In recent weeks, copies of an intriguing policy document have started to spread among space lobbyists on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The document bears the title “Athena,” and it purports to summarize the actions that private astronaut Jared Isaacman would have taken, were his nomination to become NASA administrator confirmed.

The 62-page plan is notable both for the ideas to remake NASA that it espouses as well as the manner in which it has been leaked to the space community.

After receiving a copy of this plan from an industry official, I spoke with multiple sources over the weekend to understand what is happening. Based upon this reporting there are clearly multiple layers to the story, which I want to unpack.

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Palantir launched a fellowship that recruited high school graduates directly into full-time work, bypassing college entirely. The company received more than 500 applications and selected 22 for the inaugural class. The four-month program began with seminars on Western civilization, U.S. history, and leaders including Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. Fellows then embedded in client teams working on live projects for hospitals, insurance companies, defense contractors, and government agencies.

CEO Alex Karp, who studied at Haverford and Stanford, said in August that hiring university students now means hiring people engaged in “platitudes.” The program wraps up in November. Palantir executives said they had a clear sense by the third or fourth week of which fellows were succeeding in the company environment. Fellows who perform well will receive offers for permanent positions without college degrees.

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It’s been four days since Disney’s channels disappeared from YouTube TV, and some subscribers are receiving a surprise hidden away in their account settings: Over on Reddit, there are reports that some users are able to claim $10 credits on their next six monthly bills, though it’s not entirely clear if this is intended as a make-good for the streamer’s Disney troubles.

The credit doesn’t seem to be showing up for everyone, but has been redeemed by YouTube TV subscribers at Tom’s Guide. Google has yet to make any announcements about the credit, and that based on a post to the YouTube X account, it appears to be entirely separate from the $20 credit the company previously promised subscribers if Disney channels remain off YouTube TV for an extended period. (That particular credit is apparently still pending, with YouTube telling subscribers to expect “an email with more details in the coming days.”)

It’s possible that the $10 credit is entirely unrelated to the Disney debacle, although the timing is suspect, and this isn’t the first time a mysterious credit has popped up for YouTube TV subscribers after a public controversy—9to5Google writer Ben Schoon wrote about claiming a similar credit back in June, after YouTube TV raised its prices.

Regardless of the reasons behind it, here’s how to check if you’re eligible for the new $10 YouTube TV credit on your own account, and how to claim it on your next six bills (a total savings of $60).

How to claim YouTube TV’s new $10 credit

According to the Reddit users as well as Schoon’s reporting from the last time this happened, you can only claim the credit through a web browser on a desktop or laptop computer, which might explain why some users aren’t seeing it.

Using said desktop browser, log into your YouTube TV account, click on your profile picture in the top-right corner, and click on Settings. Click on Membership, and finally Manage. If you’re eligible for the discount, you’ll see it here. Click Redeem to claim it.

Note, again, that even when you follow these steps, you may not see the discount, at least judging by reports from the Reddit community. Currently, it’s unclear how it’s being distributed. I’ve reached out to Google for more details and will update this post when I hear back.

When will I get my YouTube TV credit?

If you don’t see an offer to claim the new $10 credit on your YouTube TV account, you’re not totally out of luck: Per YouTube’s post to its X account, a $20 credit is currently being planned if Disney’s channels don’t return to the service soon. The company said it will send out emails with more details shortly, so keep an eye on your inbox for info on how to claim it. It’s possible those emails may also have more clarification about this $10 credit, which could help those who aren’t seeing it redeem it as well.

Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman says only biological beings are capable of consciousness, and that developers and researchers should stop pursuing projects that suggest otherwise. From a report: “I don’t think that is work that people should be doing,” Suleyman told CNBC in an interview this week at the AfroTech Conference in Houston, where he was among the keynote speakers. “If you ask the wrong question, you end up with the wrong answer. I think it’s totally the wrong question.”

Suleyman, Microsoft’s top executive working on artificial intelligence, has been one of the leading voices in the rapidly emerging field to speak out against the prospect of seemingly conscious AI, or AI services that can convince humans they’re capable of suffering.

