Shayne Coplan, a 27-year-old NYU dropout who founded Polymarket from his bathroom in 2020, has become the youngest self-made billionaire after Intercontinental Exchange (owner of the NYSE) invested up to $2 billion in his once-controversial prediction market platform. Bloomberg reports: A couple of years after dropping out of New York University with dreams of making it big in crypto, Shayne Coplan was so broke that he took an inventory of his Lower East Side apartment so that he could sell belongings to make rent. Fed up with crypto grifts, in 2019 he started to explore economist Robin Hanson's ideas on prediction markets and their potential for improving society's ability to identify likely outcomes. "This is too good of an idea to just exist in whitepapers," he recalled thinking in a later post on X. Then Covid struck -- the perfect time to develop an app for stuck-at-home folks to bet on real-world outcomes, he reasoned. He began building Polymarket from his bathroom and launched the platform in June 2020. It wasn't a smooth road. The company's move-fast, ask-permission-later approach repeatedly ran afoul of regulators, who forced it to ban US-based users for years because it wasn't a registered exchange. A week after the 2024 presidential election -- one that Polymarket users wagered more than $3 billion on -- Coplan's apartment was raided by FBI agents. But he and his company are now riding high after Intercontinental Exchange Inc., the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, said it would invest as much as $2 billion in Polymarket at an $8 billion pre-money valuation. That deal makes its 27-year-old founder the youngest self-made billionaire tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

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Verizon is acquiring Starry, the struggling wireless ISP that beams high-speed internet via millimeter-wave antennas. The company said the acquisition "advances" its ability to offer high-speed internet in apartments, condominiums, and other multi-dwelling units. The Verge reports: Starry made its debut in Boston in 2016, offering gigabit speeds via its unconventional approach to internet connectivity. Instead of carrying connectivity across a web of wires -- which are expensive and time-consuming to deploy -- Starry beams its internet service from a larger antenna into homes via high-speed, short-range mmWave broadcasts. The challenge with those broadcasts is that Starry connections generally require an uninterrupted line of sight between the transmitter and the receiver, as mmWave signals can be easily blocked. In recent years, Starry has run into trouble, with the company laying off half of its workers in 2022 and filing for bankruptcy in 2023. It also pulled out of one of its markets, Columbus, Ohio, leaving Starry with nearly 100,000 customers across Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington, DC. It sounds like Starry's tech will end up getting used by Verizon. Through the acquisition, Verizon plans on expanding its ability to deliver internet connectivity in urban locations, building on its 5G home internet and growing fiber footprint. Verizon expects the deal to close in 2026, subject to regulatory approval. "Verizon is uniquely positioned to accelerate this expansion because of its significant fiber backbone and extensive holdings of mmWave spectrum," the company said in its press release.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: London cops on Tuesday arrested two teenagers on suspicion of computer misuse and blackmail following a ransomware attack on a chain of London preschools. London's Metropolitan Police said the two men, both aged 17, were taken into custody during an operation at residential properties in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire. The arrests followed a September 25 referral from the UK's Action Fraud reporting center detailing a ransomware attack on the preschools. While the Met police didn't name the schools, the timing of the referral coincides with a digital break-in at Kido International, a preschool and daycare organization that operates in the UK, US, and India. In a very aggressive -- and disgusting -- attempt to extort a ransom payment from Kido, the criminals published profiles of 10 children, including photos, names, and home addresses, along with their parents' contact details and in some cases places of work, threatening to expose more if the ransom demand wasn't met. A new crime crew calling itself the Radiant Group claimed responsibility for the attack, and posted the preschool's name, along with its pupils' profiles, as the first leak on its dark web site. The ransomware gang later deleted the kids' and parents' data, apparently under pressure from other criminals -- but not before some of the parents reported receiving threatening calls.

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BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: IDC says global PC shipments jumped 9.4 percent in Q3 2025, reaching nearly 76 million units. Asia and Japan led the growth thanks to school projects and corporate refreshes tied to Windows 10's end of support. North America was the weak link, with tariffs and economic unease keeping buyers on the sidelines even as aging fleets strain under Windows 11 pressure. Lenovo kept its top spot with 25.5 percent market share, followed by HP at 19.8 and Dell at 13.3. Apple and ASUS both posted double-digit growth. IDC's takeaway is clear: the PC market is not surging on flashy new features, it is being pulled forward by deadlines, old batteries, and the reality that five-year-old laptops do not cut it anymore.

