U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols issued a preliminary injunction stopping the Postal Service from implementing new mail-voting regulations tied to Trump's executive order, mirroring an earlier block by a Boston judge. Nichols ruled that without the injunction, many valid absentee ballots could go uncounted in the midterms. The case comes as the Supreme Court is already reviewing a similar injunction from a separate lawsuit.
Apple is publicly releasing iOS 27, the newest iPhone operating system, after months of beta testing since June. The update's headline feature is an overhauled Siri chatbot built around new AI capabilities, and testers have reported gains in overall speed and stability.
A new evaluation of AI research agents, described by researcher Sayash Kapoor, found the systems performed strong engineering tasks but produced papers far below top AI conference standards. The agents ran flawed experiments, struggled to explain their findings clearly, abandoned promising hypotheses too early, and failed to meaningfully use feedback, time, or compute resources.
Director Zach Cregger disclosed that an early version of his upcoming Resident Evil movie leaned heavily into comedy, but test screenings found it 'too funny' for a horror franchise adaptation. As a result, the film was reworked to shift its tone away from humor and closer to straightforward horror.
East River Source Control, a startup operating quietly for over a year, published a post outlining why it believes existing tools like Git are struggling under the pressures of AI-driven, agentic software development. The company says it plans to announce its product soon but is first laying out its reasoning about where version control needs to evolve.
After losing hundreds of thousands of students during the pandemic, community colleges are now seeing sustained enrollment growth, with 5.8 million students enrolled in spring 2026, a 5.2% increase from spring 2021, according to National Student Clearinghouse Research Center data. Researchers say students who left during the pandemic did not simply transfer to four-year universities, which also saw declines among 18- to 24-year-olds.
Researchers at Delft University of Technology, led by Gabriel Budel, analyzed scientific literature and found The Beatles are the most frequently referenced band in paper titles and text, with over 3,000 allusions to their songs. Examples include a Long COVID paper titled 'The Lung and Winding Road' and a quantum computing study called 'Here Comes the SU(N)'. The work builds on earlier research tracking Bob Dylan and Clash lyric references in biomedical journals.
Apple unveiled the Watch Ultra 4, its top-tier smartwatch, featuring an S11 chip, upgraded heart-rate sensors, and battery life reaching 84 hours in low-power mode or 50 hours in normal use. The device introduces a daily readiness score, a VO2 Max test, and an AI-powered insights tab in the redesigned Health app, plus audio intelligence features for environmental sound alerts and conversation tracking.
Reports indicate Samsung is already developing a successor to its still-unreleased smart glasses, suggesting the company is planning a multi-year product roadmap before the debut device even reaches consumers. Details on the follow-up model's features remain unclear at this stage.
Tom's Hardware reviewed the Phanteks AMP GH 750W, a Helly Technology-built power supply that replaces the Seasonic-based AMP line. The unit delivers strong 12V voltage regulation, low ripple, Japanese capacitors and an 8-year warranty, but its 12V-2x6 connector is limited to 450W of output. Despite that restriction, the reviewer calls it one of the better mainstream 750W options given street prices under $90.
Brazilian YouTuber Fabian (fmklab) built a working version of the RTX 3070 Ti 16GB that Nvidia never shipped, by fitting an RTX 3070 Ti GPU onto an RTX 3070 PCB and swapping in higher-capacity Samsung GDDR6 chips. After reconfiguring the board's memory straps using Nvidia's BIOS Reader tool, the card correctly recognized the full 16GB pool in GPU-Z, matching the specs of a prototype that had only ever surfaced in database listings and photos.
Motorola briefly ran a website pop-up teasing a device called the Signature 27, showing a close-up of its rear camera and the tagline 'A new perspective is coming' while collecting visitor emails. The pop-up appeared on Motorola's US, UK and EU sites before quickly vanishing, and a partially loaded 'Crystals by Swarovski' logo suggests a bejeweled variant is planned, similar to the original Signature phone.