GoKawiil
Tech News
The Department of Justice disrupted operations tied to Famous Chollima, a North Korean threat group, arresting two suspects and charging 14 individuals. The FBI's 'Lonestar Roundup' operation searched 40 Texas residences between September 21-25, seizing about 187 laptops and KVM devices used to run so-called laptop farms that let North Korean IT workers appear to be based in the US.
China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has granted regulatory approval for Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen (Qwen) language models and Tongyi Wanxiang image/video tool to power Apple Intelligence on the mainland. Network access permits have also been issued for the upcoming iPhone Duo and 18 Pro, with the Duo set to launch in China next week featuring the revamped Siri.
Submarine cables linking Taiwan's Matsu Islands to the main island were severed 27 times between 2018 and 2022, with four more major outages from 2023 to 2025. A separate report notes 11 disruptions since 2023 to the dozen or so cables and pipelines crossing the shallow Baltic Sea. Globally, some 607 submarine cable systems span about 1.5 million kilometres and carry the bulk of international telecommunications traffic.
A new Priceline report finds that Americans taking GLP-1 medications like Ozempic are driving new expectations for hotels, including in-room refrigerators to store medication and menus with higher protein content. The report frames this as part of a broader shift in travel preferences tied to the growing use of weight-loss and diabetes drugs.
Apple opened pre-orders for its new HomeView smart display, and Amazon is selling it from $289.99, below Apple's own price. Amazon has not yet discounted all colors, and the wall-mounted version remains at full price. Separately, Apple's new Siri Remote (4th generation) is available for $59 as a cheaper way to upgrade an existing Apple TV setup instead of buying the new $299 Apple TV 4K.
Apple's updated CarPlay Developer Guide reveals that third-party video apps like YouTube and Netflix can appear on HomeView, but only if developers add support for CarPlay's video app entitlement. HomeView lacks an App Store, so compatibility hinges on this existing CarPlay framework rather than separate HomeView-specific development.
Amazon is selling the Oura Ring Gen 3 Horizon in Gold for $269.99, marking an $80 reduction from its usual price. The smart ring tracks sleep and other health metrics.
Ukrainian drones struck three data centers operated by Russian tech giant Yandex over four days, knocking facilities offline and disrupting services relied on by banks, retailers and consumers. One targeted site, in Sasovo, held tens of thousands of servers along with two supercomputers used to train Yandex's AI models.
Deezer announced a new feature that will let users hide AI-generated tracks, albums, and related artists from search results, with a rollout expected before year's end. CEO Alexis Lanternier cited user demand and a company survey showing roughly 45% of customers wanted a way to exclude AI music from their listening experience.
A widely shared post titled 'Passkeys are a trap' argued that passkey attestation could let websites eventually restrict logins to approved apps, operating systems and devices. A developer who built an open-source passkeys library has published a rebuttal, saying most consumer passkeys—synced ones stored in iCloud Keychain, Google Password Manager or apps like 1Password and Bitwarden—do not send attestation data at all, even when a site requests it.
TechCrunch is offering half-price tickets for the remaining two days of its Disrupt 2026 conference at San Francisco's Moscone West, running October 14-15. Discounted passes range from $175 for Expo+ to $600 for Investor access, covering speakers like Mark Wahlberg, Replit CEO Amjad Masad, and Amazon's Panos Panay, plus AI-focused programming from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Hugging Face.
A Wharton School survey of over 1,000 business leaders found no consensus on who should be blamed when AI systems make consequential mistakes. Roughly a quarter pointed to the employee operating the tool, another quarter to that employee's manager, and a similar share to the company's risk team, while about 10% blamed the AI vendor and 10% were unsure. The study also cited an incident where a faulty AI-driven email bot sent false refund and cancellation notices to more than 18,000 customers at a major U.S. retailer within six hours.