A Department of Homeland Security procurement notice reveals plans to buy Boston Dynamics' Spot quadruped robots and accessories for between $1 million and $2 million. The robots would be used by ICE for inspection, situational awareness, and hazard assessment in risky or hard-to-access environments before officers enter. A DHS official confirmed to NBC News that the robots would not be used for apprehending people or making arrests.
Streaming profiles for deceased jazz musicians including Sonny Criss, Jean Carne, Red Nichols and Jimmie Noone have been flooded with new, AI-generated songs falsely credited to them. The tracks, uploaded under a publisher called 'Ami bacuk' and a fabricated artist name, feature generic anime-style cover art and cannot be traced to existing recordings or identified by music-ID tools.
Libertix is a new Windows application that installs Linux directly without requiring a bootable USB drive or manual partitioning. It supports Windows 10 and 11 and sets up a dual-boot configuration so users can keep Windows while adding Linux, choosing between them at startup. The project is currently running a €3,000 crowdfunding campaign to fund a full-time contributor for summer 2026.
Google rolled out a new location metadata API for Android's Photo Picker in its August Mainline update, and Snapseed (version 4.1.5.970833206) is the first app to adopt it. The update adds a prompt asking whether to include an image's location info when selecting it, plus a floating toggle button to quickly enable or disable that metadata sharing.
Instagram is renaming its 'AI creator' label to 'AI-generated profile' to more clearly flag accounts featuring synthetic humans. The platform will also reduce visibility for accounts that fail to self-label as AI-generated, blocking their posts from being recommended to non-followers in Reels and Explore, though owners can appeal.
Android Authority's Joe Maring initially planned to skip the Pixel 11 Pro, criticizing Google for making only incremental updates like Samsung and Apple. He instead upgraded after Google introduced a new modem in the Pixel 11 series and he secured the phone for under £200 through combined trade-in and pre-order discounts.
A researcher attended the scientific track of the State of the Map (SotM) conference held August 29-30, marking their first time back at the event since 2011. The academic sessions featured around 20 peer-reviewed papers, a small slice of the more than 1,250 OpenStreetMap-related papers indexed on OpenAlex in 2025 alone. The author also noted receiving a Test of Time award in June from IEEE Pervasive Computing for a 2008 paper on OpenStreetMap.
A University of Georgia study tested 60 young adults on their ability to distinguish two close points of light under different colors, finding that blue light caused the greatest scattering and optical aberration in the eye, requiring points to be farther apart to be seen as separate. Green, yellow, red, and broadband light produced comparatively less scatter. The researchers also found iris pigmentation affected results, with lighter-colored eyes showing different sensitivity.
Taoyuan prosecutors raided Unimicron Technology's headquarters and a plant, questioning 14 staff over allegations the company relabeled China-manufactured circuit boards as Taiwan-origin products. Several executives were released on bail ranging from NT$300,000 to NT$15 million, and the investigation into possible forgery and false origin-marking continues.
Google's latest Android 17 QPR2 Beta 4, released last Friday, makes it far easier to use a voice-broadcasting feature on Pixel phones that lets people speak or stream audio to nearby Bluetooth LE Audio devices, similar to a personal PA system. The capability, previously called Voicecast and buried in Developer Settings, can now be turned on instantly via a Quick Settings tile, provided Bluetooth is enabled, and supports password protection to block unwanted listeners.
Google's Android 17 QPR2 Beta 4 update for Pixel devices rolled out last week, but its official manual OTA download links are now returning 404 errors. Multiple Pixel testers on Reddit report being unable to download the full OTA package for days, with at least one user stuck in a reboot loop unable to recover their device. Google has not explained the cause of the broken links.
Julia began in 2009 as an MIT research effort by frustrated researchers who wanted a scientific programming language that was both easy to use and fast, unlike existing tools that forced rewrites for performance. The project evolved from an MIT lab into the company JuliaHub, and Julia is now a free, open-source language used by more than a million people across companies and universities worldwide, applied to everything from modeling jet engines and drugs to imaging black holes.
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