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Dell is expanding its mainstream 14S laptop series with lower-cost configurations built on Intel's more efficient Wildcat Lake chips instead of Panther Lake. The new models start at 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, come in four bright colors, and pricing won't be confirmed until closer to their fall launch.
IBM has released an open source initiative called the CE Store, providing a research environment for ITA Controlled English, a structured form of English designed to be readable by both people and machines. The system lets users define concepts and instances through simple English sentences that form data models, and it can be deployed via IBM Cloud or run locally by cloning the code from GitHub.
Microsoft confirmed its Defender for Office 365 Safe Links feature is incorrectly flagging legitimate Google search URLs as malicious, showing users 'not safe' warnings when they try to click them. The company said the problem stems from an inaccurate security classification and is generating false alerts for IT admins in Microsoft Sentinel and the Defender portal. Pasting the blocked links directly into a browser does not bypass the warning.
Netflix's Tudum top 10 for August 24-30 ranked Rockstar's nearly 30-minute GTA VI extended look as the most-watched movie, topping charts in 58 countries with 31.1 million views despite only a six-hour exclusivity deal. After that window closed, Rockstar posted the same footage to YouTube, where it has since drawn over 17.7 million views using a different counting method.
Apple has updated Apple Maps to display Lake Ontario as 'Lake America' for users in the United States, following Google's earlier change to its maps. The renaming stems from an executive order President Trump signed after US-Canada trade talks collapsed, with Canadian users still seeing 'Lake Ontario' and the rest of the world seeing both names. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Trump personally contacted Apple to push through the naming change.
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.