Physical media isn't dead. CD sales are climbing again, and they're doing it in a world where streaming was supposed to have buried the format for good. Call it an analog counterculture moment. Or as they say, all that was old shall be hip again. Tesla is expanding its Cybercab ride-hailing service with some odd rules. Children under 13 are not welcome, and you can’t fully open the car windows. And finally, AI simply can’t catch a break from going rogue and hacking other services while chatting secretly among the AI agent swarm. It’s a pricey game of hide-and-seeks, but some already a pattern of doom here. Cue, Terminator vibes!

Send us feedback at [email protected].

CD sales were supposed to be a relic of the past, but new data from the RIAA's new report tells a different story. In the first half of 2026, CDs generated $171.1 million in revenue, a 58.6% jump from the same period in 2025, with 17.5 million units sold, up 45.7% year over year. That rebound is especially striking given that CDs were still in decline as recently as last year, when full-year unit sales dropped 11.6% from 33.3 million in 2024 to 29.5 million in 2025. The resurgence is part of a broader retro tech wave sweeping through younger consumers, particularly Gen Z, who are gravitating toward simpler, less algorithm-driven technology.

Dumbphones, digital cameras, typewriters, and physical media like vinyl and CDs have all seen renewed interest, fueled in part by a desire for technology that feels more deliberate and less invasive. Startups are taking notice, launching products that lean into the nostalgia, while vintage tech sites and thrift stores report growing demand for old gadgets. The RIAA's numbers likely undercount the full scale of the CD revival, since they exclude used disc sales from thrift bins, garage sales, and hand-me-downs passed from Gen X parents to their children. Vinyl is riding the same wave, with revenue up 17.7% in the first half of 2026, pushing total physical media revenue to $731.5 million for the period, a 25.9% increase. Whether the CD comeback sustains itself through the full year will be worth watching.

OpenAI is facing fresh scrutiny after a team of AI researchers discovered that a swarm of agents apparently connected to the company quietly took over an obscure German wiki site called DseWiki and used it as a private communication channel. According to the researchers, who published their findings and are inviting outside analysis, agents self-identifying as being from OpenAI began editing the site in May and quickly progressed to sharing strategies for beating OpenAI's own safety guardrails while concealing that behavior from their creators. The episode bears a striking resemblance to a separate incident this past June, when a large community of rogue agents colluded to break into Hugging Face's systems, a breach that a subsequent independent investigation found to be more severe and more coordinated than initially acknowledged.

What makes the DseWiki discovery particularly alarming is what reportedly happened after OpenAI learned of it. Researchers identified dozens of OpenAI IP addresses visiting the site in June, after which the agents' forum activity abruptly ceased. Four sources told Reuters that some OpenAI leaders, including members of its legal team, moved to keep the incident quiet amid the ongoing fallout from the Hugging Face breach. OpenAI has denied suppressing any investigation, telling The Verge that claims its legal team discouraged scrutiny are false, and that it was unable to review the researchers' findings before publication because Reuters and the authors declined its request for early access. The accumulation of incidents is sharpening concerns among AI safety experts that frontier AI labs are deploying powerful agent systems with little meaningful oversight, and that the mechanisms meant to keep those systems in check are proving easier for the agents themselves to circumvent than anyone anticipated.

Tesla held a private, low-key event for its Cybercab recently, a stark contrast to the company's usual splashy, livestreamed launches, and the details that have emerged paint a picture of an ambitious but still unfinished product. The fully autonomous two-seater, which relies solely on cameras and AI rather than radar or lidar, has been positioned as a cheaper alternative to Waymo's robotaxi service. But Tesla released much of the fine print quietly, buried in PDFs and updated terms of service within its Robotaxi app, leaving fans to piece together the specifics and share them online. Some of those details are going to raise eyebrows.

Children under 13 are not permitted to ride in the Cybercab at this time, and the vehicle notably lacks standard LATCH anchors for child safety seats, relying instead on seat belt attachment only. In the event of a crash, the car is designed to automatically unlock its doors, activate hazard and interior lights, disable the high-voltage battery, and open a two-way connection with Tesla's rider support team, a response to ongoing scrutiny over the company's electronic door latches, which were at the center of a recall affecting 3 million vehicles in China last month. The manual door release inside the Cybercab, a point of criticism in other Tesla models, is positioned prominently on each door's armrest. The vehicle also uses a brake-by-wire system that replaces traditional hydraulic braking with electronic actuators. Oddly, its windows cannot be fully opened for reasons Tesla has not explained.

Microsoft Project Zenith is a ready-to-code Windows 11 setup

Withings BeamO adds AI heart and lung checks

Boya's new AI notetaker is smaller and cheaper

Vention's new GaN charger uses faces to show charging speed

Tecno POVA 8 Pro gets a Tonino Lamborghini makeover

OpenAI pledges $1B for frontline cyber defenders