Apple has sharply raised prices across its Mac, iPad, HomePod, and Apple TV lineups as surging AI-driven demand creates a global memory and storage shortage. Increases range from $30 for the HomePod mini to $1,300 for the M3 Ultra Mac Studio, with Apple CEO Tim Cook saying efforts to shield customers from higher costs had become "unsustainable." The Verge reports: On Thursday, the company adjusted the price of its new MacBook Neo, which will now start at $699 instead of $599, while the base MacBook Air will jump to $1,299 from $1,099, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. The 14-inch MacBook Pro is getting an increase as well, going from $1,699 to $1,999. Meanwhile, the iPad Air will now start at $749 instead of $599, while the iPad Pro is increasing to $1,199 from $999. As spotted by MacRumors, the M4 Max Mac Studio will now cost $2,499, a big jump from $1,999. The M3 Ultra Mac Studio is now priced at $5,299, up from $3,999. Apple is even raising the prices of its HomePod, which now costs $349 instead of $299, as well as bumping the price of the HomePod mini to $129 instead of $99. The Apple TV also now costs $199 instead of $129.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A tech sell-off shook global markets on Tuesday as attention turned away from developments in the US war with Iran and toward the future of AI companies and chipmakers that have driven stock markets to record highs. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index closed 2.2% lower on Tuesday. The S&P 500 was also down by Tuesday afternoon, dropping 1.43% while the Dow remained steady. All three major US indices have hit record highs this year, riding off a rush of funding to support AI technology and infrastructure. Nasdaq is up 10% for the year, while the Dow jumped 6% so far this year, breaching past 51,000 points, and the S&P 500 is up 7.3%. But some economists have warned that the influx of AI spending is a bubble reminiscent of the dot-com bubble that burst in the early 2000s. Seven tech companies make up 30% of the S&P 500's value. The heavy reliance on a single industry and a few key companies has some investors wondering if it's a matter of when, not if, there will be a burst. Those concerns have been heightened by signals from the Federal Reserve last week that it may increase interest rates, and therefore the cost of borrowing, in order to tackle rising inflation. Alphabet fell 5% on Monday. SpaceX plunged 16%. The selloff also spread to Asia, with South Korea's benchmark dropping 10% as SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics each lost more than 12%, while Japan's Nikkei 225 declined 3.5%.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Mr. Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, recently dispatched a small team at his company to create a smartphone app similar to Polymarket and Kalshi, two employees with knowledge of the matter said. Users would not wager money, and the app would probably rely on a video game-like points system instead, one person said, though the company had not ruled out the eventual use of real money betting. The app is internally referred to as "Arena" and would function independently from Meta's social networking apps, which include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, said the employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential plans. Meta aims to grow the app by leveraging its large social networking audiences and directing them toward using it, they said. The effort, which insiders characterized as experimental but a top priority, is part of a broader push by Mr. Zuckerberg to create new types of apps based on emerging social behavior online. More than 3.56 billion people visit one or more of Meta's apps every day, an amount that has raised questions about whether those platforms have reached a saturation point. Arena is one of a handful of apps that Meta is trying out. Others include one called Meta Photos, another stand-alone app which would create new types of media using artificial intelligence, the employees said. [...] Meta insiders have cautioned that Arena remains in development and may not be released. But as executives search for ways to keep the world's largest social media sites thriving, Mr. Zuckerberg appears to be relying on his well-worn product development strategy: Follow the users.

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Valve's new Steam Machine will launch June 29 starting at $1,049 and go up from there depending on the configuration. Although it costs considerably more than the PS5 ($599.99) and Xbox Series X ($649.99), "the value proposition for the Steam Machine is that it can play your library of Steam games you may have accumulated over years (or even decades), rather than just PlayStation games, and it's also a full Linux PC that you can customize to your heart's content," reports The Verge. "Valve also says that it's selling the Steam Machine for the cost of its components alone instead of subsidizing the price." From the report: You can now register your interest to buy a Steam Machine as part of a reservation system. To offer a fair playing field for people who want to buy one, Valve will randomize everyone in the queue on Thursday at 1PM ET. After that, anyone who registers their interest will be added to the end of the waitlist. The first emails giving people the opportunity to buy will go out on June 29th. Valve will sell four configurations of the Steam Machine: - A 512GB model for $1,049 - A 512GB model with a bundled Steam Controller for $1,128 - A 2TB model for $1,349 - A 2TB model with a bundled Steam Controller for $1,428

