Daily AI Briefing

On Equity, we unpacked what the midterms mean for the tech industry.

A memo circulated earlier this year reportedly claimed that China’s Ministry of State Security recruited a female technology executive to spy on Nvidia's CEO.

Systems provide 360-degree view of airport operations, but concerns have been raised about the technology The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has announced that the first digital air traffic control towers in the US are officially operational, bringing new technology first to smaller airports in Florida and Alaska as the Trump administration presses ahead with updating the country’s ageing aviation infrastructure. The systems are now online at the Bartow executive airport (KBOW) in Florida

Meta just bought an app for running coding agents side by side. My four agents finished in 25 minutes. Reviewing and merging their work… Continue reading on Towards AI »

Discover 10 open-source tools that help Claude understand your codebase, remember project decisions, access current documentation, test… Continue reading on Towards AI »

Long context and fine-tuning both look like shortcuts. Continue reading on Towards AI »

Twenty-five years ago, Kevin Lewandowski founded Discogs, arguably the destination online for obsessive vinyl collectors and music nerds of all stripes. It is a marketplace for buying and selling records, obviously, but it's also become so much more. It's a shockingly comprehensive database that covers not just albums and singles, but all the various versions and pressings. It's a really fun rabbit hole to disappear down when you're trying to figure out what obscure pressing of Ministry's The Mi

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake showcases plenty of modern effects. | Image: Nintendo While some retailers were offering preorder discounts on the remastered Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, it’s not too late to save if you missed out. Costco members can currently get $5 off the digital version online, bringing the price down to $54.99. Considering an annual Costco membership runs $65, that discount almost offsets one month of your plan — a prime example of “gamer math.” The L

The NYT Cooking app now has a built in AI assistant. | Photo: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Around 7PM each weeknight, I find myself standing in front of the fridge, trying to decide on something for dinner that won't make my husband complain, "Chicken again?" Yes, I should meal plan more, but I don't, so this is where I'm at. A nightly battle in which the chicken usually wins. Recently, my best weapon in this fight has been AI. Between Alexa Plus in the Echo smart display on my kitchen

Concerns are being raised that neither the Commerce Department nor Nvidia are doing their due diligence when it comes to vetting Chinese firms cleared to handle the company's H200 AI chips. According to The New York Times, New Matrix is on the list of approved firms, yet its offices are empty, "a hollow gray shell with wires dangling from the ceiling where lights should be." In fact, the paper could find little evidence that the company exists in any meaningful way: Only scant information can be

Today, I’m talking with Alex Stamos, chief security officer at Cognition and longtime cybersecurity expert, about what a mess cybersecurity is right now. This episode is part one of a special series looking at AI in real life. I’ve always enjoyed talking to Alex because he’s so direct, and you’re going to hear him say that the multibillion-dollar cybersecurity industry as we’ve known it is essentially overdue to the unrelenting, AI-boosted waves of hacks, breaches, and attacks — and this is only

I'm calling it: time of death, November 6th, 1:30 AM, by tweet. Elon Musk's declaration Friday that Tesla would be "winding down" production of the Cybertruck next year to make room for the Cybercab was fascinating for a number of reasons. First, it was a humiliating way to kill a vehicle that was once hailed as the pinnacle of Tesla's engineering - faster than a Porsche 911, more powerful than an F-150, able to leap over the Model Y as a singular representation of Musk's Blade Runner-inspired

One contract file, three layers of evals, and the bad answer that got past my keyword check Continue reading on Towards AI »

Semi-retired professor Carolyn Marvin became a local celebrity facing down Philadelphia’s growing robot delivery army: ‘It’s my first amendment right to protest’ “One of you needs to be on the lookout for cops, while I block the robot, OK?” It is a crisp fall morning in Philadelphia. Tucked away in a dingy alley, opposite a garage called Patriot Parking, 78-year-old Carolyn Marvin is laying out some ground rules for a robot-disrupting expedition. Once a suitable target is identified, we will fol

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 151, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, get psyched because it's officially Bad Holiday Movie Season, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about Andrew Garfield and GTA VI and sexy joke thieves, finally actually watching The Sopranos for the first time (I know, I know), mourning the end of Salon, reinstalling the new and extremely improved Noti

