Daniel Liss, co-founder of the social network Dispo and the dating app Teaser AI, is convinced he’s onto the next big thing: steelmaking.
It all started, incongruously, with a few op-eds he wrote for TechCrunch about anti-trust enforcement in social media.
The commentaries apparently caught the attention of some folks in Washington D.C., Liss told TechCrunch, and resulted in him being invited to guest judge a war game capstone exercise in spring 2023 hosted by the National War College. The war game was very au courant, running a scenario in which the U.S. and China fought for supremacy over Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Liss’s take away from the exercise? “Our core supply chain of the arsenal of democracy — literally, the ships that my grandfather fought in — we don’t have the ship-building capacity. If we did, we don’t have the steel to make it,” he said.
At that point, Liss said he became “really interested — obsessed, even” with the steel supply chain. “That was really the birth of Nemo Industries.”
The basic pitch for Nemo Industries, Liss’s latest startup, appears as though it were drawn from a Venn diagram of two very American anxieties, steelmaking and AI. The company, until now, has been operating in stealth, but Liss gave TechCrunch a peek behind the scenes.
First, the obvious part: Nemo will use AI to optimize the production of pig iron, modernizing an industry that Liss said is woefully outdated. “These plants are run on, at best, Excel spreadsheets. At worst, clipboard technology,” he said. The people who run them have “unbelievable expertise,” he added, but that’s the sort of thing that doesn’t scale well.
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But Liss isn’t pitching Nemo as just another piece of industrial software. Rather, Nemo is planning to build its own furnaces. The decision was driven by Liss’s conviction that companies which use AI from inception will have a “20% to 30% margin advantage” over competitors.
In steelmaking, such conviction doesn’t come cheap. Hyundai Motor Group said in March that it would build a $6 billion steel plant in Louisiana to supply its factories in the U.S. Nemo’s plant may not cost that much since its operations will be focused on pig iron, an intermediate product which steelmakers use to make a range of different alloys.
Nemo will fire its furnaces using natural gas, which releases less carbon dioxide than coal, which is commonly used in the iron and steel industry. Liss said the company is considering capturing the furnaces’ carbon pollution; tax incentives introduced under the Inflation Reduction Act remain largely intact, and they make the endeavor profitable for Nemo, he said.
Liss’s partner in Nemo is Michael DuBose, an investor who previously worked at Cheniere Energy, a natural gas company. “He’s built billions of dollars in LNG infrastructure,” Liss said.
The startup will need that sort of scale if it’s to succeed. Nemo previously raised $28.2 million, according to PitchBook, and it is currently in talks with existing investors to raise a $100 million Series A with existing investors, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The company also has received offers for over $1 billion in incentives from two southern states if the company can build three plants over the course of 15 years, the person said.
It’s a tall order for anyone to tackle, but Liss said that sort of ambition is required if the steel industry is going to deliver the sort of returns desired by venture capitalists. And, he added, basic industries like steel have historically delivered big wins for investors.
“When you look at the history of our country, many of the greatest companies that created outsize outcomes for their initial investors were in these categories,” Liss said. “Ultimately, what were the Rockefellers and the Carnegies and the Melons and the Fricks investing in? The dollar amounts are so big in these categories.”
On July 23, the Trump Administration released its long-awaited AI Action Plan. Short of copyright exemptions for model training, the administration appears ready to give OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and other major players nearly everything they asked of the White House during public consultation. However, according to Travis Hall, the director of state engagement at the Center for Democracy and Technology, Trump’s policy vision would put states, and tech companies themselves, in a position of “extraordinary regulatory uncertainty.”
It starts with Trump’s attempt to prevent states from regulating AI systems. In the original draft of his recently passed tax megabill, the president included an amendment that would have imposed a 10-year moratorium on any state-level AI regulation. Eventually, that clause was removed from the legislation in a decisive 99-1 vote by the Senate.
It appears Trump didn’t get the message. In his Action Plan, the president signals he will order federal agencies to only award “AI-related” funding to states without “burdensome” AI regulations.
