Google DeepMind and Google Research launched WeatherNext 3, a deep-learning forecasting model that outperformed rival AI systems from Microsoft, Nvidia and ECMWF, as well as traditional forecasts from the US National Weather Service and ECMWF, on the Operational WeatherBench benchmark. Google says the model will soon power weather data shown in Search, Maps and Gemini, and will also be offered to researchers and developers through its cloud platform.
John Ternus, who succeeded Tim Cook as Apple's chief executive, posted a simple 'hello' on X to mark the transition. The reply section quickly filled with users pitching hardware ideas and design changes, reflecting Ternus's background leading Apple's engineering teams.
A robotics developer describes attempting to offload the tedious process of visually debugging robot code to an LLM coding assistant equipped with an image encoder and MCP server access to a visualizer tool. The experiment largely failed: the assistant lacked an intuitive sense of what correct robot behavior looks like and struggled to navigate the debugging GUI, taking minutes to reach a viewpoint the developer could reach in seconds.
Karyann Parkinson, a law student in Williamsburg, Virginia, let her 5-year-old son Sam walk roughly half a mile alone to a nearby pond within their gated community, a route he had safely traveled many times before. A passerby reported the child to security, triggering a police and Child Protective Services response that led to charges against Parkinson. A judge convicted her last week of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a first-degree misdemeanor carrying a six-month suspended jail sentence, and CPS placed her on the state's child abuse registry for seven years.
Hohem announced the Eyepic, a hybrid device combining a 4K/60fps wearable camera with a detachable three-axis gimbal for stabilized shooting. The camera can rotate its 2.5-inch touchscreen for cropless horizontal or vertical video, is waterproof to nearly 33 feet, and can be worn via lanyard, hat clip or magnetic mount. Hohem also revealed two new smartphone gimbals with Apple DockKit tracking and a multi-transmitter wireless mic system, though pricing and release dates remain unannounced.
Unionized staff at The New York Times and The Athletic issued a unanimous statement opposing a potential deal linking The Athletic with prediction-market company Kalshi. They cite New York's attorney general, who found Kalshi operates as an illegal, unlicensed gambling platform posing financial risk to users, and argue that any deeper partnership would compromise journalistic independence and credibility.
A team led by Agustín Sánchez-Lavega of the University of the Basque Country has identified a giant ten-sided atmospheric wave encircling Saturn's south pole, mirroring the famous six-sided hexagon long observed at the planet's north pole. The feature was first glimpsed in amateur astronomer images from 2024 and confirmed through further analysis in 2025.
A new open-source utility called balrogg recompresses existing Ogg Vorbis and Opus audio files without any loss of quality, typically shaving 8-12% off .ogg files and 3-8% off .opus files. The command-line tool, licensed under GPLv3 and hosted on GitHub, supports batch processing across multiple cores, adjustable compression effort levels from -1 to -9, and optional progress reporting during encoding and decoding.
Yum! Brands has finished divesting Pizza Hut, selling its non-China operations to private equity firm LongRange Capital for $1.5 billion after already selling Pizza Hut China to Yum! China Holdings for $1.2 billion. Yum! could earn up to $75 million more by 2030 if Pizza Hut meets performance benchmarks, while CEO Chris Turner said the move frees the company to focus on KFC, Taco Bell and Habit Burger & Grill.
Ascentiz is showcasing a modular exoskeleton system at IFA 2026 built around a hip module (H) and a knee module (K) that can be used separately or combined via a hub into an H+K configuration coordinated by its BodyOS software. Each module targets different movement needs—hip assistance for propulsion like walking and climbing, knee assistance for load management on stairs and slopes—while sharing a common Exo-Belt and communication architecture.
Intel told employees last week it is eliminating its 'Fellow' and 'Senior Fellow' titles, dating back to 1980, in favor of 'Distinguished Engineer' and 'Senior Distinguished Engineer.' CTO Pushkar Ranade said the change reflects a new leadership standard requiring technical staff to pair deep expertise with strategic vision and measurable business outcomes, though compensation is unaffected.
RPCS3 developers publicly criticized Nvidia's unreleased DLSS 5 technology after modders leaked and tested the DLL on games and the PS3 emulator itself, calling the results 'slop' and accusing the industry of using upscaling and frame generation to mask poor optimization. Some users pushed back, arguing that DLSS and FSR frame generation can work alongside optimization efforts, with Reflex helping offset added latency. RPCS3 says it won't adopt such techniques, noting PS3-era games lack the motion-vector data needed for modern temporal upscalers.
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