Democrats' midterm gains have made data-center backlash a political force, with candidates opposing rapid AI infrastructure winning seats in several states. Possible next steps include construction moratoriums and requiring operators to fund grid upgrades, though a nationwide freeze remains contested and would face veto risk.
A German Amazon reseller said 2K Games reportedly recalled the physical Switch version of Civilization 7, citing technical and security requirements, and offered the code-in-box edition. The cartridge is linked to CivSwitch, a homebrew exploit granting userland access on the Switch 2; Nintendo has not commented.
SoftBank signed a five-year deal with Sceye to operate HAPS aircraft for direct-to-device coverage across Japan, with mobile broadband and a stratospheric optical network subset. It follows a 30-day test from Roswell, New Mexico, to Japan and a week of services at about 12.4 miles.
Snap reported that over 30 million users now pay for one of its subscription plans, including Snapchat+ and the ad-free Platinum tier, disclosed alongside third-quarter earnings. Non-advertising revenue climbed 84% from a year earlier, and CEO Evan Spiegel said AI-powered creative features helped Lens+ beat expectations.
Meta Platforms acquired Conductor, the maker of an app that runs several AI coding agents at once; terms were not disclosed. Conductor halted new sign-ups and downloads, plans to shut its cloud service on Nov. 20 with refunds for active subscribers, and expects local Mac copies to keep working until early 2027.
Shares of Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta closed higher after Democrats won both chambers of Congress on a campaign emphasizing data center limits; voters approved 40 ballot measures aimed at curbing AI projects. Analysts cited investor expectations that tighter rules could aid the companies' finances.
France’s national blood service reported hackers took control of cold-storage systems at medical facilities, though it said blood products were saved. Similar attacks on connected fridges and freezers hit supermarkets across Europe, causing food losses, and experts have not identified the perpetrators.
Apple's iOS 27 adds Apple Intelligence-powered Extend, Reframe and an upgraded Clean Up tool to the Photos app, letting users fill in cropped areas, shift an image's perspective and remove distractions. The release also expands iCloud Shared Albums, introduces Captured by Me and Identity Documents collections, keyword tagging and customizable slideshows that can be saved as video.
Counterpoint Research reported that global smartphone chip shipments fell 21% year over year in Q3 2026, while Apple and Samsung were the only major chip vendors to gain share. The firm expects shipments to decline 20% in 2026 and another 3% to 4% in 2027.
Apple released Retention Messaging, which lets developers show personalized text, images or offers inside the subscription cancellation flow before a user finishes cancelling. Developers set eligibility and wait times in App Store Connect and can create up to 10 messages per app; API access is available by request.
A lawsuit accusing Los Gatos restaurant Coup de Thai of causing permanent chemical burns with its Dragon Balls appetizer has settled; terms remain confidential. Santa Clara County court has a December 17 hearing scheduled to review the case’s dismissal.
Walnut Creek voters appeared to approve Measure U, which would rezone a 2.4-acre site near the Walnut Creek BART station for mixed-use senior housing, with 71% support in unofficial early results. Measure T, making the city treasurer an appointed post, drew about 60%, while two council candidates won unopposed.
Apple reported fourth-quarter sales of $114.5 billion, lifting its annual total to $478.8 billion, up 15% year over year. Annual profit reached $132 billion as margins improved to 48.8%, while iPhone sales grew 21% and accounted for more than half of revenue; services rose 13% to $123 billion.
Elon Musk's midterm spending failed to secure Republican wins, and Democratic gains prompted questions about whether tech companies might face tougher regulation, AJ Bell's James Flintoft said. Senator Ed Markey suggested tech executives could face many subpoenas, though any legislation would still need Trump's approval.
In an interview, Voto Latino CEO María Teresa Kumar attributed Democrats' midterm gains among Latino voters to backlash over ICE raids and economic strain, saying young Latinos were pivotal in Texas. She noted Texas elected Gina Hinojosa as its first Latino governor and James Talarico to the Senate.
The European Commission launched the European Chip Design Platform, a €525 million initiative to help start-ups and small firms design chips. It combines €285 million from the EU budget with €240 million from participating countries, offering grants and access to design software and manufacturing.
Microsoft declined an option that would have more than doubled the Nscale computing capacity it rents at a Barstow, Texas data centre, the Financial Times reported. The existing Texas contract, covering roughly 104,000 Nvidia GB300 chips due from the third quarter of 2026, remains in place.
OpenSSH 10.6p2 adds a workaround for a critical vulnerability affecting Linux systems using musl libc with PAM disabled, such as Alpine Linux. The flaw is absent on non-Linux, glibc, and PAM-enabled Linux systems, and Alpine plans to backport the fix to version 3.16.
Mindmax, a London start-up founded by the Memrise team, has raised $3.3m in pre-seed funding led by Concept Ventures to build an AI tutor for professional exams and work skills. Its lessons use real-time conversation and adapt to what each learner already knows and wants to achieve.
A CPython discussion proposes having print() combine its arguments into one sys.stdout.write() call, which would reduce interleaving between concurrent threads but add memory and copying overhead for large output. A reply suggests writing in adaptive chunks and an optional atomic parameter.
A Postman desktop app update, version 12.33.4, installed plugins into Claude Code and OpenAI Codex without asking users, according to a detailed GitHub report; other users also reported entries in Cursor and the GitHub Copilot CLI. Postman says it is reverting the change, but reverting does not remove what is already installed.
A leaker claims Intel's Nova Lake-S desktop CPUs will cap maximum core frequency at 5.1 GHz once temperatures exceed 90 C, a limit that reportedly cannot be raised manually. The chips, expected at CES 2027 with up to 52 cores, may see limited performance loss because of IPC gains and large-cache variants.
The European Commission granted conditional approval for JD.com’s planned takeover of Ceconomy, MediaMarkt’s parent, after antitrust and foreign-subsidy scrutiny. The binding ten-year remedies address intra-group dealings and third-party access to European logistics infrastructure, while JD.com guaranteed protections for store locations, brands, management and roughly 50,000 employees.
Lenovo’s Yoga Tab Plus Gen 2 is a flagship tablet with 256 GB of internal storage and a microSD slot that can add up to 2 TB. In testing, its card reader reached about 90 MB/s, while internal storage was nearly 40 times faster for sequential reads and writes.
Princeton Digital Group secured about $1.3 billion in green financing for its JH1 data center campus in Johor, Malaysia, to fund continued development and expansion. The 200MW campus in Sedenak Tech Park targets high-density AI and cloud workloads; its first 52MW phase was completed in July 2025.
