Tech, in brief

Meta rewrote its new terms for business customers late on Friday and took out the word "train" from what it may do with the websites it crawls. [2]

The terms cover any business that runs ads, a Page, a shop or an app with Meta, across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. [4]

The removed line said Meta "may use any content" from those websites to "develop, improve, research, train" its products. [1][4]

Meta now says the crawling terms only ever applied to its ads and business products. [1][3]

It also says sites can still block its crawlers with robots.txt, a small file that tells automatic programs which pages they may visit. [1][2]

The News/Media Alliance, which speaks for US publishers, says training was taken off the list but not banned, so it is "still potentially on the table". [2]

The alliance also points out that the terms still do not promise Meta will obey robots.txt. [2] A law professor told The Register that the law does not always force anyone to obey it. [4]

There is no opt-out: a company that does not agree has to stop using Meta's ads and selling tools. [6][7]

Before the rewrite, the alliance's chief, Danielle Coffey, called the terms "outrageous and probably illegal" and an abuse of Meta's market power. [4]

A media lawyer told Nieman Lab, a news site, that the articles Meta could crawl would likely cost many millions of dollars to license. [5]

Meta already pays some outlets for AI use, with deals with CNN, Fox News, USA Today and People Inc. [7] Last month it began charging businesses to post links. [7]

Legal experts compared the terms to Google's rule that a site must allow scraping for its AI answers if it wants to appear in ordinary search. [5]

Why it matters. Watch whether Meta writes a promise to obey robots.txt into the terms before 30 October, the one change publishers say is still missing. [2]

More than 400 publications now take part in Google's News AI pilot, Google said on Thursday. [8] The scheme pays outlets a licence fee to use their articles in test AI features in Google News, such as AI-written story previews and a spoken briefing. [8] CNN, the Financial Times, Axios and Forbes are the newest partners, with local papers such as the Texas Tribune. [8] The pilot began last December. [8]

Why it matters. It is the paid route that Meta's terms were accused of skipping: publishers who sign get money for articles a crawler could also read. [8][5] Google will not say what it pays, so outlets outside the pilot cannot tell what their work is worth to it. [8]

HUMXN, a company that gathers real-world data for AI, will pay for plumbing, electrical, heating and cleaning jobs in homes in Minneapolis, Chicago and Miami. [9] In return the worker wears sensors that record how the job is done, so robots can learn from it. [9] The homeowner pays nothing and the worker is still paid. [9] Its founder, Thomas Unise, says robots need more than the text and images on the internet. [9]

Why it matters. A plumber's skill is not written on any web page. [9] HUMXN can only record it inside someone's home, so it pays the homeowner with the repair. [9]

DexForce, a start-up in Shenzhen, China, trains humanoid robots, machines shaped like people, in computer simulations instead of filming human workers. [10] Many Chinese robot makers record people doing tasks again and again, and one movement may need more than 100 repeats. [10] DexForce's boss, Jia Kui, told Reuters that learning everything from real recordings would take 10 trillion examples. [10] The firm has about 500 staff and recently raised about $147 million. [10]

Why it matters. It is the other answer to the cost HUMXN pays: instead of buying real recordings, DexForce makes its own. [9][10] Toyota, Samsung and Foxconn already use its software in their factories. [10]

Meta asked the High Court in London this week to limit how Ofcom, Britain's online-safety regulator, works out its fees and its largest possible fines. [11] The Online Safety Act lets Ofcom fine a company up to 10% of its worldwide revenue that counts under the law, or 18 million pounds if that is more. [11] Meta argues Ofcom counts too much of its global sales. [11] Ofcom's lawyer called the challenge "outlandish", and a judgment is due later. [11]

Why it matters. The case is about the largest fine Ofcom could set, not a fine it has already given. [11] If Meta wins, the most Britain could fine big platforms could fall, though Meta says a UK-based sum would still allow large fines. [11]

Bill Gates plans a bigger campaign for AI safety and is leaning on company bosses himself, Axios reported, citing unnamed sources. [12] In 2023 he wrote that the risks of AI were real but manageable. [12] In August he called for a tax on AI and robots, and last month he warned AI could cause a billion deaths. [12] He has not yet said what shape the campaign will take. [12]

Why it matters. His call for strict rules puts him against the Trump administration, which prefers a voluntary safety pact with the AI companies. [12] Some people he spoke to called it a "comeback tour" after his past links to Jeffrey Epstein. [12]

Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, says Google's researchers and its Gemini AI now "work hand in hand" to build the next version. [13] AI helping to build better AI is called recursive self-improvement. [13] Google DeepMind's safety report on its newest model, Gemini 4 Argon, says AI now writes most of the code the lab puts into use. [13] But the same report finds no big speed-up in AI research, and rates that risk "currently low". [13]

