Brazilian YouTuber Fabian (fmklab) built a working version of the RTX 3070 Ti 16GB that Nvidia never shipped, by fitting an RTX 3070 Ti GPU onto an RTX 3070 PCB and swapping in higher-capacity Samsung GDDR6 chips. After reconfiguring the board's memory straps using Nvidia's BIOS Reader tool, the card correctly recognized the full 16GB pool in GPU-Z, matching the specs of a prototype that had only ever surfaced in database listings and photos.
The US Department of Energy has issued a $1.9 billion loan guarantee to support restarting a nuclear power plant tied to a deal with Google. The financing is meant to help bring the previously shuttered reactor back online to supply carbon-free electricity for growing data center demand.
Apple is holding a media event at its Cupertino headquarters where it is widely expected to introduce its first folding iPhone, reportedly called the iPhone Ultra and priced above $2,000. The company is also expected to reveal Pro iPhone models, new Apple Watch and Watch Ultra devices, and updated AirPods, with the base iPhone 18 likely delayed until next year.
Samsung R&D executive Hee-Cheul Moon publicly welcomed Apple's upcoming entry into foldable phones, framing it as validation of Samsung's early lead in the category. However, he pointedly stressed that device weight is the critical factor for customer satisfaction, an apparent dig at reports that Apple's foldable will weigh roughly 235g compared to the Galaxy Fold 8's 201g. Market analysts project Apple could capture 40% of the foldable market within a year, edging past Samsung's current 38% share.
NSF NOIRLab's DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys team has published DR11, a 5.6-trillion-pixel map spanning 75% of the night sky and cataloging roughly 4 billion celestial objects. Built from 263,407 ground-based exposures gathered by 160 scientists, the release expands coverage by 50% over DR9 and restores northern-sky data missing from DR10, and it's freely accessible for public exploration.
Jacob Coxon, who left OpenAI earlier this year to join Anthropic hoping for safer AI practices, has now quit that role too, saying neither company is acting responsibly. He warns that superhuman AI systems capable of hacking and acquiring resources could emerge within the decade, and says industry insiders privately share this fear even as they downplay it publicly.
An investigation into Flock Safety examines how the company's automated license-plate readers have spread across thousands of U.S. communities, creating a dense network of surveillance that local police departments increasingly rely on. The piece traces how privacy law's ambiguous constitutional footing—rooted in Fourth Amendment protections rather than an explicit right—has left room for technologies like Flock's cameras to expand largely unchecked. It situates this growth within a longer post-9/11 trend of trading privacy for promised safety and convenience.
Three.js version r186 now includes native support for 3D Gaussian Splatting, adding a dedicated mesh type and loaders for major splat file formats. Previously splats required community-made add-ons, but they are now a core rendering feature of the engine.
Nintendo announced a new 2D Metroid game called Ravenous for the Switch 2, building visually and mechanically on Metroid Dread's style. The game blends 3D graphics with 2D gameplay, adding cinematic action sequences, enemy parrying, and Samus's familiar Morph Ball mechanic, alongside a new ability to absorb energy from foes to survive.
Evan Hubinger, a safety researcher at Anthropic, said publicly that while today's AI models pose low risk, he estimates a greater than 10% chance that future AI systems could cause human extinction within ten years. His remarks followed a former Anthropic researcher's claim that neither Anthropic nor OpenAI are acting responsibly, and a report that Anthropic withheld its newest model from the UK's AI Safety Institute.
Tesla has started offering paid rides in its two-seat, steering-wheel-free Cybercab across a roughly 288-square-mile geofenced zone in Austin, Texas. A Verge reporter who spent about an hour riding in the vehicle described a mix of impressive purpose-built design and unresolved problems, including long wait times, awkward drop-off spots that blocked traffic, and butterfly-door glitches.
Lucasfilm announced that the original 1977 Star Wars will debut on IMAX 70mm on February 19, 2027, marking its 50th anniversary, using a newly restored print of the unaltered original cut rather than the digitally remastered version. The upcoming film Star Wars: Starfighter will follow on IMAX screens starting May 28, 2027, exactly 50 years after the franchise's first theatrical release.
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