WhatsApp kicks off reservation race with 'usernames'

PLUS: Chinese supercomputer crowned world's fastest

Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Meta is bringing one of Telegram's signature features to WhatsApp — usernames.

Starting this week, the 3B users of the messaging service can reserve a username and skip sharing their phone number to chat. Privacy win, sure, but get the safeguards wrong, and it opens the gates to a wave of scams.

In today’s tech rundown:

  • WhatsApp opens username reservations

  • Chinese supercomputer crowned world's fastest

  • Apple suffers one of its biggest leaks in years

  • NASA to rescue falling space telescope

  • Quick hits on other tech news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

META

Image source: Meta

The Rundown: Meta just opened reservations for usernames on WhatsApp, allowing users to set their custom handle (like they do on Instagram) and share that with people they want to chat with — instead of providing their phone number.

The details:

  • While usernames launch later this year, Meta opened reservations to ensure users can lock in preferred handles, with each name unique to one person.

  • The feature, similar to what Telegram has offered since 2014, will keep users from sharing their phone numbers with everyone they want to chat with.

  • However, unlike Telegram, usernames won’t come with a directory to browse, and people will need to know an exact username to contact a person.

  • Meta will also back this up with a four-digit key that users can set as an additional layer of security before someone messages them on their username.

Why it matters: WhatsApp is hardening the privacy layer, ensuring you never have to share your number again when messaging your handyman or bookstore manager. But usernames can also lead to scams — a fake handle looks just as trustworthy as a real one, and without a number, there’s no way to check who you're actually talking to.

SUPERCOMPUTING

Image source: China News Service / Getty Images

The Rundown: China's LineShine supercomputer, housed at the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, dethroned the U.S.'s El Capitan as the world's fastest supercomputer — and it did it without using a single GPU.

The details:

  • LineShine surpassed El Capitan by almost 22% in the latest TOP500 rankings, hitting 2.198 exaflops, or more than two quintillion calculations per second.

  • The machine runs roughly 14M Arm-based CPU cores, packed into 45,000 LX2 processors, all built and assembled through China's LingKun platform.

  • It skips GPUs — the Nvidia chips most supercomputers run on and the exact hardware the U.S. has restricted China from buying — relying on CPUs instead.

  • Teams are already using LineShine for heavy workloads like testing a decade of weather predictions in hours and atomic-scale simulations of materials.

Why it matters: The U.S. spent years betting that cutting off GPU supply would slow China’s technology progress. LineShine is proof of the opposite — Beijing just built the world's fastest machine using the chips that Washington did not restrict. The U.S. can always write a longer list, but it can't unteach China how to win without permission.

APPLE

Image source: AFP / Getty Images

The Rundown: A ransomware group just hit Tata Electronics, one of Apple's key manufacturing and supply chain partners, and leaked 200K+ internal files on the dark web, including the iPhone 18 Pro's supplier list and photos and videos of the device.

The details:

  • The files map iPhone 18 Pro components — chips, battery parts, camera modules — to the suppliers that make them, information Apple never disclosed.

  • They also include drop-test photos and videos of what looks like iPhone 18 Pro in grey, carrying Apple's internal codenames and confidentiality markings.

  • Tata Electronics also works with Tesla, with leaked files including Model Y charge-port and drawings related to the Model 3's "Project Highland" redesign.

  • Apple said it is investigating the matter and working with Tata, which has hired a global consultant for a deeper forensic audit.

Why it matters: Apple controls almost every detail of how its products reach the public, but it doesn't always have full control over how securely its suppliers operate. This breach shows that risk clearly. The leak didn't come from inside Apple, but it's Apple's secrecy and its product pipeline that are taking the hit.

NASA

Image source: Katalyst Space / NASA

The Rundown: NASA is launching an ambitious rescue mission on July 1, where a robotic spacecraft will fly to its 20-year-old Swift space telescope and push it back up to a safer orbit — before it falls and burns up in Earth’s atmosphere.

The details:

  • With recent solar activity increasing atmospheric drag, Swift's orbit has been decaying faster than expected, putting the telescope on track to fall and burn.

  • Katalyst Space has built the rescue craft, which will first study Swift and then use its robotic arms to grab and push it 150 miles upward to its original altitude.

  • Once the gamma-ray telescope is back in its original place, NASA will restart its full system and telescope operations, which it says could take a month or more.

  • The entire rescue, launch included, costs NASA about $30M, with science chief Nicky Fox saying they can't afford to build a replacement if Swift is lost.

Why it matters: Until now, a dying satellite gave NASA two choices: build a replacement, or let it go. This mission tests a third option — pay a private company a fraction of the rebuild's cost to extend the life of the one already up there. It won't work in every case, but it can definitely bring down the cost of saving some missions.

QUICK HITS

A Waymo robotaxi was caught driving into an oncoming traffic lane in Los Angeles before correcting course, adding to a string of recent autonomous driving mishaps.

The Trump administration discussed a SpaceX stock donation for Trump Accounts, a children's savings program launching next week, Semafor reported.

T-Mobile is retiring legacy wireless plans and automatically migrating customers to newer 5G offerings, with some bills increasing by an average of about $4 per line.

Amazon agreed to pay $2.25M to settle U.S. claims that it failed to provide records needed by identity theft victims to investigate fraudulent purchases.

Colossal Biosciences and the U.S. government are creating a BioVault to preserve the DNA and cells of some 2,300 endangered species, for future de-extinction efforts.

Comcast is splitting into two public companies, spinning off NBCUniversal and Sky into a standalone media org while retaining its broadband, wireless, and cable business.

Meta reportedly hired contractors to pose as minors and test how rival chatbots handled prompts about suicide, drugs, and self-harm, as part of safety benchmarking.

Apple said it is releasing security updates earlier than usual, citing AI-driven cyber threats that are shrinking the window between vulnerability disclosure and exploitation.

Australia's competition regulator sued Amazon, alleging it used unfair contract terms to force Prime Video subscribers to pay extra to avoid ads.

Apple is seeking U.S. approval to buy memory chips from blacklisted Chinese chipmaker CXMT to ease rising component costs, the Financial Times reported.

IBM introduced the world's first sub-1 nanometer chip architecture, packing 100 billion transistors into a fingernail-sized chip.

COMMUNITY

That's it for today's tech rundown!

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Rowan, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — The Rundown’s editorial team

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