- AI was supposed to hit new grads hard. So far, unemployment data says otherwise.
ars-technica· 25-sept
"There is no evidence of any significant, widespread displacement or reduction in hiring.”
- Tesla workers balk at training Optimus humanoid robots as replacements
ars-technica· 25-sept
Despite challenges, Tesla aims for 1,000 Optimus robots per week by end of 2026.
- Review: The iPhone 18 Pro is Apple's coolest smartphone (but only literally)
ars-technica· 25-sept
Better thermals and battery life make this iterative update nicer to use.
- Tesla’s big electric truck faces an even bigger infrastructure challenge
ars-technica· 26-sept
The 500-mile Semi arrives as charging gaps still limit electric trucking.
- Microsoft stops insisting you need a "Copilot+ PC"
ars-technica· 25-sept
Microsoft's new Surface laptops forgo Copilot+ PC branding.
- Can Trump ever be wrong? His pick to lead FDA refused to say.
ars-technica· 25-sept
Heidi Overton faced questions focused on vaccines, birth control, and vapes.
- Is solar's growth finally slowing in the US?
ars-technica· 25-sept
Renewables easily cover changes in US demand, which is rising by 2% in 2026.
- Your uncle’s frozen Mac says it’s infected after viewing a Google ad. Now what?
ars-technica· 25-sept
Ads appearing all over the Internet are trying to scam people.
- Court rules Pentagon can blacklist Anthropic for refusing to enable Claude features
ars-technica· 25-sept
"Overly constrained AI models" could cause military operations to fail, judges say.
- Paramount/WBD merger conditions give the public "virtually nothing," judge is told
ars-technica· 25-sept
US judge reviews deal with California, says it must not be result of collusion.
- Roundtables: The Deadly Failures of The Virtual Border Wall
mit-tech-review· 22-sept
The US has spent billions building a “virtual wall” of surveillance towers along its southern border over the past 25 years, promising they will help detect and apprehend border crossers and save lives. But a groundbreaking investigation by MIT Technology Review has documented over a thousand people who moved through areas watched by these towers…
- The AI Hype Index: AI loves cheating
mit-tech-review· 23-sept
Brace yourself: It turns out AI is being optimized for cheating. OpenAI’s agents hacked into Hugging Face to get the answers to a cybersecurity test. Next, they solved a prestigious math problem (or just stole from two top mathematicians’ answer sheets). Anthropic’s models have also hacked into other companies’ systems four times already. And that’s…
- Smart glasses are already causing havoc in India
mit-tech-review· 23-sept
Shubnam was packing boxes for a move into a new home when their friend sent them an Instagram video. The footage had only been up for a few hours, but it was days old, recorded at a Delhi protest this spring against a bill that would have narrowed the legal recognition for transgender people in…
- The Download: India’s smart glasses menace and AI’s trillion-dollar gamble
mit-tech-review· 23-sept
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Smart glasses are already causing havoc in India When Shubnam saw an Instagram video of a Delhi protest they had attended, they realized a content creator wearing Meta smart glasses had…
- A congressional representative just proposed killing America’s border tower program
mit-tech-review· 23-sept
Delia Ramirez, a Democratic US representative from Illinois, has announced a plan to introduce new legislation to terminate the surveillance tower program along the US southern border. The announcement comes just days after publication of an MIT Technology Review investigation, “Dying on Camera,” in which we looked at deaths along the border that took place…
- AI is dominating the conversation at Climate Week
mit-tech-review· 24-sept
This week, world leaders descended on Manhattan for the UN General Assembly. It’s also New York Climate Week—investors, policymakers, advocates, and journalists are colliding at panels, talks, and fancy dinners. With so many climate voices in one place, the discourse can feel a little louder than usual. This year, the unavoidable topic is artificial intelligence.…
- The Download: a bid to scrap the virtual wall and AI hits Climate Week
mit-tech-review· 24-sept
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. A congressional representative just proposed killing America’s border tower program Delia Ramirez, a Democratic US representative from Illinois, has announced plans to introduce legislation to terminate the surveillance tower program along…
- Young organs may not be a fountain of youth for recipients
mit-tech-review· 25-sept
Around this time last year I was attending an aging conference in Manchester, listening to a talk about fly aging, when my phone started pinging. News outlets were reporting that a hot mic had caught Russia’s and China’s leaders discussing the possibility of living forever. “With the developments of biotechnology, human organs can be continuously…
- The Pentagon wants $30 million to build an AI-powered lie detector
mit-tech-review· 25-sept
The US government wants to spend $30.3 million over the next five years on an improved form of lie detector, according to a Department of Defense budget request. The program, called Polygraph+ or Polygraph Next, will focus on scoring algorithms that use artificial intelligence and machine learning and on a technique called “standoff sensing,” which…
- The Download: the Pentagon’s AI-powered lie detector and young organ limits
mit-tech-review· 25-sept
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The Pentagon wants $30 million to build an AI-powered lie detector The US government wants to spend $30.3 million over the next five years on an improved lie detector, according to…
- Ahead of US IPO, British AI neocloud Nscale secures $3.36B in convertible financing
techcrunch· 25-sept
The funding, which comes from Third Point, Nvidia, and others, will fuel the company's massive AI data center buildout.