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Back in October, I wrote about how I wanted to get a mini label printer during Amazon Prime Day so I could beef up my resale game. I am a woman of my word, and the printer arrived two short days later, immediately allowing me to print out the shipping labels I need for all the packages I sell on Poshmark.

This isn’t a necessary upgrade for any reseller, especially not someone who is casually just flipping their own clothes and goods online, as most resale platforms—Poshmark included—provide the option for you to simply show the USPS worker a QR code on your phone, which triggers the label to print at the post office. But having access to my own printer has sped up and made my process so much more efficient. Yes, I could continue printing my labels at the post office, but it was slower and more confusing that way, particularly when mailing multiple packages at once. Here are three reasons having my own printer has been better.

My label printer saves me time

When I wrote about the deals in October, I was considering getting a fancy, name-brand printer, but ended up going with the Vretti, a cheaper option at around $70, instead. I reasoned that this way, I could see if it actually benefitted my little side business before investing more money. If it didn’t work, I could resell it and recoup my minimal spend. If it did work, I could resell it, then use the earnings to upgrade to the heavier-hitting one.

Amazingly, the Vretti started proving its worth immediately. The first thing I noticed was how much time I saved. In the past, I would gather up the items that had been sold on a given day, put them all in a bag, take them to the post office, and then pack them—right there in public—into their mailing envelopes, which I had to procure at the post office itself. Then, I’d get into the line with my giant bunch of packages, wait who-knows-how-long, and finally, show the agent the QR code assigned to each package, so they could scan them, print out the label, affix it to the package, scan that, then put it in a bin ready to be shipped out. This took me 30 minutes on a good day.

With my label maker, I do most of that myself, since I also went ahead and bought some mailers. When an order comes in, I pack everything into a mailer, print my own envelope, walk over to the post office, and don’t need to wait in line at all. I just set the labeled package into a special window and walk away. The part that takes the longest is the four-minute walk to the post office, but even that can be avoided if I set up a package pickup by my mailperson the night before. I’m militant about keeping my average shipping time low, so if an order comes through in the daytime, I try to get it out same-day, which means I rarely have the chance to schedule a next-day pickup from my own home. If I cared less about that, I could easily set all my labeled packages for at-home pickup and never walk to the post office at all, meaning each sale would take me nothing more than seconds to fix up.

My label printer keeps me organized

Since I got this thing three weeks ago, I’ve made 26 sales. But because I typically sell bundles—or more than one thing at a time, offering a discount for bulk purchases—I’ve actually sold about 63 things within those 26 packages. Remember how I said that before I got my printer, I’d put everything in a bag and bring it to the post office, then pack it there? On days I had multiple bundles to ship out, that was tricky. I’d get confused about which item belonged in which mailer, have to write the contents on the mailer itself so I could remember which package corresponded with which QR code, and carefully coordinate with the attendant to make sure nothing got mixed up.

Fortunately, I never mailed anyone the wrong order or made a major mistake—but it was time-consuming, annoying, and stressful. My label printer makes that a problem of the past. When an order comes in, I build it out immediately, pulling the right items from the shelf, putting them in a mailer, and labeling them instantly. Then, even if I wait to go to the post office until I have a few more packages to send out, there’s no confusing what is what.

My label printer makes me a more appealing seller

This whole thing is very transactional and straightforward. I list my old clothes that don’t fit anymore. Someone buys them. I get money. They get clothes. That doesn’t mean there’s no customer service involved here, although you can certainly be an impersonal, brusque seller if you want to be. I do prefer to send out cute packages that make the transaction feel a little more personal, though, and the printer helps me there, too.

Because I can pack them in my own home and take my time with them, my packages are looking better and more bespoke than ever. I can write little messages on the label, take care to wrap goods in tissue paper, or otherwise spruce up my colorful mailers, all without someone in line behind me at the post office willing me to hurry up.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese President Xi Jinping joked about security backdoors while presenting a pair of Xiaomi smartphones to his South Korean counterpart, a rare moment of spontaneous levity captured during a week of tense trade negotiations with Donald Trump.

