Tootfinder

I follow the USGS Earthquake News Service emails (you can set a magnitude threshold for alerts) because I like to see the total distribution of earthquakes of different magnitudes rather than just hearing about earthquakes that cause a lot of damage. Yesterday afternoon there was a 7.6-magnitude quake in Panama, which is an extremely dangerous earthquake.
News seems to indicate that relatively little death/injury has resulted, which is great:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/panama-earthquake-tsunami-threat/
7 magnitude earthquakes are pretty rare, but are strong enough to almost always cause damage, unless they're very far from inhabited places. This one did collapse buildings and probably did plenty of property damage.

As AI models commoditize, lasting wealth will accrue to those controlling chokepoints like distribution, payment rails, and a stablecoin dollar, not to the labs (The Commanding Heights)
https://commanding-heights.com/#top

The Commanding Heights
An essay by Will Manidis and Joe Roberts. Technological revolutions are almost never born where they ultimately create wealth.

Anthropic renames its $100 per month Max 5x plan as Max and the $200 per month Max 20x plan as Ultra, and removes the 5-hour limit for verified Ultra accounts (Claude/@claudeai)
https://x.com/claudeai/status/2116220869479428500

Claude (@claudeai) on X
We’re renaming our Max plans: Max 5x → Max Max 20x → Ultra Max is still $100/month, and Ultra is still $200. If you’re a subscriber, there’s nothing you need to do. We’re also removing the 5-hour limit for verified Ultra accounts, starting today with most existing subscribers. Newer accounts ke…

Reddit closed down 29.27% on Friday, the worst drop since becoming a public company in 2024, after it forecast weak Q4 revenue (Caleigh Keating/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/30/reddit-stock-q3-earnings.html

Reddit stock plunges 30% after weak outlook, heads for worst day ever
Reddit shares sank on Friday after the company issued weak Q4 sales guidance and announced it will test requiring users to log in to see content.

Anthropic says it partnered with Theorem to use Claude to formally prove security properties at the assembly level across 100 real-world open-source libraries (Anthropic)
https://www.anthropic.com/research/formal-verification

LLMs are making formal software verification feasible at a much larger scale
Claude formally proved security properties in the compiled code of 123 open-source libraries. Along the way, it found bugs that had eluded detection for years.

Amazon rebrands Kindle Unlimited as Kindle and expands access to audiobooks, including titles narrated by AI (Maria Diaz/ZDNET)
https://www.zdnet.com/tech/kindle-unlimited-kindle-plus-audiobooks-ai/

Amazon's Kindle Unlimited is now Kindle+, and the 2 big changes include AI audiobooks - ZDNET
Unlike narrated audiobooks from Audible and other providers, the audiobooks created with Virtual Voice in Kindle+ will instead be narrated by AI.

The Browser Company plans to shut down its Arc browser on December 22, as it shifts attention to the AI-focused Dia browser (Jay Peters/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/tech/1016832/arc-browser-shutting-down

Arc browser is shutting down
The Browser Company is sunsetting the Arc browser, which will stop working on macOS and PC on December 22nd.

An interview with Intel's leadership, including CTO Pushkar Ranade, on AI chip demand, lessons from 10nm, whether Intel can catch up to TSMC, Terafab, and more (Dwarkesh Patel/Dwarkesh Podcast)
https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/intel-tour

A look at a crude campaign of cyberattacks by Russia-linked hacktivist groups that have caused physical damage in NATO-aligned countries over the past two years (Ryan Gallagher/Bloomberg)

Tests: chatbots rely on three obscure AI-built voter sites for US midterm answers; Copilot cited the error-prone Ballot Brief in 75% of tests and ChatGPT in 22% (Washington Post)

How an obscure website became a force in America’s election information machine
Experts are concerned the new crop of influential AI-created sites could quietly spread errors to millions of voters.