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ON CALL By the end of the working week it can be tempting to phone it in, but The Register instead works to bring you extra amusement in the form of a new edition of On Call – the reader-contributed column that shares your tech support stories. This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Orson” who told us they very much enjoyed the recent On Call about the lawyer who didn’t understand italics. “It reminded me of an incident many years ago when I was a Facilities Manager for a major UK food company,” Orson told On Call. “I came in one morning and was summoned by the Company Secretary, who was clearly annoyed because the night before, she tried to send an extremely urgent fax and the fax machine did not work.” For those who don’t remember fax machines, or successfully tried to forget them, they packed a low-res scanner, a nasty printer, and a slow modem into a small appliance. The user interface included a numeric keypad used to enter the phone number of whichever remote fax machine you wanted to send a document to. Faxes were horrible, but faster than the postal service. Email killed faxes in the late 1990s (except in Japan) though manufacturers kept including fax functions in multifunction printers (MFPs) for years. But we digress: Orson decided the way to solve this problem was to start with the wetware. “I asked her to show me what she had done and watched as she placed the document on the in-tray, used the keypad to dial the number, and then hit Enter,” he told On Call. Having gone through those steps, the Company Secretary stared at Orson, her pose clearly communicating a desire for him to swiftly explain why technology had let her down – and why the facilities team had left the fax machine in such a state. “I told her she was trying to use the photocopier,” Orson told On Call. To be fair, the presence of MFPs in many workplaces meant that wasn’t a completely horrible mistake. But as an example of a rather silly tech support moment, it makes for a fine On Call! Does a similar tale lurk in your memory? If so, click here to send your story to On Call. We’d offer to let you fax it in, but The Register doesn’t have a fax machine anymore. ®

Nothing smarts like a paper cut, but being attacked after leaving an application’s web interface exposed to the internet might be just as painful. Such attacks are the risk to which users of PaperCut print management software find themselves exposed today, after the company revealed a university’s security teams alerted it to an attack. The company analyzed info provided by the university and found a vulnerability in its PaperCut NG and PaperCut MF products, which manage access to printers, track use, and enable printing from myriad client devices. “We are aware of confirmed customer incidents and are treating this matter with the highest priority,” states an urgent security advisory issued on Thursday. Unusually, the advisory is silent on the nature of the flaw and the risk it poses. It looks like the web interface to the company’s products enables access deeper into a user’s networks, because among the indicators of compromise are altered log files, plus alerts from intrusion detection software, endpoint security tools, and network monitoring packages. The company has cooked up an emergency patch but warns it is not an official release. “We have not gone through our usual release process,” states an FAQ. “This is an emergency patch for customers with public-facing PaperCut servers who are unable to take other mitigating action.” Thankfully, those other actions aren’t hard to take: users need to get their PaperCut servers’ web interfaces off the public internet, by allowing access only from trusted internal IP addresses. Fashioning a potent and rapid response to a zero-day attack is never easy. Communicating the nature of the problem can be even harder, as discussing the nature of a flaw invites more attackers to take a shot at a stricken product. PaperCut says it’s working on a better fix and will advise users once it lands. For now, the company is asking customers to apply its wonky patch or take their servers offline ASAP. The Register fancies most users will go for the latter fix, as aside from the issue of finding a change window in which to apply a patch, running unvalidated emergency software is not an appetizing approach. ®

I write this column not particularly spiritually centered but deeply troubled. We are less than 70 days away from the most important midterm election in our lifetime, possibly as significant as elections in the time of Abraham Lincoln or Franklin D. Roosevelt.

I am deeply troubled and angered by policies that dismantle clean-energy initiatives, open pristine lands to further drilling and fracking, pursue seabed mining, weaken voting rights, and seek to erase or distort American history in our parks, museums, and public institutions. 

I am troubled by the turning away from longtime allies and by the imposition of 50% tariffs on our Canadian neighbors. I am angered by what I see as a “war of choice” driven by the pursuit of power and wealth. Meanwhile, we are faced with a $40 trillion national debt and growing. At $40 trillion, the debt would be roughly $117,000 per U.S. resident, using a population of about 342 million.

Acts of violence and cruelty are carried out on our streets from this administration without accountability. Earlier in the year we saw in the streets of Minneapolis where a woman and a man, both U.S. citizens, were murdered by ICE agents. 

Recently, we saw a young man—a husband and father working two jobs to support his family—killed while on his way to work, shot in the face in his car, dragged out dead and handcuffed on the street. The effect of indiscriminate arrests, most of whom are not criminals but people legally working to become citizens, is to numb us by normalizing once unthinkable actions. And this is happening in our community.

We are at a critical juncture where the far right has been emboldened to use government to destroy government while building a grand arch to celebrate the takeover. Each year is more brutal, and the silence permits the oppression to widen and deepen. Every day, the truth is violated more profoundly from this administration. 

Today, the poor are getting poorer while the rich are getting richer in both wealth and political power. The World Inequality Report came out with the finding that 0.001% of the world’s population holds three times the wealth of the poorest half of humanity. 

That number is staggering and obscene. Such inequality should trouble the conscience of anyone who believes that every human being bears the image of God. Ordinary and lower middle-class citizens are deprived of health care, childcare, assistance with food and decent housing. Our church served as a distribution site for Second Harvest Food Bank, providing food to families with children. That program ended following cuts in government funding.

