ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Gemini [1]all suffered significant service disruptions within roughly the same few-hour window Thursday morning. [2]OpenAI and [3]Anthropic reported elevated errors and later restored service, while Grok remained [4]impaired and third-party monitoring [5]indicated a likely Gemini [6]outage despite no public acknowledgment from Google. Ars Technica reports:

> Other major Internet services, including [7]Amazon Web Services , [8]Microsoft Azure , and [9]Cloudflare , have not reported any major issues as of press time Thursday, though issue reports on DownDetector did spike somewhat for all three this morning.

>

> While the affected frontier models go down occasionally, having all four experience interruptions in the same short period is practically unheard of. Claude [10]reports 99.4 percent uptime for its services over the last 90 days and last reported a similar three-hour "partial outage" [11]on August 24 . OpenAI [12]reports 99.63 percent uptime for ChatGPT and 100 percent uptime for ChatGPT Codex in the same period. ChatGPT's so-called "Work Mode" reported an hours-long period of "elevated latency" [13]on August 31 .



[1] https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/09/four-major-ai-models-suffer-rare-overlapping-downtime/

[2] https://status.openai.com/incidents/01M1KWEDH417T2CF44YYHZDFCR

[3] https://status.claude.com/incidents/461yvfrzpwtt

[4] https://downdetector.com/status/grok/

[5] https://downdetector.com/status/googlegemini/

[6] https://statusgator.com/services/google-ai-studio-and-gemini-api

[7] https://health.aws.amazon.com/health/status

[8] https://azure.status.microsoft/en-us/status

[9] https://www.cloudflarestatus.com/services

[10] https://status.claude.com/

[11] https://status.claude.com/incidents/vgz5psbjmt1h

[12] https://status.openai.com/

[13] https://status.openai.com/incidents/01M1C5M4K0WC8PPT0Z175RJA1E

A former UK competition official has [1]filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit against Apple on behalf of app developers, alleging its App Tracking Transparency rules [2]unfairly disadvantaged third-party apps while favoring Apple's own advertising ecosystem . Engadget reports:

> ATT [3]debuted in 2021, ostensibly to give users more control over how much of their activity app developers can track across other apps and websites. The company told Reuters it was "bound by the exact same requirements as all developers."

>

> However, regulators across Europe including in France, Italy and Poland have [4]investigated ATT. Germany's competition regulator, the Federal Cartel Office, last month [5]determined that Apple was favoring its own apps over those from external developers. It said the ATT pop-ups Apple used for its services "had the potential to encourage users to give their consent, whereas they had the potential to discourage consent for third-party apps."

>

> As such, the company agreed to make some changes to how ATT works in the European Union. That follows the French Competition Authority fining Apple $175 million at current rates over ATT last year.



[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/apple-facing-27-billion-uk-lawsuit-over-unfair-app-tracking-rules-2026-09-03/

[2] https://www.engadget.com/2250555/apple-sued-for-2-billion-over-app-tracking-transparency-rules/

[3] https://apple.slashdot.org/story/21/07/10/1915221/after-apples-app-tracking-transparency-advertisers-spent-more-money-targeting-android-users

[4] https://apple.slashdot.org/story/22/06/18/2310249/german-regulators-open-investigation-into-apples-app-tracking-transparency

[5] https://apple.slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/050253/german-publishers-push-regulators-to-fine-apple-over-app-tracking-transparency

Microsoft is [1]imposing monthly limits on Xbox Cloud Gaming starting in November, with Game Pass Ultimate, Premium, and Essential subscribers getting 15, 10, and 5 hours respectively before they have to buy additional playtime. "Currently, Game Pass subscribers can stream without these monthly hour limits," notes IGN. From the report:

> The change means those who use cloud gaming most via Game Pass will end up having to pay more, although Microsoft said this impacts 4% of Game Pass subscribers. Also in November, Microsoft said players will be able to buy cloud playtime hours through the Xbox Store and 'stream eligible games they own on supported devices' without subscribing to Game Pass.

