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Oct 29, 2026
Following the release of the new 14-inch M6 MacBook Pro earlier this week, Apple has bought the "touch experience" to its professional laptop series, introducing a $2,899 (and up) MacBook Pro you can use with touch. It's very fast, very thin, very light, with an impressive PROLED XDR display and up to 24 hours battery life.
A brief tour through the key specs
Very fast: Available in 14- and 16-inch models, the new MacBook Pro uses Apple's powerful M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. They support up to 64GB of unified memory (128GB on M5 Max) and up to 16TB of storage. Apple says the M5 Max can run LLMs with hundreds of billions of parameters entirely on-device.
Very thin: The 14-inch model is 0.59 inch (1.50 cm) thick, while the 16-inch is 0.63 inch (1.60 cm), so these are only a little thicker than a MacBook Air. Apple says the thinner design is a benefit of the move to an OLED display.
Very light: The 14-inch weighs 3 pounds, half a pound less than the non-touch equivalent MacBook Pro. The 16-inch weighs 4 pounds, which is 0.7 pounds lighter.
Industry-leading PROLED XDR display: A tandem OLED panel with up to 2,000 nits peak brightness (1,000 nits sustained brightness) for both HDR and SDR, and
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Oct 29, 2026
OpenAI and Anthropic agree that frontier AI systems need stronger oversight, but they are proposing sharply different approaches to stopping models that pose serious risks: Anthropic wants courts empowered to suspend dangerous systems, while OpenAI argues developers should be required to maintain and use effective shutdown controls.
The proposals appear in separate submissions to California Governor Gavin Newsom following his September 18 executive order directing state officials to consider additional safeguards for frontier AI systems. Both companies support independent safety assessments and expanded reporting of incidents involving AI systems that act beyond their intended permissions.
"If the AG concludes, informed by the independent evaluation, that a frontier AI company's models pose a near-term risk of catastrophic harm, they should be able to seek a court order to suspend a model's deployment, internal use, or further development," Anthropic wrote in its October 15 submission.
OpenAI, in its October 20 letter, called for an amendment to California's Senate Bill 53 (SB 53).
"We support amending SB 53 to require frontier developers to maintain effective shutdown controls and an enforceable duty to use them when unsafe conditions arise,
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Oct 28, 2026
Otter has added a new Work mode to its AI Chat assistant, expanding the range of tasks it can carry out before and after meetings.
It's part of a wider drive by Otter — which received $320 million in funding last week — to move beyond meeting transcription and into automating tasks and workflows.
The Work interface, announced Tuesday, is accessible in the AI Chat prompt box, alongside the Chat option. While Chat allows users to ask questions, generate content, and retrieve information, Work is aimed at multi-step actions, Otter said. It's a similar approach to other AI assistants, such as Claude and ChatGPT, that separate simpler chat functionality from newer agentic capabilities.
Prior to a meeting, Otter users can prompt Work to generate briefing documents based on information collated from previous calls and data from connected applications. After a meeting ends, the AI assistant can draft emails, generate documents — including Word and Notion docs, PDFs, and interactive web pages — and update Salesforce records.
The AI assistant requires human approval before completing tasks, an Otter spokesperson said.
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Oct 28, 2026
A new study from the Coalition for Language Equity in AI Research shows that AI models require significantly more tokens to process certain languages than others. These differences mean that users of underrepresented languages risk paying more for the same services, reports Rest of World.
An LLM's tokenizer breaks text down into blocks, or tokens, but it does so much more optimally for languages with abundant digitized data, the researchers explain. They found that among the 20 languages with the largest web presence, less common languages used from 1.5 to 5 times as many tokens as the same prompt in English. When the study was expanded to 200 languages, the difference increased to as much as 17 times in one of the models examined.
Since most LLM providers charge by tokens used, that translates to much higher costs. In addition, more tokens mean longer response times and a smaller amount of information that's able to fit into the AI models' context windows.
The researchers describe this as a hidden "tokenizer tax" and warn that it exacerbates digital inequality.
This disparity is not limited to languages with few speakers, the researchers
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Oct 28, 2026
Decades ago, the United States established programs that allow businesses to hire highly skilled foreign workers — the H-1B visa program and a related green card program. They're designed to make sure we lead the world in technology. Not uncommonly, H-1B workers and green card holders eventually become American citizens.
One of the best-known examples is Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. He came to the US from India on the green card program, then switched to the H-1B visa program in the early to mid-1990s when working for Microsoft. He ended up becoming a US citizen. In 2014, he was appointed Microsoft CEO and subsequently architected one of the biggest turnarounds in tech history. Under his leadership, Microsoft has become nearly a $4 trillion company.
President Trump, who rode an anti-immigrant message to the White House two times, has both the green card and H-1B programs in his crosshairs — and he's aiming right at Microsoft.
Earlier this month he claimed Microsoft, Adobe, and several other companies had abused an important part of the green card program called PERM, which helps H-1B visa holders get green cards. He's suspended their use of it. Microsoft fired back that Trump was off target and the company has done nothing wrong.
Who's right and who's wrong? We'll follow the facts to find out.
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Oct 28, 2026
Opera has begun rolling out AI models that run locally in its browser, potentially allowing enterprises to perform certain AI tasks on existing PCs without sending the relevant data to cloud AI providers.
The company said it has introduced support for WebAI, a proposed web standard, through an opt-in early preview in Opera One. The technology allows websites and browser extensions to access AI models running locally in the browser for tasks such as generating text and classifying content.
The WebAI preview supports 64-bit Windows PCs running Intel or AMD processors and Macs powered by Apple silicon. Opera does not specify a requirement for a dedicated neural processing unit, although it says performance depends on the device's hardware.
The preview does not currently support Windows on Arm, potentially limiting its availability across some newer AI PCs.
The feature is optional, with AI models downloaded only after users enable it. Opera said website-specific permissions allow users to control which sites can access the locally running models.
Opera said its implementation supports models including Google's Gemma and Apple's on-device foundation model on compatible Macs. The company said it plans to introduce additional models optimized for different devices as it expands the technology.
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Oct 28, 2026
Put on your finest propeller-packin' thinking caps, my fellow Android-appreciating animals — 'cause I've got a brain-bending bit of big-picture thinking about the future of Android and everything around it.
This pondering comes out of my ongoing time living with one of Google's new Googlebook laptops — the beautifully built Lenovo Googlebook (provided to me as a short-term loaner for editorial assessment). Right now, the Googlebook experience itself is best summed up as an awkward start with plenty of potential. Android in a laptop environment just comes with an awful lot of asterisks, especially when you're trying to use such a system for serious work. In many ways, it feels like a step down from the more polished and productivity-optimized Chromebook setup it's ultimately designed to replace.
But while working on a Googlebook and using it as your primary computer still seems like a bit of a square-peg situation, I've been struck by one area where the Googlebook OS software at the center of the experience feels almost shockingly natural.
And that's led me down a rabbit hole of pondering about the bigger-picture implications of this operating system and how it could, at least in theory, one day affect the rest of
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Oct 28, 2026
Apple's second day of launches this week saw it follow its tempting iPad mini upgrade by pumping up the processor in two of its most popular Macs, even while it injected artificial intelligence into Creator Studio.
24 hours of portable pro performance: 14-in MacBook Pro
Apple's 14-inch MacBook Pro is popular but sits in a funny place in Apple's notebook lineup, with the powerful and popular MacBook Air biting at its heels and the more performant and powerful (though not yet M6) MacBook Pro models sitting above.
We already know what the M6 chip is capable of, because it is already inside the Mac mini (which will be made in the US later this year). We know it delivers better single-core scores on Geekbench than the 10-core M5 MacBook Pro. We also know it beats that last MBP in multi-core. Now that same chip is available in a 14-inch MacBook Pro — a really promising dose of power and performance in a highly portable pro Mac that now packs a mighty 24-hour battery life.
The chip gives you a 12-core CPU, a 12-core GPU with Neural Accelerators in each core, a dual 16-core Neural Engine, and faster (16GB, upgradable up to 32GB)
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Oct 27, 2026
Microsoft is offering voluntary exit packages to about 60,000 employees, roughly 27% of its workforce, including staff on teams building Copilot and other AI products, as the company looks for ways to fund its AI investments.
Amy Coleman, executive vice president and chief people officer, announced the Voluntary Exit Offer (VEO) in an internal memo on Monday, which Microsoft republished on its official blog.
"This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support," Coleman wrote in the memo. It also gives participating organizations "another way to adapt their workforce to changing needs," she wrote in the blog.
The offer covers employees at level 70 and below in participating teams in the US, Canada, India, and the UK, according to the memo. "Some organizations are providing the Voluntary Exit Offer, and some are not," Coleman wrote. She added that participation depends on each business's "priorities, customer commitments and workforce needs."
However, her memo did not specify how many employees are eligible for this offer. According to a Reuters report, the move will impact about 60,000 employees globally,
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Oct 27, 2026
OpenAI has launched GPT-6.1 Terra, a new reasoning model that it says delivers near-frontier performance on visual reasoning, professional task execution, and computer-use benchmarks without the premium price tag. Replacing GPT-5.6 Terra, the model is aimed at organizations seeking better accuracy and automation capabilities for large-scale operational workloads.
Claiming it to be a step up from GPT-5.6 Terra at 50% lower price, OpenAI said its new mid-tier model is designed to handle everyday professional work such as drafting proposals, interpreting technical drawings, filling out forms, and editing videos.
"We're introducing GPT-6.1 Terra, a fast, efficient model that combines detailed visual reasoning and precise computer use alongside clearer, more natural writing," the company noted.
GPT-6.1 Terra targets developers and enterprises looking to automate everyday knowledge work at scale without paying premium prices for frontier AI models, said Pareekh Jain, CEO at EIIRTrend & Pareekh Consulting. "Enterprises need AI models that balance intelligence, speed and cost. Frontier models are expensive for routine tasks, while smaller models may lack sufficient capabilities. Terra addresses this gap, competing with Anthropic's Claude Sonnet and Google's Gemini Flash models."
Better performance at lower cost
The new reasoning
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Oct 27, 2026
AI is getting expensive, and companies are looking to cut token costs. The solution: move more AI work to PCs.
The PC won't replace the cloud. Preliminary AI work can be done on a PC, and tougher work — which today's PCs can't handle — can go to the cloud.
"We'll always need to use the most advanced cloud-based frontier models for certain tasks, but… we don't need to use them for everything," wrote TECHnalysis Research Insights president Bob O'Donnell in a LinkedIn post.
That's the vision Microsoft calls "hybrid intelligence," in which Windows makes AI always available. The cloud models run the hardest tasks, and less demanding tasks run locally on the PC. For Windows machines, at least at this point, that means Copilot AI PCs.
"The future of AI is not about having just one model. It's about having the right model at the right moment — frontier capability when you need it, smaller, faster models when you want speed," said Pavan Davuluri, head of Windows and Devices at Microsoft, at an Oct. 7 PC launch event.
Hybrid intelligence will be every
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Oct 27, 2026
Apple has responded to recent reports complaining that iPhone Duo displays have become damaged in normal use. The company is "aware" of the issue and suggests any of the "small number" of customers who encounter the problem contact AppleCare for a replacement.
