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🎃 Giant Pumpkin Rolls Through Iowa Intersection A runaway giant pumpkin came loose from the Pumpkinfest display at a local farm in Dubuque, Iowa, on Friday. High winds sent it hurtling through a busy intersection, where people fled the street, and drivers swerved to avoid it. Driver Pam McCarron told WMBF: "This is not AI-generated. This actually truly happened." She was on her way to a work meeting when the squash nearly ran her off the road.

🎧 Can a Robot Write a Symphony? Maybe Claude's music was mistaken for human work more often than Vivaldi's. The Augmented Fifth blog ran a blind test in which listeners decided who wrote each piece: a human or AI. Claude Opus 5.5's Oboe Concerto in C minor was judged human-made by 60% of respondents. A piece by Handel was taken for human work by 58%, and a piece by Vivaldi by 43%. Could you tell Vivaldi from an AI? ❤️ — Yes! 👀 — Not sure...

⛪️ Catholic Church Blesses AI-Generated Icon of Carlo Acutis An icon created by artificial intelligence has been blessed in the Catholic Church, possibly for the first time anywhere in the world. The ceremony took place in Belarus. The icon depicts Carlo Acutis, an Italian teenager who died of leukemia in 2006 and last year became the first millennial to be canonized. In social media the AI-made icon has gotten a decidedly mixed reception.

🍏 Apple Unveils HomeView, a Smart Home Display Powered by the New Siri Apple has launched HomeView, a home hub with a 7-inch display that handles music, FaceTime calls, and smart home control in one place. It runs on the new Siri AI, which can hold a real conversation and answer questions on almost any topic. Paired with an iPhone, it can also draw on the user's personal context, including their calendar, messages, and app data. HomeView recognizes up to six family members by face, gives each their own home screen, and keeps personal data hidden from everyone else. It can show up to nine camera feeds at once, adjust lights and thermostats, and lock doors. The tabletop and wall-mounted versions cost $299 each. Sales begin November 13. HomeView won't launch in the EU, where Siri AI isn't available yet.

💰 Character AI Goes Bankrupt The AI companion service has filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. and is putting its assets up for sale. The company cites legal, regulatory and operational problems, including lawsuits over harm to teens. Disney, which recently hired Character AI's ex-CEO as its CTO, has offered $20 million for a perpetual non-exclusive license to some of its technology. Former Character AI staff now working at Disney will help keep the service running during the sale. The sale should close in late November or early December. If no buyer wants to keep the service, it will be shut down.

🌡 Hackers Pushed French Supermarket Fridges to 50°C The attack hit about 150 Intermarché stores, where refrigerators stayed at 50°C overnight for six hours. All the food inside had to be thrown out, and some stores reported fires. Carrefour and Coopérative U were also targeted. France's cybersecurity agency traced the breach to a vulnerability in refrigeration control software from the Danish company Danfoss. Danfoss said the affected systems ran outdated firmware and that it had long urged customers to update.

⏫ Most Americans Think AI Is Developing Too Fast In an AP-NORC poll, 64% of respondents said AI technology is developing too fast, while only 8% think it's too slow. Another 27% of Americans are comfortable with the pace of AI development. ✖️ Overall, about 80% of those surveyed agree that the government should keep AI under human control and protect workers from being replaced. Some 31% approve of U.S. President Donald Trump's attempts to control the industry. However, when it comes to regulating the industry, 39% trust neither Republicans nor Democrats. ✅ At the same time, one in ten Americans will turn to AI to decide who to vote for in the upcoming election. What do you think: is AI developing... ❤️ — too fast 🔥 — too slowly 🤔 — about right

🌟🌟 A New Naruto Manga Is Coming Masashi Kishimoto, the creator of the original manga, is personally working on a project titled "Naruto: Shadow Rising." No details have been revealed yet. It isn't even clear whether this will continue the story of Naruto Uzumaki or follow other characters. More information has been promised at Jump Festa 2027 in December. Are you excited? ❤️ — Yes, of course 🤔 — Not really...

🔪 Robots Fight With Knives for the First Time REK has staged what it calls the first knife fight between robots. The "Predator" (Unitree H2) was armed with "Wolverine claws," while the T-800 from EngineAI had combat sawback bayonets attached to its arms. The organizers claim that no one had ever given androids weapons before. (Perhaps there are reasons for that!!!)

💥 Megaton from Fallout 3 has been ported to Fallout 2 with the help of Claude Opus 5.5. The model did all the work on its own, including designing the assets in Blender and recording the trailer.

"The mod ate half of my weekly limit on the 20x plan, but to be fair, I do everything in ultracode mode," the project's author, Bektur Ryskeldiev, says on X.

