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The NetBSD Project has released NetBSD 9.5, the last update in the NetBSD 9 stable series, bundling security and stability fixes accumulated since NetBSD 9.4 shipped in April 2024. It remains compatible with NetBSD 9.0, but its release also formally ends support for the entire netbsd-9 branch.
With Apple's new iPhone lineup arriving and starting storage now set at 256GB, buyers face the usual question of whether that capacity will last. Analysts note 256GB can hold roughly 70,000 photos, enough for most casual users, but heavy 4K video recording or large AAA games can eat through that space quickly.
ESP32 Bit Pirate is a free, open-source firmware project that converts common ESP32-S3 development boards into a versatile bench tool for probing dozens of hardware protocols including I2C, SPI, UART, JTAG, SWD, CAN, LoRa, Wi-Fi and BLE. Users can control it via USB serial, a browser-based Web CLI over Wi-Fi, or Web Serial, and the accompanying web tools support flashing, logic capture and chip programming without installing desktop software.
AMC CEO Adam Aron says Robinhood issued tokenized versions of AMC shares without the company's authorization, and he is considering legal action in response. The dispute centers on whether a brokerage can create blockchain-based tokens tracking a public company's stock without that company's consent.
German startup Isar Aerospace successfully sent its two-stage Spectrum rocket into low Earth orbit from a spaceport in Norway, marking the first entirely commercial orbital launch from continental Europe. The achievement follows a failed attempt last March, when the rocket crashed into the sea just 30 seconds after liftoff. CEO Daniel Metzler called it a new chapter for European spaceflight and sovereign access to space.
A software developer published a personal essay cataloguing mixed emotions about AI: awe at how neural networks produce reasoning without explicit algorithms, fear over unresolved existential-risk arguments, disgust at crawlers overwhelming open web communities, sadness for artists undercut by AI-generated content, and anger at political systems failing to check corporate AI power and resource consumption. The author concludes AI feels promising as technology but troubling for society.
Sony's DualSense controller for the PlayStation 5 typically lasts only 6 to 12 hours on a single charge, with the exact duration depending on how heavily a game uses features like the light bar, speaker, adaptive triggers and haptic feedback. The premium DualSense Edge fares even worse, lasting just 5 to 10 hours because its 1,050mAh battery is smaller than the standard pad's 1,560mAh cell to make room for extra hardware like rear paddles and swappable stick modules.
The Feather Atlas is an online tool that lets users identify bird feathers by filtering criteria such as pattern, color, size, and feather position. Users can select attributes like barred or spotted patterns, specific colors, length categories, and whether the feather is a primary, secondary, or tail feather to narrow down matches. The tool also allows searching across all feather types if the position is unknown.
A hobbyist in China modified an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 to eliminate its external power connectors entirely, forcing the card to run solely on the 75W supplied by the PCIe slot via a shunt resistor mod. The resulting single-slot, low-profile card uses a bare-bones blower cooler with no proper heatsink or thermal pads on the memory chips, relying on a thin metal shroud touching the core directly for cooling.
A tech newsletter digest compiles several unrelated stories, including scammers using sextortion tactics within family group chats, an assessment of which wearable devices give the most reliable sleep data, and a reported change in leadership within Apple's executive ranks.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports Apple is exploring ways to boost App Store revenue and margins, an initiative reportedly led by new CEO John Ternus and services chief Eddy Cue. Gurman also links the effort to Phil Schiller's recent departure, noting Schiller opposed the push out of concern it would anger developers and regulators.
Following the release of GPT Astra, viral demos such as recreating Minecraft, drawing a pelican on a bicycle as SVG, and simulating a bouncing ball in a rotating box swept social feeds. A commentary piece labels these 'demo-benchmarks': tasks that look impressive and are easy to grasp, but are narrow enough that labs can specifically optimize for them before each launch. It cites Thinking Machines' Inkling Small, a much smaller model that nearly matched or beat its larger sibling on tests like Humanity's Last Exam and GPQA Diamond, as evidence that public, static test sets get gamed through training choices.