Apple acknowledges the issue
While the matter has already been widely reported citing unsubstantiated claims on social media, this is the first credible confirmation of the problem. In making it, Apple took pains to explain the problem does not impact all iPhone Duo units, just a small subset of them. "We are aware of an issue impacting the inner display on a small number of iPhone Duo units," the company said.
Reports say that cracks appear in the same place on the iPhone Duo: along the center of the hinge, often followed by a bright line of stuck pixels. Several owners report the cracks appearing after only a handful of openings.
What Apple will do now
I imagine that what is happening now is that Apple is gathering intelligence as damaged units are returned to AppleCare. It will seek to understand the nature of the problem, which it will then attempt to trace through its manufacturing process in order to identify the source. Speculatively, the cause co
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Oct 27, 2026
When OpenAI's GPT-3 was released in 2020, at 175 billion parameters, it was the largest language model the world had ever seen. In the years that followed, frontier AI systems exploded in size, with today's largest models clocking in at well over a trillion parameters. But there is a countercurrent of AI research moving in the opposite direction, with pioneers like Tether building a new generation of smaller AI models.
Requiring a fraction of the computing power of their heavyweight cousins, this emerging field of lightweight models is driving a shift toward more on-device AI, with a growing range of applications now able to run locally, rather than relying on the cloud.
At around four billion parameters, even the largest among Tether's suite of compact models is tiny compared to frontier AI systems, while others are small enough to run on a basic smartphone, without requiring an internet connection once downloaded.
Mega models and the limits of scaling
As AI labs have pursued larger context windows, more sophisticated reasoning, and multimodal capabilities, model sizes have increased significantly in recent years, to the extent that parameter count, cluster size, and megawatt consumption are often framed as proxies for performance.
This narrative assumes that bigger is always better, and for a while, it was. Research has demonstrated the ex
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Oct 26, 2026
Microsoft is adding a new AI-powered security feature to Teams aimed at detecting phishing, scams, and identity theft by analyzing conversations, Bleeping Computer reports.
Instead of primarily checking for malicious links and files, the tool will be able to identify suspicious behavior in the messages themselves, Microsoft said. The feature will primarily be used for new contacts, as they pose a higher security risk.
The new security feature follows earlier warnings from Microsoft about attackers impersonating help desk staff in Teams to trick users into granting them remote access.
In a Microsoft 365 Message Center post (mirror), the company said, "During initial quality validation, detection may run in the background without showing warnings to users. After validation, users may see a warning when potential phishing is detected."
According to Microsoft, no messages will be saved or used to train AI models. The tool will also be used solely for security purposes — not, for example, for surveillance or advertising.
The rollout w
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Oct 26, 2026
Apple watchers predicted something like this: The company is ending October with a triple-whammy of new products, starting with its newly introduced iPad mini with OLED display. The rest of the week is expected to feature new Macs, specifically an M6 MacBook Pro and iMac and Apple's first touchscreen MacBook Pro.
There's no disputing how popular the iPad mini has become among some business users. Professionals use it as a digital notebook, many use it as a second display for their Mac, and some industries, particularly logistics, hospitality and field services, make extensive use of these things.
If you want something smaller and lighter than a full-weight iPad, the iPad mini fills the gap, though its high build-quality means it comes at a price — starting at $699 with 128GB storage. That's up from the $599 price tag on the previous model. Thanks to RAMaggedon, it's the second price hike so far this year: two years ago, the device held a $499 starting price.
The new 256GB model costs $799, while the 512GB iteration sets you back $999. A fully specified 512GB iPad mini with Wi-Fi, cellular, and nano-texture glass costs $1,249.
What's new in the iPad mini?
Apple has focused deeply on making the new iPad mini thinner and lighter than before. (Here's what I
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Oct 26, 2026
I've spent more than 20 years talking about technology and how it can improve people's lives. For most of that time, I was optimistic about the future.
I still believe tech can make our lives better. But I'm increasingly concerned that companies building technology have stopped asking whether it actually does. I think it's time we started asking harder questions.
My column for Network World (2000-2018) aimed to explain the benefits of new devices and software to business and personal users. This same optimism carried over to my podcasting and video career, where Today in Tech (on Computerworld) and DEMO (on CIO.com) continued the technology conversation with industry thought leaders.
Somewhere along the way, the relationship between technology companies and their customers changed. The tech industry now seems more interested in telling us what we need than listening to what we want. New technologies are being pushed into our workplaces, devices, and daily lives, often without clear explanations of how they make things better. Often, there are hidden benefits for the tech companies themselves (personal data, algorithms that exploit users' emotions, etc.)
We're expected to embrace the future simply because the companies building it tell us we should.
This goes well beyond AI, although it's certainly accelerating the problem. Technology now shapes how we work, communicate, consume information (both real and fake), and understand the world around us. Social media has chan
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Oct 23, 2026
Google has an answer to some of the electricity supply problems that data center construction is causing: It has signed an agreement with energy supplier Voltus to build what it's calling a 1-gigawatt virtual power plant, expanding on an earlier 100 megawatt deal the two signed earlier this year.
This power plant is virtual in the sense that it doesn't generate any electricity itself, but aggregates so-called flexible grid capacity into one central resource that can be deployed at times of peak demand. This flexible capacity can be in the form of batteries or of load-shedding: asking others to temporarily stop consuming electricity by shutting down industrial processes or adjusting tens of thousands of smart thermostats at once, effectively moving their electricity usage to a time when there is less demand.
Voltus operates by offering incentives to companies to reduce their power consumption temporarily, and also offers inducements to electricity resellers that they can pass on to their customers.
The Google-Voltus deal will serve the PJM grid region, the largest power grid in the US supplying 67 million people across 13 states and Washington DC.
It's a PR coup for Google, as
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Oct 23, 2026
Hyperscalers are getting decidedly twitchy about citizens' reactions to their secretive data center construction plans, and are looking for ways to de-escalate some of the conflicts.
Earlier this month, Amazon announced its Data Center Commitment which, among other things, would disclose more information about energy and water use and consider a moratorium asking government officials to sign non-disclosure agreements covering their planning applications.
Amazon is not alone in this. Earlier this week, Meta said that it was reviewing its use of NDAs after the company was widely criticized for its secrecy in proposing Hyperion, a Louisiana data center in July.
Microsoft was an early pacesetter here, announcing in March that it would "cease to use NDAs as a tool in its data center site selection and development." Google has since followed suit.
The action of the hyperscalers will be seen as a sign that the rise in protests against data center construction are beginning to have an effect. We have already seen
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Oct 23, 2026
Matrix-based messaging tools are gaining traction among European governments that seek greater control over sensitive communications data and to lessen their reliance on US technology suppliers.
The growing interest reflects a broader push toward open-source applications in Europe amid geopolitical uncertainty. Yet the cost and complexity of replacing established applications such as Microsoft Teams mean any shift away from proprietary software is likely to be gradual, with some organizations choosing to run Matrix-based tools alongside existing platforms.
Launched in 2014, Matrix is an open messaging standard for decentralized, real-time communications. Similar to email, the standard allows users to send messages between Matrix-compatible apps from different software vendors, including the open-source Element, Rocket.Chat, and Automattic's Beeper.
Matrix began as an "interesting experiment" in creating a communications standard for the wider internet, and has since become "the poster child for digital sovereignty, especially in Europe," said Matthew Hodgson, co-founder of the Matrix Foundation.
There are 65 "national- and international-scale" Matrix deployments being tracked in Europe, said Hodgson, who is also co-founder and CEO of Element, during a keynote presentation Wednesday at the
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Oct 23, 2026
OpenClaw, the AI digital assistant, is looking to establish itself as an essential tool for users — but if it is as profligate in its use of tokens as its creator, Pete Steinberger, then users could be in for some huge usage bills.
Steinberger, now working for OpenAI, spent $10 million on AI tokens there last month, he told Cloudflare CEO Dane Knecht at the Cloudflare Connect 2026 Conference in San Francisco.
The conversation was reported by The Register, which noted Knecht's remark that Steinberger had "a virtually unlimited token budget, which not all of us in the room have," and Steinberger's response, "What people don't always understand is not all of that is useful."
Steinberger went on to question the adequacy of companies' infrastructure, musing, "Why is this still using my computer? Shouldn't this all be in the cloud?"
Adding cloud costs into the equation, as well as shoving privacy issues to one side would not reassure the audience.
This was scarcely a conversation to reassure those CFOs who were getting palpitations about the real cost of AI tokens, whether this was the
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Oct 23, 2026
A judge in New Mexico has fined Meta $25 billion for its flouting of data privacy laws between 2010 and 2021, including its controversial passing of data to Cambridge Analytica.
The action serves as a stark reminder to enterprises not to play fast and loose with data protection legislation, as the consequences could be highly damaging.
Meta faced the court action after it was revealed that data company Cambridge Analytica had improperly obtained personal data that Facebook was holding.
It could have been even worse for Meta. Under New Mexico law, the damages could have been as high as $219 billion, which would have exceeded its revenue for 2025.
Judge Francis Mathew reduced his demand to $25 billion without explanation, but was scathing in his judgment on the social media company. "The harm in this matter is difficult to overstate, and goes to the heart of Facebook's basic business proposition," he wrote in his order.
The company had committed more than 43 million violations of New Mexico's consumer protection laws and had d
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Oct 23, 2026
It seems clear by now that one of the most widely shared criticisms of the iPhone Duo picked up by many of those who got to take an early look at the device was a little unfair.
They complained that there weren't many third-party apps when they looked at the device. But what made that point such weak sauce was when those reviews were written.
I don't think most developers build apps with the media reviews schedule for new hardware in mind. (Perhaps they'd get more publicity if they did.) Instead, they tend to target products at the point when people can buy them, which in the case of the iPhone Duo meant October 23.
The apps are on the way. Many landed today
After those first reviews appeared, Apple published a press release describing more than 50 apps it knows are coming for its folding smartphone. These include key streaming services Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Paramount . They include Microsoft Office products, Zoom, Slack, and Instagram.
While not included in Apple's release, the Omni Group has released its first iPhone Duo products, while the team behind Ulysses have already updated their much-loved pro writing app.
"The re
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Oct 23, 2026
SAP professionals can now renew their certifications through AI-based roleplays. The new service builds on SAP's revamp of its certification program last year, shifting the focus from rote learning of facts towards real-world use cases.
"The evolution of Stay Certified reflects a broader shift already taking place across SAP Certification: moving beyond assessing what someone knows toward validating how they can apply that knowledge. AI-powered roleplays bring that principle into the annual certification renewal experience," the company said in a blog post announcing the new option.
The AI-based scenarios across more than 100 certifications simulate customer interactions with a defined knowledge goal. "The scenarios are grounded in content reflecting the latest SAP product releases, helping learners demonstrate applied, up-to-date knowledge," SAP said. Immediate feedback is provided to highlight what went well during the roleplay, and what needed improvement.
However, the use of the AI isn't mandatory: IT pros can still choose to complete a standalone assessment quiz when renewing their certifications.
The process
Users have a 90 day renewal window before certification expiry to
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Oct 23, 2026
Indian digital trust company eMudhra has announced that it is exiting the global SSL/TLS certificate business and is offering customers certificates issued by Sectigo as an alternative, following the compromise of private keys behind eight of its intermediate certificate authorities.
