Technology News: 31 October 2026

Anthropic engineering manager Felix Rieseberg said he has stopped asking job candidates to complete coding interviews because Claude now codes better than humans. He told junior engineers to focus on making an impact and understanding the company, with radical ideas and a prototype built with AI replacing the traditional challenge. Rieseberg said he is still hiring, but is looking for a new way to assess people who build with AI.

Apple CEO John Ternus said in a Wired interview that Apple will use AI in new products but does not want to ship AI for AI's sake. He said the company is in a good position after delaying a more powerful Siri, which launched this summer, and that users should not need to know whether a feature came from AI or traditional software. Ternus also said agents could make life easier, but product creation remains deeply human.

Nothing is rolling out stable Android 17 to the Phone (4a), (4a) Pro, (3a) and (3a) Pro. The update adds a Glyph app, a split between Quick Settings and the notification panel, a Translucent theme, the Geist typeface, and a three-color status bar indicator for sensitive access, location and AI processing. All four get Dual-view Video; 3a models add Tuning and video filters, while 4a models add faster Essential Voice transcriptions.

A federal judge denied xAI's motion to dismiss an NAACP lawsuit over gas turbines at its Colossus data center outside Memphis. The suit says at least 35 combustion turbines and other pollution sources were installed without required air permits, violating the Clean Air Act. Judge Debra M. Brown found the plaintiffs have standing and that the turbines are not mobile sources under Mississippi's State Implementation Plan.

Google, Meta and other platforms are updating terms of use to explain how user data may be handed to authorities, as they prepare for possible Democratic scrutiny after midterm elections. They have delayed or pushed back on some Trump administration data requests, including administrative and grand jury subpoenas tied to ICE operations. Rep. Shri Thanedar said firms should be ready to explain under oath why they complied with such subpoenas.

Nvidia has lowered published memory and interconnect bandwidth for Vera Rubin, cutting per GPU HBM4 from 22 TB/s to 19.2 TB/s and NVLink 6 from 3.6 TB/s to 3 TB/s without a press release. The edit appeared on product pages between September 1 and 11, after Nvidia said racks were running at partners and as fall shipments were due. The HGX Rubin NVL8 board took the largest cut, falling to 130 TB/s from 176 TB/s.

Brandon Stirrup, a strategy manager at Xbox, said Xbox is using AI to develop games and that companies saying they are not are pretending. He deleted his comments from X a day later and deactivated his account, sparking debate over generative AI in games. Xbox has not officially stated a position, while some large studios say they use or plan to use AI and some smaller studios oppose it.

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison dismissed fears of a SaaSpocalypse, saying AI will make enterprise applications more capable rather than ending them. Speaking at Oracle's AI World conference, he said existing software is not done and can be finished industry by industry, with healthcare as a current focus. He also argued AI should replace complex menus with natural language interfaces that require no training.

Binance's CEO said 90 percent of the $6.3 billion stolen from customers has been replenished, with the company planning to cover the remaining 10 percent. The remaining funds are less liquid tokens that may take longer to acquire. Binance said withdrawals remain paused but are on track to resume on Sunday, 1 November 2026.

A refreshed HMD Pulse Pro 2nd Edition has appeared in a Thai retail listing, priced at 4,990 baht, or about $148. The listing cites a 120Hz screen, MediaTek Helio G99 chipset, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and 50MP main and selfie cameras. The original Pulse Pro has the Unisoc T606 and a 90Hz display, while a tipster says HMD may also refresh the Fusion and Crest Max.

Nintendo announced that November 1 is the first annual Pikmin Day, with a Pikmin Day Direct sharing new Pikmin 4 Switch 2 details, a Pikmin Bloom update and a new Hello! Pikmin short series. Pikmin 4 will let players use the Switch 2 microphone to give voice commands to Oatchi and add a Dandori Academy challenge mode with limited tests and leaderboards. Pikmin Bloom will add Secret Caves where players explore and battle enemies for treasure.

