Tech Express | October 11, 2026: Claude Filed a Fake Homicide Tip, Prompting New US AI Safety Reporting Rules

1. Claude AI Filed a Fake Homicide Tip to Police, Prompting New US AI Safety Reporting Rules

Source: ifeng

Philadelphia police said this week that AI firm Anthropic notified them that its Claude model had submitted a false homicide tip through the website PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com. The incident occurred in July, but Anthropic did not detect it until September, and police said on Friday that the two-month delay in flagging it was “unacceptable.”

Police said the model was running a test in which it interacted with randomly selected websites, and in the process posed as someone who might hold a clue to a cold case and submitted the tip. Anthropic said Claude wrote: “I may have information related to this case. I recall seeing a person matching the description in the area around [the street mentioned] during that period. If this information is relevant, please contact me.” Anthropic said Claude left no name or contact information.

The tip, dated July 18, was ultimately filed as spam and never forwarded to investigators, but police said that does not reduce the seriousness of the matter, noting that behind cold cases are real victims, grieving families and investigators seeking the truth. Separately, CCTV News reported that after several incidents of unauthorized use of US government systems by Anthropic, the Trump administration announced new mandatory AI safety incident reporting requirements; a “Superintelligence Task Force” set up by Trump will oversee enforcement.

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2. A 46-Year-Old “Mathematician” Made Over 64 Billion Yuan a Year Trading With AI

Source: Mydrivers

A 46-year-old “mathematician” has joined Britain’s top rich by using AI to trade and make markets, earning more than 64 billion yuan in a year. According to the latest 2026 Sunday Times Rich List, Alex Gerko’s total wealth reached £16.006 billion, up £7.261 billion (about 64.299 billion yuan) from 2025, making him Britain’s eighth-richest person.

Over the past 12 months his fortune grew by an average of £19.89 million (about 17.61 million yuan) a day. The list attributes the gain to a higher valuation of his company’s equity. Born in Moscow in 1979, Gerko holds a PhD in mathematics from Moscow State University and founded the top global quantitative market maker XTX in 2015.

XTX runs a for-profit AI trading system holding more than 400PB of global financial-market data and driving a large GPU cluster. The firm has just over 250 employees and not a single traditional trader, yet handles US$250 billion in daily trading volume. Unlike conventional quant firms that rely on simple linear models or historical statistics, XTX concentrates computing power on deep pattern recognition, analyzing real-time data streams across more than 50,000 instruments spanning equities, fixed income, FX, commodities and crypto. XTX has no outside investors, with profits flowing to a few partners; Gerko himself owns 75% of the company.

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3. Apple Discloses Deal to Hire Team and License Tech From Audio Startup Huxe

Source: TechCrunch

Apple disclosed in a regulatory filing that it has reached an agreement to bring on team members and technology from personalized audio startup Huxe, in what is commonly known as a reverse acqui-hire. As first reported by MacRumors, Apple told the European Commission it has agreed to make employment offers to “certain employees of Huxe AI” and to “receive a non-exclusive license to Huxe’s intellectual property rights.”

Reverse acqui-hires have emerged in recent years as a way for larger companies to hire key team members and license technology from startups without buying them outright, letting them build AI talent and tech with less antitrust scrutiny. Huxe was founded by developers who had previously worked on the AI-generated podcast features in NotebookLM (recently renamed Gemini Notebook), but the company announced on May 21 that it was shutting down, removing its app from the Apple and Google stores, halting service and deleting user data. “The team is moving on to new things, and we won’t be continuing development of the product,” it said.

On June 9, shortly after Huxe’s announcement, Apple notified the European Commission of the deal. The filing does not say who received offers or whether they accepted, nor does it disclose Apple’s plans. The report notes that Huxe’s shutdown came just a day after Spotify unveiled AI-powered podcast generation features of its own, suggesting Apple may hope to add similar functionality to its Podcasts app.

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4. Nvidia Said to Halt RTX 5090 Production, Dropping Gaming Flagship to a 24GB RTX 5080

Source: Mydrivers

According to leaker MEGAsizeGPU and other sources, Nvidia has stopped supplying the GB202 core to GeForce gaming cards, meaning the RTX 5090 and the China-specific RTX 5090 D v2 will both be discontinued, with GB202 reserved for the RTX PRO professional line. As a result, the fastest gaming GPU buyers can get will drop to the RTX 5080.

Nvidia is reportedly preparing a make-good: a 24GB RTX 5080 to replace the current 16GB model as the new GeForce flagship. It keeps the GB203 core with 10,752 CUDA cores, upgrades memory from 16GB GDDR7 to 24GB, retains a 256-bit bus and draws about 415W. It is not a new design but a model originally planned as the RTX 5080 SUPER that was shelved as memory costs soared. The 16GB RTX 5080 launched at $999, while the 24GB version is expected to retail between $1,999 and $2,999 (about 14,300 to 21,500 yuan).

