Tech News

Kagi is a paid search engine that promises better, ad-free search results. Pronounced “kah-gee,” it aims to give power back to users instead of relying on ad-driven search models.

Tesla is winding down Cybertruck production after years of poor sales in a handful of markets. The truck never delivered its promised $40,000 starting price or 500-mile top-spec range, and its stainless-steel exoskeleton idea gave way to a costly conventional unibody with difficult-to-work stainless panels. Commenters argue the delays and wasted effort came from ignoring engineering expertise, and that Tesla could have built a simpler, cheaper electric pickup years earlier.

Electronics 101 is a free set of interactive 3D lessons that teaches electronics from scratch, covering batteries, resistors, LEDs, capacitors, switches, transistors and sensors. Learners can switch each circuit on, change its parts and watch the current flow. Made by Dilum Sanjaya

Mark Cuban accused Facebook of knowingly running AI-generated deepfake scam ads, saying he has seen his own face used to promote nonexistent diabetes cures. He cited documents indicating the platform earns $16 billion in fraud revenue.

Dutch bank ASN, known for its idealist positioning, has blocked its Android app from running on non-Google Android systems, including GrapheneOS. The restriction affects users of privacy-focused or de-Googled devices, according to a report citing app version 2.40.2 in the Netherlands. The move highlights growing friction between banking apps and custom Android ROMs.

The company announced Inkling 2 Small, the first release in its second-generation Inkling model lineup. The launch marks the debut of the next generation of Inkling models.

Arjun Panickssery argues he is skeptical that autonomous AI R&D is as ingenious as claimed, citing side projects where models missed key papers, ran uninformative experiments, pursued trivial philosophy work, and failed to recognize a highly relevant blog post. He also found AI-related hackathon papers were often similar and methodologically incomplete. The notable exception, he suggests, is certain hill-climbing tasks with fast feedback loops, where iterative prompting can yield major improvements.

Volunteer-driven peer production underpins some of the internet’s most valuable resources, from Linux to Wikipedia. These collaborative communities show how openly organized contributors can rival firms, markets, and government bureaucracies in building and maintaining key digital infrastructure.

Britain will require employers to disclose salary information in job advertisements, a move supporters say will save applicants time and help reduce pay discrimination, especially gender pay gaps. Commenters cautioned that overly broad salary ranges could weaken the policy and that transparency may slightly lower average pay, though many saw the trade-off as acceptable. Details remain pending after the consultation stage.

pwn.college is a learn-to-hack resource that offers hands-on cybersecurity training through interactive challenges and modules. The platform aims to help users build practical offensive security skills.

Unleash is marking 11 years of developing its open-source feature flag server. The project describes itself as an open-source feature management platform and invites developers to contribute via its GitHub repository.

Major investors are skeptical that Anthropic’s IPO can justify a $1.5 trillion valuation, with critics questioning whether AI models have any durable moat as capabilities commoditize and customers can easily switch providers. The debate also raises concerns that massive data-center spending may not pay off if lucrative AI workloads move to cheaper or local models, making the valuation hard to defend.

Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash now supports native 15-second video generation and editing, along with stronger consistency. It also comes with 30% lower pricing.

Closed AI models now dominate the price-performance frontier, offering the best model at almost every budget. Open-weight models win at just 3% of price points, down sharply from 41% in June.

Firenook is a Rust-based replacement for Firebase emulators that works with existing firebase.json, SDKs, and ports. It claims 40× faster writes, 10× less memory, no Java dependency, and data that survives restarts.

NVIDIA Kubernetes Engine (NVKE) is a management plane for running GPU-accelerated Kubernetes on bare metal, aimed at simplifying GPU cluster operations without virtualization overhead. The project is hosted under dsx-ai-factory/nvke and targets streamlined management of bare-metal GPU Kubernetes deployments.

Reader discussion frames Silicon Valley’s “bad night” as a political and economic backlash to the AI data-center buildout, with voters rejecting tech-friendly candidates amid concerns over higher electricity costs, scant local benefits, and debt-fueled expansion. Commenters debated whether to hit the brakes or pursue a middle path with stronger oversight, municipal compensation, cleaner power, and fewer tax incentives and NDAs. Some also raised claims—without evidence in the thread—that foreign propaganda is helping fuel anti-data-center sentiment.

A unique “colony” of wood ants has survived for years inside an old nuclear-weapons bunker after workers fell through a ventilation pipe from a large outdoor nest and could not return. In total darkness, hundreds of thousands of ants have maintained an earthen mound and kept nest entrances open, though they have produced no offspring due to low temperatures and scarce food.

Investors erased about $2.5 trillion from the Nasdaq as a “blue tsunami” fueled AI-related fears, with the index falling 4% into correction territory. Commenters debated the political shift, questioning whether Democrats have become the anti-tech, Luddite party.

The discussion frames the Chomsky–Norvig debate as a clash between engineering and science: statistical methods and LLMs can be powerful tools without revealing how humans learn or use language, much as aeronautical engineering does not explain how birds fly. Commenters argue that Chomsky dismisses statistics too broadly while his influence in linguistics wanes, and they question claims that LLMs are the closest model of human language learning given children’s far greater data efficiency and likely innate linguistic knowledge.

A data breach at Brazil’s Credit Guarantor Fund has reportedly exposed millions of personal records, including payment data, Social Security numbers, and other official information. Commenters warn that fraudsters could make extensive use of the leaked data, reinforcing the assumption that all PII should be treated as already exposed.

Kugelblitz is a new Mac-native alternative to Google Earth that presents Earth and its neighbors as a 3D globe and atlas. It combines maps and open geodata with real terrain.

A new project called BUI decouples Blender’s GPU-accelerated UI from its original codebase and supports Rust, Python, JavaScript, React, C, and C++. Its developers claim it is twice as good as GPUI.

MoofTCP is a drop-in replacement for MacTCP aimed at 68k Macs running System 6, including 68000-based machines. The project seeks to modernize networking for vintage Macs while maintaining compatibility with existing software.

World Strike is a multiplayer tank game that uses real city maps from OpenStreetMap, letting players battle on recognizable streets and demolish actual buildings. Its pitch invites players to find their own street and flatten it.

A new analysis of 178,637 apps from the App Store top charts examines how many mention AI, how many sell in-app purchases, and how many are no longer updated. The 2026 snapshot highlights trends in AI branding, pricing strategies, and app maintenance across top-ranked apps.

Tata Motors has fixed security issues in its app, including hardcoded credentials, according to the company. The automaker said there were no data leaks.

A new review of books by Emily Eakin and Onur Erdur examines how French Theory reshaped the humanities and captivated generations of scholars, especially at universities. Seaton traces its influence and contested legacy, considering both its “poison” and “cure” in academic life.

Mbodi AI, a YC P25 company, is hiring research and robotic engineers. The open roles are listed in its jobs section for candidates interested in joining the company.

A flaw dubbed Sshole in OpenSSH on musl Linux has reportedly allowed access to password-less accounts since 2016. The issue affects musl-based systems and highlights the need for patching and configuration review.