The company's board decided "to voluntarily withdraw from the global SSL/TLS certificate business," eMudhra said in a press note. It added that data sovereignty and compliance requirements had increased the business's complexity and cost.
"The level of social media amplification around this incident has brought scrutiny that is out of proportion to SSL/TLS's place in our business," eMudhra Chairman V Srinivasan said in the announcement.
The company said it will contact affected customers to replace certificates free of cost. It also said it will keep revocation and certificate status services running until every issued certificate has expired or been replaced.
Sectigo offered as an alternative
In the customer update, eMudhra said it is making Sectigo-issued certificates available to all its customers.
"Our G1 root certificates remain active and continue to be fully supported," the company said in the update. The October 22 release said the G1 RSA roots "will continue to s
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Oct 23, 2026
Google's new Googlebooks are packed with potential — and while the systems in their current state may be awkwardly rough around the edges, there are some truly interesting ideas within 'em.
I looked at some of those highlights in my recent "Googlebook work test" hands-on analysis, but in addition to all the surface-level sorcery, Googlebooks hide a handful of nifty and at times quite helpful features you wouldn't notice until you'd really spent some time using 'em and poking around in their various nooks and crannies.
As a follow-up to my broader Googlebook analysis, I thought it'd be fun to show you some of the more off-the-beaten-path elements of the Googlebook experience — interesting little touches that you almost have to go out of your way to discover (or maybe just stumble onto inadvertently!).
Here are seven such treasures I've encountered in my time with the Lenovo Googlebook — provided to me as a short-term loaner review unit — so far.
[Get fresh Googley insight in your inbox with
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Oct 23, 2026
According to a new study by the research firm Forrester, AI will account for 20% of corporate technology spending in 2027. At the same time, more than half of IT executives are expected to miss their return-on-investment targets, reports The Register.
In the survey, 45% of AI decision-makers state that investments must yield a positive return within one year to be considered successful. At the same time, only 22% have seen a positive impact on their company's operating profit over the past year.
According to Forrester, the problems stem in part from companies investing in AI technology without simultaneously changing their organizations and work processes. Instead, the financial gains are realized within individual use cases.
To keep costs down, companies are expected to increasingly use open AI models in the future, as they are cheaper to operate. More expensive and advanced AI models are expected to be reserved for more critical tasks.
This article originally appeared on Computer Sweden.
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Oct 23, 2026
On Wednesday, Claude Duet was launched — a new AI agent from Anthropic designed to compete with Meta's Muse and OpenAI's Dots.
Claude Duet is based on the Claude Opus 5.5 AI model and is primarily aimed at small business owners and other professionals who want help with everything from planning and meetings to building web apps. To perform these tasks, Claude Duet is equipped with a virtual machine featuring a built-in web browser, reports The Verge.
Last month Anthropic took aim at Microsoft by introducing Claude Docs and Slides, editing tools built into the Claude interface and intended to compete with Microsoft Word and PowerPoint.
Claude Duet is available as a standalone app on iOS and Android, and as a web app at claude.ai. It's currently available as a research preview only to US customers who subscribe to the Pro or Max plans, but the AI agent is set to be rolled out to more users in the future.
This article originally a
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Oct 22, 2026
I was taking my dog for her perambulation through the leafy valleys and forests of one of the most densely populated parts of London this morning when it struck me how annoying it has become that I must now update multiple Apple devices across my family group. That's pretty much mandatory given recent security warnings, and may involve additional updates over time.
"Why must I spend so much time updating other people's stuff?" I asked myself, managing to combine resentment and self-pity within one short sentence. "Why can't they learn how to update their own stuff?" I muttered, dreaming once again of that inevitable lottery win that absolutely will change my life. "If only there was an easier way."
The one thing every family admin should do
You can do this in IT. There you have a suite of tools to manage devices. But for families, there are no easy ways, I thought.
That's not to say you can't do anything. Number one is the standard thing every family admin should do, though many of us don't:
Open Settings General Software Update.
There, tap Automatic Updates and turn on Download (iOS, iPadOS, macOS) Updates and also turn on Install (iOS, iPad
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Oct 21, 2026
Every IT and security team knows the feeling of opening a vulnerability report and seeing a number that only goes up. Thousands of findings. Hundreds marked critical. A backlog that grows faster than any team can close it.
For years, the default response has been to work harder: more scans, more tickets, more overtime. But the volume of vulnerabilities, accelerated by AI-assisted discovery and a sprawling mix of endpoints, cloud services, and applications, has outpaced that approach.
Shift from vulnerability counts to exposure reduction ?
The question has shifted from, "How do we fix everything?" To, "What should we fix first, and why?"
Vulnerabilities are not the same as exposures
A vulnerability is a weakness in software or configuration. An exposure is a weakness that can realistically be reached and exploited in your environment, with consequences
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Oct 21, 2026
For most IT teams, Patch Tuesday used to set the rhythm of the month. Updates arrived, teams tested them, change boards approved them, and deployments rolled out over the following weeks. It wasn't painless, but it was predictable.
That predictability is gone. Nearly 48,000 CVEs were published in 2025, and the average time to exploit has collapsed to roughly five days. Attackers no longer wait for organizations to finish their testing cycles.
Move from reactive patching to risk-based automation ?
Many practitioners now call this the Patch Apocalypse. The name is dramatic, but the operational reality behind it is not. It's a capacity problem, prioritization problem, and process problem, all at once.
AI is speeding up both sides
Artificial intelligence is changing how vulnerabilities are found. Researchers are using AI-assisted tools to analyze code, fuzz applications, and iden
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Oct 21, 2026
For the past few years, most enterprise AI has been advisory. It summarized tickets, drafted knowledge articles, and suggested next steps. A person still decided what to do.
That's changing. Agentic AI systems can plan multistep tasks and carry them out: querying systems, triggering workflows, changing configurations, and closing tickets with little or no human involvement. Ivanti's 2026 State of Cybersecurity Report found that 87% of security professionals say integrating agentic AI is a priority, and 77% report at least some comfort letting autonomous systems act without human review.
Secure every AI agent before its first action ?
The appeal is obvious for IT teams under constant pressure. So is the risk. An AI that gives a bad answer wastes a few minutes. One that takes a bad action can take down a service.
What "rogue" really looks like
The phrase "rogue
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Oct 21, 2026
"Hallucination" has become the catch-all term for AI getting things wrong. It describes a real phenomenon: Large language models can generate confident, fluent answers that are simply untrue.
But in IT operations, many errors labeled as hallucinations have a more ordinary explanation. The AI isn't inventing facts. It's faithfully reporting information that happens to be outdated, incomplete, or contradictory. I've seen this play out across enough environments to know the cause usually sits upstream, in the data the system learned from and the picture of the estate it read.
Fix the data foundation under your AI systems ?
That distinction matters, because the fixes are different. You don't tune the model. You fix the information it relies on.
When the answer is wrong, but the logic is right
Imagine a service desk analyst asking an AI assistant whether a user's laptop has received the latest security update. The assistant says yes. The analyst closes the ticket. Two days later, the device is flagged in a vulnerability scan. What happened? The assistant pulled from an endpoint record last updated before the device went offline for a week. The data was
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Oct 21, 2026
Ask an IT team a simple question, "How many laptops do we have?" and the answer often depends on who you ask and which console they open.
For years, that ambiguity was manageable. People reconciled the differences in their heads, in spreadsheets, or in meetings. Ivanti research shows that 34% of organizations still track IT assets in spreadsheets, which shows how much reconciliation still happens by hand.
Build the authoritative data source your AI can act on ?
Automation changes the stakes. When software acts on data without a person double-checking it first, the question of which data is correct stops being academic. People tolerate ambiguity and ask questions. Automation doesn't. It executes at scale and at speed.
What a system of record actually means
A system of record is the authoritative source for a specific type of information. It is the place everyo
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Oct 21, 2026
Private keys associated with eight intermediate certificate authorities operated by Indian digital trust provider eMudhra have been compromised, potentially allowing attackers to forge trusted certificates and impersonate websites or services, according to Google and Mozilla.
"On 17th October @ 20:06 UTC, Mozilla received a report to certificates@mozilla.org, forwarded by the Chrome Root program, that the private key of 8 eMudhra Intermediate certificates have been compromised," Dennis Jackson, a member of Mozilla's engineering team, wrote in a public Mozilla bug report. "An attacker with the private key of any of the compromised intermediate CAs could impersonate any website or service."
Mozilla independently recovered the keys later that day, confirming that they were vulnerable.
"Mozilla was able to recover the private keys for the impacted certificates independently @ 21:48 UTC and without any knowledge of the method the original reporter used," Jackson added in the report. He said the recovery confirmed that "the key generation process was flawed and is trivial to exploit."
The report was submitted by a researcher identified as Wayne and forwarded by the Chrome Root Program. Mozilla acknowledged it and subsequently began blocking the affected certificates in Firefox.
eMudhra acknowledged the report and said it was investigating, according to the Mozilla re
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Oct 21, 2026
Employers are getting pickier when looking at tech resumes, but competition for the right skills is still intense. Companies will pay a premium for experience and advanced AI skills.
"The market is no longer defined simply by how many people employers hire, but by how precisely they hire," said Ger Doyle, ManpowerGroup's regional president for North America.
In many cases, employers would rather leave a position open than make the wrong hire, Doyle said.
AI fluency and expertise are driving higher salaries, talent consulting firm Robert Half said after surveying more than 2,000 hiring managers, business leaders, and employed workers for its 2027 salary guide. "72% are increasing pay for relevant AI skills, with 42% offering more for AI-related expertise than other technical skills," the firm said.
The tech job market today
There were 272,040 new IT openings posted in September, boosting the active listings to 625,633, the highest in more than three years, according to a study released by CompTIA earlier this month. About 349,821 jobs listed in September — more than half the active listings — needed AI skills, growing by 32,327 compared t
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Oct 21, 2026
The embargo for iPhone Duo reviews has broken, which means dozens of reviews have appeared all at once. It's like sitting in an empty office with all the phones ringing at the same time. No one can answer all of them.
So, what are reviewers saying about Apple's new $2,000 product? What's hot? What's not? And what's next?
Let's begin with the criticisms.
Almost every review I read is critical about the same things: the lack of a telephoto lens on the camera, the decision to use Touch ID, and lagging third-party software support for the device, with some criticism of the FaceTime camera.
To be fair, one of those criticisms will change as developers build iPhone Duo support for their applications, while others will change in future versions of the device.
A convincing case for foldables
Reviewers seem to agree that Apple has plucked all the best ideas introduced in foldables so far and wrapped them in a highly designed, well-executed, luxurious product they think sets the scene for the next generation of foldable smartphones. As the history of most Apple product introductions shows, first-generation compromises will be overcome.
The iPhone Duo form factor itself, however, seems to be a success.
"For an iPhone user who has never experienced a foldable, I suspect they will be surprised by how quickly the larger display starts to feel useful," w
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Oct 16, 2026
Microsoft's October 2026 Patch Tuesday is the year's largest release, with 1,408 CVEs requiring customer action, 72 of them rated critical. September, the previous high, carried 963. One CVE is already exploited: CVE-2026-96951, a Windows Shell flaw that bypasses Mark of the Web. Two were publicly disclosed before release, in the .NET Framework and the MessagePack-CSharp library. Separately, on 25 September Microsoft reported attacks against CVE-2026-65660, a SharePoint Server flaw fixed in August. Readiness recommends a Patch Now scheduling for Windows, Office, Exchange and the developer tooling, and a standard release schedule for SQL Server. The Readiness team has published an infographic summarising deployment risk by product family.
