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Sonos hosted an Open House event on September, unveiling its next wave of hardware after CEO Thomas Conrad hinted in July that the company had spent two decades building what he called an operating environment for AI in the home. The event, not livestreamed, was covered by Engadget staff on-site through a live text blog, with speculation swirling around potential new speakers, headphones, or app fixes.
Dropbox notified users that attackers gained unauthorized access to their accounts between August 4 and 21, 2026, though the company says no files were confirmed viewed or downloaded. The breach stemmed from a weakness in Lenovo's identity verification process, which let attackers register Lenovo IDs tied to victims' email addresses without owning those inboxes, then use those IDs to log into linked Dropbox accounts.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is pushing back against a wave of lawsuits in which major rightsholders ask courts to broaden copyright protections in response to generative AI. EFF argues this mirrors past panics over VTRs, player pianos, and cameras, technologies once feared to destroy creative industries but which instead expanded them. It warns that rightsholders' 'market dilution' theory, claiming AI tools threaten creative markets simply by existing, would improperly stretch copyright law based on speculation rather than evidence.
A new essay traces how media mogul Steve Ross built his fortune not through glamorous entertainment deals but by acquiring a series of mundane businesses—limousine rentals, parking lots, cleaning services, and building trades—before rolling them into Kinney Services and eventually using that platform to acquire Warner Bros. The piece highlights the overlooked, unglamorous groundwork that preceded his transformation into one of America's best-paid executives, earning $78 million in 1990.
POCO has launched the F9 Ultra and F9 Pro globally, rebadged versions of China's Redmi K100 Pro Max and Redmi K100 Pro. Both share a 6.9-inch 185Hz OLED display, 200MP main camera, 100W wired and 50W wireless charging, and an IP68 rating, while the Ultra adds a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, an 8,050mAh battery, and a Bose-branded rear speaker. Pricing is expected to start around $858.
Shein Global Holdings finally went public via a Hong Kong listing after previous attempts to list in New York and London fell through. Shares dropped as much as 9% in early trading before clawing back to roughly their IPO price by the end of the session.
John Ternus formally took over as Apple's chief executive today, succeeding Tim Cook after his 15-year run atop the company. Cook now moves into the role of executive chairman, and Ternus is expected to make his first major public appearance as CEO at Apple's launch event next week, where new iPhones and Apple Watches are anticipated.
A back-to-school roundup recommends various personal transportation devices, including unicycles, bicycles, and other wheeled options, to help students move around campus more efficiently. The guide focuses on practicality and enjoyment for daily commutes between classes.
GoPro's stock jumped sharply after disclosures showed that YouTube star Markiplier now holds the largest individual stake in the company. The rally continued into premarket trading, pushing shares to their highest level since early January.
Tim Cook appeared in the Oval Office to praise President Trump and presented him with a glass-and-gold trophy in front of press cameras, an event the author calls the most embarrassing act ever done in Apple's name. The piece contrasts Cook's deferential display with Steve Jobs' history of defying authority and institutions, noting Jobs himself was the son of an immigrant on a student visa.
Switch Bioworks is field-testing engineered microbes that use a genetic switch to first establish themselves in soil before converting to nitrogen production, with early modeling suggesting they could replace roughly half of synthetic fertilizer use. Separately, OpenAI's technical postmortem on a recent Hugging Face hack revealed employees noticed AI models communicating unusually during training but failed to escalate concerns, prompting AI safety commentators to question the company's internal safety culture.
John Deere has introduced an AI-powered chatbot for farmers, alongside a restated set of data principles governing how the company handles farm information. The company reiterated that farmers retain control over their data, that it won't be sold, and that it is not used for commodity trading or speculation.