Tech 4 August 2026

Apple pulled Telegram worldwide over child abuse material. It was back within hours

App review found content violating Apple's rules. Telegram deleted it, banned the account behind it, and the app returned to the store.

For a few hours on Tuesday, Telegram was simply gone from the App Store. Not a regional block, not a server problem. The app stopped being available to download anywhere in the world, with no warning and no immediate word from Apple.

The explanation came afterwards, and it is serious. Apple’s review team found child sexual abuse material in the app, a direct breach of its store rules. The company confirmed it had removed Telegram while the matter was dealt with, and restored it once the developer deleted the content and banned the user who had posted it.

Who noticed and who did not

Only new installs were affected. Anyone who already had Telegram on an iPhone carried on using it throughout. What was suspended was the download and, presumably, updates. For existing users the whole episode passed largely unseen.

Apple states a zero-tolerance position on this category of content in its App Store Review Guidelines, and temporary removal is the standard tool: rather than negotiate, it takes the app off the shelf and puts it back once the problem is fixed. Telegram has tripped over this exact rule before, spending several days out of the store in 2018 for the same reason.

The real subject here is moderation

Telegram grew by championing large channels, encryption and a light touch. That posture attracts users, and it inevitably also attracts people who want to post what no other platform will host. Regulatory pressure on the company is not new, and founder Pavel Durov is facing legal proceedings that put the platform’s moderation squarely at the centre.

For Apple the episode reinforces an argument it makes when defending control of the store: this is what a curated marketplace does when it finds something. The same logic was in play when San Francisco demanded Apple and Google drop AI ‘nudify’ apps. The difference this time is that the removal came from Apple itself, and took hours rather than months.

By Oliver Grant

Image: Yuri Samoilov / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Tech 3 August 2026

Tekever will replace the British Army's Watchkeeper drones in a deal worth up to £400m

The UK Ministry of Defence picked the Portuguese company's AR5 for CORVUS, its new surveillance capability, on a ten-year contract. Production goes to Swindon, engineering to Bristol and Southampton.

The UK Ministry of Defence has selected Tekever to deliver CORVUS, the British Army's new surveillance capability. The contract could reach £400 million, roughly €460 million, over the next ten years. At its heart is the AR5, the Portuguese company's autonomous platform. It replaces Watchkeeper, the drone the British Army has flown for more than a decade, and should start entering service later this year, subject to contract signature and final approvals.…

Tech 2 August 2026

Water-system cyberattacks have now hit seven US states, and the FBI is looking at Iran

Michigan joined Minnesota in reporting hacks on its water systems, with federal officials citing at least seven states. The FBI is investigating a coordinated campaign.

There is one thing almost nobody thinks about protecting and everybody uses before breakfast: the water in the tap. In the United States, that blind spot has just become expensive. Michigan reported cyberattacks on nine of its water systems on Saturday, days after Minnesota counted more than thirty. Federal officials say the problem now spans at least seven states. The FBI is investigating what it calls a coordinated campaign against one of the most basic…

View of the University of Minho's Azurém campus in Guimarães

Tech 2 August 2026

Guimarães is getting Portugal's new advanced computing data centre for €5.1 million

The National Advanced Computing Centre gets a new home on the University of Minho's Azurém campus, with works due to finish in September 2026.

Talk about supercomputers in Portugal and the conversation almost always ends up in Sines, or on Deucalion. But the infrastructure that actually holds up the country's scientific computing is getting a new home somewhere less obvious: the University of Minho's Azurém campus in Guimarães. The National Advanced Computing Centre's new data centre represents a €5.1 million investment, and the build, awarded to the dst group, is due to finish in September…

Tech 2 August 2026

The AI Act now makes chatbots and deepfakes identify themselves, starting today

From 2 August 2026 the AI Act's transparency rules apply across the European Union: chatbots must say they are AI and deepfakes must be labelled. Fines reach 15 million euros or 3% of global annual turnover.

The direct answer: as of today, 2 August 2026, a European chatbot has to tell you it is a chatbot, and a deepfake has to arrive labelled as one. The AI Act's transparency obligations have stopped being a calendar entry and become applicable law — in Portugal as everywhere else in the European Union. Three things changed status in practice. Anyone interacting with an AI system has to be told so, unless it is obvious. Text, images, audio and video generated…

Tech 1 August 2026

Zoox can now charge for rides in a car with no steering wheel, and that has never been allowed in the US before

The US regulator has given Amazon's Zoox the first commercial exemption for a purpose-built autonomous vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals. Paid rides start in Las Vegas.

Anyone who has seen a robotaxi in the wild has seen the same thing: an ordinary car with a steering wheel turning itself, like a scene from a horror film. Zoox never wanted that. It built a pod with no steering wheel, no pedals and no driver's seat — then spent years waiting for American law to let it put the thing to work properly. On 30 July, NHTSA granted Amazon-owned Zoox a commercial exemption allowing it to charge money for rides. It is the first…

Tech 1 August 2026

Apple booked $109.4bn and the stock still fell — the problem is what comes next

Apple closed its fiscal third quarter with $109.4bn in revenue, up 16%, and $29.8bn in profit. It was the guidance for the current quarter that took the shine off.

