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Received — 21 October 2026 ⏭ Ars Technica - All content

The $15 billion ad-powered AI startup your doctor may already be using

Nearly two-thirds of US doctors are turning to an AI-powered search engine to make patient decisions, propelling a little-known tech startup to a $15 billion valuation while prompting a debate over the future of patient care.

Miami-based OpenEvidence, founded by serial entrepreneur Daniel Nadler in 2022, said that many of America’s 1 million physicians processed more than 42 million prompts last month. Doctors are using the company’s chatbot to scour medical journals and clinical guidelines to help diagnose and treat patients.

The ads-powered platform has grown largely by word of mouth, penetrating a sector where few tools have seen similar traction. “We’re the first viral consumer internet app in healthcare,” Nadler told the FT in an interview.

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Received — 18 October 2026 ⏭ Ars Technica - All content

Anthropic gives outside AI watchdog “employee-like” access

Anthropic has granted external evaluators “employee-like access” to assess the risks of its models, following through on a commitment to increase safeguards over concerns the technology could run catastrophically out of control.

METR, a nonprofit that has worked with leading labs including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta, now has a team embedded in the Claude maker’s office with access to its hardware and internal systems.

A greater role for third-party evaluators is among the main concrete steps the labs have proposed in response to rising concern about the dangers more capable AI systems could pose to the economy, cyber security, and humanity at large.

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Received — 14 October 2026 ⏭ Ars Technica - All content

Ukraine blindsided by Starlink throttling restrictions and intelligence gaps

Ukrainian troops have been caught off guard by restrictions on Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite Internet systems that disrupted frontline operations, while Kyiv received no warning from its partners of a Russian missile attack on its energy facilities for the second day running, according to Ukrainian officials.

Starlink terminals used by Ukrainian drone units began experiencing signal failures at speeds above 160 km/h, disrupting several missions early on Wednesday morning, according to military personnel and senior Ukrainian officials.

“Logistics at the frontline and middle strikes are badly limited,” one senior official familiar with the situation on the front told the FT. Ukraine’s middle strikes target Russian military supply lines and logistics. The limitations came with “no warning, just in the middle of the night,” the official said.

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Received — 9 October 2026 ⏭ Ars Technica - All content

Microsoft barred from sponsoring foreign workers for US residency

Donald Trump’s administration has temporarily banned Microsoft, Adobe, and several other tech companies from sponsoring workers for permanent US residency, claiming they abused immigration programs at the expense of American citizens.

Vice-president JD Vance said on Thursday that the H-1B visa programme for highly skilled foreign workers had “become rife with fraud” and that over-reliance on such schemes was “a fundamental insult to the American worker.”

He added that “no company in the US” had “abused this system” more than Microsoft.

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