An invite-only event in Austin, Texas, kept online fans in the dark for hours. A Tesla launch event tends to cause a hoopla. Fans crowd into an event space; loud electronic beats are the warm up act. Finally, the star himself, the ringmaster of this electric circus, CEO Elon Musk, emerges to a roar. There are demos, powerful verbs, and sometimes, a "one more thing," a last-minute surprise product unveiling.

More than 200 people in roles such as engineering, finance, and communications will now be represented by the Communications Workers of America. More than 200 staffers at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit behind the encyclopedia Wikipedia, have voted 158-14 to join the Communications Workers of America labor union. The US National Labor Relations Board counted ballots on Thursday. Three Wikimedia employees tell WIRED they will now have a mechanism to challenge management as the organization faces growing competition from AI chatbots and a drop in volunteer editors. The 25-year-old, San Francisco-based foundation employs nearly 700 people across 39 countries, most of them working remotely.

The board of German car giant Volkswagen has approved a plan to cut another 50,000 jobs as part of a sweeping turnaround programme. It brings the total number of roles the company plans to shed by 2030 to 100,000. The group - which includes Audi, Porsche, Skoda as well as the VW brand - said in March that it would cut 50,000 roles by the end of the decade. The move is a strong signal for the future of the firm, which is taking responsibility for our entire workforce, VW's chief executive Oliver Blume said in a statement on Thursday. Blume told the BBC in July that the firm was looking to make the additional cuts.

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Are Trump's AI videos just memes or psychological warfare? Are Trump's AI videos just memes or psychological warfare? Trump's use of AI generated content has ramped up in recent months, going so far as posting videos of fake military strikes on Iranian infrastructure. His administration says he's'sending a message', but as Al Jazeera's Emma Withrow explains, the rest of the world is left to figure out if he's serious or not. Share Are Trump's AI videos just memes or psychological warfare? on social media Why are people calling Venezuela oil deal a new form of US colonialism?

Could robots be the future of theme parks? To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Could robots be the future of theme parks? This is Galway Robot Park, a 16,500-square-meter venue that's opened near Seoul in South Korea . The company behind the park says their aim is to bring artificial intelligence and robotics into the world of entertainment.

Look Up Trending Now Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age Creator Playbook Say More Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Switch Off Mashable Voices Mashable Selects Safety Net Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List All Series American Psychological Association weighs in on classroom screen time: Quality or quantity? The organization doesn't want to ban screens, but still warns of their harm. Chase joined Mashable's Social Good team in 2020, covering online stories about digital activism, climate justice, accessibility, and media representation. Expert child psychologists urge caution around new and flashy educational technology. Classroom technology is the focus of a new report from the American Psychological Association (APA), which argues we should be focusing less on bans and more on the specific harms of flashy new tech.

Look Up Trending Now Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age Creator Playbook Say More Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Switch Off Mashable Voices Mashable Selects Safety Net Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List All Series The newest AI model from OpenAI is the first to reach the company's highest threat level. Timothy Beck Werth is the Tech Editor at Mashable, where he leads coverage and assignments for the Tech and Shopping verticals. Tim has over 15 years of experience as a journalist and editor, and he has particular experience covering and testing consumer technology, smart home gadgets, and men's grooming and style products. Previously, he was the Managing Editor and then Site Director of SPY.com, a men's product review and lifestyle website. As a writer for GQ, he covered everything from bull-riding competitions to the best Legos for adults, and he's also contributed to publications such as The Daily Beast, Gear Patrol, and The Awl.

Look Up Trending Now Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age Creator Playbook Say More Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Switch Off Mashable Voices Mashable Selects Safety Net Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List All Series Bethany Allard is a Los Angeles-based shopping reporter at Mashable covering beauty tech, dating, sex and relationships, and headphones. That basically means she puts her hair through a lot, scrolls through a lot of dating apps, and rotates through a lot of different headphones. In addition to testing out and rounding up the best products, she also covers deals for Mashable, paying an especially obsessive amount of attention to Apple deals and prices. That knowledge comes in handy when she's covering shopping holidays like Prime Day and Black Friday, which she's now done for three years at Mashable. All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers.

A little under two months after releasing its last major model family to the public, GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra and Luna, OpenAI is back with an entirely new one: GPT-6 Astra, what it claims is "the most intelligent and aligned model in the world." Following the company's decision to slow frontier model development in August after one of its models hacked AI platform Hugging Face, it may also be the last major AI model it releases for a while. A flashy demo video the company released alongside the launch shows Astra handling everything from 3D modeling to building slideshows, and often taking care of multiple tasks across different domains at the same time (like ordering food while coding a game). Key to Astra's appeal is its ability to handle these multi-step workflows on your computer and in and out of your browser. It's also allegedly able to do those complex tasks with "strong visual judgment," OpenAI says, and without drifting from its original directions or prompt.