Tech, in brief

The New York Times sued Brave Software on Monday in a federal court in Manhattan. [1]

Brave makes a privacy-focused web browser and runs its own search engine, Brave Search. [2]

Hours later, the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune and the Orlando Sentinel filed a similar suit. [2]

Both suits say Brave copied their journalism and sold access to it to AI companies. [2]

The papers cite a study finding AI crawlers send back 95.7% less traffic than Google search. [2]

Fewer visits mean fewer chances to sell adverts and subscriptions, which pay for the reporting. [2]

The Times has also sued OpenAI and Perplexity over similar claims. [1]

Copyright law has a name for one of the papers' claims: contributory infringement, which means helping others copy a work. [2]

Here the papers say Brave did the copying, then sold access on to 5 AI companies. [1] So this suit is aimed at the supplier, Brave. [1]

A shop that sells copied films can be in trouble too, not only the person who copied them.

Every claim here is the papers' own, and Brave had not replied when the suits were reported. [1]

The Times and three other papers sued Brave because, they say, it copied their pages and sold access to Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere. [2]

Whether a court will find Brave's copying legal.

Brave asked a court in 2025 to call its indexing fair use, and the papers' new claims have not been tested. [2]

Which AI models learned from the papers' articles through Brave.

The reporting ties training to one older model, Claude 2, through a Brave blog post. [2]

Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI, updated its filing to sell shares on Monday. [18]

Its list of risks says it may soon meet its own test for 'dramatically accelerated progress attributable to AI'. [18]

That test is set out in its Responsible Scaling Policy, its own rules for handling risky AI. [18]

The filing says none of its current models has crossed that line yet. [18]

It also says some past jumps in its models' abilities were spotted only after they happened. [18]

Anthropic says its models may improve faster than it can build the safety checks for them. [18]

It says it is considering rule changes to keep humans in control of building new models. [18]

AI researchers call this recursive self-improvement: AI that gets good at improving AI. [18]

Anthropic already uses AI in its research. [18] So each better Claude can speed up work on the next one. [18]

A pupil who learns how to study better then learns every next subject faster.

A share-sale filing both warns buyers and sells to them, so this claim may serve both purposes. [18]

When Anthropic will say a model has crossed its own line.

Its filing rests on internal estimates about future models, and outsiders cannot check them. [18]

Snap, the company behind the Snapchat app, settled a lawsuit days before its trial in Los Angeles. [19]

The two who sued are S.J., 16, from Illinois, and K.D.B., 18, from Mississippi. [19]

They blamed features like autoplay and endless scrolling for depression, anxiety and eating disorders. [20]

They had already settled with Meta, TikTok and YouTube, so Snap was the last company left. [19]

In March a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube negligent in the first such trial. [19] It awarded $6 million, and both appealed. [19]

Snap's boss, Evan Spiegel, will now not have to testify. [21]

In August Meta agreed deals worth up to $18bn with nearly every US state. [19] Of that, $5bn depends on similar deals with Snap, TikTok and YouTube. [19]

The next test trials are due to start in March, the teenagers' lawyers said. [19]

Lawyers call this a bellwether trial: a few cases picked from thousands to test the claims first. [19]

This would have been Snap's first trial in the wider fight. [19] Settling it means no jury tested the claims against Snap. [21]

A class tries the hardest question first, and how it goes tells everyone how the rest may go.

Before settling, Snap said the claims misrepresent its app, which opens to a camera, not a feed. [22]

What Snap paid to settle.

The terms are confidential. [19]

Squarespace, a company that helps people build and host websites, is cutting about 300 jobs. [23]

That is 19% of its 1,800 staff. [24]

Most cuts hit the teams that design and build its products, the boss's memo says. [6]

Anthony Casalena, the boss, wrote of 'smaller teams, more player coaches', meaning leaders who also do the work. [6]

Those leaving get at least 16 weeks of pay and health cover until May 2027. [24]

Tools that build a website from a few typed words have upended website building, the work Squarespace sells. [23]

Squarespace launched its own AI website builder, Blueprint, in 2024. [24] It went private that year in a $7 billion deal. [23]

Last week Microsoft offered buyouts to 60,000 staff, and other firms also point to leaner teams. [6]

Why AI takes over single tasks first, and whole jobs later

A job is a bundle of many tasks

AI is cheapest at the routine, repeated ones

Firms move those tasks to software

The tasks left over are regrouped into fewer roles

Some roles shrink while others change

AI rarely deletes a whole job in one go.

Gartner split AI agent work into its steps. Look at how few of the 10 still need a top, costly model.

