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Crypto firms building stablecoin payment systems are introducing dispute-resolution and reversal mechanisms similar to chargebacks used in traditional banking. This marks a shift from the original crypto ethos of irreversible, permissionless transactions toward systems that rely on third-party intermediaries to resolve fraud and errors.
Microsoft confirmed that its September 8 security update, KB5124008, is causing audio failures on legacy USB Audio Class 1.0 hardware such as older speakers, headsets, and microphones. Affected users may see no sound, unresponsive volume controls, or a 'Code 10' error in Device Manager. The company noted a temporary workaround: switching the audio mode to Stereo restores sound until an official fix arrives.
The Toronto International Film Festival's 2026 edition is underway, with coverage tracking a wide slate of premieres including Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, and a lengthy documentary on Elon Musk. The festival also features early looks at upcoming streaming series such as Crystal Lake and Carrie, with reviews being published daily throughout the event.
Y Combinator's newest Demo Day featured a batch skewed heavily toward deep tech, with startups like Atomarine pitching nuclear-powered floating data centers and Dipole Labs building optical networking hardware to cut power waste in AI clusters. TechCrunch surveyed early-stage investors who named nine companies that got flagged repeatedly as the standouts of the cohort. Investors noted the technology felt futuristic, but valuations across the batch were more restrained compared to recent quarters.
A researcher named Jacob Coxon quit Anthropic citing fears that top AI labs are 'gambling with our lives,' prompting Anthropic's own alignment lead to amplify the claim, stating he believes there's a greater than 10% chance AI could wipe out humanity within a decade. The remarks sparked a wider debate among AI commentators, including TechCrunch's Equity podcast hosts, over whether such warnings reflect genuine risk assessment or serve as marketing hype ahead of Anthropic's anticipated IPO.
Software engineer Alex Wormuth built a simulated fruit fly brain using Google and HHMI Janelia's newly released connectome data, then wired it to control Doom frame by frame. Each frame generates thousands of brightness and color inputs that feed into the simulated brain's 25.6 million connections, translating neural activity into in-game controls, including a pain response modeled on real dopamine receptors.
Apple's Audio Intelligence suite on the Watch Series 12 introduces Live Rewind, which captures the last 15 seconds of nearby audio via a double-press of the Digital Crown, transcribes it on a paired iPhone, and discards the raw audio. A companion feature, Siri Recap, generates AI-written summaries of conversations heard throughout the day. Apple says an audible chime and on-screen animation alert people nearby, but does not obtain explicit consent from every speaker captured.
Paramount+ dropped a nearly three-minute trailer for Avatar: Seven Havens, revealing character voices and story details ahead of its October 9 premiere. The series is set 200 years after The Legend of Korra, in a world fractured into seven havens after a catastrophe that has turned public opinion against Avatars, with new Avatar Pavi at the center of the story alongside a twin sister and a group of friends.
Instagram has launched a feature allowing users to add posts they're tagged in directly onto their main profile grid, without reposting or duplicating the content. Users can add these posts from tag notifications, the post itself, or the Tagged tab, and can remove them from their grid at any time without affecting the original post or their Tagged tab.
Nintendo is holding a Customer Appreciation Sale from September 13-26, offering 30% discounts on games, DLC, Amiibo and accessories across the eShop, Nintendo Store and retailers. The company says the promotion is funded partly by roughly $300 million in tariff refunds it recovered from the US government, rather than passing those refunds directly back to customers.
Nintendo has released firmware update 23.0.0 for the Switch 2, finally enabling variable refresh rate support when the console is docked and running in TV mode, a feature promised before launch but missing at release. The update also adds a handheld boost mode toggle in quick settings, nostalgic music options in the Mii editor, and full system transfer between two Switch 2 consoles.
During its September iPhone event, Apple showcased its upgraded Siri AI's ability to work with third-party apps, using the note-organizing app Stuff as a key example. Stuff lets users convert speech and handwritten notes into task lists with dates, and now integrates with Siri so users can create and manage lists through voice commands and camera scans.