US stock futures fell Thursday after a rough trading session, with investors again questioning returns on heavy AI spending. Separately, September's consumer price index came in hotter than expected, driven by rising energy costs, marking the 66th consecutive month inflation has topped the Federal Reserve's 2% target—the longest such run this century. Diesel prices also remain elevated ahead of the midterm elections despite a new US-Russia diesel agreement.
Intruder, the company behind an AI-driven pentesting tool, reports that early attempts to assign AI agents strict, narrowly defined vulnerability-hunting tasks caused them to miss issues outside their assigned scope or misclassify findings. Giving agents no structure at all also failed, as unguided agents couldn't properly manage large applications despite occasionally finding interesting issues. The company says it settled on a middle ground: broad roles with freedom to explore, paired with guardrails to prevent damage.
Scientists have described two new sea spider species from the Salish Sea and reclassified a penguin population on the Kerguelen Islands as a distinct species, the southeastern gentoo. Separately, Mauritius has become the first country reported to reduce its diabetes prevalence, according to Nature's roundup of positive science news.
Former Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin posted a video Oct. 1 showing off a sprawling Minecraft city he has built over 12 years, featuring stadiums, high-rises and apartments. The project began as a bonding activity with his children in the game's creative mode and continued solo after they lost interest. The video has drawn more than 3 million views in under two weeks.
Google appears to be expanding its Fast Pair pairing system beyond headphones and wearables to include health devices such as smart blood pressure monitors. The move was spotted in development signs pointing to broader accessory compatibility within Android's quick-pairing framework.
Nintendo has told customers it plans to keep selling physical game cartridges for its consoles, even as Sony moves toward phasing out physical discs for PlayStation titles. Nintendo's reassurance follows gamer backlash against Sony's shift toward digital-only distribution.
Alejandro González Iñárritu's new film 'Digger,' starring Tom Cruise as a caricatured oil billionaire, is reportedly on pace to become one of the biggest box-office failures in history despite its high budget. The film uses a play-within-a-movie structure, revealing that its broad satire of an oilman and a Trump-like administration's climate response is actually a theatrical reenactment of past events.
New data indicates that the long-running growth in college administrative staffing may be reversing. At Louisiana State University, an incoming president announced the layoff of 25 administrators, some in senior roles, redirecting the resulting savings toward faculty hiring and research.
Japan's long-lived 'gara-kei' feature phones, clamshell devices with physical keyboards that persisted even as smartphones dominated elsewhere, are rapidly disappearing. Docomo data shows smartphone ownership rose from 90% in 2021 to 98% in 2025, while MM Research Institute reports feature phone shipments fell over 25% to under 400,000 units in the first half of fiscal 2025. The decline is expected to speed up after NTT Docomo shut down the country's remaining 3G network this past March.
Petra Power, founded in 2017, builds solid oxide fuel cells that convert fuel like natural gas directly into electricity without combustion. Founder Aaron Goodman says the devices cut fuel costs and emissions while being more compact than traditional power systems, and the company is pursuing deals with data center operators and the Defense Department. Goodman declined to name specific customers but said Petra is already working with neoclouds and infrastructure providers below the hyperscaler tier.
Apate, an Australian company founded by Dali Kaafar, has spent two years building a system that routes scam calls to AI bots designed to keep fraudsters talking indefinitely without ever falling for the con. The company says it now runs roughly 350,000 bots that also infiltrate scam chat groups and respond to fraudulent texts, and the platform is used by banks with support from telecom companies.
LG's new MRGB95B is a 75-inch RGB LED TV priced at $3,600, running webOS with four HDMI 2.1 ports and Dolby Vision support, though it lacks Dolby Vision 2 and HDR10+. The reviewer found the set benefits from the brightness and color advantages of RGB LED backlight technology but still has drawbacks compared to cheaper rivals, and ultimately prefers LG's own OLED TVs overall.
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