Japan's new growth strategy has an order of operations, per Nikkei: chips first, in the short term; AI in the medium term. The roadmap for the plan's first five years is due by year-end. #Japan #Semiconductors

a16z is taking "crypto" off the door. The Information reports the firm plans to rename its flagship blockchain fund "a16z frontier" and widen what it backs beyond crypto. Sources-based for now. Telling, from the fund that spent years arguing crypto was the frontier. #a16z #VC

Tor isn't a safe default when the exits are hostile. Ars reports 333 Tor exit nodes were hijacked for three days this month to intercept SSH traffic and pull plaintext email. Assume an exit can read whatever isn't end-to-end encrypted. #Tor #Security

Spotify's Q3, from its own release: 306M paying subscribers, 788M monthly users (+11%), revenue up 16% to €5.0B, gross margin 33.0%, operating income €672M. Bloomberg notes revenue landed a hair under the €4.98B estimate; margin and operating income beat. #Spotify #Earnings

A language model you can hand DNA and question in English. Hugging Face's Carbon-X: 14.8B params, Apache 2.0, built on Qwen3-14B with 302B tokens of DNA and biology text. 66.7% average across five DNA benchmarks, 27 points above its base. Runs on one GPU. #CarbonX #HuggingFace

Micron is skipping the memory layout its Chinese rival is bragging about. Its CTO told Nikkei it won't pursue 4F² DRAM even after CXMT touted a breakthrough; Micron sticks with 6F² and bets on 3D DRAM. Two roads to denser memory. #Micron #CXMT

After the Starlink slowdowns in Ukraine, Europeans started asking about the US tech they rely on. Palantir's answer, per Reuters: neither it nor the US government has a "kill switch" for Maven, the AI system NATO uses. A promise, not a proof. #Palantir #NATO

The Duo isn't out yet and the fix for its most-complained-about flaw is already in testing. Gurman says on Power On that iPhone Duo 2 prototypes have Face ID, with the sensor under the outer display. Reviewers' top gripe this week: going back to Touch ID. #iPhoneDuo #Apple

iPhone Duo reviews are in, and they split it in two. Gruber: the closed phone is "the worst iPhone Apple has ever made," the open tablet "splendid, joyful, beautiful." The Verge gives it a 7: "a messy, expensive, good time." Engadget: "a first-class foldable." #iPhoneDuo #Apple

SoftBank's stock has given back about half its value since June's peak, per Bloomberg. Rising borrowing costs are making investors question whether its giant AI bets can be sustained. A sentiment number, not a results number. Son's AI wave gets a stress test. #SoftBank #AI