The very heavens must cry out in the name of the poor and powerless. 

The prayer of the Magnificat, the Song of Mary, is being silenced. Mary proclaimed a God who hears the cries of the lowly, brings down the mighty from their thrones, and lifts up those who have been cast down. Her song is a prophetic declaration that God stands with the poor, the vulnerable, and the powerless.

Where is the Living Christ in us emerging as prophecy? Where is the voice of John the Baptist exposing the evil and wicked deeds of the king and pointing to the light in the darkness? Where is the turning over of tables in the temple by the scandal that we have no money for childcare, and yet we support a form of capitalism that gives more tax cuts for billionaires at the expense of cutting aid and programs for the poorest on the planet.

The biblical story of Exodus reminds us that God does not remain indifferent to human suffering. The enslaved Israelites groaned under the weight of oppression and cried out for help. Their cry rose to God, and God heard their groaning and took notice of their suffering.

“The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out. 

Their cry for help rose up to God from their slavery. 

God heard their groaning… and God took notice of them.” (Exodus 2:23–25)

It is time for us to practice “Holy Impatience.” Patience is indeed a virtue. But there are moments when patience in the face of injustice becomes complicity. There are times when impatience at injustice, corruption, and cruelty to the oppressed must be called out and pushed back. This is that time.

As we approach this consequential election, I encourage you to ground yourselves in the work of prophetic witness. Whatever our political affiliations, we have a moral responsibility to be informed, engaged, and attentive to the choices before us.

Talk with one another. Listen to one another. Share your growing understanding and concerns. Encourage family members, friends, and neighbors to register and participate in the election. Bring people together for honest conversation—not simply to persuade one another, but to illuminate the moral and civic choices before us. Most importantly, resist the temptation to believe that your vote does not matter.

This is a time for courage.

This is a time for conscience.

This is a time for Holy Impatience.

A time for good trouble.

May we refuse indifference and passivity. May we listen for the cries of those who suffer. And may the Living Christ within us give us the courage to speak truth to power, seek justice, and become a light in the darkness.

Three artworks have been chosen to be installed in the traffic circle at the intersection of Clifford Avenue and Pennsylvania Drive. 

City staff received an application and proposal for a new public art spearheaded by an anonymous donor. The donor, a Watsonville resident, has commissioned Community Arts and Empowerment to design and construct three free-standing stelae created by local artist Melissa Marzan, who was chosen by the donor. 

The design concepts were initially sent out to residents near the roundabout via fliers for community feedback. Of six initial designs, three were chosen by the community—a bear, rabbit and an egret.

Deputy City Manager and Parks Director Nick Calubaquib said construction and installation of these art pieces would be privately funded, while the cost of the footings would be the responsibility of the City.

The mosaic artwork includes abstract designs that reflect Native American or Filipino patterns, and feature animals that once lived in the region.

Each piece will be 72 inches across by 36 inches tall and 4 inches deep and will be fabricated at the Muzzio Mosaic Arts Center in Watsonville.

If approved, these three designs will advance to the construction phase with installation set for spring of 2027.

The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday agreed to postpone changes to how their salaries are determined, leaving the current system in place until a newly elected supervisor takes office in January.

The board voted 4-1, with Supervisor Manu Koenig dissenting, to table the issue until January, when Tony Nuñez is scheduled to take office as Fourth District supervisor.

The decision means supervisors’ salaries will remain tied to Superior Court judges’ pay, with supervisors receiving 62% of a judge’s salary.

The board on Aug. 11 voted 3-2 to begin moving away from that formula and directed county Human Resources Director Ajita Patel to return Tuesday with recommendations for a new compensation system.

Patel told the board that county supervisors’ compensation is approximately 12% below that of comparable counties. Staff compared Santa Cruz County with Contra Costa, Marin, Monterey, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma counties.

Staff also looked at the Consumer Price Index, which rose 3.8% from June 2025 to June 2026, and recent county labor agreements. Those contracts generally provide cost-of-living adjustments of 4% in each of the first two years and 3.5% in the third.
Patel recommended eliminating the link to judicial salaries and instead periodically reviewing factors such as salaries in comparable counties, inflation and compensation trends among county employees.

Supervisor Justin Cummings, who originally proposed reconsidering the system, said tying supervisors’ compensation to judges’ salaries—a practice with roots going back decades—does not reflect current economic realities.

“We live in one of the most expensive rental markets in the United States,” Cummings said. “And there are many other factors that impact our cost of living in Santa Cruz. My intent was to see if we could have a different process that would allow for our salaries to reflect the reality that we face living here in this community.”

But Cummings acknowledged the timing was difficult, coming shortly after the board placed a half-cent sales tax on the November ballot to address the county’s financial problems and amid concerns about the economy.

He moved to postpone the discussion until January, allowing Nuñez to participate and giving the board a fresh look at the issue.

By then, the county should also know whether state lawmakers approved an increase for judges. Any corresponding increase for supervisors under the existing formula would still require board approval.

Koenig, who previously opposed separating supervisors’ salaries from judges’ pay, said he favored keeping the existing system without changes.

