All the news you need to keep up with the latest developments in the tech world, from product announcements and live events to tariffs, policies, and regulations. Tech touches every aspect of daily news, and our experts are here to keep you informed on what happens and how it all affects you.
The Independent reports an upcoming government white paper will include plans to extend the UK’s £180 (about $240) annual TV Licence — which is required to watch broadcast TV, BBC iPlayer, and live TV on streaming services — to cover all online streaming content, including Prime Video, Netflix, Disney Plus, and YouTube. Yikes.
[The Independent]
The drills were confirmed by Japan’s finance minister on Thursday. States and organizations have grown increasingly worried about AI’s ability to supercharge hacking, particularly after months of impressive releases and rogue agent attacks. Experts, including the heads of the Bank of England and International Monetary Fund, have stressed the need to guard financial institutions.
An unreleased iPad mini Smart Folio is listed on Apple’s French regulatory site, and its A3632 model number doesn’t match any known iPad mini cases. It adds weight to existing rumors that Apple will refresh the iPad mini alongside the expected touchscreen MacBook Pro launch later this month.
I said in my hands-on that you can swap the batteries in each bud without any tools in less than a minute, and now iFixit’s teardown proves my point: the battery removal starts at the 27-second mark, and is done before the minute is up. Unsurprisingly, Fairbuds 2 get a 10/10 repairability score.
Production on the film has been paused while director Matt Reeves focuses on a family matter, but Steven Soderbergh offered to help with the “final weeks” of principal photography on the movie.
“Matt and Steven will work closely together with the actors and crew to fulfill Matt’s vision of the film,” according to a statement published by Deadline. The movie is scheduled to debut on February 18th, 2028.
Bajaria joined in 2016 and became chief content officer in 2023. Peter Rice, a former Disney and Fox exec, will take over the role, Variety reports.
As reported by Variety, the newly listed Skydance (SKYD) currently has a market cap of around $40 billion, which is less than half of the sum of the $77.7 billion and $11 billion market caps that Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Skydance had before their merger.
The Mummy: Book of the Dead debuts in theaters in exactly one year: October 15th, 2027. The date was moved up earlier this year from a planned May 2028 release.
The law prevents kids under 14 from creating an account on platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, while requiring parental permission for teens aged 14 or 15. The tech trade group NetChoice won an injunction blocking the law in 2025, but a judge later paused the injunction during the appeals process, as reported by NBC 6 South Florida.
It shared a prototype demo for “seamless updates” that wouldn’t require you to restart your browser. That feature’s still in development, but in the meantime Microsoft also says Edge users can opt-in for “Restart to update on idle,” which was previously called “Instant Updates.”
It also demanded documents related to the AI companies’ safety practices, consumer privacy policies, and marketing materials, as part of “a probe focused on potential consumer protection violations,” Axios reports. Its sources also say the FTC “plans to compel top AI executives to testify about their products.”
A suspected gas cylinder explosion at Intel’s Kiryat Gat facility in southern Israel, where it makes its most advanced chips, has killed two workers and injured a third. JPost and CTech report that police believe a gas cylinder malfunctioned while trucks were loading material into tanks, causing serious burns to the victims and a leak of nitrogen trifluoride (NF₃).
We’ve written about the risks fab workers face, including the death of a truck driver in 2024 while transporting sulfuric acid waste at TSMC’s Arizona facility, and an Intel employee who worried cost-cutting and downsizing were adding extra risk.
Following wearables with playable versions of Tetris, Mega Man 2, and Pong, My Play Watch’s latest timepiece comes saturated in Street Fighter II theming including various faces inspired by the game’s characters, a matching strap, and a version of the fighting game optimized for tiny touchscreen controls. You can preorder it now for $79.99 with shipping expected later this year.
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The “Ask YouTube” feature, which pulls uses AI to generate a search results page populated with text and suggested videos to watch, popped up on mobile as an experiment in August. I tested the web version earlier this year, and in a few minutes using the mobile version, it’s pretty similar.
Six employees at the AI safety organization METR will gain access to hardware and internal tools “roughly on par” with what Anthropic’s own risk assessment team sees. While Anthropic says METR will publish reports about Anthropic’s risk levels, incidents, and practices, it can still instruct the safety evaluator to redact certain information, such as the inner workings of its models or customer data.
