Donald Trump apparently is so aligned with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang—who has become the president’s key advisor on AI—that he ignored intelligence indicating that Huang was the target of a “Chinese spy plot,” and did so partly to protect Nvidia’s stock.

The New York Times spoke with people briefed on US intelligence agencies’ surveillance and granted them anonymity to discuss findings drawn from “classified intelligence.” According to sources, about a year ago, Trump was briefed that “Beijing was getting reports from someone with direct access” to Huang. That “someone” was Alice Huang, or Huang Le, a Chinese citizen and former top executive at a Singapore cloud company called Megaspeed.

According to sources, the US had already suspected that Alice Huang—who is not related to Jensen Huang—was helping China evade export controls to gain access to high-end Nvidia chips through Megaspeed. But it alarmed investigators to discover that she may have used her role at Megaspeed to gain direct access to Jensen Huang. It’s now believed she may have leveraged that closeness to feed China intel not only on one of America’s leading AI companies, but also to influence Trump’s thinking on AI. As Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent noted last month ahead of Trump’s AI talks with China President Xi Jinping, “the president is completely aligned with Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia.”

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With its playful design, versatility, and relatively affordable price, the Ikea Varmblixt quickly became one of my colleague Jennifer Pattison Tuohy’s new favorite smart light products when she tested it in April. Now, the donut-shaped lamp is on sale for $79.99 ($20 off) through November 11th at Ikea.

Ikea Varmblixt lamp

Where to Buy:

• $99.99 $79.99 at Ikea

Don’t let us tell you where you can or cannot put your Varmblixt. But it’s meant to sit on a table or be mounted on a wall (it can hang from a drilled-in screw, nothing fancy). At just 180 lumens, it isn’t particularly bright, so it’s better suited for use as a bedside lamp or for mood lighting than being tasked to illuminate a room. The newer model lets you cycle through 12 preset colors, including shades of pink, blue, green, and white, as opposed to just orange with the predecessor. The included wireless remote lets you switch between colors, adjust the brightness, and turn the lamp on or off without needing an app or a separate hub (there’s a power button on the lamp itself) . You can also use the remote to control other compatible Ikea lights.

For those who want to embed the Varmblixt into their smart home setup, the lamp supports Matter, allowing it to work with compatible smart home platforms including Apple Home, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa. In addition to letting you control the lights with your voice, this gives you access to hundreds more colors, lets you set lighting schedules and sleep or wake-up routines, and allows you to connect the lamp with motion sensors and other smart lights you may have. You can unlock those features with Ikea’s Dirigera hub, as well, which also offers a feature through its Home Smart app that gradually adjusts the shade of white throughout the day akin to natural daylight.

Read our Ikea Varmblixt review.

Article URL: https://www.otwstatus.org/incidents/g12jnxck9g6h

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50293546

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Rather than directly converting photons into electricity, concentrated solar energy uses mirrors to turn sunlight into heat, which can then be used to drive traditional generating turbines. Up to about a decade ago, there was a case to be made that concentrated solar energy had a bright future, as improvements in heat storage had turned it into a way to generate power around the clock.

It wasn't to be. While concentrated solar costs fell enough to compete with nuclear power, the price of photovoltaics plunged, making solar panels the cheapest source of power in most locations. Currently, if you have a good site to generate solar power, then the economics of PV panels are hard to beat.

That has left us needing to build a mixture of other facilities—typically batteries and natural gas facilities—to handle overnight needs or weather-driven shortfalls. But a small company is promising that it can help avoid the need to build a separate facility. Its version of concentrated solar is designed so that a fossil-fueled backup system shares most of the generating hardware with the solar side.

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Article URL: https://github.com/Ka1-S/LYNX-SHARE

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50293308

Points: 5

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A species of seabirds appears to become disoriented on flights back to its nest due to shifting time zones.

(Image credit: birdsonline)

The new MacBook Pro brings with it a bunch of firsts for Apple laptops, the two flashiest being an OLED display and touchscreen functionality. But as an image-accuracy enthusiast, trained calibrator, and resident display expert, what excites me most about the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display is the technology it uses to display an accurate picture. It's the first laptop, and only the second product overall, to support Apple CMF 2026 color modes. It could be the future for displays.

CMFs, or color-matching functions, mathematically represent how we perceive color, and there are a few different variations. The specification that's been the …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Article URL: https://serokell.io/blog/ai-contributions-to-ghc

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50293025

Points: 3

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Utah has filed criminal charges against Kalshi and its executives, accusing the prediction market of breaking anti-gambling laws, as reported by The Salt Lake Tribune and the Associated Press. The state has filed 14 charges against Kalshi, as well as CEO Tarek Mansour and COO Luana Lopes Lara, including 12 counts of illegally promoting online gambling.

The move marks an escalation in a nationwide battle against prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket. Utah has already sued Kalshi over claims that it's operating illegally in the state, joining several other states, including New York, Nevada, New Mexico, Washington, Connecticu …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Alaska's U.S. Senate race is embroiled in an emotional fight over fish. Many in the state rely upon salmon to feed their families but those fish and others are increasingly hard to find.

Google parent Alphabet reported its Q3 financial results on Wednesday afternoon, showing a healthy rise in revenue for the months of July to September. But the company's stock price has taken a beating, marking one of the largest post-earnings drops in its history. It comes down to several troubling aspects of the new report, including an admission by the company that AI search isn't earning as much as organic search, and despite that, Google expects to spend even more on AI next year.

The company took in almost $128 billion in Q3 2026, earning more than $26 billion in net income. These may sound like good numbers, but financial markets are not impressed. While revenue is up 25 percent versus last year, net income is almost $9 billion lower. As of this story's publication, the stock price is down almost 12 percent, and it was down about 13 percent earlier in the day.

While revenue was up 25 percent year over year, analysts expected more. Google reported earnings per share of $2.12, but the consensus projection ahead of Wednesday was $3.02. Google's Cloud products actually beat expectations, crossing $30 billion in revenue. That's about a billion more than analyst guesses.

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