TechCapsules

A Delaware jury ruled that Arm breached a licensing agreement with Qualcomm and interfered with its business relationships, awarding Qualcomm $1 in damages per offense, totaling $2. The case stemmed from Qualcomm’s claims that Arm, after acquiring Nuvia in 2021, withheld chip‑testing tools and threatened to terminate a key license, allegedly damaging a $170 million deal with Meta. Arm denied the allegations, asserting it acted in good faith. The verdict may lead to further litigation over royalty payments [...]

NGINX released versions 1.30.6 and 1.31.7 on October 14 to address five vulnerabilities, including a long‑standing memory bug and a TLS flaw that could bypass client‑certificate checks. The memory bugs could crash worker processes or enable code execution under specific configurations. The TLS issue involved uninitialized session‑ticket keys, potentially allowing forged sessions. An HTTP/3 flaw let clients inject extra bytes into requests. All five issues required particular directives to be exploitable, and NGINX rated them medium severity.

D‑Wave has delivered its Advantage2 annealing quantum computer, named VoltaB1, to Villa Saporiti in Como, Lombardy, Italy, under a €10 million agreement with Swiss Quantum Technology SA. The 4,400‑qubit system will be installed and later accessed via D‑Wave’s Leap cloud service, providing European researchers, universities, and businesses with production‑grade quantum computing for optimization, materials simulation, and industrial workloads. The arrival marks a key milestone for Q‑Alliance’s effort to establish Italy’s quantum infrastructure and will be formally inaugurated on October 16. [...]

Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, released to critical acclaim, underwent extensive design iterations before settling on a fast‑paced, action‑heavy style distinct from its earlier, slower Dark Souls‑inspired prototypes. Evil Empire’s Ben Laulan explained that the initial versions felt too intense and sluggish for the series, prompting a shift toward quicker traversal and combat. The final product blends rapid movement with classic Castlevania puzzles and storytelling, earning a 4/5 rating for its gothic atmosphere and challenging gameplay.

Google has upgraded its AI Mode and AI Overview features to make links more visible and engaging. Inline links will now appear higher in responses more often, while end-of-answer links will feature enhanced design and image thumbnails in the “Dive Deeper” section. The company is expanding prominent carousels for timely articles and Preferred Sources to additional languages and regions, following a seven‑fold increase in customization usage. New tests include a top‑section for authoritative sites and clickable creator [...]

HEIDENHAIN, a German precision‑motion company, showcased its METIS HP air‑bearing XY stage at SEMICON Taiwan, highlighting sub‑50 nm accuracy for advanced semiconductor packaging. The stage, featuring multi‑degree‑of‑freedom encoders and ironless, water‑cooled motors, delivers ±150 nm precision over a 600 mm × 600 mm travel and ±150 nm dynamic straightness at 1 m/s. CEO David Doyle emphasized the shift of front‑end motion control into back‑end packaging, noting the system’s rapid settling and vibration isolation as key to higher throughput. [...]

Anderon, a pure‑play quantum foundry backed by $2 billion and U.S. Commerce support, has released its first superconducting quantum Process Design Kit (PDK) for 300 mm wafer fabrication. The kit, based on IBM’s licensed qubit process, supplies standardized design rules, component models, and verified building blocks to bridge custom device design with industrial‑scale production at the Albany NanoTech Complex. The facility has processed over 10,000 300 mm superconducting wafers and plans to expand its portfolio to include spin‑qubit modalities. [...]

Daniel Rubino, Editor‑in‑Chief of Windows Central, has a diverse career spanning medical science, emergency services, and media. He began covering Microsoft in 2007, led the site as editor‑in‑chief from 2010, became executive editor in 2020, and returned to the top role in 2022. Rubino also hosts podcasts, runs a YouTube channel, and reviews laptops, with a particular focus on 2‑in‑1 convertibles, ARM processors, and thin‑and‑light PCs. His academic background includes degrees in political science, linguistics, and neurology [...]