💥 The mod is available on GitHub, with completable quests, working trade, and choices that have consequences. Which Fallout games are better? ❤️ — The isometric classics 🔥 — The 3D era

💡 Touchscreen MacBook Could Be Unveiled as Early as Late October Apple will unveil its first touchscreen laptop around October 27, Bloomberg reports. Rumors about the device have been circulating since 2023. The new lineup may be called MacBook Ultra and will run on M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, while the macOS interface will adapt to the input method. Would you want a touchscreen MacBook? ❤️ — Yes, absolutely! 👀 — No, it's pointless

✖️ Smart Power Strip Failure Kills Aquarium Fish Across China Aquarium electronics made by Wolda began failing abruptly on the evening of September 30. Some owners noticed the shutdown right away, but October 1–7 is a public holiday in China, and many were traveling or away from their offices. Only on returning did people find their fish dead, with filters and aeration systems down. One user complained that a stopped pump had flooded his home. The cause of the failure remains unclear. The company blamed a hacker attack, but there is no independent confirmation of that. On social media, some of those affected blame a botched firmware update.

💰 AI Models Offer Pricier Products to the Rich Researchers ran 325,000 queries on 13 popular AI models, including ones from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Qwen. They found that chatbot recommendations depend on how much their user earns (at least according to the information they have). Claude Opus 4.8 stood out the most. The model offered "wealthy" users flights that cost $198 more on average than those it offered low-income users. And the effect persists even when the prompt explicitly asks for the cheapest options. Now's a good time to complain to your chatbot about your low salary.

🔴 Nano Banana 2.1 Is Now on @GPT4Telegrambot Google's updated model is much better at getting what you actually mean, so if you've got prompts that AI could never quite pull off, now's a good time to give them another shot:

1️⃣ Go to @GPT4Telegrambot. 2️⃣ Select Image Generation → Nano Banana 2.1 in the menu. 3️⃣ Describe your idea, or attach a photo and say what to change.

🎁 25 generations per week for free, up to 100 per day with a Premium subscription.

🔥 Teen Gets Stranded on a Cliff After Letting AI Plan His Hike A 16-year-old hiker set out to climb Crown Mountain by a hiking trail, but the AI's directions led him onto a rock-climbing route. Rescuers managed to reach him by phone and airlifted him out by helicopter. Search manager Paul Markey admits it all could have ended much worse. "You can't just blindly follow what AI is proposing to you," Markey warns, adding that hikers need to question the information and check whether it makes sense. Do you use AI when you travel? ❤️ — Yes, it's really convenient! 🔥 — No, that's irresponsible

📌 ChatGPT Will Start Adding Hidden Watermarks to Text in the EU ChatGPT and Codex will start adding watermarks to responses in the EU in the coming weeks. This won't become the global default. Watermarks can also be enabled for select models through the API, but they'll be off by default. OpenAI notes that watermarking may work less well on short texts and in subject areas where there's less flexibility in wording, and that manual edits can weaken the signal. For now, the detector will be available only to approved researchers. Should AI-generated texts be labeled? ❤️ — Yes, that's the right thing to do! 👎 — No, it'll just get in the way

🤖 74% of Physical Work in the US Can Already Be Done by Robots This work accounts for 34% of all working hours in the economy, according to Anthropic researchers who analyzed around 19,000 job tasks. Drivers and warehouse packers are most at risk. Of the ten most exposed occupations, nine involve operating vehicles. The vulnerable worker is usually a man without a college degree. He earns about $30 an hour less than those whose tasks robots cannot yet touch. Nurses, social workers, and nannies are relatively well protected—robots still struggle with fine interpersonal interaction and manual dexterity. ❗️ But today, robots are barely cost-effective anywhere. They are cost-competitive for just 0.3% of tasks. To automate 10% of work, prices would need to fall by about 70%, and at the current pace that would take around 40 years. Are you afraid a robot will take your job? ❤️ — Yes, I'm already thinking about it 🔥 — No, that's still very far off

🤖🤖 Mecha Fights Are Coming to Tokyo. Startup Skeletonics is opening a permanent venue where two people can fight each other in combat exoskeletons. The exoskeletons are powered entirely by mechanics, the system syncs with the pilot’s body, precisely scaling up and amplifying their natural movements. The robot’s speed and agility depend entirely on the wearer’s physical fitness. Would you take part in something like this? ❤️ — Yes, this is the sport of the future 😱 — No, it looks dangerous!

🎮 Halloween Kicks Off in Fortnite Fortnite's annual Halloween event, Fortnitemares, has begun. The game is adding Freddy Krueger, FNAF animatronics, Beetlejuice, Slender Man, and other horror characters. According to data miners, Hornet from Hollow Knight, characters from Hazbin Hotel, and the Predator may join them later. The skins will appear gradually, and the event will run until November 1. Do you play Fortnite? ❤️ — Yes, of course! 👀 — No...

🎮 NFS: Most Wanted Ported to Nintendo Switch The native version was built by recompiling the code of the original Xbox 360 game. Thanks to AI, ports of PC and retro console classics like this one are now hitting the Switch almost every few days. The source code is available on GitHub, and running it requires an original licensed copy of the game. That said, a ready-to-install image has already surfaced on torrent trackers. Just in case you lent your original disc to someone 20 years ago and never got it back. Which NFS is better? ❤️ — Most Wanted 🔥 — Underground 2