Olivier Acuna / CoinDesk: NY AG announces an up-to-$35M settlement with ex-Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky that permanently bars him from the securities, commodities, and crypto industries  —  New York Attorney General Letitia James said Friday she secured up to $35 million from former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky …

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Cloudflare doesn't block pirate sports streaming sites through its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver in France, only through its CDN. The Paris Judicial Court has now accepted that stance, rejecting [French pay-TV provider] Canal+'s request for penalties of 50,000 euros per site, per day. Interestingly, the court's conclusion relies on statistics provided by Canal+ itself. [...] As a result, Cloudflare will not be penalized under these orders, even though its public DNS resolver is not blocking the sites in question. That is in line with the company's long-standing claim that it doesn't interfere with its DNS. In its recent transparency reports, Cloudflare repeatedly stated that it hasn't blocked any content through 1.1.1.1, despite orders from French and Italian courts. "To date, Cloudflare has not blocked content through the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver," the company's latest report reads. [...] Blocking through the CDN is another matter. According to the same report, Cloudflare geoblocked 1,238 domains in France in the second half of 2025, all under a single court order. In the first half of the year, it geoblocked 662 domains under seven orders. Cloudflare recently explained its position to the European Commission, in a submission (PDF) to its Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List consultation, stressing that global public DNS resolvers should not be used to block or restrict access. Instead, it highlights its real-time pirate stream blocking program, which allows vetted rightsholders to flag pirate streams that run through its network. These streams are disrupted "within seconds," Cloudflare says, without any DNS or IP address blocking. "For live content, where speed is crucial, Cloudflare has built real-time mitigation mechanisms that allow vetted rightsholder partners to flag infringing streams. When those streams are running through our network, we act on them in seconds," Cloudflare informed the Commission. For now, Cloudflare can continue to block pirate sites through its CDN only, while its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver remains untouched. Canal+ can still appeal the rulings, so it may not be the last we hear of it. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rashi Shrivastava / Forbes: Sabi, which is building a baseball cap that uses 100K non-contact neuro-sensors to convert neural signals into text prompts for AI systems, raised a $50M seed  —  Palo Alto-based Sabi is betting its cap, outfitted with 100,000 sensors, will enable people to talk to their AI agents just by thinking.

SemiAnalysis: Analysis of 857 releases from nine Chinese AI labs between 2021 and September 2026: just 3.6% disclosed safety results, and only 1.1% did so at launch  —  AI safety is on fire.  On 12 September 2026, Dario Amodei published an essay arguing that frontier labs must deliberately slow the pace at which they improve model capabilities.

Bloomberg: Jev developer TypeSafe AI raised ~$870M led by a16z at a $7.5B valuation with Sequoia and others participating  —  TypeSafe AI, the startup behind Jev, a new artificial intelligence model that went viral after it launched only a few weeks ago, has raised about $870 million at a $7.5 billion valuation …

Shona Ghosh / Bloomberg: The UK plans to curb non-compete rules that force employees to wait before moving jobs or starting companies, an issue that has drawn complaints from startups  —  The UK is set to curb hiring restrictions that force employees to wait before moving jobs or starting companies …

Brenda Goh / Reuters: The Chinese developer of ARTEX says it has converted the AI agent into a closed-source project after CrowdStrike said it was used to hack South Korean banks  —  The Chinese developer of ARTEX said they have converted the AI agent to a closed-source project after cybersecurity firms identified …

Lucinda Shen / Axios: Meanwhile, a Sam Altman-backed bitcoin life insurance provider, raised $37.5M led by Bain Capital, sources say at a $350M valuation, up from $190M in April 2025  —  Meanwhile, a Sam Altman-backed company offering life insurance in bitcoin, raised $37.5 million in funding, CEO Zac Townsend tells Axios exclusively.

