Blog

WAITER, THERE’S AN EGG IN MY COKE! UK food delivery app Just Eat has been testing AI to make pictures for menu items that didn’t have photos yet, the BBC reported. It went about as well as you’d think.

A Belfast cafe’s bacon and egg soda bread showed up as a glass of fizzy drink with a cooked egg and bacon floating in it. Other dishes came out as chips poking out of muffins. A “cheese roll” became slabs of cheese rolled up like sushi. And thanks to a misspelling, one garlic bread came out shaped like a plane, presumably because someone meant “plain.”

Users on the Just Eat UK subreddit have spent days posting the best of the worst. The AI pictures carry a label saying so, and the BBC spotted many of the stranger ones still on menus.

A Just Eat spokesperson said the company is “in the process of removing” the bad images and will stop making more until the AI is further developed. “We’ve been trialling AI-enhanced images, and as with any new technology, it isn’t always quite right the first time,” they said, adding that it works with tens of thousands of small restaurants on photos, including funding professional local photographers.

One social media user summed it up: “Well, that lot just helped my diet.” Another made the real point: they want to see what the food actually looks like, because perfect AI versions “just lead to disappointment.”

Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News

Is the door creaking open? Russia is “ready in principle” to restart talks with the US and Ukraine on ending the war, Vladimir Putin’s top aide Yuri Ushakov said Wednesday, the BBC reported. He spoke after Putin met Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg.

Ushakov suggested a new round around 10 November in Abu Dhabi. A US official told the BBC that Witkoff and Jared Kushner had proposed a technical-level three-way meeting, which Ukraine accepted in Oslo on Tuesday and Russia accepted on Wednesday. Zelensky said the US wants it “as soon as possible” and “we are in favour of it.” The talks have been frozen since February.

Don’t pop the champagne. Ushakov called the ideas Witkoff brought “not very useful,” and said the talks must focus on “building a security system for Russia and Ukraine after the end of the conflict.” He also said Putin insists his troops are advancing everywhere on the front, a claim Ukraine and its European allies dispute, pointing to a near stalemate.

Zelensky, meanwhile, told Fox News he would accept freezing the war along the current front line. “Freeze and stop,” he said, with security guarantees to be discussed after.

All of this lands in the middle of a nasty row between Kyiv and Washington. Trump has said it is time for Ukraine to get a new president. Kyiv accused the US of withholding missile-warning intelligence, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio called “scandalous,” and Zelensky now says the sharing “works now.” Witkoff called Wednesday’s talks “constructive.” Kushner: “There is still hard work ahead.” You can say that again.

Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News

THE BIGGEST ONE YET! A judge in New Mexico on Wednesday ordered Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to pay $25 billion, the BBC reported. It is the largest fine ever levied against the company for its business practices.

It follows a two-week trial earlier this year that found Meta spent years lying to the public about how it handled Facebook user data. The case grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The state also accused Meta of misleading people about how it profited from hate speech and how it enforced its own rules, and the jury agreed on those claims too. Jurors found Meta broke state law more than 40 million times.

Judge Francis Mathew called the violations “willful” and said they spanned “more than 11 years,” from 2010 to 2021. He wrote that communications between senior executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, were “designed to mislead the public.” “The lies extend beyond Facebook’s data practices as well,” he said, going to “the heart of Facebook’s core business practices.”

Get this: the full penalty was calculated at $219 billion. The judge cut it to $25 billion, roughly what Meta earns in profit each quarter. The state had asked for up to $40 billion. Meta argued anything over $3.4 billion would be unconstitutional.

Meta’s top lawyer CJ Mahoney said the ruling makes it “all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico,” called the suit “a tax on speech,” and said Meta will appeal and win. Attorney General Raúl Torrez fired back: “No corporation is too powerful to be held accountable.” For scale, the FTC’s 2019 privacy fine was $5 billion. This one is five times that.

Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News

Two trillion-dollar giants, one CEO, and now a very big question. Elon Musk says he is actively considering merging Tesla and SpaceX, the BBC reported. “Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes,” he said on Tuesday’s call about SpaceX’s quarterly results.

Musk said both companies have formed special committees of independent directors to study the idea. “The special committees have not reached agreement on terms of any transaction and there’s no guarantee that they will,” he said. “But I do think there is a lot of merit to merging and a lot to be gained.” He also warned, per NBC News, that “some people out there assume that a SpaceX and Tesla merger is a certainty, and I think that would be overstating it.”

The size is BONKERS. The BBC puts Tesla at roughly $1.5 trillion and SpaceX at $2 trillion, which would make it one of the largest mergers in history. Musk calls himself a “conflicted party,” says he isn’t on either committee, and compared even talking about it to “tap dancing through a minefield.”

