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In Case You Missed It · Page 12
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A Fusion Startup Raised $200 Million to Put Power on the Grid by 2034
Type One Energy raised a $200 million Series B led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Clutterbuck…
By Social Storytellers Collective News Desk · October 7, 2026
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LibreOffice Is Selling the Absence of AI as a Feature
The Document Foundation said LibreOffice will not include AI features in its default installation “for the…
By Social Storytellers Collective News Desk · October 7, 2026
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The Grammys Are Keeping Asian Pop Separate. Two of Its Biggest Acts Are Sitting Out.
The Recording Academy says its new Best Asian Pop Music Performance category will move forward at the 2027…
By Leena Alridge · October 7, 2026
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The San Francisco Fed’s Mary Daly Says AI Chip Demand Could Keep Inflation Up Longer
San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly told Axios that demand for AI hardware could keep…
By Social Storytellers Collective News Desk · October 7, 2026
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Sinclair Is Launching a National News Brand on Substack
Sinclair, one of the country’s largest local broadcast groups, is launching The National Press, a national…
By Social Storytellers Collective News Desk · October 7, 2026
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Walmart Promises Not to Personalize Prices as Regulators Weigh New Rules
Walmart CEO John Furner said in a letter on October 6 that the retailer will not…
By Social Storytellers Collective News Desk · October 7, 2026
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Lambda Wants $4 Billion Before Its IPO. Anthropic Is Most of the Reason.
AI cloud company Lambda is raising up to $4 billion at a $14.5 billion pre-money valuation,…
By Social Storytellers Collective News Desk · October 7, 2026
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The Justice Department Filed 40 Cases to Strip Americans of Their Citizenship
The Justice Department filed 40 denaturalization cases in federal courts between August 21 and October 2,…
By Social Storytellers Collective News Desk · October 7, 2026
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New York City’s Reparations Study Will Connect Historical Harms to Policy Recommendations
New York City’s Commission on Racial Equity has enlisted researchers from Teachers College’s Black Education Research…
By Social Storytellers Collective News Desk · October 7, 2026
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Homes That Heat With Oil Face the Steepest Winter Bills
Households that heat with oil could pay about 50% more this winter, an average increase of…
By Social Storytellers Collective News Desk · October 7, 2026
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Uber Is Paying $2.3 Billion to Get Into the Office Lunch Business
Uber agreed on October 6 to buy ezCater, a marketplace for corporate and workplace catering orders,…
By Social Storytellers Collective News Desk · October 7, 2026
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A Federal Judge Blocks Immigration Fines Reaching $1.8 Million
A federal judge in Boston blocked the Trump administration’s immigration-fine policy October 5, ruling that its…
By Social Storytellers Collective News Desk · October 6, 2026
Microsoft and Nvidia opened preorders for the Surface Laptop Ultra, a 15-inch flagship built on Nvidia's RTX Spark chip, starting at $2,599 and shipping October 16. The companies revealed pricing Wednesday at Microsoft's first major Windows and Surface event in more than two years, held in San Francisco, alongside a Surface RTX Spark Dev Box for developers starting at $5,999, according to Tom's Hardware. Machines on the same platform from Asus, Dell, Lenovo, HP and MSI ship the same day.
The Labor Department withdrew a proposal that would have pulled roughly a quarter of its Fair Labor Standards Act interpretive guidance out of the Code of Federal Regulations, leaving the rules employers and workers lean on for wage-and-hour questions right where they are. The 2025 plan targeted nine parts, about 229 pages covering topics like who the law covers and industry-specific exemptions, and would have moved them into an appendix of the Wage and Hour Division's field handbook, according to a National Law Review analysis of the withdrawal notice published Wednesday in the Federal Register.
Spotify is expanding audiobooks from 22 markets to more than 180 by the end of 2026, putting books in front of a potential 750 million listeners. The rollout started Wednesday and was announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair, with new markets getting more than 350,000 titles across more than 120 languages, including new catalogs in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Polish, according to Spotify's newsroom. In much of Africa, Asia and Argentina, the Audiobooks+ add-on will be the main way in.
Google has contracted for 3,590 megawatts of power from Constellation Energy, the country's largest nuclear operator, with about a quarter of that coming from new nuclear capacity. The centerpiece is a 20-year agreement for 890 megawatts of new output created by upgrading 11 existing Constellation reactors in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, which enables more than $4.3 billion in new investment, Reuters reported. That added capacity, roughly the output of one new reactor, reaches the PJM grid in phases from 2028 through 2032, according to Axios.
Shopify merchants saw holiday and cold-weather demand arrive early in September, with orders for babies’ Halloween onesies and jumpsuits up 209% and Halloween costumes up 198%, according to Shopify’s monthly sales data reported by Retail Brew. Advent calendars rose 143% and Christmas tree skirts 97%, a sign some shoppers are planning past Halloween already. Winter preparation showed up too, with firewood up 129%, space heaters up 118% and snow blowers up 96%. Pets are getting outfitted as well, as pet hoodies climbed 142%. Halloween spending is projected to reach $13.5 billion nationally this year, up from $13.1 billion last year.
