Waymo says it temporarily suspended its ride-hailing service in San Francisco during a citywide blackout, as downed traffic lights appeared to halt its vehicles  —  Waymo said Saturday that it was stopping service across San Francisco after numerous online videos showed its autonomous vehicles …

METR: Claude Opus 4.5 has a 50% task completion time horizon of about 4 hours and 49 minutes, more than double that of Claude Opus 4 released earlier this year  —  We estimate that, on our tasks, Claude Opus 4.5 has a 50%-time horizon of around 4 hrs 49 mins (95% confidence interval of 1 hr 49 mins to 20 hrs 25 mins). While we're still working through evaluations for other recent models, this is our highest published time horizon to date. [image]

Sources: DHS is investigating whether 6 staffers misled CISA's acting director into taking a polygraph that he failed, compounding instability at the agency  —  The incident this July and the subsequent fallout — which has not been reported before — have angered career staff …

Google says it needs more time to upgrade Assistant to Gemini on most Android devices; Google previously planned to complete the transition by the end of 2025  —  The transition from Assistant to Gemini will continue into 2026.  —  Google wanted to remove Assistant from most Android phones …

Google and Apple advise employees on H-1B and other visas not to travel outside the US due to processing delays, following new social media screening rules  —  - Google and Apple are advising some employees with visas not to travel outside the US, per memos viewed by Business Insider.

A look at Tokyo-based neocloud provider Datasection, which sources say has a $1.2B+ contract giving Tencent access to a large share of its 15K Blackwell chips  —  Contracts with Chinese tech giant have rapidly turned Datasection into one of Asia's biggest ‘neoclouds’

Q&A with Harvard economist Jason Furman, who consults for OpenAI, on the similarities between the AI boom and the dot-com era, AI's impact on jobs, and more  —  A leading economist isn't overly concerned about the fallout from the AI bubble bursting, if it happens.  But first...  Three things to know:

Source: OpenAI's share of revenue after the cost of running AI models for paying users has jumped to ~70% in October, up from ~52% at the end of 2024  —  As OpenAI discusses raising an unprecedented investment round of up to $100 billion, it can crow about some key improvements to how it runs its business.

Q&A with Blizzard President Johanna Faries on company staff bonus transparency, working under Xbox leadership, restoring the NetEase partnership, and more  —  Johanna Faries, who took over as president of Blizzard in 2024, reveals what's coming from the storied studio  —  Hi everyone.

Sources: tech lobbyists say that David Sacks' push for an EO blocking state AI laws undercut their efforts to craft a permanent, bipartisan federal solution  —  President Donald Trump's aggressive move to block states from regulating artificial intelligence is splitting the tech lobby …

Sources detail SoftBank's efforts to raise funds as it races to close its $22.5B funding commitment to OpenAI by the end of this year  —  SoftBank Group (9984.T) is racing to close a $22.5 billion funding commitment to OpenAI by year-end through an array of cash-raising schemes …

Echo, which uses AI agents to build Docker images that eliminate vulnerabilities at the source, raised a $35M Series A, bringing its total funding to $50M  —  Echo today announced raising $35 million in a Series A funding round that brings the total raised by the company to $50 million.

US CHIPS Act-funded SMART USA Institute, focused on digital twins for chipmaking, says the Department of Commerce will terminate its $285M five-year contract  —  The head of a U.S. CHIPS and Science Act-funded center devoted to digital twins for chip manufacturing has informed its 121 members …