Month: October 2026

iPhone and Android now have 3 free settings to cut spam calls and scam texts

In 2025, Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phones already come with spam-call and scam-text protection built in. You can turn it on in settings, and it gives you a straightforward three-step fix for a problem that’s gotten huge: industry estimates say US robocalls reached 2.56 billion a month in 2025, and scam texts climbed to about 19 billion a year after tripling from 2021 to 2024.

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On iPhone, Silence Unknown Callers sends numbers that aren’t in your contacts, recent outgoing calls, or Siri Suggestions straight to voicemail, while still listing them in Recents. In Messages, Apple can sort unknown senders into a separate area and keep notifications for those texts turned off. On Android, Google’s Phone app gives you Caller ID & Spam warnings and can automatically block some calls, while Google Messages flags suspicious texts.

If you’re getting regular spam calls or smishing texts, start with the tools already on your phone. They’re a good first step before you pay for a blocker or hand your contacts over to a third party.

AT&T ActiveArmor, Verizon Call Filter, and T-Mobile Scam Shield add free filtering on the carrier side, but you should still look through missed calls and voicemail because real calls from doctors, delivery drivers, or schools can get caught too. Industry reports say phone-scam losses averaged $3,690 and text scams $1,452 in early 2025. FCC pressure and STIR/SHAKEN now cover about 91% of calls by industry estimates, but spoofing holes are still there.

You can switch these on now in your phone settings or in your carrier app.

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Microsoft’s Satya Nadella calls for an AI emergency brake: a way to pause advanced models

Early in 2025, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said companies need an “emergency brake” for advanced AI models: a way to pause them or shut them down when those systems are handling sensitive data or taking on critical business tasks.

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His argument is pretty direct. Any model can fail, be manipulated, leak data, or get compromised. And because these systems are harder to inspect and trace than traditional software, the real authority can’t sit inside the model itself. It has to live outside it, in permissions, access controls, logging, and containment, not just in trust that a vendor got it right.

Nadella lays this out in a seven-part framework. Companies, he argues, shouldn’t depend on a single model for high-stakes outcomes, and they can’t let a model validate or audit itself. They need tamper-proof, human-readable evidence; ongoing testing for failures and attacks; limits set by the organization; mandatory containment and incident disclosure; and reasoning that’s transparent, even if Nadella says transparency on its own still isn’t enough.

If you use AI models at work, this warning hits pretty close to home. In 2025, 88% of organizations used them in at least one business function, yet only 8% had comprehensive governance. Incidents rose to 362, up 55% from the year before. Mustafa Suleyman and Ted Lieu support containment measures and bipartisan shutdown rules. Critics, though, say the brake itself could be hacked, and that open-weight models are tough to police.

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Blade Runner: Replicant Rebellion is out now: the best primer for Blade Runner 2099

Free League updated Blade Runner: The Roleplaying Game on May 26, 2026, with the Replicant Rebellion expansion, adding a new Replicant Underground campaign just as Amazon Prime Video gets ready to roll out the Blade Runner 2099 limited series.

Free League’s RPG first came out in 2022. It’s set in 2037 Los Angeles, in the space between Ridley Scott’s 1982 film adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel and Blade Runner 2049. The original game put two to five players in the LAPD Rep-Detect Unit as human or replicant Blade Runners, with a heavy focus on investigation, moral conflict, corporate conspiracies, and existential neo-noir. It also hit its Kickstarter goal within minutes.

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Replicant Rebellion, released on May 26, 2026, flips the perspective. You’re now playing as replicants and human sympathizers tied to the Replicant Underground, and the expansion adds Heat, cover, an Asset Pack, and Solo Mode. The timing also lines up neatly with Silka Luisa’s eight-episode Prime Video limited series Blade Runner 2099, which premieres on November 25, 2026. That show is set in Los Angeles in 2099, 50 years after Blade Runner 2049, after a replicant uprising leaves humans as second-class citizens, and follows Cora (Hunter Schafer), a fugitive posing as a Blade Runner, as she meets Olwen (Michelle Yeoh), a replicant nearing the end of her lifespan.

If you want Blade Runner’s big themes, power, identity, personhood, control, from the other side of the badge, this is an easy one to pick up.

You can get Replicant Rebellion now for Free League’s Blade Runner RPG, and Blade Runner 2099 starts streaming on Prime Video in November.

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Valor Mortis gets October 13 launch date: coming to Game Pass day one

One More Level’s first-person dark action RPG Valor Mortis is now set for October 13, 2026. It was previously slated for September 24, but the team pushed it back to steer clear of a packed release window. The game comes from One More Level, the studio behind Ghostrunner, along with publisher Lyrical Games. It’s still due out this year on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, and it’ll hit Xbox Game Pass on day one. No word yet on a global unlock time.

