Like virtually every major Windows announcement in the last three years, the spate of features that Microsoft announced for the operating system today all revolve around generative AI. In particular, they’re concerned with the company’s more recent preoccupation with “agentic” AI, an industry buzzword for “telling AI-powered software to perform a task, which it then does in the background while you move on to other things.”

But the overarching impression I got, both from reading the announcement and sitting through a press briefing earlier this month, is that Microsoft is using language models and other generative AI technologies to try again with Cortana, Microsoft’s failed and discontinued entry in the voice assistant wars of the 2010s.

According to Microsoft’s Consumer Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Mehdi, “AI PCs” should be able to recognize input “naturally, in text or voice,” to be able to guide users based on what’s on their screens at any given moment, and that AI assistants “should be able to take action on your behalf.”

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Hacking groups—at least one of which works on behalf of the North Korean government—have found a new and inexpensive way to distribute malware from “bulletproof” hosts: stashing them on public cryptocurrency blockchains.

In a Thursday post , members of the Google Threat Intelligence Group said the technique provides the hackers with their own “bulletproof” host, a term that describes cloud platforms that are largely immune from takedowns by law enforcement and pressure from security researchers. More traditionally, these hosts are located in countries without treaties agreeing to enforce criminal laws from the US and other nations. These services often charge hefty sums and cater to criminals spreading malware or peddling child sexual abuse material and wares sold in crime-based flea markets.

Next-gen, DIY hosting that can’t be tampered with

Since February, Google researchers have observed two groups turning to a newer technique to infect targets with credential stealers and other forms of malware. The method, known as EtherHiding, embeds the malware in smart contracts, which are essentially apps that reside on blockchains for Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. Two or more parties then enter into an agreement spelled out in the contract. When certain conditions are met, the apps enforce the contract terms in a way that, at least theoretically, is immutable and independent of any central authority.

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On Tuesday of last week, Ars Technica hosted a live conversation with Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast and one of tech’s most vocal AI critics, to discuss whether the generative AI industry is experiencing a bubble and when it might burst. My Internet connection had other plans, though, dropping out multiple times and forcing Ars Technica’s Lee Hutchinson to jump in as an excellent emergency backup host.

During the times my connection cooperated, Zitron and I covered OpenAI’s financial issues, lofty infrastructure promises, and why the AI hype machine keeps rolling despite some arguably shaky economics underneath. Lee’s probing questions about per-user costs revealed a potential flaw in AI subscription models: Companies can’t predict whether a user will cost them $2 or $10,000 per month.

You can watch a recording of the event on YouTube or in the window below.

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OnePlus is expected to take the wraps off the OnePlus 15 in the next few weeks, but before that, it's giving us a look at the software that will run on it. OxygenOS 16, which is based on Android 16, will also come to the company's other supported phones, and it's going to include a heaping helping of AI features. OnePlus was slower than most smartphone makers to embrace AI, but it's full-steam ahead now with new Gemini integrations.

OxygenOS 16 is described by OnePlus in grandiose terms as "a defiant rebellion for authenticity." In the real world, this update is doing a lot of the same things as other AI-heavy smartphones. It's not all AI—OnePlus notes that OxygenOS 16 will include revamped animations that have been carefully designed for smoothness, as well as the O+ remote app that gives you remote access to Windows and Mac PCs. The lock screen is also more customizable, borrowing a page from the likes of Apple and Samsung.

OnePlus began embracing AI back in June, when it launched a feature called Mind Space on the OnePlus 13S. That phone was only for the Indian market, but the rest of the world will get this and more with OxygenOS 16. At launch, Mind Space would collect your screenshots and brief voice messages. Mind Space would analyze the screenshots to create calendar entries and not much else.

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Record labels Sony, Warner, and Universal yesterday asked the Supreme Court to help it boot pirates off the Internet.

Sony and the other labels filed their brief in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment , a case involving the cable Internet service provider that rebuffed labels' demands for mass terminations of broadband subscribers accused of repeat copyright infringement. The Supreme Court's eventual decision in the case may determine whether Internet service providers must terminate the accounts of alleged pirates in order to avoid massive financial liability.

Cox has argued that copyright-infringement notices—which are generated by bots and flag users based on their IP addresses—sent by record labels are unreliable. Cox said ISPs can't verify whether the notices are accurate and that terminating an account would punish every user in a household where only one person may have illegally downloaded copyrighted files.

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In a rarity for Apple’s streaming service, users will be able to buy bundled subscriptions to Apple TV and Peacock for a discount, starting on October 20.

On its own, the Apple TV streaming service (which was called Apple TV+ until Monday ) is $13 per month. NBCUniversal’s Peacock starts at $8/month with ads and $11/month without ads. With the upcoming bundle, people can subscribe to both for a total of $15/month or $20/month, depending on whether Peacock has ads or not (Apple TV never has ads).

People can buy the bundles through either Apple’s or Peacock’s websites and apps.

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If you've even idly checked in on the robust world of Doom fan development in recent years, you've probably encountered one of the hundreds of gameplay mods , WAD files , or entire commercial games based on GZDoom . The open source Doom port —which can trace its lineage back to the original launch of ZDoom back in 1998 —adds modern graphics rendering, quality-of-life additions, and incredibly deep modding features to the original Doom source code that John Carmack released in 1997.

Now, though, the community behind GZDoom is publicly fracturing, with a large contingent of developers uniting behind a new fork called UZDoom . The move is in apparent protest of the leadership of GZDoom creator and maintainer Cristoph Oelckers (aka Graf Zahl) , who recently admitted to inserting untested AI-generated code into the GZDoom codebase.

"Due to some disagreements—some recent; some tolerated for close to 2 decades—with how collaboration should work, we've decided that the best course of action was to fork the project," developer Nash Muhandes wrote on the DoomWorld forums Wednesday . "I don't want to see the GZDoom legacy die, as do most all of us, hence why I think the best thing to do is to continue development through a fork, while introducing a different development model that highly favors transparent collaboration between multiple people."

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Over the past week, OpenAI has faced backlash over subpoenas it sent to nonprofits accused of conspiring with Elon Musk to amplify public criticism of OpenAI as it sought to shift from a nonprofit to for-profit structure.

The subpoenas are supposed to support OpenAI's defense in a lawsuit Musk's X Corp filed to block the for-profit transition. Seeking a "wide variety of documents"—including a sweeping request for all communications regarding Musk and all information on nonprofits' funders and donations—OpenAI claimed that the subpoenas are intended to probe if Musk was involved in the actions or paid nonprofits to make critical comments, NBC News wrote in a report exhaustively documenting the controversy.

But nonprofits have alleged it's obvious that OpenAI is using the lawsuit to harass, silence, and intimidate its critics—most glaringly when it comes to targeting nonprofits that are even more publicly critical of Musk's companies than they are of OpenAI.

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The Department of the Air Force has approved SpaceX's plans to launch up to 100 missions per year from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

This would continue the tectonic turnaround at the spaceport on California's Central Coast. Five years ago, Vandenberg hosted just a single orbital launch. This year's number stands at 51 orbital flights, or 53 launches if you count a pair of Minuteman missile tests, the most in a single calendar year at Vandenberg since the early 1970s.

Vandenberg is used for missions launching into polar orbits, paths oriented north-south that, over time, cover most of the Earth's surface area. These orbits are popular for Earth observation satellites.

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