Tech Express | October 18, 2026 — Japan to Attempt World's First Sample Return from a Martian Moon

Japan to attempt world's first sample return from Martian moon

Source: The Guardian

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) aims to launch a spacecraft on Tuesday aboard the country's new mainstay H3 rocket, on the world's first mission to bring back samples from Phobos, one of the two small moons orbiting Mars. The mission is expected to take five years.

Yasuhiro Kawakatsu, project manager for the Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission, said samples from Phobos would give scientists useful data for considering a Martian moon as a base for a future manned mission to Mars. Despite their potential importance, he said, the moons have never been fully investigated and are known as "the most important unclimbed mountains in the solar system".

After launch, the spacecraft should arrive in the Mars region around August 2027 and spend three years flying near and around Phobos before returning home in 2031. It carries 13 instruments, including the French-German rover Idefix, and Jaxa aims to collect at least 10g of soil in two sampling attempts. The sample capsule is expected to land in Australia.

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DeepSeek updates V4.1 Flash and opens its own search API

Source: Wallstreetcn

On October 17, DeepSeek updated DeepSeek V4.1 Flash to the V4.1-Flash-1017 version, switching its web, app and API models to the new build. The company said the new model made substantial gains across benchmarks compared with the previous release.

DeepSeek said the model cuts task runtime and output length while improving performance, an approach it calls a "performance-cost Pareto improvement". Trained with self-feedback reinforcement learning, it is better at building complete projects from scratch in areas such as game development and 3D modelling, supporting more "wish-style" coding requests.

The company also released DeepSeek Harness 0.2.1 for the new model, with 6 yuan of credit for first-time users. Its self-developed search API is now open: the Search and Fetch interfaces each cost 5 yuan per thousand calls and are free until November 1. DeepSeek says the search engine indexes hundreds of billions of web pages and filters SEO manipulation and low-quality AI-generated content.

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Anthropic co-founder: AI could lift US GDP by nearly 50%

Source: CLS

Jack Clark, co-founder and head of public benefit at Anthropic, said on Saturday at the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok that the company's internal models project AI could raise US economic output by nearly 50% by 2030, under certain conditions.

Clark said the potential size of US GDP would reach $44 trillion, against just over $30 trillion today. "I know that sounds very dramatic," he said, adding that AI is greatly accelerating scientific discovery and that the forecast assumes continued technological progress.

He also warned policymakers that growing evidence points to a "technological singularity" in which AI development outpaces human control, and that the window to build safeguards is narrowing to "just a few years". He called for international cooperation on "extraordinary and stringent rules", and acknowledged job losses in areas such as call centres and customer service.

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CCTV comments as 155 apps block Doubao phone assistant

Source: Mydrivers

On October 18, CCTV commented on more than 100 apps refusing to let the Doubao phone assistant operate them, calling it an inevitable industry collision as AI moves toward real-world deployment and saying standards and cooperation are needed.

The dispute dates to October 14, when Doubao's phone assistant announced the end of a 30-day public comment period for its Screen Automation Declaration Protocol (SAEP) and said it would gradually open screen automation permissions for third-party apps. By that date, 155 apps had explicitly refused to allow the assistant to operate them.

Tencent and its ecosystem account for 66 of the apps and Alibaba's ecosystem for 23, together nearly 60% of the list. Kuaishou accounts for 14 and Meituan for 11, while Xiaohongshu, Didi, DeepSeek and Kimi are also on it. Doubao said its agent will not operate apps that have opted out.

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Dell CEO warns AI server memory shortage will worsen

Source: Mydrivers

Dell Technologies chief executive Michael Dell has warned that tight supplies of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and DRAM are expected to worsen in 2027, as surging demand for AI infrastructure outpaces growth in global memory capacity.

Dell is sitting on a record $95 billion backlog of enterprise and AI server orders, but converting those orders into revenue depends heavily on securing enough memory chips. Michael Dell said memory constraints could last as long as four years.

Because new semiconductor plants take years from planning to full production, much of the added capacity is not expected to come online until 2029 or 2030. Dell is keeping inventories lean, timing DRAM purchases to final assembly plans, signing long-term supply agreements and using customer prepayments to lock in supply.

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Nvidia denies RTX 5090 discontinuation rumours

Source: Mydrivers

On October 17, Nvidia senior vice president of personal computing Jeff Fisher addressed rumours that the RTX 5090 had been discontinued, saying at an RTX Spark event that the reports were entirely untrue. He stressed that the RTX 5090 remains an important flagship consumer product and will continue to be supplied steadily worldwide.

He acknowledged, however, that supply of the graphics card is constrained and that Nvidia is working to bring the market back into balance. Nvidia's US website had quietly removed the RTX 5090 product page, fuelling speculation that the card had been discontinued.

