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Norway Imposes Near Ban On AI In Elementary School Published on 2026-06-19T22:00:00Z Norway will largely prohibit generative AI use for elementary kids ages 6 to 13 beginning with the new school year, while allowing limited, teacher-supervised use for older students. The government says the restrictions are intended to prevent children from skipping foundational reading, writing, and mathematics skills amid declining test scores. Reuters reports: Facing a broad decline in education test scores, the government in 2024 banned smartphones from schools and has given teachers back more powers to enforce discipline in the classroom. Using AI increases the risk that young children skip important steps in their education, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told a press conference on Friday. "The most important thing in school is that our children learn to read, write and do mathematics," Stoere said, adding that the new standards will be imposed from the new school year beginning in ...

Doom Composer Bobby Prince Has Died Published on 2026-06-19T21:00:00Z Video game composer and sound designer Bobby Prince has died at age 81 following an illness. Developer id software shared the news. Engadget reports: Prince was perhaps best known for his pioneering work on the Doom series. The Library of Congress inducted his soundtrack for the original game into the National Recording Registry just last month. "Despite the limitations of the 1993-era sound card drivers, Prince composed the perfect riff-shredding accompaniment for the game's demon-slaying journey to hell and back," the Library of Congress stated. "Taking advantage of his knowledge of MIDI, Prince even worked to ensure that the sound effects he created could cut through the music by assigning them to different MIDI frequencies." Prince also worked on games such as Wolfenstein 3D, Rise of the Triad and Duke Nukem 3D. In 2006, the Game Audio Network Guild honored Prince with a lifetime achie...

Hyundai Takes Full Control of Boston Dynamics As SoftBank Exits For $325 Million Published on 2026-06-19T20:00:00Z Hyundai Motor Group is acquiring SoftBank's remaining 9.65% stake in Boston Dynamics for $325 million, "closing out SoftBank's last piece of Boston Dynamics and turning the Waltham, Massachusetts robotics company into a wholly owned Hyundai business," reports Startup Fortune. From the report: The price is $325 million for the remaining stake, according to the deal terms, and it follows the put option SoftBank retained when Hyundai bought control of Boston Dynamics in 2021. You should read that as a signal, not a footnote. Hyundai paid about $880 million for an 80% stake in Boston Dynamics in the 2021 transaction, valuing the company at roughly $1.1 billion at the time. SoftBank had bought Boston Dynamics from Alphabet in 2017, after Google had acquired the robotics lab in 2013. It was a strange ownership path for a company whose robots became famous on ...

Canada Missed Chances To Inspect OceanGate's Titan Before Fatal Implosion Published on 2026-06-19T19:00:00Z An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A report from Canada's Transportation Safety Board has highlighted regulatory failures that allowed OceanGate's unregistered, unflagged, and uncertified Titan submersible to operate out St. John's, Newfoundland, for years before it imploded on a tourist trip to the wreck of the Titanic in 2023. "When it came to the Titan, critical information existed across multiple federal government organizations, but no one was responsible for connecting the dots," says TBS chair Yoan Marier in a statement. "Without a complete picture of the operation, the Titan continued to operate in Canada without regulatory oversight." [...] As OceanGate continued to operate from St. John's in 2021 and 2022, the Titan made successful dives to the Titanic and several sites within Canadian waters. The company eventually...

California 'Billionaire Tax' Makes Ballot Despite Opposition From Tech Moguls Published on 2026-06-18T22:00:00Z California's proposed "billionaire tax" has gathered enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot, setting up a major fight between labor unions and some of Silicon Valley's richest figures. From the report: The California Billionaire Tax Act, colloquially known as the billionaire tax, would levy a one-time 5% tax on any California resident worth more than $1bn. The proposal is backed by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West as a means of funding California's strained healthcare and education programs. The proposal has become one of the state's biggest political flashpoints as it gained momentum throughout the year, with prominent billionaires, such as the Google co-founder Larry Page, making moves to cut ties with the state and Newsom vowing to block it from going to a vote. Although it has gained...

Midjourney Pivots From AI Image Generation To Body Scanning Medical Spa Published on 2026-06-18T21:00:00Z Midjourney is expanding beyond AI image generation with plans for a medical-imaging business built around a water-based, full-body ultrasound scanner that uses hundreds of thousands of sensors and AI to reconstruct MRI-like images. "As you descend into the water, hundreds of thousands of tiny elements take turns, sending out waves, listening together, compressing and then streaming data to a massive cluster where thousands of computers split the task," Midjourney explained in the announcement. "By looking at how the shapes of all the waves change, we reconstruct a detailed map or 'image' which basically lets us figure out what's in there." The company hopes to open a San Francisco scanning "spa" in late 2027, with 50,000 or more deployed around the world by 2031. The Register reports: It's not clear how fast the process is with the pr...

Bernie Sanders Unveils $7 Trillion Plan To Give Americans Control of AI Industry Published on 2026-06-18T20:00:00Z An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: As artificial intelligence companies reshape the economy and race toward trillion-dollar valuations, Sen. Bernie Sanders is proposing a sweeping transfer of wealth and power from the industry to the American public. The legislation, shown first to The Associated Press, would create a sovereign wealth fund overseen by an independent commission and financed through a one-time 50% tax on the stock of the largest AI companies. Sanders estimates that the tax would create a nearly $7 trillion fund that would generate hundreds of billions of dollars annually in direct payments to Americans and programs such as health care, education and housing. [...] The 50% tax would apply to AI companies that reach $200 million in annual AI sales. Any new AI company that reaches that benchmark would also be subject to the tax. ...