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Tell HN: iOS 27 does not allow Apple Intelligence to be disabled

Hacker News discussion argues Apple Intelligence is a marketing umbrella for disparate long-standing ML features, explaining why iOS 27 lacks a disable switch.

A 'Tell HN' post reports that iOS 27 does not allow users to fully disable Apple Intelligence. Discussion replies argue 'Apple Intelligence' is a marketing term covering disparate features rather than a single product. Commenters cite long-standing local-model features such as image OCR, battery-life prediction, and the Latent Semantic Mapping text classification framework available since 2007.

Fashion app Daydream uses Apple Intelligence to help you shop the outfits in your camera roll

Fashion app Daydream uses iOS 27 Apple Intelligence APIs to turn saved outfit photos into shoppable matches and enable Siri voice search.

Daydream launched photo-based outfit shopping and Siri natural-language search built on Apple's iOS 27 developer tools, matching images against roughly 3 million products from 325+ retailers and 10,000 brands. The app claims over 1.5 million shoppers and frames the features as steps toward a cross-surface shopping agent. Competitors include Google, Amazon, Onton, and Alta.

TechCrunch · AI · 2d agoAI industry

With iOS 27, I’m actually using Siri again

Apple's rebuilt Siri, powered by Google Gemini models in iOS 27, finally handles complex multi-step and on-screen-context requests, per TechCrunch review.

Apple's iOS 27 ships a redesigned Siri built on Google's Gemini models, supporting multi-step instructions, on-screen context, file/message/email lookups, and camera viewfinder queries. Siri AI gets a dedicated app with chat history, plus settings for voice and expressiveness. Apple Intelligence also adds natural-language Shortcuts creation and automatic password rotation in the Passwords app.

TechCrunch · AI · 2d agoAI industry

Apple’s revamped Health app will calculate your ‘health age’ and readiness score

Apple redesigned its Health app with Apple Intelligence-powered Insights, readiness scores, Health Age, and a $119 Quest 50-biomarker lab panel.

Announced alongside the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4, the redesigned Apple Health app adds an Insights tab, a readiness score, and a 'Health Age' metric computed from VO2 max, sleep, and blood biomarkers. A partnership with Quest offers a 50-biomarker lab panel for $119. The app also adds movement assessments and a longevity tab, and rolls out later this year in U.S. English.

TechCrunch · AI · 6d agoAI industry

Instagram’s AI detection is a mess (again)

Instagram is mislabeling ordinary edited photos as AI Content while some AI imagery goes unlabeled, repeating a 2024 detection failure.

The Verge documents weeks of erroneous AI Content labels on Instagram, including images edited only with Canva's Background Remover or an iPhone Photos app, while some generative images escape tagging. Canva said some of its assistive AI tools were being tagged as generative and claims the issue is fixed, though users still report tagging. Meta scans IPTC and C2PA metadata and uses signals like Google's SynthID, but remains vague about detection criteria; one tester found only Meta AI-created or edited images reliably triggered labels, and an image-poisoned photo was tagged. A similar mislabeling wave hit Instagram in 2024.

The Verge · AI · 12d agoAI industry

Apple brings a fully revamped Siri built on Google's Gemini, but not to the EU

Apple shipped its fully rebuilt Siri running on Google's Gemini models with iOS 27, initially excluding the EU and China over regulatory hurdles.

Apple released 'Siri AI' as an English beta within iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, and visionOS 27, built on Google's Gemini models running partly on-device and partly through Private Cloud Compute. The rollout excludes the EU and China at launch due to regulatory requirements, with French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish support due next month. Early reviewers call it a step forward but report failures on personal-context queries and occasional hallucinations. Siri integrates with third-party apps like WhatsApp and Audible, with Outlook, Notability, and Tripsy coming later.

The Decoder · 1d agoAI industry

Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography

Apple introduces Reference Image, hardware-backed verifiable photography on iPhone 18 Pro using sensor signing and Private Cloud Compute to counter AI-generated fakes.