>

> In a [2]blog post , Microsoft said it was making the changes because the cost of providing cloud gaming has grown as more people use it and play for longer. The monthly limits, Microsoft continued, will mean it can invest in reliability and performance. But it said it understood that for some players the practical result is a higher cost.



[1] https://www.ign.com/articles/microsoft-announces-big-changes-to-xbox-cloud-gaming-switches-to-monthly-hour-limits

[2] https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2026/09/03/xbox-cloud-gaming-changes/

OpenAI has [1]released GPT-6 Astra, a new model that president Greg Brockman called a "generational leap" and suggested [2]may represent the arrival of AGI . "I think it might be about this model," Brockman said in a briefing with reporters. He ended the briefing by saying: "Welcome to the AGI era." Axios reports:

> Astra pushes AI agents closer to doing complex professional work on their own -- while also raising questions about how safely they can be deployed. OpenAI said that Astra was built on its largest-ever training run, using more than 100,000 GPUs at its Stargate site in Texas.

>

> The company also said this is its first model to use other models in a significant role in supervising Astra's training. GPT-6 Astra will first be available to a limited set of organizations in OpenAI's Daybreak Access program and will be available "in the coming days" for ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise customers and API developers.

>

> OpenAI said earlier this week that Astra would be released soon, but that its most powerful cybersecurity capabilities would remain limited to a small group of trusted testers. Astra is the first model OpenAI has designated as reaching its "critical" cybersecurity threshold under its preparedness framework -- meaning it can potentially find and exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities across well-protected systems without step-by-step human guidance. OpenAI previously slowed Astra's release to add safety testing after determining that its cyber capabilities could reach the critical threshold.

Further reading: [3]OpenAI's New Reasoning Technique Alarms AI Safety Experts



[1] https://openai.com/index/gpt-6-astra/

[2] https://www.axios.com/2026/09/03/openai-astra-gpt-6-agi-brockman

[3] https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/09/03/174254/openais-new-reasoning-technique-alarms-ai-safety-experts

Nvidia has launched [1]PAIR , a free open-source tool that [2]links compatible computers on a home network so they can pool idle processing power for local AI inference and agentic workloads. "While the compatible devices are mostly Nvidia GeForce GPUs (PAIR works with RTX 20-series cards and newer, as well as RTX Pro GPUs and DGX Spark systems), Apple's M4 chips or newer will also work," reports The Verge. From the report:

> The key thing here is that PAIR uses your in-home systems when they're idle to avoid interfering with other tasks. And this disaggregated system of computers can work in parallel to chew through lots of processing requests -- which should be helpful for an agentic workflow that breaks complex tasks into smaller jobs. This should prevent large bottlenecks on a single GPU, and Nvidia says PAIR can adapt as devices join or leave the network -- including if a user does something like start playing a game on their desktop PC.

>

> [...] Nvidia says PAIR is secured by pairing all devices through a six digit code and then securing the channel via mTLS (Mutual Transport Layer Security), to create an encrypted communication line that's trusted in both directions between computers. The Nvidia PAIR beta is available today, with support for Windows, Linux, and macOS.



[1] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/ai-on-rtx/personal-ai-router/

[2] https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/989435/nvidia-pair-personal-ai-router-home-local-llm-compute-tool-rtx-macbook

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch:

> OpenAI's new Astra model will use a reasoning technique called "recurrent depth" that [1]allows it to operate outside of the sequential thinking that characterizes most reasoning models , The Information [2]reported on Tuesday. This technique, also called "opaque recurrence," will likely make the model's chain of thought more difficult to monitor -- and that has AI safety experts rattled. While Astra's use of the technique is reportedly limited, its emergence has still raised significant concerns among AI safety experts.

>

> "I am extremely concerned by the reporting that Astra uses opaque recurrence," wrote Redwood CEO Buck Shlegeris in a post after the news broke. "I don't know whether Astra is much less CoT monitorable than previous models. But if OpenAI pushes this technique further, they'll have the option to massively increase the recurrence and totally destroys CoT monitorability."

