Sep 6, 2026 · 3 min listen · Last updated September 6, 2026
From storyflo. This is your daily audio brief. Hey, it's Theo. September 6th. Here are five stories I'd flag if you missed yesterday's end-of-day. Let's get into it. First, from Hackaday. There’s Whole Computer Inside This Mouse. Specifically, he starts with a Galaxy S21 5G.
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Daily Tech Brief · September 6th
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There’s Whole Computer Inside This Mouse
Specifically, he starts with a Galaxy S21 5G. Starting with a Samsung means he can leave the stock Android alone and just take advantage of Samsung’s DeX desktop mode, rather than layer a Linux environment on top or replace the operating system entirely with something like Postmarket OS, which are both viable options. With the battery compartment removed, the phone guts fit with shocking ease in the once-wireless mouse. Of course that’s not a great thermal environment, but that’s what the brass is for.
What’s actually different under the hood is how Astra treats a task as a little workflow instead of a single answer. After it spits out a response it can keep the session alive, launch a browser, click through a site, edit code, run tests, and iterate until the job feels done. In practice you hand it a repo or a spreadsheet and it manipulates the files directly, not just describing what to do.
The numbers back that up: on the OSWorld benchmark Astra hit 72.6 % versus 65.7 % for the previous model, and the average simulated task dropped from about 75 minutes to 40. It also crossed OpenAI’s “Critical” cybersecurity tier, meaning it can spot and chain together unknown vulnerabilities in hardened systems.
Bottom line for anyone who just wants to get stuff done: stop treating Astra like a Q&A bot and start giving it concrete jobs—test a website, fix a bug, polish a presentation—and watch it handle the whole process end‑to‑end.
The Innovative HP Computer Behind a Hedge Fund Pioneer
Edward O. Thorp is one of those people who really should be better known. His Wikipedia entry describes him as ‘an American mathematics professor, author, hedge fund manager, and blackjack researcher’ before elaborating that he ‘… pioneered the modern applications of probability theory, including the harnessing of very small correlations for reliable financial gain.’ In fact Thorp’s life has been much more eventful than that introduction would imply.
3 ways to stop hackers, Amazon’s scam checker & AI flight price alerts (190, September 5, 2026)
This is the commercial-free, higher-quality audio version of the podcast for VIP paid subscribers. Prefer to listen to the free version? Find it here. Driver’s license scans exposed: More than 153 million U.S. and Canadian ID records were reportedly offered on the dark web. Freeze your credit and consider an IRS Identity Protection PIN.
Hey, I just read about OpenAI’s new GPT‑6 Astra and how it’s trying to design PCBs directly in KiCad. The big surprise is that it can take a schematic and spit out a routed board, but the real test comes from the EEBench benchmark. GPT‑6 scores about 69%, similar to Claude Opus 5, and it’s faster and cheaper. Still, the results show it’s not a silver bullet for production; engineers still need to validate and tweak the designs. So it’s a neat shortcut for quick prototypes, but full‑scale manufacturing still needs human
How US Campaigns Are Already Using AI to Try to Sway Voters
39 U.S. congressional candidates "reported paying for an OpenAI subscription this election cycle," writes the Washington Post, citing campaign finance disclosures. This means the campaigns "are using the technology to court voters — despite limits imposed by leading AI companies to protect elections from the technology's risks." Two [candidates] said explicitly in filings that they had used the subscription for advertising, even though the company's policies prohibit candidates from using their tools to generate ads.