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Toyohiro Akiyama, a Tokyo Broadcasting System correspondent who became the first Japanese citizen in space and the first journalist to report from orbit, died August 26 from lower gastrointestinal bleeding. He flew aboard Soyuz TM-11 to the Mir space station in December 1990, spending about a week filing daily audio and video dispatches for TBS despite battling space sickness and nicotine withdrawal.
Lord Tim Clement-Jones and fellow peers have proposed an amendment to the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill that would let the British government deactivate dangerous AI systems and shut down data centres if they threaten national security. Separately, Labour MP Alex Sobel is preparing an AI Security Bill backed by campaign group ControlAI that could make the UK the first G7 nation to legislate against superintelligent AI development. Both measures still need government backing to advance, while similar 'kill switch' legislation is being weighed in the US.
iOS 27 introduces a revamped Apple Pay checkout interface for apps and web payments, replacing the previous layout used across millions of transactions. The update adds swipeable card switching alongside the default card and uses color-coded icons to display shipping, billing and address details more clearly at a glance.
Prediction market Kalshi issued its first-ever lifetime ban to former congressman George Santos after finding he bet on markets tied to his own attendance at Trump's State of the Union address while publicly making misleading statements to move contract prices. Kalshi's compliance team found Santos profited nearly $18,000 from the scheme and fined him $71,356, while the CFTC separately ordered him to return his profits and paid its own $17,500 penalty.
The piece critiques the romanticized idea of disappearing into private, isolated effort—'the Cave'—citing examples like Michael Phelps's Under Armour ad and personal wrestling experience. The author argues that smart devices, recommendation algorithms, and AI reinforce this isolation by feeding people what they already believe rather than challenging them.
A new United Nations Environment Programme report concludes that Earth will soon surpass the 1.5 Celsius warming threshold set by the 2015 Paris agreement, largely due to continued fossil fuel emissions. Rather than treating this as unavoidable defeat, UN officials and scientists propose a strategy to temporarily exceed the limit before working to bring temperatures back down through ending fossil fuel use and deploying carbon removal technology.
Adobe has acquired Rilo, a Bengaluru-based marketing intelligence startup, through a licensing and team-acquisition deal, folding in its six-member team and technology. Founded in 2025 by IIT graduates Georgi Boby and Dhruv Jaglan, Rilo had raised $1 million at a $10 million valuation from backers including PeakXV and Day Zero Ventures before this exit. The startup's product will be shut down and its custom workflow-building tools absorbed into Adobe's offerings.
'Parasomnia,' the debut feature from writer-director James Ross II, has premiered on the streaming service Shudder this week. The film centers on nightmares manifesting into reality, delivering a plot that reviewers describe as convoluted yet engaging.
A study of 380 software categories found that nearly 60% of the sources Perplexity's Sonar models cite when recommending products come from domains ranked outside the top 100,000 sites by traffic, and almost a quarter aren't ranked at all. Three interlinked domains, none older than December 2023 and two with homepages literally titled 'Facts & Grounding Page', have published over 215,000 machine-generated 'best software' pages designed to be retrieved by AI models rather than read by humans.
Uber announced it will reduce its workforce by 10%, aiming to eliminate layers of management and cut costs. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told employees the restructuring will simplify operations and free up resources to invest in areas like autonomous vehicles, where Uber has pledged over $10 billion. The company, which had roughly 34,000 employees at the end of 2025, did not disclose exact job-cut figures but confirmed shares rose nearly 2% following the announcement.
Amazon has rolled out a new capability in its Alexa for Shopping assistant that lets customers ask whether an email, text, or call claiming to be from Amazon is genuine. The AI compares the message against Amazon's own records of communications sent and examines its content, formatting, and sender details before confirming authenticity, but only when it is highly confident.
Apple has activated Apple Wallet driver's license support for Oklahoma residents, letting them add their ID to iPhone and Apple Watch by scanning both sides of the physical license and verifying their identity. The rollout follows Virginia's launch just a week earlier and brings the total number of participating states to 16.