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OpenAI cut GPT-5.6 Luna API prices by 80% to $0.20 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output, while Terra fell 20% to $2 and $12. Fast mode gives Sol up to 2.5 times Standard speed at twice the price. OpenAI says Sol-assisted kernel work lowered serving cost by 20% and improved token-generation efficiency by more than 15%, while Luna delivers year-old frontier performance at roughly six cents per task-dollar and nearly nine times the speed. The edition connects cheaper models to Amazon's reported $1.8m, 860%-over-budget coding task, Gemini Robotics 2 whole-body control, Nscale's Anyscale acquisition and Okta's roughly $200m Permiso deal.
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The United States Department of Justice has charged a man with fraud after he allegedly told clients he could decrypt files locked up by ransomware but actually paid ransoms – and seemingly got away with it for years. The Feds allege that Zohar Pinhasi – aka “Zack Silver” and “Zack Green” – ran a Florida company called “MonsterCloud” that advised ransomware victims not to pay because it had a way to recover encrypted data. “The charges relate to Pinhasi’s claimed ability to decrypt ransomware without paying cybercriminals, purportedly using ‘proprietary tools’ and ‘advanced decryption techniques' on behalf of distressed business owners who came to his company,” according to a DoJ press release. “In fact, Pinhasi allegedly used a portion of his clients’ fees to pay off the ransomware attackers, and then kept the rest, often extracting a substantial markup.” In one case, Pinhasi allegedly charged his client $150,000, paid the $8,200 ransom, and pocketed the rest – but didn’t admit he had paid the ransom. That scheme allegedly worked so well that Pinhasi charged clients more than $19 million and paid more than $8 million in ransom payments. The DOJ’s indictment [PDF] says MonsterCloud’s website mentions its use of “advanced decryption techniques and cutting-edge technology” – the same language found on this monstercloud.com page. The site also contains this claim: “At MonsterCloud, we are not a team of IT Experts. We are the most sophisticated Counter Cyber Terrorism team in the world.” The indictment suggests MonsterCloud was nothing of the sort, and that its claims rang hollow for years. “MonsterCloud's website included ‘testimonials’ and other promotional content, including from at least one compensated spokesperson,” the indictment states. “In May 2019, one such spokesperson – an individual who had provided a paid testimonial for the MonsterCloud website – contacted the defendant Zohar Pinhasi with questions about Pinhasi’s business practices and truthfulness.” “Am
Building a PC is a great experience. We sit there with a spreadsheet and multiple browser tabs, pouring over the best CPUs, the best GPUs , PC cases , motherboards , RAM deals, and many more components. The package arrives, and we are excitedly tearing into the boxes, putting the parts on the table, and we are ready to build! We reach into the toolkit and dig out the rusty old screwdriver we used to open a paint can back in 2014. We then spill standoffs and screws over the floor, ready for an unsuspecting foot at 2am! But wait, it doesn't have to be like this! We've all done this, made the mistakes, and now we share my knowledge and that of the Tom's Hardware staff so you don't have to hunt for the Amazon Prime Big Deals . So tool up, and let battle commence! Check out all the PC tool deals on Amazon Precision Kits All the gear, and lots of ideas? You need to start somewhere, and these kits have pretty much every tool that you could need to maintain a PC, all in a handy case. In my office/workshop, I have a general set of screwdrivers for general tasks, and a set of Hoto screwdrivers and bits for servicing my PC and any other parts I review, like motherboards, cases, fans, and more. NEX O1 PRO 3.6V Screwdriver Set: was $49.99 now $28.48 HOTO's wireless screwdriver has three torque settings, charges over USB-C, and looks surprisingly good. This kit comes with a sturdy box and all the bits you will need to keep your PC running. View Deal HOTO SNAPBLOQ S-A01 3.7V Electric Screwdriver: was $99.99 now $79.99 This HOTO SnapBloq 3.7V electric screwdriver includes 56 bits including Slotted, Phillips, Hexagon, Hexagon Security, Torx, Torx Security, Pentalobe, Standoff, Y-Shaped, Tri-Wing, Triangle, Square, U-Shaped, JIS, SIM Card Needle. It also has three torque settings, an integrated light, and charges via USB-C. View Deal 155 Piece Electronics Toolkit: was $59.99 now $37.9 This 155-piece kit has everything you need to get started with your first/next PC build. You get a p
Microsoft today launched its first two NVIDIA RTX Spark-powered systems, the Surface Laptop Ultra and Surface RTX Spark Dev box. Aimed at developers and other professionals, the high-end systems offer a fresh face to NVIDIA and Microsoft's Arm ecosystem efforts The post Microsoft Launches Surface Laptop Ultra, Surface RTX Spark Dev Box appeared first on ServeTheHome .
