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Today — 6 October 2026Main stream

Amid Midterm Crunch, Trump Advisers Took Time to Help Russia-Aligned Government

6 October 2026 at 22:19
James Blair and Chris LaCivita, who are leading the president’s congressional campaign operation, traveled to Republika Srpska to provide election advice.

© Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Milorad Dodik, the leader of the nationalist party, which controls the government of Republika Srpska, votes in the general election on Sunday.

Xbox has secured exclusive GTA 6 streaming rights

6 October 2026 at 22:12

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma told employees that Microsoft is getting ready to do something around Grand Theft Auto VI that "no other platform holder is doing" during an employee all-hands this morning. According to sources familiar with Microsoft's plans, Xbox has managed to land a deal for the exclusive game streaming rights for Grand Theft Auto VI.

The deal will mean only Xbox Cloud Gaming can stream Grand Theft Auto VI to players at launch, but it's not clear how long the agreement will be in place. Rockstar Games still hasn't announced a PC version of Grand Theft Auto VI, so this deal will allow Xbox to market its Xbox Cloud Gaming service to …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The best robot vacuum and mop deals during October Prime Day

6 October 2026 at 22:00
The Dreame X60 Ultra in action. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Spending too much time constantly sweeping and mopping? If you have the money to delegate those chores to a robot cleaner, you could save a lot of personal time. Thankfully, it’s cheaper than usual to buy a robot vacuum / mop hybrid during Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days, and some of our favorite models are discounted. The deals aren’t just for Amazon Prime members either, with other retailers like Best Buy and manufacturers getting in on the action, as well.

That being said, if your floors are already squeaky clean, make sure to check out our roundup of over 100 deals from Amazon’s October sale.

Roborock Qrevo Curv 2 Flow

Roborock’s first roller-mop robot vacuum, the Curv 2 Flow, features flagship specs at a midrange price, including excellent mopping, a retractable mop cover, 20,000Pa suction, AI-powered obstacle avoidance, and a compact design.

Where to Buy:

Roborock Saros 20

Roborock’s Saros 20 stands out for its ability to climb tall thresholds, avoid obstacles with impressive accuracy, and clean under low furniture thanks to its slim design. It also combines powerful 36,000Pa suction with great spinning mop pads, which is why we recommend it for homes with multiple floor types and tricky transitions between rooms.

Where to Buy:

Narwal Flow 2

Our pick for the best robot vacuum-mop if you have all hardwood floors is the Narwal Flow 2. A superb mop with a wide flat roller pad and an excellent vacuum, the Flow 2 also has top-notch navigation and obstacle detection. Its sleek base station is also less of an eyesore than most.

Where to Buy:

Dreame X60 Ultra

The Dreame X60 Ultra leverages a pair of AI-assisted cameras to help it navigate obstacles and ensure a thorough, consistent cleaning. It’s only 3.13 inches tall, so it can sneak under low surfaces that some other robot vacuums can’t.

Where to Buy:

Eufy Omni C28

The Eufy Omni C28 combines excellent mopping performance with a small self-cleaning dock that’s well suited for apartments and other smaller spaces. It navigates around furniture and into tight areas with ease, while its roller mop does a great job cleaning hard floors.

Where to Buy:

Dreame L40 Ultra

Dreame’s budget-friendly L40s Ultra has storage for up to 100 days of dust, and can clean its own mop pads. The auxiliary climbing wheels help it navigate thresholds and rug edges with ease.

Where to Buy:

Roborock Q10 S5 Plus

A budget robot vacuum and mop without a multifunction dock. It has AI-powered obstacle avoidance, sonic mopping, auto mop lifting, and an auto-empty dock.

Where to Buy:

Best overall: Deebot X8 Pro Omni

The Deebot X8 Pro Omni is an excellent roller mopping bot that extends to clean along backboards and furniture. It’s also a powerful vacuum with great obstacle avoidance, a small dock, and a convenient self-cleaning brush system.

Where to Buy:

Switchbot K11 Plus

The Matter-compatible SwitchBot K11 Plus is ideal for small apartments, bedrooms, and home offices. It can easily navigate around chair and desk legs and into tight spaces that most other bots miss. It also features a commendable 6,000Pa of suction power — which is great for this price point — and works well on both hardwood and carpet.

Where to Buy:

Apple and LG team up on new smart home gear, starting with a lock, doorbell, and thermostat

By: Emma Roth
6 October 2026 at 21:39

Apple is collaborating with LG on a new lineup of smart home devices, including a video doorbell, thermostat, indoor camera, and more, according to a report from Bloomberg. The products will reportedly feature LG branding but integrate with the company's rumored smart home hub that's expected to launch during an event on October 13th.

