Month: October 2026

California has passed new legislation to protect workers from firings and surveillance driven by artificial intelligence (AI), Governor Gavin Newsom announced. We’ve come to that point, having to ask AI not to fire us, it’s hard to accept.

The new laws are aimed mainly at companies that use AI to make layoffs or monitor employees, and not at those that take advantage of this technology to replace workers.

Even so, it is one of the first pieces of legislation in the country that grants employees a say in how AI can be used in the workplace.

AI should expand opportunity, not come at the expense of workers.

That’s why I just signed first-in-the-nation laws to protect California workers as businesses adopt AI.

We’re now requiring human review before AI-driven firings, transparency when AI leads to layoffs, and new… pic.twitter.com/XghxU2b8UR

— Governor Gavin Newsom (@CAgovernor) September 30, 2026

AI as a tool, never the decision-maker

Split across several bills, the new rules prohibit employers from relying exclusively on AI when taking disciplinary action or deciding to fire someone, and require companies to ensure transparency if an AI system causes any mass layoff, transfer, or termination.

It also protects against the use of surveillance tools in workplace bathrooms and prohibits lawyers from “completely handing over fundamental legal tasks,” such as drafting filings, to AI.

California’s new laws may have been motivated, in part, by complaints from Meta employees, who said the company was using biased AI tools that flagged people who had taken medical leave for firing.

Valve has been changing many aspects of Steam in recent years and it seems that the next big change is going to be how they present their deals. In particular, the daily deals, the recommended ones, and the personalized ones. According to the company, by early 2027, they plan to completely change how they handle these aspects of the store. The goal is to give it a “more dynamic and personalized for each customer” look.

A change in the presentation of deals

As they’ve explained in the blog post, their goals are “to show the right games to the right users. That’s why, over the last few months, we’ve been testing ways to replace some of the curated slots with dynamic and personalized recommendations. By featuring games in a more personalized way in the ‘Discounts and Events’ section, we managed to show customers in that section 10 times as many games over the course of a day”. That means more sales.

Although they say that “in the coming weeks, we’ll have a clearer idea of the release date for these changes” and that, by extension, still don’t know for certain when these changes will happen, they’ve already stated that it’ll be during 2027. Specifically, in the first half of next year.

Insisting that all this won’t affect all the marketing plans already planned, it seems Valve wants to push an algorithm-based approach similar to that of other similar stores and services. This has raised concerns in some quarters, because some fear it could be an excuse to introduce dynamic pricing, something Sony is also considering for the PlayStation Store, although Valve hasn’t confirmed anything about that. So we’ll have to wait to learn more about the exact implications of these discount changes.

Is Tom Cruise always a star and does he pull in audiences just by being himself, or has the success of recent years come to him because they were blockbusters? Digger seemed like the film that would settle the question once and for all, but it’s been confirmed to be so strange, so out of place and so uncomfortable for those who’ve already seen it that it’s likely that, far from being a hit, it’ll become one of the biggest flops of 2026.

Tom Cruise, down the hole

Digger has cost so much money that Warner will only make any money if it grosses more than $325-350 million. On its opening weekend, not even the lowest forecasts have reached a number that low: if analysts’ forecasts are right, it’ll open with just $12 million in the United States (behind the week’s other big release, Verity), making it Alejandro González Iñárritu’s second movie in a row to bomb.

And no, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be a hit in the rest of the world or that it can take off afterward either: the first reviews have been terrible and it solidifies a terrible year for Warner, which has struggled to release films that cross $100 million at the box office. In fact, they’ve only turned a profit on Wuthering Heights, Mortal Kombat II and Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. And none of them has been exactly spectacular.

Ultimately, if this meager figure is ultimately confirmed, Warner will be at its lowest point and ready for the merger. This year Supergirl, The Bride!, Practical Magic 2 and The End of Oak Street have cost it about $260 million at the box office. But the worst is still to come if not even Tom Cruise turns things around.

Tesla has updated the Model 3 in China with a new 16-inch center touchscreen and vehicle-to-load support, usually shortened to V2L. So far, Tesla hasn’t said it’ll bring that same setup to US buyers.

For buyers in China, that adds up to two pretty tangible changes: a bigger display than before, plus the ability to run camping gear, small appliances, and other electronics through an adapter. Chinese EV shoppers are paying more attention to features like that, right alongside range, performance, and software.

That matters because Tesla is selling into a market where BYD, Xiaomi, Xpeng, and Zeekr keep refreshing their lineups at a faster clip. A larger 16-inch screen and V2L are the kind of easy-to-see upgrades that help the Model 3 still feel up to date, especially with Gigafactory Shanghai doing so much of the company’s production and export work.

If you’re shopping for a Model 3 in China, this update is worth a closer look. If you’re in the US, though, the lack of a matching announcement from Tesla may be frustrating, even if the company is still rolling changes out one market at a time.

The new hardware is already available on the China-market Tesla Model 3, and Tesla still hasn’t announced the same configuration for US buyers.