GoKawiil
Tech News
OpenAI's ChatGPT experienced a service disruption that left many users temporarily unable to access the chatbot for everyday tasks like writing emails, essays, and completing work assignments. The outage prompted widespread reactions online, with some users humorously reflecting on how dependent they've become on AI tools for routine work.
A hobbyist purchased a Tektronix TDS7104, a 1 GHz, 4-channel oscilloscope from the early 2000s, at a Silicon Valley flea market for $300 after negotiating down from $700. The unit initially powered on and ran fine, but hours later it failed to boot properly, throwing a CMOS battery error at the BIOS screen. The author documents the process of diagnosing and repairing the aging instrument to restore full functionality.
Reports indicate Apple's hardware engineering chief John Ternus is emerging as the leading internal candidate to eventually succeed CEO Tim Cook. The framing centers on the scale of what he would inherit: a company with enormous revenue, market value and global reach built under Cook's leadership.
A software engineer published a roundup of links they repeatedly send colleagues to explain the AT Protocol, consolidating recommended posts into a single reference page. The list includes essays by Dan Abramov on AT Protocol's filesystem-like design and its departure from fediverse-style instances, plus a piece by developer Joe Basser on the ATM (Atmosphere Money) system. The author says the post will be updated over time, with edits marked by an emoji.
Two Wall Street research notes this week argue that Meta's heavy AI investment is starting to show results. Bernstein said AI-powered ad targeting helped Meta grow ad revenue 27% year-over-year in Q2, gaining market share from Google, whose ad network revenue actually declined. Separately, Bank of America highlighted Meta's upcoming personal AI agent, Hatch, reportedly featuring a customizable dashboard and possible premium subscription tier costing up to $199.99 a month, as a potential new revenue source beyond advertising.
Amazon's Labor Day sale event is discounting a range of tech products, including Sony's WH-1000XM5 headphones at $198 (a record low) and its newer XM6 model at $60 off. Other deals include the EcoFlow Rapid Pro X laptop power bank at its lowest price this year and Nothing's Ear (3a) earbuds for $79, though some items like grills and griddles have already sold out.
John Ternus, formerly Apple's senior VP of Hardware Engineering, has officially become Apple's new CEO after Tim Cook's fifteen-year tenure ended. In his first staff memo, Ternus previewed a major product event on September 9, widely expected to unveil Apple's first foldable iPhone and a broader rollout of an upgraded Siri.
Anthropic released Fable and Mythos 5.1, updated versions of its flagship AI models that cut token costs and reduce false-positive blocks from safety filters. Mythos 5.1 remains restricted to vetted cybersecurity and life sciences partners, while Fable 5.1 is now broadly available via cloud platforms and Anthropic's API. The release also introduces a Zero Data Retention option for Fable through a new Enterprise Frontier Safeguards service arriving in June, letting clients run the model on their own infrastructure while retaining control over misuse monitoring.
Scientists studying hurricanes have identified a pattern in ocean surface temperature gradients that appears tied to episodes of rapid storm intensification, a phenomenon that has long confounded forecasters. By tracking how sharply temperatures shift across ocean regions a storm passes over, researchers believe they can better anticipate when a hurricane is about to strengthen abruptly.
Thrive Capital founder Josh Kushner issued a statement defending his firm's involvement as lead investor in FIFA's now-abandoned FIFA Forward Enterprise plan, which would have sold private investors a 20% stake in FIFA's commercial rights for $4.2 billion. The plan collapsed after European and North American member associations objected to outside private-equity influence, and FIFA scrapped the proposal before it could go to a vote. Kushner said he still believes the underlying concept was sound but would not have gotten involved had he anticipated the fallout.
A new study from Google Research and Technion shows that when models like GPT-5 and Gemini-3 hallucinate, the underlying fact is usually already stored in their parameters rather than missing entirely. The researchers found these models encode 95-98% of tested facts, but often fail to surface them during generation due to retrieval, not storage, limits. They propose 'fact-level profiling' to separate whether a fact is encoded versus reliably retrievable across different phrasings.
Ahead of Apple's September event, reports point to three key upgrades for the Apple Watch Series 12: an updated S-class chip built for AI features like Siri, an always-on heart rate sensor enabling continuous health tracking, and a returning ceramic case option in white and dark gray. The watch will launch alongside Apple Watch Ultra 4.