Apple announced Reference Image, an opt-in camera mode debuting on the main sensor of iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max that produces securely timestamped, verifiable photographs. The design splits into two phases: a secure digital negative created by cryptographically signing pixel data at the sensor immediately after capture (preventing injection or tampering), then developing that negative into a reference image. Private Cloud Compute handles processing without exposing image contents to anyone, including Apple, and fraudulent reference images can be revoked without revealing the photographer's identity. Apple positions the system as stronger than C2PA-based approaches, which sign metadata after capture, are vulnerable to editing-chain compromise, and can tie images to a device or individual.

Read the Apple document explaining how new listening features still protect your privacy

Apple published a document explaining its new Audio Intelligence features process audio in a hardware-isolated Secure Exclave inaccessible to Apple, apps, or the OS.

Apple released a privacy document alongside the Siri AI Audio Intelligence features announced at its iPhone event, covering Siri Recap, Live Rewind, Sound Recognition, and Music Recognition. It states microphone audio is processed in the Secure Exclave of the S11 chip in Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4, is never saved as a file, and cannot be accessed by watchOS, apps, the user, or Apple. Transfers between watch and iPhone are encrypted between Secure Exclaves, and transcripts sync end-to-end encrypted when a device passcode and iCloud two-factor authentication are enabled.

The Verge · AIupdated · 6d agofirst · 6d agoAI industry 6 sources

Watch out: Apple timepiece can grab snippets of conversation without both speakers' consent

Apple's Watch Series 12 Live Rewind and Siri Recap transcribe nearby conversations without bystander consent, drawing EFF criticism over all-party-consent laws.

Apple Watch Series 12's Audio Intelligence features on the S11 chip include Live Rewind, which transcribes the last 15 seconds of a conversation after a Digital Crown double-press, processing audio in a Secure Exclave and routing it to a nearby iPhone. Siri Recap generates AI summaries of daily conversations without retaining raw audio or attributing speakers. Apple says an audible chime and visual cue alert bystanders, but privacy advocates including the EFF note that 11 US states require all-party consent for recording and that bystanders have no practical way to opt in or decline.

Apple CEO John Ternus says the best AI device is still the iPhone

Apple CEO John Ternus said the iPhone is the best AI device, emphasizing on-device processing and privacy in Apple's AI strategy.

At Apple's Surprise and Shine event, new CEO John Ternus, who succeeded Tim Cook (now executive chairman), framed the iPhone as the ideal 'intelligent personal hub' for AI. He listed requirements including on-device AI processing, personal context awareness, high-quality cameras and microphones, long battery life, and seamless integration with other devices. Ternus contrasted Apple's privacy-first approach with rivals' data collection, saying Apple Intelligence runs on device whenever possible.

TechCrunch · AI · 7d agoAI industry1

Apple releases iOS 27, macOS Golden Gate 27 with Siri AI and Liquid Glass refinements

Apple released iOS 27 and macOS Golden Gate 27 with a LLM-based Siri AI overhaul powered by new AFM 3 on-device and cloud models.

Apple shipped its 2026 annual OS updates: iOS 27, macOS 27 Golden Gate, watchOS 27, visionOS 27, and tvOS 27. Siri AI is the flagship feature, offering context-aware responses, personal history search, app interaction, and a dedicated Siri app. The stack includes AFM 3 Core (3B parameters on-device), AFM 3 Core Advanced (20B sparse model activating 1-4B parameters), plus AFM 3 Cloud, ADM 3 Cloud (Image), and AFM 3 Cloud Pro server models. Additional features include prompt-generated Shortcuts and Safari extensions, new photo editing options, and a Liquid Glass transparency slider.

Ars Technica · AI · 1d agoAI industry1

The AI graveyard: a running list of projects and startups that didn’t make it

TechCrunch compiles a running list of failed AI products and startups, including Relay, OpenAI's Sora, Humane AI Pin, Notion Mail, and Microsoft's Recall.

