WhatsApp is rolling out an update that doubles the maximum length of music clips users can attach to status updates, from 15 seconds to 30 seconds. A new duration picker in the music editor lets users scroll through options and choose any clip length up to the new maximum, whether pairing music with a photo or posting it alone.
Apple's September 9 event, dubbed 'Surprise and shine,' will mark John Ternus's debut as company head following Tim Cook's move to executive chairman. Analysts widely expect Apple to finally unveil its long-rumored foldable iPhone at the Cupertino event, set for 1PM ET/10AM PT.
9to5Mac's daily podcast episode for September 8, 2026 rounds up recent reporting on rumored HomePod developments and anticipated changes to the App Store. The episode is available across major podcast platforms and is sponsored by productivity app Stuff and device-management tool iMazing.
OpenAI published a preprint claiming to show that the Navier-Stokes equations, which govern fluid motion, can break down under certain conditions, describing a spinning fluid system reaching infinite speed in finite time. The claim addresses part of one of mathematics' seven Millennium Prize Problems, but mathematicians have raised concerns over how the result was announced and over authorship disputes involving researchers connected to rival company Anthropic.
Researchers studying the remains of an ancient city in Asia have found evidence of sophisticated engineering and social organization, according to a report highlighted by Nature. The findings point to coordinated planning and construction techniques that allowed the settlement to function as a complex urban center.
Brian Nosek, executive director of the Center for Open Science, announced that as of 16 November the Open Science Framework will no longer accept new uploads of code, data or supplementary materials, though existing public files will remain online. Private files must be deleted or made public by users, or they will automatically become public after the deadline. Preregistration services and the platform's 14 preprint servers will continue operating unaffected.
Researchers at Westlake University built an AI-based 'virtual cell model' trained on over 38 million protein measurements from breast cancer cell lines, most of them triple-negative. Tested on real patient biopsies, the model successfully identified which drugs would be effective against individual tumours, matching actual clinical outcomes. The findings, published in Nature, mark the first time such a virtual cell model has moved from lab experiments to clinical testing.
On September 4, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution to phase out the 16th-century Mercator map projection in favor of the Equal Earth projection, which more accurately represents the relative sizes of continents and countries. The Mercator map, created by Gerardus Mercator in 1569, has long been criticized for exaggerating the size of Northern Hemisphere landmasses like Canada and Russia while shrinking equatorial regions such as Africa.
A new study examined whether phone tutoring could offset learning losses when schools close, finding that students who received such tutoring showed measurable gains in math performance compared to peers without access to it. The research points to remote, low-tech tutoring as a viable stopgap during disruptions to in-person schooling.
Researchers examining a set of unusual ancient fossils found evidence that the earliest insects were far more anatomically varied than previously assumed. The specimens display body structures that don't fit neatly into existing insect classification schemes, complicating the picture of how insects first diversified.
Scientists have discovered a protein, nicknamed 'superdark' for its poorly characterized status, that structurally resembles a G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) but does not behave like typical members of this receptor family. The finding suggests the protein may represent an unusual or previously unrecognized branch of GPCR-like signaling molecules.
A large-scale genetic study analyzed data from roughly one million people to identify genetic variants associated with the Big Five personality traits—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The research aimed to uncover the biological underpinnings of personality by pinpointing specific genomic regions correlated with these traits.