Daily Tech News 16 October 2026

Top Story

Tesla announced its new model Roadster - yes, the one The Verge was whining about. Taking reservations now for delivery in 2028. Or later.

It flies. (Business Insider)

Literally.

I thought it was AI for a moment.

Okay, falling with style, but falling with a lot of style. It can also drive on vertical surfaces... And on the wrong side of horizontal ones.

The flying version is single-seater and not approved for public road use.

Eppure vola.

Tech News

Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra is here and it's eh. (Tom's Hardware)

It has Nvidia's RTX Spark chip, which is basically an RTX 5070 graphics card with some ARM cores and 128GB of RAM glued onto it.

If you want to run large AI models on your laptop, it is faster than a MacBook or AMD's competing Ryzen 395 (they really need to update that). But there aren't that many people buying laptops specifically to run 35B LLMs on them.
The Return of the Revenge of Little Bobby Tables. (The Register)

Robert Xavier Tables, you validate your data right now!
Meta's Muse Spark Open, an 816 billion parameter model, is available for download now. (Meta)

All you need is half a terabyte of RAM. And a 32GB graphics card, minimum.

Musical Interlude

Disclaimer: Where we're going, we don't need roads.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

Comments

(Jump to bottom of comments)

1 Good morning

Posted by: Tuna at October 16, 2026 04:02 AM (lJ0H4)

2 G'Day everyone

Posted by: Skip at October 16, 2026 04:03 AM (Ia/+0)

3 If you want to run large AI models on your laptop, it is faster than a MacBook or AMD's competing Ryzen 395 (they really need to update that). But there aren't that many people buying laptops specifically to run 35B LLMs on them.

This is a halo product for Silicon Valley millionaires with a lot of free time to play with AI models.

Posted by: SpeakingOf at October 16, 2026 04:07 AM (6ydKt)

4 The thrusters on the Roadster are pretty cool, can't lie about it.

But I'm at a loss as to the practical use for it in everyday driving.

But, it does point to a future where we might actually get some flying Deloreans going 88 mph.

Posted by: SpeakingOf at October 16, 2026 04:10 AM (6ydKt)

5 I remember Bannarama well
Heading out driveway, TGIF.

Posted by: Skip at October 16, 2026 04:11 AM (1J4ts)

6
I was just reading up on how that Ship deorbit and catch will likely work. Safety is the big thing. You don't want a big honking hulk of metal coming down over a populated area out of control.

How you avoid that is, well, rocket science indeed. If things go awry, you can blow up, flight termination. But you need to do that up high, so the pieces will burn up. If get too low, blowing it up would be even worse than letting it crash.

Posted by: publius, Rascally Mr. Miley (w6EFb) at October 16, 2026 04:17 AM (w6EFb)

7 Pixy,

I posted a couple of Roadster links on the ONT. Here's the tech one:

https://tinyurl.com/43yyuye3

And for some entertainment, I bring you this Newsom memory moment:

https://tinyurl.com/kfkmnb6k

Hey, Gary, how's that bullet train project coming along?!

Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at October 16, 2026 04:20 AM (skLNB)

8
It will be on a 30 degree or so inclination. When launched that will be on the down leg (descending node arc). If they came back on that down leg, the deorbit burn and all that would be over the continental US, coming NW to SE.

So, they stay up there long enough to allow Erf to rotate about 1/2 turn underneath, so that it will be coming back in the ascending, up-leg arc. That will put the critical deorbit and reentry fireball over the Pacific. It will just have to cross over Mexico, aiming for the Gulf. If something goes south, they'll head for a crash in the Gulf.

Only if all goes perfectly well will that steer and light up the engines to maneuver back to Starbase.

If something goes wrong during the final terminal phase, big boom at the tower. They will not blow it up, just let 'er crash. And nobody will be close enough for any danger...

This is some wild stuff.

Posted by: publius, Rascally Mr. Miley (w6EFb) at October 16, 2026 04:25 AM (w6EFb)

9 w00t

Posted by: m at October 16, 2026 04:26 AM (odBC9)

10 Mornin'

Posted by: Puddleglum at work at October 16, 2026 04:36 AM (n17eQ)

11 And for some entertainment, I bring you this Newsom memory moment:

https://tinyurl.com/kfkmnb6k

Hey, Gary, how's that bullet train project coming along?!

Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at October 16, 2026 04:20 AM (skLNB)

The Dems really do excel at acting like pissed off ex-girlfriends talking about their ex.

Posted by: SpeakingOf at October 16, 2026 04:36 AM (6ydKt)

12 >>>Tesla announced its new model Roadster - ...
It flies. (Business Insider)

Yeah, we'll fly to the east, we'll fly to the west
There'll be no place we can't call our own
Yeah, we'll fly to the north, we'll fly to the south
Every planet will become our home

Posted by: m at October 16, 2026 04:46 AM (odBC9)

13 >>>Tesla announced its new model Roadster - ...
It flies. (Business Insider)
Eppure vola.

