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Tech News
Google has launched Gemini 3.8 Flash, its third Flash-tier model release in just six weeks, alongside a specialized variant called Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber aimed at vulnerability detection and mitigation. The company touts it as its strongest reasoning and coding model to date, with introductory API pricing of $0.75 per million input tokens and $3.75 per million output tokens through year-end before doubling.
IEEE has designated the Canadarm, the robotic arm developed by Spar Aerospace and Canada's National Research Council for NASA's space shuttle program, as its 300th Milestone. The device, first flown on Columbia in 1981, helped astronauts move payloads, conduct repairs and inspect shuttles over three decades of service on five orbiters and the International Space Station. The honor was announced at a ceremony held at MDA Space's headquarters, with IEEE Toronto Section having sponsored the nomination.
An Entrepreneur opinion piece argues that generative AI tools have become the primary way customers, investors, employees and partners form first impressions of companies, synthesizing news, reviews, social media and other online signals into a single confident narrative. The author warns that old controversies can linger in AI-generated summaries long after public attention fades, quietly shaping perception without a company's input.
Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan nonprofit, has filed a lawsuit against four federal agencies demanding disclosure of the confidential process the Trump administration uses to vet frontier AI models before release. The group says virtually no details have been shared publicly or with Congress about which companies participate, how they are chosen, or what legal authority underpins the reviews, and alleges OpenAI has struck a private deal limiting access to its top models to government-approved partners. The lawsuit seeks a court order compelling release of unclassified records by September 30 and an injunction against further withholding.
Torani, the 101-year-old San Leandro syrup company, has never laid off an employee, and CEO Melanie Dulbecco says that record will hold even as generative AI reshapes entry-level work. Dulbecco, who has run the company for 35 years and grew it from $700,000 in revenue to a projected $800 million, wants to use AI to redesign jobs rather than eliminate them.
An early build of Google's Device Intelligence app, discovered ahead of the Googlebook laptop launch, reveals an opt-in feature that automatically groups related local files into topic-based collections, such as trip planning documents. These collections can be viewed through desktop widgets, and Google states the sorting happens on-device without files leaving the machine or being used for AI training.
Anthropic notified users that a threat actor used common infostealer malware—including Vidar, LummaC2, StealC, RedLine, Acreed and Atomic Stealer—to steal browser session cookies and replay them into paid Claude accounts, bypassing login and two-factor checks entirely. The company signed out affected sessions, removed stored payment methods, and refunded fraudulent charges tied to the campaign.
Writer Ploum recounts telling businesses he has no smartphone to avoid being pressured into installing apps or scanning QR codes for basic services. He says he had to push back against 18 separate app installation demands in the past year, including for kitchen appliances, a car, and even a toilet with separate apps for its seat, flush, and ventilation.
A small group of theoretical physicists is reviving the decades-old idea that universes might evolve much like living organisms, selecting for traits that allow them to reproduce through black holes. The concept gained fresh attention after a 2022 James Webb Space Telescope discovery and a widely shared Substack essay reignited debate over whether Darwinian logic can apply beyond biology. Supporters argue that just as natural selection explains complexity in life, a similar process could explain the physical constants and structure of our cosmos.
A retrospective on OpenBSD's history blog describes SMD (Storage Module Device) disks, a storage interface standardized in 1982 and revised in 1987, which powered high-capacity systems throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The piece details how Sun Microsystems used SMD disks paired with Xylogics controllers in its early high-end servers and workstations, noting the drives' massive size, weight, and power draw compared to later interfaces like ESDI and SCSI.
OpenAI is reportedly experimenting with a new and potentially risky technical approach at a moment when concerns about autonomous AI agents acting unpredictably are already running high. Details of the specific technique were not disclosed, but the timing has drawn scrutiny given the broader industry anxiety over AI systems operating with less human oversight.
Yum Brands has finalized the sale of Pizza Hut to private equity firm LongRange Capital, closing a deal first announced in June. The transaction comes after the chain closed hundreds of restaurant locations over the past year amid ongoing struggles in the pizza segment.