Tech, in brief

South Korea's president, Lee Jae Myung, presented the country's biggest budget ever on Monday. [1]

It would raise government spending in 2027 by 12.8%, to 820.9 trillion won, about $610 billion. [1]

Of that, 21.3 trillion won goes to chips, AI that runs machines, and AI data centres. [1]

That is nearly double the 2026 amount. [1]

South Korea's fast growth rests largely on selling chips for AI. [1]

The budget puts more public money behind that one industry. [1]

Economists call this industrial policy: a government steering money into industries it picks. [1]

Samsung and SK Hynix gain: the budget backs their industry and trains graduates for their jobs. [1]

Lee says the spending adds "virtually no" net debt, because new bonds repay old ones. [1]

South Korea will spend 21.3 trillion won of public money on chips, AI-run machines and AI data centres, and 4.7 trillion won on a national AI model, while its two chip makers already earn record sums from AI memory. [1][4][5]

Which companies will build South Korea's 4.7 trillion won national model, and how its performance will be judged.

Lee set the goal of the world's highest performance, and no builder or test has been named. [1]

DeepSeek, a Chinese AI lab, released the code for an AI coding helper called Super-Agent. [6]

Anyone can copy and change it: DeepSeek put it on GitHub under an MIT licence. [6]

Its team described the design on Saturday in a post on WeChat, a Chinese messaging app. [6]

The agent takes coding jobs from a whole team, inside one project's code. [6]

It can watch a team's group chats and offer fixes without being asked, Bloomberg reported. [6]

DeepSeek calls it a research prototype and "not an official DeepSeek product". [6]

In August it released a preview of its own rival to Anthropic's coding tool, Claude Code. [6]

Last month, US civilian government agencies were told to remove DeepSeek. [6]

Programmers call this open-sourcing: publishing the code so anyone may use and change it. [6]

Palantir's technology chief expects Chinese labs to stop giving models away once they lead. [7]

India's IT ministry proposed a way to train AI on Indian data without handing it over. [8]

Its name is DEPA, short for Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture for AI Training. [8]

Hospitals, banks and government offices would put scrambled, nameless data into shared exchanges. [8]

AI makers would train their models inside those exchanges, under rules the data's owners set. [8]

India's chief science adviser, Ajay Kumar Sood, said "the model travels to the data". [8]

India already runs public tools, like the UPI payment system, so Big Tech cannot dominate. [8]

India wants AI built on local data, fearing foreign model makers will ignore its problems. [8]

India's ministry says shared bank data could bring loans to 400 million people and small firms. [8]

Privacy engineers call one tool differential privacy: it stops a model learning about any one person. [8]

How much work remains before DEPA actually runs is unclear. [8]

Why a government pays to build its own AI instead of renting one

A few firms in a few countries make the best AI and chips

Renting their tools is usually cheaper today

But a renter lives with the seller's prices, rules and choices

So a government spends public money to build its own

It pays more now to depend less on others later

A model a country builds itself usually costs more than one it rents, and the extra buys the certainty that no foreign company can raise the price or switch it off.

India wants AI trained on Indian data inside Indian exchanges, because it fears foreign model makers will not work on its problems.

The EU charges a fee on each small parcel from abroad to protect European shops: the trade side of the same policy.

The US government is turning to one of its own companies to keep a missile shield's data safe, instead of any supplier.

The bet can fail: a government can back the wrong technology, or end up with a home-grown model that is weaker than the one it could have rented.

A Korean student on a degree linked to Samsung, an Indian hospital asked to share its records and a European shopkeeper facing cheap parcels are all inside these decisions.

Google is in talks with the US Defense Department to help protect data for Golden Dome. [10]

Golden Dome is President Trump's planned shield against attacks, from the ground to space. [9]

Its cost estimate is $185 billion. [10]

The US Defense Department is forming a group of firms to secure Golden Dome's software data. [10]

Their job: keep data flowing even if landlines and phone towers are cut. [9]

The talks cover Google's data storage, networking and security work, one source told Bloomberg. [9]

Anduril, Palantir and SpaceX are already building the programme's command software. [9]

It would make Google one of the firms keeping a US missile shield's data safe. [9]

A US Defense Department official said nothing is decided on the group or its members. [9]

The US government is turning to one of its own companies to keep a missile shield's data safe, instead of any supplier.

India has proposed keeping its data at home for AI training, and Google is in talks with the US Defense Department about guarding a missile shield's data. [8][10]

If the talks succeed, it gets data-security work on a missile shield costed at $185 billion. [10]

Whether Google joins the Golden Dome data group at all.

