Researchers are getting tired of OpenAI gatekeeping its breakthroughs
On Monday, OpenAI announced impressive breakthroughs in mathematics, computer science, and physics, along with what the company says is an evolving approach to communicating its findings. But despite its apparent course correction, researchers who spoke to The Verge are growing increasingly tired of the company's antics.
It has been a turbulent few months between OpenAI and mathematicians, who are still grappling with the hundreds of preprints unceremoniously dumped on them at the start of October. This time, OpenAI says it is working with expert "shepherds" to decide how best to share its latest breakthroughs.
All three results conc …
Elon Musk says Ukraine’s military violated Starlink’s terms of service
Elon Musk claims Ukraine violated Starlink's terms of service before the recent slowdown, as reported earlier by Ars Technica. According to Musk, "Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week," however Ukrainian officials have denied that happened, or that it is actually possible for them to do.
The statement comes nearly two weeks after Ukrainian officials accused SpaceX of putting limits on the military's satellite internet service that disrupted its drone missions and operations. As reported by Axios, Ukraine uses Starlink for communications …
Trump is making it easier for fossil fuel companies to leak methane
In its latest gift to oil and gas companies, the Trump administration is expected to announce plans today to weaken rules that guard against methane leaks.
Methane is a smog-forming pollutant and a powerful greenhouse gas that's up to 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide on a 20-year horizon. It's the primary component of what the fossil fuel industry calls "natural gas" that routinely leaks from oil and gas wells and pipelines.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reversing course on its previous efforts to plug those leaks. As part of President Donald Trump's deregulatory agenda, the EPA plans to undo Biden-era rules that were ex …
VisionQuest is what happens when AI really goes rogue
In Marvel's VisionQuest, a superpowered robot tries to better understand humanity by getting lost in elaborate, digital daydreams in which he and other artificial intelligence-powered beings live together in a home. The series is deeply fantastical, yet it plays with some of the ideas that have come to dominate the conversation about real-world generative artificial intelligence, exploring whether we should look at thinking machines as people and if AI truly poses the kind of existential danger that should keep us up at night. It's also a reminder how aggressively Silicon Valley has used the trappings of science fiction to sell us on its AI …
The Super Mouse puts a touchscreen macro pad under your hand
A company called Arctic Fox Technologies has announced a new multifunction mouse that forgoes a myriad of customizable shortcut buttons peppered across its surface for a compact touchscreen sitting beneath your hand. The Super Mouse may not prioritize ergonomics with its boxy design, but it can replace other peripherals on your desk, like a trackpad, macro pad, or streaming controller. If you're faster at typing on your phone, the Super Mouse could potentially even replace a full-size keyboard with a smartphone-sized alternative that even includes swipe typing.
The Super Mouse is now available for preorder through a Kickstarter crowdfunding …
Anthropic’s elaborate plan to keep Wall Street at bay
Anthropic wants to have it both ways. With its impending IPO, it wants to tap the vast riches of the public markets and insists it doesn't want to compromise its core mission of developing AI safely and for the benefit of humanity. But greater model capabilities bring greater risks, and shareholders eager for returns may have little patience for costly safety measures that slow products on their way to market.
Sam Altman, the CEO of Anthropic's archrival, OpenAI, has cited investor pressures as one reason the company is not pursuing an IPO this year. Anthropic hopes it can resist investor pressures with a mind-boggling governance structure.
…Meta’s $25 billion legal loss just put blood in the water
When attorneys general from across the US announced a $17 billion settlement with Meta this summer, the sum was unprecedented. But a ruling last week by a New Mexico judge blew that number out of the water. The judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion to resolve claims that Meta misled users around the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal and related incidents. Similar claims were resolved by the settlement with most other states. The outcome raised an obvious question: Should these states have asked for more?
The answer depends on a mix of factors, including whether the $25 billion order stands up to Meta's legal challenges. Meta's chief legal of …
Firefox’s Smart Window adds AI form filling and webpage monitoring
Mozilla is updating Smart Window - Firefox's AI-powered browsing experience - with a new feature that can help you fill out online forms based on your open tabs. As an example, Mozilla says Smart Window can pull information from your online portfolio or LinkedIn page to paste your work history into a job application.
You can try out this feature by clicking into a form with at least four text fields. From there, you'll see an option to "Fill from sources," which will show all of the tabs Firefox will draw from. You can then select or deselect tabs that you want Firefox to use, and the browser will generate suggestions based on the informati …
Major League Baseball is looking for a new kind of fan
On October 2nd, just as Major League Baseball's Division Series was kicking off, the main MLB Instagram and TikTok accounts posted a video hyping up the teams still in the running for the World Series. It featured clips of players from the Milwaukee Brewers, Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago White Sox, and more sliding into home plate, hitting homers, and celebrating hits - standard fare for a highlight reel. What really makes the montage, though, is that it's set to an Olivia Rodrigo song.
The song, "My Way," is an album track - not even a single - from Rodrigo's latest record. It's not exactly the soundtrack one might expect from an MLB-produc …
Google’s next Genie AI model generates more realistic experiences
Google announced today its Genie 4 world model for generating interactive experiences using AI. The company says the model has four main updates: It allows for more realistic worlds, lets users update an experience in real time with a natural language prompt, can generate audio, and uses Gemini 3.8 Flash under the hood to help with its simulations. It also can create experiences that are about two minutes long, up from one minute for the previous Genie 3 model.
Google is pitching Genie 4 as a tool that could be helpful for things like pre-visualization for filmmakers, prototyping game ideas, and making training scenarios for robots. But the …