GoKawiil
Tech News
The U.S. Army has signed a $465 million contract to field 26 laser weapons designed to shoot down drones. The deal marks a shift from decades of research and prototypes toward actual battlefield deployment of directed-energy weapons.
Celeste Amadon, founder of AI dating app Known, launched a public nomination campaign called 'San Francisco's Hot List,' inviting people to nominate attractive, accomplished singles in the city. The X post drew mixed reactions—mockery alongside genuine engagement—but generated over 15,000 submissions within a day, according to Amadon. The campaign taps into a growing narrative pushing back on San Francisco's reputation as an undateable, style-deficient tech hub.
iRobot showed off a concept robot called the Roomba Duo at IFA in Berlin, pairing a powerful floor-washing base unit with a smaller Roomba Plus 757 that lowers via a mechanical arm to clean tight spots like under tables. The base handles vacuuming, steam-mopping with 46 newtons of pressure, and holds clean and dirty water tanks plus a dust bag, using lidar and cameras to navigate and map homes.
GrapheneOS developers discovered that Google's Pixel 11 phones do include hardware support for Memory Tagging Extension (MTE) after examining code in the Android 17 QPR2 Beta 4 release. This contradicts the project's earlier assessment, made just days prior, that the phones lacked MTE and its accompanying warning against purchasing them.
Google is backing a new initiative in parts of the Bay Area that subsidizes homeowners installing heat pumps, with incentives reaching as much as $10,000 per household. The program frames residential energy upgrades as part of broader grid infrastructure rather than isolated consumer purchases.
Lexar unveiled the Muse Ultra-Slim Portable SSD, a drive just 3.8mm thick that tapers to 1mm at its edge, making it too slim to house a standard USB-C port. Instead it connects via SnapLink, a proprietary magnetic pogo-pin cable, and comes with a mounting sleeve designed to attach to MagSafe-compatible Apple devices. It will ship in 512GB and 1TB versions later this year, rated at up to 1,050 MB/s read and 1,000 MB/s write speeds.
A newly compiled FAQ traces Raspberry Pi's history from its 2012 debut, when the first $35 Model B sold out so fast it crashed retailer Farnell and RS Components' servers, through to 2025, when cumulative sales hit roughly 68 million units. It also charts the company's shift into designing its own silicon, starting with the RP2040 chip in 2021, and its 2024 stock market listing while the founding Foundation remains majority owner.
Uber abruptly halted its operations in Nigeria and Uganda's Kampala on a single day, sending an email notice announcing the wind-down that arrived the same day service was cut. Some drivers and passengers were left stranded mid-trip as the app stopped working with no prior warning, sparking outrage on social media dubbed the 'Uber rapture.' Uber had run in Nigeria since 2014 and in Kampala since 2016.
Microsoft confirmed an ongoing Exchange Online incident, tracked as EX1467029, causing intermittent 'Server busy' errors for users sending or receiving messages from external domains. The company says anti-spam protections may be worsening delays for some accounts, and it has not yet identified the root cause or affected regions.
A newly launched site runs a continuous daily simulation applying carbon-aware electricity pricing to real grid data from Switzerland and 38 US grid regions. It compares this dynamic model—where prices fall during clean generation and rise during dirty generation—against standard flat-rate pricing to estimate potential CO₂ reductions.
At IFA 2026 in Berlin, Xiaomi introduced the Smart Band 11, a successor to last year's Smart Band 10 that trims the device down to 9.99mm thick and boosts screen brightness to 2,000 nits from 1,500 nits. The tracker keeps its 1.72-inch, 212x520 pixel display and offers metal or ceramic casing options, along with new color choices, HyperOS 4 software, 5ATM water resistance, and claimed improvements to heart rate and SpO2 sensing.
Instagram users report that the platform's 'AI Content' label is being applied incorrectly to photos edited with minor tools like Canva's background remover or blemish fixers, while genuine AI-generated images often go unflagged. This mirrors a similar labeling breakdown from 2024, when Meta's 'Made by AI' tag misfired on images with only minor generative retouching detected through embedded metadata.