Meta says it's issuing a new class of shares to fund its AI initiatives. As part of its third-quarter earnings report released on Wednesday, the company says the non-voting stock will also go toward potential acquisitions and employee compensation, with trading beginning in 2027.

"The scale of investment required to compete, sustain growth, expand infrastructure, and pursue new strategic initiatives amidst the AI transformation taking place in the industry is significant," Meta says in the press release. Susan Li, Meta's chief financial officer, added during an earnings call that the new class of shares will "expand our funding tools and gi …

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It remains to be seen if people really want to watch vertical content on horizontal TV screens, but many filmmakers and creators were confident that their latest projects would play well at Alza - New York City's first microdrama film festival. Founded by former Tribeca Festival chief operating officer Pete Torres, Alza, which took place October 16th through 18th, was billed as a showcase for the "the creativity, innovation, and growing cultural impact of stories made for the vertical screen." The festival featured a selection of microdrama and film premieres as well as industry-focused panels with executives who all seemed to genuinely beli …

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Meta had to shell out $9.89 billion to pay for a chunk of the child safety settlement it reached with US attorneys general. That's according to the company's third-quarter earnings report released on Wednesday, which says Meta's income from operations would have been $22.89 billion without the settlement.

In August, Meta agreed to pay $17.1 billion to settle a massive nationwide lawsuit that claimed the company harmed children by making its social media platforms "addictive" by design. It will also only pay $5.3 billion of this amount if YouTube and TikTok implement stricter settings and safeguards for kids, which Meta also agreed to as par …

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Two bugs found with AI are behind major issues today for 4chan, DeviantArt, Wikipedia, and the blog where the bar around the corner posts pictures of people's dogs. The "critical vulnerabilities" were discovered in the PHP programming language, which underpins much of the internet, including any site built on WordPress. But it's far bigger than that. Some Dutch and Finnish government agencies took their sites down as a precaution. The NSA Cybersecurity account on X recommended that organizations take their systems offline if "an immediate update is not feasible," as did the UK's National Cyber Security Center. Even Pokémon Home and Pokémon C …

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As the smoke clears from its outrageous Roadster demo, Tesla reported Q3 earnings on Wednesday - and the cold reality is that revenue has flatlined.

Tesla said it earned $1.7 billion in net income on $28.0 billion in revenue in the quarter that ended in September 2026. Revenues were flat, while profits dropped 4 percent compared to the third quarter of 2025, when the company earned $1.4 billion in net income on $28.1 billion in revenue. Tesla's revenue came in above Wall Street expectations of $27.9 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG. Tesla's own company-compiled expectations predicted Q3 revenues of $28.3 billion.

The earnings …

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Bose announced today it has acquired Skullcandy. Although the two companies are competitors in the consumer audio space, Skullcandy recently partnered with its new owner to bring several of Bose's audio technologies - including its head-tracking spatial audio and excellent active noise cancellation (ANC) - to products like the Skullcandy Crusher 1080 ANC headphones and Method 360 ANC earbuds.

Specific details about the deal weren't shared, but according to a news release, Bose plans to keep Skullcandy a separate brand that will become part of its premium consumer audio business. Skullcandy will remain based in Park City, Utah, where it was …

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Checking out of your next Airbnb might be less of a hassle now that the company is banning hosts from including time-consuming chores in their house rules. Airbnb's updated house rules policy, which starts with reservations booked on or after November 20th, says hosts can't ask guests to "complete tasks that require significant effort or time, or would typically be performed by a cleaner." According to Airbnb, that includes:

• Dishes: Guests shouldn't be asked to wash and put away dishes, but you can ask them to put used dishes in the sink.
• Laundry: Guests shouldn't be asked to remove sheets from the bed or start a load of laundry, but yo …

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Anthropic just announced an AI agent competitor to Meta's Muse and OpenAI's Dots: Claude Duet. The new agent, designed for professionals and small business owners, is launching as a "research preview," according to Anthropic, and it's available as a standalone app on iOS and Android and through Claude on the web.

The AI agent is built around Claude Opus 5.5. Here's Anthropic's description of what it can do:

Each morning, it sends you a short brief on the most important items across your connected apps. Throughout the day, it keeps tabs on those apps and messages you only when something needs your attention. You can also hand it tasks of a …

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Walmart will soon let AI agents shop on its website for you. Next month, the retail giant will allow you to use an AI agent on the site, with systems in place to let you approve and review purchases and set spending limits.

The embrace of AI agents stands in stark contrast to Amazon, which blocked Perplexity's shopping agent and Meta's Muse AI assistant. But Walmart is opening its doors to AI shoppers - as long as they follow the retailer's rules. It has outlined a set of terms for agents, saying that "agents must not take actions beyond what the shopper intends" and cannot change a customer's payment method. Agents also can only access inf …

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The Cambridge Analytica scandal has come back to haunt Meta after a New Mexico judge ordered it to pay $25 billion in penalties for more than 43 million violations of the state's unfair practices law. The ruling marks the biggest legal hit Meta has taken this year, even as it's faced several other losses or settlements.

A New Mexico jury ruled in September that Meta misled consumers over how it protected their data and prevented misinformation and hate speech on its platforms. The case stemmed from a 2021 complaint in the wake of the revelations a few years earlier that UK political consultancy Cambridge Analytica harvested data from millio …

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The Toronto International Film Festival is a place to go to see the future of film, but this year it also provided a glimpse at what is coming very soon in the realm of streaming. Four different streamers - Peacock, Netflix, Amazon, and AMC - all premiered early looks at upcoming horror-adjacent series that are dropping very soon. And by doing it at TIFF, they showed just how important the month of October has become in the realm of streaming.