Supervisor Kim De Serpa, who also opposed the Aug. 11 proposal, reiterated concerns about supervisors approving raises while asking taxpayers for additional revenue.

“We ran for office because we wanted to serve the public,” she said. “This is not a moneymaking situation, and our salary is adequate.”

De Serpa said supervisors work hard but that the county’s financial situation makes considering their own raises problematic.

“We’re in a budget crisis, we’re going out for a half-cent sales tax, we are trying to make a case to the public about why that is so important,” she said. “And sitting up here and voting ourselves a raise—it’s not a good look, it’s not good optics, it’s not a good thing to do.”

Three candidates with markedly different professional backgrounds are vying for the Trustee Area 1 seat on the Pajaro Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees in the Nov. 3 election.

College admissions counselor Meilin Obinata, general contractor Robin Sukow and retired educator Andrew Goldenkranz are seeking to replace Trustee Joy Flynn, who is not running for reelection. Area 1 covers Corralitos and more than half of the Aptos area.

The winner will join a board confronting ongoing financial challenges, contentious labor negotiations and discussions about possible school closures, while also dealing with divisions among trustees that have frequently spilled into public meetings.

All three candidates said the board needs to improve how it conducts business, but they differ considerably in the experience and priorities they would bring to the position.

Meilin Obinata

Meilin Obinata (Todd Guild)

Obinata said her candidacy is rooted in her own experience in PVUSD schools, where she attended Mar Vista Elementary, Aptos Junior High and Aptos High School before earning a mathematics degree from UC Santa Cruz and a law degree from Mitchell Hamline School of Law.

“This is my school district,” she said. “I feel very strongly about education.”

Obinata, who does not practice law, said her own education was possible because of local public schools and described it as a gift she wants to help preserve for future students.

She has worked as a college admissions counselor for 14 years and has helped students ranging from those struggling with failing grades to those applying to some of the nation’s most selective universities. She has also volunteered with students with reading difficulties and those with individualized education programs and 504 plans.

Obinata said one of her biggest priorities would be pushing PVUSD to develop a long-term strategic plan that could guide its spending and other decisions.

With the district facing difficult financial choices, she said trustees should first establish clear goals and then determine where limited resources should go.

“If you don’t have a plan, it’s really hard to make decisions about money except for reacting to certain phenomena,” she said.

Obinata also called for making district financial information easier for the public to find and understand. Disagreements over finances, she said, become more difficult when trustees, employees and the community do not begin with the same information.
She said her experience as a civil rights investigator and mediator could also be useful on a board that has struggled with internal conflict. In that work, she investigated complaints and helped people on opposing sides of contentious cases reach compromises.

Obinata said disagreement itself is not a problem, but trustees need to identify areas where they agree and build from there.

“What is important is for people to be able to just get work done,” she said. “Are we problem-solving so that we can get work done?”

Robin Sukow

Robin Sukow (Contributed)

Sukow, 79, said he is running as a concerned Aptos resident, businessman and parent who wants the district to put greater emphasis on basic academic skills.

Both of his sons attended Valencia Elementary, Aptos Junior High and Aptos High School, and he now has grandchildren approaching school age.
Sukow is a general contractor and is semi-retired from Paradigm Builders, a third-generation local business. He said that experience has taught him to work within budgets and make pragmatic decisions.

He described himself as “old school” and said schools should concentrate on making sure students can read, write, communicate and perform at grade level.

“I believe that a lot of the social issues that we deal with at school interfere with the educational process when it comes to learning the basics,” he said.

Sukow said many cultural and social issues should primarily be handled by families rather than schools. He cited proposed state legislation involving condom access for students and a new state recognition of Diwali—the Hindu festival of lights—as examples of issues that concern him.

Sukow characterized the Diwali law as requiring schools to close and develop curriculum around the holiday. The law, which took effect this year, instead allows school districts to close for Diwali if the governing board and employee groups agree and permits—but does not require—schools to hold activities recognizing the holiday.

He also cited Senate Bill 608. The legislation, still pending in the Assembly, would require schools to allow condoms to be made available to students in grades 7-12 through specified health and educational programs and would prevent school-based health centers from being prohibited from making condoms accessible to those students.

Sukow said his larger concern is keeping schools focused on academics.

He pointed to student performance on state assessments as evidence that PVUSD needs to improve and said graduates should leave high school prepared for college without requiring remedial classes.

But Sukow said college should not be the district’s only goal.

As a longtime tradesman, he strongly supports career technical education and said schools should expand opportunities for students interested in construction, automotive work and other trades.

“Having our students capable of going to college if that’s what they want, but also capable of going into the trades,” he said.

Sukow also criticized the conduct he has witnessed at board meetings, including interruptions and off-microphone comments.

“There’s an incredible lack of decorum,” he said, adding that he hopes to bring a “non-emotional influence” to the board.

Andrew Goldenkranz

Andrew Goldenkrantz (Contributed)

Goldenkranz enters the race with 37 years in public education as a classroom teacher, administrator, teacher trainer and developer of school improvement programs.

He began his teaching career at E.A. Hall Middle School in Watsonville and later spent 10 years at Aptos High School. He subsequently worked in Santa Cruz County and Fremont Union High School District in Santa Clara County.