Known issues
On 14 October, Microsoft added a known issue to this month's Windows 11 updates, KB5127648 for versions 24H2, 25H2 and 26H2, and KB5127646 for 26H1. Non-admin users might be unable to open Remote Desktop connections to devices that have
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Oct 16, 2026
Long before Taco Tuesday became part of the pop-culture vernacular, Tuesdays were synonymous with security — and for anyone in the tech world, they still are. Patch Tuesday, as you most likely know, refers to the day each month when Microsoft releases security updates and patches for its software products — everything from Windows to Office to SQL Server, developer tools to browsers.
The practice, which happens on the second Tuesday of the month, was initiated to streamline the patch distribution process and make it easier for users and IT system administrators to manage updates. Like tacos, Patch Tuesday is here to stay.
Patch Tuesday coverage has long been a staple of Computerworld's commitment to provide critical information to the IT industry. That's why we've gathered together this collection of recent patches, a rolling list we'll keep updated each month.
In case you missed a recent Patch Tuesday announcement, here are the latest six months of updates.
October Patch Tuesday: 1,408 CVEs, 1 exploited flaw and a SharePoint surprise
Microsoft just shipped 1,408 vulnerabi
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Oct 16, 2026
Investors are pouring more into AI data center infrastructure than they can hope to recoup by 2030, according to Gartner.
"Enterprise and consumer AI revenue will be insufficient to support profitable returns on all planned AI capital expenditures during this period," said Gartner Senior Director Analyst Will Sommer.
AI data center owners would need to generate $8.5 trillion in revenue through 2030 to cover announced capital spending, financing costs and expected investment returns, he said. "However, total enterprise and consumer AI revenue that can be attributed to AI data centers during this period is forecast to reach no more than $3.6 trillion."
Gartner joins a growing chorus warning that major AI players may be over-committing themselves. Bain and Co. recently made a similar forecast, estimating that annual spending on AI infrastructure could reach $1.5 trillion by 2031 and that the AI services market would need to top $6 trillion annually to pay for it.
This is particularly bad news for neocloud providers, said Gartner. While the hyperscalers are large enough to absorb the financial pressures, the research company suggests that the cost pressure will force more than 80% of neocloud providers to cease independent operations.?
The Bain and Gartner surveys don't cover quite the same ground, but their conclusions are very similar: a lot
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Oct 16, 2026
A chain of vulnerabilities in Google's Chrome browser could have enabled researchers to take control of one billion Windows machines worldwide — and it cost them just $40,000 in AI compute time to discover it.
Researchers at Xbow USA worked for six days on developing the exploit, which earned them a $250,000 bug bounty from Google, the first under the new 2026 rules.
They chose OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol for the task to demonstrate what's possible with a publicly available model rather than a specialist security implementation. They used it to search Chrome's source code, test ideas, and build proofs of concept, while they set the strategy, chose where to look, and checked its work.
They successfully chained together a vulnerability to escape first from the sandbox containing the V8 JavaScript engine and then from Chrome's operating-system process sandbox, launching a Windows app from within a malicious web page.
Xbow presented its findings to Google, which fixed the flaws. The researchers set out all the details as to how the exploit was develo
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Oct 16, 2026
NVIDIA officially entered the Windows PC race this week, and its arrival brings a formidable new competitor to the premium AI PC market. With its RTX Spark platform, NVIDIA is bringing its Grace Arm CPU architecture, Blackwell GPU technology and extensive software ecosystem together in a new generation of Windows laptops. Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra is among the first systems to showcase this collaboration, leveraging NVIDIA's tech and putting it squarely in competition with Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and even Apple for high-performance local AI and creation-optimized laptops.
For Microsoft, the partnership expands the capabilities of Windows on Arm considerably, particularly for local AI development, content creation and other demanding professional workloads. Starting at $2,599.99, Surface Laptop Ultra is clearly a premium offering, but its combination of processing horsepower, large, unified memory capacity, and premium industrial design gives it an interesting position in the market.
My personal testing suggests NVIDIA and Microsoft have delivered a compelling platform with strong AI throughput, graphics performance and competitive CPU compute. Just as importantly, the Surface Laptop Ultra offers a glimpse of how AI development and local AI agent workflows could become more practical on a portable Windows PC.
NVIDIA RTX Spark brings Grace Blackwell to Windows on Arm
At the heart of Surface Laptop Ultra is NVIDIA's RTX Spark N1X SoC, combin
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Oct 16, 2026
Due to the global memory shortage, 8 gigabytes has once again become the standard among computer manufacturers. Fortunately, Microsoft has spent the past few months optimizing Windows 11 for computers with limited RAM.
According to a post on the official Windows blog, the company has, among other things, improved background memory management. "Windows can now keep up to 2GB more of your active data in memory instead of moving it to slower storage, helping your PC stay responsive as you open more apps or browser tabs," the post said.
Other improvements for PCs with 8GB of memory or less include ensuring that widgets only load when you open them, freeing up an additional 200MB of memory.
Microsoft says these changes make Windows 11 up to 20% more responsive than before.
According to The Verge, Microsoft has also improved the Windows Hel
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Oct 16, 2026
The AI boom is seeing one of its first major busts, as Character.ai has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection while it searches for a buyer.
Founded in 2021, Character.ai enables users to create customizable chatbots and interact with them, and by February 2025 claimed to have over 20 million monthly active users.
However, it failed to turn them into a profitable revenue stream, and has been losing $8 million a month, according to Reuters. The company estimated in its bankruptcy filing that it only had assets of between $50 million and $100 million, and liabilities in the same range, despite receiving investments totalling almost $200 million over the years, pushing its valuation to a peak of around $1 billion.
Character.ai told subscribers that during the bankruptcy proceedings their access to Character ai chatbots is unaffected, and they will continue to be charged for the service.
To keep its chatbots chatting, the company has granted Disney a non-exclusive license to its technology for $20 million as part of the bankruptcy proceedings, a so-called stalking-horse deal that sets a benchmark for other bids.
Character.ai's troubles haven't just been economic: It has faced several legal challenges over the psychological effects of its service on users. In January
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Oct 16, 2026
Widgets, widgets, widgets. Has there ever been an Android feature so full of promise that went unloved by Google for so very long?
Okay, so maybe there has been — erm, lots of times, actually. But even so, Android's widgets system is a perfect example of an exceptional advantage that Google basically buried, abandoned, and left on the brink of extinction up until its overdue revival in 2021's Android 12 update. (And that revival, by the way, happened for no apparent reason whatsoever. Just a totally random, unprompted change of heart after a decade of indifference. Riiiiiiiiight.)
Google may have given up on widgets for a while, but the good news is that (a) they're back, baby — still now, more than ever, even in our overly AI-obsessed 2026 timeline — and (b) the Android developer community keeps chuggin' along and coming up with ever-more creative new ways to embrace widgets beyond what Google itself sees fit to give us. That means no matter what Android version your favorite phone is running, you can step up your own Android widget game and give yourself some fresh and fruitful paths to make the most of
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Oct 15, 2026
That ad you just scrolled past on your phone but barely spared a look or click? It could be tracking your movements and collecting your data, without you having to do a thing.
This "zero-click mercenary spyware," dubbed "AdFection," is increasingly exploiting a sprawling online advertising ecosystem ripe for abuse, according to researchers at The Citizen Lab. One top actor in the space, Discover-Tech, runs the Controlium platform that allows cyber criminals to "precisely profile and de-anonymize" millions of users, fingerprint them, and automatically infect their devices when an ad is displayed.
Troublingly, Discover-Tech is successfully masquerading as a legitimate ad company across the online ad sales environment, the researchers said, listed as a "certified" and "approved" vendor by the likes of Google and IAB Europe.
Over a four-month period, the company's ads were shown on nearly 200,000 unique websites and in Android/iOS apps in dozens of countries. Furthermore, its ads have been presented through major networks like Google, Yandex, and Beeswax, and it even exploited the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) consent frameworks to target victims in the EU.
The Citizen Lab researchers disclosed their findings to Google, IAB Europe, Beeswax, Vungle (Liftoff), and Eskimi, all of whom took action to disconnect Discover-T
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Oct 15, 2026
Although the Jev model rolled out last month by TypeSafe claims to have significant advantages over traditional LLMs, a security report published Wednesday argued that its streamlined approach makes it more vulnerable to some kinds of attack, compared to traditional LLMs.
"In some cases, [Jev] is even more vulnerable to attacks, with both adversarial text attacks and prompt injection being able to disrupt the model's outputs, resulting in incorrect and potentially devastating actions," said the blog post from researchers at HiddenLayer.
TypeSafe did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
LLM, or something else?
There seems to be debate about whether Jev is technically a large language model (LLM), with TypeSafe suggesting it is not, but HiddenLayer saying that it appears to be one. TypeSafe has even coined a name for the category: System One, which TypeSafe described as "a new class of frontier models built to make fast, structured decisions that software can use directly." Jev is the first—and thus far, only—named product categorized as System One.
Jev is a streamline
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Oct 15, 2026
ServiceNow is giving its AI Control Tower new features to make AI agents more governable — and a new name, Super Intelligence Control Tower (SICT), to please the US President. It is also updating EmployeeWorks to make building AI agents easier.
AI Passport, a new component of SICT, gives every agent, whether from ServiceNow or a third party, a verifiable identity, and provides runtime control over its activities.
As enterprises scale autonomous agents from pilots to production, they are facing new challenges, said Nenshad Bardoliwalla, SVP of AI product management at ServiceNow: "If companies can't identify which agents are running, what they are doing, and what systems they can access, then scaling quickly becomes a risk."
An AI Passport is a cryptographically signed credential for AI agents that is checked at runtime to verify the scope authorized by the enterprise. When an AI agent stays within its passport scope, it can operate freely, but if it tries to deviate, defined actions are enforced. These can include redirecting, restricting, or reconnecting the agent with proper context, or even triggering a kill switch. All actions are audited so agent activity can be tracked.
It is built on open specifications, so any governance product, identity provider, or enforcement point can issue and ver
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Oct 15, 2026
If your business has lots of Macs, what do you do with them at night? And how much money do you spend on AI inferencing?
What if the computational power of those Macs could be used to handle some inferencing tasks? A new white paper from Apple's machine learning team tells us it's possible.
Apple's teams have developed an internal technology for distributed processing they call "Minions," which effectively creates a virtual GPU cloud from connected Macs. While it's not available outside Apple at this time, it seems a pretty good candidate to turn Macs into a distributed AI data center, cutting the cost of AI inferencing and making it easier for enterprises to safely analyze company data by ensuring the information stays in the company.
Meet Apple's Minions
This exciting approach is described in a newly published white paper, ‘Minions: A Dynamic and Distributed Virtual GPU Cloud Built on Idle Apple Silicon Devices." In it, the researchers explain how constrained GPU resources delay access to inference tasks and increase costs — even while powerful Macs running Apple silicon chips may sit idle.
They've developed an a
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Oct 15, 2026
A Delaware jury found that Arm breached its licensing agreement with Qualcomm but awarded the chipmaker just $2 in damages, leaving a potentially multibillion-dollar dispute over royalty payments unresolved.