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: A physicist has put a definite date on Doomsday," The New York Times wrote on November 4, 1960. "He calculates that it will come on Friday the Thirteenth in November, 2026 A. D. On that date, or thereabouts, the human population will have expanded so far as to approach infinity and thus will automatically annihilate itself." The newspaper was right -- but the prediction was wrong. That week, Austrian American physicist Heinz von Foerster and two colleagues published a paper in Science with the stunningly succinct title "Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026." The work was based on a simple observation: The time it took for the human population to double in size kept getting shorter. Using population estimates from about 400 B.C.E. until 1958 C.E., the authors -- all from the department of electrical engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign -- came up with an equation that best described the trend. If things continued the way they were going, the number of humans on Earth would rise faster and faster, reaching more than 25 billion by 2020. The researchers didn't calculate when humanity would run out of food, land, or energy. They just concluded that at some point this year, the equation ceased to give meaningful results because the predicted population shot toward infinity. That was their doomsday. "Our great-great-grandchildren will not starve," they wrote. "They will be squeezed to death." The exact date was somewhat arbitrary, however. The formula solved to 2026.87 plus or minus 5.5 years, and The New York Times reported that von Foerster "searched the center of this doom-time span for an appropriate date and found that a Friday the Thirteenth would fall conveniently in November of 2026." (November 13 also happened to be his birthday.) [...] [D]emographers, annoyed by what they saw as a provocation by outsiders, pointed out obvious flaws. For example, the time it takes for the number of humans to double could get a lot shorter, but certainly not shorter than the 9 months it takes for a baby to develop. "In view of the comments that subsequently were published in this journal, an extensive discussion of this article does not seem to be required," public health expert Harold Dorn drily noted in Science 2 years after von Foerster's article was published. The forecast would set a record, he predicted, "for the short length of time required to demonstrate its unreliability." "The failure of the Doomsday equation is ultimately a cautionary tale about the dangers of extrapolating from historically exceptional circumstances," writes economist Javier Birchenall of the University of California, Santa Barbara writes in a Perspective published in Science today. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Eli Tan / New York Times: Sources detail Mark Zuckerberg's decision to launch Muse despite safety concerns, after seeing that AI startup Instinct's similar agent product gained traction  —  Meta had delayed releasing Muse, its A.I. agent app, for months over safety concerns.  Then new competition forced Mr. Zuckerberg's hand.

Tobias Mann / The Register: Nvidia commits $1B over five years to build out the US' “capacity for super intelligence research” in fields including quantum computing, healthcare, and energy  —  Commitment comes as GPUzilla prepares to fortify Uncle Sam's arsenal with at least seven AI-optimized supers

Sarah Hilton / Bloomberg: A slew of cyberattacks hit Japanese companies in September, exposing the data of millions and prompting calls for security checks, as AI lowers hacking barriers  —  A cascade of cyberattacks has hit Japanese companies over the past few weeks, prompting the government to call for security checks …

Matthew Belloni / Puck: Sources: Netflix is preparing for layoffs that will impact ~5% of employees, or ~850 jobs, amid pressure over weakened engagement and a depressed stock price  —  Facing pressure over weakened engagement and a depressed stock price, the streamer is prepping for a round of layoffs in the near future, per sources.

Michael Considine / CNBC: OpenAI defends its decision to fire three safety researchers, saying an investigation found they “violated clear policies on handling sensitive information”  —  OpenAI on Friday defended its decision to fire three safety researchers, saying they had committed a “significant breach of trust.”

IDC: Global PC shipments dropped 20.1% YoY in Q3 to 62.7M units due to higher prices and supply issues; Lenovo dropped 22.6% YoY, HP 30.9%, Dell 25%, and Apple 11.3%  —  Q3 delivered the widely expected PC downturn, with supply constraints, high price points, and logistical disruption eroding the usual seasonal lift