Prices have climbed sharply: the 32GB RTX 5090 in China rose from about 35,000 yuan in early September to around 54,000 yuan on October 14, an increase of more than 50%. In Germany the average price is above 6,000 euros, up 132% from a year earlier.

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iPhone Duo sells out in a minute, but supply is the story

Source: Wenxuecity

At 8pm on October 16, pre-orders opened for the iPhone Duo, Apple's first foldable phone. Social media reports said every model sold out within a minute, with JD.com and Tmall pages showing sold out, and about 40 minutes later Apple's website was quoting delivery in late January 2027.

Hours later, the same scene played out at 8am US Eastern time. Analyst Max Weinbach said stores in New York, its surrounding area and Connecticut sold out in about three minutes, and within half an hour delivery dates for every US configuration had slipped to January 25. A 2TB pre-order unit sold on eBay for $5,000, $1,800 above list price.

The article argues the sell-out reflects supply as much as demand: pre-orders opened in about 70 countries but delivery dates lined up almost exactly, suggesting quota-based allocation. Nikkei Asia reported in late August that Apple could make only "a few hundred" units a day, and Foxconn's assembly yield was barely above 60%, held back by a hinge with more than 100 parts. Analyst Jeff Pu cut his 2026 shipment forecast from 7 million to 6 million units. The 256GB model starts at 15,999 yuan in China, with the 2TB version at 26,499 yuan.

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Xiaomi's 27-inch smart home display drops to 3,399 yuan

Source: Mydrivers

On October 18, Xiaomi cut the price of its first rolling smart home display, the Smart Home Screen Max 27, for the Double 11 shopping festival: launched at 3,999 yuan, it is now 3,399 yuan, 600 yuan less. Five hidden quiet caster wheels let users push it from the living room to the bedroom or gym.

The stand rises, tilts and rotates 90 degrees, so the screen can be used horizontally for shows or vertically for short videos. The 27-inch anti-glare matte touch display is 1920x1080 with TUV Rheinland eye-care certification, and the device pairs 6GB of RAM with 128GB of storage, an eight-core processor and a 9,700mAh battery that Xiaomi says lasts more than 13 days on standby.

HDMI 1.4, USB-A and USB-C ports let it work as a portable second screen for a Switch or PC. It aggregates iQiyi, Tencent Video and Youku, supports karaoke with a microphone and AI-guided workouts, and includes the Super Xiao Ai assistant plus a 5-megapixel camera. The article notes that the 1080p resolution is a drawback for buyers who want sharper picture quality.

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Teen AI researcher Chen Guangyu leaves Moonshot for the Bay Area

Source: Lianhe Zaobao

Chen Guangyu, a 17-year-old "prodigy" who worked on core models at Chinese AI company Moonshot AI, announced on his X account on October 15 that he had left the company and would move to the San Francisco Bay Area, according to Lianhe Zaobao.

He described his year at Kimi as "the best time of my life", citing the chance to work with talented and helpful colleagues on optimising the KDA (Kimi Delta Attention) algorithm and Attention Residuals research, and thanked Kimi for trusting him at 16.

In the comments, Anthropic reinforcement-learning researcher Sholto Douglas asked whether Chen still planned to study at Carnegie Mellon and invited him to join Anthropic. Chen replied that he was heading to the Bay Area, but said "no" on October 16 when asked directly whether he would join Anthropic. Born in 2009, he graduated from high school in June and had been a machine learning researcher on the Kimi team since November last year.

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Haiguang CPU and DCU chips power Pinglu Canal's smart dispatch

Source: Mydrivers

The Pinglu Canal, the first canal connecting rivers to the sea built under national coordination since the founding of New China, opened to navigation on September 16, 2026. Haiguang Information is supplying domestic computing power for what it calls the country's first full-lifecycle digital-twin smart canal, using a CPU-plus-DCU architecture.

The canal's digital systems face several challenges: the Xijiang locks, Pinglu Canal locks and Beibu Gulf port had long been dispatched independently, with manual scheduling taking 20 to 30 minutes per plan, while huge numbers of sensors generate heterogeneous data and remote lock control must run around the clock. Haiguang's C86 CPUs handle general computing and monitoring, while its DCUs take on AI analysis and digital-twin rendering.

Guangxi's integrated river-sea dispatch platform now uses algorithmic scheduling, allowing one application, one plan and passage across the whole route, with the 134.2km channel visible, computable and controllable. Since opening, cargo from southwestern China has cut more than 560km from its sea route, with logistics costs down 18% to 30% and more than 5 billion yuan saved each year.

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