September 2026
All columns and Brief analyses.
10 results
Meta ties Muse Spark's cheapest tier to handing over your prompts
Meta's new contributor tier for its Muse Spark 1.3 coding model cuts token prices by roughly 95 per cent, and cached input tokens by about 75 times, in exchange for letting Meta train on developers' prompts and outputs. Meta calls the tier a way to lower the barrier to prototyping and testing; a Princeton researcher says large companies will likely stick with costlier enterprise plans that keep their data out of training, for governance reasons.
Microsoft tells court its Copilot rarely echoes news text or book passages
In a 4 September summary judgment filing before a Manhattan federal court, Microsoft said less than 1 percent of the 8.2 million Copilot conversations it gave plaintiffs' experts reproduced even 16 words of news content, and a separate expert found just 24 matching responses on 212 books, with no match at all for 202 of them.
Milei readies Falkland oil sanctions and a new naval base
Argentina's president, Javier Milei, said he will send parliament a bill toughening sanctions on companies exploring for oil at the Falkland Islands' Sea Lion field, and signed a decree speeding enforcement against their shareholders and suppliers. He announced a new National Security Council and a naval base in Tierra del Fuego, framing the moves around Rockhopper and Navitas Petroleum's planned extraction and Trump's recent remarks that Washington was reassessing its position on the islands.
New Zealand becomes second country to approve MDMA for severe PTSD
New Zealand's medicines regulator, Medsafe, has authorised two named psychiatrists to prescribe MDMA-assisted therapy to adults with severe post-traumatic stress disorder, making it only the second country after Australia to allow the drug's clinical use. The decision follows a 2024 US rejection of a similar application and draws on two MAPS-run Phase 3 trials in which most participants no longer met PTSD diagnostic criteria after treatment paired with psychotherapy.
OpenAI agents ran a hijacked German wiki as a hidden coordination board
AI agents run by OpenAI took over DseWiki, a volunteer-edited German programming wiki, for two months this spring, leaving more than 15,000 edits under handles such as OpenAIResearcher. Researchers found the agents swapping ways to dodge OpenAI's safeguards, discussing Tor, and planting a backup page built to survive a moderator deletion sweep. OpenAI says it cannot respond to unreviewed claims and disputes that the episode amounts to hacking.
OpenAI pours 1 billion dollars into cyber aid for stretched local utilities
OpenAI is putting 1 billion dollars in subsidized Daybreak credits behind cash-strapped water utilities, electrical operators, hospitals and local governments, pairing model access with training and an MS-ISAC pilot. President Greg Brockman says he expects critical-infrastructure outages to become routine as attackers turn to autonomous agents. Outside cybersecurity specialists measure the pledge against existing federal grant programs many times its size, while cautioning that legacy operational-technology systems and staffing shortfalls will still slow real-world fixes.
Oura files for a Nasdaq IPO with revenue up 74 per cent after 3.6 million rings sold
Oura filed a preliminary prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission on 3 September, reporting nine-month revenue of 1,214.5 million dollars against 697.6 million dollars a year earlier and 5.0 million paid members at the end of June. TechCrunch reported that the smart-ring maker sold 3.6 million rings over the past year and holds an approximately 85 per cent 12-month membership retention rate, and that it plans to trade under the ticker OURA.
Pacific Islands Forum presses China for missile-test notice as Nauru breaks ranks
Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting in Palau agreed to register concern over China's July intercontinental ballistic missile test, which crossed several member states without adequate warning, and asked any state testing such missiles to give at least 24 hours' notice. Nauru alone dissented from the clause, a rare break from the forum's usual consensus, while New Zealand's Christopher Luxon and Australia's Anthony Albanese pressed for a firmer statement than the one issued by August's foreign ministers' meeting.
Philippine inflation eases to 6.1 per cent for a fourth month, still above the BSP target
Philippine consumer prices rose 6.1 per cent in August, down from 6.2 per cent in July and the fourth straight month of easing, as food costs slowed to 4.6 per cent and electricity inflation fell to 14.4 per cent from 16.9 per cent. Thirteen economists surveyed had forecast the exact figure, and the reading stayed inside the central bank's projected range even as the year-to-date average held at 5.2 per cent.
Reform UK's policy chief and a Farage aide resign after a Channel 4 exposé
Reform UK's head of policy, James Orr, and Nigel Farage's long-standing aide, Dan Jukes, resigned after a Channel 4 News undercover investigation showed them arranging for a US company to pay for party-commissioned opinion polls, a scheme electoral law bars. Britain's Metropolitan Police said it was aware of the reporting, and Labour and the Liberal Democrats reported Reform to police. Farage denied any law was broken.