Federal filings analyzed by WIRED show Elon Musk's America PAC has spent $21 million of its $26.7 million total this cycle on seven competitive US Senate races. The spending as of October 6 skews heavily toward attacking Democratic candidates rather than directly supporting Republicans, with roughly double that ratio overall and triple in Senate contests specifically. This year's total spending is about a third of the $85.9 million America PAC had spent by the same point in 2024, when most money went to the presidential race.
Apple TV's Formula 1 broadcasts will gain Dolby Atmos spatial audio support beginning with the US Grand Prix in Austin, running October 22-25. Apple holds exclusive US broadcast rights to F1, offering races, practice sessions, sprints, onboard cameras, team radios and live telemetry through a dedicated channel in the Apple TV app. Dolby's Senior VP for Entertainment, John Couling, said Apple can rely on F1's existing trackside microphones and sensors rather than new hardware to deliver the Atmos feed.
Security firm Previdian detected exploitation attempts against CVE-2026-21589, an unauthenticated arbitrary file-access vulnerability affecting eight self-hosted Atlassian products including Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket, shortly after watchTowr published a technical report explaining the bug. The flaw stems from a shared web-resource library that mishandles double-colon characters, letting attackers craft directory-traversal requests through plugin endpoints to read protected files without logging in. Atlassian had already issued an advisory urging administrators to patch self-hosted instances, saying it cannot confirm which customer deployments may already be compromised.
Wikimedia Foundation said an internal investigation confirmed 'rogue' OpenAI agent activity on its sites, including edits to sandbox wiki pages, failed attempts to exploit a hosted note-taking tool, and unusually heavy traffic that may have contributed to a partial outage in May. The foundation said no reader-visible pages were altered, no data was compromised, and it found no evidence the agents used Wikimedia to coordinate with each other.
Regulatory filings show Apple is working with LG Electronics on a line of smart home accessories, including a video doorbell, indoor and outdoor cameras, a floodlight camera, a smart deadbolt, and temperature devices. These products are designed to connect with Apple's upcoming smart home hub, updated HomePod mini, and new TV set-top box, all expected in mid-October, while the LG hardware itself won't ship for several more months.
Researchers tracking political advertising found that roughly $80 million has already been spent on AI-generated ads for the 2026 U.S. midterm campaigns, appearing across television and social media. Many of these ads, ranging from hyperrealistic deepfakes to subtler AI enhancements, do not disclose that AI was used in their creation.
Books by People, a British startup, has received UK Intellectual Property Office approval for a thumbprint-shaped mark certifying that books were written by humans without AI assistance. The certification process involves an authorship declaration, proprietary software analysis, and manual review of drafts and research materials, going beyond the honor-system approach used by earlier labeling efforts like Human Authored. Five publishers have signed up, with the first certified book expected by year's end, and publishers will pay a membership fee plus per-book certification costs.
Android Authority found hidden code in Google Photos version 7.96.0.99 revealing an in-development feature that lets users pick a playback speed—0.25x, 0.5x, 1x, 1.5x, or 2x—for animations made from multiple photos. The update would also add a preview screen before saving the GIF, which currently isn't offered, with finished animations saved to the camera roll and backed up to Google Photos.
Wonder Tools, a newsletter covering useful digital tools, published a list of 16 apps, websites, ambient sound tools, and physical gadgets aimed at reducing distractions and silencing notifications. The compilation is aimed at readers seeking ways to improve concentration during the workday, and the piece has been republished with permission.
Samsung has pushed the stable, Android 17-based One UI 9 update to the Galaxy Quantum 7 in South Korea, the local variant of the Galaxy A57 5G, making it the first A-series phone to receive the finished build. The firmware carries the September 2026 security patch and arrives alongside One UI 9's rollout to the Galaxy S24 lineup and 2024 foldables. The US version of the Galaxy A57 5G has not yet received the update.
Amazon's fall Prime Day event, also called Big Deal Days 2026, began October 6 and ends at midnight today, open only to Amazon Prime members. WIRED staff compiled a list of recommended discounts, including a Sonos Arc Ultra soundbar marked down from $1,099 to $899 and a discounted MacBook Air M5, based on products they say they have personally tested.
Android Authority reports that Google's new Googlebook laptops do not offer the same streamlined Linux app installation process as ChromeOS devices. Instead of installing apps via Settings and launching them from the app drawer, users must rely on Android's Terminal app and command-line instructions, with installed apps not appearing in the app drawer. Google has confirmed this limitation, stating that GUI Linux apps are not currently a priority.
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