News without the noise
Technology news: AI, chips and devices, programming, security, crypto and the companies building them.
2301 articles · page 16 of 48 · The Tech front page
Eight US states filed lawsuits against OpenAI on Wednesday, alleging that its ChatGPT chatbot is an unsafe product that has harmed children and deceived parents. Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho and Montana each brought suit in their own state courts, adding to mounting legal pressure on the artificial intelligence company over its safety practices.
· 3 sourcesAfter a stretch in which Anthropic and OpenAI appeared to have the AI race to themselves, Google and Meta have both unveiled frontier models they claim can compete with the best from their rivals, reopening a contest that had looked all but settled days ago.
Security startup Xbow, using OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol model, chained three Chrome zero-day vulnerabilities into a full exploit that escapes the browser's sandbox on Windows, potentially affecting one billion users. Google patched the flaws and paid a $250,000 bounty, the company's top reward for a full-chain Chrome exploit.
Richard 'Levelord' Gray, the prolific first-person shooter level designer whose work on Duke Nukem 3D and Blood helped define the golden age of PC gaming, died on Monday at the age of 68. Reports shared on social media by Apogee Entertainment and former colleague Joe Siegler confirmed his death after a long battle with cancer.
The US Department of Justice has disrupted a North Korean remote IT worker scheme by arresting two American facilitators, charging 14 individuals, and seizing nearly 187 laptops from so-called 'laptop farms' in Texas. The operation, codenamed Lonestar Roundup, targeted the Famous Chollima threat group (also known as WageMole), which uses stolen identities to place North Korean IT workers at companies worldwide and generate revenue for the DPRK regime.
Apate, an Australian startup founded in 2024 on research from Macquarie University in Sydney, is deploying thousands of AI agents that pose as potential scam victims to waste fraudsters' time and gather actionable intelligence. The company says its undercover agents have already occupied 17 years' worth of scammers' time across 2.5 million conversations, feeding data to banks, telecom companies, government agencies and utilities to inform their anti-fraud measures.
· 3 sourcesYouTube Music announced on Wednesday a new labeling system to help listeners identify songs created with generative AI, including AI-composed tracks and AI-generated vocals. The labels will appear on the player page and will also extend to the main YouTube app, with partners able to declare their work as Fully Gen AI, Partly Gen AI or No Gen AI.
· 3 sourcesThe Australian government has introduced legislation to parliament that would force social media platforms to allow users to turn off algorithmic recommendations, opting instead to see only posts from accounts they follow. The bill, part of a broader digital duty of care package, aims to protect vulnerable users from harmful content promoted by recommender systems.
· 3 sourcesThe Brooklyn District Attorney's Office and the FBI have dismantled the online infrastructure of a multinational cryptocurrency fraud ring that preyed on Russian-speaking Americans, seizing 112 servers and shutting down 241 websites. Prosecutors say the network stole tens of millions of dollars from victims before attempting to defraud them again with phony asset recovery offers.
· 4 sourcesBank of America CEO Brian Moynihan revealed that the bank hired 1,000 external contractors in the second quarter to patch software vulnerabilities exposed by advanced AI models including Anthropic's Mythos, as the lender spent 'a couple hundred million plus' on software remediation and anti-money laundering compliance in the third quarter.
· 3 sourcesZenzap, a private workplace messenger that integrates AI and organizational context, has raised $44 million in funding from investors including Bessemer, Lightspeed, and The Garage, as well as individual investors Wix president Nir Zohar and former GM of EY Yoram Tietz. The company aims to provide businesses with a secure alternative to consumer chat apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, and iMessage.
· 2 sourcesApple's newly announced HomeView smart display does not natively support video streaming apps, including the company's own Apple TV, requiring users to AirPlay content from an iPhone, according to the device's specification page.
Floqer, an autonomous customer knowledge platform that deploys AI agents to research sales prospects, is pitching Wednesday on the Startup Battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. The startup plans to open-source the technology behind its autonomous customer knowledge database, targeting an early 2027 release pending security reviews. Floqer reports it has surpassed $1.2 million in annual recurring revenue, with overall revenue growing roughly tenfold over the past year.
· 3 sourcesBitcoin fell below $82,000 on Wednesday, touching an intraday low of roughly $81,500, after US core inflation for September came in hotter than expected and revived expectations of another Federal Reserve rate hike. CoinGlass data showed more than $100 million in leveraged positions were liquidated within an hour of the inflation report, with total liquidations exceeding $220 million over 24 hours.