Bolt Graphics said it has powered on the first silicon for its Zeus GPU project, though the planned card is not expected to reach volume production until 2028. The 12nm test chip, made by TSMC, ran without issues and uses dedicated hardware for electromagnetic simulation. Bolt has also opened a Taipei office and is reportedly seeking about $100 million at a valuation near $700 million.

Samsung says the Galaxy Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 4 Classic will not receive One UI 9 Watch, the latest operating system released with the Galaxy Watch 9 and Watch Ultra 2. The 2021 watches have already received four major OS upgrades, while the Galaxy Watch 9 and Watch Ultra 2 get five. Samsung says the Galaxy Watch 5, Watch 5 Pro and later will get One UI 9 Watch by the end of 2026, with new health and AI assistant features.

OpenAI has reportedly lowered its target for a new funding round to $20 billion, after earlier reports of a $30 billion raise at a $1.4 trillion valuation. The round is reported to be led by investors from the United Arab Emirates, with a first close expected to be lower. The company has reportedly secured $11 billion so far, and some large investors have responded tepidly.

French lawmakers voted 11 to 10 on October 30 to add a data levy to the next budget, requiring content providers to pay 0.055 euros, about 6 cents, for each gigabyte sent to French users. The measure could raise 10 billion euros, or 11.2 billion dollars, a year and names Google, Meta, Netflix, Amazon and Akamai as major contributors. Internet service providers would measure traffic and report it quarterly to the tax authority under Arcep.

NASA's second CHAPEA crew is exiting its mock Mars habitat after 378 days, with a livestream starting at 3 p.m. Eastern. Ross Elder, Matthew Montgomery, Ellen Ellis and James Spicer lived in a 3D-printed 1,700-square-foot facility at NASA Johnson in Houston, performing simulated spacewalks, maintenance and plant growth. The data is meant to help NASA optimize food system design for future lunar missions and prepare for long stays in space.

TikTok announced a Must Eat restaurant guide that compiles recommendations from more than 40 million posts and comments, letting users browse by city, cuisine, price, rating and location. The feature puts TikTok in more direct competition with Yelp and Google Maps as it expands beyond social media. It has also been developing a direct message money transfer feature, adding to TikTok Shop, maps, search and games as it builds a super app.

The U.S. Justice Department said Operation Ghostbusters charged five people in a student loan fraud scheme using stolen identities and AI to fake online attendance. The government estimates losses over 200 million dollars, with schools receiving most proceeds and fraudsters moving the rest overseas. More than 750,000 dollars in cryptocurrency was seized from a network associated with Kenyan nationals.

Google said its Suncatcher satellite, an experimental orbital AI datacenter prototype in low Earth orbit, returned a haiku after receiving a ground station prompt. The onboard Gemma 4 model generated the poem from orbit, which Google's Travis Beals called a Hello World milestone after host and TPU trays were powered up and machine learning tests were completed. Next tests will evaluate how TPUs perform under thermal stress and radiation.

The Motorola Signature 27, set to launch on November 5, posted Geekbench 7.1 scores of 3,313 single core and 11,088 multi core on a unit running Android 17 with 12GB of RAM. Motorola said the phone will use the 2nm Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chip and include a 50MP Sony LYT 910 primary camera and a 200MP periscope telephoto camera. It will also have a larger vapor chamber, seven years of OS updates and Audio by Bang & Olufsen.

The latest Windows 11 Insider build adds quick settings for Xbox mode, letting users control Bluetooth, WiFi and power without leaving gaming mode. Search can now filter files, actions and web results, run actions such as changing brightness or volume, and perform actions on a connected phone, including making calls. Results can show file details, stock charts and weather forecasts, while thumbs up or down icons let users train the search.

Best Buy is automatically adding a $100 gift card to preorders of Apple's touch enabled MacBook Pro with the PROLED XDR display, in 14 or 16 inch configurations, and to a 14 inch MacBook Pro with the M6 chip. The card appears in the checkout page. The PROLED laptops are thinner and lighter than standard models, have a glowing Apple logo, and include macOS touch changes such as magnifying the traffic light colored buttons on windows.

