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Three 16-year-old students from Cork County, Ireland—Émer Hickey, Ciara Judge, and Sophie Healy-Thow—discovered that treating cereal seeds with rhizobia bacteria, normally associated with legumes, sped up germination by 50 percent and increased barley and oat yields by up to 70 percent. Their research, which began as a school geography project on global food shortages, earned them the top prize at the 2014 Google Science Fair.
Google has introduced a new feature in Google Vids called 'Docs to Video,' which lets users convert PDFs, Google Docs, and Word files into narrated video summaries. The tool generates a script from the document's content, adds AI voiceover, and pairs it with AI-generated images and backgrounds, with options to edit the script or change the narrator's voice.
Awol Vision unveiled the LuxVision, an ultra-short throw projector that uses optical lens shift rather than digital keystone correction to preserve image detail. The device can produce a 6000-lumen, 120-inch 4K image at 120Hz from just 7.5 inches away from the wall, and includes gaming-friendly features like Dolby Vision Gaming HDR, VRR, and roughly 1ms input lag. It launches around October for $5,999, with preorder discounts starting September 5th.
Google unveiled Gemini 3.8 Flash, its third Flash-tier model release in six weeks, alongside a new cybersecurity model for government and enterprise clients. The launch coincided with a federal judge rejecting the Justice Department's demand that Google divest its ad exchange, and with Berkshire Hathaway's Greg Abel publicly praising Alphabet's AI standing.
Google released two new AI models on Wednesday: a standard Gemini 3.8 Flash built for agentic tasks, coding, and multi-step reasoning, and Flash Cyber, tuned specifically for finding and fixing software vulnerabilities. CEO Sundar Pichai said 3.8 Flash beats many larger frontier models on the DeepSWE coding benchmark at lower cost, while Flash Cyber scored 86.2% on the CyberGym benchmark and found vulnerabilities across 20 programming languages with over 70% success in internal testing.
TechCrunch has announced the Builders Stage will return to Disrupt 2026, held October 13-15 at San Francisco's Moscone Center. The track will feature founders and investors including Gamma CEO Grant Lee, Precedent.vc's Leah Solivan, and Google's Robby Stein discussing fundraising, hiring, go-to-market strategy, and AI as one of six industry-focused stages at the event.
A Reddit user reported that their Google Home assistant began calling them 'Fish Lemon' after a casual conversation about cooking fish weeks earlier. The nickname has persisted across reminders, smart display labels, and direct queries about their name, resisting attempts to correct it despite their Google Account showing their real name.
Google has rolled out a Google Home app update that lets Gemini for Home handle voice requests that mix media playback and smart device controls in a single command, such as turning off lights while stopping music. The update also fixes previously reported bugs with setting alarms and adding items to Google Keep, and it now alphabetizes automation options while enforcing privacy settings on third-party routines.
Federal judge Leonie Brinkema ruled that Google will not be forced to sell off its advertising technology business, despite an earlier finding that the unit constituted an illegal monopoly. Instead, Google must change certain business practices to give competitors fairer access, though the ruling did not specify exactly what those changes will look like. The detailed written order remains sealed for two weeks while parties prepare redactions.
VentureBeat's July VB Pulse survey of 170 AI infrastructure buyers found 39.4% plan to evaluate non-Nvidia accelerators like AWS Trainium, Google TPU, AMD Instinct or Intel Gaudi over the next year, versus 25.3% who plan to evaluate Nvidia's next-gen Blackwell GPUs. Despite this evaluation gap, the share of respondents expecting to switch platforms within three months actually dropped from 38.3% to 28.8%, even as usage and infrastructure activity rose across the board.
Microsoft announced it will begin reporting Azure cloud revenue every quarter, ending years of disclosing only growth percentages. The move accompanies a restructuring that reduces the company's operating segments from three to two, its first such change since 2015.
Broadcom topped Wall Street expectations for its latest quarter, with adjusted earnings of $3.32 per share and revenue of $29.59 billion, both above estimates, while net income more than tripled year-over-year to $13.09 billion. However, the company's fourth-quarter revenue forecast of $34.8 billion came in slightly below the $35.03 billion analysts anticipated, sending shares down 5% in after-hours trading.