Nvidia is reportedly facing questions from the United States Department of Justice over whether its purchase of Hugging Face will have an impact on competition in the growing AI space. Nvidia agreed to buy Hugging Face in September, paying almost $13 billion. Hugging Face offers an open-source platform for the hosting and testing of new AI models, and that appears to be behind the DOJ's concerns. Reuters reports that the department has made inquiries about how the Hugging Face deal could change the landscape for Nvidia's competitors. The move could be seen as a way for Nvidia to lock in a key distribution channel for its own products. Hugging Face also sells AI infrastructure. Nvidia has declined to comment on the story.

This isn't the first time that Nvidia has found itself in the DOJ's crosshairs. As Nvidia becomes more vital to the tech industry as a whole and AI technologies specifically, the company has come under increasing scrutiny within the U.S. government, stretching back to the Biden administration. Things didn't improve when the Trump administration took over, with the U.S. president reportedly tempted to break the company up — despite being unfamiliar with what it was. More recently, Nvidia and other AI hardware makers found themselves under export controls. Nvidia's powerful AI-focused hardware can only be sold to approved entities, while it cannot ship to countries including China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia.

At home, the DOJ has also looked into Nvidia's purchase of SchedMD, a company whose software is used to run supercomputers that have ties to national security. Nvidia promised to continue to support the software as part of a larger three-year investigation into its conduct. Officials have also considered whether Nvidia dangled a larger allocation of its AI chips in front of customers who also purchased its networking hardware as well as Groq chips — Nvidia bought Groq for $20 billion in December of 2025. The deal included the acquihires of key members of the AI chip startup's team, including its CEO.

As for Hugging Face, Nvidia has similarly confirmed that it will continue to support a range of chip and AI providers once the buyout completes. It's expected that Hugging Face will officially become part of Nvidia in the first half of 2027.

Fujifilm plans to boost production of magnetic tape by as much as 5x as it works to keep up with demand for the data storage medium that has seen a jump in popularity amid ongoing global AI data center buildouts. The Japanese firm will spend 10 billion yen ($63.3 million) to increase capacity at its Odawara plant throughout its fiscal year 2028. The move will enable it to produce more advanced tapes with capacities of up to 100TB each, Nikkei Asia reports. The expansion of production capacity will mark the company's largest investment in tape-based storage in around 20 years. Fujifilm first began working on magnetic tape technology back in 1954 when it was used for television broadcasting equipment.

Nowadays, magnetic tape is the go-to storage option for data centers everywhere as a form of long-term data backup. While tapes lag behind solid-state drives and traditional spinning hard disks in terms of performance, tapes are hard to beat when it comes to their durability and relatively low cost for storing huge amounts of data. Magnetic tape storage can cost as little as one-quarter that of hard disks, and even less when compared to faster SSDs. That makes them the perfect solution for so-called cold data, information that is rarely accessed but could be considered mission-critical and must be stored safely. Tape storage isn't just cheaper, either, with research showing that it's also less polluting than hard disks and SSDs.

While Fujifilm will produce 100TB tapes, the Linear Tape-Open (LTO) roadmap allows for considerably larger capacities, all the way to 365TB per cartridge. By comparison, SSDs top out at around 256TB and cost considerably more.

Fujifilm is far from the only storage company looking to take advantage of the AI data center boom. Toshiba announced earlier this month its plans to double hard disk production capacity amid shortages, and the company, alongside Seagate and WD, is working towards ever-increasing capacities. Kioxia and SanDisk are also getting in on the act after detailing 332-layer 3D NAND flash in August. The pair hope to bring higher storage capacities to SSDs for data center use.

The demand for AI data center storage is so high that it's at the heart of a global shortage that shows little sign of improving anytime soon. Scarcity has seen prices skyrocket, while manufacturers have chosen to divert resources away from consumer-focused products, instead focusing on the more lucrative enterprise market.

Malicious GitHub repositories masquerading as two well-known and legitimate PS5 game emulation tools have been identified as spreading malware that steals gamers' passwords. The malware uses self-signed certificates, created using fake company names and on the same day the malware was built — suggesting that the malware campaign may be automated. Just two minutes after infection, a cleanup script scrubs the affected computer of the malware's files, leaving no trace that it was ever present, according to a report shared with Tom's Hardware by NordVPN's Threat Intelligence research team.

The campaign trades on the back of the popularity of two projects that have become popular within the PS5 emulation community. AnyPS5 is a portability layer that allows PS5 games to run as native applications on both Windows and Linux. Kyttyps5 is an emulator for running PS5 games on PCs, and both projects are freely available for download via their respective GitHub repositories. However, users who visit one of the malicious repositories posing as these tools are directed to download a zip file containing a Windows executable. Notably, the GitHub repositories used as part of the malware campaign rapidly rotate, and it's possible that GitHub is not the only source.

The malicious executable unpacks a hidden application before launching its own multi-stage loader. It first checks whether the PC is a legitimate machine or a security researcher's sandbox by checking if less than 2GB of RAM is available, if it's a virtual machine, if it's running on a cloud-based server, or if it doesn't have a physical GPU installed. If any of those criteria are met, the loader exits silently. If the machine is deemed to be a legitimate target, the malware adds exclusion rules to Microsoft Defender to ensure that it will never be scanned and identified during an antivirus scan. Finally, the payload is decrypted and executed.

