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Apple is set to introduce a new MacBook Pro with a touchscreen and an updated iPad Mini "on or around" October 27th, Bloomberg reports. If true, that would put the event just two weeks after the October 13th event Apple announced today, which is rumored to focus on smart home products.
Bloomberg says that the late October event will include an "online video presentation" and an "in-person component for the press," which it reports is similar to what Apple is planning for the October 13th event.
At this Mac and iPad event, Bloomberg reports that Apple will announce new MacBook Pros that are lighter than what's available now, have touchscree …
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Margaret Hamilton, who coined the term "software engineering" and led the development of on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo program in the 1960s, died last week at the age of 90. A recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, Hamilton was also immortalized as a LEGO minifig the following year—part of the "Women of NASA" set that also included astronauts Mae Jemison and Sally Ride.
“To say Margaret Hamilton was a pioneer—to say she was ahead of her time—would be a dramatic understatement. She was a software engineer at a time when that field was in its infancy, and she not only developed advanced code herself but also led a team in using that nascent technology to develop one of the most complex systems humanity had ever achieved,” said Olivier de Weck, interim head of the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “The Apollo program still stands as one of our greatest testaments to the power of collaboration, ingenuity, and engineering, and Hamilton was a fundamental contributor to that program’s success.”
Born in 1936 in Paoli, Indiana, Hamilton graduated from Earlham College in 1958 with a degree in mathematics and a minor in philosophy—the latter a nod to her father (a poet) and grandfather (a headmaster). She married her first husband, James Cox Hamilton, that same year. The plan was for her to work until he finished his law degree, after which he would support her through graduate school to earn a PhD in mathematics.
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The California State Athletic Commission sent a cease-and-desist letter to a startup that hosted a match between a human and a robot last month, as reported by The New York Times.
The fight, which took place on September 18th, pitted a human, Frankie LaPenna, against a humanoid robot owned by a tech startup, Rek, that was being piloted by a human using what the NYT described as a "remote virtual-reality system." Rek says it is the "the humanoid robot fighting league" on its website, and the robot appears to be one from EngineAI but with a Terminator-like head swapped on top.
You can watch a replay of the fight on YouTube:
The CEO of Rek …
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Let's Encrypt is continuing a push toward improved security by reducing free SSL/TLS certificate lifetimes from 90 days to 64 days, starting on February 10, 2027. For administrators already implementing modern ACME clients that support ARI (ACME Renewal Information), the change should be seamless. For those still relying on hardcoded renewal schedules or manual processes, next winter will be the deadline to update before certificates start expiring unexpectedly.
Starting on October 14, 2026, Let's Encrypt will begin testing the 64-day certificates, and interested users can opt-in to test their setups before production goes live.
Prior to Let's Encrypt's launch in early 2016, certificates were often issued for as long as 1 to 3 years at a time. The service start with 90-day certificates to force renewal automation that didn't previously exist. Shorter certificate validity periods limited vulnerabilities from private key thefts and accelerated HTTPS adoption across the web.
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Four men detained at an ICE detention center in rural Georgia used the facility's video conferencing software to expose both the conditions inside and President Donald Trump's hostile takeover of the immigration courts. In the five-minute video, the men describe an intentionally dysfunctional legal system designed to keep them trapped in federal custody for months or years - in privately owned facilities that profit from their confinement.
The video cost the men, literally and figuratively. The Folkston ICE Processing Center has a work program for detainees in which they are paid a pittance to cook, do laundry, or clean. These wages allow t …
A federal jury in Texas recently ruled in favor of a man who sued Bexar County and its sheriff over allegations that the agency ran what the plaintiff’s attorneys called an “unconstitutional traffic stop scheme” enabled by “AI-powered” license plate readers.
Late last month, plaintiff Alek Schott of Houston was awarded $76, one dollar for each minute that he was detained. (Schott asked for this exact amount as symbolic compensation.)
“After the stop, I filed a complaint with the Sheriff’s Office because I knew what happened to me was wrong,” Schott said in a statement after his win. “The department reviewed it, told me they didn’t see any violation, and said if I had a problem with it, I should sue them. So I did.”
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Under anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the federal health department is undertaking an agency-wide effort to focus on injuries claimed to be related to vaccines.
In a press announcement Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) laid out four aspects of the large-scale initiative. The first is a new clinic at the National Institutes of Health that is "dedicated to studying and caring for patients experiencing health problems following vaccination." Despite only being announced today, the clinic actually opened October 5, and Kennedy secretly attended its ribbon-cutting ceremony alongside other high-level Trump administration officials. It's unclear why his visit and the clinic's opening were not disclosed by the Trump administration, but they were reported by Bloomberg Law at the time.
Another aspect of the initiative is a proposal to reimburse doctors for reporting possible injuries from vaccines to a federal system called VAERS, or the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. VAERS, which is run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is a common focus of anti-vaccine advocates, who incessantly misuse it. The system is meant to be an indiscriminate dragnet of any potential safety concerns linked to vaccines, providing a sensitive early warning monitoring system. Anyone, including members of the public, can submit an unvetted report.
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