San Diego County Counsel filed a civil lawsuit on October 5, 2026 in San Diego County Superior Court against Polymaker LLC, the Shanghai-based filament maker with U.S. operations in Houston. The complaint alleges Polymaker's marketing, including hiring 3D-printing figure Sean Aranda ("The 3D Print General") after his 2023 YouTube ban over firearms content, effectively turned its PLA filament into a regulated firearm precursor part under California law. The state seeks disgorgement of profits, civil penalties and injunctive relief.
A restored 104-minute version of George A. Romero's 1973 film, originally released as Hungry Wives, has expanded on the previously available 89-minute cut, though the director's full 130-minute version remains lost. The film, marketed by its studio as softcore exploitation, instead centers on a suburban housewife who turns to witchcraft while trapped in an unhappy marriage.
David Robinson, a safety leader at OpenAI, has resigned and written an essay for The Atlantic arguing that AI companies' reliance on a 'trial and error' development approach must stop. He described himself as joining a growing group of former employees who have left AI firms including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind over concerns about the technology's risks and uses, such as copyright infringement and military applications.
A long-form explainer details the biology of chemotaxis, the process by which a single E. coli cell detects attractive chemicals and decides whether to swim forward or tumble to change direction. The piece walks through receptor proteins, membrane signaling, chemical modifications that act as memory, and the flagellar motor that drives movement, framing the bacterium as a sophisticated molecular computer rather than a simple organism.
As public backlash grows against Flock Safety's automatic license plate readers, police departments are increasingly adopting Axon's Fusus platform, which merges feeds from body cameras, dashcams, 911 calls, gunshot detectors, drones and CCTV into a single dashboard. Law professor Andrew Guthrie Ferguson told NPR these 'real-time crime centers' already combine far more surveillance tools than ALPR cameras alone, including video analytics with retroactive search capability.
A review of consumer wearables that claim to monitor blood pressure without a traditional cuff found the devices can flag changes users don't feel. Physicians interviewed cautioned that the readings may not match clinical accuracy, raising concerns about how users interpret the data.
Brandon Thomas, the engineer behind the free ArtCraft suite that mimics Adobe's creative apps, has released three new open-source tools built with Claude: GridCraft, DeckCraft, and WordCraft, designed to replace Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. Thomas, previously known by the Reddit handle u/ai_art_is_art, has defended his use of AI coding tools after facing criticism that his software was 'vibecoded' or AI-generated slop.
Nitter maintainer zedeus revealed that X Corp. sent cease-and-desist letters in August and September 2026 demanding a permanent shutdown of Nitter instances and its code repository. He retracted an earlier September 7 statement that legal representation was secured, saying assurances he relied on proved false, and Nitter currently has no lawyer. He is now appealing for funding and legal assistance to keep the project alive.
A roboticist recounts a debate with a colleague over whether a dishwasher qualifies as a robot, arguing it does not meet technical definitions of manipulation since its spray arms and soap dispensers are mechanisms rather than object-handling tools. She contends the more fundamental issue is that 'robot' was coined by science fiction writer Karel Čapek in his 1920 play and has always been a culturally defined term rather than a strictly technical one.
WIRED compiled a list of 13 recommended gifts for travelers, including a Quince expandable carry-on and checked-bag luggage set priced at $270, and Amazon's 12th-generation Kindle Paperwhite and Paperwhite Signature Edition, priced at $200 and $250 respectively. The guide also points readers toward related WIRED roundups on travel tote bags, gifts for women, and stocking stuffers.
Women who run or appear prominently on social media platforms, including Mariam, administrator of a 400,000-member Facebook group for women in the UAE, report receiving a surge of unsolicited messages from men policing their dress, behavior and visibility online. These messages, often framed in religious terms, range from demands to cover up to outright sexual harassment, prompting some women to disable messaging features entirely. The pattern is linked to a subset of the broader online 'manosphere' that recasts antifeminist, male-grievance ideology in Islamic religious language.
Daiichi Kosho, operator of Japan's Big Echo karaoke chain, said malware found on a contractor's computer at Nippon Columbia Group may have exposed records of 93,000 employees and 8.63 million customers. Exposed data includes names, genders, birth dates, emails and phone numbers, but not passwords, and no theft or leak has been confirmed. Customers of BIG ECHO, MEGA BIG, Karaoke CLUB DAM, Banana Club, B-GARAGE and DK Dining may be affected.
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