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Amazon Pharmacy will begin offering prescription pickup kiosks at its One Medical clinics starting in Los Angeles this December, allowing patients to collect common medications like antibiotics and inhalers without waiting for delivery. Reuters reports: The kiosks will be the first in-person pick-up service offered by Amazon Pharmacy, which has been providing prescription services primarily by delivery, said Hannah McClellan Richards, a vice president at Amazon Pharmacy. One Medical offers a membership structure that allows patients to access primary and urgent care at a subscription fee of $199 annually. Patients without a membership are still able to book an appointment and would be able to use the kiosk, the company said. Richards said in an interview that the company plans to expand the kiosk model outside of California in 2026 and is in talks with external health systems to introduce the machines through partnerships. Amazon does not plan to offer medicines that must be refrigerated, such as GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, or more tightly regulated prescriptions like controlled pain medicines through the kiosk. Inventory for each kiosk will be tailored to the provider, and patients would be able to consult a company pharmacist virtually, Amazon said in a press release.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Financial Times: OpenAI and Anthropic are considering using investor funds to settle potential claims from multibillion-dollar lawsuits, as insurers balk at providing comprehensive coverage for the risks associated with artificial intelligence. The two US-based AI start-ups have traditional business insurance coverage in place, but insurance professionals said AI model providers will struggle to secure protection for the full scale of damages they may need to pay out in the future. OpenAI, which has tapped the world's second-largest insurance broker Aon for help, has secured cover of up to $300 million for emerging AI risks, according to people familiar with the company's policy. Another person familiar with the policy disputed that figure, saying it was much lower. But all agreed the amount fell far short of the coverage to insure against potential losses from a series of multibillion-dollar legal claims. [...] Two people with knowledge of the matter said OpenAI has considered "self insurance," or putting aside investor funding in order to expand its coverage. The company has raised nearly $60 billion to date, with a substantial amount of the funding contingent on a proposed corporate restructuring. One of those people said OpenAI had discussed setting up a "captive" -- a ringfenced insurance vehicle often used by large companies to manage emerging risks. Big tech companies such as Microsoft, Meta, and Google have used captives to cover Internet-era liabilities such as cyber or social media. Captives can also carry risks, since a substantial claim can deplete an underfunded captive, leaving the parent company vulnerable. OpenAI said it has insurance in place and is evaluating different insurance structures as the company grows, but does not currently have a captive and declined to comment on future plans.

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Salesforce says it's refusing to pay an extortion demand made by a crime syndicate that claims to have stolen roughly 1 billion records from dozens of Salesforce customers. From a report: The threat group making the demands began their campaign in May, when they made voice calls to organizations storing data on the Salesforce platform, Google-owned Mandiant said in June. The English-speaking callers would provide a pretense that necessitated the target connect an attacker-controlled app to their Salesforce portal. Amazingly -- but not surprisingly -- many of the people who received the calls complied. [...] Earlier this month, the group created a website that named Toyota, FedEx, and 37 other Salesforce customers whose data was stolen in the campaign. In all, the number of records recovered, Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters claimed, was "989.45m/~1B+." The site called on Salesforce to begin negotiations for a ransom amount "or all your customers [sic] data will be leaked." The site went on to say: "Nobody else will have to pay us, if you pay, Salesforce, Inc." The site said the deadline for payment was Friday.

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The UK's national security is under severe threat from the climate crisis and the looming collapse of vital natural ecosystems, with food shortages and economic disaster potentially just years away, a powerful report by the UK's intelligence chiefs is due to warn. The Guardian: However, the report, which was supposed to launch on Thursday at a landmark event in London, has been delayed, and concerns have been expressed to the Guardian that it may have been blocked by number 10. The destabilising impact of the climate and nature crises on national security is one of the biggest risks facing Britain, the joint intelligence committee report is understood to say. Already, food import supply chains are coming under pressure, with the price of some commodities increasing. This could be exacerbated in the near future, the defence experts have warned, with the UK over-dependent on imports. Other industries will also be affected by ecosystem collapse in places such as the Amazon and by the worsening impacts of extreme weather around the world. These impacts will not be encountered far off in the future as some had complacently assumed, ministers have been told, but are already being felt and will grow in significance as temperatures rise beyond 1.5C above preindustrial levels. The hard-hitting report was to be published on Thursday at a landmark event in London. But the Guardian understands that the report, prepared by experts over many months, has been halted.

