Ugreen, best known for chargers and NAS storage devices, debuted its HomeAgent smart home system at IFA, combining camera storage, on-device AI processing, and home automation controlled by a new voice assistant called Uliya. The flagship MasterAgent MA100 hub doubles as a NAS device and smart home brain, using an Nvidia Jetson Thor T5000 chip capable of up to 2,070 TFLOPS of AI performance, with three hub tiers available.
Tesla launched an online interest form ahead of its Austin Cybercab event, inviting companies to explore buying fleets of its autonomous Cybercab vehicle or building supporting infrastructure such as mobility hubs. The move marks a shift from Tesla's earlier plan to run its robotaxi service entirely in-house.
Philips Hue is rolling out a previewed backup and restore feature that lets Bridge and Bridge Pro owners save their settings, accessories, rooms, zones, scenes and automations to Hue's cloud. Restoring saved setups will initially be limited to Bridge Pro devices, with backups stored for up to a year and created manually, one per Bridge at a time. Alongside this, Hue also unveiled new hardware including gradient strip lights and a Wall Light Module.
John Ternus, who succeeded Tim Cook as Apple's chief executive, posted a simple 'hello' on X to mark the transition. The reply section quickly filled with users pitching hardware ideas and design changes, reflecting Ternus's background leading Apple's engineering teams.
Greenway Institute is a new startup school that strips away traditional campus amenities like clubs, sports teams and dining halls, focusing spending instead on hands-on academic instruction. The model aims to lower tuition by eliminating costs tied to nonacademic student life, betting that students prioritize career-ready skills over the traditional campus experience.
New generations of ultra-short-throw projectors are being marketed as direct substitutes for traditional televisions, offering improved brightness, faster setup, and sleeker industrial design than earlier models. Despite these upgrades, the devices remain significantly more expensive than comparable large-screen TVs.
Anker introduced MindBase, a device positioned as a central controller for connected homes, combining Matter compatibility with local AI processing and built-in network-attached storage. The product aims to manage smart home devices while also handling data storage and AI tasks directly on the hardware rather than relying solely on the cloud.
At IFA in Berlin, Philips Hue unveiled the Liane 360-degree Rope Lights, a flexible, cuttable smart lighting product that uses OmniGlow technology to emit diffuse light in every direction rather than pinpoints. The lights can be shaped, draped, or mounted along walls, ceilings, or furniture and controlled via the Hue app to display any color combination, with pricing starting at $399.99 for a 3-meter length and going up to $549.99 for 5 meters.
Philips Hue is rolling out Custom AI Behaviors, a feature letting users describe desired lighting automations in plain language instead of manually configuring rules. Announced at IFA alongside a new Sonos speaker integration for Hue switches, both updates arrive via a software update in November. The AI feature requires the Hue Bridge Pro's processing power to run.
As communities destroy Flock's automatic license plate readers over privacy concerns, some police departments switching to Axon are worried its similar-looking cameras will become the next target. In a leaked webinar, Axon CEO Rick Smith confirmed the company is exploring shape changes to its ALPRs after customer requests, alongside plans to mount cameras on streetlights and add explanatory signage.
A personal essay published September 1, 2026 argues against the negative connotation of being called an 'NPC,' comparing it instead to video game characters like Skyrim's blacksmith who remain unbothered by the player's actions. The author suggests that embracing an NPC mindset—focusing on one's own routine rather than comparing oneself to others—offers a form of freedom rather than a loss of autonomy.
Reliance Jio has expanded its JioPC cloud computing service beyond its own broadband subscribers, making it available to anyone with an internet connection regardless of telecom provider. The service streams a virtual PC with up to eight virtual CPUs, 16GB RAM and 1TB storage, letting even computers up to eight years old run modern AI applications without hardware upgrades. Subscriptions range from about $11 for two months to roughly $53 for a full year of the higher-spec plan.
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