October 24, 2026
Boletín 19–24 oct 2026 · Tech
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This week's stories
iPhone Duo: Apple's foldable hits stores
Apple's foldable iPhone Duo arrived in stores on Friday, with lines back at Apple Stores and limited walk-in availability. Apple reportedly boosted orders by more than 40% on strong demand, and on launch day it overtook Nvidia as the world's most valuable company. Reviews called it the best foldable yet, though not without compromise, and the first owners are already reporting screens breaking along the hinge.
An AI-found PHP flaw knocks websites offline
An AI system discovered a critical vulnerability in PHP, the language behind many websites. The finding set off a global rush to patch that left government and business websites offline while administrators scrambled.
OpenAI: a $1.25T valuation and training off the live internet
OpenAI is working on a new $30 billion raise at a $1.25 trillion valuation ahead of an IPO. It also said it will no longer train its models on the live internet, citing “significant risks”, and now trains frontier models with no internet access. Separately, prosecutors say Saudis aided the family of an engineer accused of bugging OpenAI.
Meta: a $25B privacy bill, rising AI spend and a wealth-tax plan
Meta was ordered to pay $25 billion over the Cambridge Analytica privacy violations. Its earnings showed increased AI spending even as cash pressures grow, and reporting detailed how Mark Zuckerberg pushed to shield himself from California's proposed billionaire tax without losing control of the company. Global policy chief Joel Kaplan is leaving after 15 years.
The agent race: Claude Duet and the infrastructure around it
Anthropic joined the AI agent race with Claude Duet, taking on ChatGPT Dots and Meta Muse, while reporting looked at what some of its backers are worth before an IPO. Agent cloud startup Daytona hit a $1 billion valuation, 1Password launched a way to use logins safely with AI agents and NVIDIA released OpenShell, a private runtime for fleets of autonomous agents. Anthropic research also argues LLMs are making formal software verification feasible at much larger scale.
Certificates and breaches
A CVE disclosed a compromised intermediate certificate authority, eMudhra said it will exit the global SSL/TLS certificate business and Indian government sites were found still serving revoked eMudhra certificates. Apple blocked web certificates that could be used by scammers, though a Mac vulnerability remains. Quest Diagnostics confirmed patients' personal and health data was compromised, and Railway published a preliminary report on its October 21 security incident.
Jared Kushner's hacked phone
Vanity Fair reported that a hack of Jared Kushner's phone revealed secret negotiations and millions in transactions. Kushner himself wrote that the Dutch government had hacked into his phone.
Musk, SpaceX and Starlink in Ukraine
SpaceX swung to a profit as its AI business grows, and Elon Musk said he will give a SpaceX share to “every kid in America”. Ukraine is learning to fight without Starlink as Musk plays politics with satellites, and US lawmakers plan to block Trump nominees over the restrictions on Ukraine's satellite network.
Google: Gmail data for ads and a cloud outage
Google updated its privacy policy to say Gmail and Google Photos data might be used to target ads. The company also reported cloud disruptions in Europe.
Governments restrict AI tools
Swedish government offices will ban ChatGPT and Claude. China criticized the US ban on DeepSeek AI in government systems.
PCs slump on RAM prices
PC shipments dropped over 20% in the third quarter because of RAM price hikes, with the MacBook Neo helping Apple soften the blow. Smartphone shipments in China hit a 14-year low in Q3, while Apple gained ground there.
Paying more to stream
Xbox wants players to pay 24 to 40 cents per hour to stream games they already bought, and its first chief operating officer is out after a few months. Disney is raising prices days after confirming ads on every tier, Spotify is ramping up enforcement on family plans and JustWatch launched its own streaming service.
Also this week
The Browser Company set a December 22 sunset for Arc as it doubles down on Dia. a16z Crypto rebranded as a16z Frontier as blockchain investing falls out of vogue, and OpenSSL 4.1.0 was released.
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