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Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar M. Yaghi were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for the development of molecular building blocks with spaces large enough that gases and other chemicals can flow through them. The New York Times: The cavities on the inside are "almost like rooms in a hotel, so that guest molecules can enter and also exit again from the same material," Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said during the announcement of the award. The laureates' discoveries, he added, pave the way for the creation of materials that can separate toxic chemicals from wastewater or harvest water molecules in a desert. The laureates' work started with experiments by Dr. Robson in the 1980s and gradually developed over a period of about 15 years. "It takes time for science to be recognized, and it takes multiple workers in the field with different approaches," said Dorothy Phillips, president of the American Chemical Society. The three laureates will share a prize of 11 million Swedish kronor, or around $1.17 million.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: In another loss for early smart home adopters, Logitech has announced that it will brick all Pop switches on October 15. In August of 2016, Logitech launched Pop switches, which provide quick access to a range of smart home actions, including third-party gadgets. For example, people could set their Pop buttons to launch Philips Hue or Insteon lighting presets, play a playlist from their Sonos speaker, or control Lutron smart blinds. Each button could store three actions, worked by identifying smart home devices on a shared Wi-Fi network, and was controllable via a dedicated Android or iOS app. The Pop Home Switch Starter Pack launched at $100, and individual Pop Add-on Home Switches debuted at $40 each. A company spokesperson told Ars Technica that Logitech informed customers on September 29 that their Pop switches would soon become e-waste.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Universities in the UK reassured arms companies they would monitor students' chat groups and social media accounts after firms raised concerns about campus protests, according to internal emails. One university said it would conduct "active monitoring of social media" for any evidence of plans to demonstrate against Rolls-Royce at a careers fair. A second appeared to agree to a request from Raytheon UK, the British wing of a major US defence contractor, to "monitor university chat groups" before a campus visit. Another university responded to a defence company's "security questionnaire" seeking information about social media posts suggestive of imminent protests over the firm's alleged role in fuelling war, including in Gaza. The universities' apparent compliance with the sensitivities of arms companies before careers fairs has emerged in emails obtained by the Guardian and Liberty Investigates after freedom of information (FoI) requests.

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Synology has released an update to its Disk Station Manager software that removes verified drive requirements from its 2025 model-year Plus, Value and J-series DiskStation network-attached storage devices. The change allows users to install non-validated third-party drives and create storage pools without restrictions. The company had expanded its verified drive policy to the entire Plus line a few months earlier. Synology-branded drives carried substantial price premiums over commodity hardware. The HAT5310 enterprise SATA drive costs $299 for 8TB compared to $220 for an identically sized Seagate Exos disk. Users who installed non-verified drives in affected models faced reduced functionality and persistent warning messages in the DSM interface. Synology said today it is collaborating with third-party drive manufacturers to accelerate testing and verification of additional storage drives. Pool and cache creation on M.2 disks still requires drives from the hardware compatibility list. Synology did not clarify whether the policy change applies to previous-generation products.

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American companies have begun cutting middle management positions at rates not seen in years. Google eliminated 35% of managers overseeing teams of fewer than three in August. Fiverr announced in September it would shed managers to focus on AI. Amazon trimmed its management ranks throughout the year and cut positions at its cloud-computing division in July. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg has complained about managers managing managers since 2023. Phrases relating to reducing management layers appeared 98 times on earnings calls of companies in the S&P global index this year, twice the frequency of all of 2022. The cuts stem partly from an uncertain economic environment and President Donald Trump's tariff regime, Economist writes. The pandemic created the conditions for the current retrenchment. Companies furloughed staff during Covid-19 and then hired rapidly to meet demand for e-commerce and digital services. They promoted employees to management positions to retain talent even when those managers supervised only one or two subordinates. Between 2019 and 2024, five of the ten fastest-growing job categories were management roles. Since November 2022, listed American companies have cut middle-management positions by around 3% on average.

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A Pew Research Center survey, released today, found that TV remains the dominant screen for American children aged twelve and younger. 90% of parents reported that their child watches TV. Tablets are used by 68% of children in this age group. 61% use smartphones. The survey of U.S. parents also documented emerging technology patterns. About one in ten parents said their child between five and twelve years old uses AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Gemini. Roughly four in ten parents reported that their child uses voice assistants like Siri or Alexa. YouTube appeared in 85% of households. Half of parents said their child uses gaming devices. About four in ten reported desktop or laptop use. The survey found that 62% of parents said their child under two watches television. 42% of parents said they could be doing better at managing screen time for their children.