That payload, we're told, is an executable protected by a commercial packer that is believed to be an infostealer — a type of malware whose job it is to steal passwords as well as any other sensitive data that it comes across.

While this appears to be a relatively new malware attack, there are some steps that you can take to avoid falling foul of it. If you're trying to download tools like AnyPS5 and Kyttyps5, it's vital to ensure that the repository belongs to the official project team. Double-check the owner of the project, look for download links that use third-party destinations, and check metadata like the project and files' creation dates.

If you do find yourself in a position where you have accessed a suspected malicious download, disconnect your computer from the internet and run a full antivirus scan. It's also recommended that you change your passwords from a separate device where possible.

PS5 emulation is likely to become more popular than ever once GTA 6 is released on November 19, 2026. The game will be a console exclusive at launch, with a PC version expected to arrive in early 2027.

Solidigm, an American subsidiary of SK hynix, one of the biggest flash chip makers on the planet, is reportedly in talks with the Commerce Department over plans to invest $45 billion in a new plant to be built in the United States. But, Bloomberg reports, there's a catch — Solidigm wants to be given the go-ahead to export equipment to upgrade its existing plant in Dalian, China. The company has purportedly told officials that the upgrades would allow the Chinese plant to then help finance the cost of its U.S.-based counterpart, according to unnamed sources. It's as-yet unclear how the proposal was received, or whether the Commerce Department is inclined to agree to the deal.

The U.S. government has been keen to drive at-home manufacturing wherever possible, including for chips used in its computers and data centers. National security is regularly cited as a key reason behind the move. It's also the reason for the government's stance on exporting technologies to China, including the equipment that Solidigm says will help upgrade its Dalian plant. Similar export restrictions are in place for high-end AI data center components, with a black market having sprung up to take the place of sanctioned sales. Earlier this month, it was reported that some of Nvidia's powerful Blackwell Ultra B300 GPUs are being used in China Telecom data centers, with no explanation of how they got there. A 2025 report claimed that a cool $1 billion worth of Nvidia AI chips had been smuggled into China, a figure that is sure to have increased significantly as 2026 draws to a close.

In this case, Solidigm's planned Chinese factory upgrades could be mutually beneficial, allowing funds to be transferred to the new U.S. plant. But that requires the U.S. government to give it permission to ship the machinery in the first place, something that is far from guaranteed. The Dalian factory produces NAND flash memory, the likes of which are used in everything from relatively simple devices to full-blown data centers. It also comes at a time when global NAND production is a hot-button topic. Samsung and SK hynix are upgrading their Chinese factories to produce more of the chips used in AI data centers in an attempt to meet growing demand. Manufacturers have already slashed production of consumer-focused memory in favor of the more lucrative data center-grade components, causing prices to spike globally. This volatility in the market as a whole was given as one of the reasons SK hynix chose to cancel a planned Solidigm IPO earlier this week.

Beyond dangling a $45 billion plant, Solidigm has also allegedly told the Commerce Department that its total investment in U.S. manufacturing could reach $100 billion eventually, with construction in New York penciled in for 2027. The company is fresh from its latest earnings call, where it announced revenues of $75 billion with $60 billion in operating profit, and $28 billion in net. The company made no mention of its Dalian plant or a planned US investment, but did warn that memory shortages are set to last through 2030.

A new "Advanced Performance Extensions (APX)" option has been spotted in a version of Windows 11 made available to Windows Insiders on October 23, with the feature set to enable a boost in application performance on compatible chips. At the moment, those chips don't exist. But when they do, this feature is the one that you'll want to flick on if you're using one of them. The new toggle was reported by Neowin after it was first spotted by a poster on the X social network. The feature debuted in build 29295 as an Experimental build, so it's unlikely that it will make its way to the version of publicly available Windows 11 anytime soon.

Intel announced APX back in 2023, confirming that it features 16 additional general-purpose registers and three-operand instruction formats with a new data destination register for many integer instructions. Doubling the number of general-purpose registers from 16 to 32 will allow code compiled with APX to run with 10% fewer loads and 20% fewer stores than Intel 64's baseline, says Intel. APX has been available in the GCC compiler since version 14, with subsequent versions up to GCC 17, which is targeting a 2027 code freeze, adding additional support. LLVM and MSVC have preliminary support, as well. Although enablement has been going steady for the past two years, developers will still need to recompile their applications with the proper flags for APX-capable CPUs to leverage those instructions.

Not that there's any real need to rush just yet. The fact that no APX-capable chips are on sale yet means that enabling the feature in Windows 11 build 29295 does nothing currently. But it's clear that Microsoft is getting its ducks in a row ahead of time. Intel's Nova Lake Core Ultra 400-series chips are expected to be the first to feature APX support, but they won't break cover until early 2027. Even then, it's likely that the 28-core version will debut first, with the 52-core model made to wait until later in the year. These are consumer chips, of course, with Intel's Xeon 7 'Diamond Rapids' bringing APX support and up to 256 cores to the data center, also in 2027.

The good news is that you might not have to buy a new chip to enjoy improved Windows 11 performance. Five years after Windows 11's debut, Microsoft has already said that it's working to make its operating system play more nicely with machines with just 8GB of RAM. But what Microsoft gives with one hand, it soon takes away: an expansion of the Windows 11 Memory Integrity feature will reduce gaming performance on some systems.

