• A 1,000-mile cloud on Mars may reveal physics never seen in nature
• Ice sheet expansion may have started 2,000 years ago, but we canceled that
• NASA updates lander plans for Moon landings, finally solves long-festering Orion issue
• Hegseth warns prediction market bets warp military judgment, endanger troops
• Updated Google privacy policy says your Gmail might be used for advertising
• Inside the Pentagon, the pressure is on to find a home for a new spaceport
• Spotify ramps up policy enforcement on family plans
• Crows can evaluate visual info twice as fast as mammals
• Intel gets waiver after worries fuzzy US ban on foreign-made robots may hit fabs
• RFK Jr.’s vaccine injury clinic could damage NIH hospital, board warns
• Knicks sent employees fake offer of championship rings in phishing test: Report
• Everybody panic: A Valve developer said "HLX" in public
• The reactor meant to showcase nuclear’s comeback keeps hitting problems
• Ukraine learns to fight without Starlink as Musk plays politics with satellites
• Review: Crystal Lake suffers a bit from its obsession with Pam Voorhees
• Rocket Report: SpaceX says no thanks to military launches; Spanish rocket nearly ready
• Switch 2 security takes a hit as hackers unlock homebrew access
• Moderna and Merck say their mRNA cancer vaccine cut death, recurrence by 42%
• Latest estimate for Starship launches required to support a Moon landing? 22.
• Comcast loses more customers, claims other ISPs' cheap prices are "irrational"
| • A look at Alpha School, a network of private schools that claims to teach kids 2x as fast using AI; data shows ~50% of K-8 students missed this goal in math (Dana Goldstein/New York Times)
• An interview with Ciena CEO Gary Smith, a veteran of the 2001 telecoms crash, on AI demand outpacing supply for Ciena's optical networking chips, and more (Steven Rosenbush/Wall Street Journal)
• Block unveils Dessa, a "true speech-to-speech" AI model trained on "nothing but human conversation" that it says runs locally on a MacBook Pro M4 Max or newer (Jay Peters/The Verge)
• Ukraine says Starshield was working normally again on Saturday morning; US officials said Trump asked Elon Musk to restore the service (Wall Street Journal)
• Inside Meta's law enforcement outreach team, which uses AI and human reviewers to analyze social media posts, aiming to prevent threats like school shootings (Rachel Monroe/New Yorker)
• A look at OpenAI's Project Daybreak, which lets vetted partners use its top hacking models to find and fix vulnerabilities and helped uncover PHP2Shell RCE bugs (Thomas Brewster/Forbes)
• The PHP Foundation, which coordinated fixes for two critical PHP flaws, operates on a shoestring budget with one full-time staff member and 14 contractors (Toby Sterling/Reuters)
• Google updates its privacy policy to clarify it could use data shared via Personal Intelligence from connected apps, including Gmail and Photos, to target ads (Shimul Sood/Android Authority)
• Andy Jassy says AWS capacity for 2027 is "largely sold out" and a "good chunk" of 2028 capacity is also sold, though AWS reserves some capacity for on-demand (Catherine Perloff/The Information)
• The UK plans to invest £100M to create the AI Biosecurity Lab to boost defenses against biological threats, supported by OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind (Liv McMahon/BBC)
• OpenAI says it built an "offline world" from cached web content to train isolated frontier models to browse, search for information, and use web apps (OpenAI)
• Utopai, an AI film studio that says it has more than 20 projects in the works, raised $60M at a $1B valuation (Rocket Drew/The Information)
• Memo: Helen Chiang, Xbox's first COO, is leaving Microsoft on October 23, just months after the role was created; she spent 21 years at the company (Tom Warren/The Verge)
• Mave, which is developing an AI-driven tool to automate security investigations, raised a $28M Series A led by Red Dot, bringing its total funding to $34M (Meir Orbach/CTech)
• Sources: Instacart, currently valued at $12B, is in talks to sell itself and held preliminary conversations with DoorDash and Uber; CART jumps 9%+ (The Information)
| • Google is quietly linking your phone number to other Android accounts
• Why the wires in your ethernet cables are twisted
• Steam rolls out Personal Calendar feature that constantly updates recommended games
• Xbox Game Pass could let you pick which features you pay for
• Capcom confirms data breach that affected 11.7 million users
• There's a chance your PlayStation 5 is plugged into the wrong HDMI port
• The UK is investing $134 million into an AI Biosecurity Lab
• Your smart TV's Wi-Fi is probably faster than its Ethernet, but speed isn't everything
• What is Theater Mode on your Apple Watch and when should you use it?
• Here's how to test a CR2032 battery to see if it's good
• Why your Ring camera is still useful without a subscription
• The MacBook Neo uses an iPhone chip, and it's just good enough
• How to get better iPhone battery life without closing any apps
• The beneficial purpose of 'IQ' on your Anker chargers
• Which services can you safely disable to improve PC gaming?
• How to improve your PC's airflow for better cooling
• How long is too long for an HDMI cable?
• 'Father of the PlayStation' Ken Kutaragi sides with Sony on the physical discs debate
• Engadget review recap: iPhone Duo, Rivian R2 and more
• Peak on consoles, hockey roguelites and other new indie games worth checking out
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