TechSpot

Sam Altman says the world should accept some "bad things" happening because of AI

Rob Thubron — Tue, 6 Oct 2026 13:17 -0500

Speaking in an interview with Decoded by Politico, Altman was asked about the difference between OpenAI and rival Anthropic's approaches to AI safety, which has obviously been getting a lot of attention lately.

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AMD vows to massively increase AI chip supply in 2027 as demand surges

Shawn Knight — Tue, 6 Oct 2026 12:23 -0500

The purpose of Su's visit to Taiwan is to meet with local partners and get on the same page with regard to the supply chain as it pertains to CPU and GPU production. According to Reuters, she has already met with Foxconn and plans to do the same with TSMC...

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Tech deals on Prime Day 2026: the deals are here, but the bargains are thin

TechSpot Deals — Tue, 6 Oct 2026 11:41 -0500

Amazon's October Prime sale is here, but after digging through hundreds of discounts, this isn't shaping up to be one of the stronger deal events we've seen.

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GameStop is selling refurbished PS5 Pros for $1,399, as if that were a deal

Kishalaya Kundu — Tue, 6 Oct 2026 10:08 -0500

The new prices are around 55% higher than the official $900 price tag for brand-new PS5 Pros and exactly double the console's $700 launch price. Sony increased prices for both the PS5 and PS5 Pro multiple times over the past year, ostensibly due to the AI-fueled memory crunch that has...

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Utah will become first state to let AI examine patients and prescribe medication without direct human oversight

Rob Thubron — Tue, 6 Oct 2026 09:29 -0500

The good news is that the program is currently very limited in its scope. It's just one year long and only for patients with mild-to-moderate acne.

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This script removes Apple Intelligence from macOS 27 and frees up 12 GB of storage

Daniel Sims — Tue, 6 Oct 2026 08:41 -0500

Omlahore's RemoveMacAI is a command-line script that installs and runs a program to deactivate macOS 27's AI features. It also deletes the AI models from disk, freeing around 12 GB of storage space.

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AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D drops to $429 with a free $70 MSI AIO cooler and Onimusha game

Rob Thubron — Tue, 6 Oct 2026 07:47 -0500

In a time when most PC hardware has become so expensive that many people are avoiding upgrading, it's refreshing to see a deal like this.

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Retailers are pulling back from self-checkout after years of theft, errors, and questionable time savings

Daniel Sims — Tue, 6 Oct 2026 07:03 -0500

Only about one-third of surveyed retailers plan to invest in self-checkout technology this year, significantly fewer than in 2025, according to an annual retail industry report. While self-checkout lanes have always frustrated some customers, major retailers have only recently either stepped away from the technology or at least slowed down...

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Google analyzed 5 years of Flights data, says buying on a specific weekday won't save you money

Rob Thubron — Tue, 6 Oct 2026 06:15 -0500

Google's Trends and tips for 2026 holiday travel highlights how many travelers are faced with the dilemma of buying plane tickets straight away or waiting to see if the price drops.

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Gears of War: E-Day GPU Benchmark: 44 GPUs Tested

Steven Walton — Tue, 6 Oct 2026 05:17 -0500

We tested 44 GPUs in Gears of War: E-Day at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K to see what it takes to run the game well, how 8GB cards hold up, and whether upscaling makes Ultra settings practical.

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Which AMD CPUs were famously unlocked for overclocking using the "pencil trick"?

TechSpot Trivia — Mon, 5 Oct 2026 17:14 -0500

Fun fact: The "pencil trick" involved drawing over tiny laser-cut L1 bridges with graphite to re-enable locked multipliers on certain CPUs.

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Google pauses bug bounties for open source because AI slop reports are drowning its reviewers

Alfonso Maruccia — Mon, 5 Oct 2026 15:26 -0500

Google is temporarily pausing monetary rewards for capable bug hunters because its human staff can't keep up with the current influx of automated reports. The "vast majority" of these submissions are slop, Google warns, containing invalid information and hallucinated vulnerability data.

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Qualcomm signs its first 5G patent deal with Huawei, and agrees to buy some of its US patents

Julio Franco — Mon, 5 Oct 2026 14:07 -0500

Huawei made its first licensing payment to Qualcomm in 2001, back when it was a telecom gear maker building on other people's wireless standards. Twenty-five years later, the Chinese giant is selling patents to Qualcomm, and Huawei says the deal pushes the cumulative value of its licensing agreements to roughly $7 billion.

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Google cleared 300 hectares of Finnish forest for a data center, and regulators want answers

Alfonso Maruccia — Mon, 5 Oct 2026 12:52 -0500

Google was apparently so eager to build its new data center infrastructure in Finland that it began bulldozing large swaths of forest before the required environmental review of the full plan was complete. The work could now be suspended, just as other major data center projects are being delayed in...

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RevPDF is a free Adobe Acrobat alternative that works offline

Ivan Franco — Mon, 5 Oct 2026 12:35 -0500

RevPDF is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS, offering PDF editing, OCR, conversion, forms, compression, and more, with all processing done on your device. Version 5.0 adds WYSIWYG text editing, PDF-to-Excel conversion, and improved Word exports.

