A study commissioned by CCIA Europe, whose members include Amazon, Google, and Meta, estimates that the EU’s proposed Cloud and AI Development Act could impose 115 billion euros ($128 billion) in costs over a decade as governments and companies migrate workloads and rewrite software. The figure is more than six times the European Commission’s upper estimate. However, roughly 80 billion euros ($89 billion) of it comes from a modeled scenario assuming sovereignty rules are extended to 25% of cloud workloads in essential private-sector industries.The Register reports: The report specifically targets Article 31 of the proposed legislation, which it says could allow the Commission to extend sovereignty requirements into essential private-sector services. CCIA argues that forcing businesses to move away from existing cloud infrastructure could trigger expensive software redevelopment projects, with code rewriting and re-architecting accounting for 69 percent of its estimated costs.

Luxembourg would apparently take the biggest hit, with the study putting the cost at 1,711 euros per worker over ten years. Denmark (905 euros), Austria (900 euros), and Finland (864 euros) also face hefty bills, as does Ireland (856 euros), which hosts the European headquarters of several US tech giants. CCIA is urging EU governments to overhaul the proposed legislation, limit sovereignty restrictions to sensitive workloads, and abandon requirements based on corporate origin or personnel nationality in favor of what it calls risk-based technical safeguards.

“Member States cannot rely on the Commission’s incomplete estimates when deciding CADA’s strict sovereignty requirements for cloud and AI providers,” said Mitchell Rutledge, CCIA Europe’s policy manager. “Taxpayers and businesses will foot the bill, yet the official assessment missed 70 percent of CADA’s true impact.” For AWS and Google, offering European customers greater control over their data also helps retain business that might otherwise migrate to European competitors. It’s a rather convenient arrangement: sell customers sovereignty on one hand, while an industry association representing your interests warns governments against imposing too much of it on the other.

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Google’s latest wearable seems like a Fitbit Air with a screen, but the two actually have less in common than you might think.

Lithium-ion just isn’t cut out for the cosmos.

A protein is a chain of amino acids held together by what are called peptide bonds. On their own, those bonds are extremely stable; they’re estimated to have a half-life of several hundred years. But in Earth’s environment, most proteins don’t last nearly that long. That’s because organisms have evolved a handful of ways to catalyze the break-up of peptide bonds, which have diversified into countless specialized protein-digesting enzymes. Proteases are everywhere and generally make short work of any proteins that find their way into the environment.

Now, researchers have basically short-circuited the diversification process, using AI-based protein design tools to take the catalytic core of two types of protease and replace the entire rest of the protein. The resulting enzymes could be tuned to cut specific proteins in half, and the researchers demonstrated their effectiveness by using them to cut proteins associated with neurological diseases.

Cutting proteins

The basic peptide bond isn’t especially interesting-looking—it’s what you get when you link an amino group to an acid, releasing a water molecule in the process. As their name implies, amino acids have both an amino and an acid group, allowing them to form peptide bonds on two sides of the amino acid. This is critical for building up the long chains found in proteins. (The amino acids also have side chains with distinctive chemistry, which gives a backbone specific properties.)

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It took OpenAI two days to notice that a recording device was hidden in a restricted executive conference room where leadership met to discuss highly confidential information, including technical progress, government engagements, and commercial partnerships.

Only those with special clearance are supposed to access that room. But the FBI believes the recording device was planted by Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old engineer from Saudi Arabia, who became a permanent US legal resident in 2020. In a press release Tuesday announcing his arrest, the FBI alleged that chatbot logs and CCTV footage suggested that Alfozan—who worked as an OpenAI engineer for more than a year—sought to use the device to spy on OpenAI and risked leaking trade secrets in a way that threatened national security.

To conceal the USB device, Alfozan allegedly wrapped it in toilet paper, then plugged it into the back of a conference room television. The device was likely planted on September 28, and OpenAI found it on September 30 and quickly determined that its contents were encrypted, the FBI said. Days later, on October 5, OpenAI installed a camera in that conference room, and the CCTV footage allegedly showed Alfozan attempting to retrieve the recording device that same day.

