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🔒 Apple tightens Mac file access
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- Apple is adding new controls to the "Full Disk Access" setting on macOS, which lets an app reach a user's files, mail, messages, and browsing history, after worries about AI agents misusing that level of access.
- The change will require "very explicit user action" before an app can be granted the access, with Apple saying some developers already use the feature in ways that expose everything on a system without users fully knowing.
- Apple's move follows a report that Meta's Muse app on Mac knew the content of a journalist's private messages, a claim Meta disputed, and a separate flaw in ChatGPT's Mac app that could have let hackers reach sensitive data.
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🛠️ Meta wants you to build your own Muse gadget
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- Meta has launched Muse Gadgets, an open-source project that lets developers build their own hardware connecting to Muse, the company's AI agent that books travel, fills forms, and shops for users.
- The company is handing out open-source firmware, a Linux software kit, and project ideas, so tinkerers can wire Muse to a Raspberry Pi or ESP32 board along with displays, buttons, sensors, and other parts.
- Nat Friedman, head of product at Meta's Superintelligence Labs, said the company built a USB-C device called Muse Home Link and made 5,000 to give away free to subscribers, shipping in a few weeks.
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📱 Apple to replace faulty iPhones
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- Apple will replace iPhone 18 Pro Max phones for free after a small number of AT&T users lost cellular service, blocking calls, texts, and data, since the problem can't be fixed with a software update.
- Thousands complained across the Apple Support Community, and Apple pushed out iOS 27.0.1 this week plus an AT&T carrier settings update today to stop more phones from being hit by the fault.
- Only AT&T iPhone 18 Pro Max units are affected; those US models use Qualcomm's Snapdragon X80 modem rather than Apple's C2 chip, though Apple hasn't said whether that difference caused the trouble.
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🧑 New AI avatar fooled 48% of users
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- Tavus says its new "Human Interaction Model" called Griffin fooled 48 percent of people in a study into thinking its AI avatar was a real person during a one-minute video call.
- Griffin reads speech, facial expressions, tone, gestures, and pauses while taking in and creating video at once, a sharp jump from older systems that only convinced 2 percent of testers.
- In what Tavus calls an independent Nvidia test, Griffin scored 3.83 for how human it felt, close to the 3.92 for real people, with a limited preview named Griffin-Lite now open to select testers.
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💻 Nvidia halves DGX Spark RAM amid memory crunch
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- Nvidia is putting out a 64 GB version of its DGX Spark AI machine that costs $4,999, the same price as the 128 GB model, which is being dropped at that tier as memory costs climb.
- Apart from the memory cut, the 64 GB Spark keeps the same specs and can still be linked with others through a built-in ConnectX-7 network chip and a QSFP cable to pool memory for AI models over 200 billion parameters.
- The 64 GB model arrives by October 23rd from partners including Acer, ASUS, Dell, Gigabyte, HP and MSI, though the 128 GB Spark is now selling for over $6,000 as prices keep rising.
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📄 arXiv caps researchers at two papers monthly
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- arXiv, the preprint paper site, now caps each submitter at two new papers per month, a strict new rule meant to slow a flood of low-quality submissions that AI writing tools have helped drive.
- The limit applies per submitter, so multi-author papers only count against the person who files them, and large institutions won't be hit hard; rejected papers still count toward the monthly total, alongside a cap of three active submissions at once.
- arXiv received 40,363 submissions in September, up 309 percent over the past decade and double two years ago, with moderators overwhelmed by "thin" papers; the cap is a stopgap while the nonprofit works out new submission rules.
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