GoKawiil
Tech News
The National Retail Federation projects Americans will spend $4.1 billion on candy this Halloween, part of $13.5 billion in total seasonal spending, even as candy and gum prices rise 8.1% year-over-year. PwC data cited by NBC News shows chocolate packages now average $5.67, up 15.5%, driven largely by poor cocoa harvests in Ghana and Ivory Coast.
Parley is a new federated chat system where anyone can run their own instance tied to a domain, with identities formatted like email addresses (e.g. [email protected]). Instances discover each other via DNS and exchange signed messages over HTTPS, but present themselves to users as a standard IRC server compatible with clients like irssi, WeeChat, or Textual without plugins. The project's creators describe it as a working proof of concept that is not yet hardened for production use.
The Romanian Football Federation has introduced a black card that referees can use to permanently abandon youth matches if spectators or parents behave abusively. It follows a three-step escalation process, starting with a temporary pause and warning, then a 10-minute suspension, before the match is called off entirely if the behaviour continues. The federation has distributed kits with banners, posters and flyers explaining the rules to all 130 academies under its jurisdiction.
Microsoft and the American Federation of Teachers signed a legally enforceable agreement barring the company from using student or teacher data to train its AI models, except in narrow safety and security cases. The deal also prohibits tracking students, requires human oversight for any AI decisions affecting schools, and mandates transparency with parents and educators about how the tools function. Protections take effect for school districts starting November 1.
Microsoft has signed an agreement with the American Federation of Teachers and its New York affiliate, the United Federation of Teachers, laying out ten enforceable privacy and safety commitments for AI use in schools. The rules bar Microsoft from training models on student or teacher data, limit data collection, ban AI companions, and require human oversight for high-stakes decisions. Districts can add these terms to contracts starting in November without renegotiating existing agreements.
Liquid Network, a Bitcoin-based payments and settlement platform, disclosed on Sunday that roughly 4,000 of the 4,200 bitcoin held in its Federation wallet were withdrawn without authorization, totaling about $320 million. The network described the perpetrators as "purported white-hat hackers" and warned that user wallets on the platform would be affected by the breach.