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X expands 'Under the Hood' tool to reveal government-ordered post restrictions

X announced it will now notify users when their posts or accounts have had visibility limited because the company complied with a government's legal demand. This builds on the 'Under the Hood' transparency feature launched in August, letting users with at least 10 monthly posts download a data file showing labels, downranking, and which country requested the restriction.

AX Gaming's RTX 5070 Autumn Edition GPU adds built-in fragrance feature

AX Gaming, an Inno3D subsidiary, has unveiled a seasonal limited-edition GeForce RTX 5070 12G graphics card decorated with anime artwork, maple leaf motifs, and ARGB lighting. The standout addition is a scent-emitting component the company calls 'e-sports aromatherapy,' claiming users can detect an autumn-like fragrance even when the card is powered off.

Apple uses firmware trick to ship iPhone 18 Pro Max's oversized battery

Apple's iPhone 18 Pro Max ships with a battery-firmware lock that caps capacity below the 20Wh threshold that triggers international shipping restrictions on single-cell batteries. Once a customer activates the phone for the first time, the lock lifts automatically, restoring the battery to its full rated capacity of roughly 21-22Wh depending on the model. A 'Prepare to Ship' setting can reimpose the cap, limiting charging to 80 percent over 14 days, for anyone sending the device in for repair or resale.

EPA Repeals 2024 Carbon Limits on Coal and Gas Power Plants

The US Environmental Protection Agency announced on September 14 that it is rescinding the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, which had required coal plants and new gas plants to capture 90 percent of their carbon emissions or close by 2039. The agency says the rollback will save industry $370 million in compliance costs, but has not disclosed the resulting public health toll.

Priscilla Chan Restricts Daughter's Internet-Connected AI Projects at Home

A new Colossus profile of the Zuckerberg family reveals that Priscilla Chan limits how her 11-year-old daughter Maxima can use AI tools, allowing her to vibe-code simple games and messaging apps but banning anything connected to the open internet, including a proposed dating site. The restriction comes even as Mark Zuckerberg's company Meta pushes AI products like its camera-equipped smart glasses and faces ongoing criticism over privacy failures and harmful AI-generated content on its platforms.

Zoox's 100-vehicle robotaxi cap in Nevada set to expire September 25

A Nevada Transportation Authority permit that had restricted Amazon-owned Zoox to just 100 robotaxis will lapse this month, according to confirmation from an NTA official and a Zoox spokesperson. The move allows Zoox to expand its Las Vegas fleet without the previous regulatory ceiling, though the company has not disclosed how many vehicles it plans to add.

External GPUs lose up to 32% performance versus desktop setups, tests show

Reviews from Notebookcheck and PC Gamer found that external GPU enclosures connected via Thunderbolt suffer meaningful performance losses compared to desktop PCIe slots, ranging from 7 to 32 percent depending on resolution and card. PC Gamer found an RTX 4070 Ti ran about 25 percent slower over Thunderbolt than OCuLink, with worse stuttering and lower frame-rate consistency, and found that pairing an eGPU with a faster RTX 4090 yielded diminishing returns versus a full desktop connection.

GitLab.com to tie API rate limits to subscription tier starting October 2026

GitLab is overhauling how it throttles requests on GitLab.com, moving from flat limits to caps tied to each subscription plan, applied per user and per top-level group. Free accounts and unauthenticated traffic hit the new limits on October 19, 2026, with two brownout previews on October 7 and 14; Premium and Ultimate users follow in January 2027. Unauthenticated requests, including automation hitting the API without credentials, will be capped at 60 requests per hour per IP regardless of account tier.

DeepSeek unveils V4.1 Flash with 4x KV cache compression and 420 tokens/sec speed

DeepSeek released V4.1 Flash, a model initially mistaken for a minor update but revealed via its technical report to be a significant architectural overhaul, effectively a V5-class release. It achieves near 420 tokens/second throughput while compressing KV cache by 4x through techniques including cross-layer compression, sparse attention indexing optimizations, and FP4 precision, alongside a YOCO-inspired prefill design that only activates 8B parameters during prefill versus 16B during decode across its 40 layers.

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel signals openness to teen daily time limits

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel told the BBC his company would consider adopting default daily time limits for teenage users, echoing measures Meta agreed to in a recent $12.7bn settlement with US states. Meta had pledged two-hour daily caps, muted school-hours notifications and nighttime blocks for teens, and offered to pay an extra $5.3bn if rivals like Snap, TikTok and YouTube adopt similar restrictions.

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