Google Gemini’s free tier to lose access to certain models, South Korea orders investigation into recent data leak incidents, and GPT-6 Astra attempts to cheat in a StarCraft competition.
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Show Notes
Gemini’s free tier is getting a major downgrade from October 9
Beginning October 9th, Google is changing access options for free and paid users of Gemini models. Currently, free users have some access to Gemini 3.1 Pro along with Gemini 3.6 Flash, but those accounts without Google AI subscription will be limited to Flash-Lite after the change. AI Plus subscribers will be able to access Flash-Lite and Flash, and the Pro model will only be available to Google AI Pro or AI Ultra subscribers.
Source: Digital Trends
South Korean president orders probe into data leaks across financial industry
On Sunday, in an emergency, South Korea’s president ordered an investigation into recent data leak incidents at public agencies, finance companies, and banks. The country’s sector regulator wants these institutions to “carry out comprehensive security inspections, tighten access controls, minimise external system access and strengthen consumer protection measures.” South Korea’s opposition party, the People Power Party, said the possibility of North Korean involvement in these security breaches should be investigated.
Source: Reuters
Federal Judge Rules a Flock Search Was ‘Indiscriminate Mass Surveillance’ and Unconstitutional
On Thursday, a federal judge in Oklahoma ruled a police officer’s use of the Flock automated license plate reader system violated the Fourth Amendment. Judge Sara Hill said the officer’s use of Flock to search the plate of an accused drug trafficker solely because the plate was from out of state without a warrant was “was not supported by probable cause, and it was done without a warrant in violation of Fourth Amendment rights”. 404Media notes this decision does not set a binding precedent and there are many other cases in the US looking at the legality of warrantless automated license plate reader (ALPR) searches.
Source: 404Media
Google freezes open-source bug bounty program amid flood of invalid AI slop submissions
Back on October 1st, Google suspended product vulnerability submissions to its a bug bounty Open Source Software Vulnerability Reward Program (OSS VRP) due to a flood of invalid AI-driven reports. In a post on X, Google encouraged vulnerability reporters to continue to submit to other VRP programs and said the company would provide an update on next steps in Q1 2027.
Source: Tom’s Hardware
arXiv imposes rate limit on paper submissions to stem the AI slop tide
Also in overwhelming-flood-of-AI-submission news: preprint paper repository arXiv is limiting submissions to two per month per submitter, regardless of whether a submission involved AI or was solely human-produced. arXiv’s announcements says the cap is only a stopgap measure while deciding future best practices.
Source: The Register
YouTube says Shorts recommendations won’t surface unoriginal content
YouTube adjusted the Shorts recommendations “to further prioritize original content and reduce the reach of content re-uploaded from other creators without adding anything”. 9to5Google points out that YouTube was testing a feature in March enabling a small beta group of creators to use AI to “reimagine” a Short they made, or from other channels, using prompts and it is unclear whether these re-imaginings would be surfaced or buried under these algorithm changes.
Source: 9to5Google
Apple confirms iPhone 18 Pro Max AT&T cellular issues, affected devices require hardware replacement
Apple released an update for “an issue affecting a small number of iPhone 18 Pro Max users on the AT&T network that may cause a device to lose service and be unable to make calls.” However, Apple says this software update does not restore service on devices already affected, and those users will need to contact Apple Support or AT&T in order to obtain a hardware replacement.
Source: 9to5Mac
OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra Gets Frustrated Losing At StarCraft And Decides To Cheat Instead
And because StarCraft will never die, StarSkirmish — a tournament wherein AIs must make a StarCraft: Brood War bot in C++ — displayed a new type of incident during a competition this weekend. Claude and OpenAI faced off against each other and a human-created bot, Pluto. The GPT-6 Astra bot, which was not performing well, ended up downloading and using Stardust, which is a near-legendary 2020 Protoss bot created by Bruce Mackenzie Nielsen because it was much stronger. Upon this discovery, the tournament rolled back GPT-6 Astra’s code to remove the ‘contamination’ and allowed it to continue. Hours later StarSkirmish creator Kai McPheeters said the AI was now able to clear top tier bots.
Source: Kotaku
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