“It is not really clear which discretionary funds will be deemed to be ‘AI-related’, and it’s also not clear which current state laws — and which future proposals — will be deemed ‘burdensome’ or as ‘hinder[ing] the effectiveness’ of federal funds. This leaves state legislators, governors, and other state-level leaders in a tight spot,” said Grace Gedye, policy analyst for Consumer Reports. “It is extremely vague, and I think that is by design,” adds Hall.
The issue with the proposal is nearly any discretionary funding could be deemed AI-related. Hall suggests a scenario where a law like the Colorado Artificial Intelligence Act (CAIA), which is designed to protect people against algorithmic discrimination, could be seen as hindering funding meant to provide schools with technology enrichment because they plan to teach their students about AI.
The potential for a “generous” reading of “AI-related” is far-reaching. Everything from broadband to highway infrastructure funding could be put at risk because machine learning technologies have begun to touch every part of modern life.
On its own, that would be bad enough, but the president also wants the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to evaluate whether state AI regulations interfere with its “ability to carry out its obligations and authorities under the Communications Act of 1934.” If Trump were to somehow enact this part of this plan, it would transform the FCC into something very different from what it is today.
“The idea that the FCC has authority over artificial intelligence is really extending the Communications Act beyond all recognition,” said Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “It traditionally has not had jurisdiction over things like websites or social media. It’s not a privacy agency, and so given the fact that the FCC is not a full-service technology regulator, it’s really hard to see how it has authority over AI.”
Hall notes this part of Trump’s plan is particularly worrisome in light of how the president has limited the agency’s independence. In March, Trump illegally fired two of the FCC’s Democratic commissioners. In July, the Commission’s sole remaining Democrat, Anna Gomez, accused Republican Chair Brendan Carr of “weaponizing” the agency “to silence critics.”
“It’s baffling that the president is choosing to go it alone and unilaterally try to impose a backdoor state moratorium through the FCC, distorting their own statute beyond recognition by finding federal funds that might be tangentially related to AI and imposing new conditions on them,” said Venzke.
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On Wednesday, the president also signed three executive orders to kick off his AI agenda. One of those, titled “Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government,” limits federal agencies to only obtaining those AI systems that are “truth-seeking,” and free of ideology. “LLMs shall be neutral, nonpartisan tools that do not manipulate responses in favor of ideological dogmas such as DEI,” the order states. “LLMs shall prioritize historical accuracy, scientific inquiry, and objectivity, and shall acknowledge uncertainty where reliable information is incomplete or contradictory.”
The pitfalls of such a policy should be obvious. “The project of determining what is absolute truth and ideological neutrality is a hopeless task,” said Venzke. “Obviously you don’t want government services to be politicized, but the mandates and executive order are not workable and leave serious questions.”
“It’s very apparent that their goal is not neutrality,” adds Hall. “What they’re putting forward is, in fact, a requirement for ideological bias, which is theirs, and which they’re calling neutral. With that in mind, what they’re actually requiring is that LLMs procured by the federal government include their own ideological bias and slant.”
Trump’s executive order creates an arbitrary political test that companies like OpenAI must pass or risk losing government contracts — something AI firms are actively courting. At the start of the year, OpenAI debuted ChatGPT Gov, a version of its chatbot designed for government agency use. xAI announced Grok for Government last week. “If you’re building LLMs to satisfy government procurement requirements, there’s a real concern that it’s going to carry over to wider private uses,” said Venzke.
There’s a greater likelihood of consumer-facing AI products conforming to these same reactionary parameters if the Trump administration should somehow find a way to empower the FCC to regulate AI. Under Brendan Carr, the Commission has already used its regulatory power to strongarm companies to align with the president’s stance on diversity, equity and inclusion. In May, Verizon won FCC approval for its $20 billion merger with Frontier after promising to end all DEI-related practices. Skydance made a similar commitment to close its $8 billion acquisition of Paramount Global.
Even without direct government pressure to do so, Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot has demonstrated twice this year what a “maximally truth-seeking” outcome can look like. First, in mid-May it made unprompted claims about “white genocide” in South Africa; more recently it went full “MechaHitler” and took a hard turn toward anti-semitism.
