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Tech News
Microsoft is introducing new APIs in Windows 11 that let third-party apps check whether a user falls into a child, teen, or adult age category, without revealing the person's actual birthdate. Developers can use this signal to tailor content, features, or restrictions based on age group rather than requesting precise personal data.
Circular has released two new smart rings, the Ring 3 Pro and Ring 3 Slim, combining health tracking features with NFC-based contactless payment support and haptic feedback. The move puts Circular ahead of rival Oura in offering payment functionality directly on a smart ring.
After 17 years without built-in voice communication for full teams, Riot Games is rolling out team-wide voice chat in League of Legends starting with Patch 26.20. The feature launches first in North America and Oceania, with other regions like Korea, Brazil and Latin America potentially following depending on how the rollout goes. Players need an Honor level of 3 or higher to speak, though anyone can listen, and Riot is also introducing customizable 'voice skins' along with improved noise cancellation and connection stability.
NVIDIA's new DLSS 5 neural rendering technology launches with NBA 2K27, adding finer skin texture and improved shadow detail to player and crowd models. Testing on an RTX 5090 at 4K showed the feature nearly halved frame rates, dropping from 240fps to 150fps, while offering little visible improvement in wide-angle gameplay shots.
Apple announced five new titles joining Apple Arcade next month: Pusheen's Place, River City Survivors, Terraria+, Touchgrind BMX 2+, and 4 Pics 1 Word+. The '+' titles are ad-free, purchase-free versions of existing App Store games, while Pusheen's Place and River City Survivors are entirely new releases.
ASML announced that Samsung and TSMC will follow Intel in adopting its High NA extreme ultraviolet lithography systems, with Samsung targeting DRAM production by 2028 and TSMC planning advanced node use by 2030. The three chipmakers also launched a joint effort to shift from six-inch to 12-inch photomasks, a change expected to reach advanced production by 2033.
Google has rolled out Play Services version 26.35, which lets Android users tap their physical transit cards against an NFC-enabled phone to import the card and its balance into Google Wallet. The update also adds a redesigned 'Add a card' success screen and various account management and location-sharing improvements. Separately, Google Play Store version 53.1 introduces a new navigation bar and short feature descriptions in the 'Similar Apps' section.
Microsoft has acknowledged that a memory-management change in Windows Server 2025 is causing crashes, memory corruption, and access violations in applications using Address Windowing Extensions (AWE), including SQL Server instances with Lock Pages in Memory enabled. Affected systems may show error code 0xC0000005, failed database maintenance tasks, crash dumps, and unexpected service restarts.
Samsung includes a built-in feature called Edge Panel on all Galaxy devices, offering a customizable shortcut bar accessible by swiping from the screen's edge. It provides seven panel types—Apps, People, Tasks, Weather, Tools, Clipboard, and Reminder—that users can enable and arrange from the Display settings menu. Despite being standard on every Galaxy phone, many owners are unaware of it or have stopped using it.
A HardOCP forum user reported that their MSI RTX 5090 Gaming Trio OC suffered a melted 16-pin power connector after testing Nvidia's new DLSS 5 feature in NBA 2K27, currently the only game with official support. The user's monitoring software showed sustained power draw above 610W, more than 150W higher than the card's typical 450W gaming load, before the connector overheated and several pins were visibly scorched.
A programming-focused post lists dozens of widely believed but often incorrect assumptions about local area networks, covering NAT behavior, MAC address uniqueness, DHCP configuration, protocol assumptions, and reachability between devices on the same subnet. The list format deliberately states each falsehood as if true, following the popular 'Falsehoods Programmers Believe' meme style used for other technical domains.
MapQuest is rolling out an experimental version of its navigation app for Android Auto, letting drivers view its maps on car dashboard screens instead of Google Maps or Waze. The move follows a surge in downloads after the company declined to rename Lake Ontario as 'Lake America' following a Trump administration directive. MapQuest also confirmed CarPlay support is coming soon for iOS users, and the app is testing crowdsourced reporting of accidents and police activity.