· 4 sourcesAndroid is rolling out an upgraded Scam Detection feature for Google Messages that uses cloud-based Gemini AI models to evaluate conversations with unrecognized senders, aiming to catch sophisticated mobile fraud that evolves over time.
Microsoft researchers have developed and open-sourced a machine learning tool that improves weather forecast accuracy two to six weeks in advance, a period where both physics-based models and existing AI approaches typically become unreliable. The findings were published today in the journal Nature, and the tool is now available as open-source software on GitHub.
GFiber, in partnership with Qualcomm and Gemtek, has announced a Wi-Fi 8 Premium Gateway aimed at customers on its 20 Gig fiber plan. The gateway, which uses Qualcomm’s Dragonwing NPro A8 Elite Platform, is designed to combine high-speed connectivity with native edge AI processing. Rollouts are expected to begin in 2027, with current 20 Gig subscribers using a Wi-Fi 7 gateway set to receive an upgrade once certification is complete.
WhatsApp has introduced a guest calling feature that allows users to invite anyone to a voice or video call without requiring that person to have a WhatsApp account or the app installed. Guests join by clicking a link sent by the host and gain access to call features including hand raising, screen sharing, and emoji reactions, all protected by end-to-end encryption. However, guests must wait in a waiting room until the host approves their entry.
San Francisco-based foundation-model startup Subquadratic has launched SubQ Snap, a decision model that it claims can process up to 384,000 tokens of text and images in a single request — 12 times the 32,000-token context limit of TypeSafe's Jev, which debuted in mid-September and sparked a wave of alternatives from companies including OpenAI, Perplexity, Cloudflare, Amazon and Microsoft.
Anthropic has warned that advances in small AI models could soon give rise to a new class of self-replicating malware capable of infecting internet-of-things (IoT) devices such as smart fridges and vacuum cleaners, and that such malware could be more difficult to shut down than traditional threats.
Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, has agreed to acquire Saldo Bank, a European Union-licensed bank, marking the first time a crypto firm has bought a regulated bank in the bloc. The deal, subject to regulatory approval and expected to close in 2027, will allow Payward to offer EU customers interest-bearing deposits, loans, card services and euro payments.
A coordinated international operation has disrupted a cybercriminal ecosystem that sent more than a billion phishing messages targeting over 75,000 organizations across 150 countries. Since the start of the year, more than 750 million malicious emails and SMS texts were aimed at Microsoft customers alone.
· 2 sourcesEpic Games has released a public preview of a rebuilt Epic Games Launcher that the company says was 'vibe coded' with AI assistance, and claims it starts 46% faster than Steam. The new app adds features such as collections and a unified downloads page, but is missing some social and account tools and is not yet recommended for all users.
· 3 sourcesFujifilm has announced the Instax Square 2, a new square-format instant camera that stays true to the analog roots of the Instax line while introducing a physical filter switch that lets users slide one of two colored filters in front of the lens. The camera is priced at $119.95 and will be available later this month in slate blue, brick red and misty white.
Sony has reportedly taken down Overdrive, a homebrew storefront for jailbroken PS5 consoles that offered over 1,600 free PS4 and PS5 games, after a video demonstrating the installation went viral. Within a day, however, two clones appeared on GitHub, reviving the project.
Microsoft has released cumulative updates that fix a known issue causing Always On VPN connection failures on Windows 11 systems after installing the September 2026 security updates. The October Patch Tuesday releases include KB5127648 and KB5127646, which address the bug on all affected versions.
SK hynix has detailed plans to reduce reliance on power-hungry CPU cores in its SSD controllers with an in-house designed core called the Hynix Transaction Processing Unit (H-TPU). The tiny, programmable cores handle repetitive I/O tasks with dramatically lower power and area consumption, leaving management functions to a traditional Arm CPU. The company aims to apply H-TPU across its NAND product line, beginning with next-generation enterprise SSD controllers.
Meta has expanded its Private Processing architecture to its AI glasses, using confidential virtual machines (CVMs) backed by hardware Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) to handle sensitive AI workloads and persistent user context in the cloud. The design aims to support advanced features like streaming transcription, contextual search, and long-term recall while preventing Meta itself from accessing the underlying user data.
The FBI, with help from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, has dismantled more than 40 North Korean laptop farms in Texas, seizing over 200 devices used by operatives posing as remote IT workers, according to The New York Times. No arrests have been made, but authorities warned that those involved could face criminal penalties.