Why it matters. Brin's claim and Google's own report point different ways. [13] It matters because most researchers at Anthropic, OpenAI and Google DeepMind told Gladstone AI, which interviewed them for a report, that they expect it within three to 12 months. [13]

Apple's new chief executive, John Ternus, told TIME that the shortage of memory chips is "absolutely a crisis". [14] He said "all options should be on the table", after reports that Apple tested chips from a Chinese maker. [14] US senators and the US government have warned Apple against Chinese memory. [14] Orders for Apple's first folding phone, the $1,999 iPhone Duo, are so far ahead of supply that delivery dates have moved to late January. [15][14]

Why it matters. Buyers waiting for the Duo carry the delay. [15] Which memory Apple may use is now a question for the US government as well as for Apple. [14]

Jeff Fisher, a senior Nvidia executive, said the RTX 5090, its top graphics card for gamers, has not been stopped, two Taiwanese websites report. [16] Nvidia also makes chips for AI. [16] Rumours had said it stopped the card to free chip-making capacity for AI chips. [16] Fisher said supply is "somewhat constrained". [16] Tom's Hardware found the card selling for about $8,500 on Amazon and $7,300 on Newegg, through outside sellers, and missing from Nvidia's own shop. [16]

Why it matters. Nvidia did not reply to Tom's Hardware, so gamers have only a second-hand quote to go on. [16] Gaming is now a small part of Nvidia's sales, the site notes. [16]

Ericsson, a Swedish maker of mobile-network equipment, made an adjusted profit of 10.1 billion Swedish crowns, about $1 billion, from July to September. [17] Analysts had expected 7.93 billion. [17][18] Its shares rose as much as 11% on Thursday, the most since January. [17][18] Its new chief executive, Per Narvinger, warned that the market for network gear is flat and that dearer parts will squeeze profit next year. [17]

Why it matters. Ericsson will pass those costs to phone networks when their contracts end, its finance chief told Bloomberg. [17] It is also merging its two Asian units to compete better with Starlink, Elon Musk's satellite internet, which Narvinger calls a growing challenge to phone networks. [17]

Meta's Instagram suspended the account of No Kings, a US protest movement, for several hours on Saturday, during a nationwide day of action. [19] The group held nearly 3,000 rallies to urge people to vote early in the midterm elections. [19] It says it could not get into the account for hours even after it came back. [19] Meta's spokesman, Andy Stone, said an automatic system reacts to accounts that post very often, and that this time it was "clearly taken in error". [19]

Why it matters. No Kings wants a fuller answer, and says limiting talk about voting in the middle of an election is unacceptable. [19] Meta has apologised and says everything now works as it should. [19]

TikTok permanently banned the promotion account for Musk, Alex Gibney's film about Elon Musk, just before its wider release. [20] Its distributor, Bleecker Street, was told on Friday afternoon. [20] Last month YouTube, Meta, X and TikTok all refused paid ads for the film, and YouTube and Google later called that an error. [20] TikTok and X still refuse its ads. [20]

Why it matters. Larry Ellison, one of TikTok's owners, appears in the film in a text message offering to help Musk pay for Twitter. [20] TikTok did not answer The Verge's request for comment. [20]

Someone has pitched articles to the journals Nature and Science under the name of Linda Geddes, a science journalist, using an email address that is not hers. [21] A New York Post article carried her name though she never wrote it, and the paper has removed it and passed the case to the authorities. [21] Another impostor got Science to publish a piece under a colleague's name and was paid about $1,000. [21] Geddes says many fake pitches look AI-assisted. [21]

Why it matters. Jamie Collier of Google's threat research team says AI is also helping criminals get remote jobs under stolen names, by removing the warning signs hiring managers used to spot. [21]

Verizon, a US phone network, will charge $10 a month for iPhone Handoff, a feature in Apple's iOS 27. [22] Handoff lets two iPhones share one phone number, though only one can use it at a time. [22] Calls, messages and Find My follow whichever phone is unlocked. [22] T-Mobile already charges $5 a month for it, and Deutsche Telekom offers it in Germany. [22]

Why it matters. The same Apple feature costs twice as much on Verizon as on T-Mobile. [22] What a buyer pays for it depends on the network, not the phone. [22]