The jury ruled on October 13 that Arm had failed to provide software patches and development tools required under its agreement with Qualcomm. It also found that Arm had interfered with Qualcomm's business relationship with Meta Platforms, while rejecting several other allegations against Arm.
Qualcomm is seeking to invoke a contractual provision that would allow it to stop paying royalties to Arm for five years. Arm has argued that the provision is unenforceable, leaving US District Judge Maryellen Noreika to decide whether Qualcomm is entitled to the remedy, Reuters reported.
Qualcomm welcomed the finding that Arm breached its licensing obligations, while Arm emphasized that it prevailed on several other claims and was ordered to pay only nominal damages.
The verdict follows an earlier dispute over Qualcomm's 2021 acquisition of chip designer Nuvia. Arm argued that Qualcomm needed its consent to use technology developed under Nuvia's license. A jury sided with Qualcomm on key is
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Oct 15, 2026
As Microsoft adds more advanced agentic capabilities to Copilot, such as Cowork and Autopilot, usage-based pricing is becoming an increasingly important part of its business model.
But for customers used to predictable, fixed pricing, the addition of pay-as-you-go billing can be a significant change, creating new challenges around managing and predicting costs.
Questions about the consumption pricing model are now among the most common that Gartner receives from clients around Copilot, said Max Goss, research director at Gartner. There's "some doubt about whether a full move to consumption-based pricing for everyday knowledge work is sustainable for organizations in the long run," he said.
When Microsoft introduced Copilot three years ago, it charged businesses a flat monthly fee of $30 per user, with a $21 per user subscription later introduced for small and midsize businesses. Initial capabilities focused on helping employees find information, summarize meetings and documents, and draft content.
Microsoft has since expanded Copilot with AI agents that can perform more complex tasks. Some, such as Researcher and Analyst, are included in the exi
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Oct 14, 2026
Microsoft says it has dismantled a criminal marketplace responsible for 1 billion malicious messages.
Working with international authorities and several tech and cybersecurity companies in a nearly year-long investigation, Redmond identified and took down Yam Store, a coordinated underground network dealing in commercial phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS).
The network allowed cybercriminals to readily purchase, and very quickly deploy, pre-made kits they could use in phishing attacks to steal data and credentials.
Microsoft said the takedown began as a simple investigation based on a tip from Japanese authorities.
"Working together, and with the assistance of AI tools, we connected accounts, websites, and infrastructure that initially appeared unrelated, helping expose the broader criminal marketplace behind them," Steven Masada, associate general counsel and GM for Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit, wrote in a blog post. "What appears to be a simple scam message is often the visible end of a much larger transnational cybercriminal operation."
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Oct 14, 2026
Linux creator Linus Torvalds has now begun using AI to write code for the operating system's kernel. In a new coding project, he has used Anthropic's AI tool, Claude Code, to develop eight code changes to resolve a performance issue in Linux, reports ZDNet.
"The code, the test programs, the review that forms the basis of the list above, and the first draft of this text were produced with the help of an LLM coding assistant (Claude Code) under my supervision," Linus Torvalds writes in the documentation.
The changes are still experimental and have not been incorporated into the official Linux kernel.
Torvalds has previously been skeptical of AI-generated code but has gradually become more positive about the technology. During the Open Source Summit Europe conference in Prague, he recently shared that he has gained a new perspective on it.
"I used to think the technology just wasn't very good. But now I've reached a point where I really enjoy using AI," Linus Torvalds said at the time.
This article originally appeared on Computer Sweden.
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Oct 14, 2026
The European Commission has launched investigations into OpenAI and Anthropic after the companies' AI agents escaped their test environments and infiltrated other organizations' systems, Euronews reports.
In one case, an AI agent from OpenAI managed to break out of its test environment and hack the AI platform Hugging Face. In the other case, a model from Anthropic gained unauthorized access to the systems of three external organizations.
The EU's AI Office has now requested additional information from the companies regarding, among other things, security procedures, external evaluations, and monitoring of AI models. The documents previously submitted by the companies are not considered sufficient.
These investigations will serve as a test for the EU's AI regulation, the AI Act. Since August, the AI Office has had the authority to take action against companies that do not meet the law's security requirements.
The legal situation is complicated, Euronews notes. The AI Act includes exemptions for research and development, and it is unclear whether the law can be applied to incidents that occur before a model is launched.
This article originally appeared on
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Oct 14, 2026
Google has launched Gemini 4 Argon, a new flagship AI model aimed at complex enterprise and software-development workloads, pairing claims of stronger coding performance and advanced reasoning with an introductory pricing model that doubles after November 30.
The model "excels at deep work in complex, real-world tasks," Koray Kavukcuoglu, senior vice president of Google DeepMind and chief AI architect at Google, wrote in a blog post.
Google said that its engineers used Argon to refactor a legacy folder of about six million lines within Chromium's 40 million-line codebase, finishing in weeks rather than months. Teams using Argon in Antigravity increased agentic code submissions by more than 35% and cut code rollbacks by nearly a third, the company said, without detailing how it measured either figure.
Argon is available through the Gemini API in AI Studio and on Google's Gemini platform, and to Google AI Ultra subscribers in the Antigravity agentic development environment, the post added. In a separate developer blog post, Google said the model is "designed for those long-horizon workflows that require deep reasoning and structural precision."
Pricing set to double
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Oct 14, 2026
In what may be a hugely significant move, China has approved the use of Alibaba AI models for Apple's iPhone Duo and other iPhones. It's a significant step forward for the company in China, where demand for its smartphone remains incredibly strong.
China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has approved integration of AI from Alibaba in several iPhones, including all the models currently supporting Apple Intelligence. That approval extends to Apple Intelligence, as well as Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen (Qwen) and Tongyi Wanxiang models.
This should mean Apple will be able to offer Chinese iPhone users similar image generation and AI chatbot capabilities as it provides to customers elsewhere, bar Europe.
Cook's China tour
This news breaks around the same time Tim Cook, Apple's former CEO and now executive chairman, visits China. He met with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Beijing on Monday following a weekend of
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Oct 14, 2026
Ever since OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot and its offspring Microsoft Copilot were launched, critics have pointed out that both products — and all other generative AI tools — have been built using billions of dollars of stolen intellectual property.
Training AI models requires vast amounts of written material, especially books, newspapers, and magazine articles. OpenAI, Microsoft, and other Big AI firms have been stealing every piece of intellectual property (IP) they can find for training. With few exceptions, instead of paying the people and publishers who labored to create that intellectual property, Big AI steals it and call it "fair use."
But just-released evidence shows that from the start, many employees and executives at Microsoft and OpenAI warned their companies that they were committing theft — and added that doing so could put newspapers and magazines out of business.
The companies ignored them and went full speed ahead.
All that and more came out last month in newly unsealed court documents filed in a lawsuit by The New York Times and others against Microsoft and OpenAI for IP theft. The filing cites memos, reports, and statements by Microsoft employees and execs that show the company was well aware of the illegality of what they were doing — and the consequences.
Here's just one example. Back
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Oct 14, 2026
Smaller AI models may soon be able to spread autonomously among connected devices in the home — such as smart ovens and Android TV boxes, AI company Anthropic has warned.
By exploiting security vulnerabilities in these devices, AI models could gain access, use their processing power, and spread further. This would allow them to continue functioning without relying on large data centers.
According to Anthropic, such AI systems would be difficult to shut down, as they have no central point that can be stopped.
Exactly how and when this might become possible remains uncertain. Anthropic believes that the first, simpler forms of this exploit could be just a few months away.
This article originally appeared on Computer Sweden.
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Oct 14, 2026
As a long-time appreciator of advanced Android efficiency, I love me a good widget. A well-designed Android widget can surface important info for you when and where you need it — without forcing you to find your way into the related app, poke around in its various screens and menus, and actively look for the info in question.
By default, though, Android widgets are available only on your home screen — which significantly limits their usefulness. So much of our time on mobile devices is spent sending messages, making calls, and working (or at least "working") within other random apps. Why should you have to head back to your home screen to peek in at something important like your notes or your calendar when that info is often incredibly pertinent to other tasks you're tackling?
My friend and fellow efficiency aficionado, I've found a better way. It's a creative and quite brilliant hack that turns an otherwise empty and useless area of your phone's display into an intelligent launchpad for any widgets you want, from anywhere you happening to be working.
This is one of those wonderful things that truly has the ability to change how you think about getting stuff done on the go. Lemme show ya how it works.
[Get fresh tips in your inbox with my free Android Intelligence
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Oct 13, 2026
There's growing talk of digital sovereignty as enterprises rethink past consolidation decisions made in the name of simplicity.
Mozilla, developer of Firefox, argues that a "very specific, very important layer" has been mostly missing from that conversation: The browser.
To that end, the company has unveiled Firefox Enterprise in a bid to diversify the browser engine to support privacy, control, and security.
The new offering combines the Firefox browser with a management console that enterprises can run on their own infrastructure using their own tooling. Companies get a full view of their data and can govern how it moves, and IT teams can manage policy, access, and set controls around AI use.
Firefox is already deployed across thousands of organizations and used by roughly 200 million people each month, Mozilla said. It is built on Mozilla's independent Gecko engine, the only major browser engine developed outside Google and Apple.
"If all your options are built with the same technology underneath, ‘choice' is a lie. So is control," Mozilla CEO Anthony Enzor-DeMeo observed in the blog post announcing the product.
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Oct 13, 2026
When Workday acquired Sana just about a year ago, it said that the combination of Sana's AI with Workday's platform would create a new "front door" to work. Today at its Workday Rising conference, it unveiled that front door, turning Sana into Workday's default home screen that, it said, "brings tasks, decisions, meetings, and agent activity into one place, helping employees move directly from what needs attention to getting it done."
The new interface goes beyond merely answering questions to orchestrating Workday's agents to execute tasks. Each employee's experience is tailored to their role; when they open the application, they see the tasks and decisions that need their attention and can take action directly from the UI. And, using TypeSafe's Jev AI model, Sana adapts its UI to each task, the company said, generating forms, calendars, approval cards, visualizations, and other interactive experiences in real time and completing tasks once the employee approves the action. It also supports work that spans multiple days, displaying relevant information at every stage of functions such as financial closing or preparation of workforce plans by HR.
Sana also works within other AI tools and platforms including Anthropic Claude, Google Cloud's Gemini Enterprise, and Microsoft Copilot, as well as within Microsoft Teams and Slack. But, Workday said in its announcement, "third-party AI tools and platforms never get raw access to Workday data — they can no
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Oct 13, 2026
Apple has launched its most serious push yet into your home, built around its attempt to normalize always-on AI with Siri. As widely expected, the new products include its much-anticipated Apple HomeView smart display, a new Apple TV 4K with Siri AI, the next generation HomePod mini 2, and Apple Home Collection, a range of home accessories designed in collaboration with third-party partners.
What is HomeView?
HomeView is a central control and entertainment device for smart homes. Powered by Apple Intelligence with Siri AI, the wall- or stand-mounted smart display costs $299 and has an A18 chip that runs "HomeView" software.
