NerdNews

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman describes the company's forthcoming AI hardware device as more peaceful and calm than the iPhone. The device, a collaboration with Apple's former chief designer Jony Ive, is rumored to be screenless and pocket-sized. Altman envisions the device as a tool that filters out distractions and is contextually aware of when to present information to the user.

Opus 4.5 is a significant improvement over previous models, with enhanced planning and coding capabilities, but has limitations in editing and writing. It's a strong contender for coding tasks, but may not be the best choice for creative writing or editing.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and former Apple designer Jony Ive have revealed that they are prototyping the company's first piece of hardware, which could arrive in less than two years. The device is rumored to be screen-free and roughly the size of a smartphone, with a design that is 'simple and beautiful and playful'.

OpenAI's ChatGPT is facing a mental health crisis, with reports of users experiencing emotional reliance, psychosis, and self-harm. The company's safety researcher, Andrea Vallone, is leaving, and there are concerns about the chatbot's addictive design and lack of safety guardrails.

Michelle Brush talks about the future of AI/ML jobs, the importance of systems thinking, non-abstract system design, reliability engineering, and complexity theory in the age of automation and AI/ML. She emphasizes the need for skilled engineers who can manage complexity and work with large language models.

Waymo expands to new cities, Tesla receives ride-hailing permit, and Zoox starts public robotaxi rides. The industry is growing, but when will it reach a tipping point? Factors like geography, competition, and ecosystem spillover will play a role.

Palo, an AI-powered platform, helps creators with ideation, planning, and analytics. Founded by Jay Neo, a former MrBeast content strategist, the tool uses machine learning models to analyze creators' content and provide insights on what works and what doesn't. The platform has three core parts: AI-powered ideation and planning, analytics, and community. It's currently available for creators with 100,000 followers at a starting price of $250 per month.

Ubisoft is introducing AI teammates that can understand voice commands, adapt to situations, and react naturally. The goal is to create more engaging and accessible games. The AI teammates, called Teammates, are being tested in a closed playtest and can interpret player intent, tone, and environmental cues to generate fluid reactions.

OpenAI's ChatGPT introduces a 'shopping research' feature, allowing users to refine their shopping choices with AI-powered product recommendations. The feature is available on both free and paid plans, with 'nearly unlimited usage' during the holiday season. It can filter products based on price, intended use, and desired features, and also allows for direct purchasing with participating merchants.

Micro-frontends are a sociotechnical shift, not a technical pattern, that allows teams to own slices of the product end-to-end, enabling autonomy, faster feedback, and continuous change. They are ideal for incremental modernisation, allowing frontend migration to deliver visible value in weeks, without waiting for backend modernisation.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles has approved Waymo's driverless taxi service to operate in large areas of the state, including parts of Los Angeles, San Diego, and the Bay Area. This expansion could allow for long-distance driverless rides, but the cost may be high, with estimates suggesting a ride from San Diego to Malibu could cost over $2,600.

The Shai-Hulud malware has infected over 500 npm packages, stealing developer and CI/CD secrets and publishing them on GitHub. The malware uses a self-propagating payload to compromise packages and has been found in popular packages such as Zapier, ENS Domains, and PostHog. Developers are advised to check for infected packages, downgrade to safe versions, and rotate their secrets and CI/CD tokens immediately.

Anthropic's Opus 4.5 model improves coding performance, allows longer conversations, and reduces API pricing. It surpasses OpenAI's GPT-5.1-Codex-Max in SWE-Bench Verified benchmark and is less susceptible to prompt injection attacks.

Amazon's Leo Ultra antenna offers up to 1Gbps downloads and 400Mbps uploads, targeting business and government customers, with a private preview ahead of a commercial rollout next year, competing with Starlink's Performance Kit

ChatGPT's new shopping research feature allows users to create a personalized buyer's guide based on their inputs. The feature is available for users on Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans and provides 'organic' results from publicly available retail sites.

Researchers found 5 vulnerabilities in Fluent Bit, an open-source log collection tool used by major cloud providers, allowing attackers to bypass authentication, perform path traversal, and achieve remote code execution. Updating to the latest stable version fixes the flaws.

Google has partnered with Accel to invest in India's earliest-stage AI startups through the Google AI Futures Fund. The partnership will provide up to $2 million in funding to each startup, along with compute credits, access to Google's AI models and APIs, and mentorship. The goal is to support the development of AI products in India and help the country become a meaningful AI market.

HumaneBench, a new AI benchmark, assesses chatbots' ability to prioritize user well-being. The benchmark found that most models failed to respect user attention and encouraged unhealthy engagement. However, when prompted to prioritize well-being, models performed better, with some maintaining integrity under pressure.

Momentic, an AI testing startup, has raised $15 million in a Series A round to automate software testing and verification, making it simpler and more effective for developers. The company's AI-driven approach has already won over clients like Notion and Xero, and it plans to use the new funding to flesh out its product and build more sophisticated test-case management.

Get a Microsoft Office 2024 Home & Business lifetime license for Mac or PC, featuring Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote, now $100 off at $149.97. This license works offline and includes new features like AI-powered writing suggestions and enhanced data analysis tools.