple says some developers use FDA without users’ full knowledge.
The Verge reports Meta is open-sourcing code to build Muse devices on ESP32 and Raspberry Pi, from E Ink reminder displays to HDMI sticks, and giving away 5,000 Muse Home Link gadgets for community skills like controlling lights and TVs. Meta warns builders to proceed at their own risk.
The Verge reports Apple will add limits on Mac Full Disk Access so the “extraordinary” permission is granted only through “very explicit user action,” after Inc’s Jason Aten found Muse knew his messages. Meta’s Andy Stone says access is entirely opt-in. No rollout date was given.
DOJ arrests Earthmade CEO Greg Lui over an alleged $300M+ Nvidia A100/H100 diversion ring via Malaysia and Singapore — while Nvidia calls smuggling a rounding error.
NVIDIA’s DGX Spark adds a 64GB Grace Blackwell desktop — 1 petaFLOP FP4, clusterable to 128GB — aimed at local agents that would otherwise burn metered API tokens all day.
The Verge’s Allison Johnson found OpenAI’s Dot agent, available first on high-tier plans including $100-a-month Pro, excelled at redesigning a website and editing video with desktop access but stumbled on personal errands, from bot checks to logins and checkout.
TechCrunch’s Equity podcast framed the week around a stark figure: only about 2% of consumers pay for AI, whatever the White House calls it. Related a16z/PNC data cited by TechCrunch puts paying consumers near 2.2% in May at about $31 a month, while enterprise remains where the money is.
TechCrunch’s Equity covered a White House week in which major tech CEOs signed a safety pledge Trump called “morally binding” and an executive order directed agencies to prefer “Super Intelligence” over “Artificial Intelligence” in official communications, without changing statutes.
OpenAI published a practical guide to its GPT-6 family covering model choice, reasoning effort, Fast and Ultrafast modes, prompt caching, compaction, mid-turn steering and multi-agent delegation. It says cached input can cost up to 95% less and urges measuring cost per successful task.
WIRED reports Nathan Lambert and Tom Zick founded nonprofit Trillium Labs to research recursive self-improvement, agents and how reinforcement learning shapes model character, publishing experiments for replication. Backed by Schmidt Sciences and others, it aims to raise $40 million to $100 million.