Google Play Store has always been the place to find apps that other people make. Now, Google wants it to be the place where you run the apps you make yourself. The company has announced a bunch of updates, and the biggest one lets you turn your own idea into a working app.

How do you build your own app?

You can use Google AI Studio to vibe code a custom Android app. Once it’s ready, Google Play lets you install it on your own phone. The best part is that you don’t need a developer account, as your regular Google account is enough.

These personal apps remain private and won’t appear in the public Play Store. The feature is available starting today in a few markets, including the US, for users who are 18 or older.

In the coming months, you will also be able to share your apps with friends and family. If your creation turns out to be a hit, you can upgrade to a professional developer account and release it to everyone. However, your app will then go through Google’s usual safety and quality checks, just like any other app.

I love this idea. How many times have you searched for an app that does one specific thing, only to find bloated options that do everything else? Now you can build it yourself.

What else is new in Google Play?

Apart from AI app creation, Google has added a bunch of other handy features. Gamers get a new Game Finder powered by something called Gamer DNA. It studies your play habits along with any preferences you add, then suggests games that fit what you like to play instead of just what’s popular. It’s available in English for US users today.

You can also put together lists of your favorite games with Game Playlists. Then there are Sprints, which are 48-hour mini challenges where you’re matched in groups of two to five players for quick contests. Google is also bringing PC hits like Dave the Diver to Play, and upcoming titles like REPLACED will let you switch between mobile and PC with cloud saves.

Finally, Ask Play can now compare apps side by side, explaining how they differ and what people think of them. If you often struggle to pick between two similar apps, this should save you some time.

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Executives from NTT Data, Brookfield and Infosys say electricity and skilled labour, not chips, now limit how fast AI data centres get built. In Europe the binding constraint is worse, with grid connections in congested markets running to ten years.

The thing slowing the AI buildout is no longer the chips. Executives running some of the world’s largest data centre operations say it is electricity and people.

They spoke at Bloomberg’s New Economy Forum in New Delhi on Tuesday, Bloomberg reported. NTT Data’s chief executive Abhijit Dubey called talent the bottleneck nobody talks about.

European operators said the same in July. A survey of 300 data centre decision-makers in the UK, Ireland and the Nordics put power availability and skills shortages among the leading obstacles.

Dubey put a price on the labour. An electrician in the US now earns about $200,000, he said, and sourcing the right equipment can take as long as 42 weeks.

Europe’s wait is longer. Grid connections in congested markets run to ten years or more, with Amsterdam at about a decade and Frankfurt waiting on upgrades until the 2030s.

Denmark stopped taking bookings. Its grid operator paused new connections in March with roughly 60GW of projects queued against peak demand near 7GW.

On money the panel split from this week’s other big voice. Dubey said capital is not an issue, a day after Broadcom’s chief executive said capital might be the biggest constraint of all.

Demand will outstrip supply past the end of the decade, said Connor Teskey, who runs Brookfield Asset Management. The bottleneck, he said, is who can pull these projects out of the ground.

Teskey also rejected the bubble case, saying most of the infrastructure sits behind long take-or-pay contracts with strong corporate credit. Hours earlier the IMF had called similar revenue commitments wrong-way risk.

Its Global Financial Stability Report counted 14 circular deals since 2023, about $300B of equity and $650B of debt placed into weaker AI firms, securing $1.4T of future revenue promises.

Infosys sees a third risk. Salil Parekh pointed to the backlash in Western markets, and in Scotland the governing party has voted to freeze all new builds.

That resolution counts 24 hyperscale projects at various planning stages, which together would draw more than 1.5 times Scotland’s peak power demand. Ministers have not decided.

Refusals are adding up elsewhere. Dublin turned down a Google data centre over energy, and grassroots opposition blocked $130B of US projects in the first quarter alone.

If you’re in the market for a new laptop, HP has just announced a range of festive offers. The offers include bank cashback, exchange benefits, discounted accessories, and extended warranty packages on its OmniBook AI laptops, Omen and Victus gaming laptops, and Smart Tank printers. The festive deals are available at HP World stores, authorized offline retailers, and the HP Online Store until November 10, 2026. Buyers can also get discounted subscriptions to several AI platforms when they purchase select HP laptops.

