Debby Wu / Bloomberg : TSMC reports Q3 net profit up 39% YoY to ~$14.8B, beating est., after previously reporting a 30% rise in revenue, the latest sign of robust spending on AI chips — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. posted a better-than-anticipated 39% jump in quarterly profit, the latest sign …
Nikkei Asia : Sources: Microsoft aims to produce most new products, including servers and Surface laptops, outside China from 2026; AWS is also adopting a similar strategy — TAIPEI — Microsoft aims to produce the majority of its new products outside of China as early as next year …
Apple CEO Tim Cook pledged to expand the company's investments in China during his latest visit to the country, signaling that Apple intends to maintain a strong presence in its most important manufacturing hub even as it continues diversifying production elsewhere, Reuters reports. During meetings with Chinese government officials this week, Cook told China's industry minister Li Lecheng that Apple will keep investing in the country, with ongoing commitment to its Chinese supply chain and operations. Lecheng told Cook that China hopes Apple will continue to expand in the country and "grow together with Chinese suppliers," adding that the government intends to foster a favorable business environment for foreign companies. Cook's visit comes at a sensitive time in U.S.–China relations, as both countries remain locked in a prolonged trade dispute mired by tariffs, export restrictions, and increasing pressure on technology companies to localize their manufacturing. The White House has promoted domestic production under initiatives such as the CHIPS and Science Act, while Beijing has sought to reinforce ties with foreign investors amid slowing economic growth. Apple's position in this environment has grown increasingly complex. The company has spent the past two years shifting parts of its manufacturing to countries such as India and Vietnam to reduce its dependency on China, yet the majority of its iPhones and other key products continue to be assembled by Chinese partners. Cook's latest assurances in China underscore that, despite diversification efforts, China remains integral to Apple's global operations. Apple remains caught between competing political and economic pressures. U.S. regulators have intensified scrutiny of American firms operating in China, while Chinese authorities have increased oversight of foreign technology companies. Yet Apple has so far remained largely unscathed compared to other U.S. firms such as Nvidia and Qualcomm, both of which have faced regulatory investigations in China. Apple's Chief Operating Officer Sabih Khan joined Cook for the visit, meeting with Lens Technology, one of Apple's longtime Chinese suppliers responsible for producing glass covers for the iPhone and Apple Watch. Tags: China , Tim Cook This article, " Apple CEO Tim Cook Pledges to Increase Investment in China " first appeared on MacRumors.com Discuss this article in our forums
The Apple Watch 11 has been a massive upgrade for me over the SE 2, but I can’t help but think the SE 3 does more than enough for most people’s needs.
Bloomberg : Huawei's key partners SiCarrier and Qiyunfang showcased chipmaking gear and EDA software at a Shenzhen expo; SiCarrier's gear competes with older US products — Huawei Technologies Co.'s key partners are showcasing a dizzying array of products from software to chip gear just days …
David Wheeldon / YouTube Official Blog : YouTube's creative ecosystem added over €7B to the EU's GDP in 2024 and supported 200K+ full-time equivalent jobs, according to advising firm Oxford Economics — YouTube's creative ecosystem added over €7B to the EU's GDP in 2024, while supporting over 200,000 jobs.
The volume of tap water used by Scotland's data centres has quadrupled since 2021, figures show.
Financial Times : Investigation: the Trump family's crypto empire has reaped over $1B in pre-tax profits over the past year; Eric Trump says the true figure is “probably more” — The president and his family have built a rapidly growing digital assets empire which has been fuelled by the administration's industry-friendly policies
Wall Street Journal : The White House says representatives from Microsoft, Meta, Google, and other corporate donors to the $250M ballroom attended a dinner with President Trump — Dinner set to include representatives from Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon.com and Palantir
Apple is preparing day-one software updates for its new iPad Pro , MacBook Pro , and Vision Pro models. iPadOS 26.0.1 (23A8464), macOS 26.0.1 (25A8364), and visionOS 26.0.1 (23M8340) should be available upon the launch of the new iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, and Vision Pro, which each feature the M5 chip. All three of the new devices likely have the current versions of their operating systems pre-installed. It is not yet clear what's in the new versions of iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS, but day-one updates usually include essential bug fixes. The updated iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, and Vision Pro are now available to pre-order, and will begin arriving to customers and launch in stores on Wednesday, October 22. This article, " New iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, and Vision Pro Will Have Day-One Software Updates " first appeared on MacRumors.com Discuss this article in our forums
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Wednesday added a critical security flaw impacting Adobe Experience Manager to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerability in question is CVE-2025-54253 (CVSS score: 10.0), a maximum-severity misconfiguration bug that could result in arbitrary code execution.
