Damian Pickett · No. 50
Friday 23 October 2026
The iPhone Duo launches today, and Kimi Antonelli could clinch his maiden F1 title at this weekend’s US Grand Prix.
The iPhone Duo, Apple’s first foldable iPhone, reached its first customers in Australia and New Zealand as the global launch rolled out through Friday. Early impressions are already surfacing online ahead of wider availability.
MIT researchers left 13 AI agents alone on a virtual island with nothing to do. They invented games, mourned a lost ring, then got better at their actual jobs.
Laika’s Travis Knight explains the technical innovations behind Wildwood, the studio’s biggest stop-motion production yet, as the film debuts at AFI Fest.
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With OpenAI chasing a $1.25 trillion valuation and Anthropic pushing Claude Duet, the founder story behind DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis is worth revisiting today.
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Every iPhone Duo shipping today runs on chips from the company Morris Chang built; worth knowing how he built it.
OpenAI is reportedly raising $30 billion at a $1.25 trillion valuation, which would make it the most valuable private company ever, ahead of a planned IPO.
Canva has launched its first in-house image generation model, available to all users, promising better results at a lower cost than relying on outside AI providers.
Anthropic has opened a waitlist for Claude Duet, a new app for Pro and Max subscribers built around AI agents rather than a single chatbot.
Anthropic is donating its Agent Skills standard to a new vendor-neutral Agentic AI Foundation, aiming to keep the format open as rivals build competing agent tools.
Google DeepMind has built a global map that categorises every 10-metre patch of land on Earth by forest type, a tool for tracking deforestation and restoration.
Ride-hailing firm inDrive plans to begin testing Pony.ai’s robotaxis in Kazakhstan’s capital in the first half of 2027, backed by Nvidia technology.
Rivian has acquired Third Dimension, a startup building AI world models, pairing the technology with Rivian’s own driving data to improve its self-driving simulator.
A fan-built Lego model of Daft Punk’s Alive tour pyramid has been approved to become an official set, after winning enough support on Lego Ideas.
A former OpenAI science lead has launched Warp Science, training robots on camera and sensor-glove data from human chemists to automate lab work.
MacStories spent a day in New York interviewing developers about building apps for the iPhone Duo, a new and unusually shaped device to design for.
Apple has added an Intelligent Assistant to Keynote, Numbers and Pages, available in beta to Creator Studio subscribers, alongside iPhone Duo support.
Six Colors considers whether the iPad mini remains Apple’s best iPad, as invitations go out for a Los Angeles event next week rumoured to include a new mini.
Counterpoint Research says Apple outperformed the broader PC market in Q3, with the MacBook Neo helping cushion the impact of a wider decline in shipments.
Travis Knight, Wildwood’s director and Laika’s CEO, says generative AI is incompatible with the studio’s stop-motion craft and hopes audiences recognise what that craft costs to protect.
Deadline calls Wicker the year’s most unexpected comedy, with Olivia Colman and Peter Dinklage turning Alexander Skarsgård’s basket-case character into pure delight.
Amanda Seyfried is set to star opposite Ramy Youssef and Sharon Stone in Martha & Muhammad, an A24 comedy marking Youssef’s feature directorial debut.
A24’s Moonlight turns ten this year. Its Oscar-winning screenwriter Tarell Alvin McCraney reflects on the film’s legacy, including its infamous Best Picture mix-up.
Wildwood earned the MPA’s first PG-13 rating for a Laika film, part of a wider move by animation studios toward stories aimed squarely at adults.
Paul George scored 38 points in his Celtics debut, but Boston were out-rebounded and lost the margin battle as Detroit beat them 121-113.
Paul George’s 38 points on Tuesday marked the most by a Celtics player in a debut game, placing him among the greatest debuts in Boston sports history.
Boston opened the season with Derrick White, Jordan Walsh, Jayson Tatum, Paul George and Mitchell Robinson, but an alternative lineup is already making a case to start instead.
Drake Maye threw two touchdowns and ran in a third, but Caleb Williams and Luther Burden picked apart New England’s defence as the Patriots fell 30-24 to Chicago.
New England’s three-game winning streak ended against Chicago, a defeat that also shifts the Patriots’ position in the AFC wild-card picture.
New England has placed starting left guard Alijah Vera-Tucker on injured reserve for at least four games, elevating two players to fill the gap on an already battered line.
Kimi Antonelli, F1’s championship leader at 20, could become the sport’s youngest ever world champion this weekend in Austin if results go his way.
Max Verstappen says the bumpy track surface at the Circuit of the Americas is ‘out of control’ and has raised concerns about long-term spinal injury to drivers.
Lando Norris says Kimi Antonelli has performed ‘two levels above’ his Mercedes team-mate George Russell this season, ahead of Antonelli’s first shot at the title.
Red Sox centre fielder Rafaela won the Fielding Bible Award for his position, with Wilyer Abreu also honoured, as the annual awards recognised 2026’s best defenders.
A look back at Wilyer Abreu’s hitting during the Red Sox’s win streak this season, now that Boston’s year has ended without a World Series return.
More than 1,000 artists spent over a year hand-drawing a shot-for-shot flipbook version of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, led by animator Andy Bailey.
