extraordinary time
Banks Are Struggling to Protect Customers From Their Own AI Agents
Some AI tools now make financial decisions on their own, bankers say--raising frightening security risks. A robot catches a falling $100 bill during an Are You Faster Than a Robot? Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Leading US banks have reportedly found unapproved AI agents operating inside customer accounts on users' behalf, sometimes acting independent of their instructions. In response, many institutions are resorting to blocking the tools or rethinking their security policies.
AI Helped Find a Critical Bug Affecting Huge Swathes of the Internet
It's the most startling cybersecurity vulnerability found by AI yet. It won't be the last. Some sites were affected by similar outages today when they were taken offline after a critical cybersecurity vulnerability was announced. Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Newly announced vulnerabilities could affect broad swathes of the internet after being discovered by teams of cybersecurity professionals--with heavy AI assistance.
One SpaceX Share Per Child: The New AI PR Strategy
Anthropic and Elon Musk's SpaceX have committed billions of dollars in stocks to benefit the public all while dodging accountability. The Hyperloop track failed to materialize and was dismantled in 2022. Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Elon Musk's SpaceX and AI giant Anthropic have said they will give billions of dollars in shares to the public as general sentiment around the technology's economic and societal consequences continues to plummet. "Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America," Musk posted on X on Monday.
Women Trust AI Less Than Men--But No One's Asking Them
Men are disproportionately likely to be approached as AI experts, Harvard researchers found. Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. As our tech overlords continue pumping more resources into AI development and innovation-- responsibly, of course --they're facing a massive trust gap: the people they want to use the tech keep asking who the technology is actually for. Is it for those who clamor for a surveillance state? Is it meant to help us compete with other nations?
Trump Calls on AI to Speed Up Science--While Continuing to Defund It
Tech firms are giving big to a White House AI science program amid the destruction of institutions like the NIH. President Trump presents the National Medal of Science to Elon Musk during an event at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., October 8, 2026. Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. "We tamed electricity, invented the light bulb, developed the airplane, harnessed the atom, unleashed the power of personal computers, created the Internet, pioneered superintelligence, and invented almost everything else of genius and great importance anywhere in the world," President Donald Trump boasted on Thursday . "We will always be on top. There is nobody that can compete with us."
Artificial Goes After Our Silicon Valley Overlords. Just Not Very Well.
Artificial Goes After Our Silicon Valley Overlords. The film's goofy caricatures of Sam Altman and Elon Musk do little to convey how--or why--they're so dangerous. Open AI CEO Sam Altman before delivering the keynote address at the OpenAI developers conference in San Francisco on September 29, 2026, where he announced new artificial intelligence personal assistant agents named dots to rival Meta's Muse. Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. The world premiere of, the new movie centered around the rise of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as he led an unstable company down a dangerous path, was packed.
Is Hollywood Finally Turning on Tech Oligarchs?
Is Hollywood Finally Turning Against Tech Oligarchs? A new wave of films by directors like Aaron Sorkin and Luca Guadagnino takes on Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Elizabeth Holmes, and "shapeshifter" Sam Altman. Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Big Tech is back on the big screen--but its bosses might not be thrilled. This fall, Hollywood will release four movies on tech executives: Luca Guadagnino's, on CEO Sam Altman's tumultuous time as the head of OpenAI; Aaron Sorkin's, on the investigation into Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg dismissing its platforms' negative impacts on young users and inciting violence and hate speech; the all-encompassing, by documentarian Alex Gibney, on the Tesla and SpaceX CEO's family life, corporate controversies, and engagement in right-wing politics; and You Can See Everything, an unsettling documentary in which directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim follow Elizabeth Holmes, who invited them to film her in the weeks before she began serving her federal prison sentence for defrauding investors at the now-defunct health tech company Theranos.
Trump's Appearance in Ohio Underscores All the Reasons the GOP Is Unpopular
Trump's Appearance in Ohio Underscores All the Reasons the GOP Is Unpopular Will the president's steadfast support of data centers cost Ohio Republicans a victory? President Donald Trump speaks during a midterm election rally, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026, in Vandalia, Ohio. Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. On Saturday, President Donald Trump hosted a campaign rally for Ohio senatorial and gubernatorial candidates, John Husted and Vivek Ramaswamy. As part of his campaign to revive GOP turnout and avoid what is widely predicted to be a Democratic sweep, he appeared in Ohio following weekend visits to Texas, Oklahoma, and Alabama.
In extraordinary times, Ramadan finds a place in Animal Crossing
I asked to join one of Ismail's Suhoor sessions and when I arrived I was prompted by the island's owner to join voice chat. I entered mid-conversation to hear other Muslims in different parts of the world criticizing the game's localization of Sahara, a desert camel who visits players to sell them rugs and speaks in broken English. Players brought food -- their own islands' native fruits -- to eat alongside Ismail's real-life meal in his Western European time zone. Some of the visitors removed their shoes from their characters' feet and placed them on a tarp near the entrance before walking to the table. Ismail mentioned to me beforehand that people sometimes brought gifts, so I grabbed something from my house's storage upon receiving the invite and dropped it on the ground somewhere it could be found later.