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How AI Is driving the future of mobility at Disrupt 2025

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Artificial intelligence is not just changing how we work — it’s transforming how we move. At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, happening October 27-29 at San Francisco’s Moscone West, two industry leaders at the forefront of AI-driven mobility will take the AI Stage to explore the future of intelligent transportation systems: Uber’s Sachin Kansal and Nuro’s Dave Ferguson.

Together, Kansal and Ferguson will discuss the evolving relationship between AI and mobility: how predictive models and computer vision are improving road safety, why last-mile delivery is an autonomy proving ground, and what it will take to bring AI-driven transportation to scale.

With the transportation industry evolving so quickly, this session gives you an exclusive insider’s look at the future of mobility. Register now to save up to $444 on your pass, or up to 30% on group passes.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 Dave Ferguson Sachin Kansal

Steering tomorrow: Meet the pioneers of mobility

Sachin Kansal, chief product officer at Uber Technologies, oversees the company’s global Mobility and Delivery products, including safety, sustainability, and autonomous vehicle initiatives. He’s helping define how AI and automation will power Uber’s next decade — from more efficient ride-matching to next-generation logistics networks. He oversees product and technology strategy for Uber’s new initiatives in autonomous vehicles, sustainability, taxis, and Uber for Teens.

Before joining Uber in 2017, he served as vice president of Product at Lookout and chief product officer at Flywheel Software. Earlier in his career, he led product management at Palm (acquired by HP) for the webOS mobile platform. Sachin holds engineering degrees from Gujarat University and Stanford University and has authored several patents in mobile and location technologies.

Joining him is Dave Ferguson, co-founder and president of Nuro, the self-driving technology company pioneering scalable autonomy for robotaxis, commercial fleets, and personal vehicles. Ferguson’s experience spans Google’s early self-driving program (now Waymo) and Carnegie Mellon’s DARPA Urban Challenge-winning team, giving him a rare perspective on how robotics research translates to real-world transportation breakthroughs.

A leading voice in robotics and AI, Ferguson has published over 60 papers, holds more than 100 patents, and earned his MS and PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University.

Techcrunch event

San Francisco
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October 27-29, 2025

Claim your pass to the forefront of mobility innovation

As cities and companies alike race toward smarter infrastructure and sustainable mobility, their conversation will offer an insider’s view on what the next decade of intelligent transportation could look like.

Catch Sachin Kansal and Dave Ferguson live at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, as part of the AI Stage program exploring how artificial intelligence is reshaping industries from logistics to life sciences. Register now before ticket rates increase.

Disrupt 2024 Main Stage
Image Credits:Kimberly White / Getty Images



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The best digital frames for 2025

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Making a good digital picture frame should be easy. All you need is a good screen and an uncomplicated way to get your favorite photos onto the device. Combine that with an inoffensive, frame-like design and you’re good to go.

Despite that, I can tell you that many digital photo frames are awful. Amazon is positively littered with scads of digital frames and it’s basically the 2020s version of what we saw with knock-off iPods back in the 2000s. There are loads of options that draw you in with a low price but deliver a totally subpar experience that will prompt you to shove the thing in a drawer and forget about it.

The good news is that you only need to find one smart photo frame that works. From there, you can have a pretty delightful experience. If you’re anything like me, you have thousands of photos on your phone of friends, family photos, pets, vacation spots, perhaps some lattes or plates of pasta and much more. Too often, those photos stay siloed on our phones, not shared with others or enjoyed on a larger scale. And sure, I can look at my photos on my laptop or an iPad, but there’s something enjoyable about having a dedicated place for these things. After all, there’s a reason photo frames exist in the first place, right? A great frame can help you send photos to loved ones and share cherished memories with friends and family effortlessly. I tested out seven smart photo frames to weed through the junk and find the top picks for the best digital frames worth buying.

Best digital picture frames for 2025

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AURA

Using an Aura frame felt like the company looked at the existing digital photo frame market and said “we have to be able to do better than this.” And they have. The Carver Mat is extremely simple to set up, has a wonderful screen, feels well-constructed and inoffensive and has some smart features that elevate it beyond its competitors (most of which don’t actually cost that much less).