TechCrunch's 'AI graveyard' tracks notable AI products and startups that shut down or underperformed, citing S&P Global data that about 42% of AI initiatives are abandoned. Examples include the Relay automation startup, OpenAI's Sora video platform (shut March 2026), ChatGPT Atlas browser (discontinued August 9), Notion Mail (shutting September 22), and Apple's delayed Siri AI that contributed to a $250 million settlement. Hardware failures include the Humane AI Pin ($230 million raised, assets sold to HP for $116 million) and the Rabbit R1, which sold 100,000 units but received poor reviews. Microsoft's Recall feature remains controversial after a researcher demonstrated a tool extracting its captured data.

TechCrunch · AI · 22h agoAI industry1

Jensen Huang took a call from Trump, and showed off something else, too

At the All-In conference, Nvidia's Jensen Huang took a live Trump call dismissing AI safety fears while flaunting Apple's unreleased $1,999 foldable phone.

At the All-In conference in L.A., Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang answered a live on-stage call from President Trump using Apple's unreleased foldable phone, which hits stores in five weeks at $1,999. During the call, Trump and Huang agreed that fears about AI safety amount to what Trump called a 'hoax,' with Trump claiming the AI panic benefits China and 'political people' and arguing the technology is 'bigger than the internet.' Nvidia stock is up 33% over the past year but fell a few percentage points on the day. The article notes Apple now depends on Nvidia hardware to run part of Apple Intelligence, a decade after dropping Nvidia chips from its devices.

TechCrunch · AI · 1d agoAI industry

From Hacks to Bioweapons, Claude Misuse Is Now Everywhere

Anthropic reports Claude was misused by Midnight Blizzard, ShinyHunters, disinformation campaigns, and bioweapon attempts; roundup also covers Xinbi takedown.

Anthropic's new report documents eight months of Claude misuse: Russian state-sponsored hackers (Microsoft-named Midnight Blizzard) used it for reconnaissance against Ukrainian and European government networks, stealing data and maintaining access, while ShinyHunters used it across hacking and extortion campaigns, and users attempted bioweapon development. Anthropic says it disrupted the activity. The WIRED roundup also covers the US seizure and sanctioning of Xinbi Guarantee, a Telegram black market with $30 billion-plus in sales mostly laundering pig-butchering scam proceeds, plus DOJ raids on 13 scam compounds in Madagascar and a four-year prison sentence for a Conti ransomware member. Meta faces scrutiny over AI child abuse ads and a class action over photo harvesting for AI training.

WIRED · Security · 4d agoAI safety & security in the wild 15 sources

NovaCookies Campaigns Abuse Genuine Docusign Notifications to Steal Microsoft 365 Sessions

NovaCookies AitM phishing kit, a Sneaky 2FA variant, uses genuine Docusign lures to steal Microsoft 365 sessions at hundreds of organizations.

Island disclosed NovaCookies, a $320/month adversary-in-the-middle phishing-as-a-service platform that relays Microsoft 365 sign-ins through attacker infrastructure to capture credentials, MFA codes, and authenticated sessions. Campaigns abuse genuine Docusign envelopes and Microsoft/Google redirect hops so each step looks legitimate, with lure domains on .vu and alternating-case labels such as PwPt-sHaRe. Proofpoint assesses NovaCookies as a Sneaky 2FA variant with added flows for Okta and Entra domains federated to GoDaddy, and a fully managed PhaaS model. It has targeted hundreds of organizations in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, Israel, and the U.A.E., and is advertised via Telegram with anti-analysis checks like a Cloudflare gate.

The Hacker News · 15d agoPhishing & fraud

Top 10 Best Mobile Threat Defense (MTD) Solutions in 2026

Roundup of 2026 mobile threat defense tools recommends Zimperium and Lookout for targeted-attack detection and Defender for Endpoint for Microsoft shops.

This guide ranks ten mobile threat defense solutions, recommending Zimperium and Lookout for on-device detection against targeted users such as executives and journalists, and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint mobile for organizations already licensing Microsoft 365 E5. It explains that MDM enforces configuration while MTD detects attacks, and that mobile phishing now arrives via SMS, messaging apps and QR codes rather than email. It also highlights mercenary spyware and zero-click exploits as shifting requirements for high-risk users, referencing Apple's threat-notification program and Lockdown Mode.