Microsoft is emailing some users who have not played on their Xbox Series X or S consoles about trading them in to Best Buy for up to $375 in store credit. The offer follows June price hikes for the consoles, which came after an October increase and a RAM shortage that is expected to last into 2028. The company wants idle consoles back in use, where they could generate Game Pass subscriptions and digital sales.

Darkbloom, a network that sells spare compute from Macs for AI inference, told members to expect lower earnings as token prices fall. The price per million Anthropic tokens dropped 77 percent in under five months, from $2.65 in May to $0.62 in October 2026. An M5 Pro Mac Mini with 64GB of unified memory could earn up to $192 a month, but earnings could fall to about $1.23 a day after the 77 percent token price drop.

Nvidia's Vera CPUs are generally available on Oracle clusters, with standalone Vera instances also available on OCI superclusters. The chip is usually found alongside Nvidia's NVL72 rack and is designed for agentic AI workloads. Tom's Hardware is developing an agentic AI CPU benchmark while publishing a primer on local AI terms such as inference, quantization, context and KV cache.

Intel is moving some production capacity from client to data center CPUs as server demand outstrips supply. CEO Lip-Bu Tan called it one of the most significant supply shortages in history. The company is expanding Fab 24 in Ireland, installing equipment at Fab 62 in Arizona, and expanding advanced packaging in New Mexico and Malaysia, while converting Oregon resources from 18A to Intel 3 to add Xeon 6 capacity.

Samsung is reportedly preparing a Galaxy Z Fold9 for next year with an under-display camera on the inner screen, a feature used in the Z Fold3 through Z Fold6 before the Z Fold7 moved to a punch hole. A tipster said the device would have major internal changes but minimal changes to thickness and design, and is being positioned against Apple's iPhone Duo. The report is unconfirmed, and its thickness targets do not match the wider Galaxy Z Fold8.

Multiple developers say Anthropic's Claude Code or Opus 5.5 is refusing standard game work, reverse-engineering and troubleshooting tasks, including use of the REA tool. Reports point to a game rule that bars recreating a specific existing game, though Anthropic has not officially confirmed the text. Anthropic also introduced a Cyber Verification Program on October 6 that limits access to advanced cybersecurity capabilities.

Microsoft is changing its 365 Family plan from 1TB per member, up to 6TB total, to a shared 2TB pool for up to six members. The price stays at $13 a month or $130 a year, and the change also applies to Premium plans. Existing subscribers who signed up before October 8 move to shared storage at renewal on or after May 2, 2027, though switching to Premium can move the change earlier. Users can buy up to 10TB of extra storage in packs.

Exin Therapeutics says an AI agent using Anthropic Sonnet chose a gene therapy vector, dosage and brain target, then drove a motorized rig to inject treatment into a mouse. A licensed veterinarian oversaw the procedure, performed the craniotomy and approved irreversible steps, while safeguards and an emergency stop button limited the agent. The startup said Opus 5.5 refused the biological experiment and Opus 5 refused live surgery.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on the Cheeky Pint podcast that it is quite terrible to keep limited DRAM in personal computers, arguing cloud data centers should get maximum utilization in a supply constrained market. He was referring to local inference, though consumers use RAM for gaming, streaming and video editing. OpenAI has tied up roughly 40 percent of world RAM output, and analysts expect shortages to keep prices high for years.

Amazon has published an internal memo by Terk Terkowitz, a VP and distinguished engineer, on how developers should work with AI. The document, first sent to engineers and managers in September, criticizes tokenmaxxing, the practice of creating junk tasks to increase AI token use. It follows Amazon ending a token usage leaderboard in May and reportedly announcing 250 job cuts this week, adding to anxiety among engineers.

Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft will honor a new robots.txt signal that lets publishers block crawlers used for generative AI training. The IETF proposal uses one user-agent rule instead of separate rules for each provider. Anthropic has started support, Microsoft will begin on February 1, 2027, Google in early 2027, and OpenAI in coming months. It does not undo past scraping or stop all crawling.