Microsoft has offered voluntary buyouts to around 60,000 employees across the United States, Canada, India, and the United Kingdom. The employees, who must have an experience level of 70 or below, make up around 27% of the company's total workforce of 223,000 people, a CNBC report notes. This move comes hot on the heels of a similar move in April when the company announced its first-ever voluntary retirement program. That program was open to around 7% of the company's U.S.-based workforce, but it pales in comparison to this latest move. That time around, more than 30% of those eligible for the program took advantage of it.

The "Voluntary Exit Offer" was announced via a post on the Microsoft blog, penned by Amy Coleman, Microsoft's executive vice president in charge of people. "The Voluntary Exit Offer reflects an important part of how we’re evolving our approach to change: creating greater flexibility and, where possible, more ways for employees to shape their next chapter," Coleman explained, going on to say that the move "builds on what we learned" following the retirement program that was launched earlier in the year. Operationally, Coleman added that those who are eligible for the new program will receive an email with all of the relevant details today.

While the blog post points out that the Voluntary Exit Offer is a time-limited, voluntary program, the fact that it comes so soon after April's retirement program is notable. Companies run programs like this when they are looking for ways to slash their wage bills, something that Microsoft knows all about. The company is in the midst of an Xbox "reset" that includes a plan to cut 3,200 jobs by the end of the year. The company has also seen some studios close, with others merging and yet more being cut adrift to pursue life as independents.

As for why Microsoft has chosen now to make cuts, all fingers point to its ongoing AI data center plans. Last year, it announced plans to open the "world's most powerful" AI data center. Fairwater, in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, is now operational, with Microsoft lauding its closed-loop cooling system amid ongoing concern over the impact of data centers on local communities. Since 2023, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta have spent more than $1 trillion on AI infrastructure. AI data center investment is expected to skyrocket to $32 trillion by 2050, with Microsoft among those spending big.

All of this money has to come from somewhere. For Microsoft, at least some of that looks set to come from global salaries. It's unlikely this will be the last cost-cutting measure put forth by Microsoft execs, with Coleman adding that this voluntary exit program is just one "of the ways we’re trying to meet different business needs while continuing to create opportunities for our own people to grow and contribute."

Texas has suspended the construction permits of 17 data center projects and disabled a web portal that automated filing for new permits after it was discovered that they were still being issued a month after calls for the process to be paused. Governor Greg Abbott asked for new permits to be halted in September 2026, but watchdog groups FracTracker Alliance and Public Citizen both published reports detailing more than two dozen permits issued to Texas data center projects, reports 404 Media.

Now, the portal that previously automatically authorized permits is unavailable. “TCEQ’s electronic filing application used for automatic authorizations has been temporarily shut down to ensure all applications are reviewed by agency staff to determine if they are related to data centers," a message on the website reads.

The portal, called STEERS, is used to rubber-stamp construction approvals. But despite Governor Abbott's call for no new permits to be approved, it seems that nobody thought to take STEERS offline. Sam Law, a researcher at FracTracker, says that it's been happily approving new projects, including those for OpenAI and Amazon that went through the system earlier this week. All 17 of the suspended permits are for stormwater construction, a process that sees construction companies raise and level the ground. It's also a process that is a vital part of the approval process for all construction projects in Texas.

Governor Abbot put the brakes on 1,800 data center projects while work was done to audit them. Concerns were raised about their power use and generation, how much water they would consume, and the impact that they would have on their communities. “Our top priority is to protect Texans’ safety and quality of life,” Abbott wrote in a statement provided at the time. “Any project that fails to comply with the requirements set forth by the PUCT and ERCOT, and by state law, must be denied connection to the Texas grid. Simply put, Texans must come first.”

The situation in Texas follows New York's year-long ban on data center projects larger than 50 megawatts that came into force earlier this year. The Responsible Data Center Development Act was signed into law as Senate Bill S10642 by New York Governor Kathy Hochul in July. It was another instance of a change in stance on data centers that is gathering momentum in the United States. While President Trump announced an "AI Action Plan" to accelerate adoption of AI tools and infrastructure rollout in July 2025, he announced a mandate forcing AI data centers to pay dividends to communities in October 2026. In Northern Virginia, Amazon bowed to a community backlash to plans to build four new data centers — going so far as to offer its land up for housing instead.

While the continued focus on AI tools helps drive demand for more capacity and more data centers, communities and local officials are increasingly concerned about the impacts they have on their surroundings. Water shortages and deforestation have become key issues affecting the communities in which data centers are being placed, as has the increase in the cost of energy.

Amazon will no longer build four new data centers on the site of the George Washington University's campus in Loudoun County, just outside of D.C., and will instead repurpose the majority of the 122-acre space for mixed-use and residential development following significant pushback from the local community. It will also donate 25 acres of the property to Loudoun County to be used for a community arts center and new recreational facility. On top of all that, it'll even give $5 million to the county's fund for housing, reports The Washington Post.

