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NASA is sending its WB-57F high-altitude aircraft to Iceland to chase the total solar eclipse scheduled for August twelve, two thousand twenty six. Flying above most of the atmosphere, the jet gives scientists a cleaner, longer look at the sun's corona than any ground-based observer could manage. It's old-school aviation serving cutting-edge science.
Closer to earth, a man named Samuel Tunick is fighting federal charges after prosecutors say he wiped a phone running GrapheneOS, a privacy-focused operating system. Tunick says he was secretly added to a terrorism watch list, and now faces up to five years in prison. The case raises uncomfortable questions about whether choosing privacy software can itself invite government suspicion.
And in politics, more than fifteen candidates across the country have signed something called the AI Pact, pledging to regulate data centers and artificial intelligence if elected. Nebraska Senate candidate Dan Osborn is among the signatories. Whether campaign promises translate into actual policy is always the open question, but the fact that AI governance is becoming an electoral issue marks a real shift in the conversation.
That's the pulse of tech today. Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.