A Pentagon official said no final decision has been made on the group or on which companies would join it. [9]

Google says some Asian advertisers are buying fewer ads because of a new EU import duty. [5]

Philipp Schindler, Google's business chief, said so on its parent Alphabet's results call. [5]

The EU now charges a €3 duty on each parcel worth under €150 from outside it. [5]

Before that, almost 5.9 billion such small items came in duty-free in 2025 alone. [5]

Many came from Chinese online shops such as Temu, Shein and Alibaba. [5]

Those shops may bring about 10% of Google's and Meta's ad money, the Register says. [5]

So a European trade rule helped slow ad growth at Google, a US company. [5]

Economists call the duty a tariff: a tax on imports, here meant to shield European shops. [5]

The EU charges a fee on each small parcel from abroad to protect European shops: the trade side of the same policy.

They now pay a €3 duty on each small parcel into the EU, and are buying fewer Google ads. [5]

A test found the brake pedal bracket broke on the Maextro V800, a luxury electric car. [5]

Huawei, the Chinese tech giant, makes the car with JAC, a Chinese carmaker. [5]

Dongchedi, a Chinese car review site, found it in a full-force stop at 100 km/h. [5]

Its drivers could still stop the car, but more slowly. [5]

Within days, reports of the test began vanishing from the internet, China Digital Times says. [5]

China Digital Times is a US-based site that reports on Chinese affairs. [5]

It is a safety question about a car sold as smart and high-end. [5]

Who removed the reports is not known; the Register notes theories that China's government objected. [5]

Who removed the reports of the Maextro brake test, and why.

China Digital Times says the reports disappeared within days; nobody has shown who took them down. [5]

Plymouth, a city in Minnesota, voted in September to end its contract with Flock Safety. [12]

Flock makes cameras that read car number plates, and US police use them. [12]

Plymouth told Flock on 23 September; its head office did not reply for over a week. [12]

So Police Chief Eric Fadden had staff pull out the cameras' power cords. [11]

He wanted "to be sure that they are not functioning or recording plates". [11]

In nearby Dayton, Flock put a camera back in service against the city's orders. [11]

Cities cancelling Flock are finding it hard to get the cameras taken down, The Verge says. [11]

On Sunday Flock told The Verge it respects Plymouth's choice and is working to remove them. [11]

Flock has more than 300,000 cameras across the US, Tom's Hardware reports. [12]

Leaving cameras up likely costs Flock nothing, while removing them costs labour. [12]

When Plymouth's Flock cameras will actually come down.

Flock says it is working with the city to remove them, and gave no date. [11]

Openreach says Britain's old copper phone network will switch off on 31 January 2027. [13]

Openreach is the network arm of BT, Britain's biggest telecoms company. [13]

It told phone providers this week that the date will not be pushed back. [13]

Card machines, fire and burglar alarms, and care alarms for older people still use these lines. [13]

Instead, a home phone will plug into a broadband router, a service called Digital Voice. [13]

The deadline already moved once, after the UK government asked to protect care-alarm users. [13]

Age UK, a charity for older people, says no care-alarm user should be left behind. [13]

Firms still on old business lines already pay double last year's rent for them. [13]

Homes without fibre will likely keep their old phone through equipment at the local exchange. [13]

Openreach will switch the old network off on 31 January and says it will not delay again. [13]

Linus Torvalds released the first test version of Linux 7.4, the core of the Linux system. [14]

It holds almost 20,000 changes, against the usual 15,000 or so. [14]

Many fix problems that AI tools found, and AI suggested more of the patches too. [14]

Torvalds said he was "much happier" that this work came early, not as late fixes. [14]

Linux first takes in new changes, then spends a 'stabilization phase' only fixing bugs. [14]

He called AI fixes arriving in the first stage "a much healthier model". [14]

He noted 7.4 is expected to be a long-term support release, another reason it is big. [14]

The first test version of Linux 7.4 holds almost 20,000 changes, many of them fixes for flaws that AI tools found. Linus Torvalds said he was much happier to see those fixes arrive early, as normal work.

Instagram has offered some YouTube stars $50,000 to $500,000 to post long videos, Business Insider reports. [15]

The videos go into Features, a new Instagram format up to 90 minutes long. [15]

Instagram, owned by Meta, announced Features on 26 October. [15]

The deals are not exclusive: stars can post the same video on YouTube that day. [15]

Creators had complained that Features shared no ad money with them. [16]

YouTube's partner scheme gives creators 55% of the ad money their videos earn. [17]

Instagram's boss, Adam Mosseri, said "the economics matter a ton". [16]

It is Instagram's attempt to pull long videos, and their viewers, away from YouTube. [17]

Instagram paid creators for its earlier long-video format, IGTV, which shut in 2022. [15]

Instagram has offered some of them $50,000 to $500,000 to post their long videos there too. [15]

Whether Instagram will ever share ad money on long Features videos.