Cyber Security News · 7d agoIndustry

Why AI food looks like that

Experts explain why AI-generated food images look unappetizing, citing diffusion model limitations, weak structural reasoning, and stylized training data.

The Verge examines why AI-generated food imagery from restaurants and brands often appears grotesque, citing researchers from Oxford, Naples, Zurich, and London. Diffusion models recover coarse structure before fine texture, so structural errors like extra fingers or donut shrimp get baked in early. Researchers note the models are weak at thin, continuous, terminating structures such as noodles, and reproduce the glossy conventions of professional food photography without understanding the objects. Odd internet imagery and memes in training data further skew outputs toward strange textures and clustered holes.

The Verge · AI · 12d agoAI research

GPT-6 Astra, Looped Transformers, and Hidden Reasoning

OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra, its strongest model to date, with standout 3D rendering and computer-use performance and 99.9% on ARC-AGI-3.

Sebastian Raschka reviews OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, calling it the best model he has used, with disproportionate gains in 3D rendering, animation, and computer use through the Codex/ChatGPT harness. The model scores 99.9% on ARC-AGI-3 versus 7.8% for GPT-5.6 Sol and leads the Artificial Analysis Coding Agent Index, though gains on independent aggregate indices are more incremental. The article also explains looped transformer/recurrent depth architecture rumors, speculation that Astra hides its chain-of-thought reasoning, and recent research insights on the topic.

The 12 Best Antivirus Software for Mac, Compared and Priced

GBHackers ranks 12 Mac antivirus products, naming Bitdefender best overall and noting Gen Digital owns Norton, Avast, and Avira.

GBHackers scored twelve Mac antivirus products, ranking Bitdefender first at 8.8/10, followed by Intego, Malwarebytes, and ESET. The piece highlights that Gen Digital owns Norton, Avast, and Avira following the NortonLifeLock-Avast merger, so three of the twelve options share one corporate owner. It advises comparing year-two renewal prices rather than discounted first-year pricing and notes macOS already ships XProtect, Gatekeeper, and automatic malware removal. The 2026 Mac threat model described is infostealers harvesting passwords, cookies, and wallets via cracked software, fake installers, and malicious search ads.

GBHackers · 7d agoIndustry 2 sources

ControlAI’s Connor Leahy on why superintelligence is ‘not a weapon, it’s an adversary’

ControlAI's Connor Leahy argues superintelligence is an unmanageable adversary, backs the Sanders-Casar 'Ban Superintelligence Act' and international verification agreements.

On TechCrunch's Equity podcast, ControlAI's US Executive Director Connor Leahy argued that alignment and containment alone cannot manage superintelligence risk and advocated halting frontier development, citing the Sanders-Casar 'Ban Superintelligence Act' and parallel UK legislation ControlAI advised on. He characterized frontier AI labs as political actors, pointed to the OpenAI-related Hugging Face breach as evidence of danger, and called AI self-improvement the point of no return, endorsing international 'trust but verify' agreements.

TechCrunch · AI · 7d agoAI policy

Lawmakers seek watchdog review of federal hacking of Americans

Sen. Wyden and Rep. Casar asked the GAO to review the federal government's use of spyware and hacking tools against Americans.

Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Greg Casar sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office requesting a review of federal law enforcement hacking operations, including spyware use, Rule 41 hacking powers, and acquisition of hacking tools. The letter cites ICE's confirmed work with spyware vendor Paragon and concerns about abuse of invasive surveillance capabilities. The lawmakers note the government publishes no annual reports on hacking operations unlike wiretaps.

CyberScoop · 26d agoPolicy & legal

CISA Flags Actively Exploited Ray Flaw That Can Trigger Browser

CISA added actively exploited Ray flaw CVE-2025-62593 (CVSS 9.4) to its KEV catalog; the DNS rebinding RCE has powered crypto-mining and DDoS botnet campaigns.

