Technology News: 2 November 2026

Apple's inventory rose from $11.09 billion in the June quarter to $14.54 billion in the September quarter, a 31.1 percent increase and 154.3 percent above the year earlier. CEO John Ternus called memory pricing unprecedented and said the company expects even higher costs in the December quarter, with a forecast gross margin of 45 to 46 percent. Apple also blamed supply constraints for weak iPad sales.

Meta said the last operating system update for Quest 2 and Quest Pro headsets is planned by March 2027, with version 213 as the final release. The company will continue security patches and critical bug fixes through the end of 2027, and apps for the older devices can be submitted until December 2027. Meta called Quest 3 and 3S the baseline for its VR gamers ahead of new VR Glasses expected in spring 2027.

Apple reported fourth-quarter iPhone revenue of $57.58 billion, a 17 percent increase, even though it did not release a standard iPhone in its latest lineup. Total revenue rose 12 percent to $114.5 billion, with Mac sales up 24 percent and services reaching $31.57 billion, while iPad revenue fell 10 percent to $6.23 billion. Higher memory costs contributed to price increases, and preorders for the folding iPhone Duo are not included.

Germany's BSI said members of the Bundestag and other notable individuals received Apple alerts that their iPhones may have been targeted by government-backed spyware. Apple sent the notifications to users in 99 countries, and the BSI advised recipients to assume their devices may be compromised. It is unclear which government is behind the attacks, and Berlin did not say whether Chancellor Friedrich Merz was targeted.

Snap has settled a lawsuit by two teenagers who said its platform was designed to be addictive and contributed to depression, anxiety and eating disorders. The case was due to start this month and would have been Snap's first social media addiction trial, with CEO Evan Spiegel expected to testify. The teens had earlier settled claims against Meta, YouTube and TikTok, and settlement terms were not disclosed.

Google and security firms working with Japan's police have disrupted a backdoor embedded by Android manufacturer Videostrong in more than 1.3 million devices across 200 countries. The Shenzhen-based company sold access to criminal affiliates who used the devices for ad fraud and data exfiltration.

Google has cut ties with Videostrong and says taking down command-and-control domains will sever access to at least 10 million additional compromised devices.

Motorola shared a hands-on promo video with Danny Winget ahead of the Signature 27 launch on November 5. The phone is confirmed in two colors, with a 6.8-inch 120Hz LTPO Tandem OLED display, up to 12,000 nits, a Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chip and up to 16GB of RAM. It runs Android 17 with seven years of OS updates, and its cameras include a 50MP main camera, 200MP periscope telephoto, 50MP ultrawide and an action sensor.

Helen Chiang, Xbox's former chief operating officer, said she has serious concerns about how she was treated after leaving Microsoft less than two weeks ago. In a LinkedIn post, she did not dispute being fired but denied reports that she was terminated for policy violations, leaked confidential information or left to join a competitor. She denied discrimination, bullying, harassment, insider trading, embezzlement or fraud.

Tachyum, developer of the long delayed Prodigy processor, voluntarily filed for bankruptcy in Bratislava, Slovakia, after repeatedly missing milestones. The company introduced Prodigy in 2018 and has yet to demonstrate working silicon, with its latest redesign pointing to a 1,024 core chiplet design and availability in 2030 or beyond. A trustee could take control of assets, including processor intellectual property.

OpenAI said it will pilot a Grid Protectors Program at an upcoming data center in Effingham County, Georgia, freeing up to 1,000 megawatts during extreme weather or emergencies, enough to power air conditioners in about 700,000 homes. The company is pitching its power plants as a resource utilities can call on, as opposition to data centers grows and it partners with Oracle and SoftBank on Stargate projects.

President Vladimir Putin has ordered private Russian data centers to reserve 10 percent of their capacity for state IT infrastructure, with owners given 24 hours to comply if called. The move follows Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian data centers, including Russia's largest facility and a finance ministry site. A new commission can order the release of that capacity.

Custom chip designer Marvell has agreed to buy optical chip and networking maker Lumentum in an all-stock deal with an enterprise value of $115 billion and an equity value of about $80 billion. Marvell will pay 4.5 shares for each Lumentum share, in one of the largest tech acquisitions in history. Nvidia is a major shareholder in both companies, having invested $2 billion in each in March. It should close in the first half of 2028 if approved.

The New York Times and publishers including the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel have sued Brave Software over alleged AI scraping and paywall bypassing. The complaint says Brave sold AI companies access to its index of scraped websites and let users avoid publisher paywalls without permission or compensation. Named AI companies include Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere.