HP OmniBook Offers

Customers purchasing an HP OmniBook Ultra or OmniBook X laptop can get up to Rs 18,000 in cashback through participating banks. HP is also offering exchange benefits through Cashify for customers trading in an older HP laptop. The OmniBook Ultra comes with exchange benefits worth up to Rs 20,000, while OmniBook X buyers can get benefits worth up to Rs 15,000.

HP is also offering a Da Milano combo worth Rs 10,999 for Rs 499 with either laptop. Customers can also buy an additional protection package for Rs 4,999, which includes a two-year extended warranty, accidental damage protection, and antivirus software.

Meanwhile, the HP OmniBook 7, OmniBook 5, and OmniBook 3 also qualify for festive discounts. Buyers can get up to Rs 12,000 in bank cashback on these laptops. Exchange benefits vary by model. Customers purchasing an OmniBook 7 can get benefits worth up to Rs 10,000 through Cashify when exchanging an older HP laptop. The maximum exchange benefit drops to Rs 7,000 for the OmniBook 5 and Rs 5,000 for the OmniBook 3.

OmniBook 7 buyers can get a two-year extended warranty, accidental damage protection, and antivirus software for Rs 3,999. The same package costs Rs 2,999 for the OmniBook 5 and OmniBook 3.

Gaming & AI Offers

HP’s festive offers also cover its Omen and Victus gaming laptop ranges. Customers purchasing an Omen laptop can get exchange benefits worth up to Rs 15,000 through Cashify, while the maximum benefit for the Victus series is Rs 10,000. Both series qualify for the Da Milano combo offer, which brings the Rs 10,999 accessory package down to Rs 499. HP is also offering a two-year extended warranty, accidental damage protection, and antivirus software for Rs 4,999 with an Omen or Victus laptop.

Buyers of select Omen 5000 series laptops can purchase a HyperX CloudX Stinger 2 Core wired headset, originally priced at Rs 3,727, for Rs 499. They can also get a HyperX Knight backpack worth Rs 6,397 for Rs 999. The same accessory offers apply to the Victus 5000 series. Customers purchasing an eligible model can get the HyperX headset for Rs 499 and the HyperX Knight backpack for Rs 999.

As part of its AI Fiesta offer, HP is bundling subscriptions to several AI platforms at a discounted price with purchases from its OmniBook, Omen, and Victus laptop ranges. Customers can get subscriptions to Claude 4, DeepSeek, GPT-5, Perplexity AI, Gemini 2.5, and Grok.

Apple’s new HomeView device was the center of the show at its smart home event on Tuesday, but the company also refreshed its HomePod Mini smart speaker with a new chip and Siri AI integration, the latter of which will be available through a future update.

The $149 update is $50 more expensive than the original version launched over six years ago in 2020. The new HomePod mini has an S10 chip that helps improve optimize dynamic range, loudness, and acoustic performance.

With the new HomePod mini, users can control their smart home devices through voice commands. Plus, the speaker can listen for sounds like a smoke alarm and send a notification to users’ phones — a feature that Alexa devices have offered for years.

Apple said that with Siri AI, users will be able to have multi-turn conversations, but it didn’t provide a date for when the new assistant will be available to HomePod mini 2 buyers.

The company also said the new speaker works better with its other devices. For instance, users could form a four-speaker home entertainment system paired with the new Apple TV 4K. Plus, the HomePod mini 2 speakers can be the default speaker for Mac for video calls or music playback instead of built-in speakers.

The device has another new feature, as well: a visual canvas called “Sound Glow,” which uses the color scheme of the album art to turn the top of the HomePod mini into a visual canvas that will glow and pulse in sync with the music. Users can also pick soundscapes like rain or ocean waves to start animations.

The new speaker comes in pink, green, blue, white, and midnight colorways and will be available starting October 30. Consumers can pre-order starting today.

Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, has called for global safety rules for AI. They include a legal duty to tell victims when a rogue AI agent breaks into their systems. He set out his case on the BBC’s Big Boss Interview podcast with Will Bain, released on 11 October.

Smith told the BBC: “Right now, your washing machine is subject to more safety rules than AI. Every carton of milk that you see in the grocery store is subject to safety rules and inspection.”

Smith called AI both a “tool and a weapon”. He said AI is moving forward “faster than the speed of safety”. That, he said, is not good for the public or for the industry itself.