Xi, in South Korea to meet Trump on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, presented the pair of devices to Korean President Lee Jae Myung. In a video circulated on social media, Lee asked: “Is the line secure?” Xi chuckled, pointed at the gadgets and replied through an interpreter: “You can check if there’s a backdoor.” The two leaders burst into laughter.

The exchange was striking because the issue of security and alleged espionage is a sensitive one and a major thorn in US-Chinese relations. American lawmakers have raised the possibility that tech companies such as Huawei build backdoors — ways to gain access to sensitive data — into their equipment or services, something the firms have repeatedly denied.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenAI will pay Amazon $38 billion for computing power in a seven-year deal that marks the companies’ first partnership. Amazon expects all of the computing capacity negotiated as part of the agreement will be available to OpenAI by the end of next year. The ChatGPT maker will train new AI models using Amazon’s data centers and use them to process user queries.

The deal is small compared with OpenAI’s $300 billion agreement with Oracle and its $250 billion commitment to Microsoft. OpenAI ended its exclusive cloud-computing partnership with Microsoft last month and has since signed almost $600 billion in new cloud commitments. Amazon Web Services is the industry’s largest cloud provider, but Microsoft and Google have reported faster cloud-revenue growth in recent years after capturing new demand from AI customers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US science always suffers during government shutdowns. Funding lapses send government scientists home without pay. Federal agencies suspend new grant opportunities, place expert review panels on hold, and stop collecting and analyzing critical public datasets that tell us about the economy, the environment and public health.

In 2025, the stakes are higher than in past shutdowns.

This shutdown arrives at a time of massive upheaval to American science and innovation driven by President Donald Trump’s ongoing attempts to extend executive power and assert political control of scientific institutions.

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Much to the chagrin of mundane numbers like 35 and 192, 6-7 has taken over American culture. I assume that young people love 6-7 so much because 67 is the 19th prime number and the atomic weight of holmium, which is essential to samarium-cobalt magnets, but I can’t say for sure.

I can say 6-7 is everywhere—on TikTok, in memes, and now in the dictionary. And that’s only one of the many confusing trends I’m explaining this week. I’ll also tell you about Soulja Boy selling smart glasses, the sunglasses on your waist trend, and “Beez in the Trap” (Be-Beez in the trap…)

Dictionary.com names “6-7” word of the year

The Gen-Alpha brainrot slang word 6-7 has been named 2025’s Word of the Year by Dictionary.com. “We’re all still trying to figure out exactly what it means,” Dictionary.com says on its website, adding, “perhaps the most defining feature of 6-7 is that it’s impossible to define. It’s meaningless, ubiquitous, and nonsensical.”

The dictionary site points out that 6-7 is generally annoying to adults while it bestows in-group status among children who use it; hitting a “six-seveeen” at exactly the right time marks you as a specific kind of person to other members of Generation A. The real question about 6-7 is how long can it keep going: Now that everyone, including the dictionary and HBO, is using your secret word, can it continue to be cool?

Dictionary.com’s runners-up for word of the year include “aura farming” a word that refers to a person who does something performatively cool; “clanker,” a slur aimed at robots and AI agents pretending to be human; and “tradwife,” a woman who believes in and practices traditional gender roles within marriage.

(If you want to know the definitions of a whole slew of current slang that haven’t made it to dictionary.com yet, check out Lifehacker’s glossary of Gen Z and Gen Alpha Slang You Might Need Help Decoding.)

Sam Altman just renames ChatGPT 6 to ChatGPT 6-7

In a post on X on Friday, OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman said that GPT-6 will be renamed GPT-6-7. See?

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Altman offered no other details, and it’s probably just a joke in response to dictionary.com’s word of the year choice. But it really makes me think 6-7 is over. How can so many extremely uncool people can keep using your buzzword before you have to get a new buzzword?

