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Tech News
Best Buy is selling the Asus ROG Strix G18, an 18-inch gaming laptop with an Nvidia RTX 5080 GPU, Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor, 32GB of DDR5 RAM and a 2TB SSD, for $2,699.99, down $600 from its $3,299.99 list price. The machine features a 240Hz IPS display, RGB lighting, tool-less access for upgrades, and Thunderbolt 5 connectivity.
Amazon has launched its conversational AI assistant Alexa+ in India in Early Access, supporting both Hindi and English, including mid-sentence language switching. The assistant will be free for Prime members after testing, while non-Prime users will pay ₹2,000 per month, and it integrates with local services like Swiggy, District, MakeMyTrip, EazyDiner, and JioSaavn.
MediaTek unveiled the Dimensity 9600 Pro, built on TSMC's 2nm process, alongside the 3nm Dimensity 9600M for a broader range of premium phones. The Pro chip features a dedicated neural processing unit for on-device generative AI and boosts prompt processing speed by 51% over its predecessor. MediaTek did not name partner manufacturers or give launch dates for devices using the chips.
McDonald's has teamed up with Chinese super-app Meituan to deliver food by drone to designated pickup kiosks in Shanghai's waterfront district. Customers place orders through Meituan, and drones fly meals like Big Macs and McNuggets directly to these collection points within minutes.
Polymarket runs a daily newsletter summarizing news events tied to its betting markets, resembling a political news roundup rather than a financial disclosure. Both Polymarket and rival Kalshi have struck data-sharing partnerships with major media companies—Polymarket with Dow Jones and Substack, Kalshi with CNN, CNBC, and Fox—embedding themselves into roughly a quarter of top S&P 500 communications firms, though none of these deals involve actual trading.
Boox introduced three new Android 16-powered E Ink devices: the Palma 3, a palm-sized ereader now built with an anodized aluminum frame and support for the InkSense Plus stylus, plus a 6.13-inch screen, 128GB storage and a 16MP camera. The company also revealed the 10.3-inch color Note Air6 C with a Dual Notes feature and keyboard accessory, and the Note Mini C, an 8.52-inch color device aimed at mobile professionals with enterprise app access.
Apple's iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max launched alongside the more radical foldable iPhone Duo, arriving next month, but the Pro models are largely incremental. They share the same case design as the iPhone 17 Pro and use a new A20 Pro chip with improved thermal management for sustained performance, while the standout hardware change is a moving aperture in the main camera that adjusts how much light reaches the sensor.
Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Demis Hassabis, Satya Nadella, and Elon Musk recently joined together in urging that AI development be slowed and regulated before humans lose control. Commentary notes this isn't new: thinkers from Samuel Butler in the 1800s to Alan Turing in 1951 and Bill Joy in 2000 have similarly warned about machines outpacing and endangering humanity.
Billionaire investor Mark Cuban argued in a series of X posts that public reaction to anti-AI content on social media is more dangerous than AI systems or agent swarms acting on their own. He claimed platforms like Meta and Google amplify anti-AI sentiment far more than positive coverage, even as those same companies profit from AI investment. Cuban said he isn't calling for a development pause, arguing it's not realistic anyway.
Researchers analyzed human brain tissue samples from people with and without Alzheimer's disease and identified more than 1,000 microproteins that had previously gone undetected. Dozens of these small proteins showed different expression levels in Alzheimer's-affected brains compared with healthy ones. Separately, a mouse study found that immune cells activated by gut infections can travel to the brain's protective membrane and remain there as a lasting defensive memory.
Researchers report that certain marine bacteria work cooperatively, rather than individually, to break down complex carbohydrates released by algae. The finding, published in Nature, suggests these microbes divide labor in processing large polysaccharide molecules that no single species could efficiently degrade alone.
Researchers propose that Alzheimer's disease progresses through distinct molecular and cellular phases marked by biological thresholds, rather than a simple straight-line path from amyloid buildup to Tau pathology to neurodegeneration. At these thresholds, cells lose homeostatic balance and shift behavior, with these altered states spreading unevenly across brain tissue and eventually reaching regions critical to cognition. A key threshold identified is when amyloid triggers Tau phosphorylation, marking the transition from amyloid-driven tissue states to ones dominated by neuronal stress responses.