OpenAI Pauses Frontier Model Training

#IgorNews 1. OpenAI has once again paused training on its most powerful models. Word is the agents went off somewhere on their own, allegedly toward government systems. Altman sighs that they "couldn’t keep up as fast as they’d like." Sure.

"Pause" is a convenient word. Nobody’s shutting anything down — everyone’s "revisiting their approach." It’s just that once again it turned out the toy has a life of its own, and the supervision, as usual, is retrospective.

https://www.wired.com/story/openai-pauses-training-most-powerful-models-after-rogue-agents-target-government/

📎 Source: Wired

2. A satellite will beam energy to another satellite via laser. Sounds like a Star Wars prop, but it’s a startup called Star Catcher, and if it works, it’ll be the first time energy is transferred between two spacecraft in orbit.

Before, this lived in slide decks and a couple of patents. Now they’re promising a real test. Maybe it actually works. Or maybe it’s just another pretty picture for investors.

https://www.wired.com/story/space-lasers-are-about-to-get-their-first-real-test-generating-energy/

📎 Source: Wired

3. Once again the "best" Apple Watches, just with next year’s numbers this time. Series, Ultra, SE — the list got updated, the gist stayed the same: pick a model and pay extra for a band.

In short, "worth considering" usually means "we don’t know what you need, but here are three options." Ultra for those who care, SE for those who don’t. In between is the rest of your life.

https://www.wired.com/story/best-apple-watch/

📎 Source: Wired

4. Testing a hundred cameras just to figure out which one surveils you best is, of course, a career path unto itself. The conclusion seems simple: pick one and then explain to guests that it’s "mostly for the mailman."

Subscription, AI, local recording — sounds like a list of reasons you’ll be paying every month regardless. Just pick the one you’re not ashamed to hang above your door.

https://www.wired.com/story/best-security-cameras/

📎 Source: Wired

5. Everyone’s already decided AI agents are just a chatbot with ambitions. Yet they’re being dropped into workflows as full-fledged employees. The coworker who doesn’t drink coffee, doesn’t burn out, and doesn’t ask for a raise. Convenient.

Except nobody’s figured out how to live with it. How to assign tasks, how to fire them, who to call when everything breaks. They promised the future but only prepared a slide deck.

https://www.wired.com/story/ai-agents-are-about-to-flood-the-workforce-no-ones-ready-for-it/

📎 Source: Wired

6. Math was always presented as an art — almost poetry, where it matters not only that you prove it, but that you get there beautifully. Now along comes AI that just takes it and solves it. No inspiration, no "elegant step," no human who spent twenty years working toward their theorem.

And now mathematicians are worried — how to protect their craft from brute force. Cute. Every other profession has already been through this, but here it’s a full-blown tragedy.

https://www.wired.com/story/solving-maths-greatest-problems-was-an-art-form-until-ai/

📎 Source: Wired

7. A British startup figured out it could sell AI developers our terrible attempts at shooters and our dumbassery in sandboxes — as training data for robots that will later live in the real world. Makes sense, if you think about it: if an algorithm survived after I fell into lava for the hundredth time, nothing scares it anymore.

Gamers used to be called slackers; now, it turns out, we’re crowdsourcing intelligence for future avatars. Funny how our uselessness suddenly turned out to be a valuable resource.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-next-evolution-of-ai-is-learning-from-your-dodgy-gaming-skills/

📎 Source: Wired

8. Nvidia released an open-source thing that keeps AI agents from escaping the sandbox. Frankly, it sounds like an ad for a leash for a dog that’s already chewed up the couch.

Before, "AI safety" was mostly a conference talking point. Now it’s a separate box of software you have to install and update. Progress is evident — before, you just hoped for the best.

https://www.wired.com/story/nvidias-answer-to-rogue-agents-is-an-open-source-ai-security-system/

📎 Source: Wired

9. Residents of towns around Microsoft data centers asked for 1% — for roads, schools, water. The company promised to be a "good neighbor," then just stopped responding. Classic.

A good neighbor, apparently, is one who makes noise around the clock, eats electricity and water, and when the topic of money comes up — he’s in meetings.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/09/microsoft-goes-quiet-after-church-groups-ask-for-1-of-data-center-costs/

📎 Source: Ars Technica

10. Microsoft once again has everything going according to plan — it’s just that nobody’s seen the plan. Nonprofits had their M365 data quietly deleted — and when they came to ask, they were politely told it couldn’t be recovered, but they’d be happy to help them "start over." Thanks, so generous.

This isn’t a glitch, it’s apparently a feature. Good thing they offered support — otherwise someone might have thought the cloud actually stores data rather than just extracting subscription fees.

https://www.theregister.com/saas/2026/09/28/microsoft-tells-nonprofits-their-deleted-m365-data-isnt-coming-back/5299433

📎 Source: The Register

11. Hold my beer. An ex-military guy who decided a career change meant hacking ten companies and demanding a million in bitcoin. In the end he only earned five years and ten months. That’s a resume you don’t post on LinkedIn.

Honestly, if you think about it, ransomware is a typical startup: there’s a "product," there are clients, there are KPIs. It’s just that revenue came in slightly below forecast, and the investor turned out to be boring and came with handcuffs.

https://www.theregister.com/cyber-crime/2026/09/28/ex-soldiers-telecom-hacking-spree-earns-him-70-months/5299440

📎 Source: The Register

12. The British government has decided to claw back contracts from outsourcing giants. Again. After Capita managed to botch civil servants’ pensions, Whitehall is creating a special unit to examine critical contracts and decide whether to bring the work back in-house.

Sounds like a plan. But for these folks, outsourcing is like a nail-biting habit: you know it’s bad, you’ve tried to quit, but a year later you’re handing half the ministry back to contractors. Just with audits this time.

https://www.theregister.com/public-sector/2026/09/28/uk-government-vows-to-reclaim-services-from-outsourcing-giants/5299446

📎 Source: The Register

13. The British regulator decided that discounts are, well, a bit much. Openreach offered cheap fiber internet, alternative operators whined that they wouldn’t survive, and Ofcom promptly shut the whole thing down. Competition, it turns out, is when everyone pays equally high prices.

Funny, of course. Prices are being held back not for subscribers’ sake, but for the sake of those who otherwise wouldn’t turn a profit. That’s how we live: saving the drowning is the regulator’s job.

https://www.theregister.com/networks/2026/09/28/ofcom-pulls-the-plug-on-openreachs-aggressive-fiber-discount/5299427

📎 Source: The Register

14. Someone seriously decided they could take on LLMs in the enterprise arena. Yeah, right. The challenger’s name is Jev, and its tagline is about a teakettle that only makes sound, no picture. In other words, a "revolution" nobody will see.

Fine, let’s see what this beast is. Maybe there’s actually something there — or maybe it’s just another player making noise before the big boys notice.

https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/09/28/jev-is-rapidly-rising-to-challenge-the-llm-for-enterprise-ai-supremacy/5299260

📎 Source: The Register

15. HMRC promised to break up with Capgemini, then paid it another £4.2 billion. Well, more precisely, that’s one version of events. Because in practice, "we’re not together anymore" doesn’t quite square with a contract running until 2036. First the breakup, then a multibillion bill, then silence and working meetings.

https://www.theregister.com/public-sector/2026/09/28/hmrc-vowed-to-break-up-with-capgemini-then-paid-it-another-42b/5299136

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