Former Google AI chief Jeff Dean said AI-driven automation and reinforcement learning could shrink chip design teams from 150 engineers to 10 and compress development cycles from two years to three months. He now heads the AI firm Discovery Loop.
Apple has released the second iOS 27.2 developer beta for iPhone, five days after the first. The update follows the iOS 27 release on September 14 and skips over iOS 27.1, which is an iPhone Duo-only release. The beta includes the redesigned Health app, Siri AI support in five languages, and Podcasts changes.
Flock Safety has launched a voluntary buyout program for its 1,500 employees after a wave of cancellations of its AI license plate scanning cameras. Advocacy group Secure Justice found at least 214 cities and counties dropped Flock contracts since 2021, including 90 in 2026 alone.
North Korean threat actors behind the Contagious Interview campaign have compromised at least 30,000 devices across more than 100 countries and stolen funds or credentials from over 7,000 cryptocurrency wallets. The main targets are individual web designers, engineers and crypto specialists.
After laying off most of the Destiny team, new Bungie leaders Poria Torkan and Josh Deane addressed players in a joint blog post. They acknowledged Marathon's failure, promised to restore vaulted Destiny 2 content and pledged more transparency.
A bench trial opened in Alameda County over California's lawsuit accusing Tesla's Fremont factory of subjecting more than 6,000 Black workers to racial slurs, segregation and lower pay. The state says Black workers earned about $1,533 less per month than white workers from June 2018 to June 2024, and damages are uncapped.
Disney+ updated its Subscriber Agreement on June 18, 2026, allowing pre-roll and post-roll ads, promotions and sponsorships on all tiers, including Standard and Premium. Junior Mode profiles remain the only fully ad-free option, and ad blockers are now explicitly banned.
Apple seeded the first beta of iOS 27.2. It brings a redesigned Health app with Insights, Longevity and Browse tabs, Siri AI support for French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish, and new theming options for CarPlay Ultra.
Analysis of a recovered Google Maps binary uncovered an internal system called Oyster Rank with 72 ranking signals, 25 of which are marked deprecated. The materials also reference 793 data-source providers and 446 local search intent types within the Geostore entity model.
New Apple CEO John Ternus called the Vision Pro an "amazing device" in an interview with French channel Canal+, comparing it to the early days of computers. He said surgeons are starting to use it in operations and sees a "very bright future," though the product is still at the very start of a long journey.
CD Projekt co-CEO Michał Nowakowski said the decision to drop its in-house REDengine for Unreal Engine 5 was made in late 2021 after Epic's The Matrix Awakens demo. He said the switch was not a response to Cyberpunk 2077's troubled launch and is meant to enable more frequent releases in The Witcher saga.
Google has shipped stable versions of AndroidX Security State 1.1.0 and Security State Provider 1.0.0. The libraries let apps and admins inspect patch status by component — core Android, Google Play modular updates and the Linux kernel — instead of relying on a single Security Patch Level date.
Bungie says it will begin returning previously vaulted Destiny 2 campaigns, locations and raids, with access rolling out over the coming months after tweaks to lighting and combat systems. The studio also admitted Marathon "did not reach as many players as we had hoped" and pledged to keep evolving the extraction shooter, including a permanent PvE mode and social space in December.
Valve released a new Proton Experimental update, the testing branch of its Windows-game compatibility layer for Linux and SteamOS. It adds an ARM64 build (including for Steam Frame) and fixes EA App login, the Safe Mode window in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) and Ragnarok: The New World on non-Steam Deck devices.
Freedom Mobile customers say the iPhone 18 Pro's C2 modem delivers noticeably better reception, with one user measuring a 10 to 12 dB signal improvement over an iPhone 13.
Suniva closed an $835 million raise to build a second monocrystalline solar cell factory in Laurens County, South Carolina. The new 4.5 GW plant will lift the company's total capacity to 5.5 GW, with completion expected in late 2027 and full ramp in 2028, adding nearly 600 jobs.
OpenAI is urging the US to lead an international effort to set standards for cutting-edge artificial intelligence, amid mounting concerns about the technology's potential harms.
Shares of chipmakers jumped as investors bet on rising CPU demand driven by the popularity of Meta's Muse AI agent: Intel rose over 12%, AMD over 8%, and Arm over 15%. AMD's market valuation surpassed $1 trillion for the first time in intraday trading.
Apple uses firmware to keep the iPhone 18 Pro Max battery under the 20Wh shipping threshold, unlocking full capacity on first activation. The cell is rated 21.75Wh in the US and 21.06Wh in the EU, and iOS 27 adds a "Prepare to Ship" mode that discharges it below 20Wh for up to 14 days.
PhoneBuff's drop test pitted the iPhone 18 Pro Max against the Galaxy S26 Ultra, with Apple winning 56 to 53. The Galaxy's shattered display in the face-drop round was the deciding moment, and its fingerprint scanner also stopped working.
Apple's AirPods 5 start at $129 and bring active noise cancellation and a swipe-based volume sensor previously reserved for Pro models. The $149 version adds a wireless charging case and five hours of battery life versus four on the base model.
Onsemi unveiled its Embedded Power Platform (EPP), which uses a 12-inch silicon wafer as the package substrate instead of a traditional PCB. The approach delivers up to 3–5x higher power density, 15% lower power losses, and 50% smaller solid-state circuit breakers for AI data centers. Subaru is the first announced partner for EVs.
The Basel Action Network estimates AI equipment will generate 395–617 million tonnes of e-waste between 2025 and 2050, equal to 15–23 million 40ft shipping containers. The report says 87% of data center hardware is unaccounted for in most figures, with each 1GW of capacity needing about 70,000 tonnes of electronics.
Oracle released JDK 27 with a final set of nine JEPs, and BellSoft shipped Liberica JDK 27. The week also brought Open J Proxy 1.0, A2A Jakarta 1.0, Azul Payara 7.4.0, JHipster 9.4.0, Ktor 3.6.0 and BoxLang 1.17.0, plus Netflix ja for JMS.
Figure says its Figure 03 humanoid with Helix 2.5 completed household tasks in 30 previously unseen Bay Area homes without retraining. It succeeded in 237 of 420 trials (56%), while a model trained without Index pretraining managed only 9%.
Surging AI compute performance is forcing a fundamental redesign of data center power architectures. Gallium nitride (GaN) is emerging as a key technology for meeting the industry's power demands.
A Florida driver, Kevin Finley, faced felony fleeing and reckless driving charges for nearly two years after being arrested at gunpoint in his own driveway. Footage from his Tesla's built-in Dashcam showed he never saw the unmarked patrol car, and a judge acquitted him before the case reached a jury.
Microsoft released Mixed Reality Link version 26.9105.9070.0, letting Meta Quest 3 and Quest 3S users use their headset's built-in microphone and cameras directly in Windows 11. The update also allows a Meta avatar to appear as a camera source, removing the need for an external mic connected to the PC.
Two European integrators have contracted SpaceX's Starfall return capsule for commercial Starship flights in 2028 and 2029. Space Cargo Unlimited plans a one-tonne in-space factory mission, while Exolaunch will aggregate pharma, biotech, and materials payloads and return them to Earth.
Ireland's Data Protection Commission fined Google €403 million for violating the EU's GDPR in how three of its features handled users' location data between May 2018 and February 2020. Google was ordered to bring its processing into compliance within six months.
