AI Talent Shifts, Linux API Removed, Brazil Hacked

John Jumper, who shared a recent Nobel Prize in chemistry, announced Friday that he’s making the leap to Anthropic after “nearly 9 years” at Google DeepMind.

In a post on X , Jumper wrote that DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis “took a real chance letting me lead the AlphaFold team just six months after finishing my PhD, and the entire GDM team taught me so much about how to do great science.”

Jumper (pictured above right, with Hassabis) added, “GDM is a special place, and I’ll still be excited to hear about what amazing things they discover next.”

Bloomberg reports that Jumper was a key member of Google’s team developing coding tools , which the company has struggled to sell to businesses. Character AI co-founder Noam Shazeer also announced this week that he’s leaving DeepMind — though in Shazeer’s case, he’s joining OpenAI.

Jumper and Hassabis won the Nobel Prize in 2024 for their work on AlphaFold, an AI model that can predict the 3D structure of proteins based on their genetic sequences.

The Linux kernel has completed a six-year initiative to remove the `strncpy` API from its codebase.

This deprecation involved over 360 patches, highlighting the extensive effort to modernize the kernel.

The `strncpy` function has long been a source of security vulnerabilities due to its unpredictable behavior with null termination.

Its removal is a significant step towards improving overall kernel security and code quality.

Brazil's National Civil Defense warning system was compromised, leading to an unauthorized alert being sent to mobile phones.

The platform was immediately taken offline following the incident, which affected multiple states.

Suspected hackers are believed to be responsible for sending the mysterious message.

This event has triggered a federal investigation into the security breach of critical public infrastructure.

Relativity Space will launch NASA’s Aeolus payload, which will gather data on the Martian atmosphere.

Relativity Space, the rocket company led by former Google executive Eric Schmidt, was picked to launch NASA’s Aeolus payload to Mars in 2028, as reported earlier by TechCrunch .

The Aeolus payload will have four instruments on board for studying the Martian atmosphere, which NASA says will “directly inform entry, descent, and landing systems and support safer, more predictable mission planning for astronauts.”

Schmidt, who served as CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, became Relativity Space’s CEO in 2025, a couple of years after it launched the “world’s first 3D-printed rocket,” Terran 1, which failed shortly after launch. Relativity Space’s larger Terran R rocket isn’t scheduled to have its first launch until later this year.

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Nothing’s co-founder says CMF couldn’t build a phone ‘at a price that makes sense.’

Nothing’s next budget phone is the latest victim of RAMageddon. As 9to5Google reports, Nothing co-founder Akis Evangelidis announced in a post on X that a follow-up to the CMF Phone 2 Pro won’t be coming this year:

We were working on a successor but with memory prices where they are right now, we can’t build a phone that feels like a genuine step forward at a price that makes sense for CMF. As a result, we’ve decided not to launch a new CMF phone this year.

Last week, Nothing CEO and co-founder Carl Pei also said the RAM shortage has impacted the cost of the company’s mid-range phone, stating, “For Phone 4A, memory costs doubled between when we decided to build the device and when it launched. They’ve doubled again since.” According to Pei, “memory is now the most expensive component in a smartphone.”

While there won’t be a new CMF phone this year, Evangelidis added in his post that CMF still has “several new products launching as well as some entirely new categories.” He also hinted that “the smartphone launch season at Nothing isn’t over yet.”