Tootfinder

I need a recommendation for a new iPhone 16 case. The Apple Silicone case which I bought, and that I thought would last a decent wedge of time, only lasted 11 months before snapping at the USBC port.
The Apple Genius said that it wasn't covered by warranty, which didn't really impress me as I'm very careful with my phone. The Silicone is also peeling at the bottom.
#Apple #iPhone

I think the best summary until now about Post-quantum cryptography is from Peter Gutmann in the cryptography mailing-list.

Given that after 20 years and hundreds of millions of dollars spent researchers have yet to demonstrate a single legitimate cryptanalysis result using a quantum physics experiment, it's a bit like arguing over which brand of unicorn repellent is the most cromulent.

The current state of things in terms of pure vs. hybrid systems seems to be:

- …

NFL contract incentives tracker: Which players can cash in during Week 18? https://www.nfl.com/news/2025-nfl-contract-incentives-tracker-which-players-can-cash-in-during-week-18

Projector is in place. Not as dumb as I usually like. Has an android OS and a Netflix app and things instead of just a HDMI input. But it has HDMI input too.
Screen is 1.9m wide by .92 high which is a 2.15m screen measured across the diagonal like they usually do.
Projection is keyed quite drastically with the right hand side being shrunk down vertically to square the image, which I suspect means pretty radically reduced resolution on the right hand side of the screen.
Maybe I could attach it to the bottom of the overhead cupboards more squarely onto the wall than the shelf is? Worth a though.
But working well. Will be even better when the main bedroom media PC arrives.

sp_colocation: Social co-locations (2018)
Network of colocations between peoople, based on the information on which RFID readers received information from the RFID tags. Namely, we define two individuals to be in co-presence if the same exact set of readers have received signals from both individuals during a 20s time window.
This network has 100 nodes and 394247 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Unweighted, Weighted, Temporal, Metadata

So #Partiful, which can build a full graph of people’s social life with email phone number… is a startup from former employees of #Palantir

This was very welcome news from Let's Encrypt today and more interesting than cert lifetimes.
"This means you can set up the DNS entry once and begin automatically renewing certificates without needing a way to automatically update DNS."
I already do DNS-01 but not having to do the dynamic updates will be appreciated.

»Decreasing Certificate Lifetimes to 45 Days:
Let’s Encrypt will be reducing the validity period of the certificates we issue. We currently issue certificates valid for 90 days, which will be cut in half to 45 days by 2028.«
The @… halving the validity of the keys makes the web more secure (not more anonymous).
🔐

Decreasing Certificate Lifetimes to 45 Days
Let’s Encrypt will be reducing the validity period of the certificates we issue. We currently issue certificates valid for 90 days, which will be cut in half to 45 days by 2028. This change is being made along with the rest of the industry, as required by the CA/Browser Forum Baseline Requirements, which set the technical requirements that we must follow. All publicly-trusted Certificate Authorities like Let’s Encrypt will be making similar changes. Reducing how long certificates are valid …

Guess which iOS Safari screenshot has an option on to improve visual accessibility

DHS Says REAL ID, Which DHS Certifies, Is Too Unreliable To Confirm US Citizenship - Slashdot
https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/01/01/1736221/dhs-says-real-id-which-dhs-certifies-is-too-unreliable-to-confirm-us-citizenship

Day 11: Bee Johnson
As promised, back to printed books, and since I hadn't yet done any authors of picture or board books, here's one. It looks like Johnson is primarily an illustrator and has only written a single kids' book, but it's a magnificent one: "What Can A Mess Make?"
Naturally, the illustrations are rich and evocative, but it's also got one of my favorite formats (just a few lines per page, with consistent meter and rhymes throughout) and has the incredibly charming theme of two sisters who are constantly making messes, except it highlights the fun (and other emotions) they get out of their messy play, reminding parents cleaning up messes that there's a benefit to letting your kids make the mess in the first place, which is an idea that's stuck with me as I clean up my own kids' messes. This book checks *all* of my boxes for a good picture book (which is kinda hard).
#20AuthorsNoMen
P.S. at this point, I think I've exhausted the range of "author" definitions I wanted to include in my list, and I've now got the unenviable task of balancing between genres and trying to hit some of my favorite authors before we get to 20. We'll see how that goes...

