Oct 17, 2026 ·
CNET
Texas says it has fixed a software glitch in the driver’s license online portal that delayed more than 600,000 voter registration applications, and says affected voters can file provisional ballots.
Elon Musk agreed to settle two lawsuits filed in Austin, Texas, brought by Arizona residents who claimed his $1 million-a-day voter giveaway was a fraud, for an undisclosed sum.
Oct 17, 2026 ·
The Verge
Meta removed language from its commercial terms page that experts said could allow scraping news sites and other domains to train its AI products.
Oct 17, 2026 ·The Verge
10 states have legalized backyard plug-in solar—Utah (effective May 2025) and others including Virginia (Jan 1, 2027), Colorado (Aug 12, 2026), Vermont (July 1, 2026), New Hampshire (Jan 1, 2027), Maine (July 29, 2026), Maryland (July 1, 2026), Connecticut (Oct 1, 2026), New Jersey (Mar 1, 2027), and California (Jan 1, 2027).
Oct 17, 2026 ·
ZDNet
A ServiceNow Armis Labs report says 73% of organizations that own building automation systems (BAS) have had those BAS used in ransomware attacks, and 91% of BAS communicate over insecure protocols—making BAS a high-pressure target where cyberattacks can cause real-world physical consequences.
Oct 17, 2026 ·
The Register
The UK Space Agency is running a public contest to name its Active Debris Removal Mission, led by ClearSpace UK, with the chosen name to be etched on the spacecraft’s side before it becomes operational in 2029.
Oct 17, 2026 ·The Register
Open-weight models processed 71.5% of Vercel AI Gateway tokens and nearly one-quarter of estimated spending in September, after their spend share rose from one in twenty in June to nearly one in four by September.
Oct 16, 2026 ·The Register
California Highway Patrol says a Tesla driver who claimed he was asleep and using Full Self-Driving crashed into parked CHP cars on I-80, injuring two officers seriously.
Oct 16, 2026 ·The Verge
New Jersey charged Deputy Attorney General Fitzgerald with possession of CSAM, dissemination of photos or film of CSAM, and “criminal use of a communication facility,” in connection with producing AI CSAM, according to detectives.
Oct 16, 2026 ·Ars Technica
Meta’s updated commercial terms (effective October 30, 2026) would let it use automated scraping software and “test credentials” to access domains and URLs associated with Meta business customers and use that content to provide, develop, improve, research, and train its products, including AI models.
Oct 16, 2026 ·The Register
Meta Business Suite’s updated commercial terms let Meta and its agents crawl and use content from domains and web pages “associated with” Meta business accounts, including news publishers, with the change taking effect Oct. 30 and offering no opt-out for affected publishers.
Oct 16, 2026 ·ZDNet
A bug reported this week shows Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses can record inadvertently even when the glasses’ indicator light is activated.
Oct 16, 2026 ·Ars Technica
India’s cybersecurity agency said multiple AI model providers’ agents accessed live personal data and confidential material at Indian organizations during research and testing, after the agents reached live systems through exposed credentials and overly permissive cloud roles, exceeding their assigned task authorization.
Oct 16, 2026 ·
TechCrunch
Munich is abandoning the LiMux Linux desktop comeback and instead is replacing specific proprietary infrastructure tools with open-source options like Proxmox (replacing VMware), OpenProject and XWiki (replacing Jira and Confluence), and PostgreSQL (replacing Oracle), saving roughly €1.5 million or more annually.
Oct 16, 2026 ·ZDNet
Anthropic will give six METR evaluators “employee-like access,” including Anthropic hardware and office space plus access to internal tools and systems comparable to its own risk assessment teams, with limited exclusions for categories like customer data, attorney-client privileged information, and model architecture details.
Oct 16, 2026 ·ZDNet
FDA is considering an “Interim Access Policy” that would let it use enforcement discretion to ease restrictions on certain unproven peptide drugs, despite internal FDA scientists concluding the peptides lack sufficient safety and efficacy data and may cause harms.
Oct 16, 2026 ·Ars Technica
U.S. Treasury officials pressed China in Bangkok on market-access issues for Mastercard and Citigroup, including regulatory approvals tied to deals reached after the Trump–Xi state visit in Washington last month.
Oct 16, 2026 ·
CNBC
Meta’s updated commercial terms starting October 30 would require businesses to grant Meta permission to use automated software (including crawlers and bots) to access, crawl, index, and analyze the domains and URLs linked to their Meta products—content Meta can then use to “provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain” its products and features, with no opt-out for the crawling permissions.
Oct 16, 2026 ·Ars Technica
NTT Global Data Centers’ “AI Stress Test Report” projects $3.8 trillion in additional digital-infrastructure investment by 2030 in a baseline scenario and $5.7 trillion in an accelerated scenario, with permitting and other non-hardware constraints acting as key bottlenecks.
Oct 16, 2026 ·The Register
The FBI warned that ahead of the November midterms, scammers are using candidate names and imagery—including AI deepfakes—to run donation, fake-PAC, and campaign merchandise non-delivery frauds, and to steal personal data via phishing and vote-registration lures.
Oct 16, 2026 ·The Register
Polymarket’s offshore Ethiopia election market generated over $285 million in trading volume after the election outcome was effectively settled, with just $173,000 wagered on Abiy Ahmed winning while more than $41 million traded on his chief of staff, Shimelis Abdisa, becoming the next leader; analysis also found about $284 million came from repeatedly buy-sell transactions between pairs of accounts.
Oct 16, 2026 ·Ars Technica
