Microsoft executive Matt Booty says future Xbox exclusivity will be decided "case-by-case," with Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution remaining Xbox console exclusives while major multiplayer, live-service, and previously promised PlayStation releases stay multiplatform. But IGN's Tom Phillips says Microsoft's announcement still leaves numerous questions unanswered, like "why just Gears and Clockwork Revolution?" and "how will this policy be enforced in future?" From the report: Last night's Xbox Showcase featured the return of games specifically earmarked as exclusives for Xbox consoles (though, of course, they'll still also be coming to PC). But why just Gears and Clockwork Revolution? And how will this policy be enforced in future? Microsoft's announcement left numerous questions unanswered. "We want a reason for people to get on board with Xbox, we want them to have a reason to buy an Xbox, we want them to have a reason to be an Xbox fan," Booty said. "At the same time, we want to reward all our players that have been with us for a long time -- we know that exclusives are important, and that's why we've got Gears coming in 2026 and Clockwork [Revolution] coming in 2027." "We also want to be clear that our big multiplayer games and live-service games are going to continue to be multiplatform," he continued. "If we've promised something to players already, we're going to honor that promise. And then -- I think Asha said it -- we're going to make the right decision and not the fast decision. "We're going to keep thinking about this going forward," Booty continued, "and, I think you guys know already, our principle is when we announce the date, we announce the platforms. So, it's going to be case-by-case, but we're going to be clear, that when it's got a date, it's got a platform and you'll know what the choice is going to be." Beyond those games already confirmed for PlayStation (such as the upcoming Halo: Campaign Evolved, and the PS5 version of Forza Horizon 6 due later this year), last night saw Microsoft make the call that other upcoming titles would still be coming to PS5 as well. While it had been assumed that State of Decay 3 would get a PS5 version, yesterday saw it made official. Hellblade threequel Senua was unveiled, and is getting a PS5 version. And, unsurprisingly, Spyro: A Realm Beyond is coming to Xbox, PS5 and Nintendo Switch 2.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from AppleInsider: Apple has unveiled its next Mac operating system, macOS Golden Gate, with Apple promising better performance, the improved Siri, and more. [...] On the surface, macOS Golden Gate is not as significant an upgrade as macOS Big Sur, or even macOS Tahoe with its Liquid Glass redesign. But under the surface, it is much more significant than it seems. Apple has chosen this release to draw a line in the sand. For the first time, the new macOS Golden Gate will not support Macs that have Intel processors. [...] Nonetheless, as of when this is released to the public in September or October, no Intel Macs will ever be supported again. One of the most notable design tweaks in this new release is a refinement of macOS toolbars and sidebars: toolbars are now more distinct, sidebars can stretch all the way to the window edge, and sidebar icons have regained color. Apple is also tightening window corner radii to address complaints about resizing behavior.

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At WWDC 2026, Apple announced a new "Siri AI," describing it as a more conversational, personalized, and systemwide assistant that can understand on-screen context and interact with apps while relying on on-device processing or Private Cloud Compute. The relaunch comes two years after Apple's original Apple Intelligence promises stumbled and "never fully materialized," reports The Verge. MacRumors reports: Siri is now embedded directly in the Dynamic Island, accessible by swiping down from it, pressing the side button, or saying "Hey Siri." A revamped voice engine makes the assistant sound more expressive, with micro-adjustable voice settings available during initial setup. During Apple's keynote demo, presenters showed Siri handling chained, multi-step requests with apparent ease. In one sequence, a presenter asked about a Suki Waterhouse concert, was told tickets require a lottery entry, and asked Siri to set a reminder when the lottery opens, which it did. In another, the assistant identified a photo's landmark, pulled up navigation to that location, and surfaced photos from a recent family trip, adding a specific image to a shared family album on request. Another demo showcased Siri's ability to synthesize information across apps. A presenter asked about a dessert he had heard about at an event, and Siri located the relevant details from his Messages history. It then compiled the information into a watch-party menu, drafted a message to his contacts with the menu included, and presented send and edit options. In a further demo, a presenter asked about something his son had shared in a message and followed it up by asking Siri to compose an email on the subject. A new dedicated Siri app lets users scroll back through prior conversations and kick off new ones, with conversation history synced via iCloud so sessions carry seamlessly between devices. The app is also coming to watchOS. On the Mac, Siri is now also integrated into Spotlight and available via right-click context menus on any file or window. On visionOS, Siri AI gains a 3D visualization that users can place anywhere in their space.

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wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Meta-owned communications app WhatsApp says it recently detected and disrupted a spear-phishing attempt linked to spyware company NSO Group. The attack is allegedly in defiance of a court order that bars the spyware maker from targeting WhatsApp. WhatsApp filed a lawsuit against NSO in 2019, after it came to light that a zero-day vulnerability had been exploited to deliver spyware to users. [...] NSO has been seeking to overturn the order blocking it from targeting WhatsApp users, arguing that the company will "suffer irreparable harm." According to WhatsApp, the spyware maker has violated the permanent injunction. The messaging app reported on Monday that it had recently learned of a social engineering attack that attempted to trick users into clicking on malicious links. WhatsApp has only shared a few domains as an indicator of compromise (IoC), but says it was able to link the attack to NSO, pointing to similarities to previously reported one-click phishing campaigns tied to the spyware company. WhatsApp says it also caught the attackers creating test accounts and groups. Those accounts and groups have been disabled, but further action is also being taken. WhatsApp says it is asking a federal court to hold NSO in contempt for allegedly violating a permanent injunction barring it from targeting WhatsApp and its users. The company also said it is making a "significant contribution" to the Spyware Accountability Initiative, a fund aimed at exposing and stopping spyware abuse.

