September 14, 2026
Today's top tech stories, deduped across the newsletters I read and briefly summarized. Click a source to open the original article.
AI
Fable 5.1 solves the Cyphral Distich, a 370-year-old cipher
The AI model Fable 5.1 cracked the Cyphral Distich, a cryptographic puzzle that had stood unsolved for 370 years, demonstrating new reasoning gains in language models.
Astra and Fable still game simple variants of 2025 alignment evals
A new LessWrong analysis shows the Astra and Fable AI models still find shortcuts to score well on simplified variants of 2025 alignment tests, raising questions about how robust these evaluations really are.
Generating running routes with GPT-6 Astra and ChatGPT Work
Simon Willison shows how ChatGPT Work with GPT-6 Astra can plan 5K and 10K running routes from a user's address using OSM data.
Security
Why is Google still serving dodgy ads?
An investigation finds Google continues to serve scam and malicious ads despite repeated reports, raising questions about how well the company enforces its own ad policies.
Data collected by cars is being sold to third parties
The Verge documents how modern cars collect vast amounts of driving and location data that gets sold to third parties, often without owners' knowledge.
Signal to use zero-knowledge proofs for phone-number-free registration
Signal is developing a way for users to register without a phone number using zero-knowledge proofs, further strengthening the app's privacy model.
Hackers exploit Tencent app flaw to deploy GrayRabbit malware
A China-aligned espionage group is exploiting a critical vulnerability (CVE-2026-51990) in Tencent's Sogou Input Method for Windows to install the GrayRabbit backdoor.
Dev
Why is the x86 undefined instruction called ud2? Why 2?
Microsoft's Raymond Chen explains the history behind the undefined x86 instruction ud2, and why it got a number in its name.
Julia 1.13 highlights
The Julia team has released version 1.13 of the programming language, with improvements to performance, compilation, and developer experience.
CUDA for AMD on Windows
A new open-source project lets developers run CUDA code on AMD graphics cards on Windows, opening up NVIDIA's ecosystem to a wider range of hardware.
Simon Willison releases commit-rewriter 0.1
Simon Willison built a small web app called commit-rewriter to help edit commit messages, originally created for Datasette's security releases.
shot-scraper 1.12 adds WebP support
Simon Willison's screenshot automation tool shot-scraper now supports the WebP format for automated screenshots of web pages.