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‘Shaking from head to toe’ — How the facial recognition blame game leaves shoppers stranded

Mary could tell that her husband was “distraught” the moment he was wrongly accused of shoplifting and ordered to leave Home Bargains. The ordeal left him feeling “isolated”. “I was scared to go into a shop,” he said. They had only popped out to pick up some vitamins. Elsewhere, a woman’s husband was left “shaking from head to toe” after she was told to leave Budgens on account of stealing “loads…

MacBook Neo education discount reduced (again!)

If you're a student looking to purchase the most affordable laptop from Apple, the MacBook Neo, unfortunately things just got a little…less affordable. The price of the base MacBook Neo model in the Apple Education Store just went up by $50, as first noticed by Macworld . The price of a base model MacBook Neo with education pricing is now $649. While a $50 increase may or may not sound that…

Thrive Holdings agrees to acquire ADT in an all-cash take-private deal, valuing ADT at ~$7.6B in equity value, a ~46% premium over its October 27 closing price (Claire Rychlewski/Axios)

Claire Rychlewski / Axios : Thrive Holdings agrees to acquire ADT in an all-cash take-private deal, valuing ADT at ~$7.6B in equity value, a ~46% premium over its October 27 closing price — Thrive Holdings has agreed to acquire ADT in an all-cash take-private, valuing the home security company at $15.3 billion in enterprise value, the companies announced today.

The NYT Cooking app is testing AI recipe modifications

The AI tool provides recommendations and adjusts the recipe accordingly. | Image: The New York Times The New York Times is testing a new AI feature for its Cooking app that helps users to modify recipes, and it's sparked some drama among users. NYT Cooking senior editor Genevieve Ko announced the feature last Friday, which can be used to recommend substitutions for ingredients and cooking equipmen…

Wabi, the AI agent that builds mini apps, now valued at $1.25B after latest round

On Thursday, AI app, Wabi, now describing itself as a "personal agent," said it has raised $55 million at a $1.25 billion valuation.

Mistral releases the weights for Mistral Large 4, or Le Chonk, and says it rivals top open models such as GLM-5.3 on the Artificial Analysis Coding Agent Index (Radhika Rajkumar/ZDNET)

Radhika Rajkumar / ZDNET : Mistral releases the weights for Mistral Large 4, or Le Chonk, and says it rivals top open models such as GLM-5.3 on the Artificial Analysis Coding Agent Index — Mistral has released the weights for Large 4, along with some impressive Artificial Analysis scores. — ZDNET's key takeaways

Major US Homeland Security breach exposes details on 41,000 employees — undercover ICE agents and contractors unmasked in ‘Icepick’ data dump

DHS data breach exposes personal details of over 41,000 employees and contractors The information includes personal information on ICE agents, as well as details of surveillance operations and tools used by undercover agents Numerous high-level officials across US government agencies have been named within the breach The details of over 41,000 Department of Homeland Security employees and contract…

There’s one week left to preorder the Ocarina of Time remake for $10 off

The long-awaited remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Nintendo Switch 2 launches next Thursday, November 5th. In other words, you have a week remaining to secure your physical edition with a $10 discount at Amazon and Walmart . Once the game launches, the physical version will almost certainly go from $59.99 to $69.99 while the digital version will stay at $59.99. The Legend of Zelda…

Dune: Part Three popcorn bucket tops the NSFW original

On Jan. 25, 2024, Dune: Part Two changed the world of moviegoing snacks forever. That's the day that AMC Theatres released the first look at its sandworm-themed popcorn bucket , which i mmediately went viral for its intriguing appearance. The bucket spawned countless memes, a Saturday Night Live love song , and an arms race to create even more elaborate, upsetting popcorn buckets. (Looking at you,…

5 Interesting Learnings from Guidewire at $1.24 Billion in ARR: A $1.7 Billion AI Acquisition, Its Lowest Churn Ever, and 10x ARR for a 25-Year-Old System of Record

Guidewire sells core systems to property and casualty insurers: policy, billing, and claims. It was founded in 2001. Its buyers are some of the slowest-moving in B2B. In a year when the market repriced anything that looked like legacy software, it still trades at roughly 10x ARR. Fiscal 2026 closed July 31. ARR was $1,237 million at current exchange rates, up 19% in constant currency, and fully ra…

Mistral’s Le Chonk is now the top open model for coding

Mistral has released the weights for Large 4, along with some impressive Artificial Analysis scores.

