Avatar: Seven Havens launches the Avatar franchise into a post-apocalyptic future, and in its second episode, it may have unveiled one of the apocalypse's biggest threats. The episode, fittingly titled "Into the Storm," sees a massive lightning storm encroach upon the desert haven of Ellora. As the Ellorans worry about the lightning coming from above, they also face a strange threat coming from be…
Hello again, and welcome back to Fast Company ’s Plugged In . In recent years, being gobsmacked by AI’s ever-expanding capabilities has become my new normal. More importantly, I’ve found the technology increasingly essential to my own productivity . What AI never did until last week was save my bacon. That changed when I gave OpenAI’s new Dots agent access to my calendar and email. Shortly thereaf…
Watch Fire Country season 5 online Fire Country season 5 premiere: Friday, October 9 at 9pm ET/PT US broadcast: CBS via Fubo Free trial US stream: Paramount Plus Use NordVPN to watch from anywhere The fifth season of Fire Country will open with the fallout of the Pineville Dam flooding, while Founders Day celebrations are cut short by a huge sinkhole opening up under Main Street. Station 42 to the…
The Museo de Historia de la Computación in Spain has unveiled a 1:1 scale visual replica of the famous Cray-1 supercomputer from 1976. Instead of sourcing expensive, cutting-edge tech to run the system, the creative team powered the project with 30 2012-era Mac Minis. Developed over 18 months, the project serves as a 50th-anniversary tribute to the Cray-1 and Apple's founding. Mac Minis from over…
CPU makers have noticed that the seemingly unending RAM price hikes are making it tough for a lot of us to upgrade our PCs. Their solution? A return to last-gen DDR4 RAM. Intel and AMD are making new CPUs that'll support the older, more affordable type of memory. On Friday, Gigabyte announced that two of its motherboard lines will support "upcoming" processors built on Intel's LGA 1700 socket. Tha…
NASA on Friday released a much-anticipated "request" to the US commercial space industry to develop private space stations that, as early as 2030, will succeed the International Space Station as a place for astronauts to live in low-Earth orbit. In a cover letter accompanying the 360-page "request for proposals," NASA stated its plan: "This will ensure NASA has a sustained human presence in LEO fo…
Morale at one of the most reviled companies in America appears to be at an all time low. Morale at one of the most reviled companies in America appears to be at an all time low.
An Anthropic AI model provided false information about an unsolved homicide to a Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) tipline, according to a report from 6abc. In a statement released on Friday, the PPD said the AI model sent the tip through PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com on July 18th, but the investigators never reviewed it because it was marked as spam. Anthropic learned its AI model sent the false t…
Proximity, affordability, and diversity might all be things taken into account when picking one’s favorite grocery store—but the defining factor is something else entirely. According to the recently published 2026 State of Fresh Grocery Shopping Report by consulting company Logile, American grocery shoppers are looking for freshness above all when picking out a store and deciding whether to return…
In most cases, hotspot-driven volcanism is relatively sedate, with lava flowing down mountainsides slowly enough that people can walk out of its way. But in a number of locations—Mount Etna, Hawaii, Iceland—lava gets expelled in dramatic fountains that can reach several hundred meters in height. Right now, we're not sure what powers them. However, thanks to a recent set of eruptions at the Kilauea…
India’s foreign ministry has called US Vice President JD Vance’s description of foreign workers hired by Microsoft as “indentured servants” deeply offensive. Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal read out the ministry’s statement at its briefing in New Delhi on Friday. “Resorting to terminology that carries painful historical and colonial legacy connotations is deeply offensive,” Jaiswal said. On [……
The automaker has been criticized for misleading drivers with the feature’s name. Now it’s renaming it for European regulators.
