Tech News

Minecraft Live September 2026 set for September 26

Mojang confirmed Minecraft Live will take place on September 26 at 10 AM PT / 7 PM CEST. The stream is expected to show upcoming 2026 game drops and likely the next chapter of Minecraft Dungeons 2.

Dave Plummer Releases Task Manager OG for Windows, macOS, and Linux

Retired Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer, author of the original Windows Task Manager, has released Task Manager OG (TMOG), a modern replacement that runs on Windows 11, Windows 11 on Arm, macOS, and Linux. A free version is available, while TMOG Pro costs $39.95 and adds Power & freq, Flight Recorder, Connections, Drivers, and benchmarks. The app is fully native code with no Electron.

Apple may launch screen-less Watch Air health tracker to rival Whoop and Fitbit Air

Bloomberg reports Apple has spent about a year exploring a screen-less health band, the most plausible concept in a broader wearable redesign. The sensor stack and Readiness scoring engine already shipped in Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4, but there is no name, price or launch date.

California Gov. Newsom signs seven bills regulating data centers

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed seven bills aimed at regulating the fast-growing data center industry. The new rules impose requirements on electricity costs, water use, and local oversight.

iOS 27 adds a standalone Siri app to the iPhone Home Screen

Apple has released iOS 27 with a new standalone Siri app, pre-installed on iPhone for the first time. It offers a chat-style interface with conversation history, iCloud sync across Apple devices, and access to personal context. The app is limited to Apple Intelligence-capable devices, starting with iPhone 15 Pro.

Kev: open decision models let AI agents choose without generating text

Developer Jared Palmer released Kev, a family of open decision models built on Qwen 3.5 with 0.8B, 4B and 9B parameters. Kev is prefill-only: it scores candidates in a single forward pass via a pointer head, skipping autoregressive decoding. Kev-9B reached 83.7% accuracy on the project's locked out-of-domain test.

Treasury chief: AI bosses, not bots, will be held liable for criminal acts

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said humans, not AI models, are responsible for the criminal actions of AI agents, citing the Hugging Face incident involving OpenAI. He rejected labs' proposals to shield them from legal liability for damages caused by rogue systems.

Australian RAM and SSD prices surge as memory shortage tightens supply

Australia's memory shortage has pushed a Samsung 4TB SSD from about A$500 to A$1,149 and 16GB RAM modules from about A$60 to A$200–300. Gartner expects DRAM and SSD prices to rise as much as 130% by the end of 2026, while HPE cut quote validity from 30 to 14 days.

Meta's Muse hits 902K+ downloads in six days after launch

Sensor Tower data shows Meta's new AI agent Muse was downloaded over 902K times in the six days after its Sept. 8 launch, compared with 773K for Meta AI in the same post-launch window. META shares jumped more than 12%.

Apple VP Says Ceramic Shield 2 Makes Screen Protectors Unnecessary

Apple VP of hardware engineering Tom Marieb said Ceramic Shield 2 delivers three times the scratch resistance of the previous generation, making third-party screen protectors unnecessary on modern iPhones. The cover glass debuted with the iPhone 17 lineup and is used on the iPhone 18 Pro and the outer display of the foldable iPhone Duo.

iOS 27.2 beta code reveals new Apple Music, CarPlay Ultra and HomePad features

The second iOS 27.2 beta has minimal user-facing changes, but code reveals upcoming features: live countdowns for new album releases in Apple Music, a Drive Mode theme for CarPlay Ultra that syncs in-car ambient lighting, an Extended Erase option for wiping iPhone data, and a demo mode for the rumored HomePad smart home device.

Federal Court Rules Cancellation of Solar For All Program Unlawful

A federal judge in Rhode Island ruled that the EPA acted illegally by cancelling the $7 billion Solar For All program. The program was meant to cut electricity bills for over 900,000 households and create 200,000 jobs.

ARMSX3 brings RPCS3 PS3 emulation to Android

ARMSX3, an ARM-native port of the RPCS3 PS3 emulator, is now available for Android. It needs a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 or newer and at least 8 GB of RAM; in testing God of War 3 and GTA 5 dropped below 10 FPS in combat, while The Last of Us failed to load.

VulcanForms, Specter Aerospace to Build Hypersonic Munitions Production

VulcanForms and Specter Aerospace have partnered to mass-produce low-cost airbreathing hypersonic munitions, interceptors and cruise missiles for the Department of War, pairing metal additive manufacturing with hypersonic vehicle development. The site, timeline and financial terms were not disclosed.

DC-area airports first to deploy FAA's AI airspace tool SMART

The Transportation Department rolled out the AI-powered SMART tool, which merges 200 flight data streams to predict traffic flows and flag conflicts before they occur. Three Washington, D.C.-area airports are the first to use it under a 12-year, $875 million FAA contract with Air Space Intelligence.

