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Tech News
TechCrunch announced another five investors joining the judging panel for its Startup Battlefield 200 pitch competition, which runs October 13–15 at San Francisco's Moscone West as part of Disrupt 2026. Founders selected for the contest get six minutes to pitch followed by investor questioning, with a $100,000 prize awarded to the winning startup. This group joins ten judges previously revealed for the event.
Ning Xu, an optical engineer at Tsinghua University in Beijing, won Nikon's 2023 Small World in Motion competition with a super-resolution video capturing the abnormal beating of airway cilia in a child with primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD). His entry topped 346 submissions from 40 countries in the contest, which is a video-focused offshoot of Nikon's long-running Small World Photomicrography Competition.
At a Hyrox competition in China, Australian record holder Joanna Wietrzyk went on to win the event despite fecal matter visibly running down her legs, contaminating shared equipment like rowing machines, sleds and medicine balls. Organizers allowed the competition to proceed, sparking widespread outrage online over the health risks posed to other athletes using the same stations.
Apple has submitted its opening merits brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, formally contesting a lower court's decision that held it in contempt over its compliance with an antitrust injunction from the Epic Games case. The injunction required Apple to let developers link to outside payment options, but Apple's move to charge commissions on those external purchases prompted Epic to challenge its compliance, leading a court to find Apple in contempt.
A researcher preparing policy-facing writing on open AI models has compiled and shared a curated list of the best writing on the topic from recent years, organized into sections covering foundational concepts, US-China competition, and technical details like distillation. The list is described as a living document that will be updated as readers suggest additional pieces to include.
A public disagreement has broken out over credit and validation claims tied to an OpenAI mathematics model achievement, with researchers and commentators contesting how the results were presented and verified. The clash highlights tension between traditional academic norms of open peer review and the competitive, secrecy-driven culture increasingly surrounding commercial AI labs.
A former UK Competition and Markets Authority official has filed a £2 billion ($2.7 billion) lawsuit against Apple on behalf of app developers, alleging that its App Tracking Transparency system imposes tougher restrictions on outside developers than on Apple's own services. Apple maintains that all developers face identical requirements under the policy.