The Verge reports: OpenAI, Meta, Google, Instinct, and others promise their agents can scour the internet on your behalf, doing anything from booking a dinner reservation and cleaning out your inbox to buying new shoes. But what happens when the rest of the internet won't play nice? In recent weeks, users of services like Meta's Muse, xAI's Grok, OpenAI's Dots, and Instinct have reported blocks preventing their AI agents from performing tasks across top websites. Yelp told TechCrunch that it only allows AI agents that pay for its data licensing program, while Delta Air Lines is preventing them from booking tickets on behalf of users. JPMorgan Chase and Charles Schwab have also confirmed that they're blocking AI agents from accessing accounts due to security concerns. Some users say sites that previously worked with their AI agent are no longer accessible, including Cars.com and Amtrak, suggesting other companies could be quietly blocking them.... Muse, Meta's deceptively cute AI assistant, most recently faced the wrath of Amazon, which said its "continued access" violates its site policies. There are reports of xAI's Grok, Instinct's AI agent, and OpenAI's Dots being unable to use Amazon as well. xAI owner Elon Musk responded by saying that maybe he "should start a competitor to Amazon." The more places bots struggle to access, the greater the questions about how useful they are.... Instead of trying to fight Amazon, [Meta] has partnered with retailers like Walmart, Gap, Sephora, Best Buy, and others, allowing Muse to shop on their sites. At the same time, Shopify has also opened its network of storefronts to AI agents.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Even LinkedIn is getting tired of your AI-written posts," writes CNN, reporting that the Microsoft-owned, job-oriented social media site "is upping its fight against slop." A report published in July by Pangram, a research firm that tracks AI content online, found that more than 40% of long-form posts on the platform were AI-generated, compared to around 30% on X and Medium and a smaller percentage on Reddit and Substack.... LinkedIn previously offered AI tools to edit or rewrite posts, although it recently scaled the offerings back. But low-quality AI posts are a business problem for LinkedIn. They all start to sound the same, [according to LinkedIn Editor-in-Chief Dan Roth Roth]. If users see too many generic AI posts, instead of content that really teaches them something or gives them a deeper understanding of a professional connection, LinkedIn risks losing them to other platforms. In August, LinkedIn rolled out a button letting users flag when a post "seems like AI slop," which was clicked more than 1 million times within its first two weeks. Now, the company is trying to use its own AI systems to help weed out AI slop on the platform and to remind LinkedIn users how to post like humans. The company built a team largely made up of former journalists and social media experts who have an eye for recognizing generic, sloppy content. These experts help train LinkedIn's AI model on what authentic, useful posts look like. If the model flags a post as low-quality, AI-generated content, it'll be less likely to be distributed beyond that user's direct connections. Also key to the strategy is a creator management team that acts as "content therapists" for executives, subject matter experts and other LinkedIn users, many of whom have gotten accustomed to the convenience of using AI to write what, on the surface, appear to be polished posts, Roth said. "A lot of times now today, they'll run it through Claude or Gemini or wherever, they'll post it on LinkedIn and it will perform poorly. And then they come to the team and they're like, 'Why did this do badly?'" Roth said. "And the best thing you can do is give it back to them and be like, 'Did you enjoy reading this? Do you see yourself in this?" The efforts are showing early signs of success. Improvements to LinkedIn's detection systems have resulted in a 40% decline in views of content classified as AI slop, the platform said last month. That's not to say LinkedIn is entirely opposed to AI, Roth said, adding that "not everyone is a born communicator." But failing to edit or personalize content means it's less likely to reach a wide audience on the platform.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York's 15th congressional district in the Bronx introduced the Power To The Players Act this week. If passed, the bill would direct the Federal Trade Commission to establish regulations that guarantee consumers ownership of a game when they pay for it, rather than a licensing agreement.

It's increasingly common for games sold to require a connection to a server. Meaning that when a company decides to shut down those servers, the games often become unplayable. Rep. Torres singles out NBA 2K25 as a recent example. 2K will be delisting the game from storefronts at the end of the month and shutting down its servers on …

Read the full story at The Verge.

TechRepublic reports: The TIOBE Index is a monthly indicator of programming-language popularity based on factors including skilled engineers, courses, and third-party vendors. The October 2026 rankings show a largely stable top 10, with R overtaking SQL and Julia returning to the top 20 for the first time in three years. [SQL has risen to #9 from #10 in October of 2025 — back when R ranked only #13.] Python remains No. 1, followed by C, C++, Java, C#, and JavaScript, while Rust holds its No. 10 position. [A year ago Rust ranked only #16.] Outside the top 10, Julia climbs from No. 21 to No. 18, and TIOBE introduces Mandarin Chinese search terms into its methodology to broaden the index's geographic representation. Dropping out of the top ten is Go, which fell from #8 in October of 2025 to #11. And Delphi/Object Pascal has plummeted from #9 to #19. TIOBE CEO Paul Jansen argues that Julia's growing popularity "is largely driven by the demand for modern programming languages that combine high performance with ease of learning, particularly for numerical computing." Python offers an accessible, high-level approach to numerical computing, but performance can become a bottleneck. C++, on the other hand, delivers excellent performance but comes with a steeper learning curve and a lower level of abstraction. Julia aims to bridge this gap by combining the best of both worlds... Apart from Julia, two other languages are knocking on the door of the TIOBE top 20: Dart and OCaml. Dart jumps from #41 to #27 this month. Thanks to its popular UI toolkit Flutter, Dart has been hovering around the edge of the top 20 for quite some time. OCaml, on the other hand, might come as a surprise. It jumps from #38 to #26 this month, driven in part by its growing use in real-time trading systems and parsing technology.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Get caught up on the latest technology and startup news from the past week. Here are the most popular stories on GeekWire for the week of Oct. 11, 2026.