According to Venzke, Trump’s entire plan to preempt states from regulating AI is “probably illegal,” but that’s a small comfort when the president has actively flouted the law far too many times to count less than a year into his second term, and the courts haven’t always ruled against his behavior.
“It is possible that the administration will read the directives from the AI Action Plan narrowly and proceed in a thoughtful way about the FCC jurisdiction, about when federal programs actually create a conflict with state laws, and that is a very different conversation. But right now, the administration has opened the door to broad, sort of reckless preemption of state laws, and that is simply going to pave the way for harmful, not effective, AI.”
Google has confirmed that its Android Earthquake Alerts system experienced issues in the wake of the 2023 earthquake that rocked Turkey and nearby regions.
Google’s Android Earthquake Alerts system leverages the sensors in Android phones to detect the early signs of an earthquake, providing alert to users when major quakes are coming before their effects are felt. While the system can usually only provide a few seconds of warning, that can be incredibly valuable in major quakes.
In early 2023, though, the system seemingly didn’t kick in during the major quake that rocked Turkey. It was reported in the months following the quake that users never saw these alerts, despite the region being comprised of nearly 80% Android users. Google, at the time, said that it was “confident” the system had worked correctly. That 7.8 magnitude quake led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people, largely due to collapsing buildings.
Now, Google is confirming that its Android Earthquake Alerts system failed to properly alert users of the Turkey quake.
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Speaking to the BBC, Google says that its system partially failed. Earthquake alerts have two different forms. For quakes with lower impact, a notification is sent alongside other warnings. But for major quakes, the system sends a fullscreen notification with audible alerts and overrides user settings such as Do Not Disturb. In the Turkey earthquake, Android’s system sent lower-level “BeAware” warnings to around half a million users, and the full “TakeAction” alerts to a mere 469 people. The report estimates that the system could have sent alerts to “10 million people within 98 miles of the epicenter” of the earthquake.
What went wrong? Google apparently cites “limitations to the detection algorithms,” with the company also confirming that the system did work properly on later aftershocks. Later the same day, the system sent “8,158” high level alerts to users, with “just under four million” users. In a later simulation of the initial quake, the system would have sent high-level alerts to 10 million users, and 67 million lower level alerts to those further from the epicenter.
Google recently published a deeper study regarding the Android Earthquake Alerts system, noting the “challenge of estimating an earthquake’s power.” That study, along with a further paper published to Science, doesn’t address the failure in Turkey.
In the study, though, Google says that it continues to learn from user feedback as the system continues to function, with some “key takeaways” including:
People appreciate the warning, even if they don’t feel shaking. A surprising 79% of people who received an alert but didn’t feel the earthquake still found the alert to be very helpful. This tells us that people value being informed about potential hazards in their area.
The right alert matters. A much higher percentage of people who received a TakeAction alert reported feeling strong shaking compared to those who got a BeAware alert. This shows that our system is doing a good job of distinguishing between light and potentially damaging shaking.
People are taking action. For those who received a TakeAction alert, the most common response was to “Drop, Cover, and Hold On.” This is a fantastic result and shows that these alerts are prompting people to take the correct, life-saving actions.
The winner of a $4 million lottery prize plans to give away some of the winnings.
The $4 million prize was from the “$4,000,000 Cash King Doubler” scratch ticket game, which was released in April. There’s still three $4 million grand prizes remaining to be claimed as of July 28.
The prize was claimed by SAT Revocable Trust of Peabody, which was represented by trustee Russell Goldberg. Goldberg opted to receive his client’s prize in the form of a one-time payment of $2.6 million before taxes.
The winner wants to “help others through charity donations” and enjoy the prize with their family.
The winning ticket was bought at Village Food Shop, located at 37 High St. in Danvers. The shop will receive a $40,000 bonus for selling the winning ticket.
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The move, the company said, was in response to a campaign by Collective Shout (an advocacy group that has previously criticized video games, rap music, and lingerie commercials) targeting both Itch.io and Steam for selling “No Mercy,” a game that depicts rape and incest.
In an open letter addressed to executives at PayPal, Mastercard, Visa, and other payment processors, Collective Shout said that games “endorsing men’s sexualised abuse and torture of women and girls fly in the face of efforts to address violence against women.”