"Margaret Hamilton, the groundbreaking researcher who helped create the field of software engineering and whose code helped land NASA's Apollo astronauts on the moon to win the 20th century space race, has died," writes longtime Slashdot reader Veeru. "She was 90." MIT News reports: A computing pioneer who authored over 130 publications, Hamilton helped to establish software engineering as a dedicated discipline. She worked at MIT from 1959 until the mid-1970s, after which she became a successful computing entrepreneur and CEO. Her life's work was recognized with many awards and honors, including the 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, whose citation noted: "Hamilton defined new forms of software engineering and helped launch an industry that would forever change human history. Her software architecture led to giant leaps for humankind, writing the code that helped America set foot on the moon." "To say Margaret Hamilton was a pioneer -- to say she was ahead of her time -- would be a dramatic understatement. She was a software engineer at a time when that field was in its infancy, and she not only developed advanced code herself but also led a team in using that nascent technology to develop one of the most complex systems humanity had ever achieved," says Olivier de Weck, the Apollo Program Professor and interim head of the MIT Department Aeronautics and Astronautics. "The Apollo program still stands as one of our greatest testaments to the power of collaboration, ingenuity, and engineering, and Margaret Hamilton was a fundamental contributor to that program's success. And for her that was just the beginning! She went on to become an entrepreneur and remained on the cutting edge of systems software throughout an extraordinary career, while acting as an advocate, mentor, and inspiration to millions." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nikkei Asia: Sources: Apple told some suppliers to cut iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max component production by 15%-20% as higher memory costs pushed up prices and hurt demand  —  TAIPEI — Apple has told some of its suppliers to cut production of components for its newly launched iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max …

Financial Times: Sources: SoftBank is seeking to raise up to $100B from Gulf investors for a fund to buy companies and improve their operations with AI and other advanced tech  —  Founder and chief executive Masayoshi Son has held talks with senior figures in the UAE in recent weeks

Emily Forlini / Fortune: Anthropic is setting up a “presidential engagement” program for the 2028 US elections that will offer AI policy education to candidates in both parties  —  Anthropic is setting up a “presidential engagement” program ahead of the 2028 elections, building an in-house team …

Researchers in Vienna and Beijing have independently built the first nuclear clocks based on oscillations inside thorium nuclei, marking a major milestone for a field that could eventually produce highly portable, ultra-precise timekeepers. The clocks are already precise enough to lose only about a second over millions of years. The New York Times reports: The first nuclear clocks are not going to immediately supplant the worldwide network of atomic clocks, whose steady ticking we rely on for GPS and the definition of a second. Nor have they captured the record for most precise timepiece; the best atomic clocks are about 10,000 times more reliable and would take more than 100 billion years to lose one second. But nuclear clocks hold a bevy of potential advantages over existing atomic clocks. One day, they could be more reliable than the leading atomic versions, and nuclear clocks could be made more portable. They even hold the ability to search for certain kinds of dark matter -- the invisible stuff whose clumps make up 83 percent of the matter in the universe. If a particle of dark matter passed through the thorium nuclei, it could register as a wobble in the nuclear clock's otherwise steady ticktock. The findings have been published in the journal Nature. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Associated Press: Microsoft denies JD Vance's claim it replaced thousands of US workers with foreign workers last year, saying most H-1B applications were for existing employees  —  President Donald Trump's administration announced Thursday it was suspending Microsoft and several other firms …

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: A US judge sentenced Raheim Hamilton, co-creator of the dark web marketplace Empire Market, to 40 years in prison for facilitating $430M in illegal transactions  —  The co-creator of Empire Market, one of the largest dark web marketplaces before its shutdown, has been sentenced to 40 years …

Reuters: Sources: Flock plans to let go of ~270 employees, or 18% of its staff, at the end of October; the layoffs come after a voluntary buyout program in September  —  Flock Safety plans to let go of about 18% of its employees, people with direct knowledge of the plans said on Thursday …

Washington Post: Satya Nadella and Michael Dell were awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by the White House during an appearance alongside other tech leaders  —  President Donald Trump celebrated tech billionaires such as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at an event with arguably awkward timing

Jared Perlo / NBC News: President Trump awards Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Lisa Su, and Sergey Brin the National Medal of Science at a White House summit promoting innovation  —  President Donald Trump joined Michael Kratsios to award the Medal of Science to Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Lisa Su and Sergey Brin amid announcements about new science funding.

