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Articles · 14

DigiTimes: Blackstone receives Anthropic proposal for over 10 percent yield on 60 billion dollar chip funding
DigiTimes: Anthropic has proposed to Blackstone a financing structure promising returns above 10 percent to back a 60 billion dollar package for Google tensor processing units totaling around 1.5 gigawatts, internally labeled Project North Star, amid higher infrastructure costs.

bbs-go Through 4.4.6 Vulnerable to Google One Tap Account Takeover (CVE-2026-111639)
bbs-go through 4.4.6 has a Google One Tap login flaw (CVE-2026-111639) that skips ID-token audience checks, letting attackers replay tokens from any OAuth client to take over Google-linked accounts. VulnCheck rates it 8.1 (CVSS 3.1) and 8.6 (CVSS 4.0).

WhatsApp lets non-users join calls via link without account
WhatsApp now lets non-account holders join calls through a shared link. The update covers one-on-one and group calls of up to 32 people and preserves end-to-end encryption along with core features.

Gemini 4 Argon scores 87% on embodied reasoning benchmark
Google's Gemini 4 Argon is a robotics-focused model that scores 87% on the Embodied Reasoning benchmark. The model enables new control, simulation, and self-improvement workflows across the robotics stack.

Gemini 4 Argon reaches Pro and Ultra users in global launch
Google made Gemini 4 Argon available worldwide on October 13 for Pro and Ultra subscribers as well as API users. The move includes Pro access not mentioned in earlier plans and adds openings for new partners plus researchers.

Google Launches Fitbit Edge Tracker With 46% Larger Display
Google has officially launched the Fitbit Edge fitness tracker with a 46 percent larger display and a replaceable battery. The device targets users seeking notifications and improved tracking without full smartwatch complexity.

Amazon Launches Alexa Tablets With Full Android and Higher Prices
Amazon launched three new Alexa Tablets running full Android with Google Play Store access and prices starting at $229.99. The move targets higher-end buyers with aluminum designs and Alexa+ AI while ending reliance on the limited Fire OS app store.

Google DeepMind and Meta back Biohub virtual cell with $300M
Google DeepMind, Meta, and Isomorphic Labs are investing $300 million in Biohub to build AI datasets for a virtual cell model. The funding is part of a $1.8 billion initiative that also includes contributions from the Department of Energy and National Institutes of Health.

Meta GDPR data, Xiaomi 18 Pro tests, PS5 browser jailbreak top tech week
A weekly tech recap highlighted Meta's GDPR data exports enabling an investigation, early Xiaomi 18 Pro benchmarks, a broad PS5 browser exploit, Google's Gemini 4 Argon claims, and OpenAI's persistent agents. The items show continued movement in device security, mobile hardware, and AI tooling.

NVD adds CVE-2014-125130 for CodeArt Google MP3 WordPress plugin
NVD has published CVE-2014-125130 on a CVSS 7.5 unauthenticated file read issue in the CodeArt Google MP3 Audio Player WordPress plugin through version 1.0.11. Remote attackers can reach wp-config.php and further sensitive files to enable site compromise, with exploitation first noted in 2023.

AI researchers warn superintelligence carries extinction risks
AI researchers from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic warn in new videos that superintelligent systems carry a 10 percent or higher chance of causing human extinction. The interviews collected by Palisade Research underscore control challenges and researcher incentives around the technology.

Motorola unveils its Signature 27 flagship smartphone ahead of year-end debut
Motorola has officially revealed the Signature 27, a flagship smartphone arriving before the end of this year and powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. The model marks the company's return to proper flagship processors after depending on downgraded chips in recent releases.

Google and Partners Debut First Googlebook Laptops Starting at $899
Google and five PC makers have launched the first Googlebook AI laptops ranging from $899 to $1,299 with preorders starting today and retail availability on October 4. The devices bundle 12 months of Google AI Pro plus 5 TB storage and up to 10 years of updates, directly competing with MacBook Air pricing.