Joshua Kennedy, a Scottish hacker, has broken into an Xbox 360 using a known attack from 2011. [23] It sends a tiny, perfectly timed signal to the console's processor so that it runs code Microsoft never approved. [23] Kennedy used a Raspberry Pi Pico, a computer board that costs about $4, to read the console's memory and load timing files onto a glitch chip he bought in 2017. [23] He had given up on the job that year. [23]

Why it matters. Kennedy wrote that a project that beat him in 2017 "was made trivial in 2026" by the cheap board. [23] Tools that once needed soldering and costly programmers now cost a few dollars. [23]

X-Bow Systems, a US company that 3D-prints solid rocket motors, has a deal with Leidos to build rocket boosters for a US Army plan for cheap cruise missiles. [24] The plan is part of the US military's "Arsenal of Freedom", meant to rebuild American weapons factories. [24] X-Bow, founded in 2016, says it has made more than 2,100 combat-ready motors. [24] Printing lets it change a design in days rather than months. [24]

Why it matters. X-Bow's founder, Jason Hundley, says modern wars are decided by how many rounds you can fire, not how fine each one is. [24] Tom's Hardware notes that the war in Ukraine was the first to use 3D printing and drones at this scale. [24]

Daniela Amodei, president of Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, called AI romantic partners "a terrible use of AI" in an interview with Arianna Huffington, recorded for a conference on Friday. [25] She said Claude "can never be your manager or your therapist or your partner". [25] Apps such as Replika, Nomi and Character.AI let people build relationships with chatbots. [25] Anthropic's new rules for Claude, which ban role-play with children, start on 12 November. [25]

Why it matters. She blames social media for pulling people apart, and wants AI to take dull work so people have more time with each other. [25] Anthropic told investors it made $16.8 billion in sales from July to September, and may sell shares to the public in November. [25]

Uber runs robotaxis in Zagreb, in Croatia, with Verne, a Croatian start-up, and Pony.ai, a Chinese AI company. [26] About 30 cars have driven 200,000 kilometres since April, with a safety driver on board. [26] Since 10 September a few invited riders have taken trips with nobody in the driver's seat, on a 22-kilometre route to the airport, the first in Europe. [26] Uber and its partners are testing in Manchester and plan London next. [26]

Why it matters. Each partner brings a different piece: Uber's app, Verne's depot that cleans and services the cars each night, and Pony.ai's driving software. [26] The cars stop at every stop sign even on empty roads, and fully driverless trips are still limited to one small area. [26]

Mehdi Paryavi, an adviser to the UN who founded the International Data Center Authority, a research group, says Europe should slow its plans for AI data centres. [27] Russia has struck data centres in Kyiv, and Ukrainian drones have hit several in Russia in recent weeks. [27] Paryavi says sites may now need missile defences, bunkers or underground halls. [27] The EU's call for bids to build up to seven "AI gigafactories" closes on 12 November. [27]

Why it matters. A data centre can cost up to $25 billion and take three years to build, he says, so losing one is hard to make good. [27] The European Commission did not say whether the attacks would change its plans. [27]

A community college in Louisiana is training technicians for Hyperion, Meta's biggest data centre, being built in rural Richland Parish. [28] The four-week course costs nearly $3,700. [28] All 11 students in its first class, which finished in March, got job offers, and it now turns out about 24 graduates a month. [28] Meta says the site will need 7,500 trade workers at its peak and 1,000 staff once it runs. [28]

Why it matters. One student hopes for $25 to $30 an hour, against about $14 he made at FedEx, in a state with no minimum wage law of its own. [28] Some residents have mixed feelings about the project. [28]

Volunteers in New Delhi are using an AI-assisted dashboard to get protesters home after police detain them and drop them far from the city. [29] Rajiv Choudhary, 25, built it from a simple spreadsheet. [29] Volunteers send police bus numbers and locations by WhatsApp, and the team sends drivers. [29] More than 130 volunteers now help. [29] The near-daily protests demand that India's chief election commissioner quit over 133 million names removed from voter lists. [29]

Why it matters. It puts women, children, older people and first-time protesters first. [29] Choudhary plans to take it to other cities. [29]

Several senior figures in Britain's Labour government privately name AI as one of their biggest worries, the Guardian reports. [30] One cabinet minister said the fear is powerful AI in the hands of bad actors, "not killer robots". [30] Liam Byrne, who chairs the committee of MPs on business, science and trade, says the new prime minister, Andy Burnham, is less close to big tech than Keir Starmer was. [30] At his committee this week Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepMind and Meta were split on whether government testing of new models should be compulsory. [30]

Why it matters. Gus O'Donnell, a former head of Britain's civil service, warns of the risk of falling behind. [30] Elena Simperl of King's College London says the fear of AI ending humanity has "no evidence" behind it. [30]