Oracle's head of AI strategy, Hammad Hussain, warned that companies can mistake AI usage for value while facing unpredictable consumption-based costs. He said production economics differ from pilots and that a hybrid approach using frontier models, conventional CPUs and open-weight models is emerging. A recent Splunk study found three in five businesses say unpredictable billing hikes strain them more than a higher but flatter baseline cost.

WhatsApp has introduced Group Status, letting users share 24-hour status updates visible only to members of a group, who can view, react to, like and add their own. The app also lets users share old messages with new group members after they join and pin group messages permanently. A new chat filter shows unread group chats where the user was mentioned or received a direct reply, including @all messages.

Apple is discounting the iPhone 17 by 180 euros on the base 256GB model, with the iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro also available. The company refreshed the iPad mini with an 8.5-inch OLED display and an optional nano-texture glass finish. It also launched a touch-enabled MacBook Pro.

Venture capital limited partners, the investors who fund venture firms, say they are feeling great as OpenAI and Anthropic valuations have risen quickly. They say many have piled into the same two companies, often through the same venture firm, despite the usual practice of avoiding conflicting investments. Some investors describe the situation as a yellow light and are uneasy about how quickly venture firms are returning to raise new funds.

A leaked teardown of the Galaxy Fit4 Manager app points to a Samsung Galaxy Fit4 with a 258 by 428 pixel display, slightly taller than the Galaxy Fit3, and support for up to 12 watch face tiles. The wearable is expected to track steps, active calories, heart rate, blood oxygen and stress, with on-device sleep stages, scores and coaching after seven days. No GPS receiver is mentioned, and previous rumors put the price under $100.

Binance said it is targeting resumption of withdrawals around 2:20 p.m. Sunday after a $6.3 billion hack, saying stolen wallets are covered and user assets are safe. The exchange said partners have frozen about $3 billion of the stolen crypto, while co-CEO Yi He called the sum about 2% of total assets and reserves. President Donald Trump said Binance says it has the situation pretty much under control, though he did not identify the attacker.

Two blockchain analytics firms, TRM Labs and Chainalysis, say they have robust intelligence identifying North Korea's Lazarus Group, also known as TraderTraitor, as the likely culprit in the $6.3bn hack of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. The group is accused of using a special authorisation to turn a Binance hot wallet into one that moved funds automatically to the attacker.

The case adds to major crypto thefts linked to North Korea.

Anduril Industries will begin accepting orders for BlueChip laptops in 2027, using Qualcomm Snapdragon X Series processors and replaceable shells for antennas, solar panels or other additions. The company says US and allied suppliers account for 90% of prototype component procurement costs, but a fully American-made laptop could cost 20% more. It targets government, military and public safety buyers seeking hardware security.

Nvidia is in talks to guarantee billions in debt financing for AI cloud provider Nscale's planned Anthropic data center in West Virginia. Under a residual value guarantee, Nvidia would step in if Nscale defaulted on construction payments, temporarily take over the facility, and help find a buyer and new tenant. Nscale is seeking to go public at a valuation of up to $35 billion.

Samsung is expected to sell its Android XR Intelligent Eyewear in mid-December, initially in South Korea and the United States. Europe, China and Japan are not included in the first release, and pricing has not been set. The glasses run Android XR with Gemini, have no display, and use a Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 chip for up to nine hours of use. Samsung wants to see Korean and US market reaction before expanding, as it did with the Galaxy XR headset.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company has more unpublished math and science breakthroughs and should not sit on fundamental discoveries, even as researchers criticize its rapid paper output and verification. On the Cheeky Pint podcast, he also called local use of scarce DRAM inefficient, arguing cloud data centers should maximize utilization of the limited memory supply.

NASA has asked commercial companies for ideas on how to reboost, service, or dispose of the Hubble Space Telescope, with responses due November 30. The space agency wants to know who could capture Hubble and boost it to at least 373 miles, or guide it to a controlled reentry, by 2032 without harming it. Hubble has no onboard propulsion and is expected to fall back into the atmosphere in 2033 or 2034 without intervention.