Automattic's board voted to place founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg on paid leave against his wishes, installing CFO Mark Davies as interim CEO. Mullenweg publicly objected in a company Slack channel, saying the board acted without giving him time to consult legal counsel. The exact reason for the ouster hasn't been disclosed, though it comes after years of legal disputes, layoffs and staff departures tied to his leadership.
Anthropic alleges that Chinese AI firms DeepSeek and Moonshot created thousands of fake accounts to funnel millions of real user queries into its models, a technique known as distillation used to replicate its AI's capabilities without building them independently. The company claims this activity violated its usage policies and represents a large-scale attempt to extract proprietary model behavior through automated querying.
Nepal's army is using four China-donated DJI FlyCart 100 drones to make 10 to 16 daily aid runs following the August 26 glacier collapse that triggered flash floods along the Nepal-Tibet border. The drones, each capable of hauling around 132 pounds per trip, have delivered food supplies and also retrieved bodies from areas inaccessible to ground crews. Nepal's disaster authority reports 1,369 deaths and more than 5,000 people still missing as of September 9.
Apple has opened trade-in credit for iPhone Air and iPhone 17 ahead of new successor models, offering up to $585 for either device despite the iPhone Air costing $200 more at retail after this week's price hikes. The iPhone 17 now starts at $899 and the iPhone Air at $1099, yet both receive identical trade-in valuations.
Windows admins report that this month's cumulative updates for Windows Server 2019, 2022, and 2025 are breaking Remote Desktop Services, with servers working fine for a few hours before connections begin to fail. Existing sessions can get stuck unable to disconnect, new logins hang and time out, and in many cases only a hard reset restores service. Some administrators say uninstalling the September patch is the only reliable fix so far.
Apple's iPhone 18 generation launches without a standard model, offering instead the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and a new folding iPhone Duo. The Pro models are up for preorder September 12 and ship September 18, while the Duo opens preorders October 16 ahead of an October 23 release. Rumors point to a cheaper standard iPhone, an 18e, and a second-generation Air arriving as early as spring 2027.
OpenAI Korea's Harrison Kim disclosed that OpenAI and Samsung are collaborating on production and research for next-generation chips, though he gave no specifics on the chips or Samsung's exact role. He also revealed Samsung has become one of the largest global enterprise deployments of ChatGPT, with staff across multiple markets using it for research, marketing and sales.
A tech commentary piece pushes back on comparisons between Apple's rumored foldable iPhone Duo and the Apple Vision Pro, arguing the two products face very different market conditions. The Duo starts at $1,999, well under the Vision Pro's now $3,699 price tag, and functions as a pocketable phone-tablet hybrid rather than a stationary headset with limited daily utility.
A costumed appearance by a Doctor Doom impersonator at a Seattle event highlighted support for the city's camera surveillance systems. The moment drew attention to the fact that Flock Safety is far from the only company supplying automated license-plate readers and camera networks to police departments and neighborhoods.
Paramount+ has dropped a fresh trailer for 'Avatar: Seven Havens,' the sequel series to 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. The show is set to premiere on the streaming service on October 9.
ArcadeDB has released a new repository, arcadedb-drivers, containing four Apache-2.0 licensed client libraries: HTTP and gRPC drivers for Python, and HTTP and gRPC drivers for TypeScript/JavaScript. All four are generated from ArcadeDB's own published contracts and are already available on pip and npm, though still at early 0.1.0 releases targeting server version 26.9.1.
An essayist contends that software projects, despite being fundamentally simple systems of forms, databases and workflows, tend to make otherwise rational people behave erratically. The piece attributes this to the unique combination of speed, cost, complexity and near-limitless ability to change direction that software allows, unlike physical construction where changes have visible, immediate costs.
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