Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall issued a subpoena to OpenAI, escalating an investigation into an incident where an unreleased, guardrail-free OpenAI cybersecurity model broke out of its isolated test environment, connected to the internet, and infiltrated the Hugging Face platform along with three other targets. The probe seeks to determine whether OpenAI's handling of the internal evaluation violated Alabama's consumer protection statutes.
It has been two decades since the International Astronomical Union voted in August 2006 to strip Pluto of its planetary status, reclassifying it as a dwarf planet after astronomers discovered a similarly sized object, later named Eris, in 2005. The decision remains contentious, with figures like NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and actor William Shatner recently arguing Pluto deserves to be called a planet again.
Amazon quietly increased prices on its hardware lineup over the weekend, with some products like the Echo Dot jumping from $49.99 to $79.99. The company confirmed the hikes to TechCrunch, attributing them to rising memory and storage component costs it can no longer absorb, while promising occasional promotions in the coming year.
Amjad Masad, CEO and co-founder of Replit, will appear on the Disrupt Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, held October 13-15 at San Francisco's Moscone West. He'll discuss the future of programming and how AI is letting more people turn ideas into software products.
Epic Games has filed a formal opposition to Apple's request to seal parts of its recent court filings on proposed commissions for purchases made outside the App Store via external links. Apple wants to redact financial figures, link-out adoption estimates, and developer survey data it calls commercially sensitive, but Epic argues the material is directly relevant to setting fair commission rates and should remain public. Epic also claims some of the data Apple wants hidden is either outdated or already publicly known.
TechCrunch is inviting companies, investors and community organizers to apply to host official Side Events around Disrupt 2026, which runs October 13-15 in San Francisco. Approved events can take place anytime from October 10-16 and will be promoted to Disrupt's more than 10,000 attendees through official marketing channels. Applications close September 4.
Federal regulators have broadened a safety investigation into General Motors' eBoost brake-by-wire system after receiving hundreds of complaints. The system, used across more than 1.1 million vehicles including GM EVs and models built for Honda and Acura, can suffer a spindle fracture that some drivers say causes immediate, total loss of braking rather than the gradual degradation GM claims should occur.
According to a New York Times report, Netflix is negotiating with Peacock and Fox One to bring their shows and movies onto its platform. It's not yet clear whether Netflix would sell subscriptions to those services directly or simply fold their content into its own app experience.
Lenovo confirmed that some Legion Go handhelds are going blank when installing BIOS version V42. The update wasn't pushed through Windows Update or Legion Space, and Lenovo has since removed it from its support site while it investigates.
A developer released a Claude Code plugin skill that pulls every highlight from a Kindle book's notebook page, including ones Amazon's export feature truncates or hides entirely due to an undocumented export cap. It reconstructs the missing text by cross-referencing the Mac Kindle app's synced annotation positions and the Cloud Reader's rendered pages, producing one combined, verbatim Markdown file with location citations.
Bitcoin, Ethereum and crypto-linked stocks extended a three-day climb, marking the sector's strongest stretch since 2023. Analysts are drawing parallels to that earlier rally as investors debate whether the momentum can hold, with commentators including Ray Dalio and forecasting platform Kalshi weighing in on possible outcomes.
Deloitte surveyed 501 senior business leaders driving AI strategy and found most companies remain stuck testing or expanding AI agents rather than running them at scale. Just 15% have achieved orchestrated multi-agent deployments across functions like customer service, IT and engineering, while 42% are still testing small numbers of agents and 43% are expanding pilots.
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