GoKawiil
Tech News
A growing number of US restaurants are eliminating tipping and replacing it with fixed hourly pay or built-in service charges. Workers say tips only cover the hours spent serving customers, leaving unpaid or minimum-wage time for prep and closing duties before and after service.
CNET has outlined its expectations for major smartphone launches through 2026, following recent releases from Samsung, Google and Apple. The report suggests Apple may split its iPhone 18 launch, debuting a foldable iPhone Ultra soon while delaying the standard iPhone 18 to early next year, as RAM shortages and AI competition pressure manufacturers to balance innovation with pricing.
A joint alert from the US State Department, Japan, Canada and the UK warns that North Korean operatives are using falsified identity documents to get hired as remote IT workers at foreign companies, letting them enter corporate networks with legitimate-looking access. Separately, groups like Scattered Spider have used social engineering against help desks to trick staff into resetting passwords or MFA for accounts they don't own, bypassing strong authentication entirely.
An Android Authority reviewer says his Pixel 11 Pro became unusable just five days after purchase, after a factory reset triggered a shutdown loop during the setup process. The device reportedly went blank mid-reset and later kept powering off every few seconds whenever the user tried to complete initial setup, leaving the phone effectively dead.
Ollobot argues that early companion robots from 2017 relied on simple voice commands and novelty, causing many to be abandoned once their appeal faded and some manufacturers shut down. The company is now framing a new generation of robots built with psychological research and clinical insight, aiming to shift from reactive gadgets to proactive, ever-present companions for isolated groups like elderly adults living alone and children separated from migrant parents.
OpenAI detailed benchmark results for its Jalapeño chip, an inference-focused ASIC built with Broadcom, claiming it outperforms Nvidia's GB200 and GB300 chips on efficiency and response speed. Using its InferenceX benchmark across models like GPT-OSS 120B, DeepSeek R1, and Kimi K2.5, OpenAI reported 1.5-1.9x more work per watt and up to 3.6x lower latency. Small-scale deployment is planned by year-end, with volume scaling into 2027.
Pizza Hut is shortening its name to simply 'Hut' for a limited promotional period tied to the start of the NFL season next month. The move is a marketing stunt rather than a permanent change to the chain's branding.
Samsung's latest foldable, the Galaxy Z Fold8, refines the design but still forces buyers to choose between competing priorities like thinness, durability, battery life and camera quality. Rather than solving foldables' core engineering tensions, it shifts which trade-offs users accept.
Federal contractors are moving forward with border wall and road construction across private ranchland in West Texas, threatening thousands of years' worth of Native American artifacts and rock art. While public pressure halted a planned steel bollard wall inside Big Bend National Park, DHS and Customs and Border Protection still intend to build barriers and roads through mountains and canyons on private land nearby. Ranchers like Jeff Fort, whose property hosts ongoing excavations led by archaeologist Bryon Schroeder, worry the construction will split their land and destroy sites that haven't even been fully studied yet.
Microsoft has released PowerToys version 0.101.2362.0, introducing a new utility called Window Hopper that lets users cycle only through windows belonging to the currently active app using a configurable Alt+backtick shortcut. The update also brings a compact search-box mode for Command Palette, synced brightness controls across multiple displays via PowerDisplay, Windows-key activation for Shortcut Guide, a new DemoMirror feature for ZoomIt, and a ripple effect for Mouse Highlighter.
MIT Technology Review spoke with cognitive scientists comparing how babies and large language models acquire language, finding that infants learn to speak proficiently after hearing only 10 to 30 million words, while LLMs require vastly more data to approach similar fluency. Stanford's Michael C. Frank noted that training a model like GPT-2 on the same word count a toddler hears produces a 'nonsense generator,' not coherent speech.
The University of Chicago's Booth School of Business has introduced a 10-month, primarily online program aimed at preparing executives for chief AI officer roles, priced at $28,000 per student with early-bird discounts. The curriculum spans six modules covering AI readiness assessment, business opportunity identification, governance frameworks, and enterprise-wide deployment strategies. Applications are open for the next cohort starting September 28.