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Firefox has merged initial support for Vulkan Video decoding, giving the browser a more cross-platform path for GPU-accelerated video playback beyond Linux's long-running reliance on VA-API. Phoronix reports: Firefox on Linux has long been focused on the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) that isn't universally supported by Linux graphics drivers. This has left to efforts like NVIDIA-VAAPI-Driver to layer VA-API atop NVIDIA NVDEC interfaces to enjoy GPU-accelerated video playback in Firefox. Smaller Arm/embedded graphics drivers also have been largely left out of the game in the VA-API space. But with Vulkan Video we are beginning to see more adoption and in a cross-platform manner. [...] The Firefox 153 release due out in July will have Vulkan Video decoding support available. The Vulkan Video activity in Firefox Git culminated this week with the work of NVIDIA engineer Tymur Boiko and Red Hat's Martin Stransky. Firefox 153.0 is expected for release on 21 July with this Vulkan Video support assuming no last minute issues.

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Bending Spoons, the Italian app studio behind acquisitions like Eventbrite, Vimeo, WeTransfer, Evernote, and AOL, has filed to go public in the U.S. after growing into a subscription-heavy app conglomerate with more than 500 million monthly active users. TechCrunch reports: In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bending Spoons said it ended the year with $1.31 billion in revenue and has generated $601 million in Q1, a 132% year-on-year jump. The company gets the majority of its revenue from subscriptions, which account for 84% of its business. It generated $27.4 million in profit in Q1 2026. The company raised funding at an $11 billion valuation last year, up from $2.8 billion in 2024. In April, Reuters reported that the company could seek a $20 billion valuation with the IPO.

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Jeff Bezos is backing Flourish, a new "neuro AI" startup with $500 million in funding and a reported $2.5 billion valuation, that aims to reinvent AI by studying the brain's architecture and building systems that learn continuously while using far less power than today's large language models. The company's long-term bet is that neuroscientists and AI researchers working together can uncover the brain's "core algorithm" and eventually create brain-inspired AI that runs on a tiny fraction of current compute. Wired reports: Rob Williams knows how to pitch Jeff Bezos: You write a press release as if your product has already been built. Bezos reads it and gives a thumbs up or down. Williams went through this process a lot as an executive on Amazon's "S-team," in charge of software products such as Alexa, until his departure last fall. But the pitch he made a few weeks later -- in December 2025 -- was different. Now he was collaborating with Thomas Reardon, a neuroscientist and repeat startup founder, and approaching Bezos as a funder, not a boss. Here's what Bezos, sitting on his yacht somewhere, read while Williams anxiously watched on Zoom: "Flourish is a neuro AI company that is solving the two most difficult problems facing AI today: power efficiency and continuous learning. We are building Cortex AI, the first synthetic intelligence system designed to match the computational capacity, learning efficiency, and power budget of the human brain." A month later, I'm lunching with Reardon and Williams in the Flatiron neighborhood in New York City. Reardon gets right to the point. AI has dug itself into a hole, he says. Though increasingly powerful, large language models are greedy consumers of computer power and data. Though the inspiration for LLMs was rooted in biology, current frontier models have little in common with the human brain. A person uses about 20 watts of energy to process information; a single chip in an AI training cluster uses more than 30 times that amount. The hyperscalers require thousands of chips and gigawatts of energy, enough to power small cities. And those models need to suck up virtually all of what humans have written. Each new model requires more, more, more. For all of that, the models don't learn. Once you train them, they're stuck. The goal, Reardon tells me, is to build "a synthetic artificial intelligence brain that runs on 50 watts or less." It should adapt to its conditions, be as nimble as a human mind, and burn a tiny fraction of an LLM's compute power and energy. The proof of concept is thriving inside our skulls. "There's something fundamentally wrong with saying, "I need to basically read every book ever written 20 times over in order to learn English,'" Reardon says. "A human baby does it with a couple hundred thousand utterances." Reardon and Williams haven't figured out yet how to build systems that match the magic of a human brain. What they have is a belief that an expert, well-resourced team -- of AI researchers and neuroscientists working essentially side by side -- can find the answer. The neuroscientists will conduct original wet lab experiments with some of the most advanced lab equipment available, to hunt for usable intel on the brain's architecture. They plan to release the models they're currently developing as near-term products on the path to a full reinvention of AI. The fuzziness of the proposal didn't bother Jeff Bezos. After reading Williams' two-pager, he chipped in $50 million. Other funding came from Lux Capital, Google Ventures, and Catalio, among others. Bezos then almost doubled his initial stake and told Reardon he'd have given more if they'd asked. Now with a war chest of $500 million and a reported valuation of $2.5 billion, Flourish just needs to invent a new way to do AI.

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