Anker introduced the Soundcore Sleep Earbuds 4 and 4 Pro at IFA Berlin, upgrading its popular sleep-focused earbuds line with a smaller ergonomic fit and a touchscreen charging case for the Pro model. The Pro version adds a 'track-assess-adjustment system' that uses biometric sensors—including heart rate and HRV monitoring—to tailor audio for better sleep. The standard model launches in October, with the Pro following in November; pricing has not been disclosed.
Security researcher Jose Rodriguez found that on some Android phones, WhatsApp's video call feature can let anyone view your entire photo gallery without unlocking the device. The flaw is triggered by answering a video call, opening the effects panel, selecting AI-generated backgrounds, and choosing to edit an existing photo, which opens the gallery directly. Rodriguez says the bug affects OPPO and vivo phones but not Samsung, and has reported it to Meta and Google.
Uber began operating self-driving minicabs in London on Thursday, becoming the first company to offer such a service in the UK. The initial rollout includes just 15 autonomous vehicles, each requiring a human safety driver ready to intervene, with fares matching standard UberX, Electric or Comfort rides shown upfront in the app.
Anthropic has updated Claude so it can perform computer-use tasks in the background while users keep working on the same machine. If Claude must take over the screen entirely, it asks permission once per session and waits until the user stops typing before grabbing keyboard control. The feature is in beta for Pro and Max subscribers on the Mac Claude app, enabled via Settings > General > Computer use.
Three 16-year-old students from Cork County, Ireland—Émer Hickey, Ciara Judge, and Sophie Healy-Thow—discovered that treating cereal seeds with rhizobia bacteria, normally associated with legumes, sped up germination by 50 percent and increased barley and oat yields by up to 70 percent. Their research, which began as a school geography project on global food shortages, earned them the top prize at the 2014 Google Science Fair.
Three teenage girls from Kinsale, Ireland, followed up an accidental discovery of nitrogen-fixing bacteria in pea plant roots by testing whether the same bacteria could benefit cereal crops, which normally can't host them. Working from a home laboratory over three years, Émer Hickey, Ciara Judge and Sophie Healy-Thow soaked barley, oat and other cereal seeds in rhizobium cultures and tracked germination and growth against controls, despite experts warning the bacteria wouldn't help non-legume plants.
Apple emailed Mac App Store developers saying universal apps requiring macOS 13 or later can now remove Intel-based Mac support entirely and build for arm64 only. This follows Apple's completed six-year transition to its own silicon and its earlier statement that macOS 26 Tahoe would be the last major release supporting Intel Macs. Rosetta, the tool letting Apple-silicon Macs run older Intel apps, will lose general-purpose support after macOS 27.
Plex is urging all users to immediately update Plex Media Server to version 1.43.3 and Plex Desktop to version 1.115.0, both released earlier this year, to fix multiple unspecified security vulnerabilities. The company emailed affected customers directly and said CVE identifiers have been requested but not yet published, though the flaws are known to impact Media Server v1.43.2 and earlier.
Dell has unveiled the Alienware AW2527HX QD-OLED monitor, a 25-inch display with a 560Hz refresh rate and 0.03ms gray-to-gray response time, making it the quickest monitor the company has built. The panel was developed with input from esports organization Team Liquid and features 99% DCI-P3 color coverage, infinite contrast, V-stripe subpixels, and a matte anti-glare coating. It supports DisplayPort 2.1 and NVIDIA G-Sync, includes a telescopic stand, narrow bezels, a rear headset hanger, and a 3-year warranty covering OLED burn-in, with launch expected in early 2027.
Polars has shipped the first release candidate for version 2.0, with the final release expected in coming weeks. The major version bump primarily changes the default execution engine for LazyFrame queries from the in-memory engine to the streaming engine, alongside other default setting changes and removal of legacy design constraints.
None of the 16 Rassvet satellites Russia launched in June reached their planned 870-km orbit, with several drifting as low as 300-400 km and two already re-entering the atmosphere, according to the Institute for the Study of War citing N2YO tracking data. The March batch of 16 satellites also had issues, with one lost and only 12 reaching proper altitude, undermining Bureau 1440's plan to build a Starlink competitor.
The World Meteorological Organization has issued its most confident El Niño forecast ever, putting the odds at nearly 100% that the current event will persist through February 2027. Officials say this El Niño, driven by unusually warm eastern Pacific waters, is on track to become the strongest ever recorded, with UN Secretary-General António Guterres warning it is being 'supersized.' The phenomenon is already disrupting weather patterns globally and is expected to intensify further in coming months.
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