Tootfinder

Enterprise voice AI tools provider Deepgram acquires Daily, which has raised $62M and develops open-source voice AI framework Pipecat, for an undisclosed sum (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/29/deepgram-ac…

Deepgram acquires Pipecat-maker Daily to bolster its voice AI infrastructure | TechCrunch
Deepgram said that it is committed to keep Pipecat open source.

I have spent most of the time since Labor Day out across the country,
campaigning, knocking on doors, speaking at rallies ahead of the midterms.
I’ve been in upstate New York and eastern Pennsylvania, in northern Montana and the Central Valley of California, on the Kansas-Missouri line and southern Maine, in eastern Iowa and south-central Michigan, in Austin and in Dallas.
And I’ve been online more nights than not, helping with phone banks into every part of America.

I Knocked on Hundreds of Doors Ahead of the Midterms. Here’s What I Learned
After knocking on several hundreds doors across America ahead of the 2026 midterms, I came away with four basic reminders on where we are as a nation.

Insurance software maker Guidewire agrees to acquire Hyperexponential, which makes AI-powered insurance underwriting and pricing software, for $1.7B in cash (Anzar Mehraj/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/g

OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic say they will adopt a new standard that publishers can use to opt out of being scraped by AI across multiple crawlers (Emma Roth/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/tech/1023763/openai-google-microsoft-ai-scr…

The biggest names in AI are backing a new way to opt out of scraping
OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft are planning to adopt a new standard that will allow websites to apply their AI training preferences across multiple AI companies, instead of setting them individually.

The Mice are Probing the Houses Defenses
I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of the cat thundering accross the floor. I assumed he had a case of the zoomies. Next morning I found a dead mouse in front of the bedroom door. "Good Kitty". "Mighty Hunter". Tossed the corpse outside as a warning to all it's relatives. It usually works better if I can get the mouse away from the cat while the mouse is still alive to tell all it's friends and relatives …

Over the past few years, astrophysicists have transformed our understanding of the interstellar medium.
Using newly developed maps stretching thousands of light-years across our galaxy,
they’ve discovered that it’s not the quiet, steady backdrop that researchers thought.
Instead, much of the ISM appears to be unstable
— a finding that directly contradicts the leading theoretical models taught in textbooks.
The surprise finding could help resolve a long-unansw…

A New Map of ‘Empty’ Space Challenges a Tranquil Picture of the Galaxy | Quanta Magazine
For decades, astronomers treated the interstellar medium as a static backdrop to the goings-on of the universe. Now, a wave of 3D mapping is bringing the interstellar medium’s dynamic nature into focus.

OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic say they will adopt a new standard that publishers can use to opt out of being scraped by AI across multiple crawlers (Emma Roth/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/tech/1023763/openai-google-microsoft-ai-scr…

The biggest names in AI are backing a new way to opt out of scraping
OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft are planning to adopt a new standard that will allow websites to apply their AI training preferences across multiple AI companies, instead of setting them individually.

Pete Hegseth has always assumed that experts are idiots,
believed he’s the smartest guy around,
and as a result ignores them and ends up breaking stuff (and failing in the process).
The entire Trump administration’s motto mirrors Mark Zuckerberg’s adage to
“move fast, break things,”
in this case literally.
Hegseth’s aggression, recklessness and blatant disregard for expertise is nothing new.
When he served as a 1st Lieutenant in Iraq in 2005-2006, …

Move fast, break things
The failures of Trump 2.0, encapsulated in a broken globe.

A look at growing bipartisan opposition to AI data centers in drought-stricken Arizona, where TSMC's chip fabs were welcomed but newer projects face backlash (Gaby Del Valle/The Verge)

AI has come for Arizona’s water
Arizona has long courted big business, from tech to agriculture. Now the state is facing a water crisis. Are data centers the breaking point?

Salesforce acquires Rune, which makes AI military logistics software, sources say for $375M in cash and stock; Rune raised $30m from a16z and others (Margaux MacColl/Resilience Media)
https://resiliencemedia.co/scoop-salesforce-is-paying-375m-for-rune-techno…

Scoop: Salesforce is paying $375M for Rune Technologies
Salesforce is acquiring defence tech startup Rune Technologies for $375 million in a combination of shares and cash, according to