Tech news picked on 2026-10-22
Meta's AI app Muse tops 10 million users as shopping becomes its main activity
- Muse is Meta's AI app. It lets people hand off tasks such as connecting email and calendars or shopping to an AI agent. Meta said in its Q3 earnings call that users exceeded 10 million.
- CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that about 25% of people who set up Muse use it every day. The source reports that the 10 million figure is Meta's confirmation of an estimate previously released by market research firm Sensor Tower.
- Zuckerberg said that among active users who shopped with the Muse AI agent, more than 1 out of every 4 paid an average of more than 200 dollars. Payment connections use a Plaid feature that links bank accounts to payment apps.
- Meta introduced a security feature called Muse Secure VM and explained that the upcoming Muse Confidential VM will keep user content hidden even from Meta. This is also Meta's own explanation.
Airbnb announces policy limiting cleaning tasks hosts can assign to guests
- Airbnb has changed its policy so hosts can no longer require guests to do tasks before checkout, such as stripping bed sheets, washing and tidying dishes, running laundry, or taking out the trash, according to the original article.
- The original article says the rule applies to bookings made after November 20.
- According to the original article, guests have long complained about receiving pre-checkout cleaning lists even though they had already paid a cleaning fee.
- The original article reports that some hosts argued in community forums that basic cleaning responsibility is needed to maintain hygiene and protect properties. One host posted that the change moves the platform closer to a hotel model and undermines what makes Airbnb unique.
- Railway is a cloud service for deploying and running apps. This notice says that a 3 party may have accessed environment variables that customers set. The company said that, up to the time of the investigation, some encrypted values may have been obtained in decrypted form.
- Environment variables can contain secrets such as API keys and database and registry credentials. Railway said it considers this incident part of a series of attacks targeting platform companies and AI inference providers, and wrote that it asked upstream providers to revoke keys.
- The company said the impact may be limited to some users, but it recommended that all users rotate environment variables and private registry credentials and review their logs. All deployments are suspended until the investigation ends, and new versions cannot be deployed until builds are restored.
- GM says it will change its 4th-generation EVs so that one central computer handles braking, steering, acceleration, and safety functions along with software. Previously, small chips were scattered throughout the vehicle.
- According to GM, this central computing unit (CCU) is expected to be 40 times more powerful than existing systems and to reduce the small chips around it, cutting wiring by 30%. These are figures GM has stated, and the source does not mention any verification by an independent body.
- GM says it sped up development with enterprise AI tools. Engineers reviewed 300,000 virtual designs before physically building a new battery pack, and through this process reached formal program approval in one month, according to the company.
- GM aims to halve its current development period of 4 to 5 years. The new architecture will first be applied to the 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQ, and a highway autonomous driving feature that lets drivers take their hands and eyes off the road is also planned for the same year.
Bose Acquires Skullcandy to Reach Broader Consumers
- Bose announced it has acquired Skullcandy, the earbud and headphone brand. The aim is to bring Bose technology to more people. Details such as the purchase price were not disclosed.
- Skullcandy will remain a separate brand and belongs to Bose's premium consumer audio division. Its headquarters stays in Park City, Utah, USA, where the company was founded.
- According to the source, Skullcandy has already released headphones and earbuds that use Bose's spatial audio and noise cancellation technology. Through this brand, Bose plans to expand its contact with consumers beyond frequent travelers.
- The source explains that Skullcandy's design and its ties to snowboarding and skateboarding athletes serve as a path to meet new consumers. This is the company's own explanation, and actual results are not confirmed in the source.
Recursive releases Flint, a free coding model that runs on laptops
- Recursive has released Flint, a coding model that can be downloaded for free. It runs directly on the user's computer instead of in an internet cloud, and according to the source it can be used offline and does not require sending code to external servers.
- Flint is designed to use only 2.5 billion of its 40 billion total parameters at a time. The company said its in-house automated research system, 'Eureka Machine', helped with nearly every stage of model development, and that a small team built it from scratch in 4 months. This is the company's claim.
- In the company's own tests, Flint generated about 131 tokens (text fragments) per second on a MacBook Pro (Apple M4 Pro chip). That is about twice the 58 to 69 tokens per second that similar models produced on the same device. This figure was also measured by the company itself.