Adam Mosseri says Instagram is exploring multiple options, and the paid deals Business Insider reported are confidential. [15][16]

Anthropic, which makes the Claude AI, renamed its two Claude Max plans on Friday, keeping prices. [18]

The $100-a-month plan is now called Max, and the $200 plan is called Ultra. [18]

Ultra no longer has a usage limit that resets every five hours, for checked accounts. [18]

New accounts keep a temporary limit until checked, which Anthropic says prevents fraud. [18]

Weekly limits stay the same. [18]

Heavy Claude users on Ultra can now work longer without a five-hour pause. [18]

A lawsuit filed in June claimed Anthropic oversold how much use both plans gave. [18]

The pricing page lists Ultra at 10 times the Pro plan's weekly use. [18]

Its old name, Max 20x, pointed to 20 times; Anthropic's post did not mention the change. [18]

OpenAI plans a publicity push after the US midterm elections on Tuesday, Axios reports. [19]

One idea is to call its data centres "AI compute campuses". [19]

Data centres, the buildings full of computers AI runs on, are deeply unpopular, TechCrunch says. [19]

Chris Lehane, OpenAI's head of global affairs, also floated AI "speed limits". [19]

He expects AI to be "the issue" in the 2028 US presidential election. [19]

Amazon and Microsoft have said they will stop using secrecy deals with local governments. [19]

Public relations experts call this framing: choosing words that change how people feel about buildings. [19]

Lehane said communities should hold companies "responsible and accountable". [19]

A free tool switches on AI speed that Nvidia holds back in some graphics cards. [20]

It works on RTX 20, 30 and 40 series cards, in desktops and laptops. [20]

It runs from a USB stick each time the computer starts, before Nvidia's own software loads. [20]

On the developer's own RTX 4060 laptop chip, one kind of AI maths ran 65% faster. [20]

Before, the trick worked mainly on Linux; now it works on Windows too. [20]

It cannot be used with games whose anti-cheat needs Secure Boot, a start-up safety check. [20]

It opens the trick to the many Windows owners of Nvidia gaming cards, Tom's Hardware says. [20]

Owners must run it again after every restart, because the unlock does not survive power loss. [20]

In early October, a team led by developer Brandon Thomas released free copies of Adobe's apps. [21]

Adobe sells Photoshop, Lightroom and its other Creative Cloud apps as a monthly subscription. [21]

The copies are called Artcraft; its Photoshop copy, Photocraft, has nearly matching menus. [21]

Thomas used Anthropic's Claude to rebuild the apps; the team says it used no Adobe code. [21]

Users report bugs, such as deleted images, and it cannot open Photoshop's own files. [21]

Thomas says he did it after Adobe's "cancellation fee" hit him too often. [21]

Engadget says one person skilled with AI can now do what took a team of engineers. [21]

Engineers call this a clean-room rebuild: copying what software does without copying its code. [21]

Adobe's terms ban taking its software apart, and the copies may break its trademarks. [21]

Artcraft offers free copies of Photoshop and other apps, though users report serious bugs. [21]

Sally Scales, a Pitjantjatjara artist, says AI is turning First Nations art into "Temu slop". [22]

She chairs the First Nations advisory group at the National Gallery of Australia. [22]

Temu, Shein and Amazon sell many 'Aboriginal' designs, mostly with no artist named. [22]

AI has already been trained, unpaid, on Australian artists including Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave. [22]

Experts fear AI will take sacred and cultural knowledge held in songs and paintings. [22]

Australia's attorney general, Michelle Rowland, says there are "no plans to weaken copyright protections". [22]

A client can pay once, then make AI copies without asking, says copyright expert Kathy Bowrey. [22]

When artists make new work, they then compete against an AI, Bowrey says. [22]

San Bernardino County, the biggest US county by land, is getting five self-flying firefighting drones. [23]

Seneca Systems, a drone maker, will supply them with a mobile base and control software. [23]

One pilot can supervise all five, which together carry over 500 gallons of foam. [23]

They can reach a new fire within 10 minutes of it being spotted, even at night. [23]

Fire chief Dan Munsey wants 90% of fires stopped before they pass 10 square feet. [23]

One firefighter directing five drones could free other crews for other fires. [23]

The drones are due to enter service before the 2027 wildfire season. [23]

San Bernardino County, the biggest county in the US by land, is getting five self-flying firefighting drones that one pilot can supervise. Together they carry over 500 gallons of foam, and they are due in service before the 2027 fire season.

Taiwan's Ocean Affairs Council is building software for drone fleets that act without a pilot. [24]

It is to help the coast guard answer China's 'grey-zone' pressure, short of war. [24]

With National Cheng Kung University, it ran simulated flights of two fleets of 10 drones. [24]

Chinese civilian ships have damaged undersea cables Taiwan relies on, Tom's Hardware reports. [24]

The coast guard now patrols 24 undersea cables and watches nearly 100 China-linked boats. [24]

The council has just received a V-BAT, a US drone that flies over 12 hours. [24]

Next come trials over the real sea, in different weather. [24]