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Student loan borrowers who enroll in automatic payments will get a much bigger discount on interest starting July 1, the U.S. Department of Education says. Auto pay has long offered a modest discount off borrowers' interest rate -- .25 percentage points -- but after millions of borrowers opted out during the long COVID repayment pause, with some making no payments for years, the nation's student debt portfolio swelled to $1.7 trillion. On Thursday, the department said it will temporarily increase its auto pay interest rate discount to one full percentage point. Practically, that means an undergraduate borrower with a loan at the current 6.39% would see their interest rate drop temporarily to 5.39%. The rate cut will last for two years, from July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2028. Borrowers already enrolled in auto pay do not need to act. They will automatically receive the rate cut. [...] The department says borrowers will have until Sept. 30 to sign up for auto pay and qualify for the two-year interest discount.

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Accenture announced Thursday it would acquire a majority stake in industrial cybersecurity firm Dragos for $3.25 billion and purchase two smaller security companies outright, essentially making a $4.18 billion bet that defending the IT networks of power grids, pipelines, factories and critical infrastructure sectors will become one of the defining challenges of the AI era.

The deals — which also include two Austin, Texas-based companies, runZero and NetRise —  represent a significant strategic pivot for Accenture toward operational technology (OT) security,  a segment of the cybersecurity market that has long been underfunded relative to traditional IT defenses. The announcement comes as the consulting giant faces pressure on its core business from the same AI tools reshaping the threat environment it is now moving to address.

Dragos, founded in 2016 by former intelligence specialists and based in Hanover, Maryland, has built what the industry regards as a leader detecting threats in OT environments. Its proprietary dataset of industrial threat intelligence has made it a trusted partner to critical infrastructure operators globally.

RunZero specializes in asset discovery and attack-surface intelligence — essentially mapping what is connected to a network and identifying where it is exposed. NetRise focuses on firmware-level visibility and software supply chain security, areas that have drawn increased scrutiny since high-profile incidents revealed how deeply embedded vulnerabilities can propagate through industrial device ecosystems.

Dragos co-founder and CEO Robert M. Lee will continue leading the combined entity, which will operate as an independent business under Accenture’s ownership. The CEOs of runZero and NetRise, HD Moore and Tom Pace, respectively, along with NetRise’s chief technology officer Michael Scott, will join Dragos as senior executives.

The acquisitions are not Accenture’s first move in OT security. The company acquired Cimation in 2015 and Revolutionary Security in 2020, along with several other OT-focused firms. 

Thursday’s deal, however, is of a different scale and ambition. Where previous acquisitions built out Accenture’s services capabilities, the addition of Dragos, runZero and NetRise moves the company firmly into OT cybersecurity software, a market it had not previously entered at scale.

Accenture and Dragos describe this expanding environment — which also encompasses Internet of Things devices, cloud-connected sensors and related IT infrastructure — as “xOT.” The concern is that as AI is integrated into industrial decision-making, the attack surface grows. At the same time, adversaries are using AI to shorten the window between compromising an IT network and pivoting to OT systems underneath it.

Despite that convergence, most cybersecurity budgets remain concentrated on traditional IT, leaving critical infrastructure comparatively exposed. The OT cybersecurity services market is estimated at roughly $7 billion in 2026. The broader OT cybersecurity market, which includes software, is estimated at $27 billion this year and projected to reach nearly $59 billion by 2031, growing at approximately 16% annually.

“Our energy and water systems, manufacturing plants, data centers and other operational environments need cybersecurity built from the ground up for xOT and designed to keep pace as threats evolve. The consequences of getting it wrong become societal threats,” Lee said in a release. “Organizations need solutions, not a patchwork of software and services. The addition of runZero and NetRise will allow the Dragos Platform to be a unique end-to-end platform for global defense, and Accenture will bring its decades of trusted relationships and deep expertise to help us scale and secure more critical infrastructure and physical operations globally.”

The transactions are expected to close in August or September, pending customary regulatory approvals.