>

> Longtime AI safety advocate Zvi Mowshowitz also weighed in and wrote that laws might be necessary to prevent a "race to the bottom" among AI labs. "The technique is playing with fire, risking a taboo that OpenAI and Anthropic have fought to establish that we work hard to maintain Chain of Thought faithfulness and monitorability for as long as we can," Mowshowitz wrote. "More intensive use of such techniques would probably damage monitorability."

>

> [...] In a post responding to the news, Redwood Research chief scientist Ryan Greenblatt said opaque reasoning could easily scale faster than conventional chain-of-thought reasoning, effectively removing all reasoning from visible channels. "My biggest concern is that a natural progression from here would involve scaling up the opaque reasoning to the point where the model reasons entirely or almost entirely in latent space," Greenblatt wrote. "I hope it isn't too late to avoid the most concerning architectures and that OpenAI will stop here."

Astra's use of the technique appears limited. "OpenAI has worked to preserve and utilize chain-of-thought monitoring since our very first reasoning models," [3]wrote OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki. "It's a core goal of our current research program."



[1] https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/02/openais-new-reasoning-technique-alarms-ai-safety-experts/

[2] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/secret-technique-behind-openais-astra-model-sparks-security-concerns

[3] https://x.com/merettm/status/2095023204993490967

[1]BrianFagioli writes:

> Audacity 4.0 has been [2]released with a rebuilt Qt interface, a new clip-editing model, customizable workspaces, native high-DPI rendering, and a new AUP4 project format. The open source audio editor also [3]adds ASIO playback and recording support to official Windows builds , while bringing major changes to recording, playback, plugins, and project handling. The overhaul comes with some tradeoffs. Audacity 4.0 currently lacks several features found in Audacity 3, including Time Tracks, Note and MIDI tracks, Mixer, Macro Manager and scripting pipe, VAMP and LADSPA plugin hosting, and play-at-speed. The developers say they plan to bring the missing functionality back in future releases.



[1] https://slashdot.org/~BrianFagioli

[2] https://github.com/audacity/audacity/releases/tag/Audacity-4.0.0

[3] https://nerds.xyz/2026/09/audacity-4/

Google [1]released Gemini 3.8 Flash, [2]its third Flash model in six weeks , claiming it's their best reasoning and coding model yet (topping the DeepSWE leaderboard). Ars Technica reports:

> Gemini 3.8 Flash comes in two variations. There's the standard Flash, which Google describes as a "workhorse" model that's good for anything from agentic tasks to software development. Then we have Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber, which runs on the same foundations but has been tuned for vulnerability detection and mitigation.

>

> For developers, Google has the same pitch as it did for the [3]3.7 Flash release just a couple of weeks ago. API access to the model is available at an "introductory rate" through the end of the year: $0.75 per million input tokens and $3.75 per million output tokens. The regular price will be $1.50 / $7.50, but it's likely there will be new models available long before the price changes. Google probably sees the lower prices as a necessity given that other AI labs have recently dropped token pricing to keep increasingly wary businesses engaged with AI tools.

>

> [...] Gemini 3.8 Flash will be available across the Google ecosystem starting today, but Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber is currently limited to trusted testers and governments. Like the past Flash release, you'll need a Pro or Ultra subscription to access Gemini 3.8 Flash in the Gemini app, but you can always visit AI Studio if you want to tinker with it for free.



[1] https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/3-8-flash-and-3-8-flash-cyber/

[2] https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/09/google-releases-gemini-3-8-flash-its-third-flash-model-in-six-weeks/

[3] https://developers.slashdot.org/story/26/08/13/217215/googles-gemini-37-flash-targets-coding-and-agents-with-a-50-price-cut

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired:

> Michele Spagnuolo, the Google engineer arrested in May by U.S. authorities for [1]alleged insider trading on Polymarket, is making a new bold bet. On Wednesday, his legal team filed a motion to dismiss the charges against him. Spagnuolo isn't outright denying that he made money using internal information from Google. Instead, his legal team says that the wagers were not financial instruments subject to regulation by the United States' Commodities Exchange Act but [2]rather good old-fashioned international betting that the U.S. has no authority over .

