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According to a New York Times investigation, DraftKings developed a machine-learning system that scores customers based on personal data to predict who is most likely to lose money in response to promotional offers. Former employees say the tool was used to funnel bonuses, free bets and profit boosts toward users flagged as high-risk gamblers, rather than to protect them.
Forecasters are tracking what could be the first nor'easter of the season, with New York and New Jersey among the states preparing for possible impacts in late September. Details on the storm's strength and exact path remain preliminary as meteorologists continue to monitor conditions.
Sonic the Hedgehog series boss Takashi Iizuka told Tokyo Game Show attendees that Sega executives once wanted to cancel the entire Sonic franchise, and that he had to fight internally to keep it alive. He credited the 2020 live-action film, whose character redesign followed fan backlash, with proving continued demand and enabling sequels; the franchise has since sold over 1.5 billion copies worldwide.
Venture firm Andreessen Horowitz is opening the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, a one-year, ungraded program meant to funnel young people into Silicon Valley startups. Ten partner companies, including Google, Meta, OpenAI, Palantir, and Anthropic, will host students in 'co-op' placements, backed by $42 million in a16z-led funding, compute credits, and a travel stipend. The program grants no degree and requires participants to relocate to San Francisco and cover their own housing.
Check Point Software has issued emergency hotfixes for CVE-2026-93616, a critical path traversal vulnerability in its Security Management Server that lets unauthenticated attackers upload and run arbitrary scripts. The company confirmed the flaw is being actively exploited, with a handful of customers already compromised, and released a fix in R82.20 Security Hotfix covering Security Management Server, Multi-Domain Security Management Server, Log Server, Multi-Domain Log Server, and SmartEvent.
A new analysis argues that earbuds, already worn daily by millions, are better positioned than smart glasses to host always-available conversational AI assistants. The piece contends that audio-first wearables offer a more natural and less socially awkward way to interact with AI throughout the day.
Anthropic introduced Claude Opus 5.5, a cheaper, more efficient model that reroutes risky cybersecurity requests to the weaker Opus 4.8 and flagged biology queries to Opus 5. The company says it is the top performer on its internal alignment testing and was vetted by outside evaluators Frontier Design and METR before release.
The guide explains how to repurpose an old computer as a home media server by adding storage (ideally with redundancy like RAID) and installing server software such as Plex or Jellyfin to stream content across devices. It compares the two platforms, noting Plex's simplicity but paid features versus Jellyfin's free, more customizable but technical setup, particularly around GPU-based media transcoding.
A visitor to robertmay.photography encounters an automated browser security verification screen before being redirected to the site. The page states this check runs once every 24 hours to protect the site's cluster services from scrapers and bots.
Paramount Skydance reached a settlement with state attorneys general who had sued to block its $110 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, avoiding a trial that was scheduled for next spring. As part of the deal, Paramount agreed to boost domestic production, follow certain theatrical release rules, and create a new board to oversee editorial independence at CBS News and CNN. CEO David Ellison told staff the company now expects to close the merger within about two weeks.
The Fearless SIMD project, first prototyped eight years ago, has released version 1.0 according to a blog post by its maintainer Shnatsel. The library provides portable SIMD abstractions and safe access to platform intrinsics without requiring unsafe code, while supporting both autovectorization and manual control for performance-critical code.
Ron Johnson, who led Apple's retail division from 2000 to 2011, has published a new book titled 'Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple's Genius,' co-written with Zander Nethercutt. The book details his collaboration with Steve Jobs to design the Apple Store concept and grow it into one of the most profitable retail operations globally. Johnson also recently appeared on 9to5Mac's Overtime podcast to discuss the book and the store's early history.