The Carver Mat reminds me a little bit of an Amazon Echo Show in its design. It’s a landscape-oriented device with a wide, angled base that tapers to a thin edge at the top. Because of this design, you can’t orient it in portrait mode, like some other frames I tried, but Aura has a software trick to get around that (more on that in a minute). The whole device is made of a matte plastic in either black or white that has a nice grip, doesn’t show fingerprints and just overall feels like an old-school photo frame.

The 10.1-inch display is the best I’ve seen on any digital photo frame I’ve tested. Yes, the 1,280 x 800 resolution is quite low by modern standards, but it provides enough detail that all of my photos look crisp and clear. Beyond the resolution, the Carver’s screen has great color reproduction and viewing angles, and deals well with glare from the sun and lights alike. It’s not a touchscreen, but that doesn’t bother me because it prevents the screen from getting covered in fingerprints — and the app takes care of everything you need so it’s not required.

One control you will find on the frame is a way to skip forwards or backwards through the images loaded on it. You do this by swiping left or right on the top of the frame; you can also double-tap this area to “love” an image. From what I can tell, there’s no real utility in this aside from notifying the person who uploaded that pic that someone else appreciated it. But the swipe backwards and forwards gestures are definitely handy if you want to skip a picture or scroll back and see something you missed.

Setting the frame up was extremely simple. Once plugged in, I just downloaded the Aura app, made an account and tapped “add frame.” From there, it asked if the frame was for me or if I was setting it up as a gift (this mode lets you pre-load images so the device is ready to go as soon as someone plugs it in). Adding images is as simple as selecting things from your phone’s photo library. I could see my iPhone camera roll and any albums I had created in my iCloud Photos library, including shared albums that other people contribute to. You can also connect your Google Photos account and use albums from there.

One of the smartest features Aura offers is a continuous scan of those albums — so if you have one of your kids or pets and regularly add new images to it, they’ll show up on your frame without you needing to do anything. Of course, this has the potential for misuse. If you have a shared album with someone and you assign it to your Aura frame, any pictures that someone else adds will get shared to your frame, something you may not actually want. Just something to keep in mind.

My only main caveat for the Carver Mat, and Aura in general, is that an internet connection is required and the only way to get photos on the device is via the cloud. There’s a limited selection of photos downloaded to the device, but the user has no control over that, and everything else is pulled in from the cloud. Aura says there are no limits on how many images you can add, so you don’t need to worry about running out of storage. But if you don’t want yet another device that needs to be online all the time, Aura might not be for you. Most other frames I tested let you directly load photos via an SD card or an app.

The Aura app also lets you manage settings on the frame like how often it switches images (anywhere from every 30 seconds to every 24 hours, with lots of granular choices in between) or what order to display photos (chronologically or shuffled). There’s also a “photo match” feature, which intelligently handles the issue of having lots of images in both portrait and landscape orientation. Since the Carver Mat is designed to be used in landscape, the photo match feature makes it so portrait pictures are displayed side-by-side, with two images filling the frame instead of having black bars on either side. It also tries to pull together complementary pairs of images, like displaying the same person or pulling together two pics that were shot around the same time.

Overall, the Carver Mat checks all the boxes. Great screen, simple but classy design, a good app, no subscription required. Yes, it’s a little more expensive than some competing options, but all the cheaper options are also noticeably worse in a number of ways. And if you don’t want a mat, there’s a standard Carver that costs $149 and otherwise has the same features and specs as the Caver Mat I tested.

Pros

  • High-quality display with minimal reflections
  • App makes set-up and management of your photos simple
  • You can store an unlimited number of pictures in Aura’s cloud
  • Good integration with Apple iCloud Photos and Google Photos
  • Elegant, well-constructed design
  • Smartly displays two portrait photos side-by-side on the landscape display
  • No subscription required
Cons

  • A little pricey
  • Aura’s app and cloud are the only way to get photos on the frame
  • Can’t be set up in portrait orientation

$179 at Amazon

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PhotoSpring

If you’re looking to spend less, PhotoSpring’s Classic Digital Frame is the best option I’ve seen that costs less than $100 (just barely at $99). The PhotoSpring model comes with a 10.1-inch touchscreen with the same 1,280 x 800 resolution as the Carver Mat. The screen is definitely not as good as the Carver, though, with worse viewing angles and a lot more glare from light sources. That said, images still look sharp and colorful, especially considering you’re not going to be continuously looking at this display.