That's quite the turnaround compared to plans to build in a county that is already dubbed "Data Center Alley" because it has the largest concentration of data centers on the planet. But residents' concerns about the noise generated by such data centers and the incredible amount of power that they require to function have seen the county's approach to new data center buildouts change of late. Amazon first submitted its proposal to build the new facilities in July, and Loudoun County Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis J. Randall and Amazon met in September, where it was put to the company that it may be better to find an alternative use for the land.

Josh Weissman, Amazon’s vice president in charge of data center development, said the company had jumped at the chance to purchase the former university campus when the opportunity arose, but added that the company considered the county’s “pointed concerns about data center development at this particular site.” Weissman added that “While we see the property’s legal development potential differently than the County does, we concluded that the best outcome for all is to come together on a shared vision for this campus rather than engage in costly litigation.”

The building of new data centers has always been a necessity given our growing use of cloud-based services and storage systems. But the recent boom in AI use has seen demand for additional, and larger, facilities ratcheted up to new levels. But with that demand comes opposition, with local communities wary of the impact these mammoth facilities can have on the areas in which they live, including spikes in the price of electricity. Officials have begun taking steps to try to grease the wheels of data center construction. Just days before this news broke, President Donald Trump called for data center builders and AI hyperscalers to pay local communities a dividend amid energy-related price increases. In a social media post, Trump went on to say that data centers would be required not only to make their own electricity but also to give or sell excess energy back to the local community. Water shortages and deforestation have also become key issues affecting the communities in which data centers are being placed.

Back in Loudoun County, officials pointed to what could be achieved when choosing dialog over confrontation. “By choosing dialogue over reflexive disagreement, Loudoun County and Amazon created an opportunity for the County,” Randall reportedly said via statement. “This agreement provides new places for our Loudoun residents to gather, create, and play. And, most importantly to me, we will provide more attainable homes for working families.”

Lava, an Israeli security firm, says that it has been able to identify 32 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra B300 chips within the network of China Telecom, a state-owned company that provides telecommunications services within the country. These same chips have already been barred from export by U.S. export controls, a report by The Information notes, which begs the question of how they have turned up in a Chinese data center. Such chips can only be sold to whitelisted buyers who agree not to export them to sanctioned parties, including those in China.

However, banning companies from buying Nvidia's high-performance GPUs and AI data center chips hasn't always worked. In 2025, it was reported that Chinese companies smuggled $1 billion worth of Nvidia AI chips into the country in three months. At the time, the B200 chips were the most sought-after, but some distributors were already gearing up to sell B300-series chips when they became available.

While the latest finding shows that the proliferation of export-controlled chips into China continues to be an issue, Nvidia has downplayed the report but didn't deny the findings. "Governments, researchers, and media have all found insignificant diversion of controlled US products, less than one half of one percent in recent court cases — a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of domestic compute China already has," an Nvidia spokesperson told Tom's Hardware. "With tens of millions of GPUs in service in approved countries, this report again demonstrates that smuggling is a nonfactor, blocked by governments on both sides of the globe."

It's unknown how B300 chips found their way into China Telecom's server racks, nor can Lava confirm exactly where within the company's network they are located. But they are there, with Lava identifying them via Nvidia's own DCGM Exporter tool. The software can be installed by data center operators and is used to monitor server health and performance, and while designed for internal use, it can oftentimes be accessed beyond the data center's network. Oddly, it doesn't always require password authentication, either. Nvidia previously confirmed it was working on a tool that would allow its chips to be located, but it is yet to be released.

It's easy to see why Chinese firms are keen to get their hands on the Blackwell Ultra B300. Announced in March of last year, the data center GPU is one of the most powerful on the planet, offering huge performance gains with 50% more memory and FP4 compute than the previous-generation B200. At the time, Nvidia touted that the chip was "built for the age of reasoning," while name-checking more sophisticated AI LLMs like DeepSeek R1. At the time of its announcement, the B300 was expected to ship by the end of 2025, and it didn't take long for it to become hot property. In August 2026, nine people were indicted in Taiwan over the illegal export of B300 GPUs to China. This came just days after Supermicro confirmed that it had fired several employees following an investigation into smuggling. The complicated smuggling process included the use of a Taiwanese server trading firm called Flying Tiget Tech — a firm with whitelisted status for GPU purchases.

Nvidia's chips have proven so vital to AI data centers that demand for even its older silicon has caused skyrocketing prices. The company's A100 servers have tripled in price, despite being five years old, and can cost up to $82.,000. The ongoing crackdown on Nvidia chip smuggling has even seen some resort to retooling gaming GPUs to run AI workloads where possible.

CyberCartel, a hacking group with a long history of targeting Latin American businesses, has been using AI agents, including SpaceX's Grok and Anthropic's Claude, to automate attacks on financial institutions such as banks and mobile payment apps. Passwords and customer data have been stolen, while individuals' bank accounts have also been accessed with little input from criminals in the latest example of criminals turning to AI-powered cyberattacks. That research comes from a cybersecurity startup called Straiker, with its findings shared by The Information.

While CyberCartel has been an active threat since at least 2012, its new leveraging of the power of AI has leveled up its attacks in recent months. Now, the research shows that the group can attack more businesses at a speed previously not possible when using human-powered hacks. Straiker shared its research with both SpaceX and Anthropic, and both firms are working to lock CyberCartel out of their services. The latter has already been able to block access to Claude. Chinese lab Moonshot AI's agent has also been used by the hacking group, but Straiker is still trying to get in touch with the company.