>

> Spagnuolo, who has been placed on leave from Google, is accused of committing commodities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. Using the alias "AlphaRaccoon," he allegedly made a series of wagers on Polymarket's flagship platform that resulted in profits totaling over $1.2 million. According to the [3]criminal complaint , "AlphaRaccoon" correctly wagered that the singer D4vd, who gained notoriety for his suspected connection to a grisly killing, would be Google's most-searched person of the year in 2025. (D4vd was later charged with murder; he pleaded not guilty.) [...] Spagnuolo's lawyers argue that defining swaps to include wagers like who the most-searched person on Google will be each year "would fly in the face of the statute's purpose and history" and lead to "absurd results." They say it would make it so that any wager in the world, from a charity raffle to a local Ping-Pong match, could be classified as a financial instrument. "Spagnuolo is basically making the same argument as the states that are suing prediction markets," says a financial services regulation expert Todd Phillips. "This is the issue that will likely go up to the Supreme Court." Featured Video

>

> In addition to disputing the idea that prediction markets offer swaps, Spagnuolo's legal team argues that the U.S. government had no jurisdiction over him in the first place because he's a non-U.S. citizen who was wagering on a non-U.S. platform. Although Polymarket is headquartered in New York, the company's flagship prediction market is banned in the United States and technically is administered by an ostensibly Panama-based entity known as Adventure One QSS. Spagnuolo was living in Zurich, Switzerland, when he allegedly made the Google-related trades on Polymarket. "The extraterritorial argument is interesting and raises the question of whether the U.S. should be the world's prediction markets cop," Philipps says. Spagnuolo's team also claims that the charges should be dismissed because the internal information he supposedly leveraged did not have any commercial value to Google.



[1] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/05/28/060223/doj-charges-google-employee-with-12-million-polymarket-bet-on-search-term

[2] https://www.wired.com/story/google-engineer-accused-of-polymarket-insider-trading-says-he-was-just-gambling/

[3] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/media/1442621/dl

"Enshittification of car controls [is] rapidly accelerating," writes longtime Slashdot reader [1]sinij , pointing to a new report from Car and Driver. From the report:

> Remember when iPhones used to come with free headphones and a phone charger (including the wall plug)? It didn't feel so much like Apple giving you free goodies as it did that the company was providing you with the relevant hardware to use the device. Apple [2]stopped including headphones and charging blocks [3]in 2020 . Now, Hyundai is pulling some of its standard hardware from the box, at least for two models.

>

> Hyundai is [4]charging customers extra for a driver's display in the new Elantra generation (more specifically, the Korea-market Avante), as well as the Ioniq 3, Motor1 [5]reported . Both models feature Pleos Connect, Hyundai's new infotainment setup that pairs a center touchscreen with a slim 9.9-inch instrument cluster mounted above the dashboard -- except where it doesn't.

>

> In its domestic market, the instrument cluster screen is offered as a 350,000 won ($255) option for the base trim. Not the most expensive optional extra in the world, but still kind of a slap in the face for a feature traditionally viewed as standard fare. Things are more expensive for the electric Ioniq 3. In the EV's case, the base trim gives customers the full Tesla-screen experience, meaning if customers want the driver's display, they'll need to fork over the additional $5000 necessary to move up to the next-level trim. [...] Hyundai plans to have the setup equipped in 20 million cars globally by the end of the decade.