PhotoSpring’s frames are basically Android tablets with some custom software to make them work as single-purpose photo devices. That means you’ll use the touchscreen to dig into settings, flip through photos and otherwise manipulate the device. Changing things like how often the frame changes images can’t be done in the app. While doing things on the frame itself are fine, I prefer Aura’s system of managing everything on the app.

However, PhotoSpring does have a good advantage here: you can pop in a microSD card or USB drive to transfer images directly to the frame, no internet connection required. You can also use the PhotoSpring app to sync albums and single images as well, which obviously requires the internet. But once those pics have been transferred, you’re good to go. Additionally, you can upload pictures on a computer via the PhotoSpring website or sync Google Photos albums.

As for the PhotoSpring hardware itself, it looks good from the front, giving off traditional photo frame vibes. The back is rather plasticky and doesn’t feel very premium, but overall it’s fine for the price. There’s an adjustable stand so you can set the frame up in portrait or landscape mode, and you can set the software to crop your photos or just display them with borders if the orientation doesn’t fit.

PhotoSpring also has a somewhat unusual offering: a frame that has a rechargeable battery. The $99 model just uses AC power, but a $139 option lets you unplug the frame and pass it around to people so they can swipe through your photos albums on the device. This feels like a niche use case, and I think most people will be better served saving their $40, but it’s something to consider.

One of my favorite things about PhotoSpring is that they don’t nickel-and-dime you with subscription services. There aren’t any limits on how many images you can sync, nor are things like Google Photos locked behind a paywall. The combo of a solid feature set, a fine display and a low entry price point make the PhotoSpring a good option if you want to save some cash.

Pros

  • Solid display
  • Works in portrait or landscape orientation
  • Lets you load pictures from multiple sources, including the PhotoSpring app, an SD card, USB drive or via Google Photos
  • Inoffensive design
  • No subscription required
Cons

  • Touchscreen controls mean the display is prone to picking up fingerprints
  • Display picks up more reflections than the Aura
  • Feels a little cheap
  • Software isn’t the most refined

$100 at Amazon

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Google

If you want a device that works great as a digital photo frame that can do a lot more than the above options, consider Google’s Nest Hub Max. It has a 10-inch touchscreen with a 1,280 x 800 resolution and can connect to a host of Google services and other apps to help you control your smart home devices. It also works great for playing videos from YouTube or other services, or streaming music thanks to its large built-in speaker. At $229, it’s significantly more expensive than our other options, but there’s no question it can do a lot more.

From a photos perspective, you’ll need to use Google Photos. If you’re not already using the app, switching your library over might be too much of a task to make it worthwhile. But if you do use Google Photos, signing in with your Google account when you set up the Hub Max makes accessing your images quite simple. You can pick specific albums, have it stream your entire library or pull things from various recommendations it offers up.

Once that’s set up, you can customize the slideshow as you’d expect — I set mine to come up by default after the Hub Max was dormant for a few minutes. I also removed everything from the display except the photos. By default, it shows you a clock and the weather forecast, but I wanted to just focus on the pictures. I do like the option to show a little more info, though.

As for the screen itself, it has the same relatively low resolution of the other digital photo frames I tried, but it handles glare very well. And the built-in ambient light sensor automatically adjusts brightness and color temperature, which I enjoy. It keeps the Hub Max from feeling like an overly bright screen blasting you with light; it recedes into the background well.

Of course, the Nest Hub Max has a lot of voice-activated tricks via the Google Assistant. My big question is how long the Hub Max will be supported, as Google is clearly planning to phase out the Assistant in favor of Gemini, and I’m not convinced that the Hub Max will ever support that new AI-powered tool. Beyond the Assistant, you can get a variety of apps on it like Netflix and YouTube, stream music from a bunch of apps, see video from your Nest Cam or make video calls via the built-in camera.

If you’re going to buy a Nest Hub Max, it shouldn’t be just for its digital photo frame features, even though those are quite solid. It’s best for someone well-entrenched in the Google ecosystem who wants a more multi-purpose device. If you fit the bill, though, the Nest Hub Max remains a capable device, even though it’s been around for almost five years.

