A Chinese Zhuque-2E rocket launched in September from the Gobi Desert region, released 10 satellites, then reignited its engine and came down over the American Midwest without completing an orbit. Debris was seen falling over Kansas toward Minnesota, and a farmer later found an 11-foot metal object in a cornfield in Scott Township. Authorities said the debris posed no danger to the public and are working with state and federal agencies to identify its owner and plan its removal.
A Munich Regional Court ruled that SAP infringed a Celonis patent and issued an injunction against a specific function of its Signavio Process Intelligence product, which applies only to implementations in Germany. SAP says the ruling affects one function rather than the whole product, that the product and S/4HANA Cloud migrations are unaffected, and that it has appealed. The ruling is one of several ongoing disputes between SAP and Celonis.
A London High Court judge dismissed two claims against Uber brought by around 13,000 black cab drivers and the former private hire firms Kabbee and Iride, ruling they were filed too late under the six-year time limit. The claims alleged Uber misled Transport for London to secure its operating licence, but the court did not decide whether Uber had done anything wrong. Uber denies the allegations, and the ruling does not clear it of them.
Japanese developer Alliance Arts has canceled the public free demo of its upcoming game 'Drunken Goddess Reflux,' which was set for October 19 during Steam Next Fest, and switched to a limited private session. The company feared that copycat games imitating the game's presentation and gameplay could be quickly produced with AI, and judged that restricting streams and video sharing would be hard for its small team to manage. The full game is scheduled for release on Steam on December 8.
Apple has updated its App Store guidelines to ban apps that use AI to create offensive content, and apps that disguise themselves as regular apps to pass review before turning into nudify apps, a tactic known as bait-and-switch. The guidelines also require apps hosting user-generated content to filter objectionable material, offer a way to report offensive content, and let users block abusive accounts, and Apple says it will remove apps that add features not in the reviewed version. The changes follow a July San Francisco order for Apple and Google to remove nudification apps and an April Tech Transparency Project report that found such apps in both stores.
Square Enix announced on October 19 that it had confirmed unauthorized logins to Square Enix accounts, likely caused by password-list attacks using IDs and passwords reportedly leaked from other companies. The company urged users, especially those reusing passwords, to change them immediately, and locked suspicious accounts while sending unlock instructions to registered email addresses. It said it may reset passwords for all accounts if unauthorized access continues to increase, and recommends using one-time passwords as an added layer of security.
Samsung has tentatively set its next-year shipment target for mid-range Galaxy A series phones with OLED panels at 100 million units, down from the 120 million it shared with suppliers in late September. The reductions reflect a surge in memory chip prices, which pushed Galaxy A prices up by more than 100,000 won this year, along with a weaker global mid-range market. Samsung is reportedly revising its overall next-year smartphone shipment target, originally above 250 million units.
Polls suggest Democrats could win at least one chamber of Congress in the November midterms, which would let them set committee agendas, call AI CEOs to testify, and demand documents on companies' inner workings. Top Democrats have already signaled they will press the industry on data center tax credits and recent hacking incidents. AI is emerging as a campaign issue, with local data center opposition and public concern about jobs, even as President Trump has opposed most AI regulation.
Global commerce company Boosters said its skincare brand Equalberry has entered Ulta Beauty's U.S. online and offline channels, starting online sales on the 18th and launching in Ulta's K-Beauty Bar from next month. The brand offers three lines, Vitamin Illuminating, NAD+ Peptide Boosting, and Bakuchiol Plumping, and this is its fourth major overseas retail channel this year. Its average monthly offline sales in the U.S. from May to September were about 10 times those of January to April.
Jeong-dong Yahaeng, a nighttime cultural festival in the historic Jeong-dong area of Jung-gu, Seoul, opens on the 30th and runs for two days at Deoksugung and surrounding areas. Under the theme of light, 34 historical and cultural institutions and buildings will be illuminated, and the festival has moved from spring to autumn this year. The opening ceremony at Junghwajeon will feature performers including pop-opera group Poet and singer Im Hyung-joo.
A Sceye airship completed a round-trip flight from New Mexico to Japan and back, with the trans-Pacific leg taking place over a month in August and September 2026. The uncrewed, helium-filled platform uses an electric propeller, solar panels, and batteries to hover around 60,000 feet in the stratosphere, demonstrating how it could act as a cell phone tower in the sky.
Onepredict said on the 19th that it will showcase manufacturing AI technology that recreates real factory environments at FIX 2026, a future industry expo hosted by Daegu Metropolitan City, running from the 21st to the 24th at EXCO Daegu with 510 companies. Its exhibit, "AI-Native Factory," demonstrates AI collecting and analyzing equipment and process data to take part in facility management and operational decisions, using its Cyclone and pdx platforms. The company also plans to expand ties with manufacturers in the Yeongnam region and pursue follow-up technical verification and solution adoption talks.