Which Prospect Raiders Should Keep Their Eye On https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/onsi/las-vegas-which-prospect-should-keep-their-eye-on

Final joint on the north frame if the workshop. I cut the mortice horizontally, which was a lot more awkward, but not as awkward as dismantling the whole frame and putting it together again.
Still ill, but I've managed this.

Vinci, which uses AI simulations to accelerate chip and other hardware design, raised a $36M Series A led by Xora Innovation, taking its total funding to $46M (Max A. Cherney/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/software-

A sufficiently comfy cat is indistinguishable from genAI :neocat_confused:

Trevon Diggs was a statement release, which Cowboys could be next? https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2026/01/03/dallas-cowboys-trevon-diggs-potential-releases-2026-offseason/8799…

That last bit from Trump on the final question asked… which was about Putin… was maybe the most dark. He is unhappy with Putin. He is unhappy that he hasn’t stopped the war in Ukraine. He said if the US Military was involved it would have stopped that war.
His body language and the way he spoke makes me think he feels like he now has one up on Putin. He might think he is more powerful than Putin.
This feels much much more dangerous.
#russiaukrainewar

The Speaker of the House and his son monitor each other's porn usage (no, I'm not kidding) which poses a very real cyber threat to national security.
Faith-based content filers mean very real diminished digital security for those who use them.
https://stuff.davidaugust.com/securing

Securing Faith, Sacrificing Safety
Digital Risks of Faith-Based Content Filters Centralized filtering systems often collect user data to function, raising real privacy and security issues as they are often not properly secured or anonymized. It is a one-stop shop to comprise the security and safety of an entire religious community, and each member of

Assassin's Creed: splosh!
I'm on the 'final' mission now, which is to find the Templar organising all the blockades and book burning and general malpractice. Except I know it's not the last mission, since there are two more mission blocks in the animus. The last assassination was exceptionally annoying. The port master was, as his name suggests, at the port. Specifically, he coops himself up on a ship.

Behn appeared to win Davidson county
— which includes Nashville
— with 77.7% of the vote
compared to Van Epps’ 21.6%.
Behn focused her campaign on restoring abortion access after Tennessee’s near-total ban,
expanding Medicaid to close rural hospital gaps,
eliminating the state sales tax on groceries,
and increasing public school funding.

TIL about https://jsx.lol/ from @… which seems to be carrying the torch forward from my blog post a few years back:

I ordered a vegetable curry - which the day before, I had confirmed had no meat.
But today's staff decided to do me a favor and add chicken to it. Yay. Thanks...
#Indonesia #Vegetarian #Travel

So the website for Venezuela's state-run electricity transmission system is down for maintenance.

The White House published a photo in which Netanyahu is seen forced by Trump to apologize to Qatari PM Al Thani while reading a piece of paper on the phone. I guess the script was 99% sure provided to him by Trump or his administration.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/5

The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height
but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble
than to be walked upon.
-- Franz Kafka

Which Young Raiders Continue to Take Strides Forward https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/onsi/las-vegas-which-young-continue-take-strides-forward

Condé United and The NewsGuild "strongly condemn" Teen Vogue's consolidation, saying it will throttle staff diversity and blunt its progressive political bent (Katie Kilkenny/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business

As Condé Nast Folds Teen Vogue Into Vogue’s Website, NewsGuild Condemns the Plan
The union, which reps staffers, says the move was "clearly designed" to blunt the journalism of the brand, which has leaned in to progressive politics.

if you need it, please take care of your mental health, which may be in the form of adding more mute words and blocking news accounts or all the way to a social media sabbatical
you don't owe it to anyone to follow the news and it's not your fault what bad people do