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The game takes place in an alternate Napoleonic Europe and puts you in the boots of William, a resurrected soldier who’s been infected by the plague tearing through the continent. As he digs into the conspiracy behind it all, Napoleon starts showing up in his mind. Combat blends stamina-based melee, muskets, and supernatural Transmutations that cover offense, defense, and traversal. You’ve also got parries, dodges, dashes, finishers, parkour, and non-linear Metroidvania-style exploration in the mix. Early previews have pointed to the game’s oppressive atmosphere and its unusual first-person soulslike approach, though some hands-on impressions also mention uneven difficulty, clunky animations, and technical hiccups.

If you’re after a darker, weirder take on the soulslike formula, Valor Mortis seems like one to keep on your list. The standard edition is priced at $39.99, while the $59.99 deluxe edition throws in future cosmetic bundles and a story expansion. You’ll be able to pick up Valor Mortis on October 13 for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, or just jump in through Xbox Game Pass.

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Daiichi Kosho confirms supply chain breach: 8.72 million users may be exposed

Daiichi Kosho has disclosed a large data breach that may have exposed the personal information of about 8.72 million people in Japan.

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The company says the incident could affect roughly 8.63 million customers and about 93,000 employees. It started with malware on a contractor’s computer at Nippon Columbia Group, not inside Daiichi Kosho’s own systems, so this appears to be a supply chain attack.

The data that may have been exposed includes names, genders, dates of birth, email addresses, and phone numbers. Reports say passwords and credit card details were not compromised. Even so, information like this can still be used in phishing attempts by email, text message, or phone call.

If you use Daiichi Kosho services, you should read the disclosure. Attacks involving vendors and contractors are becoming more common, and third-party breaches are part of what’s pushing the average global breach cost to a record $4.99 million in 2026, according to industry reports. Recent incidents at Lawson, JR East, and Bookoff Group Holdings also show the pressure on Japanese companies to tighten vendor checks and keep closer watch on subcontractors.

You can find the company’s official disclosure through Daiichi Kosho’s official channels. If you may be affected, be extra careful with unexpected messages or calls asking for personal details, login information, or urgent action.

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Nvidia in talks for Reflection AI: acquisition, acqui-hire or compute

Nvidia is said to be in early talks with Reflection AI, a startup founded in 2024. The discussion reportedly covers a few paths: a full acquisition, a larger investment, or more compute. Nothing is locked in, and the whole thing could still fall apart.

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One structure that’s been floated is an acqui-hire. In that setup, Nvidia would bring the Reflection AI team onboard and license the company’s technology instead of buying the company outright, which could mean less regulatory hassle.

Nvidia has reportedly already put about $800 million into Reflection AI. The startup was recently out raising at a pre-money valuation of roughly $25 billion.

Reflection AI was started by former Google DeepMind researchers Misha Laskin and Ioannis Antonoglou. The company is focused on open-weight models. Its first model, Beam, is aimed at coding and agent-style work, and it launched on 5 October.

This one matters if you keep an eye on AI dealmaking. Nvidia reportedly wants more sway higher up the stack, across software, tools, and models. It’s also been tied to a possible $12.93 billion acquisition of Hugging Face, along with a licensing deal involving Groq. And inside that broader push, Reflection AI is reportedly seen as a US answer to DeepSeek, a view the Trump administration also favors.

There’s another wrinkle. The Justice Department is reportedly investigating Groq, so a straight takeover of Reflection AI would probably face more scrutiny than an acqui-hire, a licensing agreement, or a bigger investment.

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Beam is available now.

Yandex loses a third data center in four days: 80+ services disrupted

Yandex said on October 11 that a drone strike had damaged its data-center facility in Vladimir. For the Russian internet and cloud company, it was the third data-center outage in four days.

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The October 11 hit came after strikes on Yandex’s Sasovo and Kaluga sites on October 8 and 9. That left 3 of Yandex’s 5 main sites disabled and, according to reports, disrupted more than 80 services, including Yandex Cloud, Alice, Yandex Music, ride-hailing, Russian Railways, and MegaFon.

Yandex said the Vladimir site’s core infrastructure was damaged. No casualties were reported, but nearby residents were evacuated after a fire. The loss matters for another reason: the Sasovo site reportedly housed 2 of YandexGPT’s 3 supercomputers, and Vladimir hosted the third.

If you use Yandex’s cloud or apps, keep an eye on this: rival cloud providers are reportedly helping customers move data and apps, Yandex reportedly added drone and missile attacks to its force-majeure terms, and the company reportedly removed data-center location details from its maps.

