A preliminary survey found that 80% of Micron Taiwan employees support a possible strike, as the labor union demands the company replace its current bonus structure with a profit-sharing model similar to those at SK hynix and Samsung. Mandatory mediation talks are expected to start by mid-September, as required under Taiwan law before any formal strike vote can occur. The push comes after Micron posted $41.46 billion in revenue and $28.24 billion in net income, fueled largely by AI-driven demand for high-bandwidth memory chips.
Amazon has kicked off its 2026 Labor Day Sale with widespread discounts across Apple products, including $50 off AirPods Pro 3, AirTag 2 units as low as $20, and Apple Watch SE 3 hitting a record $200 price point. Renewed Premium iPhone 17 Pro units are discounted up to $290, and even the newly released M6 Mac mini is seeing early price cuts on its two entry configurations.
A shopper compiled a complete starter tool kit for new homeowners using early Labor Day sales across Home Depot, Lowe's, and Walmart, totaling under $375 before tax and shipping. The centerpiece is a Ryobi 18V ONE+ 4-tool combo kit discounted to $199 at Home Depot, paired with other basics like a saw, screwdrivers, and a stud finder from the other retailers.
NASA has entered the testing phase for its High Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) processor at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, developed with Microchip Technology as the PIC64-HPSC chip. The system combines multi-core processing, fast networking, fault tolerance and AI capability into one radiation-hardened platform designed for missions from Earth orbit to deep space, promising over 100 times the performance-per-watt of current space computers.
Salem Robotics, founded by veterans of UT Austin robotics research and Los Alamos National Laboratory, is building software that lets existing mobile robots perform hazardous industrial inspections such as radioactive contamination smears and leak detection checks. The system focuses on precise, constrained manipulation—keeping a probe normal to a surface or within a tight offset from a pipe—while accounting for kinematics, joint limits, and collisions. The company demonstrated its software running on real robot hardware in a launch video.
Amazon is shutting down Mechanical Turk, the marketplace it launched in 2005 where businesses paid workers small sums to complete tasks like data labeling and surveys. The platform quietly built the infrastructure and workforce model that later became essential for training AI systems on human-generated data.
In a lengthy essay on Gates Notes, Bill Gates outlined ideas to cushion AI's disruption of the labor market, including taxing companies that replace workers with automation and formally designating certain jobs as off-limits to AI. He also voiced qualified support for the 'Pacing The Frontier' open letter calling for a slowdown in AI development, while doubting such restraint could hold long-term.
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is inviting educational institutions to request free, guided in-person tours for groups of 10 to 25 people. The roughly 90-minute tours run Tuesdays and Wednesdays between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., depending on site availability, with only one group hosted per date. Interested groups must submit a registration form at least one to two months ahead, since transportation is not provided and demand is high.
Retailers are running early Labor Day discounts on kitchen gear, including a 50% price cut on All-Clad's 6-quart D3 Mother of All Pans, now $150, and $62 off a Cuisinart air fryer oven and grill, now $158. Both items are pulled from WIRED's tested and recommended kitchen picks ahead of the fall cooking season.
Costco has launched an early round of Labor Day 2026 promotions covering televisions, smartwatches, Apple devices and other electronics. The deals are being aggregated and vetted by outlets like ZDNET, which test and compare pricing across retailers before recommending items to shoppers.
ZDNET has published a roundup of early Labor Day 2026 deals on laptops from brands including Apple, Lenovo, and Dell. The list is compiled through the outlet's standard testing, research, and price-comparison process rather than being a single retailer promotion.
Researchers using an automated laboratory in Zhangjiang, Shanghai encountered an unexpected experimental result that led to the identification of a new non-opioid pain treatment candidate. The discovery reportedly emerged from AI-assisted experimentation rather than traditional hypothesis-driven research, suggesting machine learning systems can surface biological insights humans might not have anticipated.
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