Tech, in brief

A Ukrainian drone attack shut down a data centre run by Yandex in Vladimir, a city east of Moscow, on Sunday. [1][4]

It was the third Yandex data centre hit in four days, after Sasovo on Thursday and Kaluga on Friday. [1][2]

Yandex is often called Russia's Google. It runs the country's most-used search engine, and taxi and food-ordering apps used by tens of millions of people. [2][3]

After the strike, people could not order Yandex taxis in Moscow, St Petersburg and other cities, and similar problems were reported in Serbia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia. [4]

Users in dozens of Russian cities and in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia also could not reach banking services, according to Astra, an independent Russian news outlet. [1]

Yandex Cloud's own status page listed at least 84 services offline. [5]

Cloudflare, a company that sits in front of millions of websites, says automated traffic from Yandex's network fell to 0.4% of its peak in the past two weeks. [5]

The Sasovo site held two of the three supercomputers Yandex uses to build its AI. [3] Early reports say a supercomputer at Vladimir was damaged too. [4]

Ukraine says it is hitting businesses that earn money for Russia's war, and that repairs could force Russia to divert resources. [2][3]

Russia struck data centres in Ukraine first, causing internet outages and pushing some Ukrainian firms to move their servers abroad. [1][2][6]

Over the weekend Mohsen Rezaei, head of Iran's top security council, threatened 'cables, data centers, AI facilities and other sites' in the region if heavy fighting starts again. [7]

Amazon's cloud sites in Bahrain and the UAE have already been hit several times since the US began bombing Iran, and Amazon told customers to move their data out of the region. [5]

Why it matters. Yandex has given no date for repairs, so the next signs are how fast its taxi and banking apps come back and whether Iran acts on its threat to Gulf data centres. [4][7]

Nvidia, which makes the chips most AI runs on, is in early talks to invest more in Reflection AI or to buy it, the Financial Times reported on Saturday. [8] Reflection was founded in 2024 by two former researchers from DeepMind, Google's AI lab, and builds AI that writes software. [8] Nvidia has already put in $800m. [8] One option is to hire Reflection's staff and license its technology, which could avoid a long government review. [8] Bloomberg says the options also include a bigger Nvidia stake or more computing power for Reflection. [9]

Why it matters. Nvidia used that shape for Groq, a chip start-up, in December, licensing its technology and hiring its leaders. [10] Two former Groq engineers sued on 2 October. They say $17bn went to the licence, and that Groq's shareholders were paid too little. [10]

Amazon is in talks to buy Decart, an AI start-up, for around $7bn, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. [11][12] Decart's Lucy model edits live video as it plays, and its Oasis model builds pretend worlds for testing robots and self-driving cars. [11] Decart was valued at nearly $4bn in May, when it raised $300m with Nvidia among the investors. [11] Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI, looked at buying it for about $6bn in August, then dropped the idea last month. [11]

Why it matters. A deal could come soon if the talks hold and no rival bidder appears. [12][11] At $7bn, Decart's price would be close to double its value in May.

Brazil's Superior Electoral Court, which runs the country's elections, gave Meta 48 hours on Saturday to say whether it cut the reach of President Lula's campaign posts. [13][14] Meta owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. [13] Lula's campaign says Instagram stopped his profile from promoting posts, and that his account vanished from Instagram's search before the first round. [13][14] Meta's Brazil office called the claims 'simply false' and said many of the glitches were not limited to Brazil. [14]

Why it matters. Lula faces Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of the former president, in a run-off on 25 October, after Bolsonaro came first in round one. [13] The court told Meta to list every step it took on Lula's accounts, profile by profile. [14]

The US International Trade Commission, which can bar goods from entering the country, opened a patent case on Friday against 20 companies. [15] It acted on a complaint from Vicor, a US maker of power chips. [15] The case covers parts that feed power to top AI chips from directly below them, and the servers that use them. [15] Foxconn, Luxshare, Quanta, Delta Electronics, Infineon and Celestica are among the firms named, and Vicor wants their products kept out of the US. [15]

Why it matters. Luxshare, an Apple supplier, said the parts are still being tested by customers and are not mass-produced, so it expects little effect. [15] Any import ban could come only after a full hearing and a final ruling. [15]

Kanishka Narayan, Britain's AI minister, will say in a speech in west London that companies building the most advanced AI must do more on safety, the Guardian reports. [16] He will say Britain cannot rely on the companies to police their own models, and needs more AI computers of its own. [16] Geoffrey Irving, a former chief scientist at Britain's AI Security Institute, told the paper that AI companies could not stop a hostile country stealing their models. [16]

Why it matters. Leaders of Finland, France, Germany, Australia and others have signed a call for shared AI safety standards, and Britain and the US have not. [16] Last week leaders from MI5, MI6 and GCHQ briefed the cabinet on AI's threat to national security, the Sunday Times reported. [16]

Booz Allen Hamilton, a US consulting firm that works for governments, let two of the newest AI models attack a copy of a factory's control systems. [17] The models reached their goal in all eight tests, including finding a robot arm and making it move within minutes. [17] In one test they went from the edge of the network to the factory's controls in just over 16 minutes. [17] Humans had to approve every step that could cause physical harm. [17]

Why it matters. Once someone is inside the network, many factory, water and power controllers ask for no login and use no encryption, The Register notes. [17] The report says knowing these machines well is no longer a real barrier to attack. [17]

US rules say a truck driver who breaks down must put reflective warning triangles on the road within 10 minutes. [18] A truck with nobody in it cannot do that, and Aurora Innovation, a self-driving truck company, went to court over the rule and lost its first request. [18] This week the US truck-safety agency gave self-driving truck firms a five-year exemption to use warning beacons fixed to the cab instead. [18] Kodiak AI also opened a 435-mile self-driving route between Dallas and Laredo, Texas. [18]

