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Tech News
A batch of declassified President's Daily Brief items spanning February 1998 through mid-1999 has been released, documenting repeated CIA warnings about Osama bin Laden's network. The documents track intelligence on bin Laden's location, his pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, infrastructure in North America, and plans to hijack US aircraft, among other threats.
An Entrepreneur contributor argues that as companies grow, CEOs can no longer stay close to every decision the way they could when the business was small. Instead, leaders must build teams capable of making sound judgment calls independently, shifting their own focus toward long-term strategy rather than day-to-day execution.
A quarter century after the September 11 attacks, air travel remains defined by security measures introduced in their aftermath, even as some newer screening technologies now let passengers move through checkpoints with fewer restrictions. The anniversary prompts a look back at how flying was transformed almost overnight and how those changes persist today.
Dubai-based SpiderSilk has built AI-driven scanning tools that need only a company's name to search billions of IP addresses for leaked data, exposed assets, and compromised credentials. The system mimics how an outside attacker would probe an organization's digital footprint, flagging weaknesses before they can be exploited. Co-founder Mossab Hussein says many organizations previously had no clear picture of what was exposed on the open internet until damage was already done.
A solo developer running Google Ads for his puzzle app Dayzle discovered that of 56 billed installs over two weeks, only 13 were real users; the rest came from devices sideloading outdated app versions while falsely reporting Google Play as the installer. These fake installs showed zero engagement, spanned dozens of phone models across many states, and appeared to be generated by a bot farm gaming Google's install-based ad optimization.
Oracle has requested proposals for 2 gigawatts of renewable energy in New Mexico as it faces local protests and legal challenges over the $165 billion Project Jupiter data center it's building with OpenAI in Santa Teresa. The facility, part of the Stargate AI infrastructure initiative, will still run on natural gas-powered fuel cells rather than direct renewable power, and analysts note the renewable investment is a 'synthetic' match rather than a direct power source for the site.
At Black Hat USA 2026, security researcher Fred Heiding and former US National Cyber Director Chris Inglis presented findings showing AI's growing role in social engineering scams, which the FBI says cost Americans nearly $21 billion last year. Heiding argued that while AI can be used to defend against AI-driven technical attacks, it cannot easily counter AI's ability to psychologically manipulate humans.
A Wall Street Journal report cites experts recommending anthropology, mathematics and philosophy as college majors better suited to an AI-driven job market than computer science, whose recent graduates face a 6.1% unemployment rate versus a 5.7% overall rate. The experts argue these fields build distinctly human skills—like understanding behavior and abstract reasoning—that AI cannot easily replicate, even as long-term demand for software developers remains strong.
A developer released litelm, a lightweight library that replicates LiteLLM's core routing and message-translation functionality across LLM providers in roughly 2,900 lines of code with only two dependencies. It deliberately omits LiteLLM's larger feature set—proxy servers, caching, cost tracking, and dozens of add-ons—keeping only model routing, streaming, tool use, embeddings, and the Responses API. The API mirrors LiteLLM's function names and arguments, so existing users can switch by simply renaming their imports.
Shelly has released the Flood S Gen4, a Matter-certified water leak sensor priced under $30 that works natively with Apple Home, Google Home, Alexa, SmartThings, and Home Assistant. The device uses three large stainless steel contact pads instead of small metal pins, allowing it to detect water faster and even sense low-conductivity liquids like AC condensate.
The EPA is proposing to eliminate a federal rule requiring states to notify the public and accept comments before approving air-pollution permits for industrial facilities, including data centers and the power plants built to supply them. A separate EPA proposal from last month would also allow developers to begin construction before permits are finalized. These changes come as data centers expand rapidly across the rural South, disproportionately affecting Black communities.
Google is said to be working on a new line of higher-end laptops, referred to as Googlebooks, that place its Gemini AI assistant at the center of the device's features. Details on specs, pricing, or release timing have not yet been disclosed.