GoKawiil
Tech News
The Atlantic has recorded six named storms this season but none have strengthened into hurricanes, an unusual outcome not seen in decades. Meanwhile, the Central and Eastern Pacific have produced 16 named storms during the same period, a notably active stretch.
A first-person account describes competing in the tabletop game Diplomacy against 80 other players at Dixiecon, held in a dorm basement in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The narrator recounts forming an alliance with fellow player Brian Ecton, only to be warned by other competitors that Ecton was manipulating him, before the alliance ultimately collapsed when an English-aligned player refused to support the narrator's army.
Christian Kästner, who teaches Machine Learning in Production at Carnegie Mellon, says he has overhauled most assessments in his course because AI agents can now complete take-home assignments convincingly. Instead of grading homework, he now focuses evaluation on TA interactions, exams, and video demonstrations, while keeping the course's core learning goals on engineering tradeoffs and teamwork largely unchanged. Students are permitted to use AI tools freely except during written and oral exams.
WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast, hosted by Zoë Schiffer with senior writer Ej Dickson, examines a loosely organized network of anonymous X accounts dubbed the 'burnerverse' that circulate explicit, nonconsensual videos of young women. The episode centers on University of Florida student Maddie Kowalski, who discovered burner accounts had spread sexually explicit videos of her that were filmed and shared without her consent, after she was targeted on platforms including Yik Yak.
Snap's Specs and Xreal's Aura are new augmented-reality glasses designed to deliver similar overlay experiences to wearers. Both devices remain conspicuously bulky in design, making them impractical to wear inconspicuously in public settings.
Rising asset and stock values combined with inflation have pushed the wealth threshold for America's top 10% higher, according to new data cited in the report. The analysis suggests that while more Americans are becoming millionaires, gains at the very top of the wealth ladder are outpacing those in the middle.
Startup Nexterity, founded by former ExxonMobil engineer Lindsey Elliott, has developed a remote-controlled robot that automates the loosening and tightening of bolted flange joints on industrial pipes. The device attaches around a pipe in two pieces, runs on batteries, and can handle four bolts at once; it comes in multiple sizes small enough to fit in a Pelican case for easy transport. Nexterity is presenting the robot as part of Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt and plans to rent it out like construction equipment.
Bungie outlined new content coming to its extraction shooter Marathon, including a December 'Symbiosis' update adding team deathmatch, a permanent PvE mode, a revamped Perimeter zone with a new Tick Queen boss, a new 'Bishop' shell, and a social space with a firing range. The studio also previewed a larger, unnamed March 2027 update that will add interconnected PvE/PvP/PvEvP modes, a new zone, new enemies, deeper shell progression, and more narrative content.
Google is reportedly rolling out a new Tasks mode within the Gemini desktop app, according to TestingCatalog, which separates regular chat conversations from more autonomous, multi-step tasks. The update includes new Computer Use settings allowing users to specify which desktop apps Gemini can and cannot control, plus a more visible option to launch projects from local folders. A Gemini Live button has also been spotted inside Tasks, suggesting users may be able to talk to Gemini while it operates across the computer.
In the latest episode of 9to5Mac's Happy Hour podcast, hosts Benjamin Mayo and Chance Miller give hands-on impressions of the new M6 Mac mini and AirPods 5, discuss early bug fixes for Apple's latest operating systems, and touch on Apple Music Hall. A Happy Hour Plus segment separately assesses how Apple's Siri AI has performed since launch.
A 2026 study sampled 7,040 U.S. local-business website listings from the Curlie directory, checking each for seven security headers via a single-request scan. After deduplicating to one HTTP-200 response per unique domain (4,688 sites), 49.7% met none of the seven header criteria.
California recently certified a ballot measure for November that would impose a one-time 5% levy on billionaires' wealth, paid over five years, aiming to raise about $20 billion annually for health care, food aid and schools. The Center for Land Economics released a report estimating California's total land value at roughly $8.14 trillion, verified through three separate methods, and argues this dwarfs the state's billionaire wealth base by about eightfold. The report notes six named billionaires already hold substantial wealth outside the state's reach, illustrating the mobility of that wealth compared to land.