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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 enough signatures for the ballot, the groups backing the measure have until June 25 to decide whether to move forward or potentially strike a deal with the state. While unions backing the group have framed the proposal as a way of getting the ultra-rich to pay their fair share, many of the state's tech elites have condemned the tax and spent millions attempting to crush it. The Google co-founder Sergey Brin has spent $82m alone on efforts to fight the tax, while joining other Silicon Valley billionaires in declaring he will leave California if it goes through. The Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, crypto billionaire Chris Larsen and Ring founder James Siminoff are among the other tech moguls who have made huge political donations to groups opposing the tax. California has the most billionaires out of any state, many of whom have increased their wealth in recent years amid the AI boom.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple is raising its prices to offset the high cost of memory and storage, CEO Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal. Apple is no longer able to absorb the increased prices and will need to pass some of the cost on to consumers. "Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable," said Cook. "We're doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we've been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable." Growing demand for memory and storage chips from AI companies has led to chip shortages and higher costs. The Wall Street Journal suggests Apple will need to increase device costs "substantially" to maintain its current profit margins given the cost of memory chips and SSDs. Research firm TechInsights claims Apple will need to make the iPhone 18 Pro around $270 more expensive to keep its existing profit margin. Apple is struggling more with memory chips, but storage chips are also an issue. "There's less supply at a time when consumers want devices and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases," Cook told The Wall Street Journal. Cook said Apple will use its cash to increase memory supply, but he did not give details on what that means. Apple does not plan to create its own memory and storage factories. "We can't do everything," Cook said. "We know what we're good at." Cook likened the memory shortages to a hundred-year flood. "I've never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years," he said. Further reading: Smartphone Market To Shrink 15% This Year Due To Memory Crisis

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Few business leaders have been as deeply embedded in popular culture as Elon Musk, the ambitious entrepreneur who has become a central figure in internet culture and amassed a fortune that has made him the world's first trillionaire. At a time when concerns about inequality are high and public attitudes toward the ultra-wealthy have soured, Musk has managed to retain a loyal following despite his stratospheric net worth and without the folksy persona that endeared other tycoons such as Warren Buffett to the masses. While admirers view Musk's no-filter style as part of his appeal, critics have accused him of wielding oligarch-like power, raised concerns about governance at his companies and objected to his increasingly partisan political interventions. Still, SpaceX, the sprawling rocket, satellite and AI company that together with electric-car maker Tesla form the center of Musk's empire, raised a record $75 billion in its initial public offering on Thursday, highlighting investor enthusiasm for his business ventures. Prior to the share sale, Forbes pegged his net worth at roughly $780 billion, far ahead of the man next in line, Alphabet co-founder Larry Page. "The second richest person has been hovering around $300 billion, so about less than one-third of what Musk can potentially be worth tomorrow," said Matt Durot, deputy editor at Forbes Wealth. "And only one other person, (Oracle founder) Larry Ellison, has ever been worth $400 billion." Most of Musk's wealth now rests with SpaceX, where he holds a stake worth roughly $866 billion. Along with Tesla and the rest of his properties, his net worth will exceed $1.1 trillion when the stock begins trading Friday, according to Forbes and Reuters calculations based on company filings.

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Visa is integrating its payment network with ChatGPT so AI agents can shop and complete purchases on users' behalf. "It means AI agents can not only recommend products but complete the purchase on the user's behalf, at potentially any merchant that accepts Visa," reports the Associated Press. "The payment network's previous attempts at this technological leap were confined to a single retailer or a small set of enrolled merchants." From the report: OpenAI will provide the technology to allow agents to interact, make decisions and initiate purchases through ChatGPT. Visa, the world's largest payment network outside of China, will provide the payment authorization and fraud monitoring needed to do this at scale. "As AI agents become active participants in the economy, Visa's focus is to ensure transactions are trusted, secure and seamless," said Jack Forestell, chief product and strategy officer at Visa. Speaking at a company event Wednesday in San Francisco Wednesday, Forestell gave an example of a customer telling ChatGPT they're looking for a pair of wireless headphones under $150. The chatbot would find a pair for sale under those parameters and buy it on behalf of the customer. Visa and OpenAI did not disclose the financial terms of the collaboration and did not give details on the fees merchants or customers would have to pay. [...] Visa says the feature will have guardrails like spending limits, required approval steps and approved merchants for shopping in order to protect consumers and minimize fraud.

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Valve is discontinuing physical Steam Gift Cards and says it will stop restocking them as retailers sell through remaining inventory. In a blog post, the company blamed persistent gift card scams as the reason, though Steam Digital Gift Cards will remain available and existing physical cards can still be redeemed. PC Guide reports: Valve says it has "responded to gift card scams over the years" -- but this doesn't stop scammers from adapting. The Steam creator has actively worked with retailers and law enforcement, among other precautions, to counteract scams, but says the issue can never be fully resolved. Steam Digital Gift Cards will continue to operate as normal.

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House Democrats criticized a draft Republican Department of Homeland Security spending bill Thursday that they said would cut funding for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency by $250 million.