“We do not see how facilitating payment transactions and deriving financial benefit from these violent and unethical games, is consistent with your corporate values and mission statements,” the organization added.
The campaign appears to have worked, with Steam saying earlier this month that it would ban games that “may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers.”
Similarly, itch.io said, “To ensure that we can continue to operate and provide a marketplace for all developers, we must prioritize our relationship with our payment partners and take immediate steps towards compliance.”
It also said that “No Mercy” had been “temporarily available on itch.io before being banned back in April,” and that “the situation developed rapidly,” forcing the company to “act urgently to protect the platform’s core payment infrastructure,” without providing advanced notice to creators.
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The company said it’s now conducting a “comprehensive audit” to ensure that games available on the marketplace meet “the requirements of our payment processors,” with adult content remaining deindexed until the audit is complete. After the audit, itch.io said NSFW game creators will be required to confirm that their content is allowed under the policies of their payment processors linked to their account.
On social media, users criticizing itch.io’s decision noted that its current terms declare that adult content violations are “permanent with no chance of appeal” and that any funds in an offending account “will not be eligible for payout” — or as one developer put it, “If you violate the rules, we take all your money. Not just the money from that work, ALL your money from EVERYTHING you’ve ever made.”
This is far from the first time that payment companies appear to have pressured online platforms over adult content — for example, last year Gumroad pointed to restrictions from payment processors when it implemented stricter rules around NSFW art, and OnlyFans also blamed “banking partners and payment providers” when it banned explicit content (a decision that it subsequently reversed).
A Change.org petition with more than 137,000 verified signatures criticizes Mastercard and Visa for their role in these types of decisions. Among other things, the petition demands that the payment companies “stop censoring legal fictional content that complies with the law and platform standards” and “reject influence from activist groups that promote moral panic or misrepresent fiction as harm.”
The streets of Tromaville, New Jersey are calling once again as the video game adaptation of the off-the-wall cartoon series Toxic Crusaders gets a release date. Seen in an official trailer from Retroware that was shown off during San Diego Comic-Con and shared online by IGN, the Toxic Crusaders game is releasing on December 4 on PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch and Steam.
As a true callback to the quirky cartoon from the ’90s, the video game is designed as a side-scrolling beat ’em up, all packaged in a fitting pixel art style. In Toxic Crusaders, you can select up to seven characters from the series, each with their own unique movesets and abilities, and join together for up to four players in local co-op. For Toxic Crusaders fans wanting more after the original series ended without a second season, this adaptation picks up where things left off. You’ll still run into some familiar faces, like the story’s main villain, Dr. Killemoff and his two bumbling henchmen.
For followers of the franchise, it’s been a discouraging journey since Retroware first announced the adaptation for release in 2023. It’s been delayed a couple of times, but the latest trailer finally offers a definitive date. If you can’t wait until December, you can catch The Toxic Avengerfilm — which is a reboot of the original movie from 1984 that the Toxic Crusaders cartoon was adapted from — in theaters on August 29.
It’s a bad time to be an S Pen fan — or, at least, that’s what Samsung’s not-so-quietly communicating to one of its most devoted bases. The company that practically invented the “phablet” has spent 2025 trying to leave behind (or, at the very least, downplay) one of the very things that brought it success in the first place. I’m worried the writing is on the wall for the S Pen, and it’s only going to grow bleaker from here.
To the casual Android observer, it might seem like Samsung’s uniquely-branded stylus is still thriving. The Galaxy S25 Ultra — already the fourth, believe it or not, in a line of Ultra-branded Galaxy Note successors — still has an S Pen built into its chassis, taking up space that could be used for components like larger batteries, with no signs of that changing any time soon. Our first Galaxy Tab S11 series leak all but confirms stylus support, and if previous generations are any inclination, it’ll continue to come in the box as in years prior. And while the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is missing its digitizer, Samsung clearly knows fan demand exists for this additional utility, even promising to consider bringing it back in a future foldable.
