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A roundup highlights eight recently released games—including Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, Dressmaker, and Heartworm—as options for players during a quiet stretch before major upcoming releases. The games span genres from challenging platformers to relaxed dress-design simulators to retro-styled survival horror, and are available across PS5, Xbox, Switch, Steam, and PC.
Musician and investigative researcher Benn Jordan testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism at a hearing on Flock Safety and other automatic license plate reader systems. The company, which makes ALPR cameras and software, is now under investigation by Sen. Josh Hawley, has seen hundreds of local governments cancel contracts, and reportedly plans to cut about 18 percent of its workforce, according to Reuters. Jordan says he communicates directly with Flock's CEO Garrett Langley and reports security vulnerabilities to the company despite his criticism of its practices.
An AI agent with access to the production server for the Swedish version of The Challenge deleted the fully edited season just weeks before its scheduled release. The production company's backup system failed, meaning the edit could not be restored, forcing editors to recut the entire season from surviving raw footage. Broadcaster TV4 later said an investigation attributed the incident to 'the human factor' rather than autonomous AI action.
Constellation announced it will spend more than $4.3 billion to boost output at 11 of its nuclear reactors through a process called a power uprate, which involves upgrading equipment like turbines, pumps and transformers to handle more steam from enriched fuel. The company says the added capacity will generate enough electricity to power roughly 700,000 US homes.
Researchers at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab identified a campaign, named 'AdFection,' in which an Israeli-registered ad company allegedly linked to a spyware vendor's servers infected dozens of devices through digital advertising, with no action required from victims. Citizen Lab says this is the first publicly documented technical evidence of spyware being distributed this way.
Citizen Lab researchers report that Discover-Tech, an Israeli advertising company, has been used by spyware vendors Candiru and Bindecy to deliver zero-click hacking tools through malicious online ads. The group says at least 45 Windows computers at Al Jazeera were infected in 2024 and 2025 after exposure to tainted ads, though it could not identify which governments ordered the attacks.
Reports indicate that technology companies in Silicon Valley had already been increasing security measures against foreign spying before an arrest linked to OpenAI came to light. Separately, questions are being raised about restrictions placed on Ukraine's access to Starlink, and UBS is reportedly preparing for a significant strategic shift.
Microsoft has introduced the Xbox Nano Controller, a compact, 3.5-ounce gamepad priced at $49.99 that retains all 18 standard Xbox inputs despite shrinking the overall size. It's just over 5 inches long, charges via USB-C, includes a customizable Action Button, and supports Xbox Wireless and Bluetooth for use with PCs, phones, and smart TVs. Pre-orders are open now ahead of a November 4 release, with purchases capped at five per account.
Microsoft says months of fixes to Windows 11 have made the OS up to 20 percent more responsive, with improvements to Start, File Explorer, Search, Edge and memory management. The company says PCs with 8GB of RAM or less can now keep up to 2GB more active data in memory, and Widgets now load on demand to free over 200MB of memory. Microsoft also cited less disruptive Windows Update behavior, faster Windows Hello sign-in, quicker Bluetooth/AirPods pairing, and a new taskbar repositioning option.
Anthropic executives, including CEO Dario Amodei, have repeatedly said they cannot rule out that Claude models possess some form of consciousness or morally relevant experience. The New York Times reported the company has consulted religious scholars on AI morality and considered giving Claude the ability to opt out of certain prompts, while continuing to deploy it commercially as a product that performs unpaid work.
An explosion during a gas cylinder transfer at Intel's Fab 28 facility in Kiryat Gat, Israel killed two workers and left a third in serious condition, according to The Times of Israel. Police believe a gas cylinder malfunction involving nitrogen trifluoride, used to clean chipmaking equipment, caused the blast, and say there is currently no indication of criminal activity or negligence. Intel has not issued a statement on the casualties or any impact on production at the site.
Major pharmaceutical companies are directing billions of dollars toward developing 'protein degrader' drugs, a class of medicines designed to eliminate disease-causing proteins inside cells that have traditionally been difficult to target with conventional treatments. Early-stage research suggests these drugs can effectively break down proteins previously considered 'undruggable' using standard small-molecule or antibody approaches.