Gone are the days when humans could use AI as their virtual punching bags, typing insults in ALL CAPS and forcing chatbots to perform tedious tasks as punishment for subpar responses. At least that’s the case for users of Anthropic’s Claude. In Anthropic’s recent 2026 Usage Policy update , the AI company announced steps to address certain types of actions directed at Claude, banning “sustained and…
IDC claims the global PC market has seen one of its biggest declines DRAM and SSD price share has risen from 15% to 40% Stockpiling could lead to some discounts, but prices are still elevated Worldwide PC shipments fell a staggering 20% year-over-year during the third quarter of 2026, per the latest IDC analysis , meaning 15.8 million fewer PCs were shipped compared with the same period in 2025. T…
Thankfully, it does not seem to have diverted police resources. Thankfully, it does not seem to have diverted police resources.
OpenAI said on Friday that it fired three safety researchers for a “breach of trust,” defending the dismissals after the trio accused the company of putting its corporate interests before safety as the reason for removing them. The ChatGPT maker said in a post on X that it “parted ways” with the researchers after an investigation found “they violated clear policies on handling sensitive informatio…
Six technology leaders received the country’s highest honours for science and technology from President Donald Trump on Thursday, the White House said. Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Jensen Huang and Lisa Su got the National Medal of Science. Michael Dell and Satya Nadella got the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Trump presented the medals at […] This story continues at The Next Web
Anyone who has even tangentially associated with computer programming knows that modern AI coding assistants and agents can be incredibly efficient at generating huge amounts of functional code . But coders making use of those tools also know better than to trust the accuracy of that code , meaning substantial effort needs to be spent reviewing any AI-generated output. A recent study of actual cod…
A jury found an Ohio political blogger guilty of telecommunications harassment after he sent an explicit image of Shrek to a Republican state senator. On Friday, a judge ordered DJ Byrnes, owner of political commentary blog The Rooster , to pay a $200 fine, according to a report from the Columbus Dispatch . Byrnes texted Ohio Sen. Jerry Cirino in May after he dropped out of the state's Senate pres…
Anthropic did not discover this behavior until over two months after its AI submitted the false tip.
Marvel's whiplash New York Comic Con announcements have brought fans disappointing cancellation news, sneak previews, and, of course, more secrecy. Taking to the stage Oct. 8, Marvel execs announced the end of Daredevil: Born Again , which will conclude with its third season next year. The team also gave attendees a taste of the upcoming third season of X-Men '97 and VisionQuest , the last install…
AI training company micro1 will spend $1bn over the next 12 months buying and licensing operational data from companies. The San Francisco company announced the plan on Friday. Citi and Hercules Capital are providing the capital. The money goes through micro1’s Company Data Partnerships programme. The company uses de-identified company data to build reinforcement learning […] This story con…
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has an optimistic perspective about the potential impact of AI on the American workforce. In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday , Bezos predicted that productivity gains from AI will allow more families to survive on one income and workers to support themselves by working only three days a week. “Some people will also decide, you know what? I can support my family by…
Workers at three major publishing houses tell WIRED that LLMs are being used for publicity, cover art, back cover copy, and emails, as some execs push junior staff to champion the tech.
Outrage has erupted among health experts over news that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is still eager to fund a widely condemned vaccine trial that would expose newborns in Guinea-Bissau to hepatitis B, putting them at high risk of a lifelong infection, which can lead to liver cirrhosis, liver cancer, and premature death. The trial was suspended in January after its unethical desig…
MSI PRO MAX Edge AI+: 30-second review The MSI Pro Max Edge AI+ is one of the most powerful mini workstations that I’ve tested, and proved to be a perfect tool for Creative application and running AI offline. Inside is the AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ 395, however, unlike previous machines of this size that I've looked at it's backed by Radeon 8060S graphics and, crucially for running local language models…
Amazon just upped its game with new Android tablets for entertainment and work.