Readwise launched Readwise Books, an app that combines an ebook store with reading tracking, calling it a cross between Kindle and Goodreads. The bootstrapped startup says it will sell millions of ebooks from major publishers, initially in the U.S., and offer detailed stats such as words read, pace, depth, immersion and sessions. It also supports uploaded DRM free EPUBs, Kindle Cloud Reader sessions and text to speech.

Apple has reportedly delayed its rumored smart home robot until next year at the earliest, and possibly to 2028, because its software is not ready. The device, codenamed J595, is expected to have a 9-inch display on a robotic arm and cameras and sensors that can follow users during FaceTime calls. Former Apple employees predict it will be called HomeView Ultra, and it may cost around $1,000 or more.

Squarespace is laying off 19 percent of its employees, around 300 of its 1,800 staff, to simplify operations and move faster. The company said affected employees will receive 16 weeks of base pay and healthcare benefits into May 2027. The cuts come more than two years after its Blueprint AI push and Permira's acquisition.

Israeli startup 42AI has come out of stealth with $62.5 million in seed funding for a behavioral world model that it says can predict human behavior. The company is initially running the system at a handful of financial brokerages, where it aims to help predict how individual traders respond to volatile conditions. Its founders said the model looks at reactions to seemingly unrelated events to infer underlying tendencies.

New safety certifications list the Samsung Galaxy S27+ with a 15V/3A rating, equivalent to 45W charging, across global, Korean, US, Chinese and Japanese models. That matches the Galaxy S26+ and keeps Samsung's Plus models at 45W for a sixth generation in a row, since the Galaxy S22+. The vanilla Galaxy S27 was separately certified for the same 25W as the Galaxy S26. The series is rumored to return to a January or February launch window.

Nagoshi Studio, founded by Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi, has officially shut down after less than a year. The company said it was dissolved on October 31 at a shareholders meeting and will now liquidate assets and sort out liabilities. Its first game, Gang of Dragon, reportedly needed more than $44 million to finish after backer NetEase pulled funding, leaving the project's future unclear.

SUSE will cut about 10% of its 1,900 employees, its CEO said, as automation and AI change software work and reduce the need for some roles. The privately held open source company, owned by EQT, will tell affected staff by November 4 and share its fiscal 2027 strategy on November 16. The cuts are framed as a response to shifting organizational needs rather than individual performance.

Omen AI is acquiring Aquatic Labs in a $16 million cash and stock deal to combine real time water sensors for data center cooling. The companies said their technologies can monitor elements and alkalinity in cooling fluids, replacing laboratory tests that take multiple days. The combined sensor is expected to reach market by early next year, with Omen initially targeting chips drawing 250 to 300 megawatts of power.

Google is testing a status bar for Wear OS that would show the time and the highest priority status indicator at the top of the screen. The test version is in the Wear OS 7.1 canary emulator, where the bar hides during scrolling and full-screen dialogs. Google may include it in Wear OS 8.

Ukraine's Air Force said its Air Alert app was likely compromised on Sunday evening, sending fake warnings about street fights, chemical attacks and radiation hazards. Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations later confirmed its app was also hit, allowing attackers to send fake information to citizens. Ukraine urged people to use sirens and official channels while its app was down.

Northwood Space said it raised $375 million in a Series C round with Andreessen Horowitz and DFJ Growth as co leads, valuing the company at $2 billion. The space infrastructure startup builds antennas and software that help satellites communicate with Earth, and its CEO is Bridgit Mendler. The round includes a financial agreement with HSBC to scale the company, hire and fulfill existing contracts.

The Washington Post reports that SpaceX has discussed acquiring Boost Mobile or accessing its network to launch its own mobile service. The talks come as SpaceX tries to make Starlink a major carrier by combining satellite-to-mobile coverage with a terrestrial network. Boost Mobile's network is powered by T-Mobile and AT&T, so SpaceX may need permission from both carriers to launch.

Google said Jules, its asynchronous AI coding agent, will wind down as the company focuses on the unified Antigravity experience. Users have until November 11, 2027, to finish ongoing sessions, after which existing projects will be read-only, and Google added an export process for settings, repositories, memories, scripts and sessions. Google described Jules as an experiment and said many of its tools will continue under Antigravity.

NVIDIA said unauthorized activity on its Brev cloud development platform between October 4 and 20 may have exposed SSH keys used by customers to access virtual machines. The company replaced the affected keys and updated customer machines, but said it found no evidence of improper use. It did not explain how attackers gained access or whether customer data or workloads were accessed.