Unfortunately, things aren’t quite as positive as they seem. Over the past seven months, Samsung has pretty clearly deprioritized the S Pen in its lineup, removing features deemed unpopular before, as I mentioned ditching it from the Fold 7 altogether. If you’re a legacy Galaxy Note user who still finds plenty to love about the S Pen — built-in or otherwise — I’d make sure your voice is heard loud and clear, because for as grim as things may seem at the moment, they can get a whole lot more bleak.
2025 hasn’t been a good time for S Pen fans
It’s been a surprisingly busy year for S Pen news, so let’s break down every action Samsung’s made throughout 2025. This year kicked off with the launch of the Galaxy S25 Ultra, a perfectly fine — if somewhat-forgettable — smartphone that built on the success of its predecessor with a more comfortable design. Unfortunately, the big news story surrounding the S25 Ultra had nothing to do with the Now Bar, Now Brief, or Galaxy AI. Instead, all of the attention went to Samsung’s decision to remove Bluetooth from the S Pen, rendering it far more basic than previous iterations while also disabling all sorts of remote features.
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At the time, Samsung said that less than 1% of its user base actually relied on things like Air Command. While this change rendered the S Pen battery-less — and, therefore, lighter as a result — it also screams cost-cutting measures. Likewise, 1% of a customer base as large as Samsung’s is still a lot of people, people that would be willing to shell out to continue using these tools. But despite a series of hope-filled rumors that a Bluetooth-capable S Pen would be sold as an optional add-on, it turned out that, from the S25 Ultra onwards, features like Air Command really were as good as dead.
Of course, none of that compares to the completely S Pen-less Galaxy Z Fold 7. Samsung’s latest big-screen foldable is stunning, slimming down both its weight and bulk to achieve a foldable not too much bulkier than the S25 Ultra. Unfortunately, hitting that 8.9mm chassis meant, among other things, removing the digitizer from both sides of the phone’s foldable display. Samsung saved 0.6mm as a direct result, but also left plenty of Galaxy Z Fold fans feeling frustrated along the way.
Samsung hasn’t ruled out the S Pen’s return to foldables, but it’s going to take a serious amount of fan outcry — not to mention a technical leap forward — to get there. It’s clear the company thinks a slimmer, more pocket-friendly foldable is a path towards appealing to a larger market that has, to date, largely shunned Android’s collection of $2,000 mini PCs. But if it comes at the cost of frustrating or angering your already-devoted user base, a group of people that pride themselves on the road warrior mindset, well, I’m not sure you’re gaining more than you’re actually losing.
And don’t think you can just wait a single generation for an S Pen-ready Galaxy Z Fold 8 — we’ve already heard reports suggesting it’s not in the cards for next year’s launch.
An early image of the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra, via evleaks.
Even the Galaxy Tab S11 series seems to pack some disappointing news if you’re judging by our earliest leaked renders. A thumbnail image of the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra doesn’t just show a smaller notch with just a single front-facing camera — it also seems to hint towards another Galaxy device launching without a Bluetooth-capable stylus.
While the past several generations of Galaxy Tab S-series models all used back-mounted magnetic charging pads for the S Pen, this tablet doesn’t seem to have a spot to dock the stylus. It’s possible the company has moved it to the side of the device, similar to Apple’s implementation on certain iPad iterations, but it’s just as likely that — in an attempt to seek parity across S Pen-supported products — Samsung is ditching Bluetooth stylus support from its next tablet lineup. If this is true, the vast majority of S Pen tools would still be supported, but anything removed from the Galaxy S25 Ultra earlier this year would also be missing on the company’s next-gen slates.
The S Pen is in stasis, and it’s up to Samsung to change that
That is, unfortunately, a lot of smoke surrounding Samsung’s stylus, and where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire. While I don’t think anything here suggests a product lineup completely free of the S Pen — and, especially on tablets, I really don’t think that reality is really a possibility — it does demonstrate that, within Samsung, the S Pen doesn’t hold the same level of reverence that it perhaps once did during the Note’s heyday.
After more than a decade of relevance, the S Pen seems to exist in a level of stasis. With the move to Bluetooth now in the rearview mirror, I wouldn’t necessarily expect additional features to disappear over time, nor would I expect something like Samsung’s Ultra-series of flagships to lose its digitizer in the same fashion as the Galaxy Z Fold 7. But simultaneously, I can’t imagine a world where Samsung expands what the S Pen can actually do for users, nor would I expect to see it arrive on next-gen devices like the company’s forthcoming tri-fold.
