Technology & Science

Lava, an Israeli security firm, says it spotted 32 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra B300 GPUs through monitoring endpoints linked to China Telecom, the state-owned carrier. The chips are barred from sale to China under U.S. export controls. Digitimes notes that the network data does not show where the GPUs are physically located. The Information first reported the finding, according to Tom's Hardware. Nvidia did not deny it. A spokesperson called diversion "a drop in the bucket" next to China's existing computing capacity and said court cases have found less than half of one percent of controlled products diverted. In August, nine people were indicted in Taiwan over illegal B300 exports to China. Supermicro also said it had fired several employees after investigating smuggling.

LONDON — Ofcom chief executive Dame Melanie Dawes told Parliament's Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Oct. 20 that the regulator has issued 11 Online Safety Act fines since March 2025. Two have been paid, one is under appeal and one is not yet overdue, leaving nine unpaid. Of those nine, two are pornography companies that have since introduced effective age checks and four have geo-blocked the UK. Dawes said the real test is whether services change their behavior, not whether fines are collected. She also acknowledged that if foreign courts get in the way, Ofcom may have to accept it cannot recover some money. The case of 4chan, fined £520,000 in total, is the most visible example. Its U.S. lawyer says Ofcom has effectively conceded defeat. Ofcom has not said it is dropping enforcement.

TAIPEI — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world's largest contract chipmaker, reported third-quarter net profit of NT$763.1 billion on Oct. 15. That was up 68.7% from a year earlier and ahead of analyst estimates. Revenue was about NT$1.49 trillion, and operating margin came in at 58.7%, above the top of the company's guidance. TSMC forecast fourth-quarter revenue of $52.3 billion to $54.3 billion. High-performance computing made up 68% of revenue, and 3-nanometer chips were the largest node at 33%. The company said capital spending from 2026 to 2028 will be significantly higher than in the previous three years. It also said its second Arizona fab is built and being equipped, with mass production expected in the third quarter of 2027, slightly ahead of schedule.

TAIPEI — Israeli security firm Lava says it identified 32 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra B300 GPUs through monitoring endpoints linked to China Telecom, a state-owned carrier, according to Digitimes. U.S. export rules bar sales of the chips to China. Digitimes stresses that the network data does not establish where the processors are physically located. That limit matters because U.S. export controls cover physical chips, not remote access to them. CNBC reported in August that Chinese firms were reportedly using Nvidia compute through Southeast Asian data centers, a route experts called legal under current rules. The Remote Access Security Act would extend controls to cloud access. It passed the House in January but has not cleared the Senate. Nvidia has not been shown to have done anything improper, and the Lava finding has not been independently confirmed.

NEW YORK — News outlets suing OpenAI and Microsoft are citing a recent Third Circuit decision as they oppose the defendants' summary-judgment motions, MLex reported Friday. The appeals court ruled Sept. 29 for Thomson Reuters against Ross Intelligence, according to a litigation tracker. It held that Westlaw headnotes are copyrightable. MLex describes the decision as finding that training AI on copyrighted works was not fair use. The news cases are consolidated in the Southern District of New York. Cross-motions for summary judgment there were filed Sept. 4, and the court has not ruled. The Ross case involved a narrower, non-generative legal-research tool, which OpenAI and Microsoft may argue distinguishes it. The Third Circuit decision is not binding in New York's Second Circuit, though it may carry persuasive weight.

STOCKHOLM — Sweden's Government Offices, which support the prime minister and all ministries, will block ChatGPT and Claude on staff work computers starting Monday, Oct. 26, Sveriges Radio's Ekot reported. Microsoft Copilot stays approved after a security review and tightened settings, though the press office would not describe the changes. Digitalisation director Mikael Wettercrantz told staff that using AI services without a formal agreement can have consequences for information security. Some employees will still reach both models through an AI-assistant platform the government built itself. The Tax Agency and the National Board of Institutional Care already have similar blocks, and the Enforcement Authority is considering one. A Transport Administration audit found about ten open AI services in use. Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic had commented as of Saturday. The block covers work devices, not Swedish citizens or companies.

WASHINGTON — A security researcher says a Chinese-speaking hacker used AI agents to probe more than 1,200 websites and break into over 100 organizations, including Deere and SharkNinja, at a total cost of roughly $5,000, Reuters reported. The account rests on the researcher's analysis. The affected companies' responses and the full scale of any data taken are not detailed in the available summary, and the claims have not been independently verified. The report fits a pattern of AI tooling lowering the cost of intrusion. Dark Reading separately reported that attackers have abused an AI penetration-testing tool called Cairn to automate a large wave of attacks. Banks have also reportedly begun restricting third-party AI agents over security concerns. The Reuters report is from Oct. 19.

A Nature paper, highlighted this week in the journal's News & Views section, reconstructs global monsoon behaviour over 450,000 years using cave stalagmites. Researchers built a rainfall record for the Amazon Basin from stalagmite chemistry and combined it with existing Asian cave records. The combined record shows the world's monsoon system oscillating regularly, with one hemisphere's monsoon strengthening while the other weakens. During warm intervals and periods of warming, however, monsoons in both hemispheres failed for thousands of years. The finding is peer-reviewed and based on past climate records rather than projections for the future. Further detail on the dating and individual cave sites is in the paper itself, which the News & Views piece accompanies.

A paper in Nature Geoscience, published October 20, reports that Antarctica's marine-based ice can begin retreating at lower temperatures than previously assumed when warming is fast. The authors, led by Jan Swierczek-Jereczek with Javier Blasco and Marisa Montoya, used coupled model simulations. They found that when warming outpaces the slow rebound of the solid Earth, delayed bedrock uplift can allow retreat before classical instability thresholds are reached. In East Antarctica, the critical warming thresholds fall by as much as 0.5 kelvin in the simulations. The result comes from computer modelling, not direct observation, and real-world outcomes would depend on emissions pathways and on how the model's treatment of bedrock response holds up. The journal lists the work as open access.

GREENBELT, Md. — NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has finished checkout of its Wide Field Instrument and is now in the last stage of commissioning, the agency reported. After final optical adjustments, the instrument shows an optical error of about 63 nanometers RMS, against a requirement of roughly 90. NASA describes that as nearly 30% better than predicted. Optical systems lead Matthew Bolcar of NASA Goddard credited ground preparation before launch, saying the telescope performed well even before the mirrors were realigned. Engineers are now running test observations of familiar sky regions to calibrate the instruments and tighten image sharpness. Roman launched Aug. 30 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. NASA has said it expects to release its first images by early 2027. It has not given a start date for the science surveys.

LAUREL, Md. — NASA said its Dragonfly rotorcraft has completed its first simulated flight. The test ran in real time on flight-like avionics at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, where the vehicle is being integrated and tested. In the simulation, Dragonfly separated from its protective backshell, flew autonomously over Titan's dunes, scanned the terrain for a safe site, then turned, descended and landed. NASA called it the most comprehensive test to date of the first-flight sequence. The run covered most of the systems and maneuvers the spacecraft will use on arrival at Titan in 2034. Earlier this year, a full-scale parachute drop test of the descent system took place in Eloy, Arizona, on Feb. 11. Dragonfly is meant to make multiple flights between locations on Saturn's largest moon to study its habitability.