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Tech News
A review examines whether ChromeOS-based Chromebooks can serve as a primary computer, highlighting their light weight, durability, fast boot times and battery life often exceeding 10 hours. It also details ChromeOS's built-in security architecture, including read-only system files, verified boot, and sandboxing, alongside the option to unlock full system access via Developer Mode.
Following a proof-of-concept with 172 employees, Switzerland's Federal Council has expanded testing of the German open-source suite openDesk to 3,000 government workstations, about 7% of the federal workforce. The pilot, running alongside Microsoft 365, aims for full migration by end of 2027, while the country's Cyber Command plans to fully replace Microsoft 365 with openDesk by October 2026.
Battery endurance depends heavily on laptop category: ultrabooks can run 8-12 hours (up to 15 in ideal conditions), standard laptops last 6-10 hours, budget models 4-7 hours, and gaming laptops only 2-4 hours. The charger used also matters, since aftermarket units may deliver imprecise voltage that stresses the battery over time.
Rene Haas, chief executive of Arm Holdings, told the BBC that AI will eventually cure cancer by modelling complex cellular and DNA processes beyond current human or computing capability, though he said this progress is being constrained by a shortage of chips needed to build data centres. He also predicted humanoid robots would become widespread within five years, while expressing doubt that chip manufacturing could realistically be built up in the UK.
General Motors is removing Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from most of its gas and electric vehicles, replacing them with a native infotainment system built around Google's Gemini AI assistant. However, the 2027 Cadillac Lyriq EV will reportedly retain support for both phone-mirroring platforms, making it the only GM electric vehicle sold in North America to do so.
Le Creuset has released a limited-edition Star Trek collection, developed after the cookware maker approached Paramount years ago, timed to the franchise's 60th anniversary. The lineup includes a $68 communicator-shaped cheese grater, a $40 Spock oven mitt, a $500 Enterprise-themed casserole pot, and a $450 Klingon casserole dish, all featuring show-inspired details and engravings.
A24 is releasing 'You Can See Everything,' a three-hour documentary about Elizabeth Holmes directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim. Filmed in 2023 just before Holmes reported to prison for defrauding Theranos investors, the film includes extensive interviews she granted in hopes of clearing her name, plus staged recreations and a discussion about relaunching Theranos.
YouTube offers just one sanctioned method for downloading videos: a YouTube Premium subscription. Originally limited to mobile devices, the download feature has since expanded to desktop platforms after testing began in 2020. However, videos saved this way can only be viewed within the YouTube app and cannot be repurposed for editing or reuse elsewhere.
A security researcher has released a reverse-engineered reconstruction of Stuxnet, the 2010 worm that sabotaged Siemens industrial control systems used in Iran's uranium enrichment program. The repository rebuilds the malware's loader, privilege-escalation exploit, rootkit drivers, and PLC-tampering payload from previously decompiled binaries, organized for study rather than deployment. Its author frames the project as educational, aimed at malware analysts and defenders rather than as usable attack code.
A security researcher tested how generative AI models behave when fed their own outputs repeatedly, using Nano Banana 2 to make a video poster undergo successive localized edits until the image degraded into visual noise. Testing the same recursive approach on text rewrites, the researcher found that unlike images, text doesn't spiral into total chaos because encoding is lossless and per-token entropy is low—but open-ended rewrites still drift substantially from the original, eventually stabilizing into a distinct, homogenized style.
A longtime version control industry veteran, who competed against Git with Plastic SCM and now works on Git performance at Origin, argues the field is undergoing its most significant transformation in two decades. He points to two converging pressures: AI coding agents generating commits at unprecedented volume, and growing developer interest in alternatives to GitHub's dominance.
WhatsApp is developing a feature that lets users generate an API key inside the app to link outside AI agents to individual chats, then message those agents directly for responses or task execution. According to WABetaInfo, the feature limits agents to reading only the messages shared in that one conversation, with no access to other chats, contacts, or media, and currently supports only one-on-one chats rather than groups or communities.