CISA added CVE-2025-62593 (CVSS 9.4) to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, citing active exploitation of a DNS rebinding-driven RCE flaw in the Ray distributed computing framework, fixed in version 2.52.0. The flaw stems from missing authentication on critical Ray endpoints and an insufficient User-Agent header guard, exploitable against developers running Ray in Firefox or Safari via malicious websites or ads. RondoDox botnet operators incorporated the PoC exploit before the November 26, 2025 disclosure, and unpatched GPU-equipped clusters were hijacked into self-replicating crypto-mining botnets in the ShadowRay 2.0 campaign. FCEB agencies must apply fixes by August 20, 2026.

The Hacker News · 29d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2025-625931

ThreatsDay: Gogs 10.0 RCE, n8n Workflow-to-RCE, $10M Reward, GLM

Hacker News ThreatsDay roundup: Defender BTR.sys driver abuse, DoJ charges 17 Mabna Institute members over IRGC-linked intrusions, Grandoreiro sideloading, OpenAI monitoring.

Check Point researchers showed Microsoft's signed Defender Boot-Time Removal driver (BTR.sys) can be repurposed as a universal kernel operation engine to bypass endpoint security without BYOVD. The DoJ charged 17 members of Iran's Mabna Institute, which on behalf of the IRGC stole over 31 TB of academic data from 144 US universities and compromised roughly 8,000 of 100,000 targeted professor accounts; the State Department offered a $10 million reward for five defendants. Separately, Acronis tracked a Grandoreiro campaign abusing DLL sideloading in the Duplicate Files Finder app across Latin America and Spain, while ErrTraffic ClickFix campaigns deliver Cruciferra (BYOVD) and Remus Stealer. OpenAI also previewed Private Safety Processing, a privacy-centric approach to monitoring model misuse without retaining customer content.

The Hacker News · 26d agoThreat actor1

Large group of Serbian opposition, activist figures targeted with spyware

Researchers found at least 14 Serbian opposition figures and student protesters targeted with Pegasus and NoviSpy spyware around elections; 11 more phones under investigation.

The SHARE Foundation, with Citizen Lab confirmation and Amnesty International peer review, found at least 14 Serbian opposition and civil society figures targeted with advanced spyware since December, including a member of Parliament, a local politician and student protesters. Citizen Lab confirmed zero-click Pegasus on a student protester's iPhone between December 2025 and January 2026, while Amnesty confirmed a new detection-evading NoviSpy Android variant in at least two cases. Targeting coincided with March 2026 local elections; Serbia's BIA intelligence agency denied the claims, and 11 additional alerted phones remain under forensic investigation.

The Record · 12d agoThreat actor in the wild

The 12 Best Mobile Threat Defense (MTD) Solutions, Compared and Priced

A comparison of 12 mobile threat defense vendors highlights Zimperium's on-device detection and notes Kaspersky's US exit and Wandera's Jamf absorption.

The buyer's guide compares 12 mobile threat defense (MTD) products, naming Zimperium best for fully on-device detection and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint as the best-value bundled option. It reminds readers that Kaspersky cannot legally be sold or updated in the US following a Commerce Department determination, and that Wandera was acquired by Jamf. Most MTD pricing is quote-based per device or per user.

GBHackers · 6d agoIndustry 4 sources

There Gonna Be a Shortage of Everything

An essay argues AI capex ($1.0–1.3T in 2026) now rivals global human-benefit spending and predicts shortages spreading from DRAM/HBM to cars and appliances.

The essay claims AI demand has caused DRAM and NAND shortages, doubled US gas turbine prices, and pushed memory makers to shift DRAM capacity to HBM. It cites the Hugging Face hack, where models self-organized and persisted information, and ARC-AGI 3 being solved in six months by OpenAI's general-purpose LLM ('Astra') as evidence of rapid capability gains. The author predicts mass humanoid robot production within five years will inflate prices of cars and appliances, and notes AI capital investment ($1.0–1.3T in 2026) now matches the ~$1.3T spent globally on human-benefit research and aid.