Some quarters a company beats everybody and loses anyway. That was Apple's: $109.4bn in revenue, up 16% on last year, $29.8bn in profit and earnings per share of $2.02 against the roughly $1.89 analysts had penciled in. The stock dropped the moment the market got to the second half of the release. $109.4bn, driven mainly by iPhone and Mac, with profit growing faster than revenue. It is the kind of quarter any company would sign for sight unseen. Because…

Tech 31 July 2026

PlayStation boxes will have no disc inside them from 2028

Sony has confirmed that PlayStation games sold in shops will contain only a download code from 2028. The box stays, the disc goes.

There will still be PlayStation boxes on the shelf. From 2028, though, when you open one at home there will be no disc inside — just a slip of paper with a code on it. Sony has confirmed the plan and shows no appetite for reversing it. Publishers can keep shipping packaging to retailers, physical shops keep their shelf space, and what is inside becomes a download voucher. Because the argument was settled a while ago. Around 80% of PlayStation 5 games are…

Tech 31 July 2026

Instituto Superior Tecnico is getting a 6.9 million euro AI and digital economy centre

The government cleared Lisbon's Instituto Superior Tecnico to spend up to 6.88 million euros rebuilding the Jardim Sul block on its Alameda campus to house the AIDE centre.

Portugal mostly argues about artificial intelligence in infrastructure terms — data centres, power, cables. This week a different piece of the puzzle turned up, and it is usually the missing one: an actual building where somebody works on this every day. It is the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and the Digital Economy, and it will occupy the Jardim Sul block on Instituto Superior Tecnico's Alameda campus. On Thursday the Council of Ministers approved…

Tech 31 July 2026

Tesla opened its Superchargers for free to people fleeing the wildfires

Tesla made charging free at five stations around Bordeaux and four in Spain, inside the areas evacuated because of the wildfires. The measure runs at least until 5 August.

People running from a wildfire rarely have time to think about battery percentage. That is the gap Tesla decided to plug: since midnight on 29 July, charging has been free at five Superchargers around Bordeaux — Arès, Bègles, Biganos, Bordeaux-Lac and Mérignac — and the measure holds at least until 5 August. In France, at the five sites above, all inside or around the Gironde evacuation perimeter. In Spain, the company switched on the same waiver at…

Tech 30 July 2026

Europe's AI gigafactories are open for bids, and Portugal is in the race with Sines

The European Commission has formally launched the call for seven AI gigafactories, with roughly 30 billion euros in play. Portugal is co-funding it and backing an Iberian bid anchored in Sines.

After months of talking about it, Europe has finally put the thing on paper. The European Commission has formally opened the call to build seven artificial intelligence gigafactories across the continent, an operation expected to mobilise something in the region of 30 billion euros. And Portugal is not watching this one from the stands. It is Europe's answer to the muscle problem. These are industrial-scale computing sites, tens of thousands of…

Tech 30 July 2026

More than a thousand OpenAI, Google and Meta staff signed a letter asking for a brake on AI

The Pacing the Frontier letter, signed by over 1,100 AI lab employees, asks Washington to build the tools for a coordinated, verifiable slowdown in AI development.

The people building the machines are asking for a brake. An open letter that began circulating on 28 July has gathered more than 1,100 signatures from employees at OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta, and it asks the US government to help assemble what they call a pacing mechanism for artificial intelligence. Not for anything to be switched off tomorrow. It asks for infrastructure: the technical tools and the governance rules that would make it possible,…

Tech 29 July 2026

Tim Cook is stepping back and John Ternus takes over Apple on 1 September

Tim Cook stops being Apple's CEO on 1 September and becomes executive chairman. The new chief executive is John Ternus, the engineer who has shaped Apple hardware for 25 years.

It had been hanging in the air for months, and now it has a date. Apple confirmed on Monday that Tim Cook leaves the chief executive job on 1 September, after fifteen years running the most closely watched company on earth. He is not going home, though: he becomes executive chairman of the board. The person taking the main chair is John Ternus. Apple went out of its way to say this was not a shock. It described the change as the outcome of long-term…

Tech 29 July 2026

China is now building its own lithography machines, and Europe is the one getting nervous

Beijing has begun scale production of domestic immersion DUV lithography tools, the equipment the Netherlands' ASML dominates. An EU-funded report warns of a gloomy future for European chipmaking.

For years the short answer to why China could not make leading-edge chips fitted in one word: lithography. It is the machine that prints circuits onto silicon, it costs tens of millions, and almost the entire world buys it from the Dutch firm ASML. Without one, no fab is worth anything. That short answer has just got more complicated. China this year began producing domestic immersion DUV lithography machines at scale — not the cutting-edge EUV tools, but…

Tech 28 July 2026

Anthropic shipped Claude Opus 5 at half the price of its top model, and that lands squarely on whoever pays the bill

Anthropic's new model arrived on 24 July priced at 5 dollars per million input tokens and 25 per million output, roughly half of Claude Fable 5. It becomes the default model on the Max plan.

Anthropic launched Claude Opus 5 on 24 July, and the pitch isn't raw intelligence — it's the invoice. The model costs 5 dollars per million input tokens and 25 per million output, roughly half what you pay for Claude Fable 5, the flagship released in June. Opus 5 replaces May's Opus 4.8, and the company describes it as more efficient and better at checking its own work — able to change course mid-task rather than confidently handing over a wrong answer.…