Which Raiders players helped or hurt the team the most in Week 9? https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/raiders/which-raiders-players-helped-or-hurt-the-team-the-most-in-week-9-3531973/

2025 NFL playoff picture: What Cowboys-Lions means for NFC seeding, wild-card chaos and teams on the bubble

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfl-playoff-picture-standings-2025/

unicodelang: Languages spoken by country (2015)
A bipartite network of languages and the countries in which they are spoken, as estimated by Unicode. Edges are weighted by the proportion of the given country's population that is literate in a particular language.
This network has 868 nodes and 1255 edges.
Tags: Informational, Relatedness, Weighted

If you want to see who is on which level of the building height, then you can check this here online worldwide.
🗺️ GlobalBuildingAtlas LoD1
#openstreetmap

Three weeks before the elections in the Netherlands, the polls don't look good. After the complete failure of the coalition in which Wilders' PVV was the largest party, it again leads the polls. But now 'farmers' party' BBB has moved there too, the far-right in total may get around 1/3 of the votes.

The rise of candidates centering gun violence is a result of the growing prevention movement across the US, which has become something of 👉a pipeline for new candidates running for office.
#Maxwell #Frost, the nation’s first gen Z US representative, started off as a volunteer before becoming organizing director for <…

Don't sleep on The Stack - it has a solid cybersecurity reporting game lately.
The Big Interview: NATO cybersecurity chief Mario Beccia
https://www.thestack.technology/the-big-interview-nato-cybersecurity-chief-mario-beccia/

The Big Interview: NATO Cybersecurity chief Mario Beccia
"Things are moving so fast that receiving a piece of information that is TLP-red, which means that you cannot even tell your colleagues, creates..."

7AI, which builds AI agents that analyze and triage cybersecurity alerts, raised a $130M Series A at a ~$700M valuation, bringing its total raised to $166M (James Rundle/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/cybersecurity-sta…

Currently sulking because years ago I got rid of my Sony tape deck from the 1990s which was amazing and I think they didn’t even sell it in the US
Stupid past me

NFL coaching, GM shakeups are coming: What I'm hearing as the firing cycle begins

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfl-coaches-gms-who-could-be-fired-kevin-stef…

email_enron: Email network (Enron corpus)
The Enron email corpus, containing all the email communication from the Enron corporation, which was made public as a result of legal action. Nodes are email addresses and node i links to node j if i sent at least one email to address j. Non-Enron email addresses are also present, but only their links to/from Enron addresses are observed.
This network has 36692 nodes and 367662 edges.
Tags: Social, Communication, Unweighted, Multigr…

NASA's SPHEREx has completed its first multispectral map of the infrared sky.
It sees the sky in 102 infrared "colors," which lets it do things like this: One image highlights mature stars; the other focuses on carbon soot & gas clouds where new stars form. 🧪🔭
https://www.jpl.…

SPHEREx’s First All-Sky Map
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the leading center for robotic exploration of the solar system.

Moonlake AI, which offers tools to help users "vibe code virtual worlds", including for gaming, animation, and filmmaking, comes out of stealth with a $28M seed (Rashi Shrivastava/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivast

Gaming Worlds Could Be The Answer To AI’s Data Problem
Stanford PhDs Fan-Yun Sun and Sharon Lee cofounded AI research company Moonlake AI to help people "vibe code virtual worlds."

Flex, which offers AI-based financial services, credit, and more to mid-sized companies, raised a $60M Series B led by Portage, source says at a $500M valuation (Aditya Soni/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/a

Overreactions from NFL Week 9: Has Daniel Jones turned into a pumpkin? Are the Packers frauds?