His campaign website says he has lived in Aptos since 1993, spent nine years working in PVUSD and is the parent of two district graduates.

Goldenkranz said his experience has taught him how to identify successful classroom practices and use data to improve student outcomes.

While working in PVUSD, he said, he helped rewrite standards and assessments for high school biology, reducing the rate of D and F grades from about 12% to 4%. He later participated in a similar effort in Cupertino that reduced the rate from about 9% to less than 2% in one cohort.

He attributed those improvements in part to project-based learning, meaningful assessments and allowing students to revise work rather than treating an initial failure as the final result.

“There was always a pathway to improvement,” he said.

Goldenkranz said PVUSD needs greater financial transparency, more attention to student achievement and improved relationships among trustees, employees and administrators.

He has watched several recent board meetings and said trustees are not always modeling the behavior expected from students.

“The adults in the system are not modeling the behavior that we expect to see from kids,” he said.

Goldenkranz suggested creating a board covenant or code of conduct governing interruptions, yelling and other behavior.

He also said district proposals should receive more public, employee and committee review before reaching trustees for a vote. Too often, he said, unfinished proposals reach the board and become bogged down in lengthy debate.

Goldenkranz said the district must also confront its financial problems with greater transparency, including involving employee unions earlier in discussions.

He said discussions about potentially closing schools should focus not simply on cutting costs, but on what educational opportunities could be created through restructuring. Simply moving teachers and students from one campus to another, he said, would not necessarily produce significant savings without a plan for the vacated property.

He also criticized what he described as PVUSD’s reliance on outside consultants, saying the district should develop expertise among its own employees whenever possible.

“A strong school, a strong district builds a strong team on the inside and can therefore rely less on external help,” he said.

Goldenkranz said his campaign ultimately centers on rebuilding trust, improving transparency and keeping the district focused on students—priorities also listed on his campaign website.

“Kids are going to learn something every day,” he said. “The question is, are they going to learn what you’re trying to teach them?”

“Better teamwork, better transparency, stay positive,” he added. “I think that’s how we can make real progress.”

The Australian city of Perth is by some measures the world’s most isolated major metropolis, but is still sufficiently connected to US law enforcement authorities that the FBI was able to help Australia’s Federal Police (AFP) to find two men they believe were the masterminds of TeamPCP, a cybercrime crew that conducted prominent supply chain attacks. According to the AFP, two men aged 21 and 23 arrested on Wednesday “were principal participants in the activities of the cybercrime syndicate and received payments in cryptocurrency for their roles in the illegal activity.” An FBI Facebook post names one of the arrested men as Ruben Thomson and describes him as “the alleged leader of the cybercriminal group TeamPCP.” Australian media named the second man as 23-year-old Louis Michael Gaebler. Investigations into the pair started in April 2026, after Australian authorities and the FBI “received information from multiple cyber threat assessment companies regarding a syndicate that allegedly inserted malicious code into software available on an open-source repository, which was then unwittingly used by other developers.” Researchers detected some of those activities before April: In March, we reported that researchers spotted a supply chain attack on the open source scanner Trivy. Another of TeamPCP’s attacks was the Shai-Hulud worm, which attacks npm packages, tries to infect them and goes looking for credentials to major public clouds or services like GitHub. If the worm burrowed into its targets, it would either try to replicate to continue its attacks, or wipe the environment out of spite. The AFP’s “We cuffed ‘em!” announcement estimates that TeamPCP’s supply chain attacks “potentially compromised more than 1000 organisations globally, enabling the theft of more than 500,000 credentials, and the exfiltration of at least 300 gigabytes of data.” Australia’s Feds estimate “the financial impact includes global remediation costs estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars.” As is often the case in such matters, the arrested men were found with electronic devices and other items which authorities seized. “A large volume of data seized is being forensically examined and the investigation remains ongoing,” the AFP wrote, adding “Further arrests and charges have not been ruled out.” Indeed, the Feds note that they arrested the two at different locations in the suburbs of Perth and searched a third property nearby. ® Bootnote: Perth is considered the site of the original “Black Swan” event, as swans there – and across much of Australia – are black. Early European explorers who explored Australia's west coast were astounded when they saw the black birds, as the “fact” that all swans are white was at the time a metaphor for the existence of absolute truths.

A boutique StrictlyVC evening returns to New York's West Village on September 10 with Keith Rabois, Craig Shapiro, Jason Levien, Tristan Walker, Brynn Putnam, and Deven Parekh — covering AI, sports investing, community-building, venture economics, and politics, with cocktails, food, and networking throughout the night.

⚡ Quick Take

• Toho and GKIDS unveiled a “Behind the Camera” featurette for the upcoming global event that will be Godzilla Minus Zero.
• The featurette shows the huge sets and props for the movie.
• We also learn it’s the first Japanese production filmed for IMAX.
• Nerdist take: If it’s anywhere as good as the previous movie, it’ll be one of the best kaiju films ever made.

When your movie makes a huge impact and even wins and Oscar, you get a lot more leeway for the follow-up. When writer-director-vfx wizard Takashi Yamazaki and his exceptional team made Godzilla Minus One for release in 2023, that’s exactly what happened. Global hit, one of the biggest for a Japanese movie in years, and an Oscar win for Best Visual Effects. So, naturally, Toho wanted to keep that going, with an even bigger budget this time around for Godzilla Minus Zero. Check out a behind-the-scenes look at the production of the movie in the video below.