Hud launches agentic rollouts to take AI-written code to production

AI made writing code fast. Coding agents now plan, write, and test changes and open pull requests in minutes. Shipping that code safely, however, has become the biggest bottleneck in engineering. That is because a change still has to be trusted enough to reach production. A change written in minutes can then wait for days […] This story continues at The Next Web

4 tips on how to get started with consumer-friendly AI agents

Agentic artificial intelligence is gaining popularity far beyond tech circles, with Meta , OpenAI , Anthropic and other companies going head-to-head in the surging market for consumer-friendly AI agents . While the leading AI labs have offered tools with agentic capabilities for years, agents that are designed to work proactively on a user’s behalf for tasks from buying groceries to managing to-do…

The next Hitman elusive target has Agent 47 taking down a podcaster who is 'loud, paranoid, and completely obsessed with content' — and played by a real-life influencer

The next Hitman Elusive Target has been revealed The limited-time mission will see Agent 47 taking down an annoying podcaster The target will be played by real-world content creator Seán McLoughlin The next Hitman Elusive Target has been revealed, and it's something that could happen in 2026. As of October 29, players will be able to take out Finn Colton – a controversial millionaire content creat…

FBI leads action to shut down Virtualine bulletproof service linked to major cybercrime activity

FBI and international partners seized infrastructure tied to Virtualine, a hosting provider allegedly serving cybercriminals Authorities say the service facilitated phishing, ransomware operations, illicit crypto activity, and other crimes Investigators seized servers and customer data, though no arrests have been announced so far The FBI has announced it seized the website of Virtualine, a bullet…

Mistral Says Its AI Model ‘Le Chonk’ Has Leapfrogged China in the Open-Weight Race

The French AI lab claims its latest release matches or outperforms even the best models from DeepSeek and Z.ai in coding and cybersecurity.

Serval, which offers AI agents for enterprise IT operations like access management, raised $150M led by Sequoia at a $3B valuation, up from $1B in December 2025 (Harshita Mary Varghese/Reuters)

Harshita Mary Varghese / Reuters : Serval, which offers AI agents for enterprise IT operations like access management, raised $150M led by Sequoia at a $3B valuation, up from $1B in December 2025 — Serval raised $150 million in a Sequoia-led round at a $3 billion valuation, as the enterprise automation company seeks …

Amazon’s AI shopping assistant can now edit your grocery lists and gift registries

Amazon is adding several new features to its AI shopping assistant, including ways to create, edit, and move items between shopping lists and gift registries. As an example, Amazon says you can now ask Alexa for Shopping to "Create a new shopping list" or "Show me what's left on my wedding registry." The ecommerce giant has continued to expand on its Alexa for Shopping assistant since its official…

Exclusive: Fractile raises £540m in new Series C funding, filings show

Wabi, which is building an AI assistant that integrates into group chats and can take actions like booking appointments, raised $55M at a $1.25B valuation (Micah Barkley/Bloomberg)

Micah Barkley / Bloomberg : Wabi, which is building an AI assistant that integrates into group chats and can take actions like booking appointments, raised $55M at a $1.25B valuation — AI assistant startup Wabi Inc. has raised $55 million at a $1.25 billion valuation to build out its software that lets groups …

Ofcom explains how it wants social media platforms to keep out under-16s

Ofcom has assessed the best ways of enforcing age checks online The regulator also identifies methods that aren't effective Around 4 in 10 under-16s plan to try to get around the ban in the UK Back in June, the UK government ruled that under-16s should be banned from social media platforms, with enforcement scheduled to start during the first half of 2027. Now the communications regulator Ofcom ha…

Bluesky blocks links to leaked DHS employee data as government seeks takedowns

The social networking site is facing criticism for blocking access to the site, which identifies thousands of ICE agents and other employees working for Homeland Security.

Petkit Automatic Cat Litter Box Sale (2026)

As WIRED’s resident pet tech tester, I have lots of opinions on what’s worth your money. Petkit’s automatic litter boxes are my top picks—and my favorite models are $100 off right now.

DoorDash to acquire Instacart for $17B

The acquisition would bring two major players in on-demand delivery under one roof, combining DoorDash’s dominance in restaurant takeout with Instacart’s reach in grocery delivery.

DoorDash agrees to buy Instacart in a deal worth about $17bn

DoorDash has agreed to buy grocery delivery rival Instacart in a cash-and-stock deal valuing the company at about $17bn. The acquisition would bring two of the biggest US delivery platforms under one roof, expanding DoorDash’s reach in grocery shopping. The companies announced the deal on Thursday. Instacart shareholders can choose $65 in cash per share, […] This story continues at The Next…

This $149 digital candle uses AI to accurately simulate a flickering flame

After engineering a flexible version of Tetris that could be wrapped around a magazine, Kevin Bates' latest creation is a digital candle that uses a custom AI model to accurately simulate the appearance of a flickering flame across a grid of LEDs. It's a far cry from the types of devices Bates is typically known for, including the Arduboy , but paying $79 for a credit card-sized handheld that can…

