The Johnson thermoelectric energy converter (JTEC) is a solid-state heat engine that converts heat into electricity without moving parts, using hydrogen circulation between two cells at different temperatures to generate voltage.
Background
The Johnson Thermoelectric Energy Converter (JTEC) is a heat engine, not a traditional thermoelectric device. It uses a cycle similar to a Stirling engine to convert heat directly into electricity, using hydrogen as a working fluid and special PEM (proton exchange membrane) stacks to generate voltage from pressure differences. Invented by Lonnie Johnson (an engineer best known for inventing the Super Soaker water gun), JTEC aims to be more efficient than conventional heat engines, especially at smaller scales, and has potential for waste-heat recovery, solar power, and remote power generation. The company JTEC Energy continues development, though commercial viability remains unproven.
Max Weinbach says he had early access to OpenAI's new model GPT-5.6 Sol, calling it his favorite model by far. He highlights that it never gives up and will keep reasoning until it's done. OpenAI announced that GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, will launch publicly on Thursday, with preview access expanding globally now.
The US government ordered Anthropic to suspend access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for all customers, citing a potential jailbreak technique that involved asking the model to review a codebase for vulnerabilities—a capability Anthropic says is available in other public models. Access was abruptly cut off on June 12.
Andrej Karpathy announces the release of Claude Fable 5, the same underlying model as Mythos but with added safeguards. He calls it a major step forward, particularly for long problem-solving sessions on difficult tasks, and describes it as state-of-the-art on nearly all benchmarks with exceptional performance in software engineering, research, and vision.
Roman Storm warns that the legal theory in his case could set a precedent making open-source developers liable for how others use their code, potentially criminalizing the mere publication of privacy, messaging, or crypto tools. He notes that developer Michael Lewellen cannot publish lawful code due to prosecution fears, and argues this chilling effect extends beyond any single case.
Meta's engineering culture is deteriorating under Mark Zuckerberg and Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, who have introduced keyboard tracking, reassignments to data labeling, and AI-centric performance metrics. Critics argue this incentivizes performative AI use, drives away experienced engineers, and contributed to a major Instagram hijacking incident caused by AI-written and AI-reviewed code.