Richard Heart, the founder of the Hex cryptocurrency and PulseChain, was detained with his wife in Istanbul on Wednesday in a joint operation by Turkish police and the National Intelligence Organization (MIT), acting on an Interpol Red Notice requested by Finland, according to Turkish media.
· 4 sourcesLedger has asked resellers and distributors in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong to suspend sales of its hardware wallets while it investigates devices fitted with a hidden implant, following suspected thefts of more than $86 million in cryptocurrency. The company said the only confirmed incidents remain in Southeast Asia and that it has not verified a drain linked to a device bought elsewhere.
· 2 sourcesThe United Kingdom has imposed economic sanctions on the cryptocurrency platform Cryptomus and related services for acting as a major conduit for payments linked to ransomware, narcotics, darknet markets, fraud and cybercrime and for helping Russia circumvent existing financial restrictions.
Epic Games is working on bringing Fortnite to Linux through its Epic Games Launcher, which is releasing in preview today. While Fortnite is not yet available on the platform, the company has indicated it plans to address long-standing cheating concerns that previously kept the game off Linux.
Apple, Amazon and Microsoft have all announced new AI-powered devices within the past week, betting that generative artificial intelligence will finally become a holiday gift category nearly four years after the launch of ChatGPT.
· 2 sourcesSafety researchers have warned that new AI image generators from OpenAI and Google are becoming more capable but also more susceptible to producing explicit content, as a Google co-authored study finds such material is spreading largely unchecked across private channels.
The private conversations of up to 125,000 Australian children who used the AI companion app Character.AI are for sale after the company filed for bankruptcy in the United States, with a deadline of November 21 for rival bidders to acquire the user data.
· 4 sourcesPython 3.15 has been released after a week's delay, with default UTF-8 encoding support across all platforms headlining a release that also adds a new profiler, an experimental just-in-time compiler, tightened dictionary structures, and a Lazy Import option.
The European Commission's proposed Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) could cost the continent €115 billion over a decade, according to a new study commissioned by CCIA Europe, a lobbying group whose members include Amazon, Google, and Meta. The research, conducted by the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE), claims the costs would be more than six times the Commission's upper estimate of €18 billion.
A new Android banking trojan named Hirudo steals account credentials by replacing legitimate banking apps with modified versions that disable security checks, giving attackers remote control of infected devices, researchers at mobile security firm ThreatFabric reported today.
The International Monetary Fund has warned that the global economy's growing dependence on capital flows to artificial intelligence could turn a market correction in the sector into broader financial contagion, cutting global GDP by 0.4% by 2028.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has ordered federal agencies to patch a high-severity authentication bypass vulnerability in Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS) by Friday, after warning that the flaw is being exploited in zero-day attacks. Ivanti released software updates on Tuesday and urged customers to act immediately.
Gartner has warned that the AI industry is pouring far more money into datacentre infrastructure than its services are likely to earn back, forecasting that capital write-downs could exceed $4 trillion by 2032 and that most specialist "neocloud" compute providers will be absorbed or forced out of business.
As the price of a 32GB DDR5 6000 RAM kit reaches $450, driven by AI-fueled component shortages, Newegg has restocked a bundle that effectively prices the same memory at $151 when purchased alongside a CPU, motherboard and SSD. The deal, which includes an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor, Gigabyte X870E motherboard, 2TB SSD, a CPU cooler and a game, is priced at $1,165.99, a saving of $358.98 off the combined list price.
· 2 sourcesRetail prices for Nvidia's RTX 50-series graphics cards at a Tokyo PC store are running up to 41.1% higher than equivalent Amazon US listings, according to pricing data shared on Reddit and analysed by Tom's Hardware. The gap reflects a memory chip shortage and surging demand for AI compute, with reports that Nvidia is scaling back gaming GPU production in favour of data centre chips.
Bitcoin briefly touched $84,000 early Wednesday before falling back to around $83,200, as traders await US inflation data and corporate earnings that could set the tone for risk assets.
Hypercall, a derivatives exchange built on the Hyperliquid crypto platform, says most of its $640 million in trading volume since June has come from S&P 500 options, according to a CoinDesk report.
Microsoft has confirmed that recent Windows updates can stop non-admin users from connecting to devices over Remote Desktop when the Administrator protection security feature is enabled. The company says affected systems may hit error 0xC000000D with the message "The token that was passed to the function is invalid," and has offered a temporary workaround while a permanent fix is developed.
A British software engineer is suing the operator of crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX for the return of 324.8 Bitcoin, worth about £20.4 million on October 1, alleging the exchange conducted regulated activities in the UK without authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority.