In a first-person account, Kid Pix creator Craig Hickman explains how he settled on the name 'Kid Pix,' favoring three-letter words that echoed his family's naming pattern and worked well visually and phonetically. He describes testing the software directly on his son and preschoolers to refine its interface, and notes that Broderbund later tried unsuccessfully to rename the product before a hired naming consultant advised against changing it.
A study covering more than 700 software companies found that AI coding agents raised lines of code by 30 percent, commits by 20 percent, and pull requests by 23 percent, but did not meaningfully increase the rate at which firms resolved tracked features or issues in tools like Jira. Researchers attribute the gap to code review, which took 49 percent longer on average after AI tools were adopted, with more revisions required and more reviewer comments per pull request.
Amazon is said to be negotiating an acquisition of Decart, a startup whose DOS software optimizes AI models to run on different chips in weeks instead of months, in a deal valued at as much as $7 billion. Decart also builds Lucy and Oasis, AI models that generate simulated 3D environments for gaming and robotics training. Anthropic had reportedly discussed buying Decart for about $6 billion last month but walked away after due diligence, for reasons that remain unclear.
A hardware project has repurposed the Gemtek W1700K Wi-Fi 7 router's MediaTek MT7996 radio chip as a wideband software-defined radio receiver, capturing raw 14-bit IQ data at up to 320 megasamples per second. Custom firmware, built without any MediaTek code, drives the radio from cold boot and streams captured data over 10 GbE to a Linux host, which renders a live spectrum and waterfall display in a browser.
Google's Pixel release date page lists exact support end dates for each device. Pixel 6 and 7 series phones get five years of updates, while Pixel 8 and later models get seven years, with a-series phones following their own release-based timelines. Phones up to the Pixel 5a are already out of support.
Indeed Hiring Lab data shows U.S. software-development job postings have risen nearly 15% since February 2025, even as overall job postings declined and AI tools write an increasing share of code. GitHub reported that AI agents are now involved in one in three pull requests, up from fewer than one in ten a year earlier.
Samsung has begun rolling out Android 17-based One UI 9 to newer devices like the Galaxy Fold 8 and Flip 8, while older models approach the end of their update lifespans. Support duration varies widely across Samsung's lineup, with budget A-series phones generally receiving fewer years of meaningful software updates than flagship models.
Reverse-engineering projects for titles including GoldenEye 007, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Halo: Combat Evolved, and a 2009 Call of Duty entry have recently reached major milestones, with one developer using 17 AI agents to rebuild a playable Call of Duty build from its compiled executable. Similar AI-driven efforts have produced open-source clones of Adobe applications and informed commentary on COBOL systems tied to a drop in IBM's stock earlier this year.
A group calling itself Xuanye Group said it breached ASOS after impersonating a trusted contact to obtain one employee's login credentials, then used that access to reach multiple internal systems, including the platform used to send push notifications to ASOS's mobile app users. ASOS has around 17 million customers and 2,800 employees; the company says this incident is separate from a July breach at ASOS US that affected nearly 140,000 people via credential stuffing.
A blogger reflects on how the rise of AI coding assistants like Claude Code, released just over a year ago, has reshaped software engineering. The author says they initially expected to keep pursuing technical writing and open-source coding as personal, intellectually fulfilling pursuits even as AI took over professional coding work, but found that community discourse around the craft has grown shallower and more repetitive, shifting from compilers and type systems to talk of 'prompts' and 'harnesses'.
Harvard researchers Fiona Chen and James Stratton analyzed Jellyfish analytics covering 300 million work events across more than 700 software firms and 700,000 employees from 2021 to March 2026. They found that while AI coding assistants and agents increase the volume of code generated, firms show little evidence of increased software output or reduced employment, because human code review becomes a bottleneck, with longer reviews, more revision requests, and more reviewer comments.
Apple has switched its recommended software update in Settings to iOS 27.0.1 for devices still running iOS 26, after initially keeping iOS 26.7 as the featured option when iOS 27 launched September 14. Users can still choose to remain on iOS 26, but iOS 27.0.1 now appears prominently under Software Update rather than tucked into an 'Also Available' section.
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