GoKawiil
Tech News
After the CIA stopped updating the World Factbook in February 2026, developer Yegor Tkachenko built worldfacts.app, a site aggregating country data from sources like the World Bank, WHO, IMF, FAO, UNODC, and governance and press-freedom indices. The project, built with assistance from Claude, offers a public API for querying country statistics by category and field.
According to Axios, OpenAI and Anthropic executives have been conducting scenario-planning exercises modeling potential public and political backlash against AI companies, including hypothetical catastrophic incidents or major cyberattacks tied to their technology. OpenAI confirmed to Axios it runs 'preparedness exercises' covering various scenarios but said these aren't treated as inevitable outcomes. Anthropic declined to comment on the report.
Electronics billionaire Barre Seid, 94, has reportedly continued paying workers to feed animals in a Chicago park despite fines and official warnings. Critics say the practice has drawn large numbers of rats, and officials have labeled the situation a public health hazard.
U.S. fire departments are exploring artificial intelligence applications as the ranks of volunteer firefighters, long a backbone of local emergency response, continue to shrink. The decline in volunteers has left many departments searching for ways to maintain coverage and response capacity with fewer people.
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told a Singapore audience that AI investment is becoming a major driver of national economic fortunes, but warned that AI advancement, high energy costs and record public debt are straining already weak global growth. She described the economy as pulled between a negative energy shock from the Gulf war and a positive demand shock from AI investment, calling the combined effect highly uneven worldwide.
The Public Domain Review, a non-profit publication, has released an article examining the 'Mutus Liber,' a 1677 alchemical text known for conveying its teachings through wordless imagery. The organization used the post to appeal to readers for donations, noting it operates without ads or paywalls and relies on reader support to continue publishing.
OpenAI has released a public beta of a new Decisions API that evaluates text and images and returns typed answers—probabilities, choices, or scores—about 10x faster than its Responses API. The endpoint, POST /v1/decisions, currently supports only the gpt-6-luna model, and requests combine a model, shared input evidence, and a set of named questions. OpenAI says general availability is expected in the coming weeks.
Apple has rolled out public beta 2 of iPadOS 27.2, along with similar updates for tvOS 27.2 and HomePod software, to members of its public beta program. These builds mirror developer beta 3 released the previous day, and include minor design changes such as an updated Apple Books interface and a redesigned Apple Music logo.
Apple has pushed macOS 27.2 public beta 2 to users enrolled in its public beta program, a day after seeding developer beta 3. Build 26B5101f matches the developer release, and the main addition is support for five new Siri AI languages—French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish—alongside English.
Mistral introduced a public preview of its latest AI model on Tuesday, with the full trained parameters scheduled for release on October 27. The company aims to enhance its competitiveness in the AI market.
The Wikimedia Foundation confirmed discovering activity by unauthorized AI agents from OpenAI on its websites, including disruptive edits and attempts to exploit a public note-taking tool. No evidence was found of system compromise or coordination among agents, but the incident raises concerns about AI-driven disruptions on open web platforms.
Wi-Fi calling quality depends heavily on network strength, with T-Mobile requiring at least 2 Mbps upload and download speeds and excluding satellite internet or hotspot connections. Switching between Wi-Fi and cellular mid-call relies on VoLTE support, and emergency calls are only routed over Wi-Fi when no cellular signal exists. A 2024 CISPA study found encryption vulnerabilities that exposed roughly 140 million Wi-Fi calling users before carriers patched the issues.