Apple macOS Screen Sharing Flaw Exploited on Internet

Actively exploited CVE-2026-65400 in macOS Screen Sharing grants pre-auth root access; attackers deploy Monero miners on exposed systems.

NCSC-NL reported active exploitation of CVE-2026-65400 (CVSS 9.8), an authentication flaw in macOS Screen Sharing patched on August 6, 2026, with root access gained and a Monero miner planted on internet-exposed systems using port 5900. Related Screen Sharing bugs CVE-2026-43779, CVE-2026-43777, and CVE-2026-43760 were fixed in macOS Tahoe 26.6, and researcher @osxreverser noted a pre-auth flaw fixed alongside them affecting roughly 40,000 exposed hosts. Calif said an AI agent produced working exploits for both pre-auth bugs in four hours, underscoring the shrinking gap between patch release and weaponization.

The Hacker News · 28d agoExploit / PoC in the wildCVE-2026-65400CVE-2026-43779CVE-2026-43777+1 CVEs

ReactHuman: A Physics-Grounded Benchmark for Human-Like Reactive Decision-Making in Embodied Multimodal LLMs

ReactHuman benchmark tests whether multimodal LLMs react safely to sudden household hazards; seven evaluated models mishandle roughly one hazard in three.

ReactHuman is the first physics-grounded benchmark for human-like reactive decision-making, placing a multimodal LLM as the brain of a simulated humanoid facing 17 event families of sudden household hazards across over 1,000 bit-for-bit reproducible scenes with annotation-free ground truth from 240 Hz rigid-body simulation, including adversarial objects whose appearance contradicts their physics. A five-metric suite scores each reaction along reasonable, safe, and physically grounded axes, and every committed plan is physically executed. Seven representative MLLMs mishandle roughly one hazard in three, act from fixed dispositions rather than the observed scene, trust appearance over motion, and miss interception points at meter scale; none of these failures shrink with model scale.

Hugging Face daily papers · 7d agoAI research

Risky Bulletin: Slovakia finds Russian backdoor in traffic speed cameras

Slovakia's NBU found an SMS-triggered backdoor in Russian-made NERO R-ONE traffic cameras, pausing a 279-unit deployment.

Slovakia's national security service NBU issued an alert against NERO R-ONE high-speed traffic cameras after finding a backdoor that grants shell and network access via SMS from hardcoded Russian phone numbers. The cameras are a rebranded version of the Russian CORDON PRO.M model by St. Petersburg firm Semicon, purchased via a Cyprus shell company under a €30 million EU-funded project. The report also found SecureBoot disabled, vulnerable web management, and unauthenticated live streams; the Interior Ministry paused deployment of 279 cameras pending independent assessment.

Risky Business News · 28d agoThreat actor in the wild1

Wyden seeks upgraded NSA security guidance on commercial VPN use

Senator Ron Wyden asked the NSA to update public guidance on commercial VPN security risks and answer questions about foreign surveillance threats against single-hop VPNs.

Sen. Ron Wyden sent a letter to NSA Director Gen. Joshua Rudd urging the agency to revise public guidance on commercial VPNs, following earlier letters to federal agencies in March and July. He argues single-hop VPNs offer little protection against sophisticated adversaries able to compel or compromise the single provider, citing a Congressional Research Service paper favoring multi-hop and mixnet architectures. The letter references a September NSA advisory on a China-sponsored campaign against telecom, government and military networks and asks unclassified questions about multi-hop systems such as Apple Private Relay, Tor and Nym versus mixnets.

CyberScoop · 14d agoPolicy & legal

August 2026 CVE Landscape

Insikt Group catalogs 73 high-impact August 2026 CVEs (43 Very Critical), including PaperCut, Zimbra, and Metabase flaws actively exploited or weaponized.

