ai – Tech News

Web Browser Arc Is Shutting Down Later This Year, Asks You to Switch to Dia

Alternative web browser Arc is reaching the end of its life, and you’ve got a little under two months to make the most of it. The developers plan to shut down the browser on Dec. 22, 2026, around 3.5 years after launch. “Our priority is to deliver best-in-class security for our members," Miller says. "Keeping a browser secure takes constant, dedicated work that is only increasing in the age of AI. Dia, our new browser, was built from the ground up to meet today’s security standards, so that’s where our engineering and security teams will focus moving forward.”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/web-browser-arc-is-shutting-down-later-this-year-asks-you-to-switch-to

PHP Armageddon: OpenAI, Google’s Wiz find ancient holes, panicking the internet

The U.S. National Security Agency’s sent out an alarming warning on Wednesday that two critical holes had been found in PHP, with patches already issued by the PHP Foundation. PHP is a server-side programming language so widely used for web applications that it powers roughly 70% of the websites on the internet; by some accounts, that’s more than 33 million sites. It is also used by popular content management systems like WordPress.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/21/php-armageddon-openai-googles-wiz-find-ancient-holes-panicking-the-internet/

AI game clones are making indie developers afraid to show their work

Since its earliest days, the video game industry has been built on developers creating clones of competing games, with varying levels of originality and varying levels of enforcement from game platforms. Now, though, AI coding tools are making that cloning process so efficient that many developers are getting extremely cautious about sharing their early work too widely.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/10/ai-game-clones-are-making-indie-developers-afraid-to-show-their-work/

Creator of Free Adobe Suite Strikes Again, Reverse Engineers Microsoft Office

“We were shocked by how well they actually worked internally, so decided to open source them,” ArtCraft co-founder Michael Caffrey told Futurism. “Adobe has been notoriously scummy in the past, and when using it we were shocked that this wasn’t an alternative, it was better.” Now, ArtCraft developer Brandon Thomas has thrown down the gauntlet once more by announcing open-source clones of Microsoft’s widely used Office suite, including Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/creator-free-adobe-suite-microsoft-office

Epic Games reportedly pivoting to “AI first” game development model

“We have a huge pivot underway here at Epic, moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration,” Epic CEO Tim Sweeney wrote on social media shortly after the Bloomberg story was posted. “The aim isn’t to do the same stuff with fewer people, but to enable everyone here to build MORE and BETTER stuff, and to bring the benefits to all teams using Unreal.”
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/10/report-epic-games-goes-all-in-on-ai-for-disney-collaboration

‘Things may get ugly’: Meta’s new AI Muse is about to make the internet more annoying

"There's going to be a huge escalation of the problems we're already having with bots," says Calli Schroeder, director of the AI and Human Rights Program at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (Epic) in the US. "What happens if bots send 600 inquiries to a website a day, when normal humans might only send two?" says Shroeder. "Businesses and individuals are going to have a lot to deal with."
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260930-metas-new-ai-is-about-to-break-the-internet

Big Tech is cutewashing its AI agents

We are firmly in the era of the anthropomorphic AI mascot, and according to multiple researchers and designers I spoke with, the trend makes perfect sense. In moments when tech companies want to encourage mass market adoption of an unfamiliar service, they’ve historically turned to friendly, approachable design.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91620091/big-tech-is-cutewashing-its-ai-agents