• KDE turns 30 with Plasma 6.8, remote upgrades, and an X11 farewell
• Plex now helps sell movie theater tickets
• Hegseth’s dubious low-T screening may flag up to 25 percent of the Army
• Targeted ads delivered 0-click exploits to install mercenary malware
• Above the 911? Porsche previews a new mid-engined supercar.
• What did the Liberty Bell sound like? Science is on the case.
• Black Sea drone attacks enter NATO country's territorial waters for first time
• Microplastics in water aren’t inert and make damaging chemicals on their own
• Trump cancels Pentagon plans to livestream firing squad execution
• Neutron's first launch slips again amid trouble with carbon composites
• Report: FTC probes Anthropic, OpenAI after Trump dismissed AI fears as “hoax”
• Singer or clanker? YouTube Music will tell you with new gen AI labeling.
• Rewilding could help vulnerable islands keep pace with rising seas
• Fridge hack costing millions and sparking fires stemmed from poor security
• Epic says its new vibe-coded Epic Games Launcher is faster than Steam
• Things are finally looking up for NASA's first missions to Venus in a generation
• Schools across US protest FCC plan that could disconnect kids from Internet
• Georgia man sues Flock, sheriff's office over alleged ALPR-fueled retaliation
• Software development and rules stability: Prototype racing in 2030
• Greta Gerwig channels Bowie in psychedelic The Magician's Nephew trailer
| • Austin-based RapidCanvas, which uses agents to help businesses build custom AI tools, raised a ∼$29M Series B led by Vertex Ventures and Hitachi Ventures (Chris Metinko/Axios)
• Sources detail Nscale's setbacks ahead of an IPO at up to a $35B valuation, including a six-month delay in Norway and penalties owed to Microsoft and ByteDance (Bloomberg)
• Microsoft unveils MAI-Base-2, a MoE model with 2.8T total and 80B active parameters, claiming 4x-12x more pretraining FLOPs-efficiency than DeepSeek-V4-Pro-Base (Microsoft AI)
• OpenAI continues to work to grow its ad business in ChatGPT, cutting ad rates, chasing small and midsize businesses, and hiring some new talent from Meta (Alix Coutures/The Information)
• The White House's AI task force begins its 120-day window to evaluate AI, including producing a risk report, implementing the White House Accord on SI, and more (Ashley Gold/Semafor)
• Opsin, which helps companies show where AI agents are active, what data they access, and flag risky behavior, raised $21M led by SYN Ventures and Race Capital (Stephen Council/Business Insider)
• Two US officials and a Western official say the order to limit Ukraine's access to SpaceX's Starshield came from inside the White House (Reuters)
• Netflix Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria is leaving the company and will be replaced by former Disney and Fox executive Peter Rice, who starts October 26 (Rebecca Rubin/Variety)
• Bluesky expands Attie, its AI tool for building custom feeds, with a "social vibe coding" feature to create sites, games, quizzes, and more on the AT Protocol (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
• Sources: some Anthropic investors discussed a ~$1.5T valuation for its IPO, down from ~$2T they had expected, after disclosures showed slowing Q3 revenue growth (Reuters)
• Experts say Meta's new terms of use will allow scraping of websites, including news sites, "associated with" business accounts on its platforms, with no opt out (Nieman Lab)
• Thoma Bravo-owned cybersecurity company Proofpoint plans to buy data security firm Varonis Systems in an all-cash deal valued at about $6.3B (Jaspreet Singh/Reuters)
• A US official says Trump didn't order any limitations on Ukraine's access to SpaceX's Starshield; Elon Musk said any limits are ultimately decided by POTUS (Kate Sullivan/Bloomberg)
• A researcher says modern neural networks are far more interpretable than believed, with most neurons understandable in models up to trillions of parameters (Nick Cammarata/Goodfire)
• Perplexity open sources SPACE, its AI agent sandbox, and says partners including CoreWeave, Akamai, and Crusoe agreed to offer SPACE to customers (Reed Albergotti/Semafor)
| • Relive Tesla's ridiculous(ly fun) Roadster stunt show
• Tesla's redesigned Roadster has a cold-gas thruster option, but you'll need $250,000 just to reserve it
• Withings wants new users to pay $100 a year to sync with Apple Health
• The UK may expand the BBC license fee, charging residents to watch streaming services
• NY congressman to introduce bill protecting video game ownership
• FTC subpoenas OpenAI and Anthropic following safety failures
• E Ink's new Kaleido 4 could inch us closer to the perfect color e-reader
• Riot will sunset League of Legends Classic in January 2027
• Alexa Tablet 12 Pro review: Amazon's premium tablet gets almost everything right
• Trump ballroom's biggest donors were overwelmingly tech and telecom companies
• Meta built a huge open-weight AI model for Macs, but you'll need 1TB of RAM to run it
• GuliKit TT Max review: The granddaddy of Switch 2 controllers
• Microsoft says it made Windows 11 zippier, especially on PCs with less RAM
• Opera's lightweight Air browser is back, unbothered, moisturized, in its lane
• Tesla Roadster reveal live: Updates from the launch of the next-gen sportscar
• LinkedIn is adding new tools to help people with their side hustles
• NVIDIA's RTX Spark is good for Windows, even if you don't need local AI
• Xreal's new flagship One Pro+ AR glasses offer better brightness and increased comfort
• CitizenLab details new spyware triggered by online advertising
• Bee unveils two AI note-taking devices, its first new products since being acquired by Amazon
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