World

The world, seen from Africa.

What is decided in San Francisco, Shenzhen, Brussels or Bangalore always ends up reaching us. We report it with its local consequences.

Servers in a data centre. PHP runs a large share of the world’s websites: a flaw in the language itself affects these machines, whatever site they host.

Cybersecurity

Two critical flaws in PHP: the fix is out, and your site needs updating

A leak on a forum forced the PHP team to bring its release forward. The flaws, CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, allow code to be run on a server remotely. Fixes have been available since October 21, but not every version is protected.

4 days ago3 min read

A silicon wafer etched with chips. Superconducting quantum processors such as Willow are also built flat, which shapes Google’s architecture choices.

Analysis

Science

Google makes “magic states” 40 times more reliable on its Willow quantum chip

20 Oct5 min read

Apple Park, Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, seen from the air in June 2024. For its new Macs, the company is leaving Northern California for Los Angeles.

Computing

Apple sets an Oct. 28 date in Los Angeles, where its first touchscreen MacBook Pro is expected

20 Oct3 min read

Robotics

OpenAI is building its own humanoid robot, and Sam Altman promises a demo in 2027

19 Oct4 min read

The Federal Trade Commission building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. The civil investigative demands sent to OpenAI and Anthropic came from this headquarters.

FTC demands OpenAI and Anthropic hand over their safety incident records

16 Oct4 min read

Apple’s 2025 iPhone 17 line-up, including the 5.64mm iPhone Air. Unfolded, the iPhone Duo, not pictured, is thinner still: 5.2mm.

Smartphones · United States

Apple opens pre-orders for the iPhone Duo, its first foldable, at $1,999 and in short supply

Since 5 a.m. Pacific time on Friday (noon in Dakar, 2 p.m. in Paris), Apple has been taking orders for its first folding phone, which ships from October 23. At $1,999 in the US and €2,339 in France, it is the most expensive iPhone ever sold, and analysts expect few units before the end of the year.

16 Oct4 min read

On Microsoft’s campus in Washington state. The company is promising a leaner Windows 11 for modest machines.

Software · United States

Microsoft says Windows 11 is now “up to 20% more responsive”, especially on 8GB PCs

In a blog post on October 15, Microsoft said Windows 11 now opens the Start menu, File Explorer and search faster, and uses memory more sparingly. The changes are starting to reach all users, though the company has not said how quickly.

16 Oct4 min read

A first-generation orange HomePod mini, launched in 2020 at $99. Its successor, unveiled on October 13, costs $149 in the United States.

Analysis

Big Tech · United States

With HomeView and a new Siri, Apple takes another run at the smart home, and raises its prices

A $299 smart display, an Apple TV that costs $100 more, a $149 HomePod mini and a range of locks and cameras made by LG and Schneider Electric: on Tuesday in New York, Apple unveiled its most ambitious push into the connected home. All of it rests on a rebuilt Siri that Europe won’t get.

14 Oct8 min read

The Spheres at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters (April 2020). The company is said to be negotiating to buy Decart, according to The Wall Street Journal.

AI · United States

Amazon reportedly in talks to buy Decart for $7 billion, a bet on the software behind AI chips

Amazon is negotiating to buy the Israeli-founded startup for about $7 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal, nearly twice what it was valued at in May. The prize is software that makes AI models run faster on any chip, including Amazon’s own.

13 Oct3 min read

Yandex headquarters in Moscow at night. The three data centres hit between October 8 and 11 are in the Ryazan, Kaluga and Vladimir regions.

Cloud · Russia

Drones knock three Yandex data centres offline in four days

Sasovo on October 8, the Kaluga region on the 9th, Vladimir on the 11th: Russia’s biggest internet company has had three of its data centres hit in quick succession. The server halls that run the cloud and AI have become military targets.

13 Oct3 min read

A frozen-food aisle in a supermarket in France (illustration). In the stores that were hit, cabinets like these were forced into defrost overnight.

Analysis

Cybersecurity · France

Hackers turned up the heat in freezers at hundreds of French supermarkets

Overnight on October 11-12, refrigerated cabinets in several hundred Intermarché, U, Carrefour, Monoprix and Leclerc stores were switched into defrost mode and set to 50°C. No data was stolen, but tonnes of food had to be thrown away and some equipment caught fire. The weak point: ageing Danfoss controllers reachable from the internet.

13 Oct7 min read

‘True or false?’: a demonstration of hyper-faking at an AI conference in The Hague in 2023. Google’s SynthID Detector tool scans files for an invisible signature left by certain AI systems.

Guide

AI · United States

Real photo or AI? How to use SynthID Detector, Google’s tool available to everyone

Since 7 October, anyone can submit an image, video or audio file to synthid.com to find out whether it bears the invisible watermark of AI systems from Google, OpenAI, NVIDIA or Kakao. Here’s how to use it – and, crucially, the limitations of a tool that doesn’t detect everything.

8 Oct6 min read

ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX™ 4060 OC Edition gaming graphics card

Guide

Software

Unstable graphics driver: this tool lets you start again from scratch

Black screen, crashes, graphical glitches or a driver installation that refuses to work: when a graphics update goes wrong, uninstalling and reinstalling the driver is not always enough. A free utility called Display Driver Uninstaller, or DDU, can clean out an installation far more thoroughly so you can start again on a clean base.

5 Oct4 min read