Melissa Heikkilä / Financial Times:
Mustafa Suleyman says Microsoft is pursuing “true self-sufficiency” in AI by building enterprise- and healthcare-focused models and reducing reliance on OpenAI  —  Big Tech group's AI chief predicts white-collar work could be automated within 18 months

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch:
The US DOJ says Peter Williams, former boss of L3Harris' Trenchant, stole and sold tools that can hack millions of computers worldwide to a Russian broker  —  The former boss of a U.S. maker of hacking and surveillance tools stole and sold technology that can hack millions of computers and people worldwide …

Dell Cameron / Wired:
The US CBP signs a one-year Clearview AI deal, granting access to its facial recognition tool for “tactical targeting” and “strategic counter-network analysis”  —  US Border Patrol intelligence units will gain access to a face recognition tool built on billions of images scraped from the internet.

Joe Rivano Barros / Mission Local:
YC's Garry Tan launches “Garry's List”, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting “moderate/pragmatic” political candidates and pro-growth policies in California  —  New operation is part-PAC, part-blog, part incubator for Silicon Valley politics — and latest entry in big-money network

Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
Microsoft fixed a vulnerability in Notepad in Windows 11 allowing attackers to execute remote programs by tricking users into clicking malicious Markdown links  —  Microsoft has fixed a “remote code execution” vulnerability in Windows 11 Notepad that allowed attackers to execute local …