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Tech News
A new AP-NORC poll finds just 17% of U.S. adults approve of President Trump's handling of the cost of living, while only 26% approve of his overall economic performance, a new low. The survey also found 65% of adults blame Trump's policies, including tariffs, for persistently high prices rather than outside factors.
Micron Technology reported fiscal fourth-quarter results that exceeded Wall Street expectations on both revenue and earnings, driven by an 11-fold jump in data center revenue. The chipmaker also issued stronger-than-expected guidance for the current quarter, though shares dipped slightly in premarket trading despite the beat.
A new Rust compiler performance report covering July 29 to September 28, 2026 shows a mean wall-time reduction of 4.57% across 629 benchmark measurements, with 555 improving and only 74 regressing. Key contributors included PGO enablement for Clippy (up to 18% faster in some cases), an upgrade to LLVM 23 that cut mean wall-time by 1.2%, and optimizations to the new Polonius Alpha borrow checker that reduced instruction counts for crates like serde by 3-5%.
Austrian hearing technology company Med-El has launched the TICI Unico, which it describes as the first commercially available cochlear implant with every component—including the microphone—placed entirely beneath the skin. The device has European regulatory approval, and the company performed its first four commercial implantations on launch day, though it is not yet available in the United States. Med-El says a 30-patient clinical trial showed hearing performance comparable to its conventional implants, while letting users hear while sleeping, swimming, or recharging the device.
The team behind the PS3 emulator RPCS3 has issued a social media warning about a surge in counterfeit Blu-ray drives being sold online. The fakes reportedly use older, inferior drive mechanisms disguised with the casings, packaging and spoofed firmware of higher-end models, meaning they cannot read PS3 discs. The developers published a wiki guide detailing identifying signs such as misspelled labels, misaligned logos and incorrect manufacturing dates.
New data shows U.S. tech sector layoff announcements rose in September, led by cuts at Uber Technologies, PayPal and Microsoft, even as overall U.S. layoff announcements declined for the month. Total tech industry job cuts for the year so far stand at 165,925.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Ross Intelligence infringed Thomson Reuters' copyrights by using Westlaw headnotes, created with help from LegalEase Solutions, to train a competing legal research AI. The court rejected Ross's claims that the headnotes lacked sufficient originality for copyright protection and that training an AI system on them constituted fair use.
Google's new Android developer verification rules took effect September 30 in four countries, requiring apps from participating stores—including Google Play, Galaxy Store, and others—to come from registered developers on certified devices running Android 7 or later. Users can still sideload unverified apps through a new advanced flow, but it requires enabling a developer option, authenticating, restarting the device, and waiting 24 hours before installation is allowed.
At an Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League event held at Italy's Imola circuit, a self-driving car built by PoliMove collided with a slowing Unimore vehicle at the track's demanding Rivazza corner sequence while traveling around 155 mph. Only two of five finalists completed the race, with Kinetiz taking first place and Constructor Racing second, while PoliMove's damaged car had to be swapped out before the podium ceremony, and TUM withdrew earlier after a brake issue.
Counterpoint Research's China Weekly Smartphone Sell-Out Tracker found the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max drove Apple to a 33% share of China's smartphone market in Week 38, making it the top-selling brand. The Pro series saw 12% year-on-year sales growth in its first three days, reversing a 17% decline in overall Chinese smartphone sales since July.
Meta has released VR Glasses priced at $1,299, weighing around 100 grams, roughly five times lighter than a typical headset. Unlike fully enclosed headsets, the device shows a live video feed of the room centrally with actual unobstructed peripheral vision around the edges, even during use. The Verge's senior editor compared it directly against Valve's Steam Frame, Apple's Vision Pro, and Google/Xreal's Aura.
Researchers are developing AI tools that can reconstruct images and mental content from brain activity, with hopes of aiding locked-in patients and studying dreams. Separately, startups are deploying small, distributed batteries in devices like induction stovetops and food carts as an alternative to large utility-scale installations facing community pushback over fire risks.