Learn how to structure Python projects: pick between flat and src/ layouts, organize your code, and apply the patterns to CLI, web, and GUI apps.

— via Real Python

Amazon has bought DuckLabs, the company behind DuckDB, and says the database and its related projects will stay free and open source under the MIT licence. Creators Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt will keep leading the team and DuckDB's technical direction from inside AWS.

— via InfoQ, Gianmarco Nalin

Outside groups have spent more than $100 million on California legislative races this cycle, topping 2024. Two new tech-backed PACs, Grow California and California Leads, have spent over $20 million and close to $14 million, and the priciest race so far, a $5.6 million Democrat-versus-Democrat fight in Orange County, is where both are backing the same candidate.

— via LAist

Apple now explicitly requires apps to proactively prevent and remove AI-generated nonconsensual intimate imagery, and developers who skip safeguards or ignore notices risk removal. A new rule also targets bait-and-switch: apps that change after review face removal from the App Store and the Apple Developer Program.

— via Daring Fireball, John Gruber

California's Department of Justice says it won't charge the CHP officer who fired seven shots at Jesse Dominguez on the 105 Freeway in November 2023, citing insufficient evidence. The officer wore no body camera, and Dominguez's family's attorney says the shooting was unjustified and that Dominguez was having a mental breakdown.

— via Hoodline, Juliette Kessler

Denver gets four '90s-era rock shows next year: Nickelback and Staind at Ball Arena, the Goo Goo Dolls with Def Leppard, and Matchbox 20 at Red Rocks. Nickelback and Staind tickets are on sale now, and Matchbox 20's go on sale Friday, Oct. 23, at 10 a.m.

— via Westword, Dave Herrera

Intero Biosystems, a Denver startup growing 1mm human intestinal organoids to test how drugs affect the body before human trials, won the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Cup and $100,000. Apate, whose AI agents pose as scam victims to bait fraudsters, took runner-up.

— via TechCrunch, Sean O'Kane

Premiums on New Jersey's ACA marketplace will rise an average of 20% for 2027, with UnitedHealthcare's average increase topping out at 35.7%. About 8 in 10 residents will still get some federal or state help, but the state's acting insurance commissioner warns the jump will push more people to drop coverage.

— via WHYY, Nicole Leonard

Republicans under 35 rate China and Russia roughly 10 points warmer than Republicans 50 and older, a gap wider than anything splitting young and old Democrats. Pew's new breakdown shows GOP generational divides on NATO, Israel and enemy nations that cut deeper than party lines alone suggest.

— via Pew Research, Beshay Sakla

Seattle and King County now owe at least $16.7 million to cover unreported overspending at the Regional Homelessness Authority, a new consultant report finds. The agency's own cash advances didn't fix its negative balance, and officials say repayment will take years.

— via PubliCola, ericacbarnett

AWS drops a 2-billion-parameter model that picks answers instead of writing them, clocking roughly 115 milliseconds on a desktop GPU, plus a sandbox that polices agent actions by content and history rather than prompt instructions alone.

— via InfoQ, Daniel Dominguez

Portland has three big haunted attractions this October, and one of them turns Oaks Park into a haunted fairground complete with a castle full of mad monarchs and raging dragons. Another packs five sequential themed areas, from alien sci-fi to a Texas Chain Saw-style cannibal farm, though its animatronics sometimes upstage the live actors.

— via Portland Mercury, Joe Streckert

New York cut how long neglect offenders stay on the state child abuse registry from up to 28 years to eight, applied it retroactively, and raised the burden of proof for adding names. This opinion column argues those changes, plus a ban on anonymous hotline reports, helped drive a surge in abuse cases at city daycares.

— via NY Post, Naomi Schaefer Riley

A Miami gallery owner got nearly four years in federal prison and must repay almost $2.6 million for passing off fake Andy Warhols as originals bought straight from the Warhol Foundation. Prosecutors say a conspirator posing as an auction-house employee falsely authenticated the forgeries, and fake invoices backed up the story.

— via NY Post, Associated Press

An EKOS poll finds 51% of the most disinformed Canadians support secession, against 7% of the most informed. Overall national support is 16%, and 29% in Alberta, where a referendum is coming.

— via CultMTL, Matthew Renfrew

Prosecutors say Moises Freire, 19, told two FIT students in their Chelsea dorm he was bringing cocaine, though he'd texted a friend a week earlier that the fentanyl he gave them was like "poison." Annabel Richter, 21, died after he allegedly raped her while she was unconscious and waited 45 minutes to call campus security.

— via NY Post, Tina Moore, Adry Torres, Sonya Gugliara

A Montreal police officer is suspended after deliberately urinating on a homeless man in the street, and the SPVM is now probing other alleged "inappropriate urination" incidents by the same officer. A second Station 21 officer was also suspended for mocking a suspect in a "humiliating position" during an arrest.

— via CultMTL, Lorraine Carpenter

At Paradise Lost in the East Village, October is "easily our busiest time of year," with a long weekend wait list for a tiki-horror menu that adds eight Halloween-only cocktails to its 25. Miracle Inc. is turning 40 bars across the US into Halloween pop-ups this year, including two Haunting concepts in NYC.

— via NY Post, Rob LeDonne

Vegan Van, a Westword favorite since its 2013 food truck days, has opened a brick-and-mortar spot at 1490 Eudora St. on Colfax after closing its Park Hill kitchen on Oct. 11. Parlor Doughnuts on Lincoln is closed for good, its owner says, because an apartment project's shifting timeline made it impossible to plan.

— via Westword, Antony Bruno

A Pittsburgh couple who ran a restaurant and deli bought discounted EBT cards from benefit recipients and used them in 834 transactions to stock their businesses, siphoning more than $178,000. They each got seven years of probation, the first year under electronic monitoring, plus restitution.

— via Hoodline, Hannah Wilson

A community board committee voted to back renovating Tompkins Square Park's entire fitness area, including the beloved steel pull-up bars, despite a petition with more than 2,600 signatures urging the city not to "fix" what isn't broken. The roughly $10 million project, which the parks department says would take 18 months, now goes to the full board.

— via Gothamist, Willow Higgins

The Rockies went 58–104 in 2026 and still drew more than 2.2 million fans to Coors Field, a ballpark that opened in 1995. Two authors who helped bring baseball to Colorado say that staying power should shape how Denver plans a wave of new stadiums, starting with the Broncos' replacement for a venue that opened in 2001.

— via Westword, Kathi Williams