Soulja Boy is selling AI smart glasses

Rapper Soulja Boy is 35 years-old, so he’s more like Soulja Middle-Aged-Man, but the spirit of Soulja Boy is eternally youthful, especially when he does things like sell his own brand of “AI smart glasses.” On a recent post on his Instagram account, Souljah invited everyone to “step into the future” and to “See the world in style” with smart glasses that promise “innovation meets drip.”

While other people are paying $800 for the latest Meta glasses, Soulja Boy’s smart glasses can be yours for only $64.50. You won’t get a display or a wrist-control for that kind of money. Instead, Soulja Boy glasses offer “hands-free music control, live performance enhancements, and seamless social media connectivity.” I don’t know what any of that means. Other awesome Soulja Boy merch you can buy: a $42 handheld game console and $20 Soulja Boy earbuds.

Character.ai shuts down teen chats

In a move that feels a lot like a response to recent lawsuits, leading AI chatbot platform Character.ai announced it will no longer allow anyone under 18 to have open-ended conversations with its chatbots. The platform boasts over 20 million users; officially, about 53% of them are between 18 and 24, and only 10% are under 18. But that’s all self-reported ages with no verification, so it’s impossible to know how many users are secretly children. My guess it’s that it’s a lot more than 10%—the platform’s thing is letting people interact with user-created “characters” that are powered by AI models, and a quick look at the site suggests cartoon characters, memes, and rappers you’ve never heard of are very popular “characters” on the site. Plus, it’s hard to see how something like this would hold the interest of anyone over a certain age.

Either way, if you want to check out the kinds of troubling conversations children are having with chatbots, this report released in September from online safety advocates Parents Together Action highlights interactions like Rey from Star Wars giving a 13-year-old advice on how to hide not taking her prescribed anti-depressants from her parents, and a Patrick Mahomes bot offering a 15-year-old a cannabis edible.

Troubling TikTok trend of the week: Sunglasses on waist

TikTok seems like it’s playing a perpetual game of whack-a-mole with unhealthy dieting content. Seemingly innocent hashtags like “what I eat in a day” are populated by videos of people who clearly don’t eat enough, and TikTok fully banned the #skinnytok hashtag a few months ago. The latest trend is the “sunglasses on waist challenge,” and it involves seeing if your sunglasses can fit around your waist. (Mine don’t, but only because my head isn’t gigantic.) There’s nothing specifically harmful about it, I guess, but there’s an implied congratulations if you can mange it, because it means you’re extremely skinny. It’s the kind of ban-evasion technique that highlights the difficulty of trying to ban ideas, even harmful ideas. They have a way of slipping out anyway. (Though for what it’s worth, a number of “Sunglasses on waist” TikToks that show up on Google appear to have been removed, though it’s unclear if the social media app banned them or the account owners took them down.)

Viral video trend of the week: Beez in the Trap

Nicki Minaj’s 2012 bop “Beez in the Trap” and 4 Non-Blonde’s 1993 hit “What’s Going on?” are both certified bangers in their own ways, but who could have guessed that they’d fit together well enough to inspire tens of thousands of meme videos on TikTok?

But let me start with an explainer of “Beez in the trap.” In this context, “beez” means “I am always,” and “trap” used to mean a place where drugs are sold, but now means anywhere where money is made, like an office, so “I beez in the trap” means something like, “I’m always hustling to make money.”

Onto the meme videos: they works like this: Two people stand back to back. Person one passioantely lip-syncs the chorus of 4 Non Blonde’s song, the camera rotates to person two, who chimes in with Minaj’s less existentially angsty contribution to the mash up. It’s one of those things that just works in a way that defies explanation. Look:

Anyway, the trend caught on and famous people started doing it too, like The Kardashians:

And Jimmy Fallon:

I guess it isn’t surprising that professionals at being like “look at me!” would glom onto an attention-getting trend, but I much prefer videos of normal people.