It works on a laptop with 16GB of memory. Bring 340GB of free disk, and enough patience for a word every couple of seconds Continue reading on Towards AI »

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. | Photo: Jason Henry/Bloomberg via Getty Images Anthropic is using AI to build more powerful AI. And it appears to be working remarkably well, with the company's models improving roughly twice as quickly as a year ago, with little indication of slowing down. That's according to a new report published Thursday by the AI safety research organization METR, following an 11-week investigation inside the company, as part of a report evaluating its AI research and developm

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DataVita has revised plan for Chapelhall development to be wholly powered by 1GW of renewable energy A datacentre company that said it would power a massive AI development near Glasgow with renewable energy has admitted that the scheme will be entirely served by the National Grid. DataVita, a key plank of the UK’s AI strategy, had promised that the Lanarkshire project would draw 1GW – the equivalent output of a small nuclear reactor, or Britain’s largest windfarm – from green sources. But when t

Power and water constraints are pressuring what seemed like a juggernaut of growth for the region just months ago In early 2026, Thailand’s datacentre industry was on a roll. The country’s board of investment had recently announced approval of datacentre projects from Tiktok, a UAE-based Skyline datacentre and Singapore’s Bridge datacentres, totalling a planned investment of $27bn. As the year has passed, however, what once seemed like a new industrial juggernaut has ground to a halt. Thailand p

Samuel Gibbs doubted he could cut costs and still keep warm by putting tech in control. The results surprised him Can smart thermostats and AI reduce your heating bills? Every manufacturer claims the answer is yes, quoting average savings in the 25%, or £180 a year range. But all of these promises are heavily caveated and, with energy costs changing regularly, it can be very difficult to tell what is having an impact. To find out if technology can really help, I spent the last two years comparin

The deal highlights the challenges of developing massive AI data centers.

OpenAI is now valued at $1.25 trillion in a new round of funding that has raised another $11 billion, according to Bloomberg. That would make it one of the world's most valuable companies, not long after raising $122 billion from investors in March at a valuation of $852 billion. Echoing FT and Wall Street Journal reports from last week, Bloomberg says OpenAI is still pursuing additional investments that could increase the amount to $20 billion, and that it had initially hoped to raise as much

Tech stocks have lost trillions while voters have rejected the industry’s political champions. The billionaire-led boom is facing a democratic reckoning This week’s midterms showed that the political bill for the AI boom is falling due. The Democratic sweep intensified fears over runaway spending, mounting debt and resistance to datacentres, sending tech shares tumbling. On Thursday Wall Street suffered its worst day since the pandemic as $3.2tn was wiped from markets. Anthropic, developer of th

China's intelligence agency recruited Megaspeed executive Alice Huang to spy on Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, according to The New York Times. The Ministry of State Security (MSS) enlisted her to glean information about American AI chips and "potentially influence the company to push for its most advanced chips to be made available to China." Megaspeed is a customer of Nvidia's, and Alice Huang also has "relationships with executives at the highest levels of the A.I. chip industry," including leaders

OpenAI has reportedly raised an additional $11 billion as part of a funding round that hasn't closed yet but is expected to in the coming weeks.

SpaceX has declared that it’s going to make Starlink Mobile a “major” mobile carrier. The Elon Musk-owned company has already deployed thousands of direct-to-cell satellites, but its next big challenge is building out its 5G network here on Earth. As part of its plans to rival AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, SpaceX has inked a deal with Qualcomm, which will deploy its cellular technology across tens of thousands of 5G cell sites starting in 2027. SpaceX is also reportedly in talks to buy Boost Mobi

Seven small ideas explain it, including what the Seed, Steps and CFG settings in your image app actually do Continue reading on Towards AI »

Buying the 4K Blu-ray disc version of KPop Demon Hunters was already going to be a wise idea for some people, especially those who primarily keep their $26.99 Netflix Premium subscription just to watch the hit animated flick in 4K. But at just $24.99 from Barnes and Noble and Amazon instead of its original $49.95 price, it’s easier than ever to recommend. KPop Demon Hunters (4K Blu-ray) Where to Buy: $49.95 $24.99 at Amazon $49.95 $24.99 at Barnes & Noble The Criterion Collection version of