Pros

  • Good display quality with auto-brightness and warmth settings
  • Getting images on it is a piece of cake, provided you use Google Photos
  • Plenty of ways to control smart home devices
  • Good-sounding speaker
Cons

  • Almost five years old
  • Google Assistant’s days are likely numbered
  • More expensive than a standard digital photo frame

$189 at Walmart

What to look for in digital picture frames

While a digital photo frame feels like a simple piece of tech, there are a number of things I considered when trying to find one worth displaying in my home. First and foremost was screen resolution and size. I was surprised to learn that most digital photo frames have a resolution around 1,200 x 800, which feels positively pixelated. (That’s for frames with screen sizes in the nine- to ten-inch range, which is primarily what I considered for this guide.)

But after trying a bunch of frames, I realized that screen resolution is not the most important factor; my favorite photos looked best on frames that excelled in reflectivity, brightness, viewing angles and color temperature. A lot of these digital photo frames were lacking in one or more of these factors; they often didn’t deal with reflections well or had poor viewing angles.

A lot of frames I tested felt cheap and looked ugly as well, which isn’t something you want in a smart device that sits openly in your home. That includes lousy stands, overly glossy plastic parts and design decisions I can only describe as strange, particularly for items that are meant to just blend into your home. The best digital photo frames don’t call attention to themselves and look like an actual “dumb” frame, so much so that those that aren’t so tech-savvy might mistake them for one.

Perhaps the most important thing outside of the display, though, is the software. Let me be blunt: a number of frames I tested had absolutely atrocious companion apps and software experiences that I would not wish on anyone. One that I tried did not have a touchscreen, but did have an IR remote (yes, like the one you controlled your TV with 30 years ago). Trying to use that with a Wi-Fi connection was painful, and when I tried instead to use a QR code, I was linked to a Google search for random numbers instead of an actual app or website. I gave up on that frame, the $140 PixStar, on the spot.

Other things were more forgivable. A lot of the frames out there are basically Android tablets with a bit of custom software slapped on the top, which worked fine but wasn’t terribly elegant. And having to interact with the photo frame via touch wasn’t great because you end up with fingerprints all over the display. The best frames I tried were smart about what features you could control on the frame itself vs. through an app, the latter of which is my preferred method.

Another important software note: many frames I tried require subscriptions for features that absolutely should be included out of the box. For example, one frame would only let me upload 10 photos at a time without a subscription. Others would let you link a Google Photos account, but you could only sync a single album without paying up. Yet another option didn’t let you create albums to organize the photos that were on the frame — it was just a giant scroll of photos with no way to give them order.

While some premium frames offer perks like unlimited photos or cloud storage, they often come at a cost. I can understand why certain things might go under a subscription, like if you’re getting a large amount of cloud storage, for example. But these subscriptions feel like ways for companies to make recurring revenue from a product made so cheaply they can’t make any money on the frame itself. I’d urge you to make sure your chosen frame doesn’t require a subscription (neither of the frames I recommend in this guide need a subscription for any of their features), especially if you plan on giving this device as a gift to loved ones.

How much should you spend on a digital picture frame

For a frame with a nine- or ten-inch display, expect to spend at least $100. Our budget recommendation is $99, and all of the options I tried that were cheaper were not nearly good enough to recommend. Spending $150 to $180 will get you a significantly nicer experience in all facets, from functionality to design to screen quality.

Digital frames FAQs

Are digital photo frames a good idea?

Yes, as long as you know what to expect. A digital picture frame makes it easy to enjoy your favorite shots without printing them. They’re especially nice for families who want to display new photos quickly. The key is understanding the limitations. Some frames have lower resolution displays or need a constant Wi-Fi connection to work properly, so they’re not a perfect replacement for a high-quality print on the wall. But if you want a simple way to keep memories on display and up to date, they’re a solid choice.

Can you upload photos to a digital frame from anywhere?

Most modern digital frames let you do this, but it depends on the model. Many connect to Wi-Fi and use apps, cloud storage or email uploads, so you can add photos from your phone no matter where you are. Some even let family members share directly, which is great for keeping grandparents updated with new pictures. That said, a few budget models only work with USB drives or memory cards, so check how the frame handles uploads before buying.

Georgie Peru contributed to this report.



