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Tech News
A veteran smart-home reviewer tested AI-generated text notifications from Apple Home, Amazon (Ring), and Google (Nest) security camera systems, comparing how fast each sent alerts and how accurate and useful the descriptions were. The review notes Apple charges up to three times more than its competitors for this AI notification feature.
A report from inside Kyiv's tech scene describes secretive startups, government engineers, and soldiers collaborating in ordinary-looking buildings and testing fields to rapidly develop new weapons technology. The reporting focuses on figures like Serhii Kupriienko, who is developing systems he says represent the next phase of warfare, built under wartime urgency and secrecy.
Researchers led by Jesse Poganik at Brigham and Women's Hospital transplanted young hearts into middle-aged mice and middle-aged hearts into young mice, implanting the extra organ in the neck to compare it with the original. Using three molecular 'aging clocks' to measure biological age, the team found that transplanted hearts largely took on the biological age profile of the recipient rather than retaining the age of the donor, a pattern also suggested by records from human heart transplant recipients.
Google's Alexander Kuscher confirmed on the Android Faithful podcast that Magic Pointer and Rambler, two signature AI features on the new Googlebook laptops, will keep working without a Google AI Pro subscription. Googlebooks ship with a free 12-month AI Pro trial, but Kuscher said this sits on top of the base experience rather than gating these core tools.
On the Ezra Klein Show, Huang was presented with a Chinese study of 26,000 students showing that AI use correlated with declining long-term exam performance and eroded basic math skills like long division and multiplication tables. When asked whether this cognitive decline matters, Huang did not offer reassurance and appeared to accept the tradeoff as acceptable.
Google is piloting a Gemini feature on Pixel 11 devices that can call businesses to place orders, book appointments, make reservations, or check stock availability. The assistant identifies itself as AI, provides a live text transcript, navigates automated phone menus, waits on hold, and lets the user take over the call at any time.
Microsoft announced it will deprecate the Windows Deployment Services (WDS) role, including its management tools, PXE boot functionality and related services, starting with the next Windows Server release. The company will stop active development after deprecation and eventually retire and remove WDS, though it remains supported on Windows Server 2025 and earlier per their existing lifecycles.
F-Droid, the open-source Android app repository, released version 2.0 with automatic update installation and a unified installer that leverages a new pre-approval API enabled by EU Digital Markets Act rulings against Google. The release comes as F-Droid displays a banner warning users about Google's upcoming developer verification requirements, which could restrict distribution of unverified apps on Android devices.
Apple has continued reducing its overall emissions even as it invests in AI infrastructure, a trend that contrasts with rivals whose emissions are rising due to power-hungry data centers. The company has previously pledged to become carbon neutral across its entire supply chain and product life cycle by 2030.
Piper Sandler's research note says eight major US tech firms are evaluating Intel's upcoming 14A chip manufacturing process. None has committed to production contracts yet, but the firm says Intel needs to land an anchor customer by late 2026 or early 2027 ahead of a planned 2028 manufacturing ramp.
The developers behind the ARMSX2 PS2 emulator released a major update to their PS3 emulator ARMSX3, fixing crashes in games like NBA 08, Burnout Paradise, Killzone 3, and The Guided Fate Paradox. The update also enables playable frame rates in titles such as Helldivers and Race the Sun at 60fps, and adds support for PS3 themes, SIXAXIS motion controls, and multi-game discs.
A Dutch government initiative is reportedly building an alternative to Microsoft's software stack using NixOS, an open-source Linux distribution known for its reproducible system configuration. Details of the project's scope, timeline and funding were not specified in available materials.