Asian and European markets follow US tech rout with many analysts predicting more waves of selling to come European and Asian stock markets fell sharply on Friday after the Democrats’ decisive victory in the midterms triggered a rout in US tech stocks a day earlier. A sell-off on Wall Street on Thursday was followed by sharp falls in Asian stock markets on Friday. The investor sentiment then reached London, where the market was, at one stage, poised for its worst day since March. Continue readi

Men allegedly impersonated voices and images of executives to convince employees to send large payments Three foreign nationals were arrested and charged with using AI to allegedly impersonate corporate CEOs and attorneys to steal over $100m, according to an indictment that was newly unsealed by the US Department of Justice. According to a press release from the United States attorney’s office for the southern district of New York, three men – Jacob Soall, Sharon Hazan, and Guy Sheetrit – were a

Tech industry fears delays to its multi-trillion dollar infrastructure buildout meant to power artificial intelligence Several newly elected Democrats and Senator Bernie Sanders have renewed calls for datacenter moratoriums in the days after the US midterm elections. The sweeping Democratic victory, which was buoyed in part by backlash to the tech industry, has added momentum to efforts to slow down the multi-trillion-dollar buildout of the controversial facilities. On the social media platform

Why learning to predict in latent space may be more important than generating pixels — and what comes next for intelligent robots. Continue reading on Towards AI »

Opening the black box of AI agents and building one from scratch. Continue reading on Towards AI »

Shure’s MV7 Plus is a popular podcasting and streaming mic. | Image: Shure While the Shure Mv7 Plus is popular with streamers and podcasters, it’s equally good at impressing your friends and coworkers on meetings and Discord calls. It’s currently marked down to $255 at various retailers, including Amazon, Guitar Center, and directly from Shure. That’s almost $50 lower than its usual price, and just a few dollars off Amazon’s all-time low. If you don’t already have a stand, both Amazon and Shur

In 2025, developers exposed approximately 28.65 million secrets on public GitHub — a 34% increase over the previous year. According to… Continue reading on Towards AI »

Separate actions also take place outside fence and across Europe in backlash against impact of AI boom Activists have stormed the site of a Microsoft datacentre being built in Amsterdam, as the backlash to the social and environmental harms of the AI boom spreads across Europe. Protesters from Geef Tegengas, a Dutch direct action group, clashed with police while breaking into a construction site at Westpoort, Amsterdam, where some members climbed a crane, lit flares and tied helium balloons to e

Security researchers found hundreds of servers hosting the penetration testing tool Artex exposed to the internet, allowing anyone access to the hacking tool.

Meta's Muse agents continue to get new features and integrations. Spaces promises to be a new way to interact with the AI helpers.

A massive permitting bill that could help energy projects come online much quicker and potentially lower utility bills for Americans is advancing with bipartisan support. And while it could be a catalyst for lots of clean energy, it could also speed up polluting projects and limit oversight of new data centers. With data centers demanding more electricity for AI, environmental advocates fear that developers could take advantage of the reforms to evade public scrutiny and rely more heavily on fos

Meta will now allow you to build customized, app-like experiences within Muse. The new feature, called "spaces," allows its AI assistant to build things like a shopping hub, school dashboard, music tracker, trivia game, and more, which you can interact with directly in the Muse app. Meta says you can create a new space by describing it. If you connect an outside app to Muse - like Gmail, Google Calendar, OpenTable, Notion, and others Muse works with - the AI assistant will continuously pull info

In one week, an app quietly added itself to developers’ AI agents, and a fake Claude Code extension planted an SSH backdoor. Here’s what… Continue reading on Towards AI »

Democrats’ historic victories in this week’s U.S. midterm elections could also transform the tech industry. The public voted on 41 data center-related ballot measures on Tuesday — in all but one, the majority voted to impose more restrictions on data center development. And even when data centers weren’t on the ballot directly, they were a […]