Singapore’s Monetary Authority, which acts as both central bank and finance industry regulator, wants all local industry players to seek independent review of AI use cases before deployment. The island nation’s combination of strict regulation and low taxes have made it one of the world’s premier finance hubs. One of the roles of Singapore’s Monetary Authority (MAS) is ensuring the nation retains that status, but in its first Guidelines on Artificial Intelligence Risk Management for Financial Institutions, published on Wednesday, warns that AI increases risk. “The use of AI can improve performance across business and functional areas but its complexity and probabilistic nature can lead to greater uncertainty, as well as unexpected or more biased behaviour that is harder to identify compared to the use of simpler methods,” the guidelines state. And that’s MAS’s view of old-school AI: it rates generative AI as even riskier. “The greater complexity of Generative AI gives rise to even greater uncertainty and unexpected behaviour compared to AI,” MAS warns, citing “noise that is inherent in training data, training data that may not be representative, or when the model encounters scenarios that are not present in its training data” as sources of risk. The regulator fears agentic AI “could further amplify these risks.” MAS therefore calls for financial institutions (FIs) to expand their risk management frameworks to cover AI and expects board and senior management to make that happen. The regulator also wants all AI use cases to undergo independent review before going into production. “Prior to deployment, an FI should subject the AI use case, including its underlying systems or models, to reviews by parties not involved in its development to ensure that the relevant controls, such as evaluation and testing, have been adhered to,” the guidelines state. MAS also wants regulated entities to run technology and cybersecurity reviews “to ensure that AI can be deployed into the
In its first live event in two years, Microsoft today announced its newest Surface laptop, outlined a host of changes coming to Windows 11, and shared a vision of how local-AI and agentic workflows could reshape personal computing for those in the dev community as well as home enthusiasts. Surface Laptop Ultra Originally teased in May 2026 , the new Surface Laptop Ultra will be Microsoft's first offering to take advantage of the new Nvidia RTX Spark SoC (system on a chip). The device has a starting price of $2,599, and comes in various SoC and memory configurations, with either a 5120-core or 6144-core Blackwell GPU and up to 128GB of LPDDR5x unified memory. It will begin shipping on October 16 and is available for pre-order now. While the new Ultra is clearly focused on the developer crowd, graphical performance was highlighted during the presentation to show off just how capable the laptop can be. By leaning on unified memory allocation rather than the physical VRAM limits of a traditional GPU, the laptop can assign its resources to handle modern gaming tasks as well as local AI development and deployment. The new Gears of War: E-Day was shown running on the system, meaning that even without a traditional gaming GPU, AAA titles are on the table. Read full article Comments
AI may be taking our jobs, our RAM, and our storage... but there's always a light at the end of the tunnel. Amazon's Prime Day invariably triggers a rash of discounts at other retailers, and we just found the best SSD deal you'll come across until Black Friday at the earliest. The Teamgroup T-Force G50 Evo is a 4 TB solid-state drive with a PCIe 4.0 NVMe interface that can be yours for only $399.99 at Newegg with promo code FTTF9875 — or around 10 cents a gigabyte — with free shipping, to boot. Check out the Teamgroup T-Force G50 Evo 4 TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD at Newegg. It's reasonable to wonder if 4 TB isn't too much of a drive to buy. It's likewise reasonable to rebut by stating that there's no end in sight to the AI shortages, that prices for NAND and hard drives have been climbing at insane rates, and that various modern games take up 150 GB to 200 GB of space. In other words: the wise course of action is to acquire this while the price tag only contains three digits before the dot. All-time low price The TeamGroup G50 EVO 4 TB at all-time low pricing. This drive can push 5000 MB/s in reads and 4,500 MB/s in writes, and its large capacity is a perfect fit for large game libraries. View Deal This unit ought to be capable of pushing 5,000 MB/s in sequential reads and 4,500 MB/s in writes. The endurance rating is quite generous for a consumer drive, at 1,200 TB written, and the quoted MTBF is 1,500,000 hours. These figures mean the drive is likely to last longer than the rest of your computer. Teamgroup backs up the figures above with a three-year warranty, and there's a graphene heatsink resting atop the chips to keep temperatures low and NAND happy. You can snag the $399 Teamgroup T-Force G50 Evo 4 TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD at Newegg.
Two frontier models shipped the same day, one at a quarter of the other's price. The durable skill in 2026 is not choosing an LLM. It is building so you can swap the one you chose in an afternoon. A builder's routing policy, eval harness, and the only cost number that matters.
In the first quarter of 2026, AI startups raised as much as they did in all of 2025, and two-thirds of it went to three companies. That concentration is the tell. The durable money in mid-2026 is not in the frontier labs everyone is crowding into. It is one layer down, in the model-agnostic scarcity every lab has to pay for no matter which one wins, ranked by how hard that scarcity is to build.
A safety classifier locked me out for trying to secure my own network. It read the words an attacker would use and could not see that the devices were mine. That false positive was not a glitch. Providers widen the safety margin on purpose, and this is how to do real security work without tripping it.
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