Apple confirmed most of the pre-event speculation, most particularly that the product will not be available in the European Union, as Siri AI is currently unavailable there due to restrictions within the Digital Markets Act. App
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Oct 13, 2026
New market research from Counterpoint Research shows that global smartphone sales fell by 20% in the third quarter of this year compared with the same period a year ago. This is the lowest level for a third quarter since 2012.
The decline is attributed to the ongoing shortage of memory components, where sharply rising prices for DRAM and NAND memory have driven up manufacturing costs. Manufacturers, in turn, have raised prices for customers. According to Counterpoint, global smartphone prices have risen by about 20% in 2026.
In terms of market share, Samsung continues to hold the top spot with 23%. Apple is close behind with 22% of the market, the highest share the company has ever held in a third quarter.
Counterpoint does not expect to see any clear recovery in the mobile market for the remainder of the year.
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Oct 13, 2026
Microsoft has launched Decision-1, an AI model that returns probabilities for predefined answers, allowing software applications to use its outputs directly instead of processing a free-form response from a large language model (LLM).
The model targets tasks such as classifying requests, prioritizing incidents, and checking AI-generated responses. Microsoft says it can handle these decisions with lower costs and latency than approaches that rely on general-purpose LLMs.
"Instead of writing a free-form response, it takes a fixed set of answer options and returns a calibrated probability for each one in a single pass," Microsoft said in a blog post.
Microsoft-Decision-1 is available through Microsoft Foundry and OpenRouter, according to the company. Microsoft built the model by post-training Qwen3.5-9B and said it plans to rebase it on other models, including Microsoft AI (MAI) and OpenAI models.
Model targets specific decisions
Decision-1 supports yes-or-no judgments, choices among predefined options, ratings, and rubric-based assessments of AI responses and agent actions, Microsoft said. Developers can use its outputs to classify inputs, rank work, verify responses, or determine the next action in an AI agent workflow.
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Oct 13, 2026
Microsoft on Monday unveiled the Maia 300, its third-generation AI chip. According to Microsoft, the new chip will be optimized to handle the latest reasoning AI models and agents, which should result in lower operating costs.
"We expect Maia 300 to deliver 40% more tokens per megawatt compared to leading GPU-based systems," said Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's executive vice president for cloud and AI, in a blog post.
The chip's predecessor, the Maia 200, was launched in January and now supports Microsoft Copilot workloads, with GitHub Copilot and Microsoft Foundry to follow by the end of 2026, the company said. Microsoft plans to deploy the Maia 300 after the turn of the year.
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Oct 13, 2026
The world is advancing toward a future in which over 10 billion humans coexist with trillions of autonomous agents in a superintelligent universe. But as AI becomes more intelligent, humanity is being divided into those who can access intelligent tools and those who will remain isolated from one of the greatest technological revolutions in decades.
As a response, Tether is building powerful infrastructure across AI, communication, finance, and neurotechnology for a future that doesn't exclude people based on geography or wealth.
AI should be the great equalizer, but is it?
AI brings a powerful technology to the global population, currently around 17.8% of the world's working-age population, according to Microsoft's Global AI Diffusion report. However, access to its benefits remains uneven.
Economies with the largest quarter-over-quarter gains in AI adoption include the United Arab Emirates, with Singapore and the North Atlantic following behind. Despite a growing wealth and intelligence gap, with barriers around cost, privacy, and availability, AI adoption continues to grow in the world's leading economies.
Between H2 2025 and Q1 2026, the rate of AI adoption grew more than twice as much in the Global North compared to the Global South. The disparity reflec
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Oct 12, 2026
IDC has bad news for enterprises upgrading PCs: don't expect prices to come down any time soon.
PC prices are already high due to constrained supplies and surging memory and component costs. Geopolitical tensions and an uncertain global economy won't make the situation any better.
"A weaker economy could soften demand further, and with prices still high and supply constrained, the outlook for the remainder of 2026 and going into 2027 could deteriorate," IDC analysts said in a press release last week.
The third quarter of 2026 was a disaster for PC makers, with shipments falling 20.1% year over year.
PC makers and their channel partners stocked up on inventory earlier in the year ahead of memory-driven price hikes. The focus in the third quarter was on clearing out that leftover inventory amid dried-up demand.
"Channels are now worried about carrying too much inventory into a market where high prices are suppressing demand," said Jitesh Ubrani, a research director at IDC.
Within the existing inventory, low-cost PCs are harder to find. For example, HP is making higher-priced PCs a larger part of its product mix so it can generate higher revenue amid declining PC shipments.
HP's chief financial officer, Karen Parkhill, said in an August
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Oct 12, 2026
Messaging on Android has come an impressively long way in a relatively short time.
After years of comically extreme flipping and flopping and endless-seeming strategy shifts, Google's been focused on its Google Messages Android app as the primary platform for Android messaging for a solid several years now. And that almost shockingly unusual (for Google!) dedication is starting to make a noticeable difference.
At this point, here in the frequently overwhelming year of 2026, messaging on Android is actually a pretty decent experience. The Google Messages app is solid at its core — and, all basics aside, the service is packed with easily overlooked efficiency enhancers and experience-improving options.
As a follow-up to my collection of 12 time-saving Android texting tricks, I wanted to dive even deeper and explore some of Google Messages' other oft-overlooked advantages — advanced features that are all t
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Oct 09, 2026
What if the three remaining hard disk manufacturers became two? Seagate Technology and Western Digital control 90% of the market, according to market researcher TrendForce, with Toshiba picking up the crumbs.
Seagate and WD both make their own magnetic drive heads, but Toshiba relies on a third party, TDK, which also sells to Seagate and WD when they need extra capacity.
Seeking to guarantee supplies of this critical component, Toshiba made a bid for TDK's drive head business earlier this year, according to Bloomberg. Concerned that this could affect its ability to meet the growing demand for hard disks from AI data centers, Seagate made a counteroffer, Bloomberg reported. TDK is staying mum.
If Seagate were to capture the TDK unit it could knock Toshiba out of the hard disk market altogether, according to Bloomberg.
While Toshiba is reliant on its suppliers for technological advances, WD and Seagate continue to innovate. In February, Western Digital
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Oct 09, 2026
The owner of a ransomware remediation company is facing trial for defrauding customers.
Zohar Pinhasi, also known as "Zack Silver" and "Zack Green," has been arraigned in New York on wire fraud charges for allegedly defrauding clients of his ransomware remediation company, MonsterCloud.
Pinhasi falsely claimed he could recover documents encrypted by ransomware without paying a ransom, according to district attorney Joseph Nocella. "The defendant re-victimized his clients while extracting a hefty profit for himself," Nocella said.
MonsterCloud claimed to offer an alternative to paying the ransom. Its website said that, thanks to its decryption techniques, "our team specializes in helping businesses recover their data without succumbing to ransom demands."
However, the indictment alleges that rather than using any technology, Pinhasi simply paid the cybercriminals in exchange for a decryption key with which MonsterCloud employees would then an attempt to unlock their clients' files. It is alleged that Pinhasi typically charged clients a fee that was substantially higher than the ransom payment. For example, in 2023, he made a payment of $8,200 to a cybercriminal while charging a client $150,000.
There may be several reasons why clients chose to use MonsterCloud. US government advice (echoed by other governments) is not to pay ransoms as it may enco
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Oct 09, 2026
There are important accounts to secure, and then there are important accounts to secure. Your Google account falls into that second category, maybe even with a couple of asterisks and some neon orange highlighting added in for good measure.
I mean, really: When you stop and think about how much stuff is associated with that single sign-in — your email, your documents, your photos, your files, your search history, maybe even your contacts, text messages, and location history, if you use Android — saying it's a "sensitive account" seems like an understatement. Whether you're using Google for business, personal purposes, or some combination of the two, you want to do everything you possibly can to keep all of that information locked down and completely under your control.
And guess what? Having a password that you hastily set seven years ago isn't enough. With something as priceless as your personal data, that single key is only the start of a smart security setup. And even it might be due for an upgrade.
Take 10 minutes to go through these steps, then rest easy knowing your Google account is as guarded as can be.
Part I: Reinforce your front door
Step 1: Check up on your Google account password
We'll start with something simple but supremely important — that aforementioned Google account password. Consider the following questi
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Oct 09, 2026
Half of all US consumers use AI services — but only a small fraction pay for them. Google is trying to shift the balance by giving users of its Gemini AI services reasons to become paying customers.
Users are certainly reluctant to dip into their pockets. A quarter of US consumers use AI daily, but only 4.5% have an active paid subscription to ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude, according to research from Andreesen Horowitz. The survey found, however, that consumers are extremely engaged and that the top 10% of spenders account for roughly half of all observed spending.
Now Google is changing the rules on who can use which Gemini models, limiting what users of its free service and its lowest-priced subscription tier can do.
Starting from October 9, those without a paid subscription will only be able to access the less powerful Gemini Flash Lite model; previously, they could use Gemini Flash and had variable access to Gemini Pro. Subscribers to the $4.99/month Google AI Plus plan will still be able to use Gemini Flash, but will lose access to Gemini Pro. Subscribers to the most expensi
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Oct 09, 2026
Apple is about to intensify its push into the smart home, having spent several years pulling the threads together. The push is well past time, though we've expected it for months.
We've seen the industry try to come to grips with some of the challenges surrounding complex consumer technology in domestic environments before. The multitude of competing standards did eventually generate the Matter standard and its friend, Thread.
Apple's upcoming event invite seems to allude to the latter, featuring a woman embroidering an Apple logo to a piece of cloth.
— Greg Joswiak (@gregjoz) October 8, 2026
While it's only slight evidence, it feels like a hint that whatever Apple does int
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Oct 08, 2026
Google seems to be making a strategic play to control the AI infrastructure layer, not just roll out another shiny new agent.
At its Gemini at Work 2026 event this week, the tech giant unveiled what it calls a "single, universal agent" and API in Gemini that can be kicked off from a simple prompt box. Like other available agents, it is plugged into skills, tools, and enterprise systems, can answer questions, create media, and write and run code, return finished work via of documents, inboxes, and developer environments, and spin up sub-agents to help it do its job.
But Google isn't just looking to go toe-to-toe with existing offerings, or trying to convince enterprises its models are qualitatively and quantitatively superior, said independent tech analyst Carmi Levy.
"Instead, it's trying to establish itself as the gatekeeper of the new enterprise operating system, powered by whatever underlying model makes the most sense," he said.
‘Omnipresent access,' orchestration capabilities
Google says its Gemini agent works autonomously from a single interface, and can function as a personal assistant or team member, akin to a project manager or analyst. Coworker agents can
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Oct 06, 2026
A newly-disclosed critical flaw in Atlassian's data center software has a remarkably wide reach, affecting eight core products across the company's enterprise portfolio.
CVE-2026-21589, rated 9.3 (critical) in severity, is an arbitrary file access vulnerability that could allow an attacker with no login access to read files in web app root directories that they should not otherwise see, and potentially use them for nefarious purposes.
The impacted products require "immediate attention," Atlassian said in a security advisory. Customers should patch to the latest fixed versions. The company said it has not yet found evidence of exploitation in its cloud offerings, which are already patched.
What is particularly concerning about this vulnerability is that it doesn't require authentication or user interaction, and it impacts a broad set of Atlassian products that many organizations rely on for development, collaboration, and IT operations.