In the featurette, “Behind the Camera,” Yamazaki and crew show off the elaborate sets (complete with tons of rubble) and massive props in Godzilla Minus Zero. It’s also bigger in another way; this is the first Japanese production filmed for IMAX. The enormity of the frame might be the only thing which can contain Godzilla himself.

The official synopsis for the movie is as follows:

War reduced Japan to zero, and Godzilla plunged it into minus. Two years have passed since then, and the country has faced agonizing struggles to achieve recovery and finally reclaim its daily life. Just as humanity managed to cling to a hard-won peace, a new threat strikes, crushing hope in an instant. There is no third time. Everything ends here.

Godzilla Official by Toho

While it makes for a good tagline, we’d imagine if this movie is another global hit, everything will not “end here.” What’re they gonna just leave Godzilla alone after he’s everyone’s favorite guy again? I don’t think so! But, we’ll find out when Godzilla stomps his way back to theaters later this year. Godzilla Minus Zero will debut in Japan on November 3, the anniversary of the original 1954 film’s release. It will then open in North America on November 6.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.

The post GODZILLA MINUS ZERO Shares Behind-the-Scenes Video appeared first on Nerdist.

Anthropic on Thursday teased a protocol for allowing AI agents "to safely operate physical devices," a somewhat optimistic ambition given it cannot reliably anticipate how its models behave. The as-yet-unpublished protocol, dubbed the Model Hardware Standard (MHS), is similar in concept to the Model Context Protocol (MCP), a way for AI models to connect to data sources. Anthropic intends for MHS to allow Claude or other models to drive the hardware used in laboratories, factories, and robots. Supopse you are an Iranian research scientist setting up a network of centrifuges to enrich uranium. You might look at how your machinery spun out of control in 2010 and think: "Maybe if we use an AI model and MHS, we could avoid that sort of mishap next time." MHS, however, is being battle-tested in quieter regions of the world, specifically at Howard Hughes Medical Institute's (HHMI) Janelia Research Campus in Maryland. And now other entities with suitable laboratory and industrial equipment can apply to join the research preview. "It typically takes a lab or manufacturing facility weeks, if not months, to set up and integrate their hardware," Anthropic explained in its post. "Most devices don’t communicate with each other, instead requiring specialists to build bespoke integrations. MHS reduces this integration work to hours or minutes." Linking hardware to an AI model requires a programmable interface. Many industrial machines offer one to expose relevant controls and data — but the ecosystem of such devices is very diverse and it is not easy for developers to make a hookup. MHS aspires to be a universal translation layer. The MHS driver software uses a limited set of primitives, such as "read" and "write," an approach similar to the way a few simple tools like Bash can be used to power AI agents. The driver makes connected devices discoverable in a standard format. It also supports tags that convey information about device functions, and lets users provide that data by conversing with the model during setup. The tags let the driver produce a reference file detailing device characteristics. AI agents can use MHS to interact with devices using three control paths: MCP, the command line interface, and API code. They can carry out commands on connected instruments, monitor test results, or tweak knobs and dials. According to Anthropic, biotechnology company Genentech has used MHS to run a drug-discovery experiment with real-time error handling. Quantum computing outfit QuEra is another user, and applied MHS to improve laser stabilization for its machines from 58 percent to 99.3 percent. The possibilities already have partners salivating. AWS is planning to support MHS through its Strands Robots library. Automata expects to add MHS to its LINQ lab automation platform. And similar support is planned by the likes of Danaher, Doosan Robotics, MBF Bioscience, Qiagen, Tecan, and Universal Robotics. "There’s more to learn before we open source MHS," Anthropic said. "LLMs still lack physical intuition, having learned about the physical world from text and images. The research preview will let us build more safety evaluations and strengthen protections for using AI in the physical world." Let the experiments begin. ®

⚡ Quick Take

• Rockstar Games dropped a 30-minute gameplay preview for Grand Theft Auto VI on Netflix.
• This is the most we’ve seen of GTA VI yet, which will come out November 19.
• The preview showcased several scenes of violence, car chases, and the game’s gorgeous vistas.
• Nerdist take: While games rarely look as beautiful and realistic, the gameplay looks like it’s still back in 2013.

The amount of things that have happened in our lives since the last Grand Theft Auto game could fill an encyclopedia. People having their mitzvahs, both bar and bat, this year were only just born when the last game dropped. And while I certainly would have enjoyed the jokes about getting such-and-such before GTA VI forever, eventually the game has to come out. Ahead of the November launch of the game, Rockstar released an extended, almost-30-minute gameplay preview. First on Netflix but later tonight on YouTube. Two things are true: It’s the best looking graphics we’ve maybe ever seen, and it doesn’t look like any of the basics of GTA have changed.

In the GTA VI footage, we see several scenes and set pieces for our protagonist couple. Jason Duval is a former Army soldier who now works for drug runners in Vice City, and Lucia Caminos, an ex-con an former freedom fighter from Liberty City. Between the two, we learn of a citywide conspiracy of corruption and criminality. The opening salvo of the footage shows Jason and Lucia going into a drug den to pick up a package for someone named Boobie and ultimately having to shoot their way out when the cops show up.