The hurdle: at least 50% of Tesla’s shareholders would need to approve, which Musk called “quite a high hurdle to achieve.” His pitch is chips, AI and software, plus Terafab, the chipmaking effort the two companies already share.

Wall Street liked the sound of it. SpaceX shares rose 8% after hours and Tesla gained 2%, per the BBC. SpaceX posted a $4.4 billion profit for the latest quarter, though it lost $1.1 billion over the first nine months of the year. Tesla reports its own results Wednesday. Grab the popcorn.

Featured image: editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News; NBC News

He’s coming home. Russia has released Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old American and former teacher from Michigan, as President Vladimir Putin met US envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg on Wednesday, the BBC reported.

Putin delivered the news right at the top of the meeting. “He is at Pulkovo Airport,” he told Witkoff in front of the cameras, Axios reported. President Trump then posted that Hubbard was “on his way back home” and that “there was no ‘swap’ necessary,” saying the release followed a request he “made directly” to Putin last week. Some earlier releases of Americans from Russia came through prisoner swaps.

Hubbard was captured by Russian forces in Izyum, Ukraine, shortly after the 2022 full-scale invasion. He was accused of serving in a defence unit there and was sentenced in 2024 to almost seven years in a penal colony. The State Department had classified him as “wrongfully detained.” CBS News reported he had been in poor health and was expected to be flown to Texas for treatment.

And the politics? Witkoff gushed: “You are a humanitarian also sir, and I salute that.” He also asked Putin to consider renewing three-way peace talks with Ukraine and thanked him for a deal to import Russian diesel. Trump suggested that if sanctions had gone ahead, Hubbard talks “would have come to a complete and total halt.” AP noted the release comes as Trump has taken a series of actions meant to benefit Moscow.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote that “much depends on whether the American side can hear something new from Russia today – about peace, and not about continuing the war.” One man is free. The war grinds on into its fifth year.

Featured image: editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News; AP; Axios

Webmasters, put the coffee down. Organizations that run on the PHP programming language are being told to install a critical update TODAY or think about taking their websites offline, the BBC reported.

The PHP security team gave advance notice on Tuesday of a security release fixing two critical vulnerabilities, both rated 9.2 on the CVSS v4.0 scale, per PHP.net. The release was scheduled for Wednesday at 14:00 UTC (9am Central), and the team said it could ship earlier if details went public or attacks showed up in the wild.

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre did not mince words: “Where immediate remediation is not feasible, organisations should consider taking the system offline until it can be fully mitigated,” it said in an alert. Its counterparts in the EU and Australia issued similar warnings. CERT-EU said the risk scores “indicate the potential for unauthenticated remote code execution,” meaning attackers could potentially install malware and take sites down.

Some aren’t waiting around. The Netherlands’ cyber-security agency says it is taking its own website offline, and the BBC reports the sites of a Dutch public health agency and the lower house of parliament went dark too. Cloudflare CTO Dane Knecht said he was “seeing early attacks emerging.”

Why should YOU care? “PHP is everywhere. It quietly powers WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Magento sites, shared hosting platforms, control panels,” security firm Huntress said. CERT-EU said the flaws could affect every version back to PHP 5, which launched in 2004. Exact affected and fixed versions are due with the release, so check with your host. Yes, we’re looking at our own server too.

Featured image: editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News; UK NCSC; PHP.net; also reported by The Verge

This one is grim, and the world needs to look at it. Sudan’s army is accused of a wave of drone strikes that reportedly killed more than 300 people, including dozens travelling to a funeral, the BBC reported.

On Sunday evening in West Kordofan state, sources told the Sudan War Observatory, a conflict monitor, that 150 people were killed. A truck carrying about 200 mourners was hit as it arrived in the town of Al-Dabab. The group says 145 people died there and five more were killed when a funeral tent was hit, with another 150 injured. A market in Al-Mujlad was also bombed that evening, with the toll not yet known.

Then on Monday, drones hit Amiet Market near Abyei, the disputed border area that Sudan and South Sudan jointly administer. The region’s information minister, Yohana Akol Ngor, told AP and Reuters the death toll had risen from 73 to 153. “It is a horrible and shocking situation,” AP quoted him as saying. A military source told the BBC the army carried out the Abyei attack, calling the market a fuel supply site for the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

And this: UN peacekeepers have been in Abyei since 2011, with more than 2,800 uniformed personnel deployed now. “Our area is a weapons-free zone under United Nations protection, yet it was targeted by drones,” one trader told the BBC. BBC Verify’s review of satellite images shows extensive burnt buildings in part of the market. South Sudan has summoned Sudan’s ambassador to protest.