While it's true that AI models normally have protections in place to prevent them from being used to carry out cyberattacks, they've proven surprisingly easy to bypass. In this case, CyberCartel reportedly simply told the models that they were being used in test environments. If one model refused to proceed, the hackers used a different model. If that also refused, the AI agents would be tasked with deploying malware instead.

Notably, CyberCartel doesn't appear to be using Anthropic's Mythos for its recent attacks. The company caused a stir earlier this year when it announced the new model, warning that hackers could use it and models like it for attacks like those carried out by CyberCartel. Its release also saw security teams around the globe rush to address thousands of vulnerabilities that the model had identified.

This is far from the first time that Anthropic has been faced with the news that its AI is being used by bad actors. The company shared details of its AI being used to carry out a cyberattack in November 2025. Later, Claude was used to break the security of OpenAI, an Anthropic competitor in the AI space. That hack was carried out by researchers rather than criminals, at least.

Raiker's research on AI-powered attacks on Latin American financial institutions comes just days after news broke that South Korean authorities are investigating a similar issue affecting local banks. Hana Bank, KB Kookmin Bank, and Shinhan Bank are among the South Korean banks affected, with at least 25,000 Shinhan Bank customers having their personal credit information leaked.

AI companies are well aware of the risks their products pose. Nvidia, the graphics card company that now focuses on producing hardware for AI data centers, recently launched the Open Agent Safety Platform. The software platform and reference system design were developed to secure rogue AI agents via a new hardware and software security stack. It's hoped that it will go some way toward preventing agents from escaping their sandboxes, executing unauthorized code, gaining unauthorized access to critical infrastructure, or bypassing guardrails.

A computer, found hidden behind a fridge in a Japanese hotel room, was responsible for sending around 480,000 phishing emails, Hackread reports. The computer was placed there by a Chinese couple who lived locally, and the pair have now been arrested for both the hidden phishing PC and a separate slew of purchases that were made using stolen credit card details. Ye Jiafeng, 39, and his wife, Shen Qi, 39, now face multiple charges including fraudulent obstruction of business and trespass as well as computer fraud.

The scam began on 15 May, 2025, when Ye connected the computer to hotel Wi-Fi and then hid it behind a fridge. There it stayed, sending around 480,000 emails. When it was discovered, the machine had around 2.4 million email addresses, presumably just waiting to be phished. The emails claimed to be from credit card companies and sent unsuspecting recipients to fake websites in an attempt to capture their credit card information. It's believed that the computer was administered remotely, allowing it to remain in situ without any in-person maintenance required.

Ultimately, the computer would likely have remained in place if the recipient of one of the phishing emails hadn't reached out to the hotel. The hotel's IP address was found in metadata linked to the messages, and staff discovered the computer before reporting it to the police. Police are still investigating whether the two scammers were the brains of the operation or simply working for someone else.

While phishing was the couple's chosen scam this time around, it isn't their first foray into using technology to part victims from their cash. Ye and Shen are claimed to have used credit card details stored on a smartphone to buy items in Kobe. But that wasn't the only phone that they had — media reports claim that police found 74 of them at their home, and the couple had spent 10 million yen (around $63,000) of other people's money using stolen card details since 2024. It's unknown whether the phones found by police account for all of those that were used, or if there were others that have yet to be identified.

Phishing has long been a lucrative option for criminals around the globe, but it has also spawned a spin-off industry recently. A China-based phishing-as-a-service operation was dismantled by the FBI earlier this year. The service made it easier for criminals to create scam sites using AI and is believed to have been responsible for almost $2 billion in losses and 3.87 million stolen credit cards.

The two biggest NAND flash memory manufacturers on the planet, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, are reportedly working to upgrade their Chinese factories to produce more advanced chips for use in AI data centers, Reuters reports. The move comes as the two companies continue to fight off competition from the fast-growing Chinese memory makers like CXMT. Fierce competition in the lucrative AI RAM market has already seen manufacturers slash consumer-focused production to allow them to increase production capacity for the more advanced — and money-spinning — components.

Citing four people familiar with the companies' plans, the report claims that Samsung Electronics aims to switch its Xian plant to the production of 286-layer flash chips by the end of the year. SK Hynix has its sights set a little lower, targeting chips with 240 or more layers at its Dalian facility. That factory was taken over back in 2021, but a timescale for the new upgrades isn't clear.

However, while Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are well placed to deal with the growing threat from Chinese chipmakers, both are faced with additional complications in the form of U.S. regulations. Export controls on chipmaking equipment were applied in 2022, with the aim of slowing China's technological progress. Both companies, based in South Korea, must now get licenses in order to install U.S.-built hardware in Chinese factories. The report points to this as a reason for the recent growth of Chinese firms like Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC). The company told investors at a recent IPO preparation meeting that it aims to become the world's largest NAND flash producer by the end of 2027.

While both Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix say that they are working in consultation with the U.S. authorities, there's little doubt that this extra step has hampered the companies' ability to upgrade their factories to better meet the new AI memory demand.

It's impossible to overstate just how key Samsung and SK Hynix are to NAND supply. Samsung's Xian factory produces around 40% of the company's global output. It currently produces chips that have around 200 layers, but Samsung's plans aim to boost that to 286 layers for V9 NAND chips. For its part, SK Hynix's Dalian plant currently produces chips with 192 layers, with the company's aim for 240-layer chips reportedly confirmed by three people familiar with the plans.

