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iRobot has unveiled the Roomba Max 875 Combo, a robot vacuum that lowers a skirt to seal its chassis against carpet fibers, concentrating airflow instead of letting it escape around the edges. The company says this SealForce technology lets the device reach 35,000 pascals of suction and clean three times deeper into carpets than prior models. iRobot is showcasing the device at IFA Berlin 2026.
Loudoun County, Virginia turned to former AOL infrastructure and empty fiber-optic networks left after the dot-com crash to attract data center investment, led by economic development official Buddy Rizer. The strategy shifted the county's tax base from over 80% residential to just over half commercial revenue, transforming it into a hub handling a large share of global internet traffic.
Perplexity has introduced Hybrid Compute, a feature that divides AI tasks between cloud-based models and models running locally on a user's device. It flags files or data containing personal information and lets users choose to process those locally while sending the rest of the task to the cloud, or send everything to the cloud. The feature currently works only in the Perplexity app on Apple Silicon Macs, supporting local models like Gemma 4 E4B and Qwen 3.6 alongside cloud options such as Claude Opus 5 and GPT 5.6 Sol.
Acer has shown off a concept device called Project DualPlay Mini, an 8-inch Windows gaming handheld resembling its Predator Atlas 8 that can flip open and swivel its screen to reveal a small backlit keyboard underneath. The device runs on an Intel chip and uses a dual-fan cooling setup similar to the Atlas 8, but Acer has not detailed further specs since it remains a concept with no confirmed retail release.
Acer has introduced the Swift Blade 14, a 799-gram, carbon-fiber-bodied laptop measuring as thin as 12.95mm, positioning it as a lighter alternative to Apple's 13-inch MacBook Air. The device will ship with Intel's Wildcat Lake processors ranging from a five-core Core 3 to a six-core Core 7, paired with 12GB of RAM, along with either a basic LCD or optional OLED display. Acer also announced the Swift Air 16, a larger companion to the budget-friendly Swift Air 14, though pricing for both new models won't be revealed until closer to their December launch.
Google has upgraded Gemini's video analysis with a new 'agentic' approach that lets the AI selectively choose which frames, audio, or transcript segments to review instead of processing every frame. The company says this cuts token usage by up to 88% while improving accuracy by up to 7%, and enables tracking of object counts, movement, and sub-second events across multi-hour videos. The feature currently works through the Gemini API in AI Studio and the Enterprise Agent Platform, with plans to reach the Gemini app and YouTube's 'Ask YouTube' tool soon.
A tech journalist with no coding background says he used AI coding assistants, including a paid ChatGPT Pro subscription, to build working iOS source ports of Duke Nukem 3D and Serious Sam in under a week, and Morrowind after several weeks of iteration. The resulting builds reportedly run smoothly with touch controls and take advantage of features like 120Hz ProMotion displays, all built by adapting existing open-source projects rather than writing original code from scratch.
A federal grand jury in California indicted 40-year-old Searzhudin Tamirlanovich Aktulaev, extradited from Cyprus in May 2025, over a phishing scheme that used 255 fake accounts to send malicious Excel attachments to roughly 80,000 freelancers on an unnamed job platform between 2016 and 2017. The attachments deployed TVRAT and DarkVNC malware, giving the defendant remote access to victims' machines and letting him steal e-commerce credentials and personal data for fraud.
A veteran executive coach with 25 years of experience reports a recurring pattern among leaders: traits that once fueled their rise can start to undercut their authority and influence when leaned on too heavily. The observation stems from direct coaching work aimed at building executive presence across many clients.
Microsoft will start rolling out updates that automatically turn on memory integrity and Virtualization-based Security on eligible Windows 11 devices, aiming to make the OS secure by default. The kernel-level protection blocks untrusted drivers and code but can reduce gaming frame rates, especially on older CPUs. Devices where users previously disabled the feature will not have it re-enabled automatically.
Shopify COO Jess Hertz says the company lets its engineering teams spend without limits on AI tools, a bet that's paying off as revenue climbs 34% even as headcount holds steady. Hertz frames this as part of Shopify's push to build the infrastructure that lets AI agents discover and purchase products on behalf of consumers, a shift away from the old model where big-budget brands dominated search rankings.
U.S. and European authorities, alongside CrowdStrike's Counter Adversary Operations team, seized domains tied to the Sality botnet in the United States, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. CrowdStrike also ran a peer-to-peer sinkhole operation that cut off command channels and isolated infected machines from the botnet's controllers, attributed to a Russia-based group tracked as SALTY SPIDER.