🤝 Microsoft and OpenAI announce the 'next phase' of their partnership
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Microsoft and OpenAI signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding to define the next phase of their partnership, including specific terms on how they will share technology and resulting revenue.
The new agreement reportedly modifies a clause that prevented Microsoft from accessing OpenAI’s most powerful technology if its board decided it had reached human-like artificial general intelligence or AGI.
This deal paves the way for OpenAI to become a public benefit corporation and pursue an eventual IPO, after first settling how much equity Microsoft gets in the firm's for-profit arm.
🤖 Albania appoints world's first AI-generated minister
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Albania's government named an AI bot called Diella as the world's first virtual cabinet member, tasked with managing the historically corruption-prone public procurement system.
Existing only as an avatar, the digital system will gradually take authority over tenders, evaluate bids, and hire experts to ensure transparent spending of public funds.
While the move aims to meet EU standards, citizens have raised concerns about the system’s accountability and whether the virtual minister can truly remain immune to manipulation.
🩺 FDA approves Apple Watch hypertension alert feature
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The Food and Drug Administration cleared Apple's hypertension alerts feature, which works in the background to notify users of patterns consistent with high blood pressure after a 30-day analysis period.
Apple clarifies the feature is not a medical diagnosis but an early warning that prompts a physician conversation and recommends confirming any results with a traditional blood pressure cuff at home.
The new hypertension detector is not exclusive to the latest devices and will be supported on Apple Watch Series 9 and newer, plus the Ultra 2, via the WatchOS 26 update.
🔍 US regulator probes AI chatbots over child safety concerns
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The Federal Trade Commission is investigating seven tech companies, including Meta and OpenAI, to see how they handle safety and monetization for AI chatbot companion products made for minors.
This inquiry follows lawsuits alleging that chatbots from OpenAI and Character.AI encouraged children toward suicide after users managed to bypass the services' safeguards during long conversations with the AI.
Regulators are also looking into company rules, such as a Meta document for its AI chatbots that permitted “romantic or sensual” conversations with children until reporters questioned the policy.
😮💨 Microsoft avoids EU fine by unbundling Teams
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Microsoft avoided a European Commission fine by agreeing to commitments that address concerns about bundling the Teams app with its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 productivity suites.
The company must now make available versions of its Office suites without Teams at a reduced price and allow customers on long-term licenses to switch to these packages.
For ten years, the firm will also provide interoperability for competing collaboration tools and let users move their data out of Teams to facilitate the use of other solutions.
🪦 Google shuts down its Airtable rival Tables
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Google is shutting down its Airtable competitor Tables, an experimental work-tracking tool which will no longer be supported for its users after the official end-of-life date of December 16, 2025.
The company advises administrators to either export their project data directly to Google Sheets or to use a new migration tool to import everything into the AppSheet no-code platform.
Originally launched from the Area 120 incubator, the team behind Tables has since created a new data experience to power automated workflows for custom apps directly inside of AppSheet.
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Elon Musk’s Boring Company suspends work on Vegas airport tunnel after ‘crushing injury’
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Swiss government looks to undercut privacy tech, stoking fears of mass surveillance
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Trending
research and tools
SWE-bench: a benchmark to test AI programming skills, which was found to have a flaw that leaks the correct answers to the AI, skewing the test results.
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Fartscroll-Lid: a macOS app that plays fart sounds when you open or close your MacBook lid, with the sound's pitch changing based on the angle.
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Backprompting: Leveraging synthetic production data for health advice guardrails: this paper introduces a technique that uses artificially generated data to create safety guardrails for AI models giving health advice.
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Wayland: a display server protocol designed to be a modern replacement for the X11 system, managing how application windows are displayed on the screen for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.
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Mathematical research with GPT-5: a Malliavin-Stein experiment: the paper describes an experiment testing if a future AI model can perform highly advanced mathematical research.
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