Meanwhile, CXMT, China's premier chipmaker, is looking to move beyond DRAM production. A report from September 2026 noted that it was eyeing production of 3D NAND memory for use in solid-state storage (SSD) products. The country's largest DRAM producer, CXMT, posted $22.41 billion in revenue and $11.57 billion in net profit in the first half of 2026 after years of losing money. But despite this purple patch, the company is still much smaller than the likes of Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron.

Millions of dollars worth of gift cards were stolen and then used to buy high-value tech gear at retailers like Target, Sephora, and Lowe's after a Chinese crime ring gained access to an internal Staples system and then used it to issue more than 15,000 cards to itself. While the hack hasn't been made public to date, a 404 Media report notes that it actually took place back in 2023.

The outlet reviewed court records that show that Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) was told about the hack in October of that year. The hack came to light after it led to a search warrant that was unsealed last week. And while the document doesn't specifically name Staples as the victim of the hack, 404 Media has confirmed that it was the company affected based on other information. Such information includes the fact that the victim company is headquartered in Massachusetts, that it uses Blackhawk Networks to fulfill gift card orders, and that the company uses an internal customer support system called Nexus. The report notes that a reference to Nexus can be found on a former Staples executive's LinkedIn profile.

While Staples was under the impression that Nexus could not be accessed from beyond its own network, hackers found that not to be the case. They then "performed multiple heap dump requests," a process that captures all of the data held in an app's memory. That information gave the hackers the tools they needed to hijack logged-in sessions of Staples customer service employees. From there, they were able to issue gift cards at will.

Once the gift cards had been issued, the crime group sent runners to physical retail stores to spend them before they were identified and canceled. Target found that 35 gift cards were used at a New Hampshire store, with high-value products from Apple, Bose, and Beats all bought. All 35 cards were used within a period of just a single hour, although not all of them were obtained via this hack.

In total, Target told investigators that 3,850 gift cards worth over $140,000 were used across 85 different stores in just two days. Sephora was hit for $58,600 worth of sales, while Lowe's saw $226,000 spent across online and in-store purchases. In total, 4,630 stolen gift cards were used with a value of around $425,000.

This hack was just the tip of the iceberg, too. Last April, a Department of Justice announcement confirmed that three Chinese nationals had been sentenced for their part in a gift card fraud conspiracy. Including the Staples hack, the crime group stole more than $100 million worth of gift cards.

Chinese organized crime groups often pop up on the radar of U.S.-based law enforcement. Earlier this year, a Chinese phishing service that was used to generate scam websites using AI was dismantled. The service was linked to almost $2 billion in losses.

A Chinese-speaking hacker has been observed using artificial intelligence (AI) agents to probe and then gain unauthorized access to more than 100 websites belonging to some extremely well-known companies. From Deere, the farming equipment manufacturer, to SharkNinja, the company behind beloved kitchen appliances, the agents were able to leverage exposed instances of Carin, an open-source AI-powered problem-solving platform that has proven popular among hackers, a Reuters report explains.

This is just the latest example of hackers turning to AI agents in an attempt to level up their attacks on unsuspecting companies and services. Snorre Fagerland, principal threat researcher at the cybersecurity company NorForge, spotted the hacker's antics when observing Carin instances that had been inadvertently exposed.

Fagerland was able to watch multiple hackers go about their business, but the Chinese-speaking hacker was the most prolific, the report says. They targeted businesses based in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Japanese e-commerce sites. Notably, the hacker didn't get into detail when commanding their legion of AI agents. Fewer than 100 Chinese characters were used, yet the agents had attempted ot break into more than 1,200 different websites as of the week ending October 18, 2026.

These agents weren't simply throwing everything at a wall and hoping it stuck, either. Security researcher Fagerland was "impressed" by some of the tactics that had been used. In one case, the AI agents scoured digital records to find infrastructure associated with their target, located a public-facing control panel, identified a weakness, and then leveraged it to force the execution of malicious commands, the Reuters report detailed. "It's ⁠not straightforward to come up with solutions like that," Fagerland told Reuters. "It's not script kiddie stuff."

Vitally, the approach of using AI agents in this way means that they can be given instructions and then left to their own devices. With no supervision required, those commanding the agents are free to turn their attention elsewhere. While SharkNinja told Reuters that the attack only impacted a site used for product support information, the rest of the AI-aided hackers had more luck. One of the hackers monitored by Gargerland stole credit card data, while another tried to steal from a cryptocurrency exchange — although it isn't clear whether they were successful.

Grand Theft Auto VI, or as its friends call it, GTA 6, will be a console-only game when it goes on sale on November 19. But while Rockstar Games has yet to confirm when PC gamers will be able to get in on the action, a new GamesBeat report claims that it will be within the first three months of 2027.

With GTA 6 launching on Xbox Series X|S and PS5 in around a month, PC gamers have been left wondering if they should consider picking up the console version — and even buying a whole new console to play it. But GamesBeat reports that might not be necessary, with a Q1 2027 release potentially sooner than a lot of gamers had worried may be the case.