Bloomberg: Meta bans ByteDance ads and paid marketing, plus third-party campaigns linking to TikTok, in the US, Canada, Egypt, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam  —  Meta Platforms Inc. banned advertisements in the US from ByteDance Ltd., the former controlling owner of TikTok, intensifying the competition with the popular social video site.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The Trump administration is suspending Microsoft, Adobe, and several other technology companies from a program that helps skilled foreign workers obtain permanent residency in the United States, accusing the companies of fraud. "Our message to Microsoft is: You're a great American company, but you've got to hire great American workers," U.S. Vice President JD Vance said in a news conference on Thursday, Reuters reported. The other firms being suspended from the program include Capgemini, Cognizant, HCL, Infosys, Tata, and Wipro. Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling said the government would not accept any new or pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies. H-1B visas are designed for highly skilled positions that employers may struggle to fill with qualified U.S. workers. Tech companies are among the largest users of the program, with nearly three-quarters of approved visas going to workers from India, according to The Associated Press. Vance also said during the news conference that the administration would investigate nine universities, including Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, over allegations they're abusing a program that allows international students to come to the U.S. and were using the program to undermine wages for American workers. "We believe in the strength and talent of the American workforce," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. "That is why the vast majority of Microsoft employees in the United States are Americans. We look forward to providing the Administration with additional information. For example, of the approximately 6,000 H-1B visa applications we submitted in the last fiscal year, 80% percent were to extend or change the status of existing Microsoft employees." "These were not to hire new people. The remaining filings for new employees were for individuals already legally in the United States who decided to come work for us, and they equal only 1% of our U.S. workforce. They are not new arrivals to our country." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mikita Balesni / @balesni: AI researcher Mikita Balesni says he believes OpenAI fired him, Tomek Korbak, and Jasmine Wang for “prioritizing safety over the near-term interests of OpenAI”  —  Two other safety researchers and I were fired from OpenAI last week. We wrote this letter to leadership. I believe we were fired for prioritizing safety over the near-term interests of OpenAI as a corporation.

Bloomberg: SpaceX agrees to buy a nationwide low-band spectrum portfolio to help Starlink “become a major mobile carrier”; AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon fall 6%+ after hours  —  Elon Musk's SpaceX said it acquired low-band spectrum that will enable it to use its Starlink satellites to become a …

Bloomberg: USV raised $900M, including a $500M early-stage fund, up from $275M in 2024, cuts general partnership to four investors, and aims to lead more AI rounds  —  New York City-based venture firm Union Square Ventures is reinventing itself to better compete in the artificial intelligence race …

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple is planning a second launch this month, scheduled on or around October 27, to introduce its first touch-screen MacBook, a new iPad mini, and more  —  Apple Inc., already set to introduce a revamped smart home strategy next week, is planning a second launch in October to introduce …

Anthropic: Anthropic launches OSS Scanner, a free opt-in vulnerability scanner for critical open-source projects; its AI-generated reports are sent without human review  —  We're launching OSS Scanner, an opt-in vulnerability scanner for the open-source ecosystem informed by our experience using Claude …

Leah Nylen / Bloomberg: Filing: the FTC is probing Block over inadequate customer service for frozen or deactivated Square accounts amid staffing cuts, following 1,500+ complaints  —  The Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether Block Inc., the parent of Square and Cash App, violated US consumer protection laws …

Sam Sabin / Axios: Anthropic launches the Critical Infrastructure Defense Program to provide AI models, threat research, and on-site support, starting with CrowdStrike and others  —  Anthropic is launching a new cybersecurity initiative designed to bring its most powerful AI models and engineers …

CNBC: Nvidia, Oracle, CoreWeave, and other AI stocks fell after a report that OpenAI's annualized revenue at September's end was $20B less than previously reported  —  Shares of Nvidia, Oracle, CoreWeave and other artificial intelligence names sank lower on Thursday after the market learned more details about OpenAI's revenue.

Amazon Prime Video will become the exclusive global home of the Emmy Awards under a six-year deal beginning in 2027, the Television Academy announced on Tuesday. The Emmys will stream live for free to viewers in more than 240 countries and territories without requiring a Prime subscription. From the report: In the release, Prime Video was named as the "permanent home" for the Emmys, in contrast to the rotating agreement in place years prior. The switch ends the traditional "wheel-deal" setup to broadcast the awards, where ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox took turns hosting the Emmys each year. The system has been in place since at least 1994, with the most recent eight-year contract expiring this year. "Television has never been more global, and the Emmys should be a celebration that the world can share," Television Academy chair Cris Abrego said in a statement. "Having a dedicated home with Prime Video allows us to build on that legacy with unprecedented global reach and a broader commitment to the Television Academy and our mission throughout the year." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple promotes Carson Oliver to VP of the App Store and names Steve Smith as M&A chief, replacing Adrian Perica, who keeps iCloud, Fitness+, and News  —  Apple Inc. is naming a new mergers and acquisitions chief, according to people familiar with the matter …