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Prolific first-person shooter level designer Richard “Levelord” Gray died Monday at the age of 68, based on reports shared on social media by Apogee Entertainment yesterday. He had “dealt with cancer on and off for a while now,” according to former colleague Joe Siegler.

After studying computer engineering in the ’80s and tinkering on some early games in COBOL, Gray broke into the industry at the age of 35 in 1994 with the launch of GrayDoom, a set of four maps for the then-new Doom that were widely shared on CompuServe and beyond. The work attracted the attention of Q Studios’ Nick Newhard, who contracted Gray to work on level design for the late ’90s cult classic Blood.

Gray was subsequently hired by 3D Realms, where he said he was given free rein in designing “half the levels” for Duke Nukem 3D. There, he was also responsible for the famous, signed “You’re Not Supposed to Be Here” easter egg, which players could find only by using cheats to explore outside of the usual confines of the map.

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Apple announced a lot of new devices during its “Welcome Home” event yesterday. The Apple HomeView, the company’s first smart display hub, stole the show, with its squared-off seven-inch display and its “oversized Apple Watch meets iMac G4” design, but Apple is also collaborating with LG and Schneider on a collection of smart devices, like lights, doorbells, and cameras, that the HomeView can control. Plus, the company also announced updates to existing products, including the Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini.

None of these items is currently available to pick up in-store. However, many—but not all—of them are already available to preorder, if you’re interested in being among the first to try them. Here’s how you can reserve the HomeView, Apple TV 4K, and HomePod mini 2 today.

The best preorder deal on the Apple HomeView

Apple’s HomeView is a unique product for the company. With it, you can control your entire smart home, chat with Siri AI, check your messages, take FaceTime calls, and play music, among other tasks. Though it’s generally far more limited than an iPad, it’s the only device of the two to offer individualized experiences per user: It can recognize up to six people in your household and display personalized information (like Messages) for each. You can preorder the HomeView from stores like Apple, Amazon, and Best Buy. However, if you opt for Amazon, you can take $10 off the Space Gray and Starlight standard models:

• Space Gray ($289.99)

• Silver ($299)

• Starlight ($289)

• Rose Pink ($299)

• Space Gray (Wall Mounted) ($299)

• Silver (Wall Mounted) ($299)

Just remember: If you’re buying a wall-mounted option, you’ll need to buy the actual mount separately. If you buy the Power Mount USB-C wall connector, that’ll add $59.99 to your total, while the Power Mount AC-wired option will add $79.99.

Apple HomeView (Space Gray)

$289.99
at Amazon

$289.99
at Amazon

How to preorder the Apple TV 4K

Apple’s newest Apple TV 4K looks a lot like the previous model, but what’s inside has changed. This model uses Apple’s A19 chip and can connect to up to four HomePod devices at once. The new Siri Remote supports Precision Finding through Find My, and has a speaker you can ping if you lose it in your couch. Apple doesn’t always make its product names all that clear. For example, the latest iteration of Apple TV 4K is simply called “Apple TV 4K.” If you’re looking to buy one, don’t just buy any “Apple TV 4K” you see. Instead, make sure it is the fourth-generation model. You’ll have two clues there, besides the (4th-gen) label: First, it isn’t currently available to purchase, so you’ll only be able to preorder it; second, it costs $299, $100 more than the third-gen Apple TV 4K.