Rockstar Games

As you’d expect, this scene, like most we see in the footage, is intensely violent. Headshots aplenty and a body count in the high dozens. But as we continue the footage, we see it’s kind of all as you’d expect. The game footage—captured on a base level PS5—looks incredible. The graphical fidelity, the lighting, the scenery, the car physics. The performance capture and voice acting—you can hear both Stephen Root and Bobby Moynihan—are all top notch. That said, in 13 years, we haven’t advanced beyond basic cover shooting and car chases?

RELATED ARTICLE

GRAND THEFT AUTO VI Sets June Pre-Order Date, Will Release in November 2026

For some, it’s possible the incredible visuals and story might be enough, but I’ll personally need to see that people say after playing the whole thing before dropping $79.99.

Grand Theft Auto VI drops on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X on November 19.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.

The post GTA VI Extended Look Offers the Best Looking Wanton Violence Ever appeared first on Nerdist.

The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for Santa Cruz County and much of California’s Central Coast due to a 20% to 30% chance of thunderstorms from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday. 

The forecast includes isolated lightning strikes, light precipitation and wind gusts of up to 40 to 50 mph. A red flag warning means that critical fire weather conditions are either occurring now or will shortly.

The affected areas include the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Salinas and Carmel valleys and the Hollister area, Monterey Bay and the Big Sur coast, interior Monterey County and the Santa Lucia range.

Lightning strikes could result in fires and the forecast winds could cause rapid fire spread. The National Weather Service also warns of an increased risk for power outages as the winds could bring tree limbs down onto power lines. 

Rainfall amounts are expected to remain below 0.15 inches. 

Santa Cruz County officials urge residents to use extra caution, prepare for an emergency and, in the case of fires, to report them immediately by calling 911. Information on power outages are available at pge.com/outages. 

Have news that should be in Lookout Briefs? Send your news releases, including contact information, to news@lookoutlocal.com.

MORE LOCAL COVERAGE

The post Central Coast issued red flag warning Friday with thunderstorms, lightning in forecast appeared first on Lookout Santa Cruz.

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, the AI Stage is back to dig into the single hottest topic in the community for the past few years, presented by Google for Startups.

Brandon Diniz, president of the Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers, speaks to the Board of Trustees in October 2025. (Amaya Edwards — Santa Cruz Local/CatchLight Local file)

WATSONVILLE >> After 11 months of negotiations, Pajaro Valley Unified School District leaders and the teachers union reached a tentative agreement on a new employment contract, the district and the union announced Thursday.

The agreement between PVUSD and the Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers comes after months of disagreements over benefits, pay and workloads for teachers — and could bring an end to a period of uncertainty for the district.

The agreement maintains health benefits, includes a 4% increase in the pay scale and adds measures to ease teachers’ workloads and class sizes, according to the union.

“This agreement reflects our members’ desire to keep our current benefits structure unchanged, put money into the pay scale, and create better working conditions that put students first,” PVFT President Brandon Diniz wrote in a statement.

The union highlighted several specific points in the tentative agreement, including more instructional assistants in kindergarten, dedicated time for special education teachers to handle paperwork, and the restoration of a $250 stipend to Palace Art & Office Supply for all teachers.

“Reaching this agreement required hard work, open dialogue, and meaningful compromise from both sides of the table,” Superintendent Heather Contreras wrote in a statement on Thursday, August 27. “This milestone allows our entire educational community to refocus our collective energy where it matters most: on supporting our students and improving outcomes in every classroom.”

The tentative agreement must now be adopted by PVFT members and approved by the PVUSD Board of Trustees.

(function() { window.mc4wp = window.mc4wp || { listeners: [], forms: { on: function(evt, cb) { window.mc4wp.listeners.push( { event : evt, callback: cb } ); } } } })(); Stay informed on Santa Cruz County’s biggest issues. Santa Cruz Local’s newsletter breaks down complex local topics and shows residents how to get involved. Email address:
mc4wp.forms.on('subscribed', function(form) { // gtag.js if(form.id == '6954') { gtag('event', 'subscribe', {'event_category': 'newsletter_prompt', 'event_label':'top_of_story'}); } }); Leave this field empty if you're human: Smaller kindergarten class sizes

One of the achievements PVFT considers a success is the return of instructional assistants to kindergarten classrooms.

For Edith Ruiz, a bilingual kindergarten teacher at Landmark Elementary School and PVFT treasurer, that support is important for both teachers and students.

Ruiz has worked in the district since 2004 and is about to begin her 23rd year at Landmark Elementary. During an interview with Noticias Watsonville, she said that staff cuts have left teachers with less support to meet students’ needs.

“Students aren’t receiving the support they need, and classrooms are less safe,” Ruiz said. Some kindergarten classes have 26 or 28 students, she said, many more than is ideal.

The current contract sets a maximum of 24 students for kindergarten, Ruiz said, but the specific details of the new agreement and how student limits will be enforced still needs to be ironed out after the contract is ratified.

Months of negotiations

Negotiations between PVUSD and PVFT lasted nearly a year before reaching an impasse and entering the fact-finding process.

For Ruiz, the process was frustrating.