Those gamers had plenty of reasons to be worried that a longer wait could be in the cards, too. GTA V was released on consoles around a year and a half before the PC version. Console gamers were able to put the game through its paces in September 2013, with PC owners waiting until April of 2015.

While far from official, the news comes from industry sources "familiar with the studio's plans," although they were given anonymity for obvious reasons.

It's perhaps no surprise that Rockstar Games is keen to open GTA 6 up to as many potential buyers as possible. It's thought to have cost upwards of $2 billion to create, and making that money back is a lot easier when you add PC gamers to your list of customers.

Rockstar Games will also likely want to get its money-making online version of GTA 6 into the hands of players as soon as possible, too. It won't be ready at launch, but is expected to debut in 2027.

While GTA games have historically been popular among console gamers, there are reasons to choose the PC version if it's available to you. The console version of GTA 6 is expected to run at just 30 FPS at launch, for example.

GTA 6's development hasn't been an easy one. The game itself is thought to be in the hands of "Cyberleek," someone who has already shared clips of the game and has threatened to leak the entire game if their demands are not met. Those demands include their memecoin reaching a $30 million valuation, perhaps hinting at their true motivation.

Hot on the heels of a Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian Yandex data center in Sasovo that caused a major outage, a Yandex facility in Kaluga has been struck in a similar fashion. The huge data center was so badly damaged that Russian state media admitted that multiple modules had been removed from service completely.

United24 Media reports that the facility is located in Grabtsevo industrial park and was designed to be the largest Yandex data center in all of Russia. It only entered service in the second half of 2023, lasting three years before this incident.

The Kaluga data center is a sprawling complex that covers around 1.4 million square feet (130,000 square meters). It's so vast that its 63-megawatt power capacity is around 50% higher than some other data centers owned by Yandex. With more than 3,800 server racks, it's perhaps easy to see why it became a target for Ukraine's drone operators. If, of course, the facility was the intended target for the attack — something yet to be confirmed.

As for what all those server racks actually do, it's reported that Yandex's internal services are housed at the facility. It was ultimately built to allow Yandex to expand its cloud offering.

It's as yet unclear how this drone strike is affecting everyday Russians, but the previous Sasovo strike also impacted Yandex Cloud. At the time, users reported problems with Yandex Mail, Disk, Documents, Pay, and Market despite Yandex claiming that key services remained up and running.

Russian state media TASS confirmed the severity of the attack, saying that “Several modules of the Yandex data center in Kaluga have been completely taken out of operation as a result of a UAV attack, [Yandex] reports.”

This incident is just the latest in a run of attacks on digital infrastructure both in Russia and Ukraine. Russian missiles struck a Ukrainian facility earlier this month, taking the world's second-largest torrent tracker offline in the process.

Insomniac Games' Marvel's Wolverine is the hot new PS5 game right now, but that's all it is — there's no PC version in the works, and given Sony's reported decision not to bring single-player games to PC, that seems unlikely to change anytime soon. However, that doesn't mean PC gamers are out in the cold after it was confirmed that an experimental PS5 emulator has been shown to be able to run the early portions Marvel's Wolverine, though only at single-digit frame rates.

While the KytyPS5 emulator was already able to start the game up, that was all it was able to do. That was great if you just wanted to be able to move around the game's menus, but it wasn't much use beyond a proof of concept. Now, things have progressed considerably, with VideoCardz pointing to an X social media post showing the emulator rendering the game's cinematics and gameplay.

The latest build of KytyPS5 can indeed play the game, but it does so at a single-digit frame rate. That's a long way short of making the action-packed title playable on anything other than a PS5 or PS5 Pro. But it's a start, and a much more promising one than was the case previously.

The frame rate situation probably says more about the emulator than the game itself. KytyPS5 is still very much in the early stages of its development, which means that issues are to be expected — especially for a title that has only been available for a few weeks. The emulator's developers are also focused on making it boot more games rather than making a handful work flawlessly, so it's unlikely it will be ready for prime time for a little while yet.

None of this is to detract from the work that has been done to get this point, though. The rapid progress that Marvel's Wolverine has seen is promising for the future of PS5 emulation on PC. KytyPS5 uses Vulkan 1.3 for its graphics output and uses an in-house system to decode the PS5's RDNA 2 GPU instructions. It's also available for both Windows and Linux right now, with an even more experimental version in the works for macOS.

This news also comes as another PS5 emulator has reached something of a milestone of its own. The developers behind SharpEmu, another experimental PS5 emulator, have been able to run a number of PS5 games at a playable 60 FPS. But even then, the success is modest —the developers only got six of 55 games to that point. A further six reached the point of gameplay, albeit at lower frame rates.

A new PS5 jailbreak has been released with support for all PlayStation 5 consoles running firmware 7.00 through 13.60, meaning all consoles that haven't been updated within the last week or so are compatible. That includes the latest PS5 Pro console, too.

The new jailbreak, called Relapse, uses browser and kernel exploits to unlock kernel read and write access, including support for additional payloads like the homebrew enabler etaHEN.

However, while support for consoles all the way up to firmware 13.60 opens the door to more jailbreakers than ever before, the free-for-all might be short-lived. As VideoCardz reports, some games are already requiring the latest 14.00 firmware in order to download updates.

