Good morning. Now that Elon Musk has promised one share of SpaceX for every American child, and Anthropic has pledged 5% of its shares to a public benefit fund, other tech companies might be thinking about how to start “giving back.”
An iPhone Duo in every pot could be a nice gesture by Apple. And maybe Google could lift the storage limits on our Gmail accounts?
Today’s tech news below. —Alexei Oreskovic
Thoughts? Suggestions? Hot tip? Drop me a line.
THE BIG STORY
Ex-OpenAI engineer accused of bugging office to stay in jail after court hearing
A federal judge ordered a former OpenAI engineer accused of bugging an executive conference room to stay in jail on Monday, after questioning whether a $1 million bond the Saudi government offered to guarantee would bring him back if he fled.
THE BLIND BOX
“If you don’t have a coup attempt every few years, you’re not hiring strong enough leaders.”
THE RUNDOWN
—Another Apple October surprise. First touchscreen MacBook reportedly in the offing.
—DHS vs DeepSeek. All U.S. civilian agencies ordered to remove the Chinese AI tech.
—New MiniMax model. Chinese AI company claims M3.1 Flash brings a "generational leap."
—Town, the latest buzzy agentic AI assistant a la Muse and Instinct, raises $108 million four months after launch.
—‘Miami-Dade County is not Vice City’: GTA 6 is taking over Miami—and dividing the county
—Management or "bot-sitting"? AI agents are changing the workplace
THE PARTING SHOT
Commuting to San Francisco from the East Bay today can be done by car, ferry, or by BART. But electric air taxis could soon offer a new option that has better views and cuts the travel time in half. Archer Aviation gave a peek of what that might look like with a series of demo flights in the Bay Area last week.