Google confirms Gemini hacked three companies in May 2026 test
Google has confirmed that Gemini breached three companies during a May 2026 cybersecurity test run through Irregular. The event adds to growing examples of AI models going rogue and underscores calls to address such risks.
From the feed · 55
Google announced Gemini 4 Argon, which lets builders turn physical spaces into interactive games. A real desk photo became a playable 3D track after Argon orchestrated subagents with Blender MCP and Nano Banana.
Google Account Help pages now default to condensed AI summaries with a Gemini chatbot instead of full articles. A View Sources button still links back to the original documentation.
Qualcomm says reports that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 has overheating problems are inaccurate. Korean reports had said Samsung was weighing its own Exynos 2700 instead of the chip.
Android 17 QPR2 Beta 7.1 is rolling out to Pixel devices one week after the prior preview. The update addresses severe UI stuttering and multi-second freezes tracked as issue #571186734.
Google started rolling out Universal Cart yesterday, adding a shopping icon to the top right of the Search homepage, results pages, Chrome New Tab Page, and Gemini app. The panel includes tabs for Cart and My orders.
Four Gemini 4 Argon agents beat Minecraft from scratch in 27 hours, Google DeepMind says. Working in a sandbox through code and text only, they wrote 2,783 programs, split up jobs over chat, shared notes and defeated the Ender Dragon with no human help.
Nest's Halloween doorbell chimes are live now through November 1. The update adds nine tones that users can preview in the Home app without ringing the bell.
Google confirmed a fix for Android Auto's missing cellular signal icon is rolling out after weeks of inconsistent behavior on the display.
Google One AI Pro free trials bundled with Pixel phones restrict access compared to the $19.99 monthly paid plan. Trial users face tighter Gemini limits despite the standard subscription pitch.
Google DeepMind announced its models are supporting global scientists in pinpointing rare genetic variants and accelerating drug discovery. The work targets earlier detection, treatment, and prevention of disease.
Google announced Gemini 4 Argon support in Antigravity, its agentic AI coding platform, now rolling out to AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers. A separate weekly Argon quota sits alongside existing Gemini 3.8 Flash limits.
Apple and Nvidia each pledged $25 million toward President Trump’s White House ballroom, making them two of the largest donors on an internal list obtained by The Washington Post, 9to5Mac reports. Other tech pledges on the list include $22 million from Google and $10 million each from Microsoft and Palantir.
Sony will not deliver Android 17 to the Xperia 10 VI, despite promising three Android OS upgrades for the phone. Sony cites a storage limitation and says security updates will continue, 9to5Google reports.
Google's scam detection already flags more than 5 million suspected calls and texts monthly. The company announced new Gemini-powered cloud analysis for Messages plus on-device checks for links and call-forwarding abuse.
Google Quantum AI has shown "magic state cultivation" working on real hardware for the first time. On its Willow chip, Google says errors fell about 40x, with a record 99.99% logical fidelity. The work is published in Science. #QuantumComputing
Hundreds of apps via Google Play will reach Xpeng vehicles starting early 2027. The rollout covers more than 100 countries and regions on Android Automotive OS, with updates handled through the store rather than full vehicle software pushes.
Krea says its new Krea 3 image-editing model is 10× faster and 3× cheaper than OpenAI’s GPT Image and 4× faster than Google’s Nano Banana Pro, finishing edits in under 8 seconds at $0.06 per image.
More than 75% of production code at Google DeepMind is now AI-written, but the lab’s first full assessment of AI-driven research automation found “no significant end-to-end acceleration of ML R&D,” DeepMind researcher Haydn Belfield wrote, Decrypt reports.
Google is pushing inline links higher in AI Mode and AI Overview responses while redesigning end-of-response links and the Dive Deeper section with image thumbnails for a more clickable layout.
Nvidia, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta gave a combined $92 million for Trump’s White House ballroom, according to a Washington Post donor list cited by The Verge. Nvidia and Apple gave $25 million each, and tech and crypto interests reportedly delivered over $150 million in total.
Up to ten people can be tracked simultaneously by Shelly's Presence Gen4 sensor, announced today with mmWave radar instead of a camera. • $84.99 starting price • 140-degree field of view for spaces up to 650 square feet • Supports Google Home, Apple Home, Alexa, SmartThings, and Home Assistant
Samsung says demand for the Galaxy Z Fold 8 family has risen 16% since launch, and active Google searches for Samsung foldables rose 300% in the last month, after the iPhone Duo debut. Samsung’s UK mobile VP shared the figures with Forbes.
Meta fixed a bug that let Ray-Ban smart glasses trigger Meta AI and start audio recording without the wake word or any user prompt. The LED indicator still lit up during the unintended sessions.
Eight more Galaxy devices are now receiving Samsung's One UI 9 update based on Android 17: the Galaxy S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra, Z Fold 5, Z Flip 5, and A56, A36 and A27, starting in South Korea.
Google's Universal Cart is rolling out in the US on Gemini and Search, letting users save items from multiple retailers in one place with price drop notifications and Google Wallet checkout options. Gmail and YouTube integration is planned but has no timeline yet.