When Walmart and OpenAI announced that the retailer would integrate with ChatGPT, the question became how quickly OpenAI could deliver on the promise of agents buying things for people. In the battle of AI-enabled commerce, getting agents to securely complete transactions is one of the biggest hurdles. More and more, chat platforms like ChatGPT are replacing browsers and getting very good at surfacing information people search for. Users will ask ChatGPT for the best humidifiers on the market, and when the model returns results, people have no choice but to click the item link and complete the purchase online. AI agents, as of now, don’t have the ability or the trust infrastructure to make people and banking institutions feel safe enough to let it loose on someone’s cash. Enterprises and other industry players understand that, to allow agents to pay for purchases, there must be a common language shared among the model and agent providers, the bank, the merchant, and, to a lesser extent, the buyer. And so, over the past few weeks, three competing agentic commerce standards have emerged: Google announced the Agent Pay Protocol (AP2) with partners including PayPal, American Express, Mastercard, Salesforce and ServiceNow. Soon after, OpenAI and Stripe debuted the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), and just this week, Visa launched the Trusted Agent Protocol (TAP). All these protocols aim to give agents the trust layer they need to convince banks and their customers that they’re money is safe in the hands of an AI agent. But these may also create walled gardens, showing just how immature agentic commerce really is. This is a problem that could cause enterprises to bet on one chat platform and the agentic pay protocol it runs on, instead of interoperability. How are they different It’s not new for players to propose several standards. It usually takes years for the industry to coalesce around a single standard, or even to use different protocols and figure out a way to harmonize them. However, the pace of innovation in enterprise moved the needle on that. Fairly quickly, MCP became the de facto channel for tool-use identification, and most companies began setting up MCP servers or connecting to one. (To be clear, it is not a standard yet) But having three different potential standards might slow that process down a bit, because it’s harder to coalesce on a single standard when there are so many to choose from. These protocols all aim to prove authorization. Both AP2 and TAP rely on cryptographic proofs to show an agent is acting on an individual's behalf. For TAP, agents are added to an approved list and get a digital key identifying them. AP2 uses a digital contract that serves as a proxy for human approval for the agent. OpenAI’s ACP doesn’t require too much of an infrastructure change, where ACP essentially acts as a courier to the merchant because the agent relays information to the merchant. Walled gardens These three protocols ideally work across different chat platforms, but that is never guaranteed, especially when your biggest chat platform competitor has its own protocol. A danger with competing protocols is that they can create wall gardens, where they only work on specific platforms. Enterprises face the problem of getting stuck in a platform and an agentic payment standard that will not interoperate with another. Organizations receive not only the product recommended by the agent, but are also most often the merchants of record and need to trust that the agent contacting them is acting on behalf of a customer. Louis Amira, cofounder and CEO of agent commerce startup Circuit and Chisel, told VentureBeat that while this creates an opportunity for companies in the interoperability layer like his, it could create confusion for enterprises. “The better the protocol proposals get, the more likely they are to end up being walled gardens and very hard to interoperate,” Amira said. “We suspect that they’re going to be fighting it out for the next few years, and the more they fight it out, the more you actually need somebody that sits underneath all of them.” Unlike the internet, where anyone can use any browser to access a website, thanks in large part to the TCP/IP standard, chat platforms tend to remain very separate. I mostly use ChatGPT (because it’s installed on my laptop and I don’t need to open a new tab), so when I want to see how Gemini will handle my query, I actually have to open Gemini to do so—the same works for anyone shopping via chatbot. The number of protocol proposals underscores just how far we are from enabling shopping agents. The industry still needs to decide which standard to get behind, and no matter how many Walmarts integrate with ChatGPT, it’s all moot if people don’t trust the model or agent to handle their cash. Take the best features, hopefully The best thing for enterprises to do for now is to experiment with all the protocols and hope that a winner emerges. Eventually, there could be one agentic commerce protocol that takes the best of each proposal. For Wayne Liu, chief growth officer and president for Americas at Perfect Corp., having multiple protocol proposals just means there’s more learning. “This is where the importance of open source exists because it will be the driving force to put everything together,” Liu said. Of course, what would be interesting to see these next couple of weeks is if there will only be three competing agentic commerce protocols. After all, there are some large retailers and chat platforms that can still throw a wrench into the whole thing.
The HIROH Phone runs e/OS lets you kill the camera, mics, and connectivity options with one switch.
Apple will bring the Vision Pro companion app to the iPad with the release of iPadOS 26.1, marking the first time iPad users can manage and explore spatial content for the headset directly from their devices. Apple mentioned the expansion in the press release for the new Vision Pro with the M5 chip. The Vision Pro app was first introduced earlier this year with iOS 18.4, giving iPhone users the ability to browse and download apps, games, and media experiences for the Vision Pro without needing to wear the headset. The app features a Discover page that highlights curated recommendations for "new and noteworthy experiences available on Apple Vision Pro ," including categories such as Immersive Video, 3D movies, and other spatial apps. The My Vision Pro page within the app provides device-specific information and tools. The app also includes guest management features. The Vision Pro app was automatically installed for iPhone users after updating to iOS 18.4 in April, and the iPadOS 26.1 release will extend the same integration to iPads. iPadOS 26.1 is likely to be released later this month or in early November. Related Roundups: Apple Vision Pro , iOS 26 , iPadOS 26 Buyer's Guide: Vision Pro (Buy Now) Related Forums: Apple Vision Pro , iOS 26 This article, " Apple's Vision Pro App Coming to iPad " first appeared on MacRumors.com Discuss this article in our forums
@openai : OpenAI says all Sora 2 users can now generate videos up to 15 seconds on the app and web, while Pro users can generate videos up to 25 seconds on the web — 2 Sora 2 updates: - Storyboards are now available on web to Pro users - All users can now generate videos up to 15 seconds on app and web, Pro users up to 25 seconds on web [video]
Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Oct. 16.
Techmeme 
MacRumors.com 
TechRadar 
BBC News Technology 
The Hacker News 
VentureBeat 
Android Authority 
CNET