[1] https://slashdot.org/~sinij

[2] https://apple.slashdot.org/story/20/10/13/207240/iphone-12-lineup-does-not-ship-with-a-power-adapter-apple-begins-selling-20w-usb-c-adapter-for-19?sdsrc=rel

[3] https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/20/12/27/1754242/should-cellphone-chargers-be-sold-separately

[4] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a73583741/hyundai-instrument-cluster-paid-option/

[5] https://www.motor1.com/news/806676/hyundai-optional-instrument-cluster/?_cl=3hp6Ltk0mR4mtQwUWbG0u4lz

[1]BrianFagioli writes:

> Perplexity has built a local artificial intelligence engine [2]designed specifically for Apple silicon and the Qwen3.6-35B-A3B model . Called Lily, the engine uses a Rust runtime and custom Metal kernels, with neither PyTorch nor MLX in its execution path. Perplexity [3]says Lily averaged 23 percent faster prompt processing and 35 percent faster token generation than MLX-LM on an M5 Max MacBook Pro with 128GB of unified memory. Lily is more specialized than MLX-LM, which supports a much wider range of models and architectures. Perplexity says it plans to release Lily as open source, but the code is not available yet, leaving its performance claims dependent on internal testing for now.



[1] https://slashdot.org/~BrianFagioli

[2] https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/optimizing-on-device-inference-for-apple-silicon

[3] https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/optimizing-on-device-inference-for-apple-silicon

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian:

> Global heating will [1]reach at least 1.8C under even the most optimistic future , well beyond the Paris agreement goal of 1.5C, according to [2]a UN report that warns every fraction of temperature rise intensifies destructive extreme weather, glacier melt, ecosystem loss, and island and coastal city submersion. The report by the Nairobi-based UN Environment Program confirmed overshooting the 1.5C goal inscribed in the landmark Paris agreement of 2015 was now "unavoidable" and, despite some progress in addressing the human-caused climate crisis driven by burning fossil fuels, likely in the next few years. It said: "There are no good outcomes above 1.5C."

>

> Heating of up to 3C above preindustrial levels could lead to glaciers losing more than a quarter of their mass by 2100, raising sea levels by up to 13cm. Global food production could decline by up to 14% by 2050 if there are not effective strategies to adapt. Human health, water supplies, nature, cities, infrastructure and economies could all be severely damaged. Some losses would be irreversible. Many communities may have to relocate or change their livelihoods. The report said the best hope for humanity to limit damage was to adopt an "overshoot, peak and decline" pathway that required immediate and sustained greenhouse gas emissions cuts combined with steps to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

>

> It described the goal of net zero emissions -- increasingly politically contentious in some countries -- as "an essential milestone that cannot be skipped" and stressed carbon dioxide removal through steps such as establishing vast new forests must occur alongside, not as an alternative to, deep cuts in fossil pollution. Crucially, the authors of the report, titled Limiting Overshoot, said the average global temperature could be returned to 1.5C this century only if heating stayed below about 1.8C. They warned nature's capacity to store carbon was uncertain and would shrink the more the planet heats. [...] The report's authors cited earlier work that found limiting heating to about 1.8C required global emissions to be halved by 2035. They said existing national policies were projected to lead to at least 2.3C heating, but it would still be possible to limit stay below 2C if countries delivered on net zero emissions commitments by mid-century.



[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/02/global-heating-warming-1-8c-best-case-scenario-un-united-nations-environment-programme-report

[2] https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/unep-world-set-cross-15degc-global-warming-can-still-limit-adapt-and

The FCC is [1]proposing (PDF) a public "robocall mitigation scorecard" that [2]would grade phone companies on how well they block illegal spam calls while avoiding false positives on the legitimate ones. "The Scorecard will empower consumers and encourage providers to continue to combat illegal robocalls by providing the public with an assessment of the effectiveness of voice service providers' efforts to protect consumers from illegal robocalls," the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau said in a public notice. Ars Technica reports:

> The scorecards could include call-blocking statistics along with data on customer complaints and enforcement actions. The FCC said scorecards could grade providers on a number scale, with letter grades, or by classifying providers as low risk, medium risk, or high risk. The proposed tool would rate wireless, wireline, and VoIP providers on efforts to block robocalls and their "actual results in protecting [consumers] from illegal robocalls," the FCC said. "In practice, that means moving beyond a simple administrative checklist (i.e., did the provider file the right paperwork, did they offer the right tools) and toward a composite set of metrics that reflects both operational practices and measurable outcomes, including how often legitimate calls are blocked."

