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Tech News
Bloomberg reports Apple is building prototypes of a display-free wearable, described internally as a technology investigation, pairing a fabric strap with a sensor-and-computing unit focused on passive health monitoring. The project has backing from executives including Tim Cook and Eddy Cue, though Apple has not committed to shipping a product, and a launch could come as early as 2028.
Amazon is selling the Nothing Phone 3 for $599, a 25% cut from its $799 list price. The phone features a 6.67-inch 120Hz AMOLED display, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset, up to 16GB RAM and 512GB storage, a triple 50MP rear camera system with periscope telephoto, and a roughly 5,000mAh battery with wireless and reverse wireless charging.
Android Authority found a new settings option in Google Recorder version 4.2.2 called "Access recordings in other apps." When turned on, future audio recordings would be saved automatically to a Recordings folder accessible through Files by Google or other file manager apps, rather than being locked inside the app's sandboxed storage. The change would only apply to new recordings, not files already saved.
YouTube unveiled two AI features for YouTube Music at its Made On YouTube event: Ask Music, a conversational search tool covering over 300 million songs including remixes and live versions, and Your Podcast Lineup, a personalized weekly audio guide highlighting recommended podcasts and episodes. Ask Music lets users type natural-language requests, like building a mix based on a song's influences or asking who played on a track, instead of searching by title or artist.
Action Porty, the community group that recently bought Portobello's old Police Station building, asked local residents for help resetting its clock tower's time. A volunteer climbed a ladder into the attic and up into the tower to inspect the mechanism, finding what appears to be the original 1877 clockwork, later fitted with electric motors and a control box to silence the night chime.
Microsoft's KB5124010 update, pushed to Windows 11's stable channel this week after appearing in the Release Preview channel, is causing crashes in games protected by the Javelin anti-cheat system, including Battlefield 6 and Wardogs. Players report the games crash within seconds of launch with little or no error information, though Wardogs users see a WD-L020 error code. Uninstalling the update has been the only workaround confirmed by affected players and, for Wardogs, by a Team17 representative.
A benchmark description surfaced detailing how an AI system referred to as GPT-6 Astra was evaluated on a driving course, measuring progress along a centerline, GPS-based distance, finish time, and accepted motion commands. The metrics track whether the run stayed within 4 meters of the course, whether it finished or collided, and how commands like set_motion and stop_now were executed during the attempt.
Amid growing public concern about AI, researchers are debating four widely discussed doomsday scenarios, including engineered pandemics and nuclear conflict triggered by AI systems. A cybersecurity researcher at SentinelOne who sits on OpenAI's Frontier Risk Council dismissed these scenarios as unconvincing, while a former Anthropic researcher who quit over safety concerns said he struggles to explain concrete ways AI could cause human extinction.
Strands harness is a preassembled agent harness that developers can run locally or deploy to cloud providers with a single line of Python or TypeScript code, released under an Apache 2.0 license. It is designed as a general-purpose agent rather than a coding-specific one, and its makers report it costs 28% less than comparable harnesses across six benchmarks while maintaining similar or better accuracy, and 77% less than Claude Code on the Fable 5 benchmark while scoring higher on Terminal Bench 2.1.
Disney has raised prices on most Disney+ and Hulu subscription tiers effective immediately. Ad-free Disney+ and Hulu Premium plans jump from $18.99 to $21.49 monthly, while ad-supported plans increase by 50 cents to $12.49. The combined Disney+/Hulu Premium bundle is expected to rise to $21.99, though it still displayed the old $19.99 price at publication.
Microsoft confirmed that its September 8 Patch Tuesday update broke File History backups on Windows 11 (23H2 through 26H1) and Windows 10 ESU devices, causing errors like false 'reconnect drive' prompts and missing previous file versions. The company has released an optional preview update to fix the issue, though it currently does not apply to Windows 11 23H2 or Windows 10.
CNET's People's Picks survey found LG is the favorite TV brand among readers, winning categories for picture quality, fast-moving content, and OLED/QD-OLED performance. Over 61% of LG TV owners rated their sets 'Excellent' for bright-room viewing, while 65% praised the dark-scene performance, with Sony as the runner-up for picture quality.