Shameless Plug

German Firm Files For Insolvency After Cybercriminals Shut Down Production For 6 Weeks Published on 2026-07-13T21:12:00Z German textile firm ZEGO has filed for insolvency and is blaming a March cyberattack that shut down production for nearly six weeks. "ZEGO's filing adds another name to the short but growing list of companies that say a digital break-in was commercially fatal to their business," reports The Register. From the report: In a notice to customers and suppliers, the organization said it had exhausted every available option before seeking insolvency protection. Managing director Johannes Zenglein described the filing as "one of the most difficult steps in our company's 37-year history." "The cyberattack of March 29, 2026, however, impacted our company to an extent that we could not fully compensate for despite our best efforts," Zenglein wrote. "The consequences resulted in a production outage of nearly six weeks and significant ...

States Sue to Block Paramount-Warner Bros Merger, Defying DOJ Published on 2026-07-13T20:00:00Z A coalition of 12 states led by California is suing to block the $111 billion Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. merger, arguing it would reduce competition in theatrical distribution, blockbuster films, and basic cable licensing. The challenge (PDF) defies the DOJ's approval of the deal. Variety reports: The coalition, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, alleges that the $111 billion transaction violates the Clayton Act by lessening competition in three distinct markets: wide-release theatrical distribution, "top-grossing" theatrical distribution, and basic cable licensing. "The unlawful merger of these two entertainment behemoths would lead to higher prices, lower quality, and less content for film and television, harming movie theaters, basic cable distributors, and ultimately, audiences on every sofa and movie theater seat in the U.S.," Bonta said in a st...

America May Soon Be Facing Largest Labor Shortage in Its History Published on 2026-07-13T04:54:00Z America "is facing what's projected to become the largest labor shortage in its history," according to experts interviewed by the Washington Post: Economists warn that the worsening labor problem, due in part to a skills shortage and population shifts, will be vast and reach beyond tech. It "could hobble the American economy for years to come," predicts the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Lightcast, a labor market data company, calls it "the largest labor shortage the country has ever seen." JPMorgan Chase warns of a national security risk from "a pervasive talent deficit that constrains the nation's capacity to build, compete, and protect its interests." There will be shortages in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of nurses, physicians, teachers, engineers, pharmacists, mental health counselors, constr...

Apple Reportedly Agreed to Intel Chips To Avoid White House Tariffs Published on 2026-07-13T19:00:00Z According to the Wall Street Journal (paywalled), Apple agreed to use Intel's U.S. chipmaking plants after White House officials pressured Tim Cook during tariff-relief talks last summer. MacRumors reports: In August 2025, Apple CEO Tim Cook was in Washington to lobby the Trump administration to drop its proposed 100 percent tariff on semiconductor imports -- a levy that would have raised costs across Apple's product line. Apple reportedly secured an exemption after pledging to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S., although many of those investments were already planned. During the meetings, president Trump and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick are said to have urged Cook to use Intel's fabrication plants to make some of Apple's chips. The link between the tariff talks and the Apple-Intel deal had not been previously reported. Almost a year later, Trum...

'Billionaire Exodus? California Drew 10x More Venture Capital Than Any Other State This Year' Published on 2026-07-12T23:34:00Z California drew more than $335 billion in venture capital funding this year, reports the Los Angeles Times, citing data released Thursday by PitchBook on private market funding: Its next biggest competitor, New York, raised less than a tenth of California's total. Texas raised 1/40th of the amount... Although a campaign for a new tax on billionaires has convinced some ultra-rich residents to shift to other states and businesses often complain that high property and energy costs and an anti-business regulatory regime make it too tough to make money in the state, the inability of the top talent, companies and investors in AI to set up elsewhere shows California's enduring attraction. The state's economy grew 5% last year to a record $4.25 trillion, making it larger than every country other than the U.S., China and Germany. It is home to ...

'Forget Coders. the Real AI Threat Is In the Back Office' Published on 2026-07-12T22:29:00Z Which jobs are most threatened by AI? "Programmers, software engineers and other tech industry employees," goes one common answer. "But many economists are more concerned about a different, larger group of white-collar workers," reports the New York Times: customer service reps, bookkeepers, payroll clerks and HR specialists, "who fly under the radar but collectively account for tens of millions of jobs..." They are spread across the country and throughout the economy, working in every industry, in big cities and small towns, at major corporations and mom-and-pop businesses... These jobs typically offer a middle-class salary or a pathway to achieving one — much as manufacturing jobs did for men before decades of globalisation and automation wiped many of them away... For now, such an outcome is a fear, not a forecast. Despite high-profile layoffs in tec...

Linus Torvalds on AI, Junk Patches, Humans, and Godzilla Published on 2026-07-12T20:55:00Z Linus Torvalds once said LLMs might bring a 10X increase to programmer productivity. But speaking at Open Source Summit India 2026, he now says that number was "not scientific," reports ZDNet. "That was pulled out of my ass number, obviously." Today, he continued, "we're at the point where hopefully it creates more productivity than it takes away," but "we certainly saw more junk being generated by LLMs than we saw useful code up until the like early this year.... it can actually be a huge drain on resources when it takes humans a lot of effort to figure out that, hey, this machine-generated report was not true." Even now, he said, "most of the good ones require more than just the LLM," because "we've had to push back quite a bit... if you find a bug with an LLM, it's not enough to just ask the LLM to make a bug report and the...