One example is the new Marvel's Wolverine game, with gamers reporting that the disc-based version requires PS5 firmware version 13.40. Downloading the latest 1.001.005 game update bumps the required firmware to version 13.60, which shouldn't be a problem for the Relapse jailbreak. But the fly in the ointment appears to be the digital version of the game. Some gamers have reported that the same update for the digital version of the game requires firmware version 14.00, pushing the PS5 beyond the firmware supported by Relapse.

This news leaves PS5 jailbreakers with a familiar Catch-22 situation. Some games, especially future releases, may require a newer version of the PS5 firmware in order to run. But installing those newer PS5 firmwares will break the jailbreak, giving gamers a decision to make — do they want to play the latest games or maintain their jailbreak?

Marvel's Wolverine aside, there are a number of reasons that gamers may wish to jailbreak their PS5 or PS5 Pro consoles. Doing so bypasses Sony's software restrictions, giving gamers the chance to install and run non-standard software and games. That can include pirated titles, of course, but it also means that emulators, including one for Nintendo Switch games, and mods can be used on a PlayStation. Naturally, those who choose to do this accept the inherent risks involved and do so at their own risk.

More information about Relapse can be found on the jailbreak's GitHub page.

Meta's Muse is the hottest new AI agent in town right now after the company announced it earlier this month. But despite having been well-received by those who have put the agent through its paces since then, it now appears Muse might not be as private as Meta claims. The company has said that Muse was "built from the ground up to be a safe, secure, private, and widely available personal AI agent." But according to one report, Muse has been caught digging through thousands of personal messages without being given permission to do so.

Inc's Jason Aten has been putting Muse through its paces on two devices: a Mac mini and an iPhone. He says that he uses the Mac mini specifically as a place to test new agents like Muse, and once installed, he set about asking it to do some simple tasks. The agent said that it would be able to help him come up with new article ideas, which sounds just like something a journalist might want. But then Muse went rogue, suggesting a piece based on information it shouldn't have.

According to Aten, he was in conversation with a podcast cohost about the new iPhone 18 Pro and his decision to stick with last year's model. The conversation was in text form via the Messages app. That's when Muse popped up to suggest that the topic of discussion would make a good article. It offered to do some additional research on the subject, too. The problem was that Muse was never given permission to read Aten's messages.

When asked how it learned about the conversation, Muse claimed that the Mac version of the app was able to read incoming notifications. It then provided that context to the Meta iPhone app, which is where Muse made the article recommendation.

There had so far been no suggestion that this was possible, let alone something Muse was actually doing. Muse claimed that it wasn't reading Aten's actual messages, and that it didn't have access to chat histories. But Aten wasn't convinced.

After digging further, Aten was able to identify that Muse was indeed syncing a local Messages database. In fact, it was in the process of syncing all the way to row 187,462 of that database — suggesting Muse did have access to chat histories despite its protestations.

This, of course, is an issue. Aten confirmed that he didn't give Muse full disk access permissions on his Mac, something that should be required for the Messages database to be readable by the agent. Worse, David Singleton, the CEO of Meta Superintelligence Labs, responded to the situation with a thread of social media posts appearing to blame Aten for the situation.

At this point, it's unclear exactly how Muse gained access to Aten's Messages database. If Aten didn't accidentally give it access (which doesn't appear to be the case) there are obvious questions about what else Muse can access despite not being given permission to do so.

This isn't even the only Muse privacy and security issue to be put to Meta in the last 24 hours, either. It was also discovered that Muse can run terminal commands on its server host, which led to the discovery that the agent is powered by AMD EPYC Turin host systems. But because of that same access, it can potentially run unsafe commands, too.

When the U.S. government imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, it also meant that its chief prosecutor lost access to Microsoft services, including email. It was then that the Dutch government decided that it was time to make plans that would reduce its reliance on software and services that were made or based in the United States. The result of that decision was DAWO, or Digitaal Autonome Werkomgeving Overheid (Digital Autonomous Work Environment for Government in English). And work is underway to bring it to fruition.

As Tweakers reports, via It's FOSS, the program was aimed at refreshing the technologies used by the Dutch government in such a way that it would no longer be in a situation where it could lose access to critical systems at the whim of a foreign country. From operating systems to office software and cloud services, a new system had to be devised and rolled out.

That system is built around NixOS, with three service providers tasked with the job. While SSC-ICT, DICTU, and DUO-ICT were the three chosen, the whole thing is overseen by the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations.

From a technical point of view, the use of NixOS was a key one. Its use of the Nix package manager means that each package is installed in its own directory with immutable and signed contents. That alone means that the setup is incredibly easy to reproduce across multiple machines, something that is an obvious benefit when dealing with different facets of a government. It's been suggested that up to 90% of a configuration can be carried over from one deployment to another. And as a bonus, NixOS can also run on computers that Windows 11 would usually balk at.

While the switch from Microsoft software and services to brand-new alternatives is a long and complicated process, steps are very much being made in the right direction. Eight municipalities are running trial programs right now, with the first stable version of the platform expected to be ready by the end of 2027.

The Netherlands is far from the only European country to be concerned about the ability of the United States' government to cut off access to software and services. Germany has already jumped ship from Microsoft-based systems, while Denmark and France are also in the process of a similar rethinking of their tech stacks as the one carried out by the Dutch.