Stoke Space announced a $1 billion Series E funding round co-led by Point72 Ventures and Spark Capital, bringing its total funding to $2.3 billion. CEO Andy Lapsa said the money will accelerate development of a bigger 'Block 2' version of its Nova rocket capable of lifting 15 metric tons to low-Earth orbit while remaining fully reusable, even as the original Nova vehicle nears its debut launch next year.
Sony Japan published a policy on September 1 defining customer harassment and warning it will restrict or suspend support for customers who cross the line, including abusive language, excessive demands, or intimidating behavior toward staff. The move comes after intense customer anger over Sony's plan to stop producing physical PlayStation discs by January 2028, a decision already facing several lawsuits.
Counterpoint Research projects global foldable phone shipments will exceed 100 million units this year, with Apple entering the category via the iPhone Ultra and quickly capturing a quarter of the market—putting it second behind Samsung and ahead of Huawei. The firm expects Apple's share to climb to 40% the following year, surpassing Samsung. Separately, Xiaomi has launched its book-style 18 Fold in China just a day before Apple's own hardware event.
An Australian Redditor known as VastOption875 says they discovered a decommissioned work server in their garage containing 30 64GB DDR4-2666 memory modules, nearly 2TB combined, that their former employer let them keep. At roughly $400 per module in today's market, the stash could be worth around $12,000, with ECC server memory potentially fetching even more.
MIT Technology Review has released its annual list of 35 young innovators, chosen from 550 nominations with help from 44 expert judges. Honorees span biotechnology, AI, computing and robotics, and climate and energy, each showing measurable progress toward their goals. A separate feature in the same issue explores how spiderwebs, rich in trapped environmental DNA, are becoming a valuable tool for tracking biodiversity.
AMD's new Radeon RX 9050 will ship in two versions: an 8GB retail model and a 4GB variant reserved for OEM prebuilt PCs. Testers found the 4GB configuration echoes the widely criticized Radeon RX 6500 XT from 2022, struggling to run current games smoothly even years after that earlier card's flaws were exposed.
A modder known as ShyVox released 'DLSS Unlocked,' which merges the OptiScaler_DLSSNR and DLSS Enabler projects into one installer that adds DLSS 5 and multi-frame generation support to RTX 20-, 30-, and 40-series cards. On RTX 20 and 30 GPUs, AMD's FSR 3.1 handles frame interpolation since Nvidia's own pipeline isn't supported, while RTX 40 cards use Nvidia's DLSS-G for the first generated frame and FSR 3.1 for the rest, enabling up to 6x frame multiplication.
Researchers at the Tech Transparency Project found more than 250 additional ads containing child sexual abuse material on Meta's platforms since early August, despite the company's claims that new AI detection tools would catch such content. Some of the ads used manipulated real photographs, including one that transformed an official image of a minor from a European royal family into a sexually explicit video.
Australia's government unveiled a proposed 'My Feed, My Way' law that would require social media platforms to let users over 16 choose between an algorithm-driven feed or one showing only content from people they follow. Platforms would need to notify users to select a default option, and non-compliance could bring fines up to AU$109.2 million (about $79 million). The bill, headed to Parliament this year, also targets addictive design features in AI chatbots and games aimed at minors.
According to a Diamond Online report, NEC quietly halted development of physical quantum computing machines at the end of March 2026, decades after pioneering superconducting qubit research in 1999. Several researchers from the program, including a key leader, have reportedly since joined Fujitsu, which continues investing heavily in the technology. NEC has not confirmed a full exit, stating it still evaluates practical applications and industrialization of quantum technologies with customers.
Google is bringing back Now Playing notifications in the shade on Pixel devices, months after removing them during a March update that split the feature into a standalone app. The restored alerts show the song title and artist, plus a shortcut to favorite tracks or view listening history, without needing to unlock the phone. The rollout appears limited so far, based on scattered Reddit reports rather than an official announcement.
AMD engineers are increasing efforts to integrate the Rust programming language deeper into their GPU software, aiming to improve memory safety and reliability across drivers and related components. The move mirrors similar work at NVIDIA, which has been developing its own Rust-based Nova Linux kernel driver.