☕️ OpenAI launches GPT-5.4 Cyber

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In today's Techpresso:

🛡️ OpenAI launches GPT-5.4 Cyber

👟 Allbirds ditches sneakers for AI, stock surges 373%

✂️ Snap cuts 16% of workforce, saying AI has reduced need for repetitive work

🔧 Google Chrome adds reusable one-click Gemini Skills

💊 Amazon launches AI tool for drug discovery

🔍 ‘Google app for desktop’ launches on Windows

Plus: 🎁 15 other news you might like, 🧰 6 tools, and 📚 4 papers.

🛡️ OpenAI launches GPT-5.4 Cyber LINK

OpenAI is releasing a new AI model called GPT-5.4-Cyber only to vetted security partners, starting with hundreds of organizations and expanding to thousands more in the coming weeks.

The move comes one week after Anthropic took a similar step by limiting access to its own model, Claude Mythos Preview, over concerns about cybersecurity misuse.

GPT-5.4-Cyber is designed to identify security holes in software, but like other cybersecurity tools throughout history, it can be used to both attack and defend networks.

👟 Allbirds ditches sneakers for AI, stock surges 373% LINK

Allbirds, the sneaker company popular in Silicon Valley, sold its shoe brand for $39 million and is now pivoting to AI under the new name NewBird AI, sending its stock up 373 percent.

NewBird AI plans to become a GPU-as-a-Service and AI-native cloud solutions provider, and it secured a $50 million investment from an undisclosed institutional investor through a convertible financing facility.

The pivot echoes Long Island Iced Tea's 2017 rebrand to blockchain, which saw a 275 percent stock jump before NASDAQ delisted it the following year after Bitcoin fever died down.

✂️ Snap cuts 16% of workforce, saying AI has reduced need for repetitive work LINK

Snap is laying off about 1,000 people, roughly 16% of its full-time employees, and closing over 300 open roles, partly because AI tools have reduced the need for repetitive work.

The company expects these cuts to reduce its annualized cost base by more than $500 million by the second half of 2026, helping establish a clearer path to net-income profitability.

Affected U.S.-based employees will receive four months of severance, healthcare coverage, and equity vesting, along with career transition support, while international staff will get comparable local packages.

🔧 Google Chrome adds reusable one-click Gemini Skills LINK

Google Chrome now lets users save Gemini prompts as "Skills," which are reusable one-click shortcuts that can be accessed while browsing on the desktop version of the browser.

Previously, users had to manually type or copy-paste a prompt each time they wanted Gemini to do something in Chrome, but Skills remove that repeated effort entirely.

Saved Skills sync across devices through your Google account and can be triggered by typing a forward slash or clicking the plus button, running instantly in the current tab.

💊 Amazon launches AI tool for drug discovery LINK

Amazon Web Services has launched Amazon Bio Discovery, an AI tool designed to help researchers speed up the process of finding and developing new drug molecules.

The tool gives researchers access to a library of biological foundation models that can generate and evaluate drug molecules, plus an AI agent that helps set parameters and interpret results.

AWS vice president Rajiv Chopra said the service is meant to augment scientists, not replace them, addressing a bottleneck created by the growing demand for computational biologists in drug discovery.

🔍 ‘Google app for desktop’ launches on Windows LINK

Google has officially launched its "Google app for desktop" on Windows for English-speaking users worldwide, after testing began in September with a Google Labs sign-up requirement.

The app opens with an Alt + Space shortcut and lets you search the web, Google Drive, local files, and installed apps in a Mac Spotlight-like experience.

It includes AI Mode, Google Lens, screen sharing for contextual questions, and a floating results window, while a separate Gemini team is working on a macOS version.

Other news you might like

• FCC just handed Netgear a de facto router monopoly in the USLINK

• Anthropic adds ‘repeatable routines’ feature to Claude Code, here’s how it worksLINK

• Nvidia bets on open models to advance quantumLINK

• YouTube livestreams will now hold back ads during peak engagement to protect the vibeLINK

• Anthropic shifts enterprise billing to per-token pricing. The flat-fee era is over.LINK

• Apple reportedly threatened to remove Grok from the App Store over sexualized deepfakesLINK

• Microsoft launches MAI-Image-2-Efficient, a cheaper and faster AI image modelLINK

• Max Hodak’s Science Corp. is preparing to place its first sensor in a human brainLINK

• Kraken has filed confidentially for IPO, co-CEO of crypto exchange confirmsLINK

• Meta extends custom chips deal with Broadcom to power AI ambitionsLINK

• ASML lifts 2026 forecast as surging AI chip demand boosts new ordersLINK

• Cybersecurity Looks Like Proof of Work NowLINK

🧰 Trending tools

Lexie: a tamagotchi-style game that helps you master tricky French numbers and vocabulary through daily practice without punishments or subscriptions.LINK

Claude Code Routines: automates repetitive coding tasks using AI-powered workflows that learn from your patterns to handle boilerplate, refactoring, and code generation efficiently.LINK

Lovable Desktop App: a desktop client for an AI-powered development platform that generates full-stack applications from natural language prompts, accelerating prototyping and deployment workflows.LINK

Fathom 3.0: records meetings with or without bots, lets you search across all past calls with AI-powered answers, and integrates with CRMs and AI tools.LINK

CC-BEEPER: a native macOS menubar app that displays Claude Code's real-time status with auto-accept modes, eliminating the need to constantly monitor your terminal window.LINK

Google app for desktop: brings Google Search, Lens, and AI-powered responses to your desktop with quick keyboard access to search locally and online.LINK

📚 Trending papers & reports

Large language models in program synthesis tasks perform worse than traditional symbolic tools across multiple domains, solving fewer problems and taking more time despite running on more powerful hardware.LINK

A new chip renders complex 3D scenes at 129 frames per second in full HD while using 53% less computation than previous methods, shrinking models by 51.6 times with minimal quality loss.LINK

Satellite constellations have negligible impact on sky brightness when limited to 60,000 satellites dimmer than magnitude 7, but extremely bright satellites can increase scattered sky background by 200% to 300%.LINK

Sciwrite-lint, an open-source tool, automatically verifies scientific references by checking if citations exist, are retracted, and actually support the claims authors make about them, running entirely on a researcher's own computer.LINK

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