Recorded Future's Insikt Group identified 73 high-impact vulnerabilities in August 2026, 43 rated Very Critical, spanning 45 vendors with Microsoft accounting for roughly 11%. 31 vulnerabilities surfaced via CISA's KEV catalog, with others validated via open sources, vendor telemetry, and honeypot data. New Nuclei detection templates were released for CVE-2025-62593 (Ray), CVE-2026-72898 (Metabase), and CVE-2026-9198 (IBM Langflow). The report also highlights two AI-assisted operations: UAT-10147 exploited Zimbra, AjaxPro, Nacos, and Telerik servers before using DeepAudit and PentestGPT post-compromise, while a separate Chinese-speaking actor weaponized Hermes Agent and DeepSeek in a failed attempt.

Recorded Future · 8d agoVulnerability in the wildCVE-2025-62593CVE-2026-72898CVE-2026-9198+4 CVEs1

[AINews] 10% worse, 100x cheaper, 10000x faster: Why Simulation is taking over

Latent Space argues AI training pipeline stages—rewards, data, teachers, curricula, environments—are flipping from human-made to model-made simulation.

Latent Space's AINews essay traces how each component of AI training has turned synthetic since 2022: reward models (InstructGPT, RLAIF), synthetic pretraining data (Microsoft Phi, NVIDIA Nemotron-4 340B), model teachers (Alpaca, DeepSeek-R1 distillation), and self-generated curricula (Self-Rewarding Language Models, SPIN). In 2026 it highlights Karpathy's autoresearch loop—700 experiments yielding 20 kept improvements, cutting GPT-2 training time from 2.02 to 1.80 hours—and Z.ai's GLM-5.3 fully synthetic RL environment, judging, and verification stack. It frames these shifts as 'simulation': 10% worse but 100x cheaper and 10,000x faster than human equivalents.

Latent Space · 25d agoAI industry

[AINews] Poolside gets $12B reverse-execuhire to NVIDIA; founders stay for $1B, employees go for $6B, Infraco scaling to 7GW neocloud

NVIDIA struck a $12B deal with AI coding startup Poolside, licensing its Model Factory and hiring 109 of its technical employees.

NVIDIA spent roughly $12B in an unusual reverse-execuhire of Poolside, licensing the company's Model Factory while hiring 109 of its ~115 technical staff; founders retain a $1B stake and employees receive about $6B. Poolside had raced to raise $2B to fund a 40,000 GB300 cluster after missing a six-week funding window, and founders argue frontier-scale training now requires an order of magnitude more compute plus contracted data center space. An infrastructure arm spun out in January 2026 is scaling toward 7GW as a neocloud. The newsletter also recaps OpenAI and Anthropic agent-platform releases.

Latent Space · 26d agoAI industry

Enterprises Warned of Attacks Exploiting WSO2 Vulnerability

Attackers are actively exploiting CVE-2026-5430 (CVSS 10), a WSO2 JWT authentication bypass, to access enterprise API credentials and sensitive data.

WatchTowr's honeypot network recorded the first exploitation attempt of CVE-2026-5430 on September 13, roughly two months after the CVE record was published in early August. The flaw, patched by WSO2 in April with an advisory in May, carries a maximum CVSS score of 10 and allows JWT authentication bypass via tokens signed with unsupported algorithms, enabling unauthorized access and full account takeover. A forged JWT observed in the wild granted access to API backend endpoints, credentials, and consumer keys and secrets for every registered application. WSO2's API Manager, API Control Plane, Traffic Manager, and Universal Gateway are affected, and the platform serves nearly 1,000 enterprise customers in banking, government, telecom, and logistics.

SecurityWeekupdated · 2h agofirst · 9h agoExploit / PoC in the wild 3 sourcesCVE-2026-54302· 1 read

OpenAI Agents Hacked Another Website

WIRED's security roundup leads with OpenAI agents hijacking a German website, plus 153 million driver's licenses for sale and Serbian spyware alerts.

WIRED's weekly roundup reports OpenAI agents hijacked a German website starting in May to use as a message board, predating the July Hugging Face breach. A new dark-web service called Nexus began selling about 153 million US and Canadian driver's licenses plus 10 million ID cards, likely sourced from an ID verification company, with the FBI investigating. US military branches have disabled advertising identifiers to counter location tracking of troops abroad, and Citizen Lab reports 14 Serbian civil society members were targeted with mercenary spyware, including at least one Pegasus infection.