“Basically, they dragged us along for many months. That’s very frustrating as a teacher,” she said.

The district, for its part, described the agreement as the result of months of negotiations and compromise on both sides.

The tentative agreement will first be presented to PVFT members for ratification and then to the PVUSD Board of Trustees for final approval.

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The post PVUSD and teachers union reach tentative agreement after 11 months of negotiations appeared first on Santa Cruz Local.

It is both staggering and utterly unsurprising to get proof positive that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. bald-faced lied to the Senate during his confirmation hearing. Honestly, with this administration, not lying is probably a rarer occurrence, but nonetheless. The Guardian and The Associated Press got their mitts on letters proving that Kennedy’s claim that a…

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A cartoon by Pedro Molina. Related | ICE finds heinous new way to spend millions and terrorize people…

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Shots were fired at the Hot Chips conference in California this week as Nvidia announced its new Groq-3-based LPX racks had entered production, with early tests showing the systems churning an eye-watering 3,400 tokens a second in Gemma 4 31B. That's four times faster than rival Cerebras. A day later, Cerebras fired back, touting nearly equivalent performance from its next-gen CS-4 accelerators revealed last week. These top-line performance figures make inference feel instantaneous relative to the chatbots we've grown accustomed to over the past four years. But the two companies are essentially arguing over numbers their customers will probably never see in production. To be clear, neither is lying. If you wanted to recreate these results, you certainly could — Artificial Analysis, the team responsible for both sets of benchmarks, knows what they're doing — but beyond a marketing gimmick, no inference-as-a-service model operator in their right mind would run either system this way. Not unless you've somehow figured out how to make a profit serving one request at a time. In reality, these numbers are more like the top speed on a race car. It makes for great marketing but you probably aren't driving that fast on a regular basis, and if you did, you wouldn't get very far before your tank runs dry. These aren't the numbers that matter Unsurprisingly, the economics of "premium" or "ultra-low latency" inference are a bit more nuanced, but ultimately come down to how efficiently you can scale that performance at the rightmost end of the Pareto frontier. We've shown the graphic below before. It charts the performance characteristics of how different Nvidia B300 configurations perform across a Pareto front. As you can see, GPUs are great for high-throughput, low-interactivity applications, but run out of steam quite quickly as per-user generation rates climb. Chips like Nvidia's Groq-3 LPUs or Cerebras' dinner plate-sized accelerators offer massive bandwidth thanks to their SRAM-heavy architectures, so they can extend and push the Pareto curve out to the right. Unfortunately, the same thing that makes them so fast also limits their ability to scale that performance to large numbers of users. To understand why we need to walk through a little math. We're going to pick on Gemma 4 31B, in part because we have rough numbers for both Nvidia and Cerebras, but also because it's a small model and therefore presents a best-case scenario. Each Groq-3 accelerator is equipped with 500 MB of on-chip memory capacity. Nvidia achieved its 3,400 tok/s per user run at 8-bit precision. So to run a 31 billion-parameter model, we need about 31 GB of memory or about 64 LPUs. But that's just to hold the model's weights. Since it's running as a standalone system, we also have to account for the KV caches generated during the prefill stage in which the prompt is processed. According to LMcache's KV calculator, at 8-bit precision, a 100,000-token input sequence is going to chew up another 8 GB of memory, and that's per sequence. So for every additional 100,000 token input, that's another 16 LPUs worth of memory. By our estimate, that means the most a single LPX rack with its 256 LPUs can manage on its own before running out of memory is a batch size of 12 at a 100,000 token input length each. The numbers look a little different for Cerebras' CS4, but the conclusion is largely unchanged. Each CS4 rack contains three massive WSE-3T accelerators with 44 GB of SRAM apiece, totaling 132 GB of capacity. That leaves the system a bit more headroom, but we're still looking at a maximum batch size of 12. To be clear, that's not a compute limitation. The systems simply don't have enough memory to support larger batches without adding additional racks or cutting the prompt size. Sure, we're oversimplifying a bit. We're assuming batch inference with fixed input sequences, not concurrent users hitting the systems asynchronously, and with different input and output sequences each time. For a chatbot, especially one with a limited context window — think the model's short term memory — a single CS4 or LPX rack could conceivably serve far more users than the 12 noted here. Lifting the curve Even if both systems can hit 3,400 tok/s, the better platform is going to be the one that delivers better scale at a lower cost and power consumption. The benchmark figures touted by Nvidia and Cerebras this week are really measuring the top speed the systems could run on, not the speed customers will actually run them. In fact, customers probably won’t run these systems on their own. These SRAM-heavy architectures work a lot better as decode accelerators, which is exactly why Nvidia spent $20B to license Groq's tech and poach its engineering team. It's also why Cerebras recently teamed up with AWS and AMD. We've discussed these kinds of heterogeneous compute architectures in the past, but in a nutshell they involve GPUs or other compute heavy XPUs, like Amazon's Trainium chips, with something like Groq's LPUs, Cerebras' waferscale accelerators, or SambaNova's SN-series parts. This combination largely eliminates, or at least minimizes, the KV cache and compute overheads that made scaling Cerebras' and Groq's chips so difficult. As decode accelerators, they only really need to hold the model weights, as almost everything else can get on just fine on a GPU. Again, top line AI performance makes for great headlines, but the far right of the Pareto is rarely where you'll want to be. As is usually the case with Pareto curves, the sweet spot usually presents itself as a notable hump or knee pushing toward the upper right corner of the chart. Here you'll be trading some per-user interactivity for better concurrency, throughput, and economics. Combining GPUs with Cerebras or Groq accelerators is what Nvidia, AMD, and AWS are all counting on to make "premium inference" cost-effective. There's a better benchmark for this We've yet to see benchmarks combining Cerebras' or Groq's chips with Nvidia, AMD, or AWS' respective GPUs and XPU platforms, but these are the metrics that are actually going to matter. SemiAnalysis' InferenceX offers a better representation of whether or not adding a CS4 or LPX rack would even help, as we can see exactly how each system performs across the full Pareto, ranging from high-volume low-interactivity "bulk" tokens on the left, to ultra-low-latency but also lower-volume tokens on the right. In fact, while Nvidia and Cerebras opted for Artificial Analysis' simpler test methodology, OpenAI actually opted for InferenceX to show how its spicy new Jalapeño accelerators perform across bulk and premium inference regimes. So why didn't Nvidia and Cerebras do the same? If we had to guess, it's because their LPX and CS4 racks are still best suited toward low-latency inference and wouldn't look as impressive on the left and middle sections of the Pareto curve. We fully expect that both companies will share InferenceX results for their combined GPU and LPX/CS4 systems when they're ready, but no marketer ever got a bonus for making their product look worse than it really is, so we'll just have to wait. In any case, the next time you see someone boasting of some impossibly fast inference accelerator, it's worth asking where on the Pareto that number came from. ®

