Richard Lawler

More than three years after Tate and his brother were arrested and indicted in Romania on charges of human trafficking, Reuters reports the DIICOT prosecuting unit has indicted Tate again. They’ve charged Tate for “trafficking minors, money laundering, sex with a minor and witness tampering and his brother Tristan for complicity.” Both Tates were arrested in Miami in July after British authorities requested their extradition, and they are currently in jail in the US. [Link: Romanian prosecutors indict Andrew Tate for trafficking minors, money laundering

As reported by Wired, more than 200 US-based workers at the Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia, will join Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 9415 after management declined to voluntarily recognize the union in July. Organizing committee member Bryan Davis called it a “huge milestone” and said: > We continue our petition for recognition in the U.K. and hope to see more jurisdiction-specific units call for voluntary recognition in the coming weeks and months. Solidarity will continue to drive our discussions, planning, and actions as we begin working on our collective goals for contract bargaining to support all WMF workers regardless of legal jurisdiction, job duty, or hours of employment.

That seems to be the pitch behind OpenAI’s promo reel for the new AI model, putting people on a set to talk at their computer about doing things like putting together a presentation for their next season of fashion designs with instructions like “make it high end” and “make it fun,” or creating an eBay listing for a dented table they want to sell. Welcome to the AGI era? [Media: https://www.youtube/watch?v=1QNsdr-Qx_I]

Season two of the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League put five cars on the track this weekend, and it was going more smoothly than the series’ 2024 debut, for a while. Unimore Racing suffered a sensor failure while leading the race on lap ten, causing it to suddenly slow down and stop on track, where the second-place Polimove car ran into it — maybe next time they’ll add training data from Hulkenberg or Hadjar. [Media: https://youtu.be/VSdCF_yR3L4?si=kQQwkiZ8aXww3ADw&t=1729]

It’s not too surprising that most of Apple’s wristwear is now listed as unavailable on its website for shipment or pickup (but not all — we did see some Ultra models available), with a product event scheduled for tomorrow, but MacRumors points out that the value-priced version of the Apple Watch is unavailable too. Based on the rumors, we have been anticipating updates for the Apple Watch Series 11 and Ultra 3, and maybe the SE 3 is just taking a break in solidarity. We’ll find out tomorrow. [Link: Apple Watch SE 3 is Suddenly Unavailable

Apple might recycle the name from Microsoft's dual-screen device for its first folding iPhone.

With only a few hours left until the first iPhone launch event since John Ternus took over as the CEO of Apple, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman says the name of the company's long-rumored folding phone is the iPhone Duo. The midnight report suggests it will have a price starting at $2,000 for a model with 256GB… Cell Phones Engineering & Technology

A 2025 lawsuit claiming TikTok violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act will now go to trial after Judge Cory Liu granted the state’s request for a partial summary judgment on Thursday. The state had argued that TikTok said it would remove content with drugs, gambling, or graphic injuries but instead designated it “hard to find,” and said a Restricted Mode setting filtered out content that was inappropriate for minors while employees internally acknowledged it didn’t work as well as advertised. [Link: Texas judge rules TikTok misled users on child safety feature

The New York Times reported Thursday that federal prosecutors are in the “early stages” of a criminal investigation into the Clippers’ shady sponsorship arrangements for Kawhi Leonard, using companies like Aspiration, Daktronics (which already revealed an ongoing SEC investigation), and Boingo Wireless. Pablo Torre obviously chimed in with his take on the proceedings, saying “there is, in fact, more.” [Media: https://www.youtube/watch?v=FplbSvQh5jI]

According to The Information, former DreamWorks co-founder (and co-founder of the quick bites video app) Jeffrey Katzenberg’s latest move is joining up with Bill Peebles, who left OpenAI after it pivoted away from the Sora team he was leading. The unnamed venture will apparently “train its own video models and try to win over filmmakers,” once it secures enough funding. On the plus side, they already have a long list of things to not do this time around. [Media: https://www.youtube/watch?v=-qrvvBK_PYs]