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If you’re trying to set up a simple home security system without drilling holes or wiring a maze of cables, this Blink bundle is about as plug-and-play as it gets. Right now, the Blink Outdoor 4 (2-Cam System) + Blink Video Doorbell (2nd Gen) + Sync Module Core is down to $61.99 on Amazon—its lowest recorded price, according to online price-trackers. Normally $189.98, this three-piece setup is basically everything you’d need to secure a small home: two wireless cameras to cover your spaces, a smart video doorbell for the front, and a sync module that keeps it all connected and running through the Blink app.

All-new Blink Video Doorbell + Outdoor 4 – Wireless smart security cameras, head-to-toe HD view, two-year battery life. Sync Module Core included – 2 camera system + Video Doorbell

$61.99
at Amazon

$189.98
Save $127.99

$61.99
at Amazon

$189.98
Save $127.99

Both the outdoor cameras and doorbell share the same strengths, including wire-free installation, long battery life, and solid video quality. Each runs on a pair of AA lithium batteries that can last up to two years, so once they’re up, you can largely forget about maintenance. The Outdoor 4 cameras record in 1080p, while the doorbell captures in 1,440 x 1,440, giving you clear visuals day or night thanks to infrared night vision. Both include motion detection and two-way audio, which means you can see and speak to whoever’s at your door or gate in real time. The devices are also weather-resistant, with the doorbell rated IP65 against dust and rain, and their wide viewing angles—143 degrees on the cameras, 150 on the doorbell—help cut down blind spots. At the center, the Sync Module Core keeps the entire setup running smoothly, linking all devices over wifi and supporting up to ten Blink gadgets for easy expansion later.

That said, the Sync Module Core lacks a USB port for local storage, so you’ll need Blink’s cloud plan to save footage long-term. You can still view live feeds for up to five minutes at a time without a subscription, but features like clip storage, person detection, and extended video history start at $40 per year for one device or $120 for unlimited. Also, while the system integrates neatly with Alexa and Echo Show displays, letting you pull up a live feed with a voice command, it skips Google Home and Apple HomeKit support.

Microsoft has released a patch that fixes a longstanding bug in Windows 11 and Windows 10 where selecting “Update and shut down” would restart the computer instead of powering it off. The issue affected users across both operating systems since Windows 10’s initial release. The fix arrived in Windows 11 25H2 Build 26200.7019 and the October 2025 optional update KB5067036.

Microsoft confirmed the patch “addressed underlying issue which can cause ‘Update and shutdown’ to not actually shut down your PC after updating.” The problem likely stemmed from the Windows Servicing Stack failing to carry the power-off command through the required reboot phase. During updates Windows must restart into an offline servicing mode to replace system files. The power-off instruction was either cleared or blocked during this transition.

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“During the past two years or so I have been slow-rolling an effort to port the Linux kernel to WebAssembly,” reads a surprising post on the Linux kernel mailing list.

I’m now at the point where the kernel boots and I can run basic programs from a shell. As you will see if you play around with it for a bit, it’s not very stable and will crash sooner or later, but I think this is a good first step.
Wasm is not necessarily only targeting the web, but that’s how I have
been developing this project… This is Linux, booting in your browser tab, accelerated by Wasm.
Phoronix warns that “there are stability issues and it didn’t take me long either to trigger crashes for this Linux kernel WASM port when running within Google Chrome.”

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This month, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine archived its trillionth webpage, and the nonprofit invited its more than 1,200 library partners and 800,000 daily users to join a celebration of the moment. To honor “three decades of safeguarding the world’s online heritage,” the city of San Francisco declared October 22 to be “Internet Archive Day.” The Archive was also recently designated a federal depository library by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who proclaimed the organization a “perfect fit” to expand “access to federal government publications amid an increasingly digital landscape.”

The Internet Archive might sound like a thriving organization, but it only recently emerged from years of bruising copyright battles that threatened to bankrupt the beloved library project. In the end, the fight led to more than 500,000 books being removed from the Archive’s “Open Library.”

“We survived,” Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle told Ars. “But it wiped out the Library.”