>

> Whether the tool is useful for consumers will depend on how it's designed, how easy each provider's scorecard is to find, and what data sources it relies on. The proposed scorecard would apply to domestic voice service providers with retail customers, but not telcos that operate solely as wholesale or intermediate providers. "Combatting the scourge of illegal robocalls remains the FCC's top consumer protection priority... As proposed in today's public notice, the FCC aims to develop a scorecard that will give consumers more information about the measures providers are taking to fight illegal robocalls, and it will also incentivize providers to improve their efforts," FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a [3]press release .



[1] https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-26-932A1.pdf

[2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/09/fcc-plans-robocall-scorecard-to-grade-phone-companies-on-spam-call-blocking/

[3] https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-424686A1.pdf

1Password is facing customer and internal employee backlash after [1]pledging $300,000 to support a Linux distro created by David Heinemeier Hansson , who has regularly published racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric. "The popular password manager is now a ' [2]distinguished corporate patron ' of Omacom, the nonprofit foundation that oversees a popular Linux distribution known as Omarchy," reports The Verge. From the report:

> One viral blog post [3]declared that 1Password "Supports the Ethnic Cleansing of Europe" because of the donation. Others on social media asked for suggestions for alternative password managers so they would not support the funding of a project from Heinemeier Hansson, better known as DHH. The donation has also resulted in internal pushback from employees of 1Password who are disappointed by the affiliation, The Verge has learned. 1Password CEO David Faugno and cofounder Roustem Karimov have since posted internal messages addressing what Faugno describes as "concerns, both internally and externally" that have been raised "due to the polarizing nature" of DHH.

>

> DHH is a Danish entrepreneur best known for creating Ruby on Rails, Basecamp, and the Hey email client. Omarchy is DHH's "opinionated" version of Linux, meaning it's Linux the way he likes to use it. It's based on Arch Linux, with certain apps that install by default. It's also, apparently, one of 1Password's big customer environments. [...] In an internal Slack message obtained by The Verge, 1Password's Karimov downplayed the overtly racist comments from DHH, telling staff the following: "As I said, people have different personal opinions. You believe in your heart that DHH is evil, that you have the moral high ground, and that nothing will change your mind. However, not everyone believes that. It is not fair to claim a monopoly and ostracize team members who might disagree with you. There are people who are afraid to speak up simply because they will be personally attacked."

>

> 1Password CEO Faugno took a different approach, trying to reassure staff that "1Password does not endorse hateful, dehumanizing, or exclusionary views, including those shared publicly by DHH." Nonetheless, it seems the company has sacrificed a moral position for a "mission-driven" position. In the same message to staff, Faugno says "the scale and growth of [Omarchy's] use among our customers is significant -- Omarchy has grown to be the second most used Linux distribution among 1Password users." Faugno then tries to create distance, telling staff that its contribution is "to the Omacom Foundation, not an individual." Still, he says "we recognize that Omarchy is associated with DHH, its founder. Our donation is not in any way an endorsement of his personal views or conduct."



[1] https://www.theverge.com/tech/988536/1password-dhh-linux-controversy

[2] https://omarchy.org/news/2026/08/1password-and-37signals-become-distinguished-corporate-patrons/

[3] https://www.alilleybrinker.com/blog/1password-funds-ethnic-cleansing/

Longtime Slashdot reader [1]Microsplat :

> CERN [2]plans to have all 2,200+ industrial computers and embedded systems in its accelerator-control infrastructure [3]running Debian 13 by the end of 2026 . These are systems used for accelerator control, laboratory equipment and other operational functions ... They also generate and interact with a hefty amount of data, although this [4]Linux.com article refers more broadly to CERN's computing infrastructure. It's unclear whether the Debian migration covers all server infrastructure or what scientific-research-based systems are included. Our shops have done much the same in recent years, mostly due to CentOS and CFEngine getting the can.

Phoronix adds some additional context in its article: CERN was a longtime RHEL/CentOS shop, previously co-maintained the Scientific Linux RHEL derivative, moved to CentOS in 2015, and later considered CentOS Stream. CERN says Red Hat's adoption of the "-march=x86-64-v2" compiler flag by default, which it viewed as "forced obsolescence" of older hardware, was the "straw that broke the camel's back."