Sources tell Bloomberg that the upcoming line of devices also includes a deadbolt lock, outdoor security camera, and a floodlight camera.

Several of the devices will reportedly come with support for the smart home protocols Thread and Matter amid a "formal reboot" for Apple's HomeKit platform. T …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Drones sink ships near NATO countries in “unacceptable” attacks, EU says

6 October 2026 at 21:31

Drones sank two cargo ships and damaged a third in the exclusive economic zones of NATO member countries for the first time, killing at least two sailors. The attacks represent a notable escalation as Black Sea commercial shipping has increasingly come under attack during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with Russia also being accused of carrying out “hybrid warfare” incidents across Europe.

The Togo-flagged cargo ship Alfa Watan sank, and the Palau-flagged cargo ship Able was set ablaze after being attacked by multiple sea and aerial drones about 80 miles (128 kilometers) off the coast of Bulgaria on October 6, according to the Associated Press. In an interview, Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev described the incidents as “an unacceptable attack in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone” and “a blatant violation of international law and maritime law.”

The fate of the Alfa Watan’s crew was not immediately known after the vessel sank. A Bulgarian ferry managed to evacuate the 18 crew members of the Able, with two severely injured mariners being flown to a hospital in the city of Varna.

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OpenAI will watermark ChatGPT outputs by default—but only in the EU

6 October 2026 at 20:50

OpenAI will begin automatically watermarking text generated with ChatGPT in the European Union, the company has announced. It will also offer the watermarking feature in other regions, but it will be off by default outside of the EU.

The move in Europe is driven by a need to comply with the EU AI Act, which took effect in August. It requires marking content produced by AI models in a way that another tool can detect. Unfortunately, there is still no completely effective and reliable way to do that. A few standards already exist, like SynthID and the C2PA project, but they are relatively easy to circumvent for anyone with basic know-how.

The same is likely true for OpenAI's watermark. Its method is proprietary; the company calls it textGrain, and has published a technical paper explaining how it works. But in general, it works like other LLM watermarking tools we've seen in the past: It puts patterns in the word choices that are not clear to a human reader, and that don't meaningfully change the general quality of the output, but that someone with a key can use a specialized detector to find. OpenAI says it will be giving access to the detector to a limited number of researchers and organizations, and providing a request-for-approval process for others to be added over time.

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HBO Max, Paramount+, and Discovery+ "will unify into a single service”

6 October 2026 at 20:32

After months of industry and customer speculation, Paramount Skydance has shed some light on the future of the HBO Max and Paramount+ streaming services.

Paramount Skydance completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) today, ending a monthslong saga that began when Netflix last year announced its own plans to buy WBD. Netflix scrapped those plans in February. Skydance is the name of the company created from the $111 billion merger.

In an announcement today, Skydance said that all of the direct-to-consumer streaming services it owns, including the Discovery+ service that Discovery Inc. (which merged with WarnerMedia in 2022 to create WBD) launched in 2021, “will unify into a single service over time.”

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It looks like the Atlantic storm season may finally produce a hurricane

6 October 2026 at 19:55

A low-pressure system in the western Gulf of Mexico should soon become a tropical storm, and based on the latest forecast modeling, it has a decent chance of becoming a hurricane.

Normally, a hurricane forming in early October would not be particularly noteworthy. However, this year the development of a hurricane would be a big deal—because it has not happened yet.

In the modern hurricane record—an era dating to about World War II when there has been aircraft reconnaissance and later continuous satellite coverage—there has never been an Atlantic season without a hurricane, and no season has gone this late without one forming.

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© Google Weather Lab

Hackers obtain counterfeit TLS certificates for Google and other large services

6 October 2026 at 19:21

Attackers hijacked three top-level domains and used their control to mint counterfeit TLS certificates for Google and other large organizations, Google said Tuesday.

The attackers launched a series of attacks on the .gh, .sl, and .as country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) and then modified authoritative DNS records for selected domains within those namespaces. By controlling those DNS records, the attackers were able to pass automated domain control validation checks and obtain unauthorized certificates for “several Google domains” and “several leading global brands and widely used online services.” Google said it updated Chrome to block all certificates it identified as unauthorized, and worked with the issuing certification authorities to ensure the unauthorized certificates for Google properties were revoked.

Certificate issuance: The weak link in the chain

TLS certificates are the cryptographic credentials that underpin authentication and encryption protections for websites, mail servers, and other Internet infrastructure. These x.509 certificates use a digital signature to bind a domain name such as google.com to a public key. The public key is publicly available, while the private key is held only by the website operator. When a connection shows that the keys match, the visiting party knows it’s connected to the authentic site rather than an impostor. Possession of unauthorized certificates allows attackers to cryptographically impersonate the affected infrastructure.

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