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Android 16 October update rolling out with Pixel display & UI fixes

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The first update to Android 16 QPR1 is rolling out with the October security patch for the Pixel 6, 6 Pro, 6a, 7, 7 Pro, 7a, Tablet, Fold, 8, 8 Pro, 8a, 9, 9 Pro, 9 Pro XL, 9 Pro Fold, 9a, Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, and Pixel 10 Pro XL.

There are no security issues resolved in the Android 16 October patch dated 2025-10-01 or 2025-10-05.

The build number does reflect that this is the October update: BP3A/BD3A.251005.x. There no updates for the Pixel 6 series today.

Global

Advertisement – scroll for more content

  • Pixel 7:                BP3A.251005.004.B1
  • Pixel 7 Pro:        BP3A.251005.004.B1
  • Pixel 7a:              BP3A.251005.004.B1
  • Pixel Tablet:       BP3A.251005.004.A2
  • Pixel Fold:             BP3A.251005.004.B1
  • Pixel 8:                BP3A.251005.004.B1
  • Pixel 8 Pro:        BP3A.251005.004.B1
  • Pixel 8a:                BP3A.251005.004.B1
  • Pixel 9:                   BP3A.251005.004.B1
  • Pixel 9 Pro:           BP3A.251005.004.B1
  • Pixel 9 Pro XL:     BP3A.251005.004.B1
  • Pixel 9 Pro Fold:  BP3A.251005.004.B1
  • Pixel 9a:                BP3A.251005.004.B1
  • Pixel 10:                BD3A.251005.003.W3
  • Pixel 10 Pro:         BD3A.251005.003.W3
  • Pixel 10 Pro XL:   BD3A.251005.003.W3

Japan

  • Pixel 9a:                BP3A.251005.004.A2
  • Pixel 10:                BD3A.251005.003.J5
  • Pixel 10 Pro:        BD3A.251005.003.J5
  • Pixel 10 Pro XL:  BD3A.251005.003.J5

Use the following device key to interpret the Pixel’s Android 16 October update changelog:

*[1] Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel 7a, Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro, Pixel 8a, Pixel Fold, Pixel Tablet, Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, Pixel 9 Pro Fold, Pixel 9a, Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro XL

*[2] Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel 7a

*[3] Pixel Tablet

*[4] Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, Pixel 9 Pro Fold, Pixel 9a, Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro XL

*[5] Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro XL


Display & Graphics

  • Fix for screen flickering and sudden shutdown issues under certain conditions*[2]
  • Fix for issue occasionally causing frozen or fuzzy display under certain conditions*[5]

System

  • Fix for issue occasionally causing system instability under certain conditions*[3]

User Interface

  • Fix for an issue where a semi-transparent background would persist after the camera was launched under certain conditions*[1]
  • Fix for issue where the flashlight status does not appear on the At a Glance widget in certain conditions*[4]
  • Fix for System UI crash when starting or stopping casting with the Media Output Switcher in certain conditions*[1]

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Mass. casino winner: Here’s how a jackpot prize was won

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A Massachusetts casino player walked away a jackpot prize winner in September.

On Sept. 19, a player Encore Boston Harbor bet $25 and won $20,021. The bet was on the game “Trip Red Hot 777.”

On the same day, a $30 bet won a jackpot prize of $26,400. It was won on “Ultimate Poker.”

The casino, which is located in Everett, has more than 2,700 slot machines and more than 175 table games.

Players must be 21 years or older.

In August, Encore Boston Harbor paid out $46,395,287.66 across 16,628 total jackpots, which was a record amount of payouts for the casino. This included 135 table game jackpots totaling $1,0298,528.92 and 16,490 slot jackpots totaling $45,350,462.21.

There were also three sports jackpots totaling $15,296.53.

The largest slot machine jackpot was for $134,778.50. It was off of a $225 bet on the game “Huff n More Puff“ on Aug. 2.

In July, Encore Boston Harbor paid out $39,627,206.20 across 15,101 total jackpots. This included 153 tables games jackpots totaling $1,162,787.13 and 14,946 slot jackpots totaling $38,451,803.09.

For those who need help with responsible gaming, call the helpline at 1-800-327-5050 or go to GameSenseMA.com.

