At the first International Space Summit in Paris on September 10, European leaders including Ursula von der Leyen and Emmanuel Macron called for the continent to build its own launch and crewed spaceflight capacity rather than relying on NASA and firms like SpaceX. The event took on added significance after reports that the White House discouraged US companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin from attending, which one former satellite executive called a wake-up call.
Google DeepMind has created the DeepMind Institute, led by managing editor Shane Legg alongside directors Demis Hassabis and James Manyika, to host differing perspectives on artificial general intelligence from within Google and the wider research community. Its first release includes four essays addressing economic disruption from AGI, keeping AI reasoning interpretable, principles for human flourishing, and how to evaluate frontier models. Notably, Hassabis proposes a U.S.-based standards body to assess advanced AI systems, starting with voluntary reviews before release.
Meta AI has released Muse, a personified AI agent app for iPhone, with a companion Mac app added nine days later and web access at muse.ai. Users can customize the agent's name and avatar, and while the app is free with weekly usage limits, paying subscribers get expanded access. The Mac version can work across apps, files, calendar, notes, and messages, with user-controlled permissions.
A newly published Nix flake automates installing Microsoft 365 (click-to-run Office) on Linux without a virtual machine, using the umu-launcher tool alongside GE-Proton, the gaming-focused Wine build from Valve and GloriousEggroll, with Bottles' ProtoSoda Wine core offered as an alternative runner. The project doesn't bundle any Microsoft software itself; instead its ms365 script fetches the Office Deployment Tool and Office files at install time, requiring users to supply their own Microsoft 365 license and sign in. The approach builds on prior community work, including Bottles' reports of Office 365 running on Wine and older ruados/eylenburg registry and DLL tweaks.
Motorola posted a cryptic teaser on X showing close-ups of various materials alongside the tagline 'A new perspective is coming' and the date September 22, 2026. Signs point to this being the reveal of the Signature 27, a follow-up to the Motorola Signature phone launched in January, since a sign-up page using the same tagline already exists.
Baseten's newly formed research arm, Base Labs, announced a partnership with Hugging Face and Goodfire AI on Wednesday to develop safety evaluation and monitoring tools for open-weight AI models. The effort aims to create a shared standard that embeds safety directly into how models are trained and deployed, rather than adding it after release. Technical details of how the collaboration will function have not yet been disclosed.
Skillsync, part of YC's W26 batch, is building a tool that makes AI chat sessions portable so users can carry context and history from one AI agent to another instead of starting fresh each time. The company launched publicly on Hacker News to introduce the product and gather early feedback from developers.
Huawei announced at its Huawei Connect conference that it will release its next-generation Ascend 960DT AI chip in the first quarter of 2027, six months earlier than the previously planned Q3 2027 date. The chip is part of Huawei's Peerium Computing Architecture, a system linking hundreds of thousands of accelerator cards via its UnifiedBus interconnect technology to build massive AI computing clusters for training and inference.
Addigy has launched an Intelligence Suite inside its device management platform for MSPs and IT teams overseeing Apple devices. The suite includes AI Script Assist for writing and auditing scripts, natural language reporting, and an MCP server that lets AI agents interact with the management control plane under admin-defined guardrails. Addigy says all processing happens within its own environment, with no customer data sent to outside AI models.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has opened an official online store selling branded merchandise, including T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, mouse mats, and even a bottle of Chardonnay. He announced the launch himself on X, describing it as a way to share some of his personality and bring fans a bit of enjoyment.
A 50-year-old woman named Lipps was arrested at gunpoint by US Marshals in Tennessee while babysitting four children, after facial recognition software wrongly identified her as a fugitive wanted in North Dakota. She spent six months in jail in Tennessee before the mistake was corrected, and she is now suing the city of Fargo and the detective involved for $10 million.
Apple confirmed to CNET that its first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo, will launch on Oct. 23 running iOS 27.1 instead of the base iOS 27 version. The company said this build adds features specifically designed for the foldable form factor, while other iPhones are already testing the next update, iOS 27.2. Preorders for the Duo open Oct. 16, and all devices will eventually be able to move to iOS 27.2 later this year.
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