"Staggering." "Overwhelming." "Unprecedented." "Surreal." "Pure insanity." Those were among the descriptions more than three dozen mathematicians reached for in conversations with The Verge as they tried to make sense of the flood of mathematical results OpenAI abruptly dropped on the field this week. Amid the awe, excitement, and uncertainty over the sheer scale of the deluge was a deep-seated an…
Running AI locally is becoming an increasingly attractive option for small businesses that want more control over their data, predictable computing costs, and the ability to experiment with the technology without relying on cloud services. Nvidia's new RTX Spark laptops could make that easier, combining powerful processors, Blackwell graphics, and large amounts of unified memory in portable comput…
Skims cofounder Emma Grede thinks many business leaders are too chummy with their workers. “It is not my job to be your friend,” Grede said this week on the Boardroom podcast . “It is not my job to treat everybody as though this were a family.” “But that doesn’t mean that you miss empathy or that you treat people badly,” she added. Grede, who cofounded the $5 billion shapewear and clothing brand w…
McDonald’s is being sued over its use of dynamic AI pricing The lawsuit alleges it colluded with franchises to set prices McDonald’s denies the allegations made in the antitrust case How would you feel if you got charged more for your McDonald’s meal simply because some opaque AI algorithm decided you should? You’d probably be pretty unhappy, and the practice is now in the spotlight as the fast-fo…
Rivian loves a seasonal update, especially its now-annual Halloween drop , which has become a treat for owners of its electric vehicles. But for 2026, Rivian has done its best — and succeeded — to beat previous themes like Knight Rider and Back to the Future , with a pretty perfect pairing. With the Halloween update rolling out now — R2 is the 2026.36.40 version, and R1 is 2026.36.0 — owners of th…
Watch Boston Blue S2 on CBS via Fubo free trial (US only) Global stream: Paramount Plus Use NordVPN to watch Paramount Plus from anywhere Boston Blue – the Blue Bloods spin-off - is back with a bang on October 9. Last season ended on a huge cliffhanger when Lena (Sonequa Martin-Green) got shot while investigating prison contraband, and Lena’s boyfriend and fellow detective Brian (Ryan Broussard) w…
Anker Soundcore AeroClip 2 review I was incredibly excited to try out the Anker Soundcore AeroClip 2. The original model is easily among my favorite pairs of clip-on open earbuds, delivering immersive audio, an exceptionally comfortable fit, and a solid feature-set to match. So can the sequel build upon the strengths of the original AeroClip? Here’s my verdict after testing them. Let’s start by ta…
Vesta has raised a $30M Series B to expand AI agents that handle mortgage origination work, including underwriting decisions, with three customer lenders among the investors. The same software sold in Europe would be high-risk under the AI Act, and GDPR already limits automated decisions of this kind. Vesta has raised a $30M Series B […] This story continues at The Next Web
Batteries are now cheaper than natural gas turbines as the data center boom pushes prices up.
According to a new report from the Financial Times , OpenAI has informed investors that the company is expected to make $50 billion in revenue for the year. That's a lot of money, but it's also a full $20 billion less than earlier projections from just last month, which predicted the company would earn $70 billion in annual revenue. AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are in the midst of an unp…
PC shipments saw a steep drop of about 20 percent in Q3 2026, analysts reported this week. The industry saw its “sharpest decline since “Q1 2023," Omdia said in an announcement toady. Global shipments of laptops, desktops, and workstations fell 21.2 percent year over year (YoY) to 58.1 million devices, the analyst said. Desktop PC shipments (including desktop workstations) decreased 23.5 percent t…
Hackers recently hijacked Microsoft's X account to promote a Clippy crypto scam , but if you want the paperclip mascot back without the meme coin, you can get this Clippy desk accessory on Amazon for $14.50. • Best for: Nostalgic office and remote workers, IT teams, and white elephant gift-givers who want a fun, harmless Clippy for their desk thgat won't hijack social media to sell you crypto. • T…
Lucinda Shen / Axios : A record 42 startups became decacorns so far in 2026, beating 2021's 34; PitchBook: the average time to hit $10B dropped to 5.5 years in 2025 vs. 9.4 in 2020 — We're in the golden age of decacorns. — The average time from launch to decacorn has been cut in nearly half, and some decacorns arrive literally overnight.