Wired: How the Peter Thiel-Linked Dialog Club Secretly Ranks Its Members
WIRED has obtained internal data from Dialog, the private club co-founded by Peter Thiel — dossiers on nearly 200 prominent people, complete with home addresses, private phone numbers, dates of birth and even food allergies. It turns out the club secretly grades its members by wealth and fame, assigning each an A, B or C rating, and uses an AI tool to assemble the dossiers and help decide who should meet whom and who no longer belongs.
TechCrunch: He made your free video player run smoothly. Now he’s doing that for robots.
French entrepreneur and open-source legend Jean-Baptiste Kempf — the man behind the free VLC video player (over 6 billion downloads) — is now building a new company, Kyber: software that lets you remotely control robots, drones and other devices in real time with minimal latency. Convinced that “hundreds of millions of robots” will be roaming the streets within a few years, he has raised a $5 million round led by Lightspeed, which has also backed Anthropic and Mistral AI.
NPR: Can you taste history? We try George Washington’s original beer
NPR and the New York Public Library try to recreate the “small beer” George Washington jotted down in a notebook in 1757, when he was a colonel in the Virginia militia. Back then, low-alcohol beer was a way to get safe drinking water and spare soldiers from dysentery. New York brewery Talea made a couple of hundred bottles from the recipe — a dark amber, cloudy drink heavy on molasses, sweet and a little tart.
Politico: Orbán-appointed Hungarian president bans Orbán from returning to power
Hungarian President Tamás Sulyok — appointed by Viktor Orbán himself — has signed a constitutional amendment capping the prime minister’s term at eight years, thereby barring Orbán, who held the post for 20 years, from returning to power. New Prime Minister Péter Magyar, who has long promised this “lex Orbán,” is simultaneously trying to remove Sulyok from office, calling him a “puppet” of the previous regime.
NPR: Big dogs, Buc-ee’s and the great BBQ debate: World Cup fans discover everyday America
World Cup football fans who have come to the US are gushing on social media about everyday America — free soda refills at McDonald’s, huge portions, yellow school buses and Texas roadhouses. NPR writes that this fascination with American culture and the warmth of its people — at a time when US relations with many allies are strained — acts as a counterweight of “soft power” to the animosity between politicians.
The New York Times: Mexico’s Laws Have a New Target: Journalists
Mexican politicians and officials are increasingly weaponising the law against journalists — suing, fining and harassing critics, accusing them of terrorism or invoking rules on artificial intelligence. Mexico has long been one of the world’s most dangerous places for journalists (nearly 180 killed since 2000), and now the threat of litigation is pushing many to censor themselves.
Financial Times: EU official’s outreach to Russia backfires
European Council president António Costa tried to reopen communication channels with Russia to lay the groundwork for possible peace talks over Ukraine, but the move triggered dismay among the bloc’s leaders at a Brussels summit. Several states, Germany among them, objected that the time was not right to talk to the Kremlin and that they should have been consulted first; Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rejected the EU’s moves and threatened nuclear retaliation.
Al Jazeera: Cuba: Between charcoal and solar panels
Al Jazeera reports on how Cuba is gripped by one of its worst energy crises in years — blackouts in many places last more than 12 hours a day. The crisis is splitting society: those with savings or relatives abroad are buying solar panels and lithium batteries, while everyone else falls back on charcoal and homemade stoves to cook.
In an Instagram video, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced that the American firm Palantir would be replaced at the country’s domestic security service (DGSI) by the French company ChapsVision. Palantir’s leadership reacted with disbelief: executive vice-president Josh Harris, noting that after ten years of cooperation he learned of it from the media, was indignant — “you can’t do this on Instagram; this is a very serious matter.” The company says it will stay in place until the transition to the “sovereign” solution, which will take one to three years.
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