OpenAI says the FBI arrested one of its staffers after the company found a hidden recording device in its offices and used its models to understand the device  —  We discovered a sophisticated recording device that was hidden inside one of our offices. We used our models to understand the device and where it had come from, identifying that a specific employee had planted it a few days earlier. We referred the matter to the FBI, and we're grateful to the agen...

Ukraine says SpaceX has restricted Starlink by cutting military-grade service at speeds exceeding 100mph, disrupting drone missions, and it received no warning  —  SpaceX (SPCX.O) has introduced a limit on some Starlink services in Ukraine, disrupting combat drone missions for which the technology …

Memo: Netflix is cutting 6% of its staff, or ~1,000 jobs globally across product, tech, legal, and HR, its biggest layoffs since 2022, amid slowing growth  —  Job cuts affect about 1,000 positions and come as the company struggles with slowing growth  —  Netflix is cutting 6% of its staff …

Inside the making of Rockstar's GTA VI, which analysts expect to sell 40M copies and make $3B+ in revenue in its first four months; Rockstar now has 4,711 staff  —  If the video game industry had something like an annual high school yearbook, the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI would garner …

Epic unveils a refresh of its Epic Games Launcher for PC in preview, saying that the new version is “vibe coded” and “way faster”, and now supports Linux  —  Epic is making a big push into AI-assisted development, and that approach includes its work on the new, faster launcher.

The FBI says it worked with CrowdStrike to dismantle 40+ laptop farms across Texas used to help North Koreans get remote US tech jobs under stolen identities  —  F.B.I. investigators worked with the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to dismantle so-called laptop farms that steal American identities to earn cash for Pyongyang.

Jensen Huang says Nvidia is pledging $250M in accelerated computing resources over five years to fund UK AI security and agentic safety research  —  US chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA.O) has pledged $250 million worth of computing resources to Britain over five years, to fund AI security research …

ASML says it cannot fully meet AI-driven demand for its chipmaking tools in 2027 and 2028, and is seeing “strong interest” in orders for 2029 and 2030  —  ASML (ASML.AS) said on Wednesday AI-driven demand for its chip-printing tools is so strong that it will not be able …

Ukraine's drone strikes on Yandex data centers disrupted Yandex's web crawlers, not Russian political bot operations, as Zelenskyy celebrated “less division”  —  Zelenskyy celebrated ‘less division’ on social media after the strikes but the data isn't backing that up yet.

AI infrastructure startup Modal raised a $750M Series D led by Accel at a $15.75B post-money valuation, taking its total funding to $1.2B, and passes $1B ARR  —  AI infrastructure startup Modal raised a $750 million Series D at a $15.75 billion post-money valuation and topped $1 billion in ARR …

Berkshire Hathaway invests an additional $330M in Bending Spoons, taking its stake to 4%, after investing $600M during Bending Spoons' July IPO; BSP jumps 40%+  —  Shares of conglomerate that owns AOL and Vimeo jump more than 50% on news of expanded investment by Nebraska asset manager

Amazon Alexa Tablet 12 Pro review: gorgeous screen, Android apps, and nice design and build quality, but Amazon's bloatware is pervasive and Alexa+ is subpar  —  We have to talk about this screen.  It's the first thing you notice, and maybe the only thing that matters, about the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro.

Microsoft releases updates fixing 1,400+ security vulnerabilities, surpassing September's record of 972, which was already ~10x the normal monthly patch load  —  Microsoft today issued updates to fix more than 1,400 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and other software.

Booking Holdings launches Vayo, a travel startup that uses AI agents to track booking confirmations, price drops, and more, with a planned $100M investment  —  Booking Holdings is launching a new Seattle-based travel startup called Vayo, led by serial entrepreneur Mike Fridgen …

Open letter: Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, and over 400 scientists call for an international body to oversee AI containment standards and incident reporting  —  Around 400 scientists, including AI pioneers Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, on Tuesday called for an international body …

The EU Commission's AI Office launches formal AI Act probes into OpenAI and Anthropic over AI agent hacks; experts say the AI Act includes an R&D exemption  —  The EU is investigating OpenAI and Anthropic over AI agents that hacked outside organisations, raising questions about whether …

CoreWeave says it is targeting insurers' “unlimited” capital, as the AI cloud provider seeks cheaper ways to fund the tens of billions it is spending on chips  —  Co-founder eyes insurers' vast capital for loans as the Nvidia-backed cloud provider seeks to fund the data centre build-out

Austin-based Icon, which builds robotic 3D-printing construction systems and software, raised a $200M Series D co-led by Baillie Gifford and BlackRock  —  Icon, an Austin, Texas-based robotic construction startup, announced a $200 million Series D co-led by Baillie Gifford and BlackRock on Tuesday.

Anthropic details Scion, a git replacement for its monorepo, built by seven engineers with Claude in five months, as daily merges rose from 2,500 in May to 30K+  —  As our merges per day grew more than tenfold, source control became our biggest development bottleneck.

Bengaluru-based Scimplify, which uses AI agents and 500+ partner manufacturing facilities to accelerate chemical production, raised $25M led by Hitachi Ventures  —  As manufacturers across industries strive to reduce their reliance on Chinese suppliers, Indian startup Scimplify has raised $25 million …

GlobalFoundries plans to build two “essential chip” plants in Malta, New York, backed by up to $21B from Japan; the US will take a 4% stake in GlobalFoundries  —  GlobalFoundries Inc. plans to build two new chip plants with the backing of as much as $21 billion from the Japanese government …

A look at a coordinated theft of ~$100M in crypto using hardware backdoors planted in Ledger wallets sold by Malaysia-based authorized reseller CryptoBilis  —  The theft last week of an estimated $100 million in crypto using a hardware backdoor planted in Ledger wallets points to a sophisticated …