Automata

A tech digest, every weekday. About

211 items across 29 sources in the last seven days. The email carried the 39 that mattered most.

Automatic summaries were unavailable for this edition; a classifier chose and ranked the stories.

Claude Sonnet 5.5

Simon Willison · 9/28

Claude Sonnet 5.5 New Sonnet model from Anthropic today. They say it "runs 30%+ faster, and costs up to 30% less for most work" - it's priced the same as Sonnet 5 but appears to beat it on every benchmark, and should be cheaper to run as well. Here are some pelicans riding bicycles. Sonnet 5.5 suffered from the same bug as Opus 5.5: the "max" thinking effort pelican thought for 128,000 tokens (at

AMD Acquires Fei-Fei Li's World Labs For $8.2 Billion

Slashdot · 9/28

AMD has agreed to acquire Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for about $8.2 billion in stock, making it the chipmaker's second-largest acquisition and giving it a major foothold in "world models" that simulate 3D environments for robotics and other physically grounded AI. CNBC reports: AI researchers expect world models will be able to help develop robots and other physically-grounded artificial intelligence

AI & LLMs

Nvidia Unveils AI Agent Safety Platform With Hardware-Based Watchdog

Slashdot · 9/28

wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Nvidia on Monday announced the Open Agent Safety Platform, which combines open source software and a reference system design to keep AI agents within set boundaries from testing through deployment. The chipmaker explained that the platform pairs the open-source OpenShell runtime with Sentry, an out-of-band watchdog running on BlueField-4 DPUs. Nvidia s

Quoting @joedaroo

Simon Willison · 9/28

To say that we were surprised at the jump and suddenness of the capabilities of our models when it came to “cyber” or “swarming” or “message boards” or anything else related to the incidents is an understatement. Security posture takes time to develop. It’s not just about hardening the systems at play; you have to ingrain it in the culture of the company. The literal people themselves in your orga

Claude Sonnet 5.5 now available on AI Gateway

Vercel · 9/28

Claude Sonnet 5.5 from Anthropic is now available on AI Gateway as anthropic/claude-sonnet-5.5.Sonnet 5.5 improves on Claude Sonnet 5 for well-scoped everyday work, from building features and fixing bugs to creating documents, slides, and spreadsheets.On coding tasks, Sonnet 5.5 carries changes through multiple steps and checks its work before reporting completion. It produces more polished docume

How we will do better for Australia

OpenAI · 9/28

OpenAI apologises for incidents involving Australian government websites and outlines stronger safeguards and support to strengthen Australia’s cyber defences.

Web & Frontend

Search domains without authentication

Vercel · 9/28

You can now discover domain names and check availability and pricing without signing in to Vercel or providing an access token. This works through the Vercel CLI and Domains Registrar API.With the Vercel CLI, search by keyword or domain fragment: With the Domains Registrar API, check up to 200 exact domain names in one request. The response shows whether each can be registered and, when available,

Devtools & Platform

Self-hosted runner version enforcement date has moved

GitHub Changelog · 9/28

The enforcement date for GitHub Actions minimum version requirements for self-hosted runners on GitHub Enterprise Cloud has changed. The change ships Monday, September 28, 2026, and full enforcement now begins… The post Self-hosted runner version enforcement date has moved appeared first on The GitHub Blog.

Vercel Marketplace database browser now supports Redis

Vercel · 9/25

You can now run Redis commands, browse keys, and inspect values directly in the Vercel dashboard using the Marketplace database browser.Both the Redis and Upstash for Redis integrations in Vercel Marketplace are supported, so you no longer need redis-cli or a separate database UI.From your project, open Infrastructure > Storage and select a Redis database. The database page now includes two new ta

Highlights from Git 2.56

GitHub Blog · 9/28

The open source Git project just released Git 2.56. Here is GitHub's look at some of the most interesting features and changes introduced since last time. The post Highlights from Git 2.56 appeared first on The GitHub Blog.

Deep Dives

The road to the agentic browser: A Kitesurf update

Cloudflare · 9/28

We’ve updated Kitesurf, our Workers-based browser for AI agents, with WebMCP support, improved DOM performance, and terminal-based rendering. With over 730,000 Web Platform subtests passing, agents can now navigate complex sites faster.

Quick Hits

Bill Gates Says an AI 'Kill Switch' Isn't Enough

Slashdot · 9/28

Bill Gates said an AI "kill switch" alone would be insufficient to address the technology's risks. "The kill switch is, that's kind of a weird thing. It's not enough to have a kill switch," the Microsoft co-founder said in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." He said the more immediate concern is people using AI for cyberattacks or bioterrorism rather than systems acting auton

iOS 26.7.1 Fixes Vulnerability Used in Targeted Attacks

MacRumors · 9/28

iOS 26.7.1, iPadOS 26.7.1, macOS Tahoe 26.7.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.8.1 address a major vulnerability that Apple believes was used against a small number of people. Apple's security support pages say there was a CoreGraphics out-of-bounds write issue that could be exploited with a maliciously crafted file, allowing for arbitrary code execution. It has been fixed with improved bounds checking.

Apple Releases macOS Golden Gate 27.0.1 With Bug Fixes

MacRumors · 9/28

Apple today released macOS 27.0.1, the first update to the macOS Golden Gate operating system that came out in mid-September. Mac users can download the new ‌macOS Golden Gate‌ software by using the Software Update section in System Settings. Apple says ‌macOS Golden Gate‌ 27.0.1 fixes unspecified bugs. Apple has also released macOS 26.7.1 and macOS 15.8.1 security updates. Related Round

From the timeline

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.Fred Brooks