Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Techpresso.
In today's Techpresso:
🔒 Apple tightens Mac file access
🛠️ Meta wants you to build your own Muse gadget
📱 Apple to replace faulty iPhones
🧑 New AI avatar fooled 48% of users
💻 Nvidia halves DGX Spark RAM amid memory crunch
📄 arXiv caps researchers at two papers monthly
Plus: 🎁 10 more stories you might like, 🧰 6 tools, and 📚 5 papers.
Apple tightens Mac file access
Source: TechCrunch
- Apple is adding new controls to the "Full Disk Access" setting on macOS, which lets an app reach a user's files, mail, messages, and browsing history, after worries about AI agents misusing that level of access.
- The change will require "very explicit user action" before an app can be granted the access, with Apple saying some developers already use the feature in ways that expose everything on a system without users fully knowing.
- Apple's move follows a report that Meta's Muse app on Mac knew the content of a journalist's private messages, a claim Meta disputed, and a separate flaw in ChatGPT's Mac app that could have let hackers reach sensitive data.
Meta wants you to build your own Muse gadget
Source: TechCrunch
- Meta has launched Muse Gadgets, an open-source project that lets developers build their own hardware connecting to Muse, the company's AI agent that books travel, fills forms, and shops for users.
- The company is handing out open-source firmware, a Linux software kit, and project ideas, so tinkerers can wire Muse to a Raspberry Pi or ESP32 board along with displays, buttons, sensors, and other parts.
- Nat Friedman, head of product at Meta's Superintelligence Labs, said the company built a USB-C device called Muse Home Link and made 5,000 to give away free to subscribers, shipping in a few weeks.
Apple to replace faulty iPhones
Source: MacRumors
- Apple will replace iPhone 18 Pro Max phones for free after a small number of AT&T users lost cellular service, blocking calls, texts, and data, since the problem can't be fixed with a software update.
- Thousands complained across the Apple Support Community, and Apple pushed out iOS 27.0.1 this week plus an AT&T carrier settings update today to stop more phones from being hit by the fault.
- Only AT&T iPhone 18 Pro Max units are affected; those US models use Qualcomm's Snapdragon X80 modem rather than Apple's C2 chip, though Apple hasn't said whether that difference caused the trouble.
New AI avatar fooled 48% of users
Source: The Decoder
- Tavus says its new "Human Interaction Model" called Griffin fooled 48 percent of people in a study into thinking its AI avatar was a real person during a one-minute video call.
- Griffin reads speech, facial expressions, tone, gestures, and pauses while taking in and creating video at once, a sharp jump from older systems that only convinced 2 percent of testers.
- In what Tavus calls an independent Nvidia test, Griffin scored 3.83 for how human it felt, close to the 3.92 for real people, with a limited preview named Griffin-Lite now open to select testers.
Nvidia halves DGX Spark RAM amid memory crunch
Source: Digital Trends
- Nvidia is putting out a 64 GB version of its DGX Spark AI machine that costs $4,999, the same price as the 128 GB model, which is being dropped at that tier as memory costs climb.
- Apart from the memory cut, the 64 GB Spark keeps the same specs and can still be linked with others through a built-in ConnectX-7 network chip and a QSFP cable to pool memory for AI models over 200 billion parameters.
- The 64 GB model arrives by October 23rd from partners including Acer, ASUS, Dell, Gigabyte, HP and MSI, though the 128 GB Spark is now selling for over $6,000 as prices keep rising.
arXiv caps researchers at two papers monthly
Source: The Register
- arXiv, the preprint paper site, now caps each submitter at two new papers per month, a strict new rule meant to slow a flood of low-quality submissions that AI writing tools have helped drive.
- The limit applies per submitter, so multi-author papers only count against the person who files them, and large institutions won't be hit hard; rejected papers still count toward the monthly total, alongside a cap of three active submissions at once.
- arXiv received 40,363 submissions in September, up 309 percent over the past decade and double two years ago, with moderators overwhelmed by "thin" papers; the cap is a stopgap while the nonprofit works out new submission rules.
Other news you might like
- Anthropic will spend $100M to train 10,000 AI engineers Cybernews
- Google lifts the Pixel 10a price to $599 as memory costs climb The Next Web
- New Mexico wants Meta to pay $40 billion in penalties for Cambridge Analytica scandal Engadget
- Broadcom is starting to raise $60 billion in debt to finance AI chips for Anthropic Quartz
- OpenAI says its review into hacks, including on Australian government sites, is costing $500,000 a day The Guardian
- Once a $2.3 Billion Network, Ethereum Layer-2 Blast Is Shutting Down Decrypt
- Dutch eyewear chain Hans Anders halts sale of Meta glasses, citing privacy concerns Reuters
- Tesla sustains its EV sales momentum despite US troubles TechCrunch
- Soon-to-be merged Paramount and Warner Bros. will be known as Skydance going forward Engadget
- OpenAI software attempted to secretly scrape data from dozens of prominent websites The Record
Trending tools
Notchware: turns the MacBook notch into a live island showing Now Playing, battery, volume, and AI agent alerts from Codex, Claude Code, and Cursor. ballmac.com
MacCam: native macOS camera app for capturing photos and videos from your Mac, iPhone, or webcam directly into Apple Photos, with Photo Booth effects. maccam.app
bmux: a free, open-source browser with split panes, named sessions, and per-profile windows, letting you run background agent sessions via CLI and keyboard shortcuts. bmux.cc
Sapien: runs AI-powered market research using synthetic populations grounded in real data, predicting how audiences respond to products, prices and campaigns same-day. asksapien.ai
Teachoo: provides K12 math and finance learning with AI-personalized worksheets, serving students who want structured practice and adaptive study material. teachoo.ai
miso: book flights over iMessage with a concierge team that tracks your preferences, points, seat choices, and handles changes 24/7. miso.com
Trending papers & reports
Reasoning navigation gives language models a built-in compass that senses how close they are to a correct answer during multi-step problem solving, improving accuracy on harder, longer reasoning chains without the heavy cost of exploring many paths. arXiv
Diffusion text models stumble on step-by-step reasoning because they lock in the guesses they feel surest about rather than following the logic, a shortcut that can multiply errors on tasks like multi-digit addition tenfold. arXiv
Automatic home furnishing fills empty floor plans with realistic, editable furniture layouts that respect real design rules, trained on 505 professional plans, giving real-estate and interior-design workflows ready 3D scenes without slow trial-and-error placement. arXiv
Model testing shortcuts shrink the giant benchmark exams used to grade AI versions by up to ~89%, cutting evaluation time as much as 8x while keeping accuracy within about 1 to 3 points of full tests. arXiv
Goldilocks training teaches language models structured puzzle solving by drilling them on problems at the edge of their ability, hitting ~64% accuracy on hard Sudoku and ~91% on hard mazes across several model sizes. arXiv
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