Bloomberg: Sources: Firmus is set to postpone its IPO and is weighing a private funding round instead, as some investors raised concerns over its pricing strategy  —  Australian data center company Firmus Grid Ltd. is set to postpone its initial public offering, and the company is weighing …

Hayden Field / The Verge: Anthropic updates its usage policy to ban “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior” toward Claude, ending chats as the primary enforcement mechanism  —  The usage policy update also adds new rules addressing propaganda campaigns, surveillance, and weapon development.

Donald J. Trump / @realDonaldTrump@truthsocial.com: Trump says the WH considers as “THE ENEMY” anyone who uses the term Artificial Intelligence, not “the highly accepted” and “more accurate” Super Intelligence  —  The White House considers anyone that uses the term, “Artificial Intelligence,” …

Financial Times: Docs: OpenAI told investors its annualized revenue was nearing $50B at the end of September, well below the $70B reported by media based on investor docs  —  AI giant recently told investors the key figure was approaching $50bn in September, far less than the $70bn that was widely reported

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: AI hardware startup Natura unveils Interface, a $99 smart ring that connects to AI agents and apps, including Muse, Instinct, Claude, Grokbot, and ChatGPT  —  Meet Interface, a new $99 smart ring from AI and hardware startup Natura that's designed for the era of AI agents.

Rachel Metz / Bloomberg: Arena, which develops the popular AI model leaderboard, raised $200M at a $3.1B valuation, up from $1.7B in January, and launches an Alignment Index  —  Arena Intelligence Inc., the startup behind a popular artificial intelligence model leaderboard, has raised $200 million in funding …

Ian King / Bloomberg: GlobalFoundries signs a five-year, $2B deal to provide silicon interposer production capacity to TSMC, manufactured at GlobalFoundries' New York facility  —  GlobalFoundries Inc. shares gained as much as 7% after the chip manufacturer announced a five-year, $2 billion deal to provide US production capacity …

Ryan Christoffel / 9to5Mac: Apple announces a special event, “Welcome home”, for October 13 at 9AM ET in New York City  —  Today Apple announced a special event happening next Tuesday, October 13 with the tagline 'Welcome home.  Apple event coming with new Home products  —  Apple is launching …

Bloomberg: Hone, founded by former OpenAI and Cognition staffers to create AI agents that can help run a business, raised a $60M seed at a $285M valuation  —  A group of former employees from some of the fastest-growing artificial intelligence firms, including OpenAI and Cognition AI Inc. …

Bloomberg: Sources: the IPO of Nvidia-backed data center provider Firmus is uncertain after failing to attract adequate support, underscoring concerns over AI funding  —  The sudden plunge in demand for an Nvidia-backed data center company's initial public offering is revealing fresh cracks in the AI funding boom.

Ancient Slashdot reader williamyf writes: If you thought the gender pay gap was not real, and that there were no biases in the workplace, think again: A recent study from the University of Limerick found that, in a VR office setting, AI agents -- not even humanoid robots -- that presented themselves as "male" were paid more per task and perceived as more "human-like" than their "female" counterparts, even though both were using the same underlying technology (LLM model, agent, guardrail, and harness). The pay gap was approximately 10%. The study was conducted with 189 people. Small sample, but still, food for thought. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff / Reuters: The US suspends Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, and others from a program that lets skilled foreign workers gain permanent residency, citing alleged fraud  —  US Vice President JD Vance said on Thursday that the federal government was suspending Microsoft from a program …

Colin Demarest / Axios: Gallatin AI, which uses AI to digitize and streamline military logistics data, raised a $50M Series A, bringing its total funding to $70M  —  Gallatin AI raised a $50 million Series A, with defense-tech frequent fliers 8VC and Silent Ventures pitching in, CEO Woody Glier told Axios.