[Anthropic]
EasySMX’s upcoming $54.99 S05 Pro wireless controller doesn’t seem to leave out any features. It has a similar design to the X05 Pro, but with TMR sticks and more Switch features, like amiibo support, six-axis gyro, and one-button wake-up. More surprising are its two-stage Hall effect triggers that have dedicated rumble actuators (plus rumble in each grip). I’ll be testing it soon.
The “Crows” scene from the upcoming stop-motion fantasy film is less than two minutes long. Wildwood production designer Nelson Lowry told Variety it’s “the largest and most complex film” Laika has ever done. It comes out in theaters next week on October 23rd.
Google’s worldwide phone-powered earthquake alert system now covers even more of the planet. After launching in California in 2021 and eventually expanding to 98 countries and regions including Greece and New Zealand, the system is now available in over 200 regions with Panama, Guatemala, and more joining the list.
The website decomp.dev published a big statement following the recent influx of AI-assisted decompilations of games:
decomp.dev was originally designed to gamify decompilation: watching the progress go up was a fun way to stay motivated when every fraction of a percent took real human effort. Today, that same idea has warped decompilation into a hollow numbers game, exacerbated by folks who just want to burn tokens to make number go up or “port game to PC”, all else be damned. While the increased attention has brought in genuine folks who want to learn and contribute meaningfully, I believe that decomp.dev serving as a public index and leaderboard is now causing more harm than good.
In January 2024, the label announced a major cost-cutting initiative that is expected to run through 2027. As another round of layoffs is expected, several executives are leaving, including Tunji Balogun, Chairman and CEO of Def Jam Recordings; Nicole Wyskoarko and Sam Riback of Interscope Geffen A&M; Ben Mortimer, President of Polydor Label Group; Rebecca Allen, Chief Artist and Strategy Officer at Universal Music Group UK; and Mark Crossingham, Managing Director of UMG Ireland.
A Reddit user spotted the fake “Chrome” app as a sponsored suggestion above the real version. As Android Authority reports, the app was originally added to the Play Store as a “Ball Bounce” game before the developer reskinned it as a Chrome dupe.
You can use it as a regular USB webcam on Windows, macOS, or Linux PCs, but Arduino’s new plug-and-play accessory is primarily designed to work with computer vision models running on the UNO Q or Ventuno Q microcomputers. It’s got a built-in microphone so additional audio hardware isn’t needed and a touch-dimmable LED ring around the lens with an adjustable color temperature.
The broadcaster announced that viewers in the UK and US can now watch a 24-hour news feed via the BBC News YouTube channel, with plans to expand access to Poland, Kenya, Australia and Nigeria soon. This is part of the BBC’s plan to access broader and younger adiences via YouTube’s platform as its traditional license-paying TV broadcast market continues to decline.
The $199.99 Barracuda V2 Pro is $50 cheaper than its predecessor, yet contains quite a few improvements. Notably, the ANC-ready headset ships with a USB-C wireless dongle hidden within the left ear cup. It supports simultaneous 2.4GHz and Bluetooth 6 audio, as opposed to making you swap between them, and includes a detachable mic for better voice capture than its beamforming mics. It’s available now at Razer’s site.
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The new paid Expansion Pass adds content in waves: first, some Three Houses-themed weapons that are available today, then new playable characters and outfits coming this holiday season, and finally new stories featuring four characters that will launch in 2027.
I reviewed the already-gigantic base game and loved it. The new content will be a perfect excuse for me to dive back in.
The funding is part of a $15 million initiative led by the Simons Foundation, with Anthropic also contributing. It follows months of upheaval in the field as AI companies race to solve longstanding problems and comes just over a week after OpenAI dumped hundreds of preprints on the research community.
County election officials claim they largely cleared the backlog by Wednesday, but the incident still raised alarms and prompted a lawsuit from voting rights groups. According to the New York Times:
The lawsuit, which named Mr. Howden and Freeman F. Martin, director of the Department of Public Safety, among its defendants, said the backlog had resulted from a programming error on a website for driver’s license applications that was also supposed to allow applicants to register to vote.
Because of the error, voters who checked “yes” to register to vote between December 2025 and February 2026 received a receipt confirming their choice, but their data was never recorded, the lawsuit said.
The export-restricted equipment for making RAM would go to SK Hynix’s Dalian, China facility, Reuters reports. Its sources say increasing SK Hynix’s production in China would help fund a US factory. SK Hynix is also separately reportedly in talks about making chips at an Intel facility in Ohio.