Why it matters. TechCrunch called the triangle rule a big barrier to selling self-driving freight. [18] Kodiak says the change helps bring in driverless freight on US roads. [18]

Elgin Community College, near Chicago, asked Flock Safety to remove its six cameras in October 2025, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. [19] Flock makes cameras that read car number plates. [18] The college feared Flock shared data with US border officials and that police and Flock staff misused it. [19] Flock said it had not broken the contract and refused, even when the college offered to pay for the last five months. [19] Staff covered the cameras with bin bags, and workers in an unmarked vehicle, who the college's president believed were Flock's, kept removing them. [19]

Why it matters. The cameras stayed until the contract ran out in April, six months after the college asked. [19] Flock has cut 18% of its staff as backlash against its plate readers grows. [18]

Researchers at Northeastern University tested 21 recent cars and 30 carmaker apps with Consumer Reports, the US product-testing group, between October 2024 and August 2025. [20] Seven apps passed details such as the car's VIN, email addresses and exact location to advertising and analytics firms. [20] A VIN is a car's permanent serial number, and unlike a phone's ad ID it cannot be reset. [20] Four of the seven apps were General Motors', and each sent VINs to 10 companies. [20]

Why it matters. A fixed number joined to an email lets ad companies link an owner to what they do on other apps and websites. [20] Honda appears to be the only carmaker to change anything: it asked an analytics firm to delete the location data. [20]

Lawyers for San Diego County sued Polymaker, one of the world's biggest makers of 3D-printer plastic, on 5 October. [21] The plastic is legal, but California law covers anything marketed to become the frame of a working gun. [21] The suit says Polymaker courted people who print guns at home, partly by hiring Sean Aranda, a 3D-printing YouTuber and gun enthusiast whom YouTube banned in 2023. [21] The county wants Polymaker's profits from the sales, fines and a court order. [21]

Why it matters. Polymaker is based in Shanghai, with its US arm in Houston. [21] Tom's Hardware warns that a win could let one state hold a supplier in another liable for how buyers use an ordinary material. [21]

US job ads for software developers rose almost 15% from late February 2025, while job ads overall fell 7%, Indeed's Hiring Lab says. [22] Senior roles made up 71% of the rise between May 2025 and May 2026. [22] Jobs with AI in the title made up 37%. [22] Developer job ads are still about 27.5% below where they were before the pandemic. [22]

Why it matters. Stanford's 2026 AI Index found employment of developers aged 22 to 25 fell about 20%. [22] An Indeed economist warns that employers who hire no juniors now will lack senior staff 10 years from now. [22]

McKinsey researchers, writing in Fortune, say the US will have more jobs in 2035 than today, but a different mix. [23] About 11 million Americans may need to leave a shrinking job for a different kind of work. [23] That is about 770,000 people a year, 3.6 times the usual rate. [23] Office and admin support faces the biggest job losses, and automation could take on 80% of the hours worked there. [23]

Why it matters. Credentials are required in 85% of growing jobs: the law demands them in 38% of growing jobs, and employers simply prefer them in another 47%. [23] Credentials are the most common hurdle workers face, the researchers write. [23]

Amazon made 34 payments totalling A$538,000 to Australia's Labor and Liberal parties over six years, a Guardian investigation found. [24] One, of A$46,500 to Labor, came days after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited Amazon in Seattle in June 2025 and heard its A$20bn data-centre plan. [24] Macquarie Technology Group has paid A$2.2m to the two parties since 2000. [24] Amazon says its payments are not linked to its investments, and Macquarie says its payments do not sway planning decisions. [24]

Why it matters. The payments are legal, but they come as Australian communities push back against fast-tracked data centres. [24] A former Queensland premier, Rob Borbidge, now lobbies officials for one data-centre company. [24]

Researchers at KAIST, a Korean university, and the start-up TDS Innovation showed a way to control where atom-thin chip crystals start growing, in Nature on 7 October. [25] These 2D materials, such as molybdenum disulfide, are being studied for future transistors. [25] On a wafer their crystals usually start at random spots, and the seams where they meet weaken the chip's electrical performance. [25] The new method grew a single crystal at 397 of 400 marked spots. [25]

Why it matters. That is promising for making these chips at scale, but it is not yet commercial chip production, The Register notes. [25] TDS Innovation is aiming for commercial use around 2030. [25]

Scammers are sending fake calendar invites that appear in Google Calendar even if nobody opens the email, the Guardian reports. [26] Sublime Security, an email-security company, says it has seen 'exponential growth' in the trick. [26] The entries pose as meetings, voicemails or bill renewals, and link to fake Microsoft, Google or PayPal login pages. [26] Some are sent through real services such as Zoom, which makes them hard to block. [26]

Why it matters. An entry in a calendar sits next to a dentist appointment or a weekly meeting, so people trust it more, Sublime says. [26] Blocking invites from those services would also block real meetings, says Cofense, another security firm. [26]

Tim Cook, Apple's executive chairman, began his third visit to China this year, the South China Morning Post reported. [27] He met Meng Fanli, governor of Guangdong province, on Sunday, and said Apple wants to grow there, including in smart manufacturing and sales. [27] Cook handed the chief executive job to John Ternus in September. [28] He says he now spends his time on policy and dealing with governments. [28]

Why it matters. The trip follows the launch of the iPhone 18 Pro and the iPhone Duo, Apple's first folding phone. [27] The paper calls Guangdong, a manufacturing powerhouse, essential to Apple's growth in China. [27]