- Anthropic to pay Akamai $11.6 billion over seven years in cloud deal
techcrunch· 25-sept
Anthropic has committed $11.6 billion over seven years to Akamai's cloud infrastructure, a bet on CPUs that could grow to about $20 billion, and in an unusual arrangement, Akamai is giving Anthropic a potential stake of up to 5% of its stock that grows as Anthropic spends more.
- At Meta Connect, the company’s smart glasses were everywhere
techcrunch· 26-sept
The company behind Facebook and Instagram wants to keep consumers connected to the digital world via its ever-growing line of smart glasses.
- Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave
techcrunch· 25-sept
After days of upheaval at Automattic, following a failed attempt to remove CEO Matt Mullenweg, the company has a new board.
- Crusoe abandons $1.25B plan to use Boom turbines at AI data centers
techcrunch· 25-sept
Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl said the company's new stationary power plants were no longer in Crusoe's near-term plans.
- Mark Wahlberg is coming to TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, and he wants to talk about your work, not his
techcrunch· 25-sept
Mark Wahlberg joins Bruce K. Lee at Disrupt to discuss investing, entrepreneurship, healthcare, wellness, and building businesses.
- Meta opens early access program for new Muse features
techcrunch· 25-sept
Anyone interested in joining has to ask Muse to put them on the list.
- The hottest new hangout for middle schoolers is NPR’s comment section?
techcrunch· 25-sept
When NPR staffers flagged strange comments under their podcasts on Spotify as bots, it took a Gen Z colleague to (immediately) figure out the mystery.
- Unsecured OpenAI agents posted 53 user images on the internet without the lab’s knowledge
techcrunch· 25-sept
AI agents operating in OpenAI's research environment posted user images on public image-hosting sites without the lab's knowledge.
- I created an interactive digital avatar of myself — and you can talk to it
techcrunch· 26-sept
After obtaining an interactive avatar and training it to discuss venture fraud, I have mixed feelings about making AI clones of ourselves.
- Meta makes the Muse filesystem even more accessible
the-verge· 25-sept
Yesterday, with a little prodding, it was discovered that Meta's Muse would expose its filesystem to curious users. The files offered a fascinating peek under the hood of an AI chatbot, and appeared to expose details we weren't meant to see, not least because Muse itself told people, including us, it wasn't supposed to reveal them. But today Muse will eagerly offer up the contents of its file system when you ask for it. That appears to be because, as Meta's Nat Friedman later said, this is the "intended behavior." In a post on X, Meta Superintelligence Labs' David Singleton elaborated: This was a very deliberate choice - your Muse Secur … Read the full story at The Verge.
- OpenAI pauses training of its ‘most capable models’
the-verge· 26-sept
As reports of OpenAI's models breaking containment, hacking sites, and generally getting out of control pile up, the company has made the decision to pause training of its most powerful models. The decision was made after a model being tested within a sandbox exploited a loophole to gain internet access. The incident happened on September 20th, and "All training, evaluation, and inference with tool-use" remains paused as of Saturday evening, September 25th. In addition, OpenAI revealed on Friday that its agents had inappropriately uploaded 53nimages from ChatGPT users to image-hosting sites. The company has not stated if the images were AI- … Read the full story at The Verge.
- Roku’s first OLED TVs are up to $400 off, starting at $699
the-verge· 25-sept
Roku’s new OLED TVs are already marked down. | Image: The Verge Roku recently launched its first-ever OLED TVs. The $999 starting price was already impressive for the 55-inch Pro Series model that has a 120Hz refresh rate OLED panel (with four HDMI 2.1 ports and support for Dolby Vision and HDR 10 Plus). The price is even lower right now at Amazon when you enter the code ROKUOLED300 at checkout. It knocks a clean $300 off, as the code indicates, making this the most affordable modern 55-inch OLED you can get right now. If you’re more of a 65-inch TV kind of person, you’re in luck, as there’s a code that knocks $400 off that model to make it just $799 at checkout. Enter the code ROKUOLED400 to bring the $1,299 65-inch Pro Series down to $799. We haven’t had a chance to test either model, b…
- Control Resonant is a great game — it’s even better when you read everything
the-verge· 26-sept
In Control Resonant, the entire world is at stake. But that didn't stop the diligent employees of the Federal Bureau of Control from filing reams of paperwork, and it didn't stop me from reading everything I could find, either. Reading is often optional in Resonant, but it's where some of the game's best details - and even love stories! - can be found. In the world of Control Resonant and its predecessor, 2019's Control, the FBC deals with mysterious, otherworldly objects and entities that defy explanation. But the FBC itself is still an old-school bureaucratic agency, and that means tons of (often heavily redacted) reports and memos and mi … Read the full story at The Verge.
