Tech:NYC Digest: October 30

Friday, October 30, 2026

Welcome to another Friday edition of the Tech:NYC Digest, featuring our favorite five highlights in New York and tech this week.

The numbers behind New York’s AI economy (Crain’s New York Business)

• AI skills are climbing NYC employers’ wish lists. New research from Tech:NYC and Accenture shows that job postings seeking AI or machine-learning skills nearly tripled over the past year. They now represent nearly 14% of all advertised jobs in the city, more than twice the national rate. 🤖

  • NYC is home to more than 2,000 venture-backed AI companies, which added an estimated 26,000 net jobs over the past year.

  • More than 90% of surveyed execs say their companies are at least experimenting with AI, while nearly half are scaling tools that have demonstrated measurable value.

The five-borough route: The beating heart of the New York Marathon (New York Times)

• Fifty years ago, closing NYC’s streets for a footrace sounded crazy. Today, the NYC Marathon draws 60,000 runners and more than 2 million spectators to a five-borough course first conceived for America’s 1976 bicentennial. 🗽🏃

  • That first citywide race drew roughly 2,000 entrants and helped inspire other major marathons, including London’s.

  • From route changes to expanded accessibility, the race has evolved with the city. Take a mile-by-mile video tour of the 26.2-mile course, from Staten Island to Central Park.

The only prescription for marathon watchers? More cowbell (New York Times)

• New York’s loudest Sunday is about to get even louder. As 60,000 runners hit the streets for this weekend’s NYC Marathon, spectators will be armed with the race’s unofficial instrument: the humble cowbell, whose relentless clanging has become as much a part of marathon culture as running shoes and energy gels. 🔔🏃

  • The tradition may have originated at European ski races a century ago, when spectators discovered that mittens weren’t particularly effective for clapping.

  • Today, cowbells are handed out by the thousands at major marathons because they’re cheap, reusable, and easy to operate with one hand.

Who chooses the poems for the New York City subway? (Literary Hub)

• Who picks the poems above your seat, betwixt the ads you read on repeat? 📖🚇

  • Since ’92 the MTA, and Poetry Society have brightened the way.

  • Through ten thousand books, staff search for a find: Twelve lines or fewer that linger in mind.

  • They favor uplifting verse, poets still here, with words to outlast the next “Stand clear.”

  • On thousands of posters and screens, poems ride — bringing a little reflection inside.

  • Most surveyed riders know them by sight (74%) — and plans to expand could bring more to light.

1,000-pound pumpkin draws gawkers to Park Slope for Halloween tradition (New York Post)

• You know we couldn’t leave you without a Halloween story. A Park Slope resident’s annual Halloween tradition has grown to enormous proportions, with a 960-pound pumpkin perched on his brownstone stoop drawing crowds of curious New Yorkers, schoolchildren, and good-luck seekers.

  • Local real estate broker Charlie Pigott has been displaying giant pumpkins for more than a decade, hauling this year’s monster from Pennsylvania and using a forklift to get it onto his stoop.

  • The tradition began with a modest 100-pound pumpkin Pigott discovered with his daughter, and he now dreams of growing ’em big enough to turn into boats for kids to race in Prospect Park Lake.

  • Gourd luck. 🎃

That’s all for this week. Catch a fright, cheer runners with all your might, and vote for what you think is right, New York! 👻🏃🗳️

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