Republicans said the bill provides $2.4 billion for CISA, and that among its focuses are “improving cybersecurity resilience,” in the words of House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla.

But Democrats decried it as a funding reduction. The panel’s subcommittee on homeland security is set to vote on the bill Friday.

The fiscal 2027 funding measure “dramatically cuts funding for cybersecurity and infrastructure protection despite an increasing number of sophisticated attacks from foreign adversaries against U.S. businesses, health care systems, utilities, schools, and state and local governments,” Democrats said in a fact sheet.

They also said it limits DHS’s ability to counter foreign propaganda seeking to undermine U.S. democracy, and to protect states against foreign groups during the elections.

The second Trump administration has sought deep cuts in CISA’s personnel numbers and budget in both fiscal 2026 and 2027, drawing concerns from both sides of the aisle.

Congress last year sought to implement some, but not all, of Trump’s proposed cuts for the agency, advancing legislation to set its budget at $2.6 billion.

In their fact sheet, Republicans said they were reallocating $100 million from past appropriations to fund CISA’s core missions.

They acknowledged some cutbacks, saying that the bill “Includes strategic reductions to redundant, unauthorized, or duplicative contracts, positions, and programs.”

Despite the cutbacks at CISA over the last year and a half, officials have talked about wanting to hire additional personnel. The fiscal 2027 bill includes “$31 million to hire mission critical positions to counter threats from foreign adversaries, such as China,” according to the GOP.

The GOP also highlighted other cyber funds in the DHS bill. DHS’s management director would get $11.3 million for “enhanced cybersecurity protections,” while the Homeland Security Investigations division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement would get $5 million for the Cyber Crime Center.

Neither panel Republicans nor Democrats responded to requests for comment seeking more detailed numbers for the fiscal 2027 bill.

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Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Congress Wednesday that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency would ideally have 2,800 personnel, up from approximately 2,200 now and down from 3,400 before the second Trump administration began.

President Donald Trump has pushed to dramatically reduce personnel numbers at the agency, something that has drawn criticism from both Democrats and Republicans on the Hill. Trump has proposed hundreds of millions more in cuts for fiscal 2027.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., asked Mullin at a hearing Wednesday about further proposed CISA budget cuts, saying he was “concerned” about personnel numbers and funding for education programs and whether the fiscal 2027 blueprint would “negatively impact those efforts.”

Mullin said DHS funding lapses have made the department rethink CISA, although the deep CISA personnel reductions predate the recent spate of government shutdowns. 

“We had to readjust the way we’re looking at CISA and better lean on public partnerships,” he said. The agency can work well with 2,800 people “If we can actually have the partnerships we need with states and be able to use the grants, the monies that [we] saved with CISA to be able to invest with local and state municipalities. … We’re not going to fail on the mission we have in front of us.”

CISA personnel figures are in a constant state of flux. The CISA staff figure of 2,200 Mullin gave is down even from December. In March, acting director Nick Andersen said CISA was looking to hire 300 people.

There’s been no proposal from the Trump administration to-date to take funds formerly allocated to CISA and shift them to state governments for cybersecurity. State officials have said CISA budget cuts have made their jobs harder, and most experts have said the Trump administration’s approach to shift cyber responsibilities to states is badly misguided.

Congress has yet to permanently reauthorize the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program that expired last year before it got a temporary extension and is due to expire again in September.

CISA has gone without a Senate-confirmed director for the entirety of the second Trump administration. Mullin said “we’ve got a person soon to be nominated that will be running CISA that has the ability to recruit and focus on the authorities we have.”

Mullin said CISA has “unique” authorities that haven’t “been completely utilized.” 

“We want CISA to be the leader in cybersecurity,” he said. “They should be and they will be.”

A House Appropriations subcommittee is set to consider a DHS funding bill Friday.

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Cybercrime remains a booming business. 

Annual cybercrime losses amounted to almost $20.9 billion last year, reflecting a 26% increase from 2024, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) said in its annual report Tuesday.

The comprehensive study exposes a worsening digital crime environment that is driving financial losses, with momentum moving in the wrong direction and compounding at an alarming rate. Annual cybercrime losses have jumped almost 400% from $4.2 billion in 2020, and cumulative losses in that five-year period surpassed $71.3 billion.

The FBI’s IC3, which formed as the country’s central hub for cybercrime reporting in 2000, is busier than ever. “We now average almost 3,000 complaints per day,” Jose Perez, the FBI’s operations director for its criminal and cyber branch, wrote in the report. 