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RTX 5090 modder claims to have solved melting power connectors with auxiliary 8-pin board

Shawn Knight — Mon, 5 Oct 2026 11:46 -0500

Over on Reddit, user DallasGrave outlined the approach taken when developing the mod. In short, the fix utilizes a pickup PCB soldered to the contacts of the original 12VHPWR header that feeds an auxiliary dual eight-pin board. This effectively spreads the load across three sets of cables, which significantly reduces...

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Amazon is spending $1 billion to win over towns fighting its data centers

Kishalaya Kundu — Mon, 5 Oct 2026 11:03 -0500

In a blog post, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said the company will invest more than $1 billion over the next five years in data center towns across the US, on top of its existing efforts.

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Elon Musk says SpaceXAI will become SpaceXSI as Trump pushes to use "Super Intelligence" over AI

Rob Thubron — Mon, 5 Oct 2026 10:23 -0500

Musk revealed his decision on his X platform. After posting "No more AI" and that SI was better, a user asked about the possibility of SpaceXAI becoming SpaceXSI. "Yes, we will make that change," he replied.

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Blue Origin reveals 65-foot solar tower designed to power future bases on the Moon

Skye Jacobs — Mon, 5 Oct 2026 09:56 -0500

The proposed system reflects the growing focus on the infrastructure needed for future surface operations. Launch vehicles and landers may get equipment to the surface. Systems such as the Power Tower would help keep it running once it arrives.

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This open-source tool aims to eliminate shader compilation stutter in PC games

Alfonso Maruccia — Mon, 5 Oct 2026 09:25 -0500

A lone developer recently unveiled the Shader Compilation Stutter Killer (SCSKiller), a tool designed to "kill" stuttering in modern games. SCSKiller is an open-source application providing a novel approach to the shader-related stuttering issue that has been plaguing PC gaming over the past few years.

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Avengers: Endgame overtakes Avatar again to become the highest-grossing movie of all time

Skye Jacobs — Mon, 5 Oct 2026 07:48 -0500

The rerelease, titled Avengers: Endgame Encore, has pushed the movie's worldwide total to $2.9255 billion. That puts it just ahead of Avatar, which has earned $2.9237 billion globally.

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Humanoid robots pummel YouTuber in cage matches, California tells startup to stop the fights

Rob Thubron — Mon, 5 Oct 2026 07:03 -0500

Last month, YouTuber Frankie LaPenna fought three different robots from REK, including a distinctly Terminator-like machine. At one point, the robot gave LaPenna a brutal kick to the face that sent him into the side of the cage, while another kick to the stomach sent the influencer flying onto his...

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Microsoft's fix for shader compilation wait is coming to Nvidia, Intel, and Qualcomm GPUs

Skye Jacobs — Mon, 5 Oct 2026 06:15 -0500

Advanced Shader Delivery, or ASD, distributes compiled shaders from the cloud instead of having each player's PC compile them locally before play. Microsoft says that can reduce the process from "several minutes" to "just a few seconds," with a 95% reduction in burn time overall.

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German utility launches dedicated electricity tariff for gamers with power-hungry PCs

Rob Thubron — Mon, 5 Oct 2026 05:15 -0500

German publication ComputerBase writes that meinGAMING is the tariff name being offered to gaming households in Germany. There are three tiers available, each with its own annual energy consumption.

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Steam is on track to top $20 billion in revenue for the first time

Skye Jacobs — Sun, 4 Oct 2026 12:08 -0500

Steam took in an estimated $1.7 billion in September, 13% more than the previous September record, set in 2025. Its estimated third-quarter revenue reached $5.5 billion, up 12% from the same period last year.

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Sony's quiet PS5 Slim revision shows how consoles keep changing long after launch

Skye Jacobs — Sun, 4 Oct 2026 10:43 -0500

The board, labeled EDM-051, was identified by technician @Modyfikator89 inside a PS5 Slim from the Marvel's Wolverine Limited Edition Bundle. Sony has not announced the change, and it is unclear how widely the revised board has been released. But the teardown reveals several differences from earlier Slim models, including changes...

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RuneScape 4 is officially in the works, and it started as a Dragonwilds expansion

Skye Jacobs — Sun, 4 Oct 2026 09:21 -0500

The company has not said which version of Unreal Engine it is using, which platforms the game will support or when it plans to show gameplay. Its first public look at the project is a CGI teaser rather than an in-engine demonstration.

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Florida woman used Claude as a diary, then Anthropic reported an entry to police

Rob Thubron — Sun, 4 Oct 2026 08:37 -0500

According to the arrest report, Carli Michelle Heller, of Bonita Springs, Florida, wrote on September 26 that she would attack the Sheriff's office. She later said that she uses Anthropic's chatbot like a "diary."

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The Best 1440p QD-OLED Monitors for Less Than $500

Tim Schiesser — Sun, 4 Oct 2026 07:23 -0500

We tested 11 budget 1440p QD-OLED gaming monitors to find the best buys, comparing full- and limited-brightness panels, features, design, and pricing to see which models are actually worth it.

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Steam's latest survey shows 32GB RAM overtaking 16GB despite the massive price surge

Kishalaya Kundu — Sat, 3 Oct 2026 13:08 -0500

According to the Steam Survey for September 2026, 32GB is now the most common system memory configuration for gaming rigs among Steam users. The data shows 32GB systems accounted for 42.22% of all rigs sampled during September, a 4.77-point gain over August, when 16GB was still the most common configuration.

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