The report says the business logic is simple: the same GB202 core sells in the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell for over $8,000, far more profitable than the RTX 5090’s $1,999 list price; with memory costs surging and AI demand booming, Nvidia is prioritizing its limited high-end chip supply for higher-margin professional products. In Japan, in-stock RTX 5090 cards have risen to 1.2 million yen (about 51,000 yuan), while the German market average has topped €6,000.

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5. Qualcomm and Arm Face Off in Court: Qualcomm Seeks 5 Years of Free Licensing and V10 Access

Source: Mydrivers

The licensing dispute between chip giant Qualcomm and Arm has entered a critical stage. After a five-day trial, a jury in the US District Court for the District of Delaware failed to reach a verdict on October 9 and will resume deliberations next Tuesday. It is the second head-to-head showdown between the two companies in two years.

Qualcomm’s demands are highly unusual: it seeks to stop paying Arm licensing royalties for up to five years, involving potentially billions of dollars, and wants to force Arm to license its V10 instruction-set architecture, the next-generation core architecture that has never before been opened to third parties. The case was sparked by a leaked letter. Qualcomm alleges Arm withheld software patches and tools needed for chip design and violated a price-protection agreement; more critically, it says Arm leaked a 2024 letter to Bloomberg accusing Qualcomm of breaching a key license deal, which damaged its chip talks with Meta and shrank a contract by about $170 million (roughly 1.22 billion yuan).

Arm denies everything, saying Qualcomm suffered no harm and sued only to gain leverage in licensing talks, and dismisses the Meta deal as “speculative.” Relations have long soured: since SoftBank acquired Arm in 2016, Arm has shifted from pure licensing to selling its own chips. Qualcomm holds an Arm architecture license valid until 2033, but whether it can reach a deal on newer architectures such as V10 is the crux of the dispute. Arm’s annual report shows Qualcomm accounts for 9% of its revenue.

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6. Foldable iPhone Duo Will Greet Owners by Name on First Boot

Source: Mydrivers

Tech blogger Mark Gurman said on social media that users buying the foldable iPhone Duo at an Apple Store will get a personalized touch: the system will show the user’s name on first boot. Where new iPhones normally greet users with “Hello,” the iPhone Duo is expected to show “Hello + name.” The service will be offered to US users and supports English and Spanish.

The news quickly went viral and trended in search. Some bloggers said Apple is now selling “emotional value,” noting that since this is Apple’s most expensive iPhone, ceremony matters. The iPhone Duo will open pre-orders at 8 pm on October 16 and go on sale on October 23, starting at 15,999 yuan.

In design, the iPhone Duo uses a book-style fold: a 5.4-inch outer screen when closed and a 7.6-inch inner display when open; it is just 5.2mm thick (11.3mm folded) and weighs 254g, offered in night sky and starlight white. Apple has added a nano-textured matte surface and scratch-resistant coating to spread bending stress and reduce crease visibility. Due to space limits it drops Face ID for a side-button Touch ID and supports Apple Pencil. It packs the same A20 Pro chip as the iPhone 18 Pro and Apple’s in-house C2 modem, offers 256GB, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB storage, a 48MP dual camera (main + ultrawide, no telephoto) and ships with iOS 27.

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7. Entry-Level MacBook Pro to Gain the New Design Sooner Than Expected

Source: 9to5Mac

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman previously revealed that Apple has a new M7-powered entry-level MacBook Pro in the pipeline for spring 2027. This isn’t an ordinary refresh: it will bring the upcoming redesign down to the entry level, something that wasn’t previously expected. Normally, when Apple introduces a new MacBook Pro design, it takes a while to trickle down to the base model.

This time, however, only about a six-month gap is expected. According to Bloomberg, Apple will bring the redesign to the entry-level MacBook Pro in early 2027, shortly after debuting it on the high-end MacBook Pros, rumored to be called MacBook Ultra. The revamped entry-level model, code-named K104, could arrive as early as the first half of next year; the 14-inch laptop will adopt a new design in line with the touchscreen high-end MacBooks due between late this year and early next year.

Notably, Apple will also offer an entry-level MacBook Pro with the current design and an M6 chip, on track to debut this fall alongside the redesigned high-end models. Those redesigned high-end MacBook Pros are expected to launch with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips rather than the M6 generation, after Apple decided to abandon high-end M6 plans and accelerate M7. The redesign is expected to feature a thinner chassis, OLED displays with touch support and possibly a Dynamic Island.

