The Amped Journal

Apple's board unanimously approved John Ternus, the company's senior vice president of hardware engineering, as chief executive officer effective September 1, ending Tim Cook's 15-year tenure atop the company. Cook moved into the newly created role of executive chairman, and Johny Srouji, previously head of silicon engineering, was promoted to chief hardware officer.

Ternus joined Apple's product design team in 2001, became vice president of hardware engineering in 2013, and was elevated to senior vice president in 2021, overseeing the iPad, AirPods and Apple silicon lines. Apple and outlets covering the transition have framed his central challenge as proving a hardware-focused engineer can keep Apple competitive against Google, Microsoft and OpenAI in AI, while also managing supply-chain shifts and the company's relationship with the Trump administration.

Google DeepMind, the company's AI research lab, released WeatherNext 3, a new forecasting model built with Google Research that learns directly from real-time weather station observations rather than relying only on historical simulation data. The model now powers forecasts across Google Search, the Gemini app, Google Maps and Google Maps Platform.

Google says WeatherNext 3 delivers up to a 50% reduction in error for global precipitation forecasting, historically one of the hardest problems in weather modeling, and boosts temperature-forecast resolution five-fold, from 25 kilometers down to 5 kilometers, in a single pass. Because it ingests satellite data directly, it can generate a new global forecast every hour instead of the six-hour intervals typical of compute-constrained traditional models.

Developers and researchers can access the underlying real-time data through Google's BigQuery, Earth Engine and Cloud Storage services.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk spent Wednesday detailing the Cybercab, the company's purpose-built robotaxi, in a series of posts on X. The vehicle has no steering wheel or pedals, designed purely for autonomous operation, and uses electric brakes rather than a hydraulic system, which Musk said eliminates the need to route brake plumbing throughout the car.

Musk said the Cybercab's motor achieves its full range without using any rare earth metals, calling it 'extremely hard to achieve,' and that riders will be able to stream 4K live video over Starlink, Tesla's satellite internet service, while in the vehicle.

A U.S. missile struck a home in a town in southern Iran where dozens had gathered to celebrate a fisherman's daughter's wedding, according to a rights group and Iranian state media cited by the Associated Press. At least two women and two children were killed and more than 60 people were wounded in the strikes on the town.

The strike is the latest escalation in clashes between the U.S. and Iran that began with American strikes near the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian retaliation near Jordan earlier this week. Vice President JD Vance blamed Iran for the resulting rise in gas prices, now averaging above $4 a gallon nationally, and said he 'won't make a promise' about when prices might fall. President Trump has vowed further action.