The army hasn’t answered the West Kordofan allegations but says it does not attack civilians. Meanwhile the UN says 20 million people face acute hunger. The war has killed hundreds of thousands and driven more than 14 million from their homes, and drones from foreign suppliers keep pouring in despite a partial arms embargo.

Featured image: editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News

Somebody check the plug! Google Cloud says it has fixed an outage at its London cloud region that hit UK banks, businesses and even the courts on Tuesday, the BBC reported.

Google said the trouble came from a “power event” at a third-party facility in its europe-west2 region, inside one of its smaller data center zones, europe-west2-b. Earlier in the day, its status page described “elevated errors and intermittent network failures.” Google apologized and says it will publish an analysis of what went wrong.

The fallout was real. Revolut, Lloyds Bank and HSBC confirmed disruption after thousands of user complaints, and more than 1,500 reports about Revolut alone hit an outage tracker shortly after 8am UK time. Customers also flagged problems with Royal Mail, DPD and e-bike service Forest. HM Courts and Tribunals Service said the video platform used for remote hearings was affected.

One Revolut customer in Glasgow told the BBC she couldn’t pay for parking at a shopping center. A small veg-box business in Preston said it couldn’t download orders or book parcels, and lost sales while customers couldn’t reach its website. Revolut says services are fully restored and money and data “remained safe throughout.”

The timing is almost comical: the BBC notes it came exactly ONE YEAR after an AWS outage knocked more than 1,000 sites offline, UK banks included. “Google Cloud’s outage is a reminder of how deeply our economies depend on just a handful of cloud providers,” said Prof Feng Li of Bayes Business School. One power hiccup, and a chunk of the country can’t pay for parking. Resilient!

Featured image: editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: BBC News; also reported by the Guardian

It only took about SIX YEARS. The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday signed off on the Boeing 737 Max 10, CNBC reported. It’s the largest jet in the Max family and the last one to win government approval.

The Max 10 was supposed to start flying in 2020. Then came extra scrutiny after the two Max crashes in 2018 and 2019, other safety problems, and required engineering changes, including to an anti-icing system for the engines. The green light also comes weeks after federal officials reviewed a navigation system glitch on the plane and decided it was not a safety-of-flight issue.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford: “The FAA’s decision follows a thorough review of the aircraft’s design and safety requirements. We will continue to hold Boeing to the highest safety standards.”

This is a BIG deal for Boeing’s wallet. CEO Kelly Ortberg said in September that Max 10 orders make up about 30% of the company’s backlog, and customers include Alaska, American, United and Delta. Airlines pay most of a jet’s price on delivery, which is why Boeing has been racing to ramp up production. It opened a fourth 737 Max line in Everett, Washington, in July.

How long was the wait? United CEO Scott Kirby told CNBC in August that the lie-flat seats the airline bought for the plane no longer make sense and are sitting in a warehouse. Don’t book your Max 10 seat yet, either: airlines can start flying certified planes soon, but working them into schedules can take months. The smaller Max 7 was approved in early August.

Featured image: editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.

Sources: CNBC

What happens in Vegas does NOT stay in Vegas when you grab the flamingo. A Canadian tourist, Mitchell Fairbarn, has been found guilty of animal cruelty after taking a Chilean flamingo named Peachy from its enclosure and bringing it back to his hotel room, the BBC reported.

It happened in March at the Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel and Casino, which has a free walk-through wildlife habitat with a flock of Chilean flamingos. Trial videos showed a smiling Fairbarn carrying the bird by the neck as he rode a lift up to his room.

His defense? Booze. Fairbarn, 34, testified he’d downed 30 to 40 beers and thought it would be “funny.” FOX5 Las Vegas reported he called it a drunken “silly pranky joke” and denied any intent to hurt or kill the bird. His own lawyer, Josh Tomsheck, didn’t exactly sugarcoat it: “The truth is, Mitch was drunk. Mitch was stupid. He made bad decisions.”

The jury wasn’t laughing. Animal experts testified Peachy had feathers torn out and suffered blood loss. After hearing 14 witnesses and reviewing more than 112 pieces of evidence, jurors took about five hours to convict him on felony and misdemeanour animal abuse charges, the BBC reported. He faces nearly five years in prison, with sentencing set for Dec. 1, according to FOX5.

The good news: a state veterinarian said Peachy has largely recovered, though the bird now has a more anxious demeanour around humans. Can you blame it?

Sources: BBC — Tourist found guilty after stealing Las Vegas flamingo from enclosure (Oct. 20, 2026) · FOX5 Las Vegas — Man accused of stealing Las Vegas flamingo found guilty (Oct. 19, 2026)

Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.