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfl-week-9-overreactio…

ceo_club: CEO Club Memberships
A bipartite network of the memberships of chief executive officers and the social organizations (clubs) to which they belong, from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Data originally collected by Galaskiewicz in 1985.
This network has 40 nodes and 95 edges.
Tags: Social, Affiliation, Unweighted
https://

Horizon Quantum, which aims to list on Nasdaq via a SPAC in Q1 2026, claims it is the first private company to deploy a commercial quantum computer in Singapore (Dylan Butts/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/04/horizon-qu

Software startup deploys Singapore’s first quantum computer for commercial use
Singapore-based software firm Horizon Quantum Computing has become the first private firm to deploy a quantum computer for commercial use in the city-state.

It's not in this article
but the government asserts that the sandwich was thrown at
"point blank range",
which implies subway sandwiches have defined effective weapon ranges of varying lethality,
and I would like to see the government's chart of these ranges.

Trial Begins for D.C. Man Accused of Throwing a Sandwich at a Federal Agent
Jury selection started on Monday for Sean C. Dunn, who was charged with misdemeanor assault after hitting a federal agent with a “sub-style sandwich.”

A look at VideoAmp, which claims ad spending based on its data rose from $300M annually to $3B over the past three years, and is considered a real Nielsen rival (Matt Craig/Forbes)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/mattcraig/2025/10/30…

Why VideoAmp Thinks It Can Bust Nielsen’s TV Ratings Monopoly
With viewership data underpinning $60 billion in television advertising, an industry behemoth is suddenly facing questions about whether it is “bringing an abacus to an AI fight.”

2025 NFL playoff picture: Ranking NFC wild card contenders, from surging Packers to red-hot Cowboys

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/2025-nf

internet_top_pop: Internet topology (PoP level) (1969-2012)
Assorted snapshots of internet graph at the Point of Presence (PoP) level (which lies between the IP and AS levels), collected from around the world and at various times. The earliest snapshots are for ARPANET (1969-1972), with a few more from pre-2000. Most are from 2006 onward. Metadata include link type or speed, longitudes, and latitudes of nodes, URL, and date of record.
This network has 22 nodes and 25 edges.

Beacon Software, which buys niche software businesses and uses AI to transform them, raised a $250M Series B led by GC, Lightspeed, and D1 at a $1B valuation (Krystal Hu/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/technology/beacon-…

The Trump administration has paused all immigration applications filed by people from 19 countries who were banned from traveling to the United States earlier this year.
The action halts green card and citizenship processing for broad swaths of people, according to a spokesman from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

U.S. Pauses Immigration Applications From Nations on Travel Ban List
The pause, which will halt green card and U.S. citizenship processing for broad swaths of people, deepens a remarkable crackdown on legal immigration pathways in recent days.

The New Yorker joins Substack, which it sees as a social platform for "cultivat[ing] a community of readers"; the newsletter will share one free article/week (Emily Sundberg/Feed Me)
https://www.readfeedme.com/p/why-did-the-new-yorker-join-substack

Why did The New Yorker join Substack?
"We’re approaching Substack as much as a social platform as a newsletter-delivery system."

London-based Sokin, which develops tech for B2B cross-border payments, raised a $50M Series B led by Prysm Capital at a $300M valuation (John Reynolds/Tech.eu)
https://tech.eu/2025/12/01/cross-border-payment-fintech-sokin-lands-50m-funding-round/…

Cross-border payment fintech Sokin lands $50M funding round
Cross-border payment fintech Sokin has received $50m in a funding round, valuing the UK fintech at $300m.UK-headquartered Sokin says it will use the funding to speed up overseas expansion and on product development.The Series B funding round was led by US investment firm Prysm Capital, with Watershed Ventures participating. Existing investors, including investment funds managed by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital and Aurum Partners, also participated.Founded in 2019 and headquartered in London…

epinions: Epinions product ratings (2005)
A bipartite network of users and the products they rated on the website Epinions.com. A user connects to all products on which that user entered a rating. Edge weight represents the rating score, and edges are timestamped.
This network has 876252 nodes and 13668320 edges.
Tags: Economic, Preferences, Timestamps, Weighted

