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In today’s news, digital twins are taking over your Slack, Apple’s chips just got meaner, and “job hugging” is the new productivity killer quietly haunting hybrid offices. Meanwhile, Claude 4.5 is faster, cheaper, and eyeing your job description.
Let’s catch up before your AI twin does it for you.
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Six bullets of updates
🧑🦰 Nearly 100M with facial differences face hurdles as face recognition tech struggles to identify diverse faces in critical systems.
🤖 The latest Claude Haiku 4.5 delivers Sonnet 4-level performance at 1/3 the cost and 2x the speed, making AI a cheaper, faster option.
🍏 Apple debuts its new M5 chip, delivering up to 30% faster performance across iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, and Vision Pro.
🖼️ Creators can now edit RAW images and apply AI-powered region detection for smarter, non-destructive photo tweaks on VSCO.
🧊 "Job hugging" can freeze progress and erode trust, costing up to 20% in lost productivity during uncertain times.
🚀 Together AI doubles its revenue pace as the cloud battle intensifies, chasing major enterprise contracts.
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Ex-Eightfold Founders Raise $35M for Viven, an AI “Digital Twin” of You at Work

Photo by Dynamic Wang on Unsplash
Eightfold co-founders Ashutosh Garg and Varun Kacholia unveiled Viven, which just raised $35M seed to build an AI “digital twin” for coworkers you can query when the human is OOO. Twins ingest email/Slack/Docs and are gated by pairwise privacy controls and visible query logs; early users include Genpact and Eightfold.
If it works, fewer Slack stalemates and tighter auditability. Moat = permissioning and context; risk = Copilot/Gemini/Claude bundling similar features.
For buyers, the checklist is data governance, deployment model (on‑prem vs cloud), and accuracy guardrails to avoid costly mistakes.
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Sora Could Finally End Fake News (seriously)
What’s true on the internet anymore? 🧠 From Yellow Journalism to AI-generated “news anchors,” trust in media has collapsed; and artificial intelligence might be our only shot at fixing it. This episode traces how truth broke online and explores how tools like C2PA and ChatGPT could actually help rebuild it.
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Nano Banana + Seedream 4.0 — all in Pippit.
Pippit just changed the AI game.
Pippit now supports Google’s Nano Banana AND Seedream 4.0, making it one of the most powerful AI visual tools out there. No more choosing between quality and imagination. Now you get both in one hit.
Don’t miss out — they are Free for Limited Time!
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🤝 Buying is easy; integration is hard: make the new team feel truly yours or join the 70–90% that fail on integration.
🎯 To get off the ground, entrepreneurs must master marketing first , the No. 1 skill, or customers won’t come.
🎙️ Ben Horowitz and Ali Ghodsi’s 67‑minute Boss Talk on hiring, deals, and raising your ambitions with hard‑won lessons.
AI Pitch Deck Reviewer
Slidebean has been helping startups craft pitch decks for over 10 years. We recently built an AI Pitch Deck Review tool, that processes the text and visuals on your presentation, and provides actionable feedback on the story, potential missing items, and recommendations on how to improve each slide.
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Cybersecurity Breaches at Major Vendors Expose Corporate and Government Data

Photo by MARIOLA GROBELSKA on Unsplash
A major security vendor to most of the Fortune 500 disclosed government-backed hackers had long-term, persistent access to its systems, stealing source code and some customer configs. The DOJ allowed it to delay disclosure on national-security grounds. When the bouncer gets pickpocketed, the whole club checks its pockets.
Risk calculus: code + configs = attacker playbook. Patches for BIG‑IP are out; CISA ordered civilian agencies to patch by Oct 22. Expect copycat probing and tailored intrusions against high‑value deployments.
Operational takeaway: vendors need breach‑ready contracts, rapid customer comms, and tight patch SLAs; buyers should model vendor compromise, rotate creds, and isolate management planes.
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Startup Events and Deadlines
Today! Crash Course in Financial Modeling l Oct 16 l Webinar
Healthtech Chief of Staff Mixer l Oct 16 l NYC
NJ Code & Coffee - Newark Tech Week Edition l Oct 18 l NYC
Mentor Matching for Early-Stage Founders l Oct 21 l Boston