GoKawiil
Tech News
Microsoft introduced Project Zenith, a decluttered version of Windows 11 aimed at developers doing local AI work, initially available on AMD's Ryzen AI Halo mini-desktop with 64GB of RAM. The build comes preloaded with developer tools and languages, enables settings like visible file extensions by default, and is designed to let users run large AI models locally without cloud costs.
Alan Waldenberg, longtime outside counsel to Cerberus Capital Management and personal trust manager for Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, also served as the Pentagon's lawyer on its $400 million equity stake and $150 million loan to rare earth miner MP Materials. Feinberg, Cerberus's founder, now holds vast sway over Pentagon budgets and contracts, and reportedly picked Waldenberg himself to work on the deal. The arrangement surfaced amid a broader Pentagon push, now exceeding $2 billion, to invest directly in critical minerals and battery firms to counter China.
A Denver resident filmed a newly built AI data center running its lawn sprinklers heavily enough to create standing puddles, even as Denver Water's Stage 1 drought restrictions limit residential and commercial lawn watering to twice a week through September, with a full ban starting October 1. The footage went viral and fueled anger, though it remains unclear whether the facility violated the rules, since the timing of the video, use of recycled non-potable water, or a special variance could all justify the watering.
The Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and Special Operations Command have all turned off advertising tracking on government-issued phones and computers, according to a letter Senator Ron Wyden shared. The change, rolled out earlier this year with the Air Force following in July, blocks the advertising identifiers apps use to generate location data that gets sold to data brokers.
Hardware hackers, led by q3k, reverse-engineered the Colorlight 5A-75B, a cheap receiver card originally built for modular LED displays, turning it into an accessible development board for Lattice's ECP5 FPGA. Priced around $20-25, the board pairs the FPGA with dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, SDRAM, flash storage, and HUB75 outputs, and can be programmed via an open-source toolchain using Yosys once a JTAG header is soldered on.
TECNO has unveiled a special version of its POVA 8 Pro 5G smartphone made in partnership with Italian lifestyle brand Tonino Lamborghini. The companies say the collaboration goes beyond cosmetic branding, with Lamborghini's design philosophy woven into the phone's hardware, software and overall character rather than just applied as a surface finish.
The open-source audio editor Audacity has released version 4.0, bringing a redesigned user interface alongside improvements to its editing tools. The software remains free, cross-platform on desktop, and supports common formats like WAV, AIFF, FLAC and MP3, along with over 100 sound effects and features such as auto-ducking for podcast mixing.
Security researchers using AI tools are now uncovering software flaws at a pace that outstrips vendors' ability to triage and fix them. This surge is straining existing bug-disclosure pipelines and revealing gaps in products that were supposedly built with security-by-design principles.
Android Authority discovered that Google Gemini's Android app, version 17.55.8, contains unreleased code for a redesigned camera interface that shrinks the viewfinder to roughly half the screen instead of taking up the full display, letting users see chat content behind it. The same build also reveals a reworked '@' menu meant to look cleaner and to automatically hide disabled Connected Apps.
OpenAI has been hit with 30 new lawsuits from survivors and families connected to the Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia school shooting, alleging the company enabled the attacker through ChatGPT interactions and failed to warn police despite internally debating whether to do so. These join seven earlier lawsuits filed in April, bringing OpenAI's total legal exposure to more than 50 cases claiming psychological, physical, or fatal harm linked to ChatGPT use.
A guide details how owners of the LG C5 OLED, running webOS 25, can restore 5 GHz Wi-Fi that is disabled by the TV's Middle East regional configuration. By enabling LG Developer Mode and using the upstream lg-geolock-bypass script over SSH from a Windows 11 PC, one user switched the set's area code from a Middle East profile to a European one with the country set to Germany, which unlocked 5 GHz connectivity without root access or a firmware update.
Isar Aerospace has opened a weeklong launch window starting Friday at Andøya Spaceport to try again to send its Spectrum rocket to orbit carrying small CubeSats. The German company's first orbital test failed shortly after liftoff last year, and repeated attempts since January have been delayed by technical issues and range availability. The launch comes as Norway observes a period of mourning for King Harald V, though officials say the mission can proceed as planned.