Google has released its new flagship AI model, Gemini 4 Argon, which the company says ranks just behind Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 and Claude Sonnet 5.5 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. Analysts cited by CNBC say the model shows strong performance in legal and financial reasoning, enterprise tasks, and cybersecurity. Google is rolling the model out in phases, first to trusted cybersecurity partners, while working with the U.S. government on pre-release safety evaluations.
Raspberry Pi has raised prices again, this time targeting the 2GB versions of the Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5, which had been spared in an April price increase. The Raspberry Pi 5 2GB rises 19% to $77.50, while the Raspberry Pi 4 2GB climbs to $67.50 from $55, a 23% jump. CEO Eben Upton attributed the increases to ongoing shortages of LPDDR4 and LPDDR5 memory chips that have pushed up production costs.
A new report from the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network and the Swiss Commission for Cryosphere Observation found glaciers lost 5.5% of their ice volume in the first eight months of 2026 alone, bringing cumulative losses since 2021 to 19.4%. Glaciologist Matthias Huss of ETH Zurich said some glaciers are now collapsing from internal meltwater cavities rather than just surface melt, and mean glacier thickness dropped 2.5 to 4 meters this year. Separately, MeteoSwiss reported the April-to-September period was the hottest and driest since records began in 1864.
Figure AI retired its F.02 humanoid robot fleet as the newer F.03 fleet scales up, choosing to melt the robots in a 75-ton electric arc furnace at a foundry in Imatra, Finland rather than disassemble them. The company trained the robots in simulation to jump into molten steel using stunt-artist movement data, and Arnold Schwarzenegger took part in the project after suggesting the melting idea online. The robots executed the jumps autonomously during a 24-hour window at the foundry despite extreme heat and electromagnetic interference.
Figure AI released a nearly four-minute promotional video showing its older F.02 humanoid robot units being thrown or made to leap into a vat of liquid steel at a foundry in Imatra, Finland. The video echoes a scene from "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" and features Arnold Schwarzenegger. Figure says the robots were trained beforehand to dive off a balcony in test conditions, and the actual filming happened across six melts with only a 20-minute window per melt.
Members of the public describe deliberately shifting back to physical media—vinyl records, CDs and DVDs—rather than relying on streaming services. They cite reasons including the removal of shows from platforms like HBO's Sesame Street catalogue, a desire for tactile engagement with music, and frustration with algorithmic curation that they feel discourages deep listening or discovery.
Novartis has agreed to license a drug from Chinese biotech Abogen in a deal valued at up to $7.8 billion. Abogen describes its lead drug as having the potential to transform treatment for patients with autoimmune diseases.
Tesla rolled out an 'emergency drive away' feature that lets drivers shift into drive and pull away from a charger while the cable is still attached, overriding the normal charging lock. The cable breaks away and falls to the ground, causing some damage to both the car and the charging handle, and the feature triggers a confirmation alert before activating. It is currently available only in the US.
TCL has filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Central District of California accusing Samsung of mislabeling its entry-level M70H, M80H, and M90H televisions as Mini LED sets. According to the complaint, these models are rebranded versions of Samsung's standard Crystal UHD line and lack full array local dimming, a backlighting feature TCL says is essential to genuine Mini LED technology. Samsung has not addressed the specific claims but said it will vigorously defend itself in court.
Android Authority's Stephen Radochia initially criticized Google's higher Pixel 11 series pricing and the base model's reduced RAM, but after a month using the Pixel 11 Pro XL he reports the phone's display, cameras, battery life, and Gemini Intelligence features justify the cost. A reader poll cited in his piece showed 59% of respondents still plan to stick with their older Pixel rather than upgrade.
YouTuber PewDiePie released Ajax, a fine-tuned version of Alibaba's Qwen3.5-9B model with refusal behavior stripped out using the open-source tool Heretic, meant to run locally as part of his Odysseus self-hosted AI workspace. He says OpenAI banned his account twice during development, once explicitly citing 'distillation,' and that one ban was later reversed while the second was not.
Several independent candidates running in this year's midterm elections are incorporating the word 'independent' directly into their campaign logos and branding. The approach is meant to visibly distance them from both the Democratic and Republican parties at a time when both major parties face low public approval.
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