[1] https://slashdot.org/~Microsplat

[2] https://gemmei.ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/debian-meetings/2026/MiniDebConf-Winterthur/ch2026-53-controlling-cerns-accelerators-with-debian.av1.webm

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/CERN-Goes-Debian-Leaving-RHEL

[4] https://www.linux.com/topic/open-source/how-cern-using-linux-open-source/

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said AI adoption is "non-negotiable" for countries, [1]comparing rejecting it to refusing electricity a century ago and predicting it will unleash an unprecedented boom in entrepreneurship. "The economic growth and benefit to people that can come from this, the value to a country, is too high to ignore," he said. His comments were made during a fireside chat with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. CNBC reports:

> Altman thinks the public won't be talking as much about AI a decade from now -- it'll be expected everywhere. "A kid growing up today will never be smarter than AI, but he or she will also never have understood a world where every product and service that they interact with is not really smart and really capable and really helpful," he said.

>

> Altman referenced the adoption of electricity multiple times in his comments and drew a line between that and AI. "I think it would be approximately as bad of an idea to say we're not going to have AI in our country as it was to say we're not going to have electricity in our country, you know, back 100 plus years ago," he said.

>

> Altman called cybersecurity one of the biggest challenges to navigate in the age of AI and one that leaders shouldn't sidestep. "I think some things are going to go very wrong with cybersecurity unless people act quite urgently," he said. Altman said that falling short in cyber defense and other areas "could set this technology back a great deal."

You can watch a recording of the chat [2]on YouTube .



[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/02/g20-innovation-ministerial-live-updates.html

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4QIZ_7Rdxg

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters:

> Alphabet's Google escaped a breakup of its advertising technology business on Wednesday, when a judge in Virginia [1]rejected U.S. antitrust enforcers' bid to force a sale of Google's online advertising exchange . While the ad exchange is a small part of Google's business, the ruling is the second powerful symbolic victory against the U.S. Department of Justice in its efforts to force Google to sell assets to address illegal monopolies. U.S. Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, declined to make Google sell AdX, where publishers pay Google a 20% fee to sell ads in auctions that happen instantly when users load websites. She accepted most of the parties' proposed behavioral remedies.

>

> The DOJ and a broad coalition of states [2]sued Google in 2023 over its dominance in markets for advertising technology used by online publishers and websites. In April 2025, Brinkema [3]ruled that Google holds illegal monopolies on servers that host publisher ads and ad exchanges which sit between buyers and sellers. Google unlawfully locked publishers on its ad server into using its AdX, the judge found. The tech giant's anticompetitive conduct "substantially harmed Google's publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web," Brinkema said at the time.

>

> At a trial last year on remedies in the case, the DOJ [4]argued that Google cannot be trusted to run AdX, given its past behavior. Google argued that a forced sale would be technically difficult and result in a long and painful transition that would hurt customers. During the remedies trial, Google's lawyers [5]warned that forcing it to sell parts of its ad-tech business would cause disruption and damage. [...] The ruling is the third time in a row that a judge has rejected a bid by U.S. antitrust enforcers to break up Big Tech in a crackdown that started during President Donald Trump's first term. In another major Google antitrust case, a judge similarly [6]rejected the DOJ's push to force Google to sell Chrome. It is likely to fuel questions about whether courts are up to the task of checking the industry's unprecedented power over the U.S. economy.



