GoKawiil
Tech News
Preorders for Nintendo's limited-edition Switch 2 Zelda 40th Anniversary console sold out within minutes at Target, Best Buy, and GameStop, prompting scalpers to relist units on eBay for close to $1,000, nearly double the $519.99 MSRP. Amazon and Walmart have listed the console but haven't yet opened preorders, leaving a narrow window for buyers to secure one at retail price before launch on October 29.
CERT/CC disclosed that Skullcandy Dime 3 earbuds running firmware 1.0.0.28 accept Bluetooth pairing from nearby devices without any user approval, due to a flaw in the Airoha Bluetooth Audio SDK tracked as CVE-2025-20701. Skullcandy has released firmware 1.0.0.30 to fix the bug, but there is no way for users to update their earbuds manually or through the companion app.
A Maine business that sold fox and coyote urine to hunters as a cover scent noticed an unusually large order from a lawn and garden store outside hunting season. A phone call revealed the retailer's customers were gardeners using the same product to scare rabbits away from vegetable patches, uncovering an entirely new customer base the founder hadn't realized existed.
Jacob Coxon left his role at Anthropic and publicly stated that frontier AI labs are knowingly gambling with humanity's survival by racing toward self-improving superintelligent systems. He argued these future systems could hack any infrastructure, seize resources, and cause catastrophic harm by decade's end. Anthropic's own Alignment Science lead, Evan Hubinger, backed the warning, estimating over 10% odds of AI causing human extinction within ten years.
Douglas Yao, a self-taught chemist working outside any pharmaceutical company, says he used ChatGPT to design a new compound called PAC-3310, targeting the same receptor as the approved antipsychotic Cobenfy. He claims to have built a chemistry lab in his garage, synthesized the compound himself, and is now testing it in cell lines and mice, part of a broader effort to generate thousands of AI-designed drug candidates.
A collection of twenty small, standalone LaTeX and MetaPost examples demonstrates how to reproduce the look of old scientific publications, from engraved optics plates to Victorian newspaper layouts. Each file isolates one technique—such as antique typography, hand-drawn diagrams, or period color palettes—so users can compile, modify, or strip out individual effects to see their contribution. The examples split into pure LaTeX pages, standalone fiziko MetaPost figures, and hybrid pages combining both via LuaTeX.
A team tasked with speeding up ClickHouse for its largest customers found a critical dashboard query taking over 85 seconds and scanning nearly 2 billion rows across 198GB of data. Over four months, they applied a series of incremental, non-flashy optimizations—tackling issues like the overhead of ReplacingMergeTree's FINAL clause on mutable event data and an inefficient partition key—to bring the query down to sub-second response times.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been analyzing Americans' financial transaction records to help agents identify vehicles and individuals worth pulling over. The practice extends the agency's data-driven surveillance tactics beyond travel and license-plate records into personal banking activity.
Plaion Replai has pushed back the launch of its Neo Geo Advanced Entertainment System+ remake from November 2025 to September 16, 2027. The company cites overwhelming demand plus a global memory chip shortage fueled by AI infrastructure investment as reasons for the delay. Pricing remains unchanged, with the standard edition at $250 and the 35th anniversary bundle at $350.
Steven Spielberg's new science-fiction film, titled 'Disclosure Day,' is heading to Peacock this October. The project stars Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colman Domingo, and Colin Firth in a story centered on an alien mystery.
Apple released a document detailing how its newly announced Audio Intelligence features—Siri Recap, Live Rewind, Sound Recognition, and Music Recognition—process audio without storing or exposing raw recordings. The company says these features rely on a hardware-isolated 'Secure Exclave' in the Apple Watch's S11 chip, which processes sound locally and never creates an accessible audio file. Any data transferred to iPhone is encrypted between Secure Exclaves, and users must manually activate features like Live Rewind and choose what text to retain.
The Justice Department has formally asked Fox and Roku to submit additional documents and data as part of a deeper antitrust review of Fox's proposed $22 billion acquisition of Roku. The move, known as a second request, is a standard but significant step signaling regulators have unresolved questions after reviewing the companies' initial filings.