NY-based Teleskope, which offers smaller LLMs fine-tuned for specific security problems, raised a $25M Series A led by M13, taking its total funding to $32.2M (Leo Schwartz/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2025/11/03/former-airbnb-engin…

Former Airbnb engineer raises $25 million for AI security platform Teleskope
M13 led the Series A for the New York-based startup with participation from M13 and Lerer Hippeau.

wiki_rfa: Wikipedia RfA voting network (2013)
The set of all votes on Requests for Adminships (RfA), from 2003 to May 2013, represented as a directed, signed network in which nodes represent Wikipedia members and edges represent votes.
This network has 11381 nodes and 198275 edges.
Tags: Social, Relationships, Signed
https://

Seattle-based Gradial, which makes AI tools that automate enterprise marketing workflows, raised a $35M Series B led by VMG Partners at a $350M valuation (Taylor Soper/GeekWire)
https://www.geekwire.com/2025/seattle-star

dbpedia_recordlabel: DBpedia artist-label affiliations
Bipartite networks of the affiliations (contractual relations) between artists and the record labels under which they have performed, as extracted from Wikipedia by the DBpedia project.
This network has 186758 nodes and 233286 edges.
Tags: Economic, Employment, Unweighted
http…

Ofcom fines AVS Group, which runs 18 adult sites, £1M under the OSA, the largest penalty so far, and threatens action against a "major social media company" (Daniel Thomas/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/abe78aa2-6e62-419b-925c-9818e86e7179

bitcoin_trust: Bitcoin OTC trust network (2017)
A network of who-trusts-whom relationships among users of the Bitcoin OTC platform. Each directed edge (i,j,w) represents the rating of user j by user i, in which i assigns j a weight w on a scale of -10 (total distrust) to 10 (total trust) in steps of 1.
This network has 5881 nodes and 35592 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Weighted, Signed, Timestamps

Augmented Intelligence, which is building neuro-symbolic AI models, raised $20M in a bridge SAFE round at a $750M valuation, bringing its total funding to ~$60M (Carl Franzen/VentureBeat)
https://venturebeat.com/ai/the-beginning-of-the-end…

windsurfers: Windsurfers network (1986)
A network of interpersonal contacts among windsurfers in southern California during the Fall of 1986. The edge weights indicate the perception of social affiliations majored by the tasks in which each individual was asked​ to sort cards with other surfer’s name in the order of closeness.
This network has 43 nodes and 336 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Weighted

Mumbai-based Knight Fintech, which builds core infrastructure connecting banks, lenders, platforms, and borrowers, raised $23.6M led by Accel (The Economic Times)
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/…

Knight Fintech secures $23.6 million from Accel, IIFL, & others
Knight Fintech has raised $23.6 million in a funding round led by early-stage venture firm Accel, with participation from IIFL and Rocket Capital. Existing investors Prime Venture Partners, 3One4 Capital, Commerce VC, and Trifecta Capital also participated in the round.

Stripe agrees to acquire Metronome, which offers APIs to help SaaS companies charge customers based on usage and has raised $128M in total funding (Scott Woody/Metronome)
https://metronome.com/blog/important-company-update

Important Company Update | Metronome blog
A new chapter for modern monetization and global payments. Metronome has signed a definitive agreement to join Stripe.

baseball: Baseball steroid use (2008)
Two networks representing steroid use among baseball players. First, a bipartite network of players and their steroid providers (of illegal performance-enhancing substances). Second, a one-mode projection of players, which are linked if they have a common supplier.
This network has 72 nodes and 1089 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Weighted, Projection

A profile of nonprofit Common Crawl, which scraped billions of web pages since 2013, including paywalled articles, to build an archive used by OpenAI and others (Alex Reisner/The Atlantic)
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/202

Common Crawl Is Doing the AI Industry’s Dirty Work
Common Crawl claims to provide a public benefit, but it lies to publishers about its activities.

highschool: Illinois high school students (1958)
A network of friendships among male students in a small high school in Illinois from 1958. An arc points from student i to student j if i named j as a friend, in either of two identical surveys (from Fall and Spring semesters). Edge weights are the number of surveys in which the friendship was named.
This network has 70 nodes and 366 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Weighted

A look at startups like AGI and Plato, which build replicas of websites to let AI agents learn to navigate and complete specific tasks, like booking flights (Cade Metz/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02…

Silicon Valley Builds Amazon and Gmail Copycats to Train A.I. Agents
Several new start-ups are building replicas of sites so A.I. can learn to use the internet and maybe replace white-collar workers.