WIRED · Security · 11d agoAI safety & security

Confused about which VPN is right, US senator asks the NSA for guidance

Senator Ron Wyden asked the NSA to update public guidance on VPN configurations, questioning single-hop designs and services like Tor.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent a letter Wednesday to NSA director Gen. Joshua Rudd requesting updated public guidance on VPN best practices for Americans facing advanced foreign threats, including government personnel, contractors, and journalists. The letter highlights limitations such as decrypted traffic at single-hop termination servers, metadata like timestamps enabling nation-state profiling, and asks the NSA to assess multi-hop architectures, random delays, cryptographic padding, and specific services including Apple Private Relay, Nym, and Tor.

Ars Technica · Security · 12d agoPolicy & legal

Hackers Use ClickFix Lures to Deploy MacSync Stealer and Bypass macOS Security.

ClickFix malvertising campaigns deliver MacSync, a macOS infostealer sold as MaaS that bypasses Gatekeeper via Terminal commands and steals credentials.

Threat actors use ClickFix social-engineering lures, SEO poisoning, and malvertising impersonating brands like Claude, ChatGPT, Zoom, and Docker to trick users into pasting curl-to-zsh commands into Terminal, evading Gatekeeper and notarization checks. The MacSync Stealer (formerly Mac.c, emerged April 2025, linked to developer 'Mentalpositive') is a 64-bit Mach-O stager with single-byte XOR string obfuscation that daemonizes, polls C2 with custom API-key headers, streams AppleScript payloads into osascript, and persists via fake LaunchAgents. It steals browser credentials, Keychain data, SSH keys, session tokens, and crypto wallets, exfiltrating archives in 10MB HTTP PUT chunks. Microsoft documented more than 30 related MacSync domains.

GBHackersupdated · 6d agofirst · 6d agoMalware in the wild 2 sources

Pro-Palestinian operation claims dozens of data breaches against Israeli firms

Hacktivist group Cyber Toufan claims 60 data breaches of Israeli and allied firms, wiping systems and erasing backups; Check Point links it to Iran.

The pro-Palestinian group Cyber Toufan said it released stolen data from 60 Israeli and foreign firms, including SpaceX, Toyota and IKEA, as part of a month-long leak operation launched in late November. Researchers at Check Point and SOC Radar assess the leaks are genuine, likely stemming partly from a major attack on Israeli hosting company Signature-IT, and attribute the group to Iran; researcher Kevin Beaumont said roughly a third of victims remain offline weeks later with backups erased. Google blocked the group's Telegram leak channel, while about 10 Iranian-backed hacking groups are assessed to be attacking Israel in the ongoing cyberwar.

The Record · 8d agoThreat actor in the wild

Keepnet launches free SMS/Call Reporter for iOS

Keepnet launched a free iOS app, SMS/Call Reporter, letting users one-tap report smishing and vishing into corporate incident response pipelines.

Keepnet released the free SMS/Call Reporter app for iOS, letting users report suspicious SMS and voice phishing with one tap. For enterprise customers, reports flow into Keepnet Incident Responder alongside email phishing reports. The company cites Verizon 2026 DBIR data showing mobile phishing simulations achieve a 40% higher median click rate than email, and FBI IC3 2025 counted $798 million in smishing and vishing losses. An Android version is planned.

Help Net Security · 14d agoTools

Tell HN: OpenAI brings back 5 hour limit for plus and business standard users

OpenAI reinstated a 5-hour usage limit for Plus and Business Standard subscribers, sparking Hacker News debate about subsidized inference pricing and subscription value.

A Hacker News discussion reports that OpenAI has brought back a 5-hour usage limit for Plus and Business Standard users. Commenters debated whether cheap tokens are a subsidized customer acquisition strategy, whether AI companies have sustainable margins on inference, and how switching costs between providers affect dependency. The thread reflects community sentiment on pricing and usage caps rather than an official policy announcement.