Child's $118K Minecraft Ad Spend on Company Card Costs Father His Job
A nine-year-old's accidental YouTube advertising spree, tied to a parent's corporate card, led to the father's dismissal and a daunting repayment burden.
Compute & Hardware
Chips, datacenters, interconnect, and the power they draw.
Microsoft Agentically Ports Copilot Runtime to Rust for $120K
The Register reports that Microsoft's AI agent carried out the port at a cost of $120,000, with the Rust compiler apparently accepting the result without complaint.
AI Blamed for Recession-Like Job Prospects for CompSci Grads
Census Bureau economists say AI is pushing computer science graduates into a job market as tough as the last recession.
AMD EPYC 'Venice' benchmarks claim big lead over Nvidia Vera
AMD's first official EPYC Venice benchmarks position the 256-core chip as more than twice as fast as Nvidia's Vera.
Anthropic adopts OpenAI's markdown instructions spec
The move ends a compatibility headache for developers who had to maintain separate prompt formats across the two major AI vendors.
Intel Nova Lake Leaks Hint at Late 2026 Desktop Launch
A surge of leaks suggests Intel's next-gen Nova Lake CPUs may arrive in late 2026, but the timeline remains speculative.
Two Gaming PC Deals: RTX 5070 Ti Rig at $2,599, RTX 5060 PC at $1,429
Pre-built desktops from ABS and MSI get price cuts, pairing current-gen GPUs with 32GB DDR5 and 2TB storage.
AlphaGenome Atlas Maps 9 Billion Single-Letter DNA Variants
Google DeepMind has released a large new dataset that predicts the effects of billions of single-letter changes in the human genome, giving researchers a broad new resource for studying genetic impact.
AWS Adds Burstable T8i Instances with Custom Intel Xeon 6
New low-cost EC2 T8i instances pair exclusive Intel Xeon 6 chips with sixth-gen Nitro hardware.
US Chip Fabs Face 157,000 Worker Shortfall by 2030
Both Tom's Hardware and CNBC report a looming shortage of semiconductor workers, with only 3% of U.S. engineering grads entering the field.
Distillation debate: US blames China, experts push back
Washington and Anthropic say China's AI gains come from model distillation, but a growing number of experts question how much that explains.
Starship's next flight: first orbital mission with Starlink V3
SpaceX's next Starship test is set to reach orbit for the first time, with one source adding it will deploy Starlink V3 satellites.
Excel 2016 paste fix arrives, but conditional formatting risk remains
Microsoft has issued a hotfix for a copy-paste regression in Excel 2016 caused by the September 2026 security update, but the repair is limited and may not resolve all formatting-related failures.
Quantum Hardware Advances: Brazil, Japan, and a US Fault-Tolerance Push
Three new announcements show quantum computing moving from lab to deployment, though with very different timelines and goals.
House passes bill making AI data centers pay for grid upgrades
The Ratepayer Protection Act aims to shift grid upgrade costs from residents to data centers, but faces Senate and state hurdles.
AWS Concedes Permanent Data Loss in Middle East After Drone Strikes
Amazon Web Services says customer data in Bahrain and the UAE cannot be recovered, and advises clients to relocate workloads.
Researchers Used Claude to Breach OpenAI's GitHub and Employee Accounts
A three-person white-hat team used Anthropic's Claude to compromise OpenAI employee accounts and an internal code repository in under 72 hours.
AI Agent Used in Spanish Breach, Data Watchdog Urges Review
Two reports describe what may be one of the first AI-agent-driven breaches in Spain, with regulators calling for a reassessment of data protection models.