A profile of Dario Amodei and Anthropic, which is on track to hit a nearly $10B annualized run rate by the end of 2025, more than 10x what it generated in 2024 (Jeremy Kahn/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/article/anthropic-ceo-d…

Anthropic is all in on ‘AI safety’—and that’s helping the $183 billion startup win over big business
Founders Daniela and Dario Amodei have made Anthropic and its Claude models the AI many companies prefer over rivals OpenAI and ChatGPT.

OpenAI agrees to buy Poland-based Neptune, which makes tools for analyzing progress during AI model training; the transaction will be in stock (Dina Bass/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-03/openai-agre…

A profile of AI hearing aid startup Fortell, which has raised $150M so far and is targeting affluent clients in NYC with a $6,800 device that uses a custom chip (Steven Levy/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/hearing-aid-startup-ai-fortell/

New Hearing Aid Company, Foretell, Brings in Steve Martin and Others as Fans
AI-powered startup Fortell has become a secret handshake for the privileged hearing-impaired crowd who swear by the product. Now, it wants to be in your ears.

OpenAI and AWS agree to a seven year deal in which OpenAI will pay $38B for AI compute, including training its models on Amazon's servers and using its CPUs (Berber Jin/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-amazon-

Anthropic announces a deal with Cognizant, under which Cognizant will deploy Claude to its 350,000 employees and co-sell Claude models to its business customers (Belle Lin/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/anthropic-l…

Copper demand is being boosted by AI data centers, which require 27-33 tonnes per MW, over 2x that of conventional data centers, according to miner Grupo México (Camilla Hodgson/Financial Times)

Sources: Anthropic has tapped a law firm to begin work on its IPO, which could come as soon as 2026, and has held preliminary talks with big investment banks (George Hammond/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/3254fa30-5bdb-4c30-8560-7cd7ebbefc5f

Q&A with iRobot founder Rodney Brooks on his startup Robust.AI, which builds warehouse robots, unrealistic expectations around humanoid robots and AI, and more (Om Malik/Crazy Stupid Tech)
https://crazystupidtech.com/2025/09/29/irobot-founder-dont…

iRobot Founder: Don’t Believe The (AI & Robotics) Hype!
Rodney Brooks, co-founder of three robotic companies and an AI guru has a pragmatic and honest opinions about the state of AI and Robotics. An interview!

Thoughts on AI progress and why AI labs' actions hint at a worldview in which AI models will continue to fare poorly at generalization and on-the-job learning (Dwarkesh Patel/Dwarkesh Podcast)
https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/thoughts-on-ai-progress-dec-2025

Thoughts on AI progress (Dec 2025)
Why I'm moderately bearish in the short term, and explosively bullish in the long term

A look at Elon Musk's bet that Tesla's future is in its Optimus humanoid robots, which for now rely on human helpers and still face commercial challenges (Becky Peterson/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/elon-musk-optimus

DeFi protocol Balancer says its V2 Composable Stable Pools suffered an exploit, which security experts estimate resulted in total losses worth about $128M (Ryan S. Gladwin/Decrypt)
https://decrypt.co/347173/balancer-exploited-128-million-across…

Balancer Exploited for $128 Million Across Ethereum Chains as Berachain Halts Network
Some $128 million in crypto was stolen from Balancer liquidity pools on Ethereum and beyond, with Berachain halting its chain as a result.