Perhaps the most high-profile is Carrie, which is coming to Prime Video. An adaptation of the classic Stephen King novel, which has already been turned into no fewer than three feature films, this ver …

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Snap is introducing "Specs Intelligence," a new AI assistant that can connect other digital accounts to help you with things like work tasks and keeping track of travel information. It seems similar to AI assistants like Meta's Muse and Gemini's Spark, though Snap is pitching Specs Intelligence as an "anticipatory AI service" that "helps you manage what needs attention today, so you can make progress toward your longer-term goals." Like with other AI assistants, you can also chat with it.

Specs Intelligence is being launched alongside Specs, Snap's first consumer pair of augmented reality glasses. But it's also available on iOS today in pre …

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My favorite part of wearing the Specs, Snap's new augmented reality glasses, was playing dominoes. Sitting across the table from a Snap employee wearing the same pair of chunky glasses, I could select a virtual domino with a pinch and then move my hand to drop it in place, watching the tile snap down in front of us on a real table. It was unlike anything I've tried in other VR headsets or smart glasses - the ability to sit with another person and have a shared digital experience.

Snap really believes in AR glasses. The company has spent more than half a decade developing the technology, producing two generations of glasses that only ever sh …

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Christopher Nolan's engrossing take on The Odyssey dominated at the box office and spurred a newfound interest in classic literature among filmgoers. But a new retelling of the story made entirely with AI is so bad that it might just make viewers hate the original tale altogether.

The new film, called Odysseus: The Fall, comes via AI firm Fountain 0 and is written and directed by company cofounder Ash Koosha, who also lent his likeness to the title character and created all of the music. (The film's credits are very short.) The studio's only previous work is an AI film called Dreams of Violets that made it into Tribeca earlier this year. Th …

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E-waste from the AI boom has been vastly underestimated, a new report warns. By 2050, it could become enough trash to fill 23 million shipping containers - roughly enough 40-foot containers to circle the world six times if lined up in a row.

It's a significantly higher estimate of AI's e-waste than previous studies have found because the authors of the new report factor in all the infrastructure needed to support servers in data centers. The broader scope provides a clearer picture of junk AI leaves behind, according to the nonprofit Basel Action Network (BAN), which published the paper today.

"AI may feel weightless, but every model dep …

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When Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil hit theaters in 2002, video game movies were largely seen as a niche. Films like Mortal Kombat and Tomb Raider had proven that big-screen game adaptations could be successful, but the commercial and critical failure of projects like the 1993 Super Mario Bros. still cast a long shadow. And while Anderson's vision of Raccoon City might have captivated audiences on the whole, many hardcore fans of Capcom's games were left disappointed by the way the original movies wildly deviated from the source material.

Weapons director Zach Cregger's new take on Resident Evil is a return to the franchise's fundamenta …

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The Metroid series is going back to its 2D roots again with Metroid Ravenous for the Nintendo Switch 2, the first side-scrolling game in the series since 2021’s Metroid Dread for the Nintendo Switch. If you’re already excited enough to consider preordering, you can save $10 on the physical version of the game when you buy it from Walmart. It’s $59.88 instead of $69.99, about the same as buying it digitally. The game launches on January 28th, 2027, but it’s not clear how long the preorder discount will last. If it’s anything like other Walmart preorders, it may occasionally disappear.

Metroid Ravenous

Where to Buy:

• $69.99 $59.88 at Walmart

Nintendo first showed off the side-scrolling adventure game at its September 2026 Direct, with a frantic trailer cutting between cinematic sequences, Samus dashing and rolling across a variety of environments, and engaging a number of enemies and bosses in battle. Samus absorbs some powerful abilities at the conclusion of Dread, and Ravenous seem to be all about plowing through anyone stopping her from escaping the planet. Other details of the story, including unique new mechanics, are being kept under wraps for the time being.

If you haven’t played Metroid Dread, I recommend it, especially at its $41.99 discounted price at Amazon. It’s part of Nintendo’s “Customer Appreciation” sale happening through September 26th, and several other games and accessories are cheaper, too.

According to The Information, Apple is planning to get back into the server game and might just pair up with Nvidia to make it happen. Apple retired its Xserve line in 2011 and has largely left enterprise machines to other manufacturers since. But the growing demand for compute power as the AI industry continues to expand has apparently led the company to believe there is an opening for its powerful but efficient ARM-based M processors. Its Mac Mini and Mac Studio have proven popular with AI developers, which has led to shortages.

The server product, whether it's called Xserve or something else, likely won't debut until 2029. Word is that i …

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During last week's Apple Watch announcement, I let out a distinct "Noooo!" in the Steve Jobs Theater. Along with a new readiness metric and a redesigned Health app, Apple had just announced that later this year, it'd be introducing a new longevity feature called Health Age.

This is a familiar concept in the wearable and health tech world. The idea is that if you put effort into your health and fitness, your physiological age c …

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Google is opening up its smart home to AI agents, letting tools like Claude and Open Claw access and control your connected devices and analyze your home's data using the standardized Model Context Protocol.

Google Home MCP is a new integration that lets third-party AI agents control and monitor your smart home and act on your behalf. It "allows any AI agents that support MCP, including Google Antigravity, Claude, Hermes or Open Claw, to securely work with all of the devices and event history in your Google Home ecosystem," Taylor Lehman, group product manager at Google Home & Nest, said in a blog post.

According to Lehman, Home MCP integ …

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