The Russian satellite Kosmos 2612 reportedly came within a few hundred meters, or possibly closer, of the Finnish-built radar satellite Iceye-X36, which is registered in the US and used by Ukraine for military purposes. Kosmos 2612 was one of four Russian satellites launched in April to follow Iceye-X36, and since late September it has maneuvered to nearly the same altitude and orbital plane. Analysts say Russia's intentions are unclear, with possibilities ranging from coincidence to jamming or an attack.
Japanese internet provider Nifty announced that unauthorized access to its line application and reception management systems may have leaked up to 542,513 records. The possibly affected data includes member IDs, names, gender, birth dates, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of customers who signed up for optical line services from outside Nifty's website since 2019; bank account and credit card information are not included. The company has blocked the access source, the attack targeted an internal system rather than the customer-facing web form, and it is investigating and reporting to the Personal Information Protection Commission.
The Maeving RM2 is a retrofuturistic electric motorcycle that the reviewer found one of the quietest and smoothest they have ridden, since its rear hub motor produces no drivetrain noise. Its 15-horsepower motor struggled to reach the officially rated 70mph top speed, and the reviewer also noted rough suspension and a loose mirror. At $10,995, the reviewer felt the asking price was a bit extravagant given these rough edges.
Microsoft has reportedly terminated its agreement with UK AI infrastructure startup Nscale for a planned datacenter in Loughton, Essex, after reports that the site may not receive grid electricity until the early to mid-2030s. The facility was planned to hold 23,040 Nvidia GB300 GPUs for Microsoft's Azure cloud services, with first chips expected in early 2027. Nscale says the project is still going ahead and that it is exploring alternative power sources.
A 16-year-old flaw in Broadcom's Wi-Fi software could let attackers take over routers without knowing the Wi-Fi password, according to security researcher Quentin Kaiser, who disclosed it as 'WPSplinter'. He claims Broadcom knew about the problem as early as 2018 and that a partial fix did not fully resolve it. Kaiser estimates that about 1.56 million routers in Belgium could be affected, though he describes these figures as rough estimates.
Hobbyist developers are using AI-assisted 'vibe coding' tools to write custom firmware for hardware synths, samplers, and grooveboxes, adding features in days that once took weeks or months. Popular projects include firmware for the $70 M-Vave FM-1, a Yamaha DX-7 clone, and new firmware for Elektron, Roland, Akai, Novation, Arturia, and Zoom gear. Many developers say they want to revive older or affordable hardware, and some FM-1 firmware projects list Claude as a contributor.
Dr Garry Hunt, the UK's sole representative on the eight-member Voyager imaging team, joins The Register's Kettle podcast to discuss his role in the mission. The episode covers the future of the Voyager probes, which launched nearly half a century ago and are still running as they approach a light-day's distance from Earth. Hunt also discusses the state of science in the UK, US, and beyond.
Elon Musk says he will give one SpaceX share to “every kid in America” in 2027, a gift worth more than $10 billion at the current $146 share price, or roughly 1% of his $1 trillion net worth. It is unclear how he will do this, though he said it will be the “first of many” share donations and that he wants to give the shares “directly to the public.” The announcement came hours after Anthropic pledged to put 5% of its shares into a public benefit fund.
Seoul's Eunpyeong-gu will pilot 'Gajyeoga,' an AI-based app that automatically identifies bulky waste items and supports disposal applications through December, which the district says is the first such service in the country. Users photograph an item with a smartphone, and the app provides fee information, payment, and disposal requests, with simple authentication and no separate membership sign-up. The district introduced the service to reduce collection delays caused by incorrect reports, and it expects the reporting process to shorten from up to 20 minutes to about one minute.
Women in their 40s and 50s consider fabric, comfort, and ease of laundering as well as design when buying clothes. In a survey of 447 women aged 45 to 59 by the research group YELO, under the platform Queenit's operator Lapo Labs, 99.3% said they checked the material, and the material name and blend ratio was the most helpful online information at 32.4%. When repurchasing, 39.4% considered similar texture or thickness based on past experience.
Linux kernel 7.3 was released on schedule on Sunday, with no extra round after rc7. Linus Torvalds said no changes particularly stand out and the fixes are spread evenly across all areas, while about a third of the rc1 patch consists of AMD DCN6 register header dumps. The merge window for kernel 7.4 opens on Monday, and Torvalds may extend it by an extra week because he is taking his annual vacation.
YouTuber Marina trained her own language model, "PocketGPT", from scratch with about 30 million parameters. It runs on an ESP32-S3 microcontroller and can hold short conversations, though its memory covers only 64 tokens and the project description warns that answers may be wrong or repetitive. Code, training scripts, and the finished model are freely available on GitHub.