"On the surface, arbitrary file access might not sound as serious as remote code execution, but the real issue is what an attacker could potentially get access to," said Erik Avakian
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Oct 06, 2026
A number of studies reported a decline in tech jobs in September as the US continues to get squeezed by geopolitical and economic instability.
Tech consortium CompTIA said 10,350 positions in the technology sector were lost in September, lower than the 14,700 positions cut in August.
But economy-wide, tech jobs — which include IT roles not associated with tech sector — took a bigger hit. Tech jobs across all industries fell by about 6,000, a sharp reversal from the 86,000 added in August.
CompTIA's report is based on an analysis of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' September jobs report, which found that only 29,000 nonfarm jobs were added in the US in September, lower than expectations. The US added 133,000 jobs in August.
Tech worker unemployment ticked up to 3.3%, but that was below the 4.2% national rate, according to CompTIA. The strong August numbers raised hopes that tech jobs were stabilizing, but September's numbers dashed that hope.
Separately, tech companies announced 10,799 job cuts in September, a 77% rise from the 6,103 announced in August,
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Oct 06, 2026
When it comes to consumer protections, Europe is following its own path. That may be visible in its quixotic-seeming decisions that allegedly prevent Apple from introducing Siri AI in the European Union. It's time to begin to grapple with what those decisions mean.
I think the EU has got it wrong in how it has chosen to enforce its Digital Markets Act against Apple. The refusal to figure out a mutually satisfactory way to apply the intent of the DMA on Apple's business practices while protecting its stated values around privacy is a failure of imagination and diplomacy. Apple and Japan previously reached an agreement that achieved positive impacts for third-party developers while protecting the product design integrity and customer privacy the company and its customers care about.
Prevention is not cure
That lack of deal-finding in the EU is preventing the introduction of Apple Intelligence and Siri AI to customers in the trading bloc.
When it announced these AI features, Apple told us it had proposed some kind of technological fix that would provide third-part
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Oct 06, 2026
According to new figures from Statcounter, Windows 11 continues to gain users at the expense of Windows 10. The newer operating system is now estimated to account for 71.5% of all Windows computers globally, while Windows 10 has dropped to 27.8%, reports The Register.
Microsoft itself does not publish any user figures. Statcounter's estimates are based on tracking code installed on websites globally. These figures are not broken out by consumer and business use.
A major shift to Windows 11 occurred when mainstream support for Windows 10 ended on October 14, 2025. Just a month before that transition, about half of PCs still ran Windows 10, according to executives from Dell and HP.
Since then, businesses and consumers have been able to continue receiving security updates through Microsoft's Windows 10 Extended Security Updates (ESU) program. Consumers can enroll in the program
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Oct 06, 2026
OpenAI has announced that within a few weeks it will introduce a digital watermark for text generated using the company's AI tools, ChatGPT and Codex.
This move comes in response to the EU's new AI regulations, introduced two months ago, which stipulate that AI-generated content must be identifiable. Competitor Anthropic introduced a similar feature for its AI tools in August.
OpenAI's new watermark will be available worldwide, but it is enabled by default only within the EU. In other words, users in other parts of the world can ignore it.
According to TechCrunch, it appears possible to edit out the watermark, so it remains to be seen whether it serves any significant purpose.
This article originally appeared on Co
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Oct 06, 2026
Companies continue to invest in AI, automation, developer tools, and other new technologies. But they may not get the results they expect if IT workers don't have the time, resources, or freedom to learn how to use them.
IT workers may be afraid to try new tools if they think a failed experiment could hurt their performance reviews. They may also be unsure which tools and data they can use or how to test new technology without creating security problems or disrupting the business.
A safe-to-fail culture can help remove those barriers. It gives IT workers room to try new ideas while limiting the risks to the company. Although employees still have to follow rules, they're given the time, approved tools, and secure environments they need to test new ideas. Even if the company decides not to adopt a new technology, it can still learn from the experience.
"To me, a safe-to-fail culture is not a safe-to-be-careless culture," said Michael Morris, global head of platform and talent at Randstad Digital. "It means designing experiments so that a failure is contained, reversible, and useful."
1. Make experimentation part of the job
"Fear of failure is a major barrier, especially when people believe every experim
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Oct 05, 2026
Most organizations have been largely unable to measure financial returns from AI, but analysts say new ways to calculate return on investment are emerging.
"There's a delay between the development of technology, even the investment in the technology, and the value that an organization can capture from it," said Michael Chui, a senior fellow at McKinsey.
But more executives are asking questions. "The CFOs are asking CIOs, investors are asking CEOs: ‘Where's the ROI from this stuff, already?'" he said.
In McKinsey's "State of AI" survey released in August, about 80% of respondents said AI improved their productivity. But only 37% said AI's impact showed up in profits, about the same as last year. An even smaller number — only 6% — said AI delivered significant value and accounted for at least 5% of their operating profit.
In other words, there's a drop-off between the value that individual workers are getting from AI and the value that organizations are getting from AI, Chui said.
The biggest gains will come from redesigning workflows and processes in which humans and AI agents work together, according to McKinsey's Technology Trends Outlook. Layering agents onto existing processes isn't enough.
"Usually an end-to-end workflow involves multiple individuals, and completely redesigning that with the use
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Oct 05, 2026
Apple has been forced to make macOS even more locked down, to the dismay of some developers. It has announced plans to introduce more user-facing control over the process of giving apps Full Disk Access.
Some developers are upset, believing this will put more barriers in place to those creating apps outside the App Store. Endpoint security vendors voiced some concern but understand the cause: "poorly written/insecure/greedy AI agents/assistants insisting on Full Disk Access, and then once granted/obtained, abusing that, to access ," as Objective-See co-founder Patrick Wardle wrote on X.
Explaining its plans, Apple says it will still make it possible for customers to choose to enable Full Disk Access; it's just going to make the decision much more intentional, with additional steps to ensure that users know what they are signing up for.
Why is Apple doing this?
It may or may not be in reaction to Meta's Muse AI agent, which was
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Oct 02, 2026
US President Donald Trump's rebranding of artificial intelligence (AI) as super intelligence (SI) has already caused a flurry of activity for one internet domain registry.
SI is the international country code for Slovenia, and in the 24 hours following Trump's executive order, Slovenia's .si domain registry recorded 9,780 new .si registrations, compared to just 3,515 in the whole of the preceding month. Registrations were running at 2,726 per month and 110 per day around this time last year.
Until now, registrars typically charged just $10 for .si domain registrations. The price is higher in the .ai domain belonging to the island of Anguilla: domain names there currently fetch $90.
Conspiracy theorists are already wondering if there's a link between First Lady Melania Trump's Slovenian origins and the decision to rename AI as SI.
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Oct 02, 2026
We're on the brink of a revolution in how people use AI.
Today, people mostly use non-agentic, non-personalized, non-proactive AI tools via PC browsers and mobile apps.
Very soon, I predict, most AI usage will move to agentic, personalized, and proactive AI assistants via wearables like glasses, watches, and earbuds.
We'll move from mostly typing and reading to mostly talking and listening.
This is a much bigger shift than it sounds. It moves AI from its current status as an external tool that we use to a future status of being part of us, a kind of prosthetic technology like eyeglasses, hearing aids, or an artificial knee.
(People use chatbots now for writing assistance [74%], learning and research [64%], work productivity [58%], creative projects [41%], personal organization [37%], and health and wellness [19%]. It's reasonable to predict that people will continue to use PCs and phones for writing, coding, and image generation, but wearables for the rest.)
Surprisingly, one of the least visionary companies in technology currently has the best vision.
Meta's product-vision blunders include the metaverse boondoggle and Horizon Worlds, the failed Facebook Phone, the Libra/Diem cryptocurrency fiasco, missing TikTok's rise until it was too late, losing mobile platform control to Apple and Google
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Oct 02, 2026
Samsung users are still digesting big price increases on the Galaxy S26 series, particularly as they mean some models are now more expensive than equivalently capable iPhones.
That's bad news for everyone, of course, but this is unlikely to get any better for some time to come, with memory giant Micron warning that the memory supply/demand imbalance is going to stick around for at least another year, and probably more.
The AI-driven memory price hikes are applying an inflationary squeeze across the entire industry. It's not the only pressure being felt, as businesses at every scale feel the pain of fuel price and energy cost increases. All this might be a little easier to take if the leaders of the frontier firms creating the memory supply imbalance weren't also warning us that the tech they're making is an existential threat to humanity. It makes the financial sacrifice of costlier consumer electronics
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Oct 02, 2026
The US Federal Trade Commission has warned leading AI players that they will to have tighten up their acts. The agency will soon send formal demands for information to Anthropic, OpenAI, and other AI companies as part of an investigation into whether they are breaking consumer protection laws.
The FTC has acted following a number of incidents where AI models have penetrated corporate systems. In the past few months, we've seen OpenAI agents attack Ruby Gems and Claude breaching three organizations during security testing. Security experts have since warned of new dangers as these companies expand their operations, with new threats continually emerging.
This is not a new area of interest for the FTC, which takes a keen interest in computer security and has previously issued heavy fines to companies with inadequate protections.
The agency has also investigated other AI companies. Last year, it had Alphabet, OpenAI and Meta in its sights when it was looking at the impact of chatbots on children, and in June the FTC broadened an investigation into Microsoft's cloud and AI
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Oct 02, 2026
Tools such as Anthropic Claude Code or OpenAI Codex have changed the face of software development, and all the signs are that this investment is set to increase further. But is paying a monthly subscription (and perhaps additional usage fees) cost-effective? Will the increasing level of investment in AI-generated software prove to be worthwhile?
That's a question several economists from the US National Bureau of Economic Research have attempted to answser, at least indirectly. Their paper, snappily entitled The Macroeconomic Effect Of AI: Sizing The Software Engineering Channel, attempts to calculate how much AI has increased the productivity of software engineers in enterprises outside the software and semiconductor industries by looking at their share prices.
"The main idea is that if AI raises the productivity of software engineers, then firms that rely more heavily on them should benefit more. Therefore news about AI generates higher expected profits for these firms. These profits are capitalized into larger stock price responses. Combining these stock price responses with a model, we can pin down the increase in software engineering productivity expected by financial markets," the researchers wrote.
And the answer? "From November 2022 to December 2025, AI increased the market's expected present value of software engineering productivity by the equivalent of a permanent 32.6% productivity increase."
That's not to say that your software engineers will be
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Oct 02, 2026
Thanks to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), which allows users to run Linux distributions in Windows, it is possible to switch seamlessly between Linux and Windows apps.
Microsoft has announced that it is adding support for Linux containers in WSL, a move that's likely to be appreciated by many enterprise users.
To use this feature, run the command wsl -update; once the installation is complete, you'll have access to the new command-line tool wslc.exe and the shortcut container.exe.
Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint integrations in WSL have also been extended to support container workflows, Microsoft said. New controls in Intune allow admins to enable or disable WSL containers and restrict image pulls to approved registries.
Using the WSL Containers API, Windows apps can also interact with Linux containers, reports Bleeping Computer.
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Oct 01, 2026
When Omnissa this week rolled out a new AI governance authority product, Elara, in beta, it delivered a glimpse into the potential of having visibility between the typical enterprise's data silos, whether they're in lines of business, disparate geographies, or corporate operational units.