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Most popular stories on GeekWire

Microsoft’s top science exec is leaving to fulfill a childhood dream: Joining a Formula 1 team

Peter Lee, the longtime Microsoft Research leader, plans to join the Mercedes Formula 1 team in a newly created AI advisor role. He’ll work on physics problems for the team’s car, predictive models and how F1’s regulators might govern AI. Read More … Read More

Leaked list shows what Microsoft, Amazon and other tech giants are giving for the White House ballroom

Microsoft committed $10 million to President Trump’s White House ballroom project, and Amazon and T-Mobile each committed $5 million, according to a donor list obtained by the Washington Post. The donations aren’t subject to campaign finance limits or disclosure requirements, raising concerns that companies could be buying influence or feeling pressured to give. Read More … Read More

Booking Holdings unveils AI travel startup Vayo, based in Seattle, with a planned $100M investment

Booking Holdings is launching a new Seattle-based travel startup called Vayo, led by serial entrepreneur Mike Fridgen, betting that AI agents built for travel can do a better job of planning and managing trips than general-purpose assistants from the likes of OpenAI and Meta. Read More … Read More

Robot on aisle 7: Customers react to autonomous inventory machine roaming a Seattle grocery store

An autonomous, camera-laden robot named Tally is scanning shelves — and triggering a mix of Jetsons-esque wonder, anxiety about job losses, and some customer privacy fears. Read More … Read More

Apple challenges Amazon’s Echo and Ring with its new smart home lineup

Apple’s $299 HomeView smart display goes up against the Echo Show, and new LG-made cameras, a video doorbell and a smart lock compete with Amazon-owned Ring. Apple has 7% of U.S. smart speaker owners, compared with about two-thirds for Amazon. Read More … Read More

Why Amazon might pay billions for Decart, a 3-year-old AI startup that hasn’t disclosed its revenue

Amazon is in talks to buy Decart for around $7 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported. The startup makes software that helps AI models run faster on different kinds of chips, including Amazon’s Trainium, and has already worked with AWS on its newest chip. Read More … Read More

Institute led by UW Nobel winner uses AI to build molecular scissors targeting disease proteins

Led by Nobel laureate David Baker, researchers at UW Medicine’s Institute for Protein Design have used AI to engineer reusable molecular “scissors” capable of repeatedly destroying target proteins linked to diseases like Alzheimer’s and ALS. Because these proteases chop up targets repeatedly instead of clinging to just one, they could treat complex conditions at far lower doses. Read More … Read More

Microsoft makes ‘biggest bet yet’ on its own silicon, unveils new AI chip to reduce reliance on Nvidia

Microsoft says its homegrown Maia chips will handle most of the AI work behind Copilot and its other products, with the new Maia 300 rolling out in 2027. The company says the new chip does more AI work with the same amount of electricity than the GPU-based systems that power most AI today. Read More … Read More

Microsoft’s Brad Smith pushes back on Vice President JD Vance’s visa fraud accusations

Someone “failed to inform the vice president accurately about our numbers” before blocking Microsoft from sponsoring foreign workers for permanent residency, asserts Brad Smith, the company’s president and vice chair, in an interview with Politico. Read More … Read More

LinkedIn just released its list of the top 10 Seattle startups: One problem, nearly half aren’t based in the region

LinkedIn’s list of Seattle’s hottest startups includes companies headquartered in California and Texas. We did a little digging and found a geography problem hiding in plain sight. Read More … Read More

What does it take to trust AI with a complex codebase—not just a quick prototype? 

Jesse Houwing, GitHub Star, Microsoft DevOps MVP, and trainer at Xebia, joins us to share how he uses Copilot to investigate difficult bugs, improve the PowerShell Analyzer, and turn everyday frustrations into working tools.

We discuss managing Copilot costs at scale, why AI can struggle with new APIs and undocumented company knowledge, and how developers can tell useful AI-generated code from convincing-looking “AI slop.” Jesse also considers how the role of developers may evolve—from writing code toward guiding AI, curating knowledge, and applying hard-won engineering judgment.

A candid conversation about AI’s promise, its limits, and why experience still matters.

About this episode, and Jesse Houwing in particular: you can find Jesse on LinkedIn.

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Download audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1622272/episodes/19966087-138-beyond-vibe-coding-jesse-houwing-on-building-better-software-with-ai.mp3