Pins matching posted:2026-09-28

DeepSeek releases DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash, an open-weight 552-billion-parameter multimodal model that it says beats its own flagship V4-Pro, and routes all V4-Pro API traffic to it at Flash prices.

Tesla showed its Europe-spec Semi, with camera mirrors, separate headlights and 550 km of range at 40 tonnes, at Europe's biggest commercial vehicle show, where Semi lead Dan Priestley gave a keynote on the truck's European launch.

Google releases two real-time voice models: Gemini 3.8 Live, built for low-cost fluid dialogue that sees through the camera and switches among 97 languages, and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking, which reasons while it speaks and tops Artificial Analysis' speech-to-speech quality index at 82.6.

California's Civil Rights Department began its bench trial accusing Tesla of tolerating widespread harassment, segregation and lower pay for Black workers at its Fremont factory, the first government discrimination case against Tesla to reach trial.

SpaceXAI, formerly xAI, releases Grok 4.7, its most capable model for coding and knowledge work, built on a larger base model and priced like Grok 4.6 at $2 per million input tokens; independent tests still put it well behind Claude Fable 5.1 and GPT-6.

Seven groups led by the Environmental Defense Center and the Center for Biological Diversity asked the Ninth Circuit to overturn PHMSA's 25 June special permit, which waives corrosion-repair rules for the onshore lines that caused the 2015 Refugio spill.

The ZET SCALE shipper alliance, backed by Microsoft and PepsiCo, picked Tesla as primary supplier for 2,500 battery-electric Class 8 trucks, the largest US electric truck order, nearly doubling the country's electric heavy-truck fleet.

Xiaomi releases and open-sources MiMo-V2.6-Pro and MiMo-V2.6-Flash, natively omnimodal models with 1M-token context; Pro scores 46.32 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, the highest of any open-source model.

Santa Barbara County's Board of Supervisors voted to send the Senate a letter opposing the House's Hunt Amendment, which would let the Defense Secretary take easements, including by condemnation, along Sable Offshore's Santa Ynez Pipeline System.

OpenAI releases GPT-6 Sol for coding and agent work and GPT-6 Luna for high-volume tasks, at half the API price of their GPT-5.6 predecessors: $2 and $10 per million tokens for Sol, $0.10 and $0.50 for Luna.

Google releases two text-to-speech models that design new voices from a written description, clone a voice from a 30-second sample with the owner's recorded consent, and take line-by-line acting direction in more than 100 languages.

Oliver County's planning and zoning board voted 2-3 against all four approvals for Base Electron's 1,200 MW Missouri Bend gas plant, the $2.4 billion Babcock & Wilcox project to power Applied Digital's data centres near Center, North Dakota, sending a recommendation to deny to the county commission.

Taylor Swift expanded The Life of a Showgirl with four songs written in Sweden with Max Martin and Shellback to celebrate its record first week, led by the single 'Patient Zero' and 'Cleveland!', a nod to husband Travis Kelce's hometown.

Anthropic releases Claude Sonnet 5.5, the second model in its Claude 5.5 family, which it says runs more than 30% faster than Sonnet 5 and costs up to 30% less per task at the same $2 and $10 per million token prices.

President Donald Trump announced in the Oval Office at 2 p.m. ET on 28 September 2026 that Mesabi Metallics will invest about $15 billion in a steel plant in Iowa, which the White House calls the largest of its kind in US history and the first mega steel plant built in the country since the 1960s. The plant is due to start producing steel in 2030. Its first phase is put at about 7.5 million tons a year with up to 6,000 construction jobs, rising to 10 million tons a year and at least 1,750 permanent jobs. It will run on iron ore from Mesabi's new mine at Nashwauk on Minnesota's Iron Range, and Iowa lawmakers have discussed tax incentives for a plant in Lee County in the state's southeast. The announcement came weeks before the November midterm elections, as Trump pointed to his 50% steel tariffs as the driver of new US steel investment.

NHTSA's Chief Counsel ordered Tesla to answer 21 questions under oath by 30 September 2026 on how it self-certified the Cybercab, which has no steering wheel, pedals or mirrors, as meeting federal safety standards.

Google announced Gemini 4 Argon on 30 September as its new frontier model, rolling out soon to Google AI Ultra subscribers and paid API customers at an introductory $2/$10 per million tokens, with no firm release date.

The Ninth Circuit has set a hearing in San Francisco on three consolidated petitions by California and conservation groups against PHMSA's takeover of Sable Offshore's onshore pipelines from state regulators and its approval of their restart.

Anthropic releases Claude Haiku 5.5, the third model of its Claude 5.5 family and its cheapest, fastest small model, at $0.10 input and $0.50 output per million tokens for prompts up to 100K tokens, about 90% below Haiku 4.5.

Bruno Mars plays the first of two nights at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, the tour's Bay Area stop between SoFi Stadium and a record five nights in Vancouver.

Paul Hyon Kim, who shot out cameras and firebombed Teslas at a Las Vegas Tesla Collision center in March 2025, is due to be sentenced by Judge Jennifer Dorsey after pleading guilty to arson and a destructive-device charge that carry at least five years in prison.

Bruno Mars starts five shows at BC Place, the most any artist has played there on a single tour, surpassing the three nights that closed Taylor Swift's Eras Tour.

Taylor Swift, 36, the youngest songwriter ever elected, joins the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame at its 56th anniversary gala at the Music City Center, with Lyle Lovett, Bruce Channel, Shawn Camp, Lee Thomas Miller and the late J.I. Allison.

Sable Offshore’s October 26 announcement schedules its third-quarter 2026 financial and operating results for Monday November 9, before the market opens.

Terafab's full-scale chip plant is due to start construction on 1 December 2026 at the former Gibbons Creek power station site in Grimes County, Texas, with completion planned by the end of 2028 and an initial $16.8 billion investment.

Bruno Mars begins a five-night run at Mexico City's Estadio GNP Seguros, his only Latin American stop on The Romantic Tour and its last dates of 2026.

A Los Angeles judge is set to hear Tesla's petition to overturn the California DMV's finding that its 'Autopilot' and 'Full Self-Driving' marketing was false advertising, a label Tesla wants removed even though it already complied with the order.

Tesla is expected to publish its fourth-quarter and full-year 2026 vehicle production, deliveries and energy-storage deployments on Saturday 2 January 2027, a year after 2025 deliveries fell 8.6% to 1,636,129.

Tesla is expected to report fourth-quarter and full-year 2026 results after the market close, most likely on Wednesday 27 January 2027, with its Q&A webcast at 4:30 p.m. Central; the date is announced in the Q4 deliveries release.

Bruno Mars ends a six-city, 12-show Japan dome tour, billed as one of the largest ever, with the second of two sold-out nights at Tokyo Dome.

Bruno Mars begins his 2027 Australia and New Zealand stadium run in Perth, with Tyla and Anderson .Paak as DJ Pee .Wee supporting; demand added a second Perth night.

Bruno Mars brings The Romantic Tour to Auckland's Eden Park with Tyla, DJ Pee .Wee and a Silk Sonic set; the first two of three nights have sold out.

Bruno Mars returns to Singapore's National Stadium for four nights, opening The Romantic Tour's 2027 Southeast Asia run with Anderson .Paak as DJ Pee .Wee.

Bruno Mars plays the first of four Kai Tak Stadium concerts, his first Hong Kong shows in nearly nine years, with Anderson .Paak as DJ Pee .Wee; tickets start at HKD 799.

Tesla plans first European customer deliveries of its electric Semi in 2027: a 550 km, 40-tonne version with camera mirrors and 800 kW charging, first built at its Nevada Semi factory.