A newsletter roundup from Wonder Tools highlights two visual creation tools: Whorl, which lets users build animated 3D graphics without technical expertise, and Flux 3, which generates polished AI video clips from text prompts or images. Both are positioned as accessible options for producing eye-catching visual content.
At the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, the bipedal robot Tiangong Ultra clocked a 9.39-second 100-meter sprint, edging out Honor's Lightning at 9.47 seconds and both beating Usain Bolt's 2009 world record of 9.58 seconds. Neither robot could stop cleanly, with each crashing into padded foam barriers past the finish line.
Falling costs have spurred a surge in grid-scale battery storage proposals across the US, but aging grid infrastructure and equipment shortages are causing massive backlogs. Roughly 750 gigawatts of storage capacity are now waiting for interconnection approval, with median wait times rising from about 1.5 years in 2015 to 5 years in 2025. Utilities like Con Edison and PG&E report project queues swelling by hundreds of percent, citing shortages of transformers, breakers and skilled labor.
Meteoric, a startup founded by two Cambridge engineers, is developing autonomous drone fleets designed to fly into low- and mid-altitude clouds above solar farms and physically alter water droplets to reduce cloud reflectivity. The company says this chemical-free approach could boost energy output from existing solar installations by 10-30%, costing an estimated $30-60 per hour to operate, far cheaper than traditional cloud-seeding aircraft.
LinkedIn revealed that its feedback button letting users flag suspected AI-generated posts has been used more than a million times since debuting July 30. The company says combining these reports with updated detection systems has reduced views of flagged 'AI slop' content by 40% in recent weeks, and it now notifies authors when their posts draw such flags.
A June 2026 Resume Builder survey of 1,000 recent bachelor's degree graduates found that 34% had a job offer pulled back after accepting it, with 13% saying it happened more than once. Separately, 68% reported being ghosted by employers after interviews, and 65% believe AI is reducing entry-level openings in their field.
Asus' new 32-inch ROG Strix XG32UQWMS is a Tandem OLED gaming monitor delivering native 4K at 240Hz, with a frame rate boost mode pushing to 480Hz at 1080p. It supports Adaptive-Sync, DisplayHDR 500 True Black, and a wide DCI-P3+ color gamut, while dropping extras like RGB lighting and built-in speakers to keep costs down.
When Krakatau erupted on August 27, 1883, obliterating most of three islands between Java and Sumatra, telegraph wires carried real-time reports of destruction across the world for the first time. More than 36,000 people died, mostly from tsunamis triggered by the explosion, while sulfur aerosols lofted into the atmosphere cooled Northern Hemisphere summer temperatures by roughly 0.6°C for years afterward.
A former Netflix subscriber who canceled the service a year ago tried several alternatives before unexpectedly settling on Apple TV+. The writer had long avoided the platform due to its high price, limited content library, and lack of perks like free trials or Family Sharing for non-Apple device owners.
A Reddit user reported finding a PNY GeForce RTX 5080 OC graphics card marked down to $702.56 at a local Walmart, well below its $1,249 listed price and Nvidia's $999 MSRP. The buyer verified the box contents matched the correct model and found the card in good condition before purchase.
A technology explainer walks through the history of the transistor, starting with the electric relay invented in 1835 for telegraph systems. It explains how relays used a small current to control a larger one, solving signal-loss problems over long telegraph wires, laying groundwork for the switching logic that transistors would later perform electronically.
With Jane Schoenbrun's new film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma drawing theater crowds, critics are revisiting the director's 2021 debut We're All Going to the World's Fair. The film follows Casey, an isolated teenager who takes part in an online horror ritual called the World's Fair Challenge and documents her supposed transformation for an internet audience. Her only real connection forms with JLB, an older stranger who insists she's in danger.