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This startup wants to turn idle user car inventory into rental revenue

When Igor Dobrianskyi looks at a car dealership lot, he doesn't see rows of cars — he sees millions of dollars just sitting there, depreciating, while people who only need a car for a few months are stuck paying too much for too little choice, so he built MyMonthlyCar, a platform that lets dealers rent out their idle used cars month to month (with an option to buy), and it's now one of the startups showing off at this year's TechCrunch Disrupt, running October 13 to 15 in San Francisco.

Sony brings AI graphics upscaling to the regular PS5

Sony is launching a new AI upscaling technology specifically for the regular PS5. The new tech, called Quick Spectral Super Resolution (QSSR), is a "new performance tier of AI upscaling" that's a result of Sony's Project Amethyst work with AMD, according to a blog post. Sony says that PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), which is available on the PS5 Pro, "remains the gold standard," and in Digital Foundry's early hands-on with the tech, it does seem that QSSR isn't as fast as PSSR because the PS5 doesn't have dedicated machine learning silicon. As a result, you should probably expect closer to an upscaled 1440p resolution on PS5 … Read the full story at The Verge.

Clef: Open-source decision models, and new RL fine-tuning platform

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Hacker News·Oct 1, 2026

One year later, Tesla and Musk still don’t have a good definition of ‘abundance’

The CEO promised to get more specific about his vision. But the details are still absent.

Brian Chesky interview: AI agents need their own operating system

Brian Chesky on making Airbnb agent-friendly, the state of consumer AI, and why the world needs an AI-native operating system.

OpenID Foundation: Identity Management for Agentic AI [pdf] (2025)

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Hacker News·Oct 1, 2026

NYC is now the first city in America that bans sketchy subscriptions

Image: Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images | AFP via Getty Images New York City residents struggling to get out of recurring subscription fees can now submit complaints to the city government. As of Thursday, the city's click-to-cancel rule has taken effect, which requires businesses to make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up. That means a gym that lets you join online, for example, can't make you call or go in person to end your subscription. It's the first municipality to see the rule take effect, after an appeals court struck down a federal version for procedural issues. The city expects it to save New Yorkers anywhere from $21.5 million to $162.5 million annually. And to NYC Depar … Read the full story at The Verge.

OpenAI’s new agent is a shot at Meta — but can it compete with free?

A pop-up shop for "dots," a personal assistant agent at OpenAI DevDay 2026. (Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images) | Getty Images At OpenAI's annual DevDay conference, the company pulled out all the stops to compete with its rivals - primarily Meta, whose Muse AI agent platform has seen early runaway success. CEO Sam Altman walked onstage to cheers and announced Dots, a "real-deal AI" agent powered by GPT-6 Astra, "inspired by the cool agents that we all watched in movies growing up." Similar to Muse, Dots aims for disarming cuteness, taking the form of colorful, personalizable blobs with eyes. OpenAI fired shots at Meta by demonstrating Dots' ability to not just act as helpful assistants but build metaverse-esque virtual worlds. But in one key area, Dots strikingly fa … Read the full story at The Verge.

Photon held a funeral for mobile apps. Now it has $4.5M to help replace them with agents

The startup helps developers build AI agents that work over iMessage, SMS/RCS, email, and other messaging platforms. It's a bet that consumers will increasingly use agents instead of downloading apps.

The best early October Prime Day deals happening now

It’s not even October yet and Amazon is already offering some Prime Big Deal Day discounts on its own hardware, along with plenty of other popular products. It’s all to hype up October Prime Day, which starts October 6th at 3AM ET and lasts through 3AM ET on the 8th if you’re on the East Coast (12AM PT). October Prime Day offers a glimpse of deals that will likely be available again during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. So, with the holiday shopping season officially underway, you can get some of your shopping out of the way before things get busier as we approach the holidays. The most recent update to this post on October 1st added a couple of Belkin deals, plus a discount on a capable 1440p USB-C monitor. This post will be updated a couple more times ahead of October 6th as new deals become available. Belkin Qi2.2 25W 2-in-1 foldable charging dock Slap a recent iPhone onto this charging pad and it’ll charge at fast 25W speeds. It can also charge AirPods, and includes a cord and wall

What even is a ‘microdrama’?

On Monday, Variety reported that RoseBerry Media is recutting episodes of the Australian soap opera Neighbours "into microdramas." These clips will be available on Epis, a short-form vertical video streaming platform. Though Neighbours ran for 41 seasons from 1985 to 2025, at launch, RoseBerry is only recutting two storylines from the late aughts focused on a character played by the now-internationally famous Margot Robbie. In a statement about the project, RoseBerry cofounder / CEO Guy Hameiri described Neighbours as "an iconic piece of television history" that's well suited to be adapted for vertical viewing with the company's proprietar … Read the full story at The Verge.

Hearing tech startup Legato launches its AI hearing glasses

The glasses stem from the startup’s goal of making hearing care more accessible by addressing the cost, comfort, and stigma associated with traditional hearing aids.