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Even after Stargate, Oracle, Nvidia, and AMD, OpenAI has more big deals coming soon, Sam Altman says

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At nearly the same moment as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was expressing surprise over OpenAI’s multibillion-dollar deal with competitor AMD — shortly after his company agreed to invest up to $100 billion into the AI model maker — Sam Altman was saying that more such deals are in the works.

Huang appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Wednesday. When asked if he knew about the AMD deal before it was announced, he answered, “Not really.”  

As TechCrunch previously reported, OpenAI’s deal with AMD is unusual. AMD has agreed to grant OpenAI large tranches of AMD stock — up to 10% of the company over a period of years contingent on factors like increases in stock price. In exchange, OpenAI will use and help develop the chipmaker’s next-generation AI GPUs chips. This makes OpenAI a shareholder in AMD.  

Nvidia’s deal is the reverse. Nvidia has invested in the AI model-making startup, making it a shareholder in OpenAI. 

While OpenAI has been using Nvidia gear for years through cloud providers like Microsoft Azure, Oracle OCI, and CoreWeave, “This is the first time we’re going to sell directly to them,” Huang explained. He added that his company would still continue to supply gear to the cloud makers, too.

These direct sales, which include AI gear beyond GPUs like systems and networking, are intended to “prepare” OpenAI for the day when it is its own “self-hosted hyperscaler,” Huang said. In other words, when it’s using its own data centers. 

But Huang admits that OpenAI doesn’t “have the money yet” to pay for all of this gear. He estimated that each gigawatt of AI data center will cost OpenAI “$50 to $60 billion,” to cover everything from the land and power to the servers and equipment.   

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So far, in 2025, OpenAI has commissioned 10 gigawatts’ worth of U.S. facilities through its $500 billion Stargate deal with partners Oracle and SoftBank. (Plus, it penned a $300 billion cloud deal with Oracle.)

Its partnership with Nvidia was for at least 10 gigawatts of AI data centers. Its partnership with AMD was for 6 gigawatts. Plus its “Stargate UK” partnership involves expanding data centers in the U.K., and it has other European commitments. By some estimates, OpenAI has this year inked $1 trillion worth of such deals.  

Similar to the AMD deal, Nvidia’s deal has been criticized for being “circular,” Bloomberg reported. The critics say Nvidia is essentially underwriting OpenAI’s purchases, getting the AI startup’s stock for its efforts. 

Altman to the world: Expect more

As Huang was dissecting OpenAI’s infrastructure needs on CNBC, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s interview with Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z Podcast dropped.

During the podcast, a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz told Altman that he’s “very impressed by deal structure improvement,” referring to these most recent deals. Andreessen Horowitz is an OpenAI investor, so it would be shocking if he wasn’t impressed. OpenAI has found a way to potentially obtain billions of dollars of equipment on someone else’s dime. Repeatedly. 

When asked about these recent deals, Altman said, “You should expect much more from us in the coming months.” 

Altman sees OpenAI’s future models and upcoming other products as so much more capable, thereby fueling so much more demand, that “we have decided that it is time to go make a very aggressive infrastructure bet,” he explained.  

The problem is that OpenAI’s revenue today is currently nowhere near a $1 trillion, though it is, by all accounts, growing rapidly, reportedly hitting $4.5 billion in the first half of 2025.

Yet Altman obviously believes that eventually all of this investment will pay for itself. “I’ve never been more confident in the research road map in front of us and also the economic value that will come from using those [future] models.” 

But, he said, OpenAI can’t get to all of that economic lushness on its own.

“To make the bet at this scale, we kind of need the whole industry, or big chunk of the industry, to support it. And this is from the level of electrons to model distribution and all the stuff in between, which is a lot. So we’re going to partner with a lot of people,” Altman said, with more deals expected in the coming months.

So stand by, tech industry. OpenAI is still wheeling and dealing.



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Star Wars and Super Mario sets now up to 30 percent off for Day 2

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October Prime Day is almost over, and Amazon is still awash with discounts to consider. Amazon uses October Prime Day to kickstart the holiday shopping season — even if you haven’t even thought about the holidays yet, you should give the latest Prime Day Lego deals a look. A number of Lego sets from the Super Mario and Star Wars collections are on sale for up to 30 percent off, and they’re still in stock now during the final hours of the event.

