Google unveiled Googlebook, a new line of laptops running a hybrid ChromeOS-Android OS with built-in Gemini AI. Five models from Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acer and Asus launch October 4th, priced from $899 to $1,299 with Intel Panther Lake and Snapdragon X Elite chips.
The 2026 Mac Mini is the first Mac with Apple's M6 chip (12-core CPU and GPU) and adds an M5 Pro option in the same 0.82L chassis. The starting price rose from $599 on the M4 model to $899, while the tested M5 Pro configuration costs $2,899.
Apple has started shipping the Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips. The M5 Ultra test unit (36-core CPU, 80-core GPU, 256GB RAM, 4TB) costs $12,299 and runs about 30% faster than last year's M3 Ultra in synthetic tests.
Google has opened pre-orders for the first Googlebooks from Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP and Lenovo. All five are premium laptops with at least 16GB of RAM, 14 hours of video playback or 16 hours of web browsing, Intel Core Ultra 5 Series 3 or Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chips, and a Glowbar light array on the lid. Prices range from $899 to $1,299.
Googlebooks starting at $899 ship with Gemini features including the Magic Pointer, the Rambler dictation tool and prompt-built desktop widgets. The reviewer argues the most compelling feature is native support for fully isolated Linux environments running on a Level 5 security-certified hypervisor with pKVM isolation.
Macworld reviewed the Mac Studio with the M5 Max chip (18-core CPU, 40-core GPU, 128GB RAM, 4TB SSD) at $6,899. The standout improvement is a dramatic SSD speed gain carried over from the M5 MacBook Pro, while GPU performance rises 33% over the M4 Max.
The open-source PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3 has found a workaround for an Nvidia driver bug that was bottlenecking performance. Tests showed 20–25% FPS gains in Red Dead Redemption and 37% in Gran Turismo 5, with VRAM use dropping from 7.1 to 4.8GB. AMD drivers are unaffected, and Nvidia has yet to respond to the developers' reports.
Atlus' second deep dive video for Persona 4 Revival revealed a brand new social link: Aika Nakamura, daughter of the family that runs Inaba's Aiya restaurant. She was only mentioned in Persona 4 Golden and appeared as a background character in Persona 4 The Animation. Her Arcana and romance status remain unknown.
Hyundai is recalling 5,360 2026 Ioniq 9 electric SUVs in the US because the second-row power-folding seats may trap children, as the cars fail to detect an occupant. The fix is a free Seat Controller software update, including an over-the-air update via Bluelink. Five complaints were filed with NHTSA, two alleging minor injuries.
Boston Dynamics has opened its Robotics Metaplant Application Center (RMAC) at Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America in Georgia. The permanent facility trains Atlas humanoids on real automotive parts using teleoperation, simulation and UMI devices; Hyundai plans to deploy 25,000 Atlas units across its global plants, and RMAC will expand roughly 10x in 2027.
CATL has created "tall" batteries designed specifically for American electric pickups, and U.S. automakers have already tested them. The company is considering licensing the technology for local production but has not disclosed specs, timelines, or partners.
A California federal judge finalized an agreement requiring ProAPIs and Netswift to stop mass scraping of LinkedIn user data, halt its sale and transfer, abandon fake accounts and delete scraped data. LinkedIn sued last October, alleging the firms used millions of bogus accounts.
Air Security disclosed Plugin4Shell, a zero-click RCE flaw in Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot and Gemini CLI. The agents never verify the pinned commit they receive, and git silently prefers a branch named like a hash. Anthropic and OpenAI patched; Microsoft and Google did not.
A Chinese hardware researcher claims the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 use a 128GB NAND flash die despite officially offering only 64GB of storage. The reason for the limit is unclear — Apple may reserve part of it for sensor data or wear leveling. A similar case occurred with the M4 iPad Pro, which had 12GB of physical RAM but only 8GB accessible.