The annual internet crime report highlights growing and sustaining trends. Yet, the scope of the study is limited and relies entirely on cybercrime incidents submitted to the FBI. 

The full impact of cybercrime remains murky, as an unknown number of victims suffer in the shadows and never report the crimes they endure.

The FBI received more than 1 million complaints last year, with victims aged over 60 reporting the largest amount of crimes that also resulted in the greatest amount of total losses by age group. Victims at least 60 years old filed 201,000 complaints with losses totaling nearly $7.75 billion, or about 37% of all cybercrime-related losses last year.

Investment-related fraud remained the largest component of cybercrime losses in 2025, reaching almost $8.65 billion. Business email compromise took the No. 2 spot with almost $3.05 billion in losses, followed by tech support scams at more than $2.1 billion. 

Cryptocurrency was the primary conduit for fraud linked to investment and tech support scams last year, while wire transfers composed the bulk of fraud resulting from business email compromise, according to the report.

Phishing was the most commonly reported type of cybercrime last year, followed by extortion, investment scams and personal data breaches. The FBI tallied losses amounting to $122.5 million from extortion and $32.3 million from ransomware last year.

The FBI also received more than 75,000 reports of sextortion last year, including more than 5,700 submissions that were referred to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The top five cyber threats reported to IC3 in 2025 included data breaches at 39%, ransomware at 36%, SIM swapping at 10%, malware at 9% and botnets at 7%. 

The FBI received more than 3,600 complaints reporting ransomware last year. The five most reported variants included Akira, Qilin, INC, BianLian and Play.

Each of the 16 critical infrastructure sectors reported ransomware attacks last year, and the most heavily targeted included health care, manufacturing, financial services, government and IT.

The IC3 primarily receives complaints from U.S. residents and businesses, but it also received complaints from more than 200 countries last year, which accounted for nearly $1.6 billion in total losses. 

While losses and the sheer amount of cybercrime continued to climb last year, “the FBI continues to disrupt and deter malicious cyber actors — and shift the cost from victims to our adversaries,” Perez wrote in the report.

“It has never been more important to be diligent with your cybersecurity, social media footprint, and electronic interactions,” he added. “Cyber threats and cyber-enabled crime will continue to evolve as the world embraces emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence.”

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President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget would slash the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s total by $707 million, according to a summary released Friday, which would deeply chop down an agency that already took a big hit in Trump’s first year.

Another budget document suggests a smaller — but still substantial — hit of $361 million, with the discrepancy possibly due to the comparison points amid budget uncertainty for CISA’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security. DHS and CISA did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.

“At the time the Budget was prepared, the 2026 appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security was not enacted, and funding provided by the last continuing resolution it had been operating under (Continuing Appropriations Act, 2026, division A of Public Law 119-37, as amended by division H of Public Law 119-75) had lapsed,” the budget summary notes. “References to 2026 spending in the text and tables for programs and activities normally provided for in the full-year appropriations bill reflect the annualized level provided by the last continuing resolution.”

By either measurement, the proposed budget would cut deeply into an agency that started the Trump administration at roughly $3 billion, and would be substantially below that if Congress enacts the latest blueprint. The budget appendix says CISA would end up with slightly more than $2 billion in discretionary funding under Trump’s plan. For fiscal 2026, appropriators sought to mitigate some of Trump’s proposed CISA reductions.

The 2027 budget summary recycles identical language from the 2026 budget summary, and makes references to ending programs that CISA has already shuttered.

“The Budget refocuses CISA on its core mission — Federal network defense and enhancing the security and resilience of critical infrastructure — while eliminating weaponization and waste,” the summary states in both the 2026 and 2027 documents.

It makes references to getting rid of things that have already been cut, like “external engagement offices such as council management, stakeholder engagement, and international affairs.” It talks about ending programs focused on censorship, something CISA under the Biden administration said it never had, and on “so-called” misinformation, which CISA said it ended during the former president’s term.

Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, criticized the budget proposal for CISA.

“Like the President’s cyber strategy, the President’s CISA budget reflects his utter lack of understanding of the urgency of the cyber threats we face and how to mobilize the government to help confront them,” he said in a statement to CyberScoop. “As of 2023, CISA was spending $2 million on countering information operations, an effort initially launched at the behest of Congressional Republicans during the first Trump Administration.

“There is nothing that justifies a reckless $700 million cut to CISA, particularly at a time of heightened tensions with Iran and an increasingly aggressive China,” he continued. “I am committed to working with my colleagues to push back against these cuts and ensure we can protect government and critical infrastructure networks.”

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