From PC Mag: Apple has removed the ICEBlock app from its App Store, citing the "safety risks" of people reporting the whereabouts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

In July, the app drew criticism from Attorney General Pam Bondi, who told the app's developer to "watch out." Now...

From CNET: Social media's targeted ads are so creepily good that people have long believed their apps are secretly recording their conversations. This isn't true -- and Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri posted a "myth-busting video" on Wednesday to tackle the myth head-on.

Mosseri says that Instagram...

From PC Mag: Google is making a change to Gmail that could disrupt your access to third-party email services if you rely on the POP3 protocol.

In a support page, the company announced that Gmail will stop supporting POP (Post Office Protocol), which lets email programs access a third-party mail...

From Tom's Hardware: The U.S. and Taiwan have been engaged in months-long bipartisan trade talks since the Trump administration took over, negotiating largely around the tech both countries hold. According to Bloomberg, the latest progress stemming from these discussions is a potential new high-tech...

From ExtremeTech: Apple's forthcoming M5 chip appears to have popped up on Geekbench. The tested device is labeled "iPad 17,3," almost certainly referring to this year's iPad Pro revision. According to the listing, the chip has nine cores—three for handling high-performance tasks and six focused on...

From InfoWorld: Microsoft has introduced the Microsoft Agent Framework, an open-source SDK and runtime for building, orchestrating, and deploying AI agents and multi-agent workflows, with full framework support for .NET and Python.

Introduced October 1 and available on GitHub, the Agent Framework...

From Tom's Hardware: Intel is in the early stages of talks with AMD about making the fabless chip designer an Intel Foundry customer, according to a report from Semafor.

The report, citing "people familiar with the matter," doesn't say just how much of AMD's chip manufacturing would move to Intel...

From ComputerWorld: The authoritarian, surveillance-loving UK Labour government remains deeply committed to magical thinking, slamming yet another encryption-busting “Technical Capability Notice” (TCN) on Apple, according to the Financial Times.

The difference is that this time it says it only...

From TechCrunch: OpenAI has sold $6.6 billion in shares held by current and former employees, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The sale pushed OpenAI’s total valuation to $500 billion, the highest ever achieved by a privately held company. Purchasers included SoftBank, Dragoneer Investment...

From PC World: Xbox Game Pass is getting a lot more expensive—up to 50 percent more expensive for the all-you-can-eat Ultimate tier—which is a problem for a service that appeals to players based on its relative affordability. It looks like Brad Chacos isn’t the only one cancelling before the higher...