At a Fast Company event, ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro and Monday Night Football host Laura Rutledge discussed how ESPN is transforming from a traditional TV network into a personalized, interactive digital platform. The conversation, moderated by Fast Company editor Brendan Vaughan, focused on how streaming, social media, fantasy sports and online betting are reshaping ESPN's business model.
MediaTek unveiled the Dimensity 9600 Pro, its new flagship smartphone processor, as the first chip manufactured using TSMC's 2-nanometer N2P process, beating Qualcomm to the milestone. The chip promises significant gains including a 61 percent drop in multi-core power draw, a 17 percent single-core speed boost, and improved gaming and AI performance through a new dual-NPU architecture.
A Caijing Magazine investigation, translated by ChinaTalk, details how Unitree Robotics founder Wang Xingxing personally controls minute product decisions—from material colors to screw lengths—to drive down costs. This hands-on, cost-obsessed approach has helped Unitree sell some of the cheapest humanoid and quadruped robots on the market, including a $13,500 G1 model and a $4,900 R1 model, though employees say it has come at the expense of quality control.
A maker who previously used the Cuttle parametric CAD service to design laser-cut keyboard holders has since switched to OpenSCAD, an open-source CAD tool, citing concerns over design ownership and portability. Using OpenSCAD, they built a cable-management box for a partner, complete with finger joints and a decorative cat-silhouette cutout pattern on its front and back panels.
HP's HyperX Omen 15 replaces the Victus 15 as the company's mainstream gaming laptop, pairing a Core Ultra 9 processor, 32GB of RAM and a 15.3-inch 1800p OLED screen with strong gaming benchmarks. Tom's Hardware found the as-tested unit costs about $2,100, a few hundred dollars more than its closest rival, and noted the build relies on an aluminum lid but cheap, flexible plastic for the rest of the chassis.
Volkswagen's Executive Board has formally approved a restructuring program dubbed Future Plan 2030, confirming it will eliminate 50,000 jobs, including management positions, to hit a nine percent operating margin target by 2030. The plan also involves halving its model lineup, cutting product complexity by 75 percent, and reportedly retiring the Seat brand while keeping Cupra. Volkswagen says European factories are running over 500,000 units above demand, and it will decide the fate of plants in Emden, Zwickau, Hanover and Neckarsulm by mid-2027.
Uber is cutting about 10 percent of its roughly 34,000-person workforce as part of a reorganization that removes management layers and merges overlapping teams. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told staff the changes aim to reduce coordination overhead and speed up decision-making, while consolidating global teams primarily in New York and San Francisco. The company is also requiring most remote workers to relocate to an office and enforcing its three-day-a-week hybrid policy.
A clean-energy development is being built on 500 acres of a West Virginia strip mine that was abandoned two decades ago, combining solar power generation with both lithium-ion and zinc battery storage systems. Google is supporting the project, which aims to extend the availability of renewable electricity further into nighttime hours than conventional battery setups typically allow.
Anthropic announced it will permanently raise Claude Code's standard weekly usage limits by 25% for Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise plans starting September 14. However, this replaces a temporary 50% boost currently in effect, meaning users will actually see a 17% reduction in usage compared to what they have today. Anthropic initially framed the change as an increase before deleting the post and issuing a clarification acknowledging the cut.
Anthropic is embedding its own browser directly within Claude Cowork, removing the requirement for a separate Chrome extension to handle many everyday browsing tasks. This lets Claude operate web pages and complete tasks natively inside its own app environment rather than relying on Google's browser infrastructure.
Apple is eliminating more than 200 positions, including about 100 roles within the Vision Pro division and another 100 across Siri and AI software groups, according to Bloomberg. The cuts come as Apple scales back its costly in-house immersive video production for the headset, shifting more of that work to third-party developers.