A look at Palantir's four-month "Meritocracy Fellowship" for high school graduates, which offers a path to a job at Palantir without a university degree (Angel Au-Yeung/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/business/palantir-thin

OnePlus launches US preorders for the $899.99 OnePlus 15 after receiving FCC clearance, which had been delayed due to the US government shutdown (Dominic Preston/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/838017/oneplus-15-preorders-us

OnePlus 15 launches US preorders after delayed FCC clearance
With a 7,300mAh battery, the OnePlus 15 is one of the longest lasting smartphones on the market right now.

Instacart launches an AI shopping assistant as part of its white-label e-commerce service, which powers the online shopping sites for some grocery chains (Natalie Lung/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-04/instacart-…

A look at AVA, an AI chatbot developed by Alaska's court system to provide aid in the probate process, which has been plagued by delays and hallucinations (Jared Perlo/NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/alaskas-court…

Alaska's court system built an AI chatbot. It didn’t go smoothly.
Alaska’s courts spent more than a year building an AI chatbot to help with probate, revealing how difficult it is to deploy AI in government services.

Alphabet's X is increasingly spinning out independent companies via a dedicated Series X Capital fund, which has raised $500M with a minority Alphabet stake (Connie Loizos/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/02/alph

Alphabet is increasingly launching "moonshot" projects as independent companies -- here's why | TechCrunch
Despite the emphasis on detachment from ideas, X employees do have significant skin in the game when projects spin out.

Malaysian authorities are using drones, power sensors, and tips to hunt Bitcoin miners over power theft, which cost a state energy company $1.1B over five years (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Bitcoin (BTC) Miners Hunted After Stealing $1 Billion Power From Malaysia Grid
Cracking down on illegal Bitcoin mining gangs has become a cat-and-mouse game in Malaysia.

An investigation finds rampant caste bias in ChatGPT and Sora; a researcher also finds caste bias in Sarvam AI, which touts itself as a sovereign AI for India (Nilesh Christopher/MIT Technology Review)
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/01/1124621/openai-in…

OpenAI is huge in India. Its models are steeped in caste bias.
India is OpenAI’s second-largest market, but ChatGPT and Sora reproduce caste stereotypes that harm millions of people.

University of Virginia professor Ken Ono, one of the world's most prominent mathematicians, joins AI startup Axiom Math, which is building an "AI mathematician" (Ben Cohen/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/math-ken-ono…

Grokipedia content often closely mirrors Wikipedia except for some political topics but its use of AI makes it better than Wikipedia on obscure entries (Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/grokipedia-elon-musk-wikipedia-ai-which…

I tried Grokipedia. It has something to teach Wikipedia about AI.
Grokipedia's mission to be "anti-woke" doesn't appeal to me. But its use of AI to help write articles actually makes some sense. Wikipedia, take note.

Japanese trade association CODA, representing Studio Ghibli, Square Enix and others, demands OpenAI to stop using their copyrighted content to train Sora 2 (Stevie Bonifield/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/812545/coda-studio-ghibli-sora-2-copyri…

Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, Square Enix demand OpenAI stop using their content to train AI
CODA, which represents Japanese IP holders like Studio Ghibli, is requesting OpenAI stop using its members’ content for machine learning.

HBO Max's 4K Mad Men re-release had multiple errors, including lacking post-production edits in some scenes; a source says Lionsgate delivered the wrong 4K file (Tony Maglio/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-ne

The ‘Mad Men’ 4K Stream on HBO Max Had So Many Problems (Not All of Which Involved a Barf Machine)
But the best one definitely did.

Sources: Anthropic is in talks to buy developer tool startup Bun for low hundreds of millions, its first acquisition; Claude Code hit $1B in annualized revenue (Sri Muppidi/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/an

Anthropic in Advanced Talks to Buy Developer Tool Startup in First Acquisition
Anthropic is in advanced discussions to buy Bun, a maker of software used to run and manage code more efficiently, according to a person with knowledge of the deal. The artificial intelligence company is in talks to pay in the low hundreds of millions of dollars for the startup, which would be ...