Perplexity decided it was paying too much for DynamoDB and wasn’t getting the control it wanted over read performance. So it built its own database: CobbleDB. Built by two engineers in two months with help from hundreds of persistent coding agents throughout development, CobbleDB is a roughly 40,000-line Rust key-value store that now handles part of Perplexity’s production search traffic. The company measured median batch-read latency at 5.6 milliseconds after the move, compared with 31.4 ms on DynamoDB before the cutover, while p99 went from 123 ms to 24.2 ms. It’s expected to cost at least 20% less than DynamoDB and plans to open-source the database at some point. But the

The narrative that AI might end humanity in a decade has monopolized public discourse, so much so that we may be ignoring more prosaic, immediate AI concerns like jobs. I'm neither an AI doomer nor a booster. I believe generative AI has tremendous potential, especially for helping us solve our most difficult problems, like cancer and maybe resources and climate change. I'm also a realist and know that AI development and growth are clearly outstripping our ability to properly manage it. We should never have a situation where we do not know how or why an AI did something. The Hugging Face incident should be a call to action. In lieu of regulation (which the White House will block ), self-regul

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 … Read the full story at The Verge.

There were unusual goings-on this month at Automattic , a company known for its free and open-source app for building WordPress sites. The company issued a notice last Thursday confirming that CEO Matt Mullenweg was on leave. Mullenweg, who also co-founded WordPress in 2003 before establishing Automattic in 2005, was temporarily replaced by company CFO Mark Davies before being reinstated less than a day and a half later. By last Saturday, a new alert emerged stating that Mullenweg was back in his position and that “Matt was away for only 33 hours and 20 minutes.” Automattic has not publicly explained what changed between the initial decision and Mullenweg’s return — a

If you rely on the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s weekly vulnerability bulletin to keep you up to date on the latest threats, we have bad news. It’s being discontinued at the end of September. CISA announced on Wednesday that its weekly vulnerability bulletin would stop going out on Monday, September 28, saying the move was part of its shift from managing vulnerabilities based on severity to “a modern, risk-based approach.” That approach, as CISA explains, is detailed in a June Binding Operational Directive (BOD) that explains how covered federal civilian agencies should prioritize security updates based on real-world risk rather than treating all vulnerabilities and syst

Ukraine says its Sargan-3000 drone boat destroyed a Russian counterpart using machine gun fire The reported clash involved two unmanned boats fighting directly at sea No video has emerged showing the reported destruction of the Russian craft Ukraine's Navy has announced that a Sargan-3000 drone boat destroyed an armed Russian counterpart somewhere in the waters of the Black Sea. Kyiv describes the encounter as the first occasion on which two robotic warships have fought each other directly at sea. That assertion rests entirely on the Ukrainian account, since no independent party has so far confirmed the situation. Machine gun fire instead of a warhead According to the announcement, operative

Boston officials released a report explaining why they won't use Flock cameras It reveals that Flock shared camera data despite saying it wouldn't Hackers also discovered that Flock cameras track more than just license plates The Flock backlash might have taken a backseat to more recent tech news — namely, whether AI development needs to slow down before superintelligence wipes us out, or, on a lighter note, Apple’s first foldable iPhone — but the anti-surveillance crusade is continuing, with Boston officials and its police department announcing the city will not be relying on the service any longer. This follows the publishing of a 2025 report which included details on a Flock pilot the cit

Something of a consensus has emerged from the developer fraternity in 2026 — GitHub, a platform built substantively for human developers, is no longer fit for purpose . Part of the problem is sheer volume. Agents can generate, revise and submit code at a cadence GitHub wasn’t designed for, placing growing pressure on infrastructure built for humans working through commits, branches and pull requests. But there’s also a more fundamental question about the interaction model itself: when much of the reasoning behind a change happens inside a conversation with an agent, a pull request presents reviewers with the resulting diff while leaving much of the journey that produced it

Advanced AI should be paused as regulators assess the potential damage Trump urged to discuss international agreement with Chinese President Current US government criticized for taking a light-touch approach Bernie Sanders is working together with former White House strategist Steve Bannon in a bid to urge the governments to take more oversight over AI. Job losses, a loss of control over advanced AI, biological warfare, rising energy prices and concentrated power among a few AI giants as just some of the arguments the two political figures are using in their broad argument for greater AI regulation, per Reuters reporting. In particular, Sanders claims that tens of millions of jobs could be r

AMD is rumored to be working on its own version of DLSS 5 A leaker says that the neural rendering tech will be launched with next-gen RDNA 5 GPUs That means we could be waiting until late 2027 or 2028 to see this debut, which might leave AMD lagging behind Nvidia considerably AMD could be working on its own take on Nvidia's DLSS 5 , and apparently this alternative attempt at neural rendering will be for its next-gen RDNA 5 graphics cards . VideoCardz spotted that a known leaker in the GPU field, Kepler L2, posted on the Anandtech forum in a discussion around RDNA 5 speculation to say that: "AMD will have their own version of 'Neural Lighting' like DLSS5 next-gen." Kepler then clarified that

There's a new kind of agent coming to ChatGPT ads, and this one wants your money. OpenAI has begun testing Sponsored Agents, advertiser-backed bots that try to sell you things as part of a custom conversation. OpenAI said in a Wednesday announcement that Sponsored Agents were now being tested with select US advertisers already using its platform to put sponsored content in front of ChatGPT users. Despite the “agent” label, however, it seems from OpenAI’s description of the new feature that it’s more like a typical sponsored content chatbot that appears unasked on websites, bombarding users with the opportunity to ask a virtual customer service agent what product is right for them. In this ca

UK NCSC, FBI, and Dutch AIVD warn Iran is using Chosen Brick malware against dissidents and journalists Malware steals files, captures audio, grabs WhatsApp/Telegram data, and can wipe systems entirely Operatives rely on social engineering; agencies urge awareness, MFA, updates, and endpoint monitoring Iranian hackers are targeting “enemies of the state”, both local and foreign, with advanced malware capable of spying on the victims and stealing their sensitive files, experts have warned. This is according to a new security advisory, published jointly by the UK National Cyber Security Centre, the FBI, and the Netherlands’ General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD), which noted how Iran

Both Google and Uncle Sam warned that attackers have exploited a zero-day improper authorization bug in Pixel phones' cellular modems that can bypass permission checks and escalate privileges with no user interaction required. The hole has since been closed, provided that you update. Google disclosed the high-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-58704, on Tuesday - and, at the time, warned the security hole “may be under limited, targeted exploitation.” In other words: miscreants found and exploited this bug before Google fixed the issue. The Register reached out to Google for more details about the scope of exploitation, and how attackers are exploiting the flaw and what they can ach

Salesforce expands Missionforce defense AI agent program Missionforce will now add in models from OpenAI and Nvidia Missionforce is now one year old, with big plans going forward Salesforce is expanding its defense AI model program to help bring extra intelligent to critical government missions. The company revealed its Missionforce program will now be partnering with OpenAI and Nvidia to bring in the former's frontier models, and also adding the latter's models and accelerated computing capabilities. Salesforce says this expansion will allow Missionforce to deliver "new, specialized AI capabilities and agents designed for the government’s toughest challenges." Missionforce gets smarter “Gov

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 … Read the full story at The Verge.