Canva introduced Affinity for iPad, offering vector graphics, photo editing, illustration and page layout tools optimized for Apple Pencil and touch. The app adds a Sketch Studio for freehand drawing and sketch to vector workflows, and supports Apple Pencil Pro gestures, pressure, tilt, barrel roll, squeeze and hover.

Core tools are free with a Canva account, while optional AI Studio features require a Canva Pro subscription starting at $18 per month.

OpenAI is preparing to combine the Chat and Work tabs in the ChatGPT desktop app, starting with select users for feedback before a wider rollout. The company said users can bring files and plugins and ask ChatGPT to build a website, create a presentation or work on the web while reviewing its output.

Codex will remain separate, but ChatGPT and Codex will draw tokens from the same allowance pool, which may make some users wait for resets more often.

Elon Musk said serving Grok Bot was unsustainably high relative to revenue after users reported hitting usage limits early. Some users said their Grok Bot usage jumped to 100 percent without active use, and Musk replied that costs had forced a lower cap. The comments come amid scrutiny of AI product economics, including concerns that token costs can exceed subscription prices.

The UK's Investigatory Powers Commissioner's Office said GCHQ has failed to establish the location or status of thousands of removable storage devices, including USB sticks, external hard drives and memory cards. The watchdog said the issue was first raised years ago and expressed disappointment at the time taken to investigate. GCHQ has commissioned a new monitoring tool and will report how many devices have been confirmed as lost.

Prospect signed an access agreement with Google UK, allowing it to organise among about 7,000 workers across UK operations, including YouTube but excluding DeepMind. The deal follows new UK workplace rights and a similar Meta agreement. Prospect can run sessions at Google sites, including King's Cross, while Google said it already had good employee relations. DeepMind is expected to seek a separate deal with the Communication Workers Union.

A second wave of cyberattacks hit supermarket freezers across Belgium, Sweden, Luxembourg, Estonia and Ireland, with temperatures remotely raised to 50 degrees Celsius. Ahold Delhaize confirmed dozens of stores were affected, and ICA and Coop in Sweden reported similar incidents. The attacks follow a similar wave in France last month, with researchers pointing to internet-connected Danfoss units no longer receiving security updates.

Hermantown's city council unanimously approved a development agreement and special use permit for a Google data center covering just over 200 acres outside Duluth. The project will have three buildings of about 1.66 million square feet, capped at 33 feet, after Google dropped a request for up to $80 million in property tax breaks. The approval follows postponed meetings and public opposition, while lawsuits and a power supply inquiry remain.

Redmi has quietly launched the M100 Pro in China, a phone that appears to be a rebranded Redmi Note 14 Pro. It is powered by a Dimensity 7300-Ultra chip, has up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and carries a 6.67-inch 120Hz AMOLED display, triple rear cameras and a 5,500mAh battery with 45W charging. The single 12GB and 256GB model is priced at CNY 2,499.

Spotify is reportedly planning an AI remix feature that could launch in February, possibly around the Grammys, or at another first quarter 2027 date. The Financial Times says people familiar with the plans expect a $4 to $5 surcharge on top of Premium subscriptions, though timing and pricing are not finalized. Spotify is still trying to win over artists and labels.

Russia's Federal State Statistics Service said coordinated cyberattacks hit its servers between October 29 and 31, but denied claims that 23TB of data had been leaked. Belarusian CyberPartisans and Silent Crow said the haul includes wartime loss data marked for official use only, with a chart suggesting 25,000 to 50,000 Russian soldiers killed each month. Rosstat's website was reportedly defaced and remained inaccessible.

Anthropic said it added two sentences to Claude Code's prompt on Opus 5.5 to steer it away from recreating someone else's specific game. The company said work on original games was meant to continue working, and that it is iterating on the rules to strike the right balance. Users also reported the model blocking reverse engineering tasks, with one developer saying switching to Opus 4.8 let him continue.

Anthropic's initial public offering filing shows the company is going public with nearly a trillion dollars in compute commitments. The 614-page S-1 also says much of its computing power relies on customers that are also competitors.

Elon Musk mocked OpenAI CEO Sam Altman after Altman said it is quite terrible for home computers to hold DRAM during a global supply crunch. Altman argued limited DRAM would be better used in AI data centers for maximum utilization. Musk shared a meme on X referencing a German WWII officer hunting people hiding sticks of DRAM. The comments come as memory prices rise and makers warn AI driven shortages may last until 2027 and beyond.

Amazon is rolling out its Ask this book AI feature to certain Kindle models, including the Kindle Colorsoft 2026 and Kindle Paperwhite 2026. The tool, first offered in the U.S. iOS Kindle app, lets readers ask questions about a supported book based on where they are in it or the whole book. Amazon has not confirmed which other models or regions will receive the update, and some users have called the feature invasive.