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“Rockstar Games fired dozens of employees,” reports Bloomberg, “in a move that a British trade union said was designed to prevent the workers from unionizing. The company said they were fired for misconduct.”

TheGrand Theft Automaker terminatedbetween 30 and 40 staffersacross multipleoffices in the UK and Canada on Thursday, according to aspokesperson for the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB). All of the employees were part of a private trade union chat groupon Discord and were either members of the union or attempting to organize at the company, the union spokesperson said.

“Rockstar has just carried out one of the most blatant and ruthless acts of union busting in the history of the games industry,” Alex Marshall, president of theIWGB, said in a statement. “This flagrant contempt for the law and for the lives of the workers who bring in their billions is an insult to their fans and the global industry.”

On BlueSky the IWGB union posted “We won’t back down, and we’re not scared — we will fight for every member to be reinstated.”

Bloomberg notes that Grand Theft Auto VIis slated for release on May 26, 2026, “and is expected to be one of the top-selling video games of all time.”

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“It finally happened,” writes the GamingOnLinux site:

Linux gamers on Steam as of the Steam Hardware & Software Survey for October 2025 have crossed over the elusive 3% mark. The trend has been clear for sometime, and with Windows 10 ending support, it was quite likely this was going to be the time for it to happen as more people try out Linux…

Overall, 3% might not seem like much to some, but again — that trend is very clear and equates to millions of people. The last time Valve officially gave a proper monthly active user count was in 2022, and we know Steam has grown a lot since then, but even going by that original number would put monthly active Linux users at well over 4 million.

Additional details from Phoronix:

The only time Steam on Linux use was close to the 3% mark was when Steam on Linux initially debuted a decade ago and at that time the overall Steam user-base was much smaller than it is today. Long story short, thanks to the ongoing success of Valve’s Steam Deck and other handhelds plus Steam Play (Proton) working out so well, these October numbers are the best yet… a hearty 0.41% increase to Linux… landing its overall marketshare at 3.05%. Windows meanwhile was at 94.84% (falling below 95% for the first time in a while) and macOS at 2.11%. For comparison, in October 2024 Steam on Linux was at 2.00%.

The Linux-specific data shows SteamOS commanding around 27% of all the Linux installs at large. SteamOS most notably being on the Steam Deck hardware.

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TechCrunch reports:

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said that the company is doing “well more” than $13 billion in annual revenue — and he sounded a little testy when pressed on how it will pay for its massive spending commitments.
His comments came up during a joint interviewon the Bg2 podcast between Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella about the partnership between their companies. Host Brad Gerstner (who’s also founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital) brought upreports that OpenAI is currently bringing in around $13 billion in revenue — a sizable amount, but one that’s dwarfed by more than $1 trillion in spending commitments for computing infrastructure that OpenAI has made for the next decade.
“First of all, we’re doing well more revenue than that. Second of all, Brad, if you want to sell your shares, I’ll find you a buyer,” Altman said, prompting laughs from Nadella. “I just — enough. I think there are a lot of people who would love to buy OpenAI shares.”
Altman’s answer continued, making the case for OpenAI’s business model. “We do plan for revenue to grow steeply. Revenue is growing steeply. We are taking a forward bet that it’s going to continue to grow and that not only will ChatGPT keep growing, but we will be able to become one of the important AI clouds, that our consumer device business will be a significant and important thing. That AI that can automate science will create huge value…

“We carefully plan, we understand where the technology — where the capability — is going to go, and the products we can build around that and the revenue we can generate. We might screw it up — like, this is the bet that we’re making, and we’re taking a risk along with that.” (That bet-with-risks seems to be the $1.4 trillion in spending commitments — but Altman suggests it’s offset by another absolutely certain risk: “If we don’t have the compute, we will not be able to generate the revenue or make the models at this kind of scale.”)

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, added his own defense, “as both a partner and an investor. There has not been a single business plan that I’ve seen from OpenAI that they have put in and not beaten it. So in some sense, this is the one place where in terms of their growth — and just even the business — it’s been unbelievable execution, quite frankly…”

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