- Wired reporter Will Knight tried building small programs, such as a to-do list app, on a 48GB memory Mac and reported that it mostly handled the requests well. However, the company also said it is better to split large tasks into smaller steps.
- The US National Security Agency (NSA) warned that two serious security holes were found in PHP, and the source says the PHP Foundation has already released patches.
- PHP is a server-side programming language used to build websites. The source says about 70% of internet websites use it, and WordPress also uses it. According to the source, attackers could break into the server file system or the database used by web apps.
- According to the source, the two vulnerabilities may exist in all versions after PHP 5, which was released in 2004. PHP 8.1 and earlier versions are no longer supported, and the current version the source recommends is 8.5.12.
- AI was used in the discovery process. OpenAI said the security firm Calif found one vulnerability with GPT-5.6 Sol through OpenAI's Patch the Planet program. The source says Google's Wiz team also found several vulnerabilities using its own AI security agent and other tools, and this is a claim based on the two companies' announcements.
- This release is a security update that keeps outsiders from manipulating servers running PHP. According to the PHP project, versions 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36, and 8.2.35 fix two vulnerabilities that let an unauthenticated attacker run code on the server under certain conditions.
- The first vulnerability corrupts internal data at the moment a request exactly reaches the memory usage limit (memory_limit). The second reuses memory from a previous request after a fatal error. The original article says remote code execution was demonstrated under default settings in an Apache mod_php environment.
- According to the original article, signs of the first issue first appeared during an external audit in 2024, but no actual attack path was confirmed at that time. Later reports from Calif, OpenAI, and Wiz revealed the scope of the impact, making it a top priority since August.
- On October 20, vulnerability IDs leaked first to forums and social media, so PHP moved up its advance notice and brought the release date forward by one day. A security firm accidentally published a proof-of-concept video, and according to the original article, Chainguard distributed an image containing the fix before public disclosure.
GM adds personal AI assistant to OnStar vehicle safety service
- GM said it will add a personal AI assistant to OnStar, its subscription connected car service (a service that links to the vehicle to provide crash alerts and roadside assistance). It will first appear on the 2027 model year Cadillac Lyriq electric vehicle soon and later expand to other GM vehicles.
- According to the source, drivers can use voice commands to control vehicle functions such as climate control and ask questions about those functions. If a vehicle camera is connected, live video and crash records can be uploaded to the OnStar app for viewing.
- The new OnStar mobile app, arriving in 2027, will replace the Guardian app launched in 2020 and the separate Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and GMC brand apps. The new app will connect with in-vehicle software.
- GM said recorded video has a storage time limit and is encrypted, and that neither GM nor OnStar can access connected camera recordings. This is the company's claim, and the source contains no independent verification of it.
- Supernatural is a fitness game where you wear a VR headset and move your body to music. After Meta said it would stop making new content, the game was split off into an independent app and returned in early access preview on the Meta Horizon Store.
- According to the developers, thousands of remastered workouts and new workouts are available in the app from today, and new workouts will be added every week starting next week. This is the developers' announcement and has not been independently confirmed.
- The original report says the subscription rises from 9.99 per month to 20 per month or 200 per year. Existing users can move their points, start dates, streaks, favorites, and badges to the new version until December 3, according to the report.
- Supernatural Together, the group workout feature, returns with a full redesign, and a mobile companion app that records heart rate and progress is also planned. The original report presents both features as coming later.
Foursquare co-founder claims shareholders received no proceeds after acquisition
- According to the article, advertising company Infillion acquired Foursquare, a once-popular social network and location data platform. The purchase price was not disclosed.
- Co-founder and former CEO Dennis Crowley claimed in a blog post that holders of both common and preferred stock received no value from this sale. He reached this view by drawing on a post from an angel investor.
- Crowley said that after the business shifted toward enterprise customers, there were years when annual revenue exceeded $100 million. He believes that after the appointment of a CEO, an investment banker who led a private equity investment in 2019 and a funding round in 2021, management failed to protect or create value, and he cites that change as the cause of the final outcome.
- Citing PitchBook data, the article reports that Foursquare raised more than $411 million, and that the company shut down its app service in 2024.