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AI just got its driver’s license, a shopping mall, and possibly a drinking problem. Meanwhile, Elon’s building a GPU city, and parents are taking TikTok to court. The future’s here; and it’s equal parts brilliant, bizarre, and slightly dehydrated.
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Catch the stand-up comment of today’s issue here:
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Eight bullets of updates
🧒 Italian families sue Meta and TikTok, alleging failure to protect kids and widespread underage use impacts 2M minors..
₿ Merchants can now accept Bitcoin payments fee-free for a year, as 4M Square sellers get new crypto features.
💧 AI data centers could consume up to 4.8 billion gallons of water annually, intensifying strain on water-stressed regions.
🤖 Gemini 2.5 can now autonomously surf and complete web tasks, marking a leap in AI’s practical utility.
🎭 Robin Williams’ daughter urges people to stop sending her AI deepfakes after a spike in unsolicited tributes online.
🤖 Developers can now build custom ChatGPT apps and tap faster GPT-5 APIs as OpenAI rolls out an Apps SDK and Sora 2.
🛒 ChatGPT takes on e-commerce, letting users shop and sell products directly through AI; 100+ retailers already on board.
🤖 Internal docs reveal Oracle’s AI Cloud is navigating just 16% gross margins amid tough Nvidia chip costs.
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Entrepreneur Launches AI Investment Platform to Democratize Wall Street Strategies
Photo by Andre Taissin on Unsplash
After a $54M sports-media exit, Brandon Harris writes a $700k check to build an AI investing platform aiming to open up Wall Street strategies for retail. Think sports highlights, but for alpha.
If it works, expect “retail quant in a box”: intuitive backtests, factor tilts, and guardrails on risk, fees, and slippage. The moat: differentiated data, compliant disclosures, outcomes that survive real-world frictions—and sane CAC in a hypey category.
Stakes: retail gains pro-grade tools; advisors/robos face pressure to prove value; regulators watch AI claims and suitability; distribution likely leans on creator finance channels; great for CAC, tricky for trust.
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We Destroyed Truth - but AI Could Fix It
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SEO’s evolving—and we have the answers
Join 600+ marketers at Ahrefs Evolve in San Diego, Oct 14–15. Two days of real insights on SEO, AI, content & analytics—no fluff, just actionable strategies you can use Monday morning.
Meet the people behind the profiles, sharpen your edge, and find clarity in a fast-changing landscape.
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🧠 Rewire your mind: Human Liberation’s 5 Steps to End Negative Self-Talk shows how to drop limiting beliefs (no meditation retreat needed).
📉 Company-page reach on LinkedIn is down to 1.6%; here’s how to boost organic visibility without ads.
🥤 AR packaging turns bottles into mini-stores—scan-to-buy can drive sales and spark organic referrals .
🔁 Bounce 2 makes Mastodon↔Bluesky moves easy; 2-way migrations start Oct 20 , from Masto→Bluesky, posts won’t carry over.
SaaS Growth Calculator
A growth calculator that lets you forecast the impact of your ARPU (average revenue per user) and Churn Rate on the long-term potential of your subscription business.
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Elon Musk and xAI Develop Massive AI Data Centers in Memphis
Photo by Tanner Boriack on Unsplash
Elon’s AI outfit is racing to industrial scale: a 200k‑GPU build now, then a 550k‑chip “Colossus 2”, price tag in the tens of billions. Because apparently “go big” was taken.
This is hyperscaler territory. Bottlenecks shift from GPUs to power, cooling, and transformers; expect long‑term PPAs, liquid cooling, and supply pre‑buys that tighten the open market.
Winners: Nvidia, power utilities, and specialized real estate. Pressured: smaller labs and AI startups renting compute as pricing power concentrates with a few buyers.
If these campuses land, frontier training centralizes further; the edge tilts toward proprietary data, sticky product loops, and abundant capital, not just parameter counts.
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The future of AI customer service is at Pioneer
There’s only one place where CS leaders at the cutting edge will gather to explore the incredible opportunities presented by AI Agents: Pioneer.
Pioneer is a summit for AI customer service leaders to come together and discuss the trends and trajectory of AI and customer service. You’ll hear from innovators at Anthropic, Toast, Rocket Money, Boston Consulting Group, and more—plus a special guest keynote delivered by Gary Vaynerchuk.
You’ll also get the chance to meet the team behind Fin, the #1 AI Agent for customer service. The whole team will be on site, from Intercom’s PhD AI engineers, to product executives and leaders, and the solutions engineers deploying Fin in the market.
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Startup Events and Deadlines
500 Startups Flagship Accelerator l Deadline: Oct 11 l USA
Crash Course on Startup Fundraising with Caya (Slidebean CEO) l Oct 15 l Webinar
Crash Course in Financial Modeling l Oct 16 l Webinar
Mental Health Tech Summit 2025 l October 15 l NYC