Apple TV 4K (Fourth Generation)

$299.00
at Walmart

$299.00
at Walmart

How to preorder the HomePod mini 2

The HomePod mini 2 comes in refreshed colors that just so happen to match Apple’s iMacs. The new speakers run on the Apple S10 chip and come with a new “Sound Glow” feature that can pulse to the music with colors that match the track’s album art. They can also act as default speakers for iMacs over Wi-Fi 6e. Amazon doesn’t have Apple’s latest HomePod mini device ready to preorder. If you search for it, you’ll only find previous-generation speakers available to purchase now—and only renewed versions, at that. In addition to Apple, Best Buy also has the new HomePod mini 2 available to preorder in all five colors:

• Midnight ($149.99)

• Blue ($149.99)

• Green ($149.99)

• Pink ($149.99)

• White ($149.99)

Apple HomePod mini 2

$149.99
at Best Buy

$149.99
at Best Buy

You can’t preorder the Apple Home Collection yet

The Apple Home Collection is pricey, but Apple won’t be taking your money for it just yet. While the company has a landing page for the new smart devices, including the $349.95 LG Smart Deadbolt Lock and $399.95 LG Floodlight Cam, none of them are officially available to preorder or purchase. Apple says some of these devices will be available in December, while others will arrive in early 2027, though it doesn’t say which devices will launch when.

Google has made Android’s phone-number verification opt-out, automatically verifying and associating a device’s phone number with every Google account signed in on that phone, including secondary and work accounts. Android Authority reports: As spotted in a recent Reddit thread, users report receiving confirmation emails out of the blue from “noreply-phone-verification@google.com” stating that their phone number has been verified. The feature, known in Google settings as “Phone number verification,” links your active phone number across all Google accounts signed in on the same phone, including secondary profiles, work accounts, and throwaway handles.

Google’s support documentation has long noted that it periodically re-verifies your device’s phone number to keep communication and recovery features up to date. However, this support page was updated sometime between August and October 2025 to add this rather aggressive behavior of turning on phone number verification by default, as well as adding all phone numbers to all Google accounts signed in on the device. To disable automatic phone number verification on Android, open your phone’s Settings app, tap Google, and select the All Services tab. Under Privacy & Security, find Phone number verification and turn off Verify phone numbers automatically.

“[T]urning off the phone number verification toggle only prevents future linking,” notes the report. “If Google has already attached your number across secondary accounts, you will need to open your Google Account Personal Info page, head to Contact info > Phone, and manually remove the number from each profile where it doesn’t belong.”

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Because there comes a time in a pumpkin’s life when they’re convinced they’ve outgrown the patch and decide to move to the big city, only to return years later when a parent starts rotting in the field and re-fall in love with a Jill-O-Lantern they knew in high school and move back to take over the family corn maze and cider stand (Hallmark, hire me), this is a video of a giant inflatable pumpkin blowing down the street in North Carolina. I asked the one girl I know who lives in North Carolina and is big into Halloween if this was hers, but she said it wasn’t. I know it was, but I wouldn’t admit to it either.

Keep going for the video (the pumpkin actually escaped from Phillips Farms in Cary, NC), while I AI someone dressed up as Indiana Jones x the Headless Horseman running from it.

Thanks to JustA, the most magical witch of all time.

Cuts are coming to RedLynx and Ubisoft Singapore.

It’ll cost you though.

Director Greta Gerwig could have made pretty much any movie she wanted after 2023’s Barbie racked up nearly $1.5 billion at the box office. She chose to make Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew for Netflix, an adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ sixth novel in The Chronicles of Narnia series. Gerwig has said little publicly about the film, other than she was inspired by 1960s-era David Bowie, although she said it would not be a musical. Netflix just released the trailer, set to “Stairway to Heaven,” and it’s quite the wild psychedelic ride.

The first book in the series, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, was published in 1950, and Lewis did not initially intend to write any more Narnia adventures. But then an acquaintance asked how the London lamppost ended up in the middle of Narnia’s woodland, and Lewis was intrigued enough by the question to start a prequel, The Magician’s Nephew, in order to find an answer. Lewis found it difficult to finish the book, however, writing four other Narnia books first before completing The Magician’s Nephew in 1955.

There have been several adaptations, in various media, of The Chronicles of Narnia, most recently the early 2000s film franchise adapting the first three novels in the series. Those films showed diminishing returns, however, and by 2011 the film rights had expired. There were initial plans to adapt the fourth novel, The Silver Chair.

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