Sources: Microsoft is seeking to raise $25B+ in its first US investment-grade bond sale since 2017, when it raised $17B, to fund AI-related capital expenditures (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg : Sources: Microsoft is seeking to raise $25B+ in its first US investment-grade bond sale since 2017, when it raised $17B, to fund AI-related capital expenditures — Microsoft Corp. is looking to raise at least $25 billion from its first US investment-grade bond sale in more than nine years …

Anthropic’s business plan: Build God or die trying

The Anthropic S-1 seems to have provided the financial justification for the company to spend as much as it possibly can on compute. If you are the kind of person who wonders if Anthropic is doing its level best to build a machine god while convincing Wall Street it's in the business of selling IT contracts, Anthropic has just offered a handy solution: Doing a bunch of things that look like you're…

Apple finally combined a toaster and a refrigerator

For more than 15 years, Apple has had a pretty simple answer to the idea of a touchscreen MacBook: no. Yesterday, Apple finally decided to think different and announce one anyway . "You've gotta touch it to believe it," says Apple CEO John Ternus. He might be right: I haven't yet touched it, and I still can't quite believe it. Steve Jobs first called touchscreen laptops "ergonomically terrible" in…

Microsoft sells at least $25bn of bonds, its first US deal since 2017

Microsoft is looking to raise at least $25bn through a US bond sale, its first high-grade debt offering in the country since 2017, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The deal is divided into as many as 10 tranches, with repayment dates ranging from two to 40 years. Its final size will depend on […] This story continues at The Next Web

The Amazon rainforest, long known as the ‘lungs of our planet,’ now releases more carbon than it absorbs

The Amazon rainforest has long been called the “lungs of our planet,” because of how it takes in and stores billions of tons of carbon dioxide. But the Amazon has been losing that ability. Years of deforestation, drought, and fires have hindered just how much CO2 the rainforest can absorb. Now, the Amazon rainforest often releases more carbon than it takes in, a new study finds. It’s only in the “…

Inde Navarrette channels Obsession for SNL promo

Inde Navarrette is hosting SNL for the first time this weekend, joining Grace Reiter for a round of promos in the video above — and you probably won't be surprised to learn that Obsession crops up. The promos above feature some jokes about Halloween and some (fairly impressive) singing, before Navarrette morphs into her infamous character when Reiter tries to tell her that Obsession isn't a…

Data breach at Sony ISP subsidiary exposes 2.5 million customer records as Japan hit with another major cyberattack

Sony Network Communications discloses breach affecting roughly 2.5 million ISP customers and former users Exposed data included personal details, while some email service users also lost email passwords Company contained the intrusion, notified authorities, and warned customers about phishing and fraud risks A subsidiary of Sony Network Communications, the Japanese tech giant’s Internet Service Pr…

Mistral releases open weights for its 1 trillion-parameter Large 4 model

Mistral has released the weights of Mistral Large 4, the 1 trillion-parameter model it previewed three weeks ago, and the version now on Hugging Face is noticeably sharper. The Paris-based company says three extra weeks of reinforcement learning, guided by customer feedback, have made ML4 the strongest open model for agentic coding and cyber defence. […] This story continues at The Next Web

Amazon updates Alexa to help you manage shopping lists and subscriptions and update delivery instructions

The update allows you to use Alexa to create lists, register them, see what's on them, and add or edit items. You can also manage subscriptions.

Mode acquires JibJab for up to $29.5 million amid its consumer data roll-up spree

JibJab , the e-card and video company perhaps still best known for a viral video from the Bush-Kerry election in 2004, has been acquired by Mode , a company with a very 2026 business model: rewarding app users for sharing their data, including for AI training. The deal includes up to $29.5 million in cash and stock. Mode says the purchase marks its 11th acquisition since January 2025 and its large…

Who will you learn from in 6 days at TechCrunch Founder Summit? Meet the founders and investors taking the stages

Six days from now, TechCrunch Founder Summit brings experienced founders, investors, and operators to Boston on Nov. 4 to share the decisions, mistakes, pivots, and lessons that shaped their companies. Register before it starts for ticket savings and deals.

Amazon updates Alexa to help you manage shopping lists, subscriptions, and update delivery instructions

The update allows you to use Alexa to create lists, register them, see what's on them, and add or edit items. You can also manage subscriptions with the AI bot.

Deepgram acquires Pipecat-maker Daily to bolster its voice AI infrastructure

Deepgram said that it is committed to keep Pipecat open source.

Massive leak exposes 41,000 DHS workers and undercover ICE agents

An unprecedented leak of Department of Homeland Security records has exposed details of more than 41,000 employees or contractors who work for the department and its constituent agencies. The records include email addresses, phone numbers, and office addresses, but also references to internal systems and sensitive information on undercover and surveillance programs. In all, the leak provides a map…