Its boss said some roles are needed far less and others will change, which is tasks moving rather than whole jobs vanishing.

Most cuts hit the teams that build its products, and the boss wants smaller teams where leaders also do the work.

It split AI work into steps and found 9 in 10 routine enough for a cheap model, leaving 1 in 10 for the costly one.

Time saved on one task was filled with more tasks, so the day grew instead of shrinking.

The task model says which work a machine can do. It cannot tell you whether a firm cut jobs because of AI or because its owners wanted lower costs.

The engineers at SUSE and Squarespace, the managers reading Claude's reports and the staff whose hours ActivTrak counts each see only their own tasks change.

On the same day SUSE and Squarespace said about 490 jobs would go, and both bosses pointed to AI or to smaller teams. [7][6]

Most of the 300 cuts fall on them, with 16 weeks of pay at least. [6]

SUSE, a German company that makes Linux software for businesses, is cutting about 10% of its staff. [7]

It has more than 1,900 employees, so about 190 people will go. [7]

Its boss, Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, told staff AI and automation are changing how software firms work. [25]

'The requirement for some existing roles has greatly diminished,' he wrote. [25]

Staff affected will be told by 4 November, and everyone sees the new plan on 16 November. [25]

Van Leeuwen called the cuts painful for SUSE's people, its culture and its open source community. [7]

Swedish investment firm EQT bought SUSE in 2018 and took it off the stock market in 2023. [7]

In organisation design, a flatter firm has fewer layers of managers, so each manager leads more people. [25]

Van Leeuwen says new tools let SUSE's teams work 'with less operational overhead and flatter reporting lines'. [25]

A school with fewer heads of year has each one looking after more classes.

SUSE has posted no public statement; the news comes from a memo The Register saw. [7]

Its boss said some roles are needed far less and others will change, which is tasks moving rather than whole jobs vanishing.

Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, ordered private data centres to hold back 10% of their space for the state. [26]

If called on, owners must hand that space over within 24 hours. [26]

A new government commission will decide when to call on it. [26]

Ukrainian drones have hit Russian data centres in recent weeks. [26]

In early October they struck Russia's largest, a 63-megawatt site, and users of Yandex mail and payments saw problems. [26]

Later Russia's finance ministry's data centre, said to hold tax records, was damaged too. [26]

The aim is to give the state more computer space quickly, if it needs it. [26]

Engineers call this spare capacity: room kept free so work can move when one site fails. [26]

Drones damaged the data centre said to hold Russia's tax records. [26] Space held free elsewhere gives such work somewhere to move. [26]

A spare key at a neighbour's means one lost key does not lock you out.

A senior prosecutor cited a court case that does not exist, in England's High Court. [27]

She works for the Crown Prosecution Service, which brings criminal cases in England and Wales. [27]

The fake case came from an AI summary in an internet search, the Guardian understands. [27]

It was cited to argue that a child should be prosecuted. [27] Judges said the error did not change the outcome. [27]

It is the second known case like this at the CPS; the first came out in February. [27]

A tracker kept by barrister Matthew Lee now lists 101 confirmed, suspected or disputed AI errors in UK courts. [27]

'That's a serious failure,' said Brian Flanagan, a law professor who studies judges' use of AI. [27]

AI researchers call this a hallucination: a chatbot writes something that sounds right but is invented. [27]

The invented case was given a real-looking name, R v J, and a 2024 date. [27] So it passed as real until someone checked. [27]

A friend confidently gives you directions to a shop that closed years ago.

The CPS says its rules demand human checks, and that the error came from internet research. [27]

How many other court papers rest on AI-made cases.

Matthew Lee says his tracker of 101 may be the tip of the iceberg, because many lower court decisions are never published. [27]

A new database of 10,202 comments at US council meetings this year found 90.5% against data centres. [15]

Only 7% spoke in favour, and 73% of meetings heard no supporter at all. [15]

The site, American Sentiment, is run by Prophecy Gov, a San Francisco AI start-up. [15]

Water use was the top worry, and only 21% of comments mentioned AI. [15]

Red and blue counties objected at almost the same rate. [15] Of commenters who said they were union workers, 79% were in favour. [15]

In Texas, the Democratic candidate for governor promises a strict pause on new data centres. [28]

A pause there could affect about 29% of the new US data-centre capacity planned for 2028. [28]

Planners call this 'not in my back yard': people may accept something in general but fight it near home. [15]

Neighbours carry the water use and the change to local life. [15] Many told meetings they doubted the promised benefits would come. [15]

Everyone wants a bus stop on the street, but not right outside their own window.