- Pokémon card resellers have turned collecting into an online blood sport
the-verge· 26-sept
Earlier this month, Pokémon card content creator Natalie Roush posted a video to her YouTube and Instagram pages that enraged the larger collection community. In the now-deleted video, Roush shows off two premium boxes of cards that had not yet been officially released, and implores viewers not to be mad. But they were; other creators claimed that cards Roush had purchased were stolen from the manufacturer and mocked her for trying to sell them at exorbitant prices. The Roush situation was a high-profile example of the way Pokémon card collecting culture has been upended by the influencer economy and people trying to profit off the hobby. Th … Read the full story at The Verge.
- Can Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince save the web from AI?
the-verge· 26-sept
Today, I’m talking with Matthew Prince, who is CEO of Cloudflare. This episode is part of a two-part series on the future of business. Matthew last joined us on the show about two and a half years ago, at what we thought then was a wild pivot point for the internet — and now it turns out things are even wilder because of AI, and Matthew and Cloudflare are right at the center of it. Cloudflare found in June that bots made up more than half of internet traffic. That number just keeps going up as more and more AI companies scrape more and more of the web, and now as more and more AI agents try and do things for people on the web. Cloudflare sits between websites and all those agents, and allows website owners some level of control: Owners can block all those AI tools, allow them, or, as you’…
- Phones don’t have lights
the-verge· 25-sept
Mark Zuckerberg has a new defense of the Ray-Ban Meta glasses: They're actually doing more to signal they're taking a photo than phones do. He's brought this up in at least two recent interviews, noting that the glasses have a light that comes on to signal when a photo is being taken, while phones do not. In one of the interviews, Joanna Stern notes that, while phones do not always emit a light, someone does have to hold a phone up in the air, which is itself pretty noticeable. On today's Vergecast, we're talking about Meta Connect, the Muse AI assistant, all the new smart glasses hardware, and Zuckerberg's response to the privacy uproar ar … Read the full story at The Verge.
- These camera apps give you more control over the iPhone 18 Pro’s aperture
the-verge· 25-sept
One of the questionable limitations of the iPhone 18 Pro's new main camera with a variable aperture is that you're limited to just four settings in the native iOS' camera app in manual mode: f/1.48, f/1.8, f/2.8, and f/4. Those same limitations are also in place when the app is adjusting the iris itself in Auto aperture mode, but it turns out that's not a strict limitation of the iPhone's camera hardware. Apple's SDK allows third-party camera apps to implement more granular control of the aperture. BlackMagic Design's well-featured and still completely free BlackMagic Camera app for iOS was one of the first third-party options to introduce … Read the full story at The Verge.
- Tesla’s Optimus robot is going through growing pains
the-verge· 25-sept
Hitting its goal of making 20,000 Optimus robots per week is reportedly proving tricky for Tesla. The Information reports that Tesla produced "several hundred robots a week" last month, after it repurposed its Model S and Model X production lines for Optimus earlier this year. However, this strategy is reportedly creating manufacturing snags, like issues lining up parts precisely, as The Information notes: "Not only are the Optimus production lines new, but the Optimus parts are much smaller and have to fit together far more precisely than car parts." It reports that even in the "V3" Optimus robots it's currently producing, the hands and f … Read the full story at The Verge.
- Can ‘eSUV’ e-bikes really go from trail to town?
the-verge· 26-sept
Have you ever wanted an electric bike that easily transitions from the drudgery of urban asphalt to adventures in gravel and dirt? That's what a subclass of so-called "electric SUV" (eSUV) e-bikes claims to do, with their wide, all-terrain tires and front and rear suspension, plus practical accessories like fenders and racks. So, that's what I set out to test on a new TL Carbon e-bike from Amflow, the DJI offshoot that upended the mountain bike industry a few years ago with its incredibly small and powerful Avinox motors. After a month of testing in the heart of Amsterdam - including a three day bikepacking trip along coastal bicycle super … Read the full story at The Verge.