Right now, the S Pen simply is what it is, for better or worse. For most fans, I’d bet that’s probably enough, and that’s the same bet Samsung seems to be making. After all, there’s a reason this company feels it can make these changes while surviving any potential public outcry. And early Galaxy Z Fold 7 sales numbers sure seem to imply most customers won’t actually miss their stylus.
But if Samsung wanted to maintain the base of enthusiasts it built throughout the 2010s, it could do plenty more. Bring back Bluetooth-capable S Pens, even if they come at an additional surcharge. Continue working towards a future foldable that includes a digitizer and that sleek sub-9mm chassis, no matter how difficult of a feat it may be. Get back to making the S Pen feel like an absolutely essential piece of the experience, not something simply here because the previous model had it. Surely, in this age of Galaxy AI, Samsung can think of a few new software tricks to keep this tool feeling as exciting as it once did.
My word of advice to S Pen fanatics is this: stay loud. For all its strengths, Samsung is a company that can get easily distracted by the next big fad in technology. Right now, that appears to be a focus on thinner, lighter devices that simply don’t mesh with the size constraints needed for a stylus. So, push for the S Pen’s inclusion in as many devices you can, and demand new tools that keep it a relevant part of the company’s lineup. Otherwise, this might not just be a regression of the S Pen’s importance — it might be the start of a slow, steady crawl to its eventual demise.
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SPRINGFIELD — A city councilor and longtime activist was suddenly fired from her job at the New North Citizens’ Council and escorted from her desk last week.
Maria Perez, the agency’s chief of housing programs and the Ward 1 city councilor, was terminated “effective immediately” after an internal review, according to a statement released Saturday night from Efrain Vazquez Jr., clerk of the New North Citizens’ Council board of directors.
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When Lehrer wasn’t teaching college-level math, he was sitting at a piano making people laugh — and worry — about the world. His targets included politics, nuclear destruction, and even social harmony.
“I could never sit down and say, ‘Today, I will write a funny song,'” he told NPR in 1997.
Born in 1928, he was raised in New York City’s Upper East Side, according to a 1981 Harvard Crimson profile, where he took piano lessons as a child. He attended Horace Mann High School before going to Harvard, where he wrote “Fight Fiercely Harvard,” his first recorded song, which he wrote at 17 years old.
His records spread well beyond campus to become an underground sensation in the 1950s. In the mid-1960s, NBC aired a satirical show called That Was The Week That Was. Producers turned to Lehrer for material. Although cast members sang his songs, Lehrer later performed and recorded them for intentional distribution.
“He established this genre of comedy songwriting,” said Rachel Bloom, a musical satirist and star of the CW TV show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Although she’s several generations younger, Bloom says she learned a lot from Lehrer’s work. “When you’re doing comedy songs, you want to take established genres and flip them on their head,” she said. “It’s almost like you want to go opposite.”
When Tom Lehrer wanted to ridicule and attack something, he did it from the inside. He would falsely embrace what he detested.
Take his song “The Vatican Rag.” It was for Lehrer a logical extension of the ecumenical council in Rome in the 1960s known as Vatican Two. Lehrer’s tune suggested that the best way for the Vatican to sell a product in this secular age would be to redo some of the liturgical music in popular song forms.
Lehrer may have been a Jewish kid from Manhattan, but he knew his catechism. Like all his work, “The Vatican Rag” was subversive and funny. And Lehrer could be ahead of his time. Even before the public had fully engaged on environmental damage, he wrote this: “Pollution, pollution, they got smog and sewage and mud. Turn on your tap and get hot and cold running crud.”
He retired from public performances in the 1970s and focused on teaching. He taught for many years at the University of California, Santa Cruz, splitting his time between there and Cambridge.
“I used to laugh more. Now I get angry,” he told NPR in 1997. “And it’s very hard to be satiric and — or to be funny, let’s say — and angry at the same time.”
NPR’s Chandelis Duster and James Doubek contributed to this report.