A federal judge rejected a motion to dismiss the NAACP's Clean Air Act case over gas turbines powering xAI's Colossus 2 data center in Southaven, Mississippi. The ruling rejected xAI's argument that the turbines were mobile sources exempt from permitting. The plaintiffs say the plant could emit over 5,00 tons of nitrogen oxides and 47 tons of formaldehyde annually, a setback for SpaceX, which owns xAI.

Indian smartphone maker Karbonn has relaunched in the country with the Rebel and Rebel Pro, two 4G phones that will be sold online from November 4. The Rebel starts at INR 11,999 and has a 7,000mAh battery, while the Rebel Pro is priced at INR 12,499 with a 6,000mAh battery. Both are available in 4GB RAM and 128GB storage configurations and run Android 16.

The FBI said TraderTraitor, a North Korean operation linked to Lazarus, stole about $6.3 billion from Binance in an October 29 attack that began with a compromised DevOps laptop. Investigators say hackers are swapping stolen assets for Ethereum and moving them through DeFi and instant swap services. Binance has resumed withdrawals and says it has replenished about 95 percent of the stolen assets.

Sony's UBP-X700K, its last remaining 4K Blu-ray player in Japan, was marked unavailable on October 22, and local retailers were reportedly told not to expect new stock. Sony has not announced a worldwide withdrawal, and its UK operation said it prefers not to comment on speculation. The player remains listed on Sony's U.S. website, with Best Buy offering it for $329.99.

Philips Hue has added Custom AI Behaviors to its app, letting users describe lighting routines in natural language if they have the Hue Bridge Pro. The AI translates requests into a special programming language that runs automation in the bridge. Early testing found the feature can misread instructions, such as turning on all lights instead of selected ones, and users cannot yet tweak the generated behaviors.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says Apple may launch up to three new iPad models early next year, covering the base iPad, iPad Pro and iPad Air. The base model is expected to gain Apple Intelligence, an A19 processor, 8GB of RAM, the N1 chip and C1X modem. The iPad Air is expected to get an OLED screen, while the iPad Pro may move to an M6 or M7 chip with a vapor chamber for cooling.

Openreach warned that the UK's legacy copper-based PSTN network will be retired on January 31, 2027, with no extension. It has already supported the migration of around 15 million lines, but point-of-sale terminals, fire and security alarms and personal care alarms may still need upgrading. Openreach urged businesses and consumers to audit remaining analogue services and work with providers now.

The 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 now costs $385 after an $80 increase, while 16GB Compute Module 5 versions rose by $40 to between $375 and $415. CEO Eben Upton said the hikes were unavoidable because of a lack of alternative supply for 16GB DRAM, on top of other component shortages. Upton encouraged buyers to use lower-memory or older models and said Raspberry Pi plans to roll back prices when memory costs fall.

Ford launched a privacy promise for its connected cars, committing to keep vehicle data safe and give customers control over what they share. The company also opened a website explaining how, where and why it uses data and how to change settings. The move comes as automakers add connectivity, with only 14% of U.S. customers saying they fully understand what data their vehicle collects.

NATO tested an AI-agent-assisted counter-drone system in Latvia that used existing 5G masts to detect and track flying objects during DiBaX 2026, from October 19 to 30. The exercise was conducted with the United States, Canada, Germany, Finland, Lithuania and other allies, with some tests failing. In the U.S., AT&T and Ericsson demonstrated drone detection over 5G near AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

Hackers remotely activated defrost mode in online-controlled freezers at stores in Belgium, Sweden and Luxembourg, raising temperatures to about 50 degrees Celsius and risking food losses. Ahold Delhaize said dozens of its Belgian and Luxembourg stores were hit, while Sweden's ICA and Coop reported affected stores. Reports are also emerging for Ireland, Estonia and the Netherlands, weeks after a similar attack in France.

OnePlus has added the Turbo 6Vs to its Turbo 6 series in China, listing it with the same core specifications as the Turbo 6V. The new model is available in orange and white, and is powered by a Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 chipset with a 6.78-inch AMOLED display with up to 144Hz refresh, a 9,000mAh battery and 80W charging. It is sold in one 12GB RAM and 256GB storage configuration for CNY 3,699, roughly $555.

Twenty-nine hospital trusts that NHS England lists as benefiting from Palantir's £330m federated data platform said the system is not live or that they are not using its applications. A senior health official called the gap very misleading. The finding comes as Health Secretary Yvette Cooper faces calls to end the contract, while Palantir's UK and Europe chief said doing so would put politics above patients.