Three measures

The first measure is a “safety brake or emergency brake”, often called a kill switch. It would cover any AI system that controls autonomous devices or critical infrastructure. Smith said it should sit with the companies running the models and in the cloud infrastructure they run on.

The second is a legal requirement to write “incident reports”. If AI agents “break loose” and break into systems, victims should be told. That already happens after a data breach. Anthropic said this month that one of its models sent a fake murder tip to police during testing.

Smith called the third measure the biggest and most important. It is whether government evaluators should sign off frontier models before release. He said cartons of milk and passenger aircraft are already subject to inspection and certification.

“We know how to do this for other products. We should build on that knowledge and think about how to apply it to AI,” Smith said.

Why the UK

Smith said the UK is best placed to drive the rules because of its AI Security Institute. Former prime minister Rishi Sunak’s government launched it as the AI Safety Institute. He said it has the strongest technical capability in the world to test AI models.

“It’s the United Kingdom. They are the best,” Smith said.

In Washington, he added, people do not look at London the way they look at Brussels. He called that a strength.

Last month, the White House asked OpenAI and Anthropic to hold back models from UK testers. On Monday, the UK said its testers would again get pre-release access.

At odds with Trump

President Donald Trump has said the industry should regulate itself so US firms do not lose out to Chinese rivals. He has repeatedly said that “whoever wins AI, wins”.

At the end of September, Trump hosted the leaders of OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, SpaceX, Meta and Google. They signed a “morally binding” document at the White House. Microsoft did not sign it. Smith said he applauds the statement and that Microsoft is “happy to sign it”.

“It’s a good step, it’s a necessary step… But I don’t think it’s sufficient any longer,” Smith said. “It’s the companies that are not as responsible that you need to worry about.”

Smith made the same comparison to milk and washing machines in an interview with ITV News on 8 October. He told ITV that governments should be able to order AI systems offline, as they can ground aircraft. Developers should be legally liable if they act negligently and their AI causes catastrophic harm, he said.

Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, called for an emergency brake on AI models on Saturday.

In the BBC interview, Smith also answered Vice President JD Vance, who accused Microsoft of abusing the H-1B visa system more than any other US company. Smith said Vance’s staff “got the maths wrong”. He said about 80% of Microsoft’s 6,000 visa applications were for existing employees, and that the company hired 9,000 Americans last year.

If you’re eager to get your hands on the highly anticipated iPhone Duo, the first foldable iPhone, here’s how to get a head start on ordering. Apple has opened a staging page for preorders on apple.com, where you can get ready to place a preorder for the viral phone.

Head over to Apple’s online storefront, and you’ll find that a new iPhone Duo configurator is now live. On that page, save your preferred phone color, storage, mobile carrier and payment method. Saving these details in advance ensures you can complete your purchase immediately when preorders open at 5 a.m. PT on Friday.

Apple unveiled the iPhone Duo, one of its first new products under the helm of new CEO John Ternus, during its Surprise and Shine event in Cupertino, California, on Friday. It’s the first foldable from Apple, although merely the latest in a wave of new bendy phones to hit the market.

The iPhone Duo opens to reveal a 7.6-inch display and folds down to a pocketable passport size. The shifting shape supports split-screen multitasking and Apple Pencil, and brings a host of new features and animations to Apple iOS 27.

Pricing starts at $1,999 for the 512GB model and tops out at $3,199 for the 2TB version — before carrier subsidies — making the iPhone Duo the most expensive iPhone ever released. Price aside, observers expect demand among early adopters to be high, so prepping your order now is a smart idea.

Not quite sure that the new iPhone Duo is the right phone for you? I’m also on the fence. Check out CNET’s coverage leading up to the launch of the new foldable and iOS 27, as well as the more conventionally shaped iPhone 18 Pro, so you can make an informed decision.

Antuan Goodwin

Senior Writer, Electrified Cars

Antuan has nearly 20 years of expertise and experience testing hundreds of cars, including electric, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, hydrogen, and traditional combustion vehicles.

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• Bose recently launched $99 / £99 ‘Noise Cancelling Wired Earbuds’
• Also, Bose is ‘happy to take credit for making open-ear mass market’
• Bose’s President of Premium Audio spoke to me about both developments

Last month was huge for Bose’s earbuds output, thanks to the release of not one but two successors to the excellent Bose Ultra Open, a delightfully emo collab on the company’s flagship cans and a set of wired, inexpensive earbuds that boast ANC, controlled by the inline remote.

