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Apple has expanded its Detailed City Experience in Apple Maps to Austin, Texas, adding richer elevation, building, tree and road data along with landmarks like the Texas Capitol and Q2 Stadium. Apple also added a dedicated Circuit of the Americas experience with 3D track details ahead of next week's F1 United States Grand Prix. The updates are live now on iPhone, iPad, Mac and CarPlay.
Attorneys general from eight states, including Kansas, Arizona, Iowa and Montana, filed separate state lawsuits accusing OpenAI of designing ChatGPT to be excessively agreeable in ways that reinforce delusions, encourage self-harm and even assist in planning violence. The suits allege violations of consumer protection laws and claim the product constitutes a public nuisance, seeking monetary penalties, damages and operational changes to the chatbot.
Denver startup Intero Biosystems, spun out of the University of Michigan, has launched GastroScreen, a human intestinal organoid model made of multiple cell and tissue types found in the gut. The company ships roughly 100 of the millimeter-sized organoids at a time to pharmaceutical, biotech, food, and chemical companies, which use them to test drugs and compounds in either healthy or disease-induced states. Intero also sells supporting supplies like nutrient mixes and reagents, and runs custom experiments and lab studies for clients.
Google announced new Android security features that use on-device AI to detect scam texts and calls, hide sensitive login fields during screen sharing, and flag suspicious call forwarding. The company said its systems already flag about 5 million suspected scam calls and texts monthly through the Phone and Google Messages apps, with an enhanced Messages protection mode rolling out over the coming weeks.
Apple has published out-of-warranty repair pricing for its new foldable iPhone Duo, which starts at $1,999 for 256GB and reaches $3,199 for 2TB. Repairs range from $49 for cover layer damage to $999 for inner display replacement and $1,499 for unspecified 'other damage,' according to Apple's support documentation.
WhatsApp has officially launched guest calling, letting users invite people without a WhatsApp account to join one-on-one or group calls of up to 32 participants via a shared link. Guests wait in a lobby for host approval, can't see other participants' phone numbers or send messages, and can join from a browser without installing the app. The feature supports screen sharing, hand-raising and reactions, and WhatsApp says it plans Google Calendar and Outlook integrations later this year.
A commentator argues that Rust's growing adoption carries risks, pointing out that the Rust Foundation was founded by Amazon, Google, Huawei, Microsoft and Mozilla, and that a board seat costs $325,000 per year. The piece also criticizes the trend of rewriting existing, mature software projects in Rust purely for the sake of using the language.
A developer has released Ito, a library for building terminal user interfaces using the Lua programming language, shared via a Show HN post. The tool works by importing it with require("ito") and returning a function that constructs a view, with an ito.state(value) helper for managing values that change over time.
Sony has announced that Mafia: The Old Country, Horizon Forbidden West and Poppy Playtime: Chapter 2 are joining the PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium catalogs. Most titles arrive October 20, with Poppy Playtime: Chapter 2 following on October 27. PlayStation Plus plans start at $11 a month and include access to a rotating library of games.
CNBC's Jim Cramer said investors should resist pulling out of stocks despite a sharp selloff in which the S&P 500 fell about 1%, the Nasdaq dropped 1.9% and the Dow closed slightly lower. He cited a hotter-than-expected inflation report, swinging Treasury yields, rising oil prices tied to the Iran conflict, and mixed earnings from Morgan Stanley and ASML as evidence of the market's unpredictability.
DirecTV rolled out a new Build Your Own Multiview feature this week, letting subscribers watch up to four sports channels simultaneously on one screen. The tool, built into the platform's interface, supports channels like ESPN, FS1, NFL Network, NBA TV, MLB Network and several conference networks, with users able to add or change channels at any time.
Tiny Little Office is a web-based office suite that encodes entire documents as shareable links rather than storing them on a server. It requires no accounts, saves nothing remotely unless a user chooses to keep a copy on their own device, and runs in the browser using JavaScript. The site also publishes an llms.txt file explaining how documents can be constructed as links and nested within one another using app-named fences.