A critical security flaw in the programming language underpinning much of the web has prompted a global rush to patch vulnerable systems.

© Vincent West/Reuters

The midterms are the first elections in which artificial intelligence is integrated into every major social media platform. Efforts to blunt its harms are uneven.

© Nicole Craine for The New York Times

Governments and businesses around the world scrambled to prevent hackers from exploiting a vulnerability in PHP, a popular programming language.

© Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Associated Press

The disclosure heightened concerns about A.I.’s potential to upend cybersecurity unless shortcomings are addressed.

© Annegret Hilse/Reuters

• Meta's AI agent, Muse, is unprofitable due to "very high compute costs," CEO Mark Zuckerberg says.
• Meanwhile, Meta expects Reality Labs, its AI glasses division, to lose $15 billion next year.
• The social media giant has a plan to fix that.

Meta says some of its biggest cash incinerators could finally start turning profits.

The social media giant, which generated over 97% of its quarterly revenue from ads, has faced persistent questions from investors about the lack of profitability in its AI and hardware initiatives.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed those concerns head-on during its third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday.

Zuckerberg said that Muse, the AI assistant it launched last month, is unprofitable since it's "very compute intensive to run." Meta expects to start turning that around next year by massively improving Muse's efficiency.

"If compute efficiency continues improving quickly for another few years, which we think is highly likely, then Muse will be highly profitable over multiple years," he said.

Meta plans to make money from Muse by taking a small transaction fee off of purchases it drives, Zuckerberg said at Meta's Connect conference last month.

Zuckerberg added that Muse, which launched only in the US and Canada, wasn't launched globally due in part to the amount of compute it requires. (Meta's North American users are generally its most lucrative.)

Zuckerberg also struck a positive note about its cash-hemorrhaging Reality Labs division, which makes products like Meta Ray-Bans and virtual reality glasses.

Meta expects Reality Labs to narrow its losses to about $15 billion in 2027, down from the $18 to $19 billion it expects to lose this year. The division should start trending toward profitability next year, as Meta's AI systems make it more useful, Zuckerberg said.

"I continue to believe that the path to delivering holographic experience, of bringing together the physical and digital worlds and everyday glasses, will come through VR first," Zuckerberg said.

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Tech stocks are up after the rocket and artificial intelligence company beat earnings estimates — and Elon Musk confirmed it is weighing a deal with Tesla.

© Andres Kudacki for The New York Times

Draft rules on the export of artificial intelligence technology show how China is trying to balance national security risks with its desire to outpace the United States.

© Aly Song/Reuters

Draft rules on the export of artificial intelligence technology show how China is trying to balance national security risks with its desire to outpace the United States.

© Aly Song/Reuters

Saudi officials paid for his wife and son to fly out of the U.S. and offered to cover his bail, according to court filings. A judge ordered the engineer to remain in custody.

© Aaron Wojack for The New York Times

Four years of sanctions have not closed the door through which Russian metal still reaches Europe. The EU imported 1.6 million tons of Russian iron and steel products in the first eight months of 2026, paying 682 million euros, down 54% in value year on year, GMK Center, a Ukraine-based consulting company, reports, citing Eurostat data.

Every euro spent on Russian metal is revenue for a state waging war on Ukraine, and the EU has banned most of it: pig iron, direct-reduced iron, iron ore and ferroalloys. Yet one category still flows almost untouched: semi-finished steel, mostly slabs, which made up 97.8% of the imports, or 1.56 million tons worth 670 million euros.

Volumes dropped 55% year on year after the full ban on Russian pig iron and DRI took effect on 1 January 2026, and no pig iron, ferroalloys, iron ore, or DRI reached the EU from Russia in the period, the center found. Iron ore and ferroalloys fall under sectoral limits, and the largest Russian producers are subject to corporate sanctions.

The slab loophole that keeps the money flowing

Slabs are the gap in the wall. Belgium took 767,700 tons of Russian semi-finished steel, nearly half the EU total, and Italy 191,800 tons, the center said.

Demand still outstrips the rules, with a slab quota for the year to September 2026 standing at nearly 3 million tons and effectively used up within four months, the data showed. Scrap was the only other notable inflow, at 41,300 tons worth 11.7 million euros, down about a third.

A ban that keeps getting postponed

The door is closing slowly, and not without a fight. The quota falls to 2.6 million tons for the year to September 2027, and to 2 million for the following year, the center added, yet attempts to halt Russian slab imports early have failed because the biggest consumer countries lobby against it.

Earlier, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy reported that the EU paid Russia €317 billion in goods since February 2022. The sum is €116 billion more than the €201 billion the bloc extended to Ukraine in financial aid over the same period.

We may not want it to, but A.I. is asking us how to live.

© Tamara Porras for The New York Times

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief rivals have said they won't form a coalition with any Arab-led party after the Oct. 27 election – even if that means months of gridlock and another round of voting.

The Fields Medalist Terence Tao is on the front lines of a debate about artificial intelligence and the future of his field.

© Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times

Mansour Abbas, a dentist-turned-lawmaker, helped oust Benjamin Netanyahu once before. Now, he and a Jewish ex-police commander have teamed up to try to do it again.

© Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times

Augmented reality (AR) can help industrial crews perform tasks more efficiently and consistently, but widespread deployment will depend on demonstrating that productivity gains can be achieved without compromising safety. That’s...

The American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) have signed an agreement to advance the use of nuclear power in commercial shipping, including nuclear-powered vessels,...

ABS and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy have signed a memorandum of understanding to advance modern commercial nuclear technology at sea. The agreement spans floating...

ABS has issued approval in principle (AIP) and completed a basic design review (BDR) for a natural gas liquefaction system developed by Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) for the topside of...

A nuclear-powered LNG carrier could cost roughly 2.5 times as much to build as a conventional vessel, but lower fuel costs could significantly change the economics over the ship’s operating...

Two American charities recently announced a new fund to fight forest fires. They want to raise US$100 million to help countries find fires faster and put them out sooner. But the fund, announced at the UN General Assembly, is limited to South America, home to the Amazon rainforest. Southeast Asia is left out, and so […]

The post Indonesia should have a seat at new forest firefighting fund appeared first on Asia Times.