Vivo announced the X500, X500 Pro and X500 Pro Max at a launch event in Shanghai. The Pro models run a 2nm Dimensity 9600 Pro with Zeiss and Sony cameras and 4K 240fps video, while the Pro Max adds a 200MP telephoto and a 7800mAh battery. Chinese pricing runs from ¥5499 to ¥6999.
Bloomberg reports Apple laid off a handful of employees working on Fitness+ audio features like Time to Walk and Time to Run. New releases will continue but drop in frequency; the service isn't being shut down yet, though staff see this as the start of deeper cuts.
Fastly announced AI Runtime Control, AI Firewall and new API Security features to give organizations real-time visibility and control over AI models and agents. Machine-generated traffic on Fastly's network crossed 50% in July–August, while AI traffic grew 6.5x faster than human traffic from January to May.
The beta for World of Warcraft: Forever, announced at BlizzCon 2026, drew Blizzard's largest player influx in 17 years but suffered disconnects and lag. The issues stemmed from Battle.net's BGS protection system rather than CPU overload. The game launches on November 7, 2026.
Oppo unveiled ColorOS 17 based on Android 17, the first shared build for Oppo, OnePlus and Realme devices. The update adds floating navigation, Fluid Design animations, frosted-glass UI, an AI Photo Editor, AI Notes and live translation.
Google is testing Gemini 4 Pro in the Arena environment, where it handles intricate SVG animation generation and complex 3D simulations. The report also mentions GPT-6 Soul with an April 30, 2026 knowledge cutoff, Grok 4.7 and the Union Alpha Model with a 256K token context window.
Kitty 0.49, the GPU-accelerated terminal emulator, is out with custom shader support for visual effects. Real-world throughput improves by 15–35%, ASCII-heavy workloads gain about 50%, and a new AVX-512 decoder boosts multibyte text by up to 75%.
A review crowns the iPhone 18 Pro as the best phone for video thanks to its stabilization, smooth zoom transitions and variable aperture. It also earns top marks for low-light photo and video and wide dynamic range.
Satya Nadella was expected to attend this week's White House state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping. Executives from Apple, OpenAI, Nvidia and Qualcomm were also expected, as debate over AI regulation grows.
Pedro Sánchez said at the launch of Spain's Plan IA360 that self-regulation of AI does not work and that recent safety warnings from industry leaders may partly aim to attract investors. The 12-month program includes an AI gigafactory, models built with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, and vouchers for small businesses, targeting AI adoption by over half of Spanish companies by 2030.
Over 10 days in September 2025, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Microsoft and xAI admitted losing control of AI agents and called for slowing development. Anthropic published a 4,000-word essay, while its researchers put the odds of human extinction above 10%.
IMECAS has developed an experimental process flow for stacked-nanosheet gate-all-around transistors using immersion DUV lithography and demonstrated functional devices. Ion/Ioff ratios reached 9.7×10⁵ and 7.6×10⁵, above the 5×10⁵ threshold, but critical geometry and a full 3nm manufacturing process remain undisclosed.
Bethesda's latest update for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered on Switch 2 fixed crashes and glitches but appears to have degraded image quality, with players reporting blurrier visuals in both docked and handheld modes. The cause is speculated to be a DLSS issue, and performance has not improved.
Windows Insiders build 26340.9502 adds a contrast theme toggle to Magnifier that darkens the interface without inverting colors, so photos, videos and charts keep their original look. Four themes are in testing — Aquatic, Desert, Dusk and Night sky — with the dark theme on by default. The update also improves Live Captions, Cloud Rebuild and the Mouse indicator.
Apple's Vice President of Hardware Engineering, Tom Marieb, discussed the company's first foldable iPhone. He invited users to hold Apple accountable if the display crease worsens over time.
NVIDIA's 88-core Vera CPU was tested in the TPC-H benchmark on DuckDB, outperforming Intel's 96-core Xeon 6 by 46-48% in query throughput. Both systems ran with 768 GB of memory, 3 TB+ NVMe storage and Ubuntu 26.04.
