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Google's newly announced Pixel Tag Bluetooth tracker won't ship until November, leaving buyers without an option for months. Android Authority points to five trackers already available, with Motorola's Moto Tag 2 standing out at $20 (or $99 for four), offering UWB support, a replaceable CR2032 battery, IP68 water resistance, and roughly 600 days of battery life, all while working with Google's Find Hub network.
London startup Relay, founded by former Nothing staffers Cookie Xu and Raymond Zhu, has released voice dictation software for macOS ahead of a companion hardware device called the Relay Q, due in early 2027. The founders say existing software tools like Wispr Flow struggled with inconsistent microphone pickup in office settings, prompting them to build purpose-made hardware for accurate speech capture.
Meta has settled with 47 US states over youth safety harms, agreeing to pay at least $12 billion regardless of outcome, with an additional $5.3 billion contingent on TikTok, YouTube and Snap adopting similar protections like default usage limits and nighttime notification blocks. Meta publicized the deal through an 'Open Letter' and full-page newspaper ads urging its rivals to match its new standards, while TikTok, YouTube and Snap have not yet commented.
Actor and producer Reese Witherspoon faced online criticism after saying women need to be involved in AI because 'the change is here.' Critics pushed back, with one widely liked response warning that framing AI adoption as inevitable discourages critical thinking about its risks.
The Verge's Hayden Field reports that OpenAI cofounder and president Greg Brockman has become the company's de facto day-to-day operational leader, now overseeing consumer and enterprise products including ChatGPT and Codex, as well as infrastructure buildout. This shift comes as multiple senior OpenAI executives have departed in quick succession over recent months, leaving Sam Altman as the public-facing CEO while Brockman's influence grows internally.
During a nearly 12-hour livestream from the Alaskan wilderness, streamers Maya Higa and FaZe Adapt were filmed sitting near a massive grizzly bear as it charged past them into a river to catch fish. The pair, aware that moving could provoke the animal, stayed still and narrated the moment for viewers rather than retreating to safety.
Hyundai CEO José Muñoz said the automaker intends to use its existing dealer network to sell robots like Boston Dynamics' Atlas humanoid and Spot quadruped, alongside cars. Hyundai Capital, the company's auto financing arm, is also exploring ways to offer financing for these costly machines. Hyundai plans a factory to produce 30,000 Atlas units annually by 2028, with deployment starting at its Georgia plant.
Google has replaced the Exynos modem used in previous Pixel phones with a MediaTek modem in the Pixel 11 series, promising better reliability, speed, and power efficiency. Android Authority ran side-by-side signal and performance tests comparing the Pixel 11 Pro against last year's Pixel 10 Pro using identical SIM cards and network conditions to verify these claims.
Biorobotics researchers at the University of Queensland and biomedical engineers at UNSW have created 'paraborgs'—giant burrowing cockroaches equipped with cameras and miniature auto-injection systems. In tests, the insects hit targets with injections 95% of the time when within 15cm, and completed the full navigate-and-inject sequence successfully in 72% of trials.
Microsoft has begun rolling out a permanent fix for a bug that crashed Windows 11 systems and broke games like ARC Raiders, MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and The Finals. The root cause was traced to the inpoutx64.sys driver, often bundled with RGB lighting peripherals, rather than the August 2026 update initially suspected. The update, which started propagating on August 26, 2026, automatically blocks the faulty driver and requires a restart to take effect.
Samsung has launched the Galaxy S26 FE with nearly identical specs to last year's S25 FE, including the same 6.7-inch OLED display, 4,900mAh battery, and triple rear camera. The main changes are an upgraded Exynos 2500 chipset, a slightly wider selfie camera, new color options, and a redesigned camera island, but the phone now starts at $699.99, a $50 increase over its predecessor.
New real-world images shared on Weibo reveal the unreleased Xiaomi 18 Fold in a dark red color, showing its triple-rear-camera module for the first time after earlier leaks kept the cameras hidden. The design closely resembles Huawei's Pura X Max, and the device is expected to debut with Xiaomi's new in-house XRing O3 chipset sometime in September.