Technology News of the last 24 hours

The tech industry spent big on the midterms, but it turned out to be a poor investment. Elon Musk poured a staggering $446m dollars into Republican-aligned political action committees (Pacs) and groups since last year, but his efforts didn’t pay off. Democrats won every one of the five Senate races where Musk’s America Pac spent the most money backing Republican candidates. Carter Sherman and Kai Wright are joined by the Guardian’s US tech editor, Blake Montgomery, to ask what the ‘blue tsunami’ will mean for Musk and the wider tech industry. Will this spell the end of AI datacenters? And if so, what could this mean for the US economy? Continue reading...

Philippe Jaenada told French radio that he used ChatGPT to ‘play with the reader’, after the prize removed a different book from its longlist over allegations of AI use The winner of France’s most prestigious literary prize has admitted using artificial intelligence while writing his novel, barely a day after collecting an award whose jury had thrown out another book over suspected AI use. Philippe Jaenada, who won the Prix Goncourt on Tuesday for L’Inconnue du quai de Javel (The Unknown Woman of the Quai de Javel), told France Inter radio on Wednesday that he had turned to AI “three times” while writing it. Continue reading...

The tech billionaire set spending record as he poured $446m into campaigns for failed Republican candidates Elon Musk set a record for election spending this year after pouring nearly half a billion dollars into backing Republicans in the US midterm elections. It turned out to be a poor investment. The SpaceX and Tesla CEO contributed at least $446m to Republican-aligned Super Pacs and groups over the course of the elections, specifically targeting several key Senate races in an effort to help the Trump administration retain Republican control of Congress. He outdid his own 2024 spending of nearly $290m. Yet as Democrats swept to power across the country on Tuesday night, it became clear that Musk would get nearly nothing in return for his hundreds of millions in spending. Continue reading...

Ted Cruz is pushing to confirm another Republican commissioner, potentially clearing the way for an all-Republican FCC that critics say would violate federal law.

The head of T-Mobile's parent company is casting doubt on SpaceX's plans to make Starlink Mobile a "major" carrier in the US. During an earnings call on Thursday, Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Höttges says he takes the Elon Musk-owned company "super serious," but that it will cost at least $200 billion to pull off: He […]

Voters approved nearly every datacenter moratorium that was on the ballot, dozens in total in Tuesday’s elections Track live results from all 50 states Send us your questions about the US midterms results and Democrats’ ‘blue wave’ There were three big losers in Tuesday’s midterm elections in the US: Donald Trump, Elon Musk and datacenters. Datacenters, the facilities full of semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence and a host of other online products, were on the ballot in elections in at least 40 jurisdictions across 10 states. Voters responded with a strong rebuke of the giant buildings, which have has become a symbol of the tech industry and AI. Continue reading...

The tech industry spent big on the midterms, but it turned out to be a poor investment. Elon Musk poured a staggering $446m dollars into Republican-aligned political action committees (Pacs) and groups since last year, but his efforts didn’t pay off. Democrats won every one of the five Senate races where Musk’s America Pac spent the most money backing Republican candidates. Carter Sherman and Kai Wright are joined by the Guardian’s US tech editor, Blake Montgomery, to ask what the ‘blue tsunami’ will mean for Musk and the wider tech industry. Will this spell the end of AI datacenters? And if so, what could this mean for the US economy? Continue reading...

All-round upgrades fit a bigger OLED screen in a smaller and lighter body with water resistance for first time The new iPad mini takes Apple’s fan-favourite tiny tablet and upgrades just about everything about it, including giving it a new OLED screen, serious performance, speakers embedded into the display and even water resistance, all with a big new price tag. The eighth-generation iPad mini costs from £699 (€749/$699/A$1,099), which is £200 or equivalent more than the original price of its predecessor as RAMageddon continues to bite. That makes it uncomfortably expensive, costing £270 more than the base model iPad (A16) and only £50 cheaper than the bigger 11in iPad Air M4. Continue reading...

