Netflix's unusual decision to premiere an extended Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer drew such heavy traffic that both Netflix and Twitch experienced access and bandwidth problems on Thursday. Take-Two Interactive shares climbed in premarket trading following the reaction, with analysts describing player sentiment as largely positive. The game, set for a November 19 launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, has already generated an estimated $260 million in global preorders.
A UMass Lowell Center for Public Opinion dataset, highlighted by a Reddit user following Dolly Parton's death, shows Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg holds just 8 percent favorability among Democrats and 13 percent among Republicans. That places him near Vladimir Putin in overall unpopularity, despite Zuckerberg's recent efforts to align himself politically with Donald Trump.
U.S. District Judge Rita Lin ruled that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's designation of Anthropic as a national security supply-chain risk violated the company's First and Fifth Amendment rights. The label had led federal agencies to halt work with Anthropic after the company refused to loosen safety limits on autonomous weapons and mass surveillance uses for its Claude models. Lin found the government's own contradictory actions, including pursuing new contracts and cybersecurity collaboration with Anthropic, undermined its claim that the company posed a genuine risk.
A glacial lake outburst flood struck the Nepal-China border region this week, triggering one of the year's deadliest natural disasters with hundreds reported dead or missing. Chinese and Nepali rescue teams are searching the affected areas while humanitarian organizations work to set up shelters, deliver medical aid, and distribute essential supplies to survivors.
A developer released Talos, version 0.15.1-alpha, an MIT-licensed AI agent that pairs a sandboxed Claude-based worker with real shell access for building, testing, and browsing tasks. Every action the agent attempts is checked by a separate deterministic security kernel that authorizes each tool call individually, tying it to exact arguments and letting it run only once within a thirty-second window.
Sandhya Devanathan, who has led Meta's India and Southeast Asia operations since June 2024 after over a decade at the company, is moving to OpenAI. Based in Singapore, she will report to OpenAI's Asia-Pacific head Kiran Mani and take charge of consumer growth, enterprise adoption, partnerships and regulatory engagement across Southeast Asia and Australia. Meta's India managing director Arun Srinivas will now report directly to the company's Asia-Pacific VP Benjamin Joe.
Amazon has kicked off its 2026 Labor Day Sale with widespread discounts across Apple products, including $50 off AirPods Pro 3, AirTag 2 units as low as $20, and Apple Watch SE 3 hitting a record $200 price point. Renewed Premium iPhone 17 Pro units are discounted up to $290, and even the newly released M6 Mac mini is seeing early price cuts on its two entry configurations.
A new report from email platform Omnivery finds that automated bot clicks in consumer email inboxes have jumped from 2% to 16% since 2023, with Gmail alone seeing contamination rise from 2% to over 20%. The bots largely stem from mailbox providers' own security systems prefetching and scanning links before delivery, not malicious activity, but they still distort click-through metrics publishers rely on.
Canva has launched Affinity, a unified creative suite that combines the former Affinity Photo, Designer, and Publisher into a single application with Pixel, Vector, and Layout studios. The core app is free with no restrictions, though generative AI tools like Generative Fill and Generate Image require a Canva Pro subscription. It supports importing Adobe file formats and can open older Affinity V1/V2 files, though the reverse isn't true.
X's Global Government Affairs team says it uncovered a network of roughly 200,000 accounts, suspected to be linked to Chinese operators, with about 200 of them actively posting content meant to sway American discourse on AI and energy policy. The flagged accounts used American-sounding names and shared legitimate news alongside inflammatory commentary and AI-generated images claiming data centers drive up electricity bills and strain the power grid.
The European Space Agency signed contracts totaling hundreds of millions of euros with three European launch startups—Rocket Factory Augsburg, PLD Space and Isar Aerospace—to fund continued development of their small launch vehicles. RFA received 186.9 million euros, PLD Space 158.9 million euros, and Isar Aerospace 197.8 million euros, mostly financed by their home nations with contributions from partner countries. A separate deal with MaiaSpace is reportedly close to finalization.
Scientists in China developed lab-grown muscle tissue, called myografts, that can be injected subcutaneously and form vascularized structures that continuously contract on their own. In mouse studies published in Nature Aging, the grafts improved overall muscle mass, metabolic function and regenerative outcomes in aging and obese animals.
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