Type One Energy raised a $200 million Series B led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Clutterbuck Capital to build its first commercial fusion power plant, which it aims to bring online by 2034 at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Bull Run site. Lowercarbon Capital, Siemens Energy Ventures and SiteGround Capital also invested, adding to at least $82.5 million the company raised earlier. Type One plans to act as an integrator, designing the plant while partnering with specialized suppliers, including high-temperature superconducting magnets licensed from Commonwealth Fusion Systems and engineering work from AECOM. CEO Christofer Mowry said the capital Type One needs is “just a different order of magnitude than if you were going to be vertically integrated.” Fusion has a long history of slipping timelines, so 2034 is a target the industry will be watching closely.
The Document Foundation said LibreOffice will not include AI features in its default installation “for the foreseeable future,” presenting the decision as a privacy protection rather than a gap. The foundation argued that most AI tools send documents to remote servers, and that any organization handling confidential, legally privileged or personal data needs to know where that data goes, with the only reliable assurance being that it “does not leave the machine.” Users who want AI can still install optional extensions that connect to models running on their own devices. The foundation also set criteria any future built-in AI would have to meet, including keeping data local and avoiding dependence on a single provider. As AI gets added to nearly every productivity app, LibreOffice, used by tens of millions of people and organizations, is betting some users care just as much about what is left out.
The Recording Academy says its new Best Asian Pop Music Performance category will move forward at the 2027 Grammys despite objections from some of the artists it was designed to recognize. BTS declined to submit its comeback album Arirang, saying the group wanted its music heard “for what it is, rather than being divided by region or language,” while Stray Kids also allowed the August 21 submission deadline to pass without entering any music. Variety notes that Stray Kids’ agency confirmed the decision but did not explicitly say the Asian Pop category caused it, so describing both acts as part of a formal boycott would overstate what is confirmed. Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. said the organization heard both criticism and strong support during industry listening sessions and decided to keep the category for 2027. The argument now centers on whether creating a dedicated category expands recognition or gives the industry another way to keep globally successful Asian artists outside the Grammys’ general-field awards. Variety reported on the Academy’s decision and BTS’s objection here.
San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly told Axios that demand for AI hardware could keep pushing prices up longer than the one to three years the Fed typically expects a supply shock to last. “It doesn’t seem like the demand for AI is going down. If anything, it’s going up,” she said, noting that companies are already seeking forward contracts for memory chips and redesigning products to use fewer of them. Daly described three pressures that could reinforce one another: AI hardware, tariffs and energy costs. She said the Fed’s latest move “seemed completely necessary at this juncture to respond to inflation risks going up,” and that whether more will be needed depends on whether those shocks prove temporary or compound. For borrowers, that suggests relief on rates may take longer to arrive.
Sinclair, one of the country’s largest local broadcast groups, is launching The National Press, a national news brand on Substack built on reporting from roughly 1,200 journalists across its 60 local newsrooms, Axios reported October 6. Independent journalist and former Newsmax co-host Lyndsay Keith will anchor the publication, which was developed with New Media, a company founded by Free Press veteran Alex Chitty, with Vice co-founder Shane Smith among its investors. Readers can subscribe for free or pay for ad-free and extended content. CEO Chris Ripley said revenue growth will be the top measure of success, followed by subscriber growth, and acknowledged that Sinclair’s earlier digital brand, Circa, was a “failure” after four years. The launch shows legacy media companies now treating newsletter platforms as a core distribution channel.
Walmart CEO John Furner said in a letter on October 6 that the retailer will not use personal data to charge different customers different prices, writing that using “someone’s income, shopping history, or moment of need to charge them more would violate the EDLP promise.” He also said Walmart does not use its electronic shelf labels to set personalized prices. The letter landed the same day the Federal Trade Commission closed public comments on a proposed enforcement policy aimed at personalized pricing practices it considers deceptive. The FTC has acknowledged that “the extent to which businesses currently use personalized pricing is not well understood,” and the National Retail Federation argued that personalized discounts should be treated differently from personalized prices. How regulators draw that line will shape what shoppers see at the shelf and online.
AI cloud company Lambda is raising up to $4 billion at a $14.5 billion pre-money valuation, led by Coatue Management and Blackstone, ahead of a planned 2027 public offering, The Wall Street Journal reported. Lambda rents out GPU computing power for AI workloads, and its contract backlog jumped from $15 billion in June to $50 billion in September. Anthropic accounts for $35 billion of that backlog through a deal signed in late August. The company also raised $1 billion in debt the week before to buy chips, a reminder that much of the AI data-center buildout runs on borrowed money. That leaves Lambda’s growth story tied closely to one customer relationship and to lenders’ willingness to keep financing it.