Microsoft is finally doing something about Windows 11's abysmal performance on lower-end systems, and third-party software developers are following suit. Discord's CTO has recently confirmed that the popular messaging platform is soon getting a brand-new desktop client. Unlike past web-based versions, it should deliver much better performance thanks to the... Read Entire Article

Anthropic today added Personal Finance to Claude, allowing users to connect their bank and card accounts for analysis. Claude has read-only access to accounts, and there is no option for it to move, manage, or invest money. Anthropic says Claude gives answers in everyday language and can explain unfamiliar financial terms. The feature can track spending across categories, upcoming bills, and out-of-the-ordinary purchases. It can look for unexpected fees, increasing bills, and subscriptions, plus it can create charts, calendars, and dashboards. Financial accounts are connected to Claude through the Plaid service, so Claude does not see bank passwords. Claude has access to the bank name, account name and type, balances and credit limits, and up to two years of transactions for bank accounts. Personal Finance chats are not used for model training and are not added to Claude's shared memory. OpenAI added a similar finance feature to ChatGPT back in May. Personal Finance is rolling out in beta on the Pro, Max, and Ultra plans in the United States. Tag: Anthropic This article, "Claude Gets Personal Finance Feature With Bank Account Linking" first appeared on MacRumors.com Discuss this article in our forums

Meta has brought its free Instagram Edits video editor to desktop, starting with macOS. The app features multi-track editing, color grading, customizable keyboard shortcuts, and AI-assisted workflows. Users can export videos in up to 4K without watermarks. Read Entire Article

Anthropic launched Personal Finance, a beta that lets US Claude subscribers on Pro, Max and Ultra link bank and card accounts through Plaid and ask about their spending. Claude can read balances and transactions but cannot move money, and the feature has no ads. Anthropic is letting some Claude subscribers in the US connect their […] This story continues at The Next Web

Blue Origin plans to do its next New Glenn rocket launch in January 2027, according to CNBC and the Financial Times, which cite a memo from CEO Dave Limp sent to staff. The new timeline follows a May launchpad explosion that damaged Blue Origin's New Glenn launchpad ahead of a flight that would have brought […]

Instagram announced on Thursday that it is bringing Edits, its short-form video editing app, to desktop on Mac.The app is free to download, but it works only on Macs with Apple Silicon chips, from the M1 onwards, and users need an Instagram account to sign in. Instagram first launched Edits on phones in April 2025 […] This story continues at The Next Web

Sony is enjoying a sharp profit spike in its latest quarterly financials, largely driven by its PlayStation business and the blockbuster success of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. According to the company's September earnings, Sony's net profits climbed to 449.60 billion yen (about $2.84 billion) for the three months ended September - a 44 percent increase […]

Exposure to toxic metals like cadmium has been associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes such as miscarriage, preterm birth and low birth weight. Because these effects are difficult and ethically challenging to study directly in pregnant women, how such exposures affect pregnancy has remained poorly understood.

More than 100 campaign groups will join together in 15 countries this week to call for a halt to major AI projects Protesters across Europe are planning two days of action against datacentres this week with demonstrations taking place in 15 countries. More than 100 groups are joining together for the “Stop Dirty Data Centres” events on Friday and Saturday. They are calling for a moratorium on large projects, citing environmental and social costs that “we can no longer afford”. Continue reading...

Discord is finally giving up on Electron, the cross-platform framework that lets developers build desktop apps using web technologies. Electron web apps are notoriously heavy on system resources, and Discord is now moving its desktop app fully to Rust - a modern programming language designed for speed and memory safety. "We've been early adopters of […]

Perplexity is taking on OpenAI and Anthropic with its own work-focused AI agents. The startup's new always-on "Teammates" can take on multiple roles within a workspace, while pulling existing projects, skills, and memory from the Perplexity tools you already use. Teammates integrate with Perplexity Computer, an AI system that can deploy agents on your device […]

Around 450 million metric tons of plastics are produced worldwide each year. The major share of this sheer volume is used only once and then winds up in an incinerator or in landfills. This also applies to so-called polyolefins, which include polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP). As packaging materials and films, they account for approximately half of our plastic consumption.

Alcon Entertainment had accused the studio of helping Elon Musk create unlicensed promotional material using an artificial intelligence image generator. It continues to pursue claims against him and Tesla.

Albanese should tread carefully as he struggles to make case for how the new technology will benefit ordinary voters Get our daily political email, free app or daily news podcast When will Australia see the benefits of the AI and datacentre boom? So far, all we’ve seen is the possibility of changes to copyright which would hurt Australian creatives, special rules about power and water use, and the threat of mass displacement or replacement of workers, with the trade-off being a mere 10% chance of human extinction. Now add the Reserve Bank’s assessment this week that datacentres were part of growing “inflationary pressures” when lifting interest rates to an 18-year high. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s Politics, really newsletter here Continue reading...

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On November 6th, Apple will release an all-new MacBook Pro. It's thinner and lighter and has a beautiful OLED touchscreen. It is very likely what every new MacBook Pro will look like in a couple of years. The M6 MacBook Pro, which is also out on the 6th, is not that laptop. Instead, it's a […]