[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/media-advertising/articles/google-defeats-us-bid-force-143055450.html

[2] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/01/24/1742243/us-sues-google-over-ad-market-in-escalation-of-antitrust-fight

[3] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/04/17/1950221/federal-judge-declares-googles-digital-ad-network-is-an-illegal-monopoly

[4] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/05/02/2243229/us-asks-judge-to-break-up-googles-ad-tech-business

[5] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/09/24/1948231/google-experiences-deja-vu-as-second-monopoly-trial-begins-in-us

[6] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/09/02/2119208/google-gets-to-keep-chrome-but-is-barred-from-exclusive-search-deals-judge-rules

New York City Public Schools is [1]banning generative AI for students from pre-K through eighth grade for the 2026-27 school year, affecting more than half a million students in the nation's largest school district. ABC News reports:

> In a statement to ABC News, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that the city is implementing a moratorium on generative AI for students in pre-school or 2-K through eighth grade and will spend the next year "studying the impacts of this technology." Mamdani wrote in part, "the tech industry wants us to believe that A.I.-powered early education is not only inevitable, but necessary." "We do not see it that way," he added.

>

> [...] The district said it is implementing the most expansive AI moratorium in the nation, eliminating software that uses student-facing AI and banning companion chatbots. The city's AI moratorium does not apply to high school students. The district said it will offer twice-yearly AI literacy classes designed to help high school students "think critically" about the technology before they start to "rely" on it.



[1] https://abcnews.com/Technology/new-york-city-public-schools-banning-ai-middle/story?id=136134872

Uber is [1]laying off about 3,300 employees , or roughly 10% of its workforce, as part of a restructuring aimed at cutting management layers and redirecting investment toward ridesharing, delivery, and robotaxis. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced the changes in an internal email that was also [2]published online .TechCrunch reports:

> According to the email, the layoffs are part of a restructuring exercise that would shrink the number of managers by 20%, and some personnel in these roles would work as individual contributors going forward.

>

> The ridesharing giant is reducing the number of teams with one or two members by 50%, and letting go staff who are "more than seven layers down from the CEO," per Bloomberg. Khosrowshahi's email said the company is combining its engineering, science, and delivery divisions. The company is also bringing together its delivery operations across restaurants, retail, and direct divisions.

>

> Remote jobs at the company are going away, too, with Uber only allowing less than 1% of its staff to work remotely.



[1] https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/02/uber-is-laying-off-10-of-staff-or-3300-people/

[2] https://www.uber.com/us/en/newsroom/simplerfasteruber/

A dark-web identity theft service called Nexus [1]claims to be selling scans of more than 153 million U.S. and Canadian driver's licenses , along with millions of other identity documents. "Based on interviews with individuals whose licenses are available for purchase through the service, it appears to be siphoning images collected by a widely used Louisiana-based identity verification company," reports KrebsOnSecurity. The outlet also reports that the FBI's New Orleans field office has launched an official inquiry into the source of the images. From the report:

> On Monday, Aug. 31, a source alerted KrebsOnSecurity to a service advertised by a new user on the Russian cybercrime forum Exploit, offering access to digital scans of identity documents on more than 170 million people in North America. The source brought it to my attention because the proprietor of this identity theft service offered my Virginia drivers license as a free sample in their initial sales thread on Exploit. The service, dubbed Nexus, claims to have more than 153 million drivers licenses for people in the United States and Canada, as well as more than 10 million identification cards; more than three million travel documents and/or international IDs; and at least 579,000 medical cards.

>

> [...] The people behind Nexus claim the license images are coming from an active breach at "a major identity verification company" whose customers include multiple Fortune 500 companies. "We have been continuously exfiltrating new data for over a year into our private database," the service enthused in its introductory post on Exploit. "Records are available to preview before purchase with pertinent information redacted. Customer photos are displayed if available." Indeed, over the past 24 hours, the number of drivers license records listed as available in Nexus has increased by nearly 400,000, suggesting that freshly stolen license data is being harvested and uploaded to this service on a semi-regular basis.

KrebsOnSecurity traced the apparent source by comparing timestamps on stolen license images with when their owners had their IDs scanned, including at Hertz rental counters and a Planet13 dispensary. Both companies use identity-verification services from Louisiana-based idscan.net, whose technology also scans IDs using infrared and ultraviolet light.

Since the story was published, Krebs reports that the Nexus identity theft service website "vanished from the darkweb, replacing its login page with a plain text message that reads, 'This service is no longer available.'"



[1] https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/09/fbi-probes-service-selling-153m-drivers-licenses/