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Tech News
Wuyoh Sui, a digital-health researcher at Western University in Canada, examined how smart watches and rings are increasingly used in scientific studies of exercise, sleep and chronic disease. He points out that these commercial devices rely on opaque AI algorithms whose data handling is difficult to audit, raising ethical questions for researchers who adopt them.
Revolut, valued as Europe's most valuable startup, disclosed customer information to an individual who fraudulently claimed to represent a government agency. Hundreds of accounts were affected by the breach, which stemmed from the bank's own verification failure rather than a hack of its systems.
Apple Wallet and Google Wallet now let users store a state driver's license or ID digitally, with built-in options to share only limited information—such as confirming someone is over 21—instead of a full birth date, address and license number. Both companies say the data is encrypted, stored locally on the device rather than in the cloud, and requires biometric or passcode authentication before any information is shared with a verifier.
Apple's watchOS 27 introduces a Siri app with chat history, matching similar updates on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. However, unlike those versions, the Apple Watch interface doesn't offer an obvious way to continue a previous conversation from within the app.
Apple has removed the double-click Digital Crown shortcut that let users instantly jump between apps on Apple Watch in watchOS 27. The company reassigned that same gesture to trigger Live Rewind, a new Audio Intelligence feature that generates a 15-second transcript of recent spoken audio, but Live Rewind only works on the upcoming Series 12 and Ultra 4 hardware.
India's National Payments Corporation announced that starting October 15, merchants will pay a 0.4% fee on UPI transactions exceeding ₹2,000, capped at ₹300 for payments of ₹75,000 or more. Consumers will still use UPI for free, and small merchants earning up to ₹100,000 monthly through UPI, along with transactions of ₹2,000 or less, are exempt. Certain sectors like railways, telecom, insurance and fuel will instead pay a flat ₹5 fee on larger transactions.
Digital Realty CEO Andrew Power said warnings of a potential AI development slowdown from firms like Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI would not mean a halt to data center real estate demand. He argued that non-AI digital transformation and cloud computing growth remain strong drivers for his business, even as Digital Realty and Equinix shares fell on Monday amid AI slowdown fears.
Fujifilm has unveiled the Instax Pal 2, a successor to its palm-sized Instax Pal camera, adding an optical viewfinder and a 1.3-inch LCD screen missing from the original. The camera uses a small sensor paired with an f/2.2 28mm lens to shoot up to 10-megapixel images and will launch in the US later this month for $169.95.
Planted, a startup that uses digital-twin software and robots to redesign and build solar farms, has raised $31.8 million led by Piva Capital and RA Capital Management Planetary Health, with backing from Google, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Gigascale Capital, and Khosla Ventures. The company's technology helped one St. Louis-area project cut land use by 40% while producing the same power output, resolving a zoning dispute that had stalled the development.
CSS-Tricks, the web development site DigitalOcean acquired in 2022 and briefly revived in mid-2024 under editor Geoff Graham, has gone inactive again with no explanation from its owner. Meanwhile, DigitalOcean quickly arranged a $3 million donation to Omarchy, a set of Arch Linux scripts led by David Heinemeier Hansson, and has also stopped small monthly payments to GNOME and Flathub infrastructure.
Starting Tuesday, pubs and shops in England and Wales can accept digital identity apps from government-approved providers like the Post Office, Yoti and Luciditi as proof of age, alongside traditional physical ID. The scheme is voluntary and technology-agnostic, letting businesses choose whether to adopt it, though officials say most venues will still accept physical documents too.
The Trump administration has appealed a federal court ruling that blocked its policy allowing detention and deportation of noncitizen researchers who study harmful online content, arguing they pose national security risks. Separately, a judge dismissed a related lawsuit from Imran Ahmed of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, ruling that courts lack jurisdiction to stop deportation proceedings even though she criticized Secretary of State Marco Rubio's justification for targeting him.