Comments come from people who turn up, and the site says they may not match the whole country. [15]

Hermantown, a small city in Minnesota, approved a Google data centre on 30 October. [16]

The council vote was unanimous, after at least 2 delayed meetings and hours of objections. [16]

To win it, Google cut the plan from 4 buildings to 3 and capped their height at 33 feet. [16]

It also dropped a request for up to $80 million in property tax breaks. [16]

The city now expects about $3 million a year in property tax. [16]

Three lawsuits still challenge the project, and Minnesota's utility regulator must still approve its power. [16]

The site needs about 500 megawatts. [16] A consumer group says that is close to all the homes in Minneapolis, St Paul, Duluth and Rochester. [16]

In land-use planning, a special use permit lets a council attach conditions before it says yes. [16]

Here the conditions include 3 buildings, a height cap and checks on nearby wells. [16] A $210 million deal covers clearing the site if it closes. [16]

Parents allow a party if you agree to finish early and clean up after.

Council member John Geisler said the vote was 'not about big tech' but about land use. [16]

Hermantown in Minnesota expects about $3 million a year in tax from Google's new data centre, after Google dropped its request for up to $80 million in tax breaks.

OpenAI says power plants at its planned data centre in Effingham County, Georgia, will help the grid in emergencies. [17]

It promises to free up to 1,000 megawatts in extreme weather, enough to cool about 700,000 homes. [17]

It calls this its 'Grid Protectors Program', and now calls its data centres 'compute campuses'. [17]

Tennessee, Florida, Oklahoma and Oregon have laws to stop AI firms passing energy costs on to residents. [17]

OpenAI argues that steady year-round demand spreads the grid's fixed costs over more power sold. [17]

Grid engineers call this demand response: a big user agrees to cut its use when the grid is strained. [17]

OpenAI's site would draw power all year, but cut back on the days when homes need it most. [17]

A family skips the oven when everyone in the street is cooking at once.

The pilot is promised for a data centre still to come, so none of this power has been freed yet. [17]

Raspberry Pi raised the price of its 16GB Raspberry Pi 5, a small cheap computer, by $80 to $385. [12]

That is more than triple the $120 it cost at launch. [12]

It is the 5th price rise since October 2025. [29]

Eben Upton, the boss, blamed a lack of other suppliers for 16GB memory chips. [29]

Since late 2025, AI data centres buying memory have pushed up prices for everyone else. [30]

A 32GB memory kit cost $94.99 in 2020. [30] The cheapest similar kit cost $198 this October. [30]

Makers are moving to cheaper boards for small projects and mini PCs for big ones. [12]

Economists call this a demand shock: a big new buyer arrives faster than supply can grow. [30]

AI data centres now bid for the same memory chips. [30] So a small maker like Raspberry Pi pays the higher price. [29]

When a whole team queues for the last few snacks, the tuck shop can charge more for each one.

Each memory price rise reaches them straight away, with no other 16GB chip to switch to. [29]

People and firms have slowed their move to Windows 11 as chips and memory get dearer, analysts say. [13]

Microsoft's Windows sales to PC makers fell 27% in its latest quarter. [13]

Windows 10 still ran on 27.7% of Windows PCs in September, up from 26.45% in February. [13]

Microsoft stopped mainstream support for Windows 10 a year ago. [13]

Intel has also raised its processor prices, adding to the cost of each new PC. [13]

PC makers are still sitting on unsold stock, Microsoft's finance chief said. [13]

Relief may not come until 2028 or 2029, analysts said. [13]

Economists call this a deferred purchase: when prices rise, people keep the old thing longer. [13]

'When prices are higher, demand goes down,' said analyst Dean McCarron. [13] So more than a quarter of Windows PCs still run Windows 10. [13]

When school shoes get dearer, families make last year's pair last another term.

Elon Musk's SpaceX cut how much people can use Grok Bot, its AI helper, without warning. [9]

Some users' weekly allowance jumped from 50% used to 100% overnight. [9]

'The cost of serving Grok Bot was unsustainably high relative to revenue,' Musk wrote on X. [9]

SpaceX, which now owns Musk's AI business, says AI makes up 52% of its income. [9]

Its AI division made a $431 million profit, which is rare in the AI industry. [9]

Musk has called Grok Bot the fastest-growing product he has ever seen. [9]

Economists call this marginal cost: what it costs to serve one more request. [9]

Each Grok Bot task costs SpaceX computer time. [9] So a fixed monthly fee loses money on the heaviest users. [9]

An all-you-can-eat buffet loses money on the diner who goes back again and again.