Tech News Roundup — September 14, 2026 (PM)
Anthropic’s disclosure that criminals weaponized its own Claude models to scan nearly two million Android apps for exploitable flaws anchors this edition, landing right as Microsoft and Anthropic’s leadership both push public statements on reining in AI development. Elsewhere, Microsoft widens its AI-model buffet with Grok, Spain waves through its first driverless robotaxi pilot, and the Linux kernel closes out a three-year-old data-loss bug while quietly getting faster to build.
Hackers used Claude to scan 1.8 million Android apps for exploits
AI is now doing reconnaissance for cybercriminals, and Anthropic has the receipts. A new Anthropic report describes a case researchers call “particularly concerning”: attackers used Claude to automate analysis of 1.8 million Android applications, hunting for vulnerabilities and weak points to exploit at a scale no human red team could match manually. The finding is the latest example of large language models being repurposed as attack tooling rather than just being attacked themselves, and it lands as AI labs face mounting pressure to explain how they’re limiting misuse of increasingly capable models.
Microsoft and Anthropic both say the industry needs to slow down
Two of the biggest names in AI spent the weekend arguing for restraint. Microsoft published a 37-page “humanist AI code of conduct” declaring that “people matter more than AI,” stating that its models are not conscious and should not be designed to imitate consciousness, and rejecting any pursuit of legal personhood for AI systems. The document arrives days after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for a coordinated industry-wide slowdown in AI development, warning that model capability could soon outpace the industry’s ability to safely deploy, verify, and control increasingly autonomous AI agents. [The Verge] covered both moves as part of a broader safety reckoning taking hold across the major labs.
Grok arrives in Microsoft Copilot, but not in the EU yet
Microsoft keeps adding rival AI models to Copilot instead of building everything in-house. xAI’s Grok models are joining Microsoft’s Online Services Subprocessor list, with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint users in the Microsoft Frontier Program able to test them now ahead of a broader rollout. Microsoft frames this as a “multi-model strategy” that keeps customers inside the familiar Copilot experience while giving them a choice of underlying model — Copilot’s Researcher Agent already runs on Anthropic’s Claude, for instance. During testing, Grok will not be available to users in the European Union, the European Free Trade Association, or the United Kingdom, and organization admins will need to explicitly enable it in their settings once it ships more broadly.
Spain approves its first Level 4 robotaxi trial
Driverless ride-hailing is officially testing on Spanish roads for the first time. Spain’s traffic authority, the DGT, granted AVOMO Cars — a joint venture between WeRide and Uber — the country’s first national authorization to test Level 4 autonomous passenger vehicles. The approval follows a broader push by WeRide and Uber to expand robotaxi operations beyond their existing markets, and marks Spain’s entry into a small but growing club of countries permitting driverless ride-hailing pilots on public roads.
Cities are ditching Flock’s license-plate cameras, but the data doesn’t just disappear
Local governments are cancelling contracts with Flock, the AI-powered license-plate-reader company, faster than they can figure out what happens to the data already collected. Florida has banned Flock readers on state highways and jurisdictions from Washington state to North Carolina have cancelled their contracts amid public outcry over the surveillance network. But ending a contract doesn’t mean the cameras come down immediately, and many agreements let Flock retain previously gathered data long after a city walks away — leaving open questions about who controls the footage even after the cameras are gone. [The Verge] has the full breakdown of what “de-Flocking” actually involves.
Linux kernel closes a three-year-old data-loss bug and gets faster to build
Two separate kernel fixes landed this week that matter for very different reasons. A fix merged after the Linux 7.3-rc3 release addresses a silent user-space data-loss bug that has existed in the kernel for three years, finally closing a defect serious enough that data could vanish without any error being surfaced. Separately, a second revision of a patch series aimed at eliminating “hideous code” and single-threaded bottlenecks in the kernel build process hit the mailing list, with maintainers hoping it lands in Linux 7.4 — early testing suggests full kernel builds could get roughly 36% faster and incremental builds up to 70% faster, with AI-assisted analysis credited for helping track down the bottlenecks.
Renault’s electric Trafic van promises 470 km of range
Renault is doubling down on electric vans as it expands its commercial-vehicle lineup. The new Trafic Van E-Tech Electric debuted at IAA Transportation 2026 in Hannover, promising up to 470 km of range and ultra-fast charging as part of Renault’s wider electrification strategy for its commercial fleet. The launch positions Renault against a growing field of electric van rivals racing to win over fleet operators looking to cut fuel costs and emissions.
In Brief
- A hidden Windows 11 power plan for maximum performance. Windows 11 includes an advanced power profile, absent from the default menu, that Microsoft has quietly offered users for years to unlock extra performance on laptops and desktops beyond the standard balanced and performance modes.
- Are refurbished smartphones worth it? A flagship phone no longer has to mean spending over €1,000 — refurbished devices are an increasingly attractive alternative for buyers who don’t need to be the first to open the box.
- Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance DLC trailers cover Heavy Bowgun, Lance, and Switch Axe. The latest weapon trailers add a laser-firing Boost Driver and an Overcharge mechanic to the Heavy Bowgun, among other changes across three weapon types ahead of the expansion’s launch.
- Guns of Eschaton debuted a new trailer at Gamescom 2026. The soulslike FPS from Eschatology Entertainment blends fast-paced gunplay with punishing, precision-driven combat where every bullet counts.
Compiled from the TT-RSS Tech category feeds: Pplware, The Verge, Windows Central, and Phoronix.