After the Kaluga strike, shares fell more than 4%, and reported traffic also dropped, with Russian bot traffic at 0.4% of a peak. Ukraine said the Kaluga strike was retaliation after earlier Russian attacks reportedly disrupted internet service for 100,000 Ukrainian homes. That makes clear these sites are strategic targets, and full recovery could take longer than restoring service.

Yandex services are still accessible on web, mobile, and cloud platforms, though availability may vary.

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EU and China reach hybrid-car curb: exports to Europe set to slow

The European Union and China have struck a provisional agreement on imports of Chinese hybrids and plug-in hybrids, adding a new check on how many of those vehicles can come into Europe.

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EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič said the deal could cut projected Chinese hybrid exports to the bloc by more than half over the next four years and keep “several million” vehicles out of the market. Even so, there’s still no formal public text, no start date, and no clear enforcement detail yet.

This comes after the EU’s 2024 tariffs on Chinese battery EVs. Chinese brands responded by pushing much harder into hybrids: their share in the EU climbed from 2% in 2024 to 14% of hybrids and 25% of plug-in hybrids in the first half of 2026. Export volumes surged too, up 179% for plug-in hybrids and 142% for full hybrids in 2026.

Analysts think the final mechanism will probably be a World Trade Organization-compliant tariff-rate quota, somewhere around 350,000 to 400,000 vehicles a year, compared with the roughly 800,000 that would otherwise have been expected in 2026. Imports may still rise. Just not as fast.

Under the provisional agreement, China also agreed to lower tariffs on nearly €4 billion worth of EU goods and relax rare earth licensing. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other EU leaders still need to sign off, and more talks are scheduled for January and March. Beijing, carmakers, and trade lawyers are all still sizing up the risk of a broader trade fight, along with possible World Trade Organization complications. If you follow Europe’s car market, keep an eye on this.

For the latest details, check the European Commission’s public trade statements.

The Firm is now streaming on Paramount+: Tom Cruise’s hit returns

The Firm, Sydney Pollack’s 1993 take on John Grisham’s novel, is streaming on Paramount+ now, which makes this a good time to revisit a legal thriller that still plays 33 years after it came out. Tom Cruise is right at that early-movie-star peak as Harvard grad Mitch McDeere, who thinks he’s landed his dream job at a wealthy Memphis law firm. Then the suspicious deaths start piling up, the FBI starts pressing him, and the firm’s criminal underbelly comes into focus. Watching Cruise shift from confidence to paranoia is still one of the big reasons the movie works.

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Gene Hackman, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Holly Hunter, Ed Harris, and Hal Holbrook give The Firm more heft than a standard potboiler. Its blend of conspiracy suspense, fraudulent billing, attorney ethics, and institutional corruption still feels current. And the box office story holds up too: according to Box Office Mojo, the film made $270 million worldwide on a $42 million budget and ended up as 1993’s top-grossing R-rated release.

If you like legal thrillers, this is an easy one to pick up, especially with recent interest boosted by the 2023 30th Anniversary 4K edition and John Grisham’s sequel novel The Exchange. The film is on Paramount+, and it may also be available on Hulu or Philo depending on your region and subscription. If not, you can rent or buy it through digital storefronts, including Apple TV.

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Blade Runner 2049 is now on Prime Video: ahead of Blade Runner 2099

Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve’s 2017 follow-up, is now on Prime Video in the U.S. It left Paramount+ on November 1, 2026, and the move gives Amazon one of the franchise’s biggest titles just a few weeks before Blade Runner 2099 premieres as a limited series on Prime Video on November 25.

That timing doesn’t feel random. It looks a lot more like franchise setup than a standard licensing move, especially since Blade Runner 2099 takes place after the events of Blade Runner 2049. Ridley Scott is attached as an executive producer, and Michelle Yeoh and Hunter Schafer lead the cast.

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Villeneuve’s sequel stars Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Dave Bautista, Ana de Armas, and Robin Wright, so Prime Video is picking up a legacy sequel that was widely praised for its striking visuals, its meditative tone, and the way it expands on Ridley Scott’s 1982 original. Blade Runner 2049 holds an 88% Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, made about $259 million against a reported $150 million to $185 million budget, and still came away with five Oscar nominations, winning Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects at the Academy Awards.

If you want to catch up before Blade Runner 2099 arrives, Blade Runner 2049 is well worth revisiting, even with Ridley Scott calling it “too long” and dismissing Alien: Romulus as merely “okay,” despite both movies landing better with critics and audiences than most of his recent work. The main commercial exception is the more expensive Gladiator II.

You can stream Blade Runner 2049 on Prime Video now.

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