When shopping for Lego sets on Amazon, we highly recommend checking a price tracker like Keepa or CamelCamelCamel before buying. It’s not difficult to find Lego sets “on sale” at Amazon, but often those discounted prices have been around for a long time. We’ve clocked “deals” in which the sale price has been available for months already, going back as far as late spring and early summer 2025. Here, we’re mostly highlighting discounts on new Lego sets, recent price drops and record-low (and close to them) prices on popular Lego sets from franchises like Star Wars, Super Mario and others.

Best Amazon Prime Day Lego deals

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LIMBO, Agent A, The Last Game, more

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This afternoon’s Android game and app deals are now ready to go, just make sure you dig in to the Amazon Prime Big Deal days sale before it closes down for another year later tonight. There are some, frankly, wild price drops live right now, including $415 off unlocked Galaxy Z Fold 7, up to $315 off Galaxy Z Flip 7, up to $390 off S25 Ultra, and a gigantic $490 price drop on Galaxy S25 Edge. That’s all on top of the best prices yet on Google Pixel 10 devices, and these Lenovo Android tablets from $100. But for now it’s all about the apps, and they are waiting for you below. 

Best Android app and game price drops:

Galaxy Z Fold 7 deals-02
A cell phone with a camera

Google’s unlocked Pixel 10/Pro/XL hit best prices yet at up to $250 off for fall Prime Day, deals from $349

More Android app deals still live:


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Chicopee mobile home case heard in Appellate Court session at Western New England School of Law

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MGM WNEU press conference
S. Prestley Blake Law Center at Western New England University. (Hoang ‘Leon’ Nguyen / The Republican)

SPRINGFIELD — Tenants of a Chicopee mobile home park have been in a court battle with both the city’s mobile home rental control board and the owner of the park since 2023.

On Wednesday morning, appeal arguments were heard in a special sitting of three Appellate Court associate justices at Western New England University’s School of Law in front of a room of students.

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Remembering Ashleigh Brilliant, a man of 10,000 witticisms

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Ashleigh Brilliant has died. He was known for thousands of one-liners — witty statements or epigrams that he licensed and marketed as “pot-shots.” He was 91.





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Sora’s first week on iOS in the US was nearly as big as ChatGPT’s

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After OpenAI’s video-generating app Sora surged to the No. 1 position on the U.S. App Store, it has now, technically, experienced a bigger first week than ChatGPT on iOS, according to new data from app intelligence provider Appfigures. Its estimates show that Sora saw 627,000 iOS downloads in its first seven days of availability, compared with ChatGPT’s 606,000 iOS downloads during its first week.

This isn’t the fairest comparison, however, because ChatGPT was available only in the U.S. during its first week, while Sora is currently offered in the U.S. and Canada at launch. Still, Appfigures says that Canada contributed about 45K installs, so the Sora launch was about 96% of ChatGPT’s launch, if the data had been based on the U.S. numbers only.

This level of consumer adoption is worth noting because Sora remains an invite-only app, while ChatGPT was more publicly available at launch. That makes Sora’s performance more impressive.

During its first day, Sora had seen 56,000 app installs in short order, bumping the app to become the No. 3 Top Overall app on the U.S. App Store. By Friday, October 3, it reached No. 1. That surge had already put Sora’s debut ahead of other major AI app launches, including Anthropic’s Claude and Microsoft’s Copilot, and put it on par with xAI’s Grok launch.

A quick scan of social media provides plenty of anecdotes that support Appfigures’ data. Sora videos, which uses the new Sora 2 video model and gives users the ability to generate realistic deepfakes, seem to be everywhere. Users are even creating deepfakes of dead people, a use case that has prompted Zelda Williams, daughter of the late actor Robin Williams, to ask folks to stop sending her AI generated images of her father.

Image Credits:Appfigures

Per Appfigures, the app has seen steady adoption since its first day on the market, September 30, 2025. Its data indicates that daily downloads on iOS hit a high mark of 107,800 downloads on October 1, 2025. It has since seen between lows of 84,400 daily installs (on Oct. 6) and 98,500 daily installs (on Oct. 4).

While that’s not quite as high as earlier in the week, it’s still decent numbers for an app that not everyone can yet use.

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