• Drones sink ships near NATO countries in “unacceptable” attacks, EU says
• OpenAI will watermark ChatGPT outputs by default—but only in the EU
• HBO Max, Paramount+, and Discovery+ "will unify into a single service”
• It looks like the Atlantic storm season may finally produce a hurricane
• Hackers obtain counterfeit TLS certificates for Google and other large services
• Paramount completes $111B Warner merger, creating “Skydance” behemoth
• Support Ars and get a better reading experience in return
• Amazon kills Alexa’s ability to control Echo speakers' AUX input
• Neutrino physicist wins 2026 Nobel Physics Prize
• Googlebook "Better Together" phone features don't work with Samsung at launch
• Why is NASA bringing 7,500 contractors back to work as civil servants?
• All-electric camping gets a solar upgrade: The 2027 Pebble Flow
• Big Oil asks Supreme Court to kill climate lawsuits before trial
• OpenAI agents tried to hack Wikipedia tools and flooded it with traffic
• Licensing costs driving 90 percent of VMware users to explore options: Survey
• MCP for agent-to-agent comms may be the riskiest protocol you've never heard of
• Cable lobby to sue Trump FCC over repeal of national TV ownership cap
• Texas city demands $2M for public records on Flock usage
• Command-line tool quickly removes Apple Intelligence from macOS 27
• Controlling the brain with light earns a physiology Nobel
| • Google releases Nano Banana 2.1, based on Gemini 3.6 Flash, saying it improves on previous versions "across the board"; pricing is ~50% lower vs. Nano Banana 2 (Matthias Bastian/The Decoder)
• Sources: SpaceX is seeking to raise $40B, including ~$10B in bank loans and ~$30B in investment-grade debt, to purchase Nvidia chips, in a deal led by Apollo (Financial Times)
• Sources: Xbox has secured exclusive game streaming rights for Grand Theft Auto VI; it is not clear how long the agreement will be in place (Tom Warren/The Verge)
• OpenAI releases a range of new mathematical results produced by an internal model, with details like estimations of compute spent in terms of ChatGPT Pro usage (OpenAI)
• Gurman: Apple's upcoming smart home products co-developed with LG are "at least a few more months" away; LG is handling manufacturing and product support (Marcus Mendes/9to5Mac)
• Sources: Singapore-based data center operator DayOne seeks to raise up to $5B in a US IPO and plans to list its American depositary shares by the end of 2026 (Wall Street Journal)
• Sources: Apple's push into smart home devices includes a doorbell, thermostat, and other accessories developed with LG; the products will carry the LG brand (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)
• Artificial Analysis says Mistral Large 4 is the most intelligent model from outside the US and China, achieving results comparable to DeepSeek V4.1 Flash (max) (Artificial Analysis)
• Capitolis, which develops tech for banks and financial institutions, raised $220M, including a $120M Series E at a $1.9B valuation, up from $1.6B in March 2022 (Meir Orbach/CTech)
• Anthropic says it found 5,500 verified vulnerabilities in April-October and Glasswing partners found 129K+ in April-July; 33K+ were critical or high severity (Reuters)
• Mistral launches a preview of Mistral Large 4, or Le Chonk, a 1T model it claims tops any open model developed in the US or Europe; weights are due October 27 (Carl Franzen/VentureBeat)
• Sources: Waymo increased the size of its inaugural debt raise from $3B+ to $5B, as it grapples with rising AI costs and rapidly expands its robotaxi fleet (Bloomberg)
• Anthropic expands its Cyber Verification Program by integrating Project Glasswing and offering three tiers, all with access to its most capable Claude models (Anthropic)
• Mistral says it trained ML4 "from scratch" using 3,800 Nvidia Grace Blackwell GPUs in its data centers in Europe and much of its training data was multilingual (Mistral Blog)
• Meta, Walmart, Instinct, Shopify, Sierra, Stripe, and others publish the Personal Agent Protocol to standardize and secure how AI bots interact with businesses (Kate Rooney/CNBC)
| • Why do some PCs have two Ethernet ports?
• Apple reportedly worked with LG on gadgets for its upcoming smart home push
• Kindle Click vs Kobo Remote: How much of a difference is there?
• Remember MapQuest? You can now use it with Android Auto
• Doom on the Vectrex turns the classic shooter into Tron-like vector art
• Skydance will combine HBO Max and Paramount+ into a single streaming service
• Google Photos vs. Gallery app: What's the difference and which should you use?
• Asos hit by extortion hack that may have compromised some customer data
• Why it's important to regularly replace your surge protectors
• Don't throw away your old digital camera — do this instead
• How to check if your Android phone is still getting security updates
• How to supercharge your Windows 11 PC with this built-in automation tool
• Affordable alternatives to Nintendo's Switch 2 Pro Controller
• Why don't you see external antennas on mesh Wi-Fi systems?
• Apple iPhone Duo vs. Motorola Razr Ultra: How do these foldables compare?
• Controversial $110 billion mega-merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. finally closes
• The Emmy Awards are moving to Prime Video in 2027
• Should you buy or rent your router from your internet service provider?
• JBL's PartyBox Ultimate 2 delivers 1,500 watts of sound and a built-in light show
• 4 simple benchmarks to test your PC's performance
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