So hang on, on the one hand we’ve got an evolution on a groundbreaking, clip-style, wire-free product Bose pioneered just over two years ago, (something President Raza Haider says he’s “happy to take credit for — making open-ear mass market”). And on the other hand we have… wired earbuds like it’s 2003?

AMD has published Helion, an open rack blueprint for running AI agents rather than training models, with a CPU-only version holding up to 32,768 cores. Partner systems are due in November, and the pitch is how many agents fit in each watt.

AMD has published a rack blueprint for running AI agents rather than training models. It is called Helion, and partner systems are due in November.

The design appeared at the Open Compute Project summit in San Jose, The Register reported. It comes in a CPU-only version for hyperscale operators and a mixed CPU and GPU version for enterprises.

The CPU-only rack tops out at 32,768 cores. That is 128 sockets of AMD’s 256-core Venice chip on Zen 6, in 400W dense or 600W balanced blades.

The mixed rack is thinner on graphics than it sounds. It holds at most 16 Instinct MI350P accelerators, in two eight-GPU servers that AMD says run independently, with no scale-up fabric.

So this is not a frontier machine. AMD’s Helios rack carries 72 of the newer MI455X parts and 31 terabytes of HBM4, and remains the product for training.

Helion’s most interesting part is barely described. AMD says the enterprise rack carries a token router that sends agents’ model calls either to frontier models in the cloud or to open-source models running in the rack.

That detail appears only in AMD’s own release. Dan McNamara, who runs compute and enterprise AI at AMD, said the point was to let partners make efficient use of available power.

Power is the whole pitch. Matt Kimball at Moor Insights and Strategy said in a field note that the job is packing as many agents as possible into every watt.

He named sovereign AI operators among them, which puts Europe in the frame. Denmark’s grid operator paused new connections in March, with about 60GW of projects queued against peak demand near 7GW.

The constraint is not only Danish. Brussels adopted a Cloud and AI Development Act in June, aiming to at least triple the bloc’s data centre capacity within seven years.

Operators say the same thing. In a survey of 300 data centre decision-makers in the UK, Ireland and the Nordics, power availability came out as the leading obstacle to delivering sovereign capacity.

Helion is less finished than it reads. AMD has published no pricing, plans to contribute the specification to OCP rather than having done so, and named no European system builder among its partners.

Europe is still buying. The bloc has opened bidding for up to seven gigafactories at about €30B, each meant to hold 100,000 chips from suppliers including AMD.

KRAFTON India has announced the start of the 2026–27 Esports College Campus Tour, which now covers 256 colleges in India. The tour began on October 10, 2023, at IIT Kharagpur and IIT Varanasi, and is scheduled to end in March 2027. The new edition doubles last year’s reach, giving more college students a chance to compete in esports.

KRAFTON India Doubles Campus Tour Reach With BGMI and Real Cricket

KRAFTON India’s previous College Campus Tour reached 128 colleges and engaged over 75,000 students across India. This year, the company will double its reach and organize BGMI and Real Cricket tournaments across 256 colleges. The tournaments will give more students a chance to compete and represent their colleges in organized esports events. KRAFTON India is partnering with Nodwin Gaming and Upthrust Esports to run the tournaments. The events will take place alongside college festivals, making it easier for students to participate. College festival committees will manage the events with support from the organizers, while KRAFTON India will provide the prize pool.

Karan Pathak, Associate Director – Esports at KRAFTON India, said, “Last year, we saw how much interest there is among college students for competitive gaming, with the Campus Tour reaching 128 colleges and engaging over 75,000 students. This year, we are taking that a step further by reaching 256 colleges across the country. We want to give more students the chance to experience competitive gaming at their own campuses, compete with other colleges, and, for the strongest teams, progress to the next level.”

Winners to Advance to the College Campus Championship

The Campus Tour will follow a structured competition format, giving winning teams a chance to advance beyond their college-level tournaments. Winners from different colleges will play in zonal matches before advancing to the Grand Finals. After that, the best teams will move on to the Campus College Championship, where 16 teams will compete. The team that wins gets the opportunity to move forward directly to the invited stage of KRAFTON India’s official competition in 2027. The Campus Tour will run from October 2026 to March 2027, giving college teams across India several stages to compete and prove their skills.