Sky News reports that Virgin Media O2 plans to cut an unconfirmed number of jobs, understood to be in the thousands, as it seeks to reduce costs and manage debt. The company employs around 16,000 people, and an unnamed insider said as many as 4,000 roles could be at risk. Non-customer-facing roles are likely to be most affected, with details possibly given on its November 3 Q3 call.

Western Australia police said a five-month trial of real-time facial recognition scanned 1,380,882 faces across 100 deployments in 43 locations. The alerts led to 122 arrests, engagement with 146 registered sex offenders and 10 welfare checks, with nine incorrect alerts. Police said no one was arrested on a false alert, but civil liberties advocates questioned the error rate and said convictions will determine how many arrests were wrong.

Xiaomi said its 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max phones, which debuted in China in September, will make a global debut later this month. Listings on Italian retailer Epto showed European prices, with the 18 Pro starting at 1,398.90 euros and the 18 Pro Max at 1,783.90 euros. The global models are listed with smaller batteries than the Chinese versions, at 6,000mAh and 7,050mAh respectively, and three colours.

Jackery announced the Explorer 100D, its smallest portable power station, measuring 4.6 by 3.4 by 3.4 inches and weighing 1.87 pounds. It has a 96Wh lithium iron phosphate battery, two 140W USB-C ports and an 18W USB-A port, with total output capped at 158W. The device is available from Costco in a two-pack for $179.99 and will be sold through Walmart from November 15 for $99.

India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has outlined DEPA, an AI training framework in which models are processed at data locations rather than data being sent to model-makers. Hospitals, banks and government agencies would share anonymized, encrypted data with exchange platforms running hardware-based secure environments. The plan aims to keep data owners in control while enabling AI uses in health and finance.

Anthropic said it is using Claude to help biotechnology developers address obstacles in drug development, from molecular design to clinical trial preparation. Projects involve potential treatments for cancer, food allergies and rare muscular disorders, most still experimental. At Generate Biomedicines, Claude Code helped shorten a CAR T-cell therapy component by about 70%, with lab tests showing cells producing roughly ten times more receptors.

Chinese team says it transmitted data at 3.2 petabits per second through 24 core optical fiber, setting a new real time record and exceeding its earlier 2.5 petabit record. The system combined spatial division multiplexing with S, C and L band transmission to carry more data. Hubei's government website compared the capacity with about 3.2 million 1 Gbps households, while the report said it could download more than 20,000 4K movies per second.

Google said some APAC advertisers, likely Chinese e-tailers, are buying fewer ads after the EU ended its de minimis exemption and added a temporary 3 euro duty on consignments under 150 euros. The change is meant to protect European retailers from cheap imports. Temu, Shein and Alibaba are thought to account for about 10% of ad revenue at Google and Meta.

Samsung smart TVs usually come pre-loaded with popular streaming apps, though availability can vary by region. Users can add other apps by opening the home screen, selecting the search bar, typing an app name and installing it, or browsing categories in the apps menu. Apps can then be pinned to the home screen and rearranged by pressing and holding an app, selecting move and sliding it left or right.

A teardown of Android Auto version 18.0.664204 found a hidden Work Mode tile, suggesting Google may be testing Work Profile controls, though no arrival date was given. The tile lit a briefcase icon over the app drawer but did nothing when tapped. Work Profiles keep employer-managed apps separate from personal apps, and current Android Auto limits can block Teams or hide Meet call history from a Work Profile.

Binance customers withdrew more than $3.6bn of assets from the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange as it reopened on Sunday after a record hack that affected $6.3bn of digital assets. The FBI and other major organisations accused North Korea of responsibility. Binance said it has covered about 95% of the stolen assets and that withdrawals for major cryptocurrencies have resumed, with more services to return in phases.

With iPadOS 27, Apple brought extra-large widgets to Today View, giving them more room on the bigger screen. Useful options include Parcel for tracking deliveries from up to 300 services and Apple's interactive Home widget for quick actions such as switching lights or garage doors. Users can add widgets by touching and holding an empty Home Screen spot, tapping Edit and Add Widget, or converting some app icons into widgets.

OpenAI's spokesperson told Business Insider that compute campuses is its preferred term for data centers, saying it better describes the scale and role of AI infrastructure. The company called them long-term investments in computing, energy infrastructure and skilled work. A September Pew survey found only 4% of Americans viewed data centers positively across environment, utility costs, neighborhood quality of life, jobs and tax revenue.