Wikipedia
And_yet_it_moves
E pur si muove or Eppur si muove is an Italian phrase commonly attributed to the Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei

vola = it flies

Lovely!

Posted by: m at October 16, 2026 04:51 AM (odBC9)

14 TLDR

Neural Networks Are Already Clean

The cause of polysemanticity in early model organisms wasn’t superposition, but several ordinary, mostly fixable issues. We can now understand most neurons in models up to trillions of parameters, and think the outlook for mechanistic interpretability may be far better than we thought.

https://already-clean.goodfire.com

Posted by: m at October 16, 2026 04:58 AM (odBC9)

15 7 And for some entertainment, I bring you this Newsom memory moment:

https://tinyurl.com/kfkmnb6k
Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at October 16, 2026 04:20 AM (skLNB)

Cage match! Elon and what's-his-name!

Posted by: m at October 16, 2026 05:08 AM (odBC9)

16 7 And for some entertainment, I bring you this Newsom memory moment:

https://tinyurl.com/kfkmnb6k
Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at October 16, 2026 04:20 AM (skLNB)

SOUND UP!

Posted by: m at October 16, 2026 05:09 AM (odBC9)

17
g'mornin', 'rons

Posted by: AltonJackson at October 16, 2026 05:10 AM (AMvSw)

18 3 If you want to run large AI models on your laptop, it is faster than a MacBook or AMD's competing Ryzen 395 (they really need to update that). But there aren't that many people buying laptops specifically to run 35B LLMs on them.

This is a halo product for Silicon Valley millionaires with a lot of free time to play with AI models.
Posted by: SpeakingOf at October 16, 2026 04:07 AM (6ydKt)

Hacker News
A halo product is something that isn't there to be the real flagship that's driving the revenue, but instead to be the ultra-cool item that people really lust after, associate that with the brand, then buy one of the lower end models.

Posted by: m at October 16, 2026 05:14 AM (odBC9)

19 Disclaimer: Where we're going, we don't need roads.

Rejoinder: Great Scott!

Posted by: Grumpy and Recalcitrant, a Moron behind enemy lines at October 16, 2026 05:15 AM (O7YUW)

20 I thought this was a very touching devotional from a man from Florida writing about his own father and his Heavenly Father, and based on Psalm 28:6-9:

https://tinyurl.com/bde7a8w4

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at October 16, 2026 05:16 AM (JrHfD)

21 16 7 And for some entertainment, I bring you this Newsom memory moment:

https://tinyurl.com/kfkmnb6k
Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at October 16, 2026 04:20 AM (skLNB)

SOUND UP!
Posted by: m at October 16, 2026 05:09 AM (odBC9)

This is so great. I'm tempted to put it on endless replay.

Posted by: m at October 16, 2026 05:18 AM (odBC9)

22 Old time hymn- "Be still, my soul"

https://tinyurl.com/mrx5ztdw

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at October 16, 2026 05:25 AM (JrHfD)

23 Have a good day folks. May you know you are a blessing to others . Prayers for people going back and forth to Corsicana and for a safe and happy time there.

I need a break from political news. Hopefully see you on Monday.

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at October 16, 2026 05:27 AM (JrHfD)

24 14 TLDR

Neural Networks Are Already Clean

The cause of polysemanticity in early model organisms wasn’t superposition, but several ordinary, mostly fixable issues. We can now understand most neurons in models up to trillions of parameters, and think the outlook for mechanistic interpretability may be far better than we thought.

https://already-clean.goodfire.com
Posted by: m at October 16, 2026 04:58 AM (odBC9)

The author is Nick Cammarata.

• an AI safety researcher who specializes in neural network interpretability

• previously at OpenAI

• currently conducts research at the AI safety startup Goodfire

Posted by: m at October 16, 2026 05:34 AM (odBC9)

25 Morning, 'rons and 'ettes.

Posted by: olddog in mo at October 16, 2026 05:38 AM (Hbeqj)

26 I love studying IT
We just had the cyber security exam including metasploit, metasploitable, setoolkit, 2 stenography programs, Wireshark, rsa, hashing, pki for for the signatures AND certificates, sql injection, xss, and even manually deciding a block cypher.
That's the exam after 3 hour lectures that sounded like a guy reading a dictionary, expecting total recall of the SQL commands we were told about 3 months ago, covered in the same week as JavaScript and php.
3 questions were about things i didn't have in my lecture notes, they were touched on and moved on from that quick.
Everyone i spoke to was walking out and complaining of lack of time to answer all the questions.
But still the masochist in me finds it kind of fun.
I should have just stayed on the forklift.

Posted by: Nato at October 16, 2026 05:42 AM (XAyZ8)

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