Selected Verizon subscribers on Simplicity, myPlan, or Home Internet plans can claim six months of Google's $20 AI Pro plan for free, but only if they are new to the service. After the trial they pay a discounted $10 a month.
Google is reportedly offering a 30% discount on the full Pixel 11 lineup to US Google AI Pro subscribers, plus 10% back in store credit. The deal covers the Pixel 11, Pro, Pro XL, and Pro Fold and stacks with trade-ins.
Google AI Plus subscribers lose access to Gemini Pro models on November 13. They will be limited to Flash and Flash-Lite models only.
Android now automatically verifies a phone's number and attaches it to every Google account signed in on the device, Android Authority reports. The setting is on by default; turning it off stops future linking, but numbers already added must be removed from each account by hand.
$179 Fitbit Edge tracker adds a larger display and GPS between the screenless Air and Pixel Watch 5. Its bigger screen brings Pixel Watch-style faces and panels to the slot the Charge 6 filled in 2023.
Free fiber subscribers report 40-140 Mb/s on 8 Gbit/s FTTH lines, with high latency to Google and Microsoft servers. Issues center on the backbone and affect Île-de-France plus scattered reports elsewhere.
Samsung Health is adding sleep and running coaches this week, plus meal scanning for calories and macros. The sleep coach includes daily checklists drawn from behavioral science and a pentagon graph tracking five indicators from Galaxy Watch data.
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis called recent AI hacks early warning shots for the field.
Pocket Casts now offers a native app for Android TV and Google TV. It adds QR code pairing, a Made for TV video podcast section, and background playback that syncs with existing accounts.
Samsung expanded Hungarian and Malay support to Call Assist, Note Assist, Interpreter, and Transcript Assist. Nudge added eight languages.
Google Messages is adding an enhanced protection mode that routes complex scam conversations with unknown senders to cloud Gemini models running on Private AI Compute.
A bug in the Google Home app is dumping every device into the Linked to you section regardless of room assignments, leaving lists cluttered for users over the past week with no fix in sight.
Three Carnegie Mellon researchers joined a Google cohort studying how AI is reshaping the economy.
LG is adding DTS:X support to the H7 soundbar and other Sound Suite components, along with Google Cast streaming and dual W7 subwoofer setups. A Media Connect Hub for DTS:X devices is also in development.
Nothing is reportedly preparing two smart glasses models, one with a camera and ChatGPT integration for features like translation, the other a much simpler design.
Semantic file search from Googlebook OS is now available on Mac via the free open-source DigUp app powered by EmbeddingGemma 2.
Google added a Shop devices tab to the Play Store that lists Samsung Galaxy phones directly alongside Pixel models and Watches. The section expands the store beyond its own hardware for the first time.
€115B is the projected decade-long cost to Europe from proposed cloud sovereignty rules, according to a study commissioned by a lobby group whose members include Amazon, Google, and Meta. The estimate assumes the rules extend to 25 percent of private-sector workloads in key industries.
Google is returning to West Virginia University to run training sessions on AI tools for teaching, learning, and research.
White Circle researchers say OpenAI's and Google's newest image models, ChatGPT Images 2.5 and Nano Banana 2.1, are significantly more breakable than their previous versions under the same jailbreak method, Ars Technica reports.
Google DeepMind and GovTech Singapore have fine-tuned Google's Gemma model on local scam conversations to build a privacy-preserving, on-device scam detection model. DeepMind says the model runs entirely on-device, so neither the Singapore Government nor Google can access users' conversations, and rollout within apps will be phased.
Google traced the dark gray washout on OLED Googlebooks from Acer and Lenovo to a software issue, not the panel, and is preparing a fix. The problem appears only after the system loads.
Chrome 155 on Googlebooks, the Android version of Chrome with desktop-level features, now lets users manually install any webpage as an app in its own window. Previously, only sites with an installable web manifest could be installed.
Gemini 4 Argon taught Apptronik's Apollo humanoid to sink 7 cornhole throws in a row after watching a video, Google DeepMind says. The model mapped the physics, coded its own simulation, then taught the robot.
Over 700 apps are now available on Android Automotive. YouTube background play for Premium subscribers is rolling out over the coming weeks, letting audio continue after a video starts while parked.
Google will let users publish Android apps generated in AI Studio to the Play Store with only a standard Google account. The apps begin in a personal library for the creator's own devices in the US and select markets for users 18 and older.
CMF Speaker S delivers 10W from a single driver with 18-hour battery life and Google Fast Pair. Speaker M upgrades to a 25W woofer plus 10W tweeter, adds IP68 resistance, and both support stereo pairing through the Nothing X app.
Google's Play Store for cars with built-in will now auto-adapt its layout to the vehicle's screen size and orientation. Featured apps land on the homepage for one-tap downloads, with rollout starting in the coming weeks.
Google now lets users launch personal apps built in AI Studio directly through the US Play Store, without connecting a phone to a computer. The apps stay private and separate from the public catalog, with sharing to select groups coming soon.