"By connecting signals across systems that often operate independently, Elara gives IT and security leaders greater context into how their digital work tools, including AI apps, models and agents, are being used across their environment, and the ability to apply policies and controls based on broader business context," the vendor, formerly a unit of VMware, said in its announcement, noting that many existing tools are limited to authorizing actions within the systems they manage.
"Elara is designed to sit above these tools, connecting the systems that customers already run and giving organizations broader context without requiring them to standardize on a single technology stack," it said.
Brian Link, product CTO for Elara, offered a hypothetical example that illustrated the potential of cross-silo data sharing, which enterprise CIOs have seen as a data Holy Grail for decades.
If someone in cybersecurity needs to, for example, push an urgent OS update to global retail tablets to address
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Oct 01, 2026
The global memory shortage that has driven up the cost of servers, storage and PCs through 2026 will get worse in 2027 and 2028, according to memory maker Micron Technology.
"We expect memory and storage supply-demand conditions to be much tighter in calendar 2027 and 2028 than they were in 2026," CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in prepared remarks for the company's fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call.
Even with new cleanroom space planned across the industry, "We do not have line of sight to when supply and demand will return to balance," he said. Earlier industry forecasts had expected the two to return to balance in 2028.
Mehrotra added that new plants would not bring quick relief. "Production from new DRAM and NAND fabrication facilities takes time to ramp and gradually becomes more meaningful starting a few quarters after initial output," he said.
Neil Shah, vice president of research at Counterpoint Research, said the outlook means CIOs "will have to be prudent about which equipment to upgrade and which to stretch to maintain cost efficiencies."
Higher prices, less memory
On the same call, CFO Mark Murphy said Micron's "inventory levels and
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Oct 01, 2026
ServiceNow has a new take on the service desk: Flow by ServiceNow, a standalone AI product that allows users to get help via chats in Microsoft Teams, Slack, or a Flow web app, or by email, rather than having to leave what they're doing to open a helpdesk ticket.
Flow can be up and running within a day, no implementation project or infrastructure required, the company said. The product can stand alone or plug into the ServiceNow platform for customers who need enterprise scale, governance, and cross-functional workflows, it said.
It's a smart move, said Frank Dickson, principal analyst at Dickson Research. "The pitch is what Flow does not require. ServiceNow claims Flow can be running in a day with no implementation project, no CMDB migration, and no infrastructure. Every item on that list is something its flagship ITSM platform does require. ServiceNow is selling the absence of its own complexity," he said.
Flow will connect to more than 100 systems through pre-built connectors. If the AI can't surface the information it needs to fulfill a request from available data sources, Flow will escalate the issue to a human. Frequent requests, such as those for password resets, can easily be automated by IT, ServiceNow said.
Cost of consumption
Customers don't need an existing ServiceNow implementation to use Flow; as soon as it goes live, it can handle us
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Oct 01, 2026
Tech writers seem hugely excited at news that new Apple CEO John Ternus intends to launch a wave of new products, presumably because we'll get to fill our feeds waxing lyrical about all the new things. But what does it mean when a company known for a few great products begins to introduce lots of potentially lesser gadgets?
Will this dilute the Apple brand? Extend it? Or will an even greater sense of product ubiquity amplify the core products it creates? Will Apple's new hardware drive huge revenue, or are these plans just a sign the company now intends to capitalize on its brand equity with a wave of new devices, some of which may fail?
More things, more money?
That's not to say that the new products will fail, of course. I'm sure there are plenty of households that want an iPad on a base to use as a home security monitor, recipe-finder and call center to stay in touch with friends. I'm pretty certain touchscreen Macs and new all-glass-seeming iPhones will strike a chord.
All of these products will no doubt enable Apple to identify and offer new services to boost that side of its income. Services have become the second-largest revenue stream for 21st-century Apple, after the
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Sep 30, 2026
OpenAI unveiled its long-rumored productivity software suite Tuesday with the launch of Pages, a collaborative document editor for ChatGPT. A slides app is also on the way, the company announced at its DevDay event.
The Pages app is accessed via a new Space tab, which OpenAI describes as a "new home for your team to collaborate with AI to get work done." Users can store documents and other uploaded files, as well as create and share pages, slides, and spreadsheet documents. Space replaces the Library in ChatGPT, but the Projects tab will remain as a way to organize chats and files.
The announcement puts OpenAI into direct competition with incumbent office productivity software providers, such as Microsoft, Google, and Notion.
"Spaces and Pages broaden the competitive overlap, because ChatGPT is moving beyond being primarily an individual assistant towards becoming a place where work can be retained, organized, and shared with colleagues," said Maria Bell, senior research analyst at FDM CCS Insight.
"That brings it closer to the collaboration layer of Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Notion, rather than simply competing with the AI assistants inside those platforms."
"OpenAI is trying to become a more user-centric environment that focuses o
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Sep 30, 2026
US President Donald Trump has ordered the federal government to call artificial intelligence "Super Intelligence," while keeping the technology's legal definition unchanged and relying on industry to set the rules for its use.
In an executive order, the White House administration said modern systems "far exceed what was envisioned when the term ‘Artificial Intelligence' first came into use," adding they "increasingly represent not merely artificial intelligence, but a new era of Super Intelligence."
"It is therefore the policy of my Administration that, to the maximum extent permitted by law, the executive branch shall use the terms ‘Super Intelligence' and ‘SI' in place of ‘Artificial Intelligence' and ‘AI'," Trump ordered.
The executive branch "will not acknowledge" the older terms in any applicable setting, the order stated.
Yet the order defines the new term using the old one. Section 3 of the order says Super Intelligence means the technologies and systems covered by the statutory definition of artificial intelligence in 15 U.S.C. 9401(3).
That equivalence may not last. The order gives the White House 60 days to propose a new legal definition.
Trump also put the new name to use immediately. On the same day, he and the leaders of six technology companies signed the "White Hou
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Sep 30, 2026
If you've not done so recently, you should update your Apple systems now as the company continues to fight sophisticated, targeted hacks. The latest patch protects against what the company called "an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals."
Apple recently published an emergency security patch for users on iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 to fix the zero-click vulnerability (CVE-2026-86950), described as an "out-of-bounds write issue" in CoreGraphics. A patch was also made for macOS Sequoia.
This was far from being a friendly vulnerability, as it could impact affected systems with no action on behalf of the user, hence its status as a "zero-click" attack. In this case it means that just the action of "processing a maliciously crafted file" could lead to arbitrary code execution. Apple said it was aware of a report that the issue could have been exploited in a targeted attack on older versions of iOS.
Apple did not specify how the attack is delivered, but SecurityWeek surmised it may have been delivered using the web, email, or messaging apps and that simply previewing the m
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Sep 30, 2026
One of the most rewarding parts of being a Certified Android Explorer™ is the geeky pleasure that comes with uncovering a hidden shortcut Google snuck somewhere into its smartphone software.
One of the most exhausting parts, in contrast, is realizing that Google randomly changed a bunch of the shortcuts you'd found and developed the muscle memory to remember.
Here in the land o' Googley matters, both of those things are constant realities and balancing forces. In fact, we're watching that exact duality play out in the Google Messages app for Android right now.
Google Messages has so many tucked-away options and power-user shortcuts that most mere mortals never notice — or just don't remember to use. And now, sure enough, Google's in the midst of rolling out an update that changes the way many of 'em work.
Maybe you've noticed. Maybe you had no idea those invisible gestures were even there in the first place. Either way, now's the time to learn or relearn the best ways to get around Google Messages on Android and take full advantage of its recently revamped invisible actions.
Here's your guide to all the hidden swipes, taps, and presses and how they can help you communicate more efficiently than ever.
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Sep 29, 2026
Meta is once again repositioning itself to target the enterprise market.
This week, the company announced the Meta Enterprise Platform, which it says will evolve its AI stack into products and services that enterprises can deploy into operations, rather than just using them for advertising and social media campaigns.
While the company provided few details about the offering, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called the platform "the next major pillar" of its business, saying it will feature a connected suite of products including Muse agent, Meta Business Agent, Muse API, and Muse Code.
MongoDB's Chirantan "CJ" Desai will step in as chief enterprise platform officer to lead the effort.
The question is whether this endeavor, once fully launched, will be more lasting than Meta's previous attempts in the enterprise.
"The issue of trust remains," said Armaan Sandhu, research analyst in the AI practice at Info-Tech Research Group.
The shutdown of previous products like Workplace and Horizon Workrooms indicate that Meta tends to "abandon the enterprise products as soon as its vision of the future changes," he said.
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Sep 29, 2026
The fact that almost one-fourth of Anthropic's revenue last year came from just two customers, and that many of its largest customers have not signed long-term contracts, could translate into a much stronger negotiating position for enterprise CIOs.
According to a detailed analysis by Reuters, the company's confidential prospectus depicted a company that might be suffering from a lack of revenue diversification, with Anthropic, like other AI vendors, needing enterprise revenue more than enterprise CIOs might need that particular AI vendor.
Analysts and consultants said the results of the analysis might be good news for enterprise CIOs, but events still need to play out.
The key risk factor for Anthropic, according to the prospectus, is the revenue concentration, said Frank Dickson, principal analyst at Dickson Research.
"Nearly a quarter of revenue came from two customers, and Anthropic itself warns that many large clients are not locked into long-term contracts. That cuts both ways," he said. "CIOs have more leverage than they think, because the vendor needs them more than the pitch deck admits. Negotiate price protection, advance notice before models are retired, and data portability now, while you are the customer they cannot afford to lose." Or, for that matter, a prospecti
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Sep 29, 2026
Manus's relationship with Meta? It's complicated. Just months after they called off their merger, they find themselves competing in the market for agentic AI platforms. Awkward!
The company has just released a rebuilt version of its AI agent platform: "Manus 2.0 is not a version update. It's a new architecture, new products, and new capabilities," the company said in a blog post.
The release is available on web, desktop, and mobile platforms and introduces a new agent harness called Cascade, dedicated execution environments, event-triggered automations, an upgraded desktop app called Manus Studio, and Cue, a standalone app for personal agents, the company said.
Entering on Cue
Cue is Manus's alternative to Meta's Muse app. It's "a new standalone app for your personal agents, on your phone and desktop, built on the same infrastructure as Manus," the company said.
Each agent operates with its own identity and resources. "In Cue, each agent has its own email, phone number, wallet, and computer," the company said, enabling it to communicate, transact within defined limits, and complete tasks independently.
Cue also supports collaboration between agents. "Put several agents in a group chat with a shared goal, and they hand work to each other," the company said.
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Sep 29, 2026
You carry a huge burden of responsibility when you make the world's most widely used electronics product with an audience of hundreds of millions and usage patterns that penetrate every single part of life.
Some complain that Apple doesn't innovate swiftly enough. They expect the company to act as if it didn't have the responsibility it holds, but I propose that responsibility is why the company steadily focuses on incremental change — not just to prevent mass protest by customers when much-loved features disappear, but also to balance the repercussions of any change they make.
After all, at this kind of scale, a simple-seeming change in the nature of product features or user interface can have quite dramatic impact. Social media is a perfect illustration of a technology that seemed so trivial on introduction but has had such huge impact — and Apple never really got into that business, either.
The need to take a gradual approach when implementing big change means Apple is no longer in a race against competitors, because it can't race against some of them in the same way. That's also why I thin
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