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South Korea's government may have permanently lost 858TB of information after a fire at a data center in Daejeon. From a report: As reported by DCD, a battery fire at the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) data center, located in the city of Daejeon, on September 26, has caused havoc for government services in Korea. Work to restore the data center is ongoing, but officials fear data stored on the government's G-Drive may be gone for good. G-Drive, which stands for Government Drive and is not a Google product, was used by government staff to keep documents and other files. Each worker was allocated 30GB of space. According to a report from The Chosun, the drive was one of 96 systems completely destroyed in the fire, and there is no backup. "The G-Drive couldn't have a backup system due to its large capacity," an unnamed official told The Chosun. "The remaining 95 systems have backup data in online or offline forms." While some departmers do not rely on G-Drive, those that do have been badly impacted in the aftermath of the fire. A source from the Ministry of Personnel Management said: "Employees stored all work materials on the G-Drive and used them as needed, but operations are now practically at a standstill."

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Wednesday that he's surprised Advanced Micro Devices offered 10% of itself to OpenAI as part of a multibillion-dollar partnership announced earlier this week. From a report: "t's imaginative, it's unique and surprising, considering they were so excited about their next generation product," Huang said in an interview with "CNBC's Squawk Box." "I'm surprised that they would give away 10% of the company before they even built it. And so anyhow, it's clever, I guess." OpenAI and AMD reached a deal on Monday, with OpenAI committing to purchase 6 gigawatts worth of AMD chips over multiple years, including its forthcoming MI450 series. As part of the agreement, OpenAI will receive warrants for up to 160 million AMD shares, with vesting milestones based on deployment volume and AMD's share price.

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TiVo, the digital video recording pioneer, has moved on from its legacy DVR technology, focusing instead on its branded operating system software promoting third-party content searches, recommendation, including free ad-supported streaming options and more for smart televisions. From a report: "As of Oct. 1, 2025, TiVo has stopped selling Edge DVR hardware products," the company said in an AI-based message. The recording said that the company and its associates no longer manufacture DVR hardware, "and our remaining inventory is now depleted." TiVo said it remains "committed to providing support for our DVR customers and will continue to provide support for the foreseeable future." TiVo in 1999 created the first set-top device enabling users to record and skip ads within television programming.

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AmiMoJo shares a report from the BBC: Renewable energy overtook coal as the world's leading source of electricity in the first half of this year -- a historic first, according to new data from the global energy think tank Ember. Electricity demand is growing around the world but the growth in solar and wind was so strong it met 100% of the extra electricity demand, even helping drive a slight decline in coal and gas use. However, Ember says the headlines mask a mixed global picture. Developing countries, especially China, led the clean energy charge but richer nations including the US and EU relied more than before on planet-warming fossil fuels for electricity generation. This divide is likely to get more pronounced, according to a separate report from the International Energy Agency (IEA). It predicts renewables will grow much less strongly than forecast in the US as a result of the policies of President Donald Trump's administration. Coal, a major contributor to global warming, was still the world's largest individual source of energy generation in 2024, a position it has held for more than 50 years, according to the IEA.

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XXongo writes: A New York times article suggests that merging the diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome into the Autism diagnosis in 2013, thus creating the "autism spectrum disorder," was not helpful (paywalled; alternative source). That broadening of the diagnosis, along with the increasing awareness of the disorder, is largely responsible for the steep rise in autism cases that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called "an epidemic" and has attributed to theories of causality that mainstream scientists reject, like vaccines and, more recently, Tylenol. But the same diagnosis now applies to both people who are non-verbal, frequently engage in self-destructive behavior such as pounding their heads against the floor, and may require full-time care, but also to people who are merely somewhat socially awkward, possibly engage in repetitive behaviors, and have a narrow range of interests. "Everything changed when we included Asperger's [in the diagnosis of autism]," said Dr. Eric Fombonne, a psychiatrist and researcher at Oregon Health & Science University. He noted that in the earliest studies of autism rates, 75% of people with the diagnosis had intellectual disabilities. Now, only about a third do.

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NBC is developing a game show based on the New York Times' Wordle puzzle, with Today anchor Savannah Guthrie set to host and Jimmy Fallon executive producing through his company, Electric Hot Dog. The Times is also a production partner. From the Hollywood Reporter: Wordle, which the Times acquired in 2022 and logs billions of plays from the paper's games site annually, gives players six tries to guess a five-letter word, revealing only if letters are in the right place (via a green background) or part of the word but in the wrong place (with a gold background). Should it go forward, the Wordle show would join another Fallon-produced game show, Password, on NBC's unscripted roster. The Tonight Show emcee also executive produces and hosts the network's On Brand, a competition series that revolves around advertising and marketing.

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