Air traffic system outage grounds flights at JFK, LaGuardia and other US airports

The FAA issued ground stops at Philadelphia, Newark, Teterboro and later New York's JFK and LaGuardia after frequency failures at Philadelphia TRACON. The primary circuit failed and a backup fiber line was severed during construction in New Jersey; more than 600 flights were delayed by 1 p.m. ET.

Valve open-sources Lepton for running Android games on Linux

Valve has open-sourced Lepton, a project that runs Android games on Linux through Steam, with the upcoming Steam Frame headset as its main focus. Games run in isolated Android containers without root privileges.

Scientists speed up protected quantum state operations by 1,000x

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have proposed a theoretical method that speeds up the creation and control of bosonic quantum codes by more than a thousand times, cutting the process from several thousand driving cycles to a single one. The work was published in Physical Review Letters; an experimental demonstration is still pending.

Wandercraft launches Eve, first FDA-cleared home exoskeleton

Paris-based Wandercraft commercially launched Eve on September 17, 2026, the first FDA-cleared self-balancing personal exoskeleton for home use by wheelchair users with spinal cord injuries. The Class II device (510(k) K260381) needs no crutches, is available at 180+ National Seating and Mobility locations and is billable under Medicare code K1007. Pricing was not disclosed.

Tesla Cybercab's 10-Minute Ride Took 70 Minutes Due To Detours

Riders in Austin report that Tesla Cybercab robotaxis take huge detours: a trip expected to last 10 minutes took 70. The fleet avoids highways and at-grade railroad crossings, compounding Tesla's long-standing navigation issues.

Pixel 11 Pro Fold review: $1,899, Tensor G6 and a visible crease

The Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold costs $1,899, matching the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and undercutting the iPhone Duo. It packs a 6.5-inch outer and 8-inch inner Super Actua display at up to 3,600 nits, a Tensor G6 chip with 16 GB RAM, a triple camera with a new 48MP main sensor and a 4,750 mAh battery. It is 10% lighter and 1 mm thinner than the Pixel 10 Pro Fold at 239g and 10.1mm, but cracked along both antenna lines in JerryRigEverything's durability test.

$20 Bracelet Jams Nearby Smart Speakers With Ultrasonic Static

University of Chicago researchers built a wearable cuff with 24 ultrasonic transducers that jams microphones within about three feet. The roughly $20 prototype exploits microphone nonlinearity to turn recorded speech into unintelligible static.

Google brings games to Android Auto out of beta

Google says the games category for Android Auto and Android Automotive OS with Google built-in has graduated from beta to general availability. Gaming remains parked-only, and developers can now publish titles to open testing and production tracks on Google Play.

Nvidia: Vera Rubin NVL72 Boosts Agentic AI Throughput by 30x

At the AI Infrastructure Summit 2026, Nvidia said its rack-scale Vera Rubin NVL72 platform delivers up to 30x the AI factory throughput of GB300 NVL72 on agentic workloads. In SemiAnalysis AgentX tests with DeepSeek-R1 and Qwen3-VL, gains reached 3.7x, while performance per watt is 10x that of Grace Blackwell.

Scientists built a swallowable paper battery to power medical devices

Researchers created a paper battery that powers devices inside the body and gradually dissolves afterward. In pig tests it ran for up to three days, delivering 1.77–1.84 V and up to 3.5 mAh.

Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra gets pricier: base up $500–1500

Apple raised Mac Studio prices: the M5 Max model now starts at $2,500 (+$500) and the M5 Ultra at $5,500 (+$1,500). The company blames soaring LPDDR5X memory and storage costs, plus hedging and its usual high margins.

Rivian R3 Will Be Priced 'Materially Lower' Than R2, CEO Says

Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe told The New York Times that the upcoming R3 hatchback will be priced "materially lower" than the R2, which will eventually start at $45,000. An even cheaper R4 will follow the R3, he said.

WordPress Click2Shell flaw lets hackers run PHP on the server

Researcher Paulos Yibelo of pwn.ai disclosed Click2Shell, a CSRF vulnerability in WordPress Core that lets an attacker force-install any theme from the WordPress.org catalog and execute arbitrary PHP. The flaw was fixed in WordPress 7.1.1, and exploitation requires a logged-in administrator to visit a crafted URL.

Kairos Power gets up to $100M from Samsung group to build nuclear reactor for Google

Kairos Power has picked Samsung C&T to help build its 50 MW demonstration reactor for Google. Samsung C&T will invest $70 million in the startup and provide in-kind engineering services, bringing the total deal value to up to $100 million. The Hermes 2 reactor is expected to start operating in 2030.

ZoomEye: Over 239,000 Citrix NetScaler Gateways Exposed Amid SAML Bypass

ZoomEye measured the internet footprint of Citrix NetScaler ADC and Gateway: 239,130 assets matched the full product fingerprint and 116,773 the shorter one. The scan follows CVE-2026-19490, a CVSS 9.8 SAML authentication bypass enabling session forgery that was fixed in an emergency patch in August 2026.