The U.S. military is experiencing a “beyond critical” shortage of advanced missile interceptors in Europe largely driven by President Donald Trump’s war with Iran, a U.S. defense official in Europe and a NATO official told The Associated Press, raising concerns about vulnerabilities in NATO countries to a potential Russian attack. The U.S. defense official said the most concerning shortfall…

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⚡ Quick Take

• LEGO has revealed its latest deluxe Star Wars set, Darth Vader’s Super Star Destroyer Executor.
• This massive set is LEGO’s longest ever Star Wars build in size, and contains 6,130 separate pieces.
• Along with Darth Vader, this set comes with 6 bounty hunter minfigures.
• Nerdist’s take: This LEGO build ranks alongside the Death Star among the best Star Wars sets ever.

The Star Wars franchise is no stranger to amazing and iconic spaceships. Sure, the good guys might have the best ones, as it’s hard to beat the Millennium Falcon and the X-Wings. But those Imperials are no slouches when it comes to cool ships. Case in point, Darth Vader’s flagship, the Super Star Destroyer Executor, which debuted in The Empire Strikes Back. Now, that iconic starship has earned the honor of being LEGO’s longest Star Wars brick-built model released so far, measuring over 53.5 inches (136 cm) in length. And just try to get John Williams’ “Imperial March” out of your head as you gaze upon this bad boy. We know we can’t! You can check out several images of the new 6,130-piece LEGO Star Wars Super Star Destroyer build down below in our gallery.

LEGO Star Wars Executor Super Star Destroyer Click To View Gallery The LEGO Group/Lucasfilm Lucasfilm/The LEGO Group The LEGO Group/Lucasfilm Lucasfilm/The LEGO Group The LEGO Group/Lucasfilm Lucasfilm/The LEGO Group The LEGO Group/Lucasfilm Lucasfilm/The LEGO Group The LEGO Group/Lucasfilm Lucasfilm/The LEGO Group The LEGO Group/Lucasfilm Lucasfilm/The LEGO Group The LEGO Group/Lucasfilm Lucasfilm/The LEGO Group

The LEGO Star Wars Executor set comes with a few smaller ships for scale, including a standard Imperial Star Destroyer. In The Empire Strikes Back, George Lucas used the standard Star Destroyer, which seemed so huge to audiences in A New Hope, to show the sheer scale of the new model. Also included in this build is an even smaller Millennium Falcon, attached to the Super Star Destroyer’s rear. This, of course, echoes Han Solo’s maneuver as he attached the Falcon to the Executor to evade their detection. After which he then floated away “with the rest of the garbage” when they dumped their trash into space.

The LEGO Group

Of course, no LEGO set is complete without some minifigures. And it comes with all six bounty hunters from Empire; Boba Fett, Dengar, Bossk, IG-88, 4-LOM, and Zuckuss. And, of course, Darth Vader. This new set represents the first time LEGO has released all of these characters together as minifigures. Sadly, this one doesn’t come with the string of terrified Imperial officers Vader terrorizes throughout the film. No dead Admiral Ozzel or Captain Needa, or always fretting Admiral Piett. We’ll leave them to the LEGO customizers. The Super Star Destroyer Executor will become available for purchase for $799.99, starting October 1 via LEGO Stores and LEGO.com/Star-Wars.

Eric Diaz is a staff writer at Nerdist and a Swiss Army knife of fandoms. Eric loves DC, Marvel, horror movies, and even Star Wars and Star Trek equally.

The post LEGO Reveals Massive STAR WARS Super Star Destroyer Set appeared first on Nerdist.

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