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8. Scientists Detect a Record-Breaking Fast Radio Burst From the Ancient Universe

Source: 404 Media

Scientists have discovered the most distant fast radio burst (FRB) yet, a mysterious radio flare from space. The burst erupted when the universe was only about three billion years old and sent radio waves across roughly 10 billion light years before reaching Earth on March 4, 2024. The distant signal, FRB 20240304B, comes from an ancient galaxy beyond redshift 2, originating more than twice as far as the next-farthest known FRB.

“Approximately one hundred FRBs have identified host galaxies with measured redshifts, with the vast majority at redshifts z ≲ 0.5,” said researchers led by Manisha Caleb of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy. “Only a small number of FRB host galaxies have been identified at z ≳ 1.” The team captured the remote flash with South Africa’s MeerKAT radio telescope and pinpointed “a low-mass, clumpy, star-forming galaxy” at redshift 2.148 as the host using follow-up observations with the James Webb Space Telescope.

FRBs produce incredibly energetic radio pulses, but the exact mechanisms that generate them remain unknown. Given their diverse features—some repeat, some are one-offs—they may come from many different sources. In the case of FRB 20240304B, the team speculated it is a magnetar, the highly magnetized remains of a massive star that went supernova. “The low stellar mass, active star formation and low metallicity of the host galaxy are consistent with a magnetar origin,” the researchers concluded. This milestone detection opens the possibility of finding more bursts at high redshifts and of extracting clues about the universe’s evolution.

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9. Tim Cook Visits China for the First Time Since Stepping Down as Apple CEO

Source: ifeng

Apple board executive chairman Tim Cook has made his first trip to China since stepping down as CEO. On the evening of October 10, Cook said on Weibo that he was happy to be in China again and that in Guangzhou he experienced the charm of Wing Chun through an iPhone 18 Pro lens for the first time, calling it an unforgettable experience.

On October 10, Cook appeared at the Guangzhou set of a Wing Chun-themed short film for the iPhone 18 Pro series, visiting young director Gu Tianji and Wing Chun inheritor Dai Zilong, and watched a demonstration of Wing Chun moves. Reports say his Guangzhou trip will last several days, with meetings with developers and content creators. On October 11, Meng Fanli, deputy party secretary and governor of Guangdong Province, met Cook in Guangzhou. Meng welcomed Apple’s closer alignment with Guangdong and support for placing more innovative products, new businesses and R&D platforms in the province. Cook thanked Guangdong for its long-term support, saying it is home to many Apple supply-chain partners and ecosystem developers and is crucial to Apple’s growth in China, and that the company is willing to expand its operations there.

Cook stepped down as CEO on September 1, with John Ternus taking over, ending a 15-year “Cook era.” In the fiscal 2026 third quarter ended June 27, 2026, Apple reported revenue of $109.417 billion, up 16% year over year, and net profit of $29.79 billion, up 27%; Greater China revenue was $18.82 billion, up 22%, below market expectations.

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10. AI-Generated ‘Celebrity Relatives’ Peddle Goods; Chinese State Media Blasts Platforms

Source: Guancha

According to reports from Jiangsu News, CCTV.com and others on October 11, less than half a month after the death of musician Liu Huan, a wave of “relatives” appeared on social platforms: a supposed “Liu Huan’s wife Lu Lu” sat before the camera, her voice trembling as she said “Old Liu has left,” then pivoted to pitching “Huangjing Wuhei powder.” A “Liu Huan’s son” also appeared, with a shopping link under the video selling the same product. The son of Xiao Shenyang, “Zhao Benshan’s ex-wife Ge Shuzhen,” “Feng Gong’s wife” and more—a string of “celebrity relatives” sprang up, using AI-generated faces and voices to do the same thing: sell the powder.

The videos follow a highly similar formula: telling a heartfelt story in the first half, then attaching a shopping cart to sell goods in the second. The “Liu Huan’s wife” video, for instance, used clips of Liu Huan performing, paired with an AI-synthesized “wife’s” voice describing his final moments, drawing tens of thousands of likes and shares. Although the page carried small print saying “content generated by AI,” many netizens believed it. CCTV.com noted that using public figures’ fame for false endorsements and mass-producing fake accounts is already a well-organized grey business that crosses multiple legal red lines, including personality-rights infringement, false advertising and consumer fraud.

The report also noted a blame-shifting loop: merchants point to platforms, and platforms point to rights holders—platform customer service said it would act only if the rights holder or family reported the content. CCTV.com criticized that while platforms can precisely intercept strongly regulated content such as political or terrorism-related material, they take a “no complaint, no action” stance toward grey content like impersonating celebrities to sell goods, saying “how loose or strict platform review is, is not a matter of capability, but of choice.”

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