EFF Health News

  The Student Loan Shake-Up Is Here: What July 1, 2026 Means for Your Wallet If you have federal student loans, or you're about to take some out, you might want to sit down for this. On July 1, 2026, the entire federal student loan system is undergoing its biggest overhaul in decades. The way you borrow, the amount you can borrow, and the way you repay are all changing, effective immediately. Think of it like this: For years, federal student loans have been like a giant, messy toolbox with a dozen different wrenches, hammers, and gadgets. Some were great, some were confusing, and most were collecting dust. On July 1, that toolbox is being replaced. The government is swapping out all those tools for just two new ones, and shoving the old ones into a locked closet. The result? A simpler system. But  simpler  doesn't always mean  cheaper . This guide is your instruction manual. We'll break down exactly what's changing, how it impacts  you  specifically (becaus...

  Why Is NA Wine So Far Behind NA Beer? The Honest Truth Let me be blunt with you. I've poured more bad non-alcoholic wine down the sink than I care to admit. Flat reds that tasted like watered-down jam. Whites that hit with a sharp, unpleasant tang and then left nothing behind. Sparkling "no-seccos" that promised elegance but delivered cloying sweetness and regret. And every time, I'd look over at my friend sipping a crisp NA beer, something from Athletic Brewing or a Guinness 0.0 , and think the same question: *Why is NA wine still so far behind?  * You've probably asked it too. Maybe you're sober curious, cutting back for health, or designated driving through a wedding season. You've watched the NA beer revolution happen in real time. It's genuinely good now. Craft breweries are crushing it. So why can't wine catch up? The short answer?  Wine has a much harder job. Beer starts with relatively low alcohol (typically 4–6% ABV) and has a produ...

  Palantir’s Karp Says Businesses Are ‘Unhappy’ with Frontier AI Labs, Here’s Why Alex Karp , the CEO of Palantir , is not known for subtlety. And in June 2026, he delivered one of his most unflinching critiques yet. “It’s not just the man and woman on the street that is unhappy with the frontier labs ,” Karp told CNBC‘s Sara Eisen. “It’s in private every single enterprise we deal with.” He went further on a podcast appearance, comparing the way companies consume AI tokens to… well, let’s just say  adult content addiction . “People are just, like, sitting there all day … enterprises are, like, ‘Okay we believe this will create value, but we cannot have people just checking the weather with it, just rearranging deck chairs on their personal Titanic,’” Karp said. That‘s the headline. But behind the provocative language is a serious indictment:  frontier AI labs, OpenAI , Anthropic , Google , are selling enterprises a dream they can’t deliver on.  And the bill is co...

Goodbye, Porter Square Shopping Center. Hello, 'The Mix.',  Here's What Comes Next. Just steps from the Porter MBTA stop, there it is. A Dunkin‘. A Panera Bread. A liquor store, a hardware store, a Star Market , and a scattering of smaller places tucked in between. For 70 years, this was the Porter Square Shopping Center . Nothing fancy. Just the reliable, everyday retail that generations of Cambridge residents have counted on. But that was then. Now, according to the Boston-based firm that manages it, it's something else entirely. Now, it's "The Mix." As in: "Want to meet for a spring roll at The Mix?" Or: "I'm going to the supermarket at The Mix." Or maybe: "I'm all out of ashwagandha tincture. Mind stopping at The Mix?" It sounds like a marketing exercise. A consultant's fever dream. And if you ask the regulars who actually  use  this plaza, many of them will roll their eyes so hard they might strain something. ...

From Cutting Government Waste to Chasing Profit: The Second Act of the DOGE Bros Here's something you don't hear every day. Two guys in their late twenties, with zero prior government experience, once got handed the keys to review thousands of federal grants. They used ChatGPT to decide which ones to cut. They couldn't always define the terms they were enforcing. And now? They want another shot. Nathan Cavanaugh and Justin Fox, better known online as the "DOGE bros", are back. Their new company,  Special , just raised a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) with backing from some of the biggest names in tech: Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong, Palantir execs, and close allies of Elon Musk. Their mission? To take what they "learned" at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and apply it to the private sector. But here's the question hanging in the air like a bad smell at a blockchain conference:  Why should anyone trust them? Let...

  Trump Says Ford and GM Asked Him for a Bill to Stop You From Fixing Your Own Car: Here’s What’s Really Going On You pop the hood, grab your tools, and get ready to fix your own car. Simple, right? That’s how it’s always been. But what if I told you that two of America’s biggest automakers just asked the President for a bill to make that illegal? Sounds like something out of a dystopian novel, doesn’t it? Well, on June 4, 2026, President Donald Trump stood in the Oval Office and dropped a bombshell. He claimed that executives from Ford and General Motors sat across from him and asked for federal legislation that would… wait for it…  stop you from repairing your own vehicle. “They don’t want people to fix their car,” Trump said, seemingly bewildered. He even told a wild story about a man who went to jail for seven years, just for fixing his own ride. Now, I don’t know about you, but that stopped me in my tracks. We’re talking about a $200 billion auto repair industry. We’re t...