A federal jury in Delaware ruled that Arm breached its Architecture License Agreement with Qualcomm and intentionally interfered with Qualcomm's business relationship with Meta, but awarded only $2 in nominal damages after a five-day trial. The jury rejected several other claims Qualcomm had brought against Arm. Both companies claimed victory in the ruling, which follows Qualcomm's earlier win in the related Nuvia licensing dispute.
DARPA has launched a $73 million initiative to create long-lasting, dried versions of plasma, platelets, and red blood cells for battlefield use. The program aims to have these dried blood products ready for field deployment by 2029, though researchers still face open questions about the safety and effectiveness of synthetic blood alternatives.
Samsung Health is updating its Sleep Coaching feature so users can begin the program after just three days of sleep data within a two-week period, down from a full consecutive week per month. The update applies to Galaxy Watch 4 and later, Galaxy Fit 3 and Galaxy Ring users, and combines a sleep habits survey with tracked data to assign a personalized 'Sleep Animal' and a four- to eight-week coaching plan. Samsung also updated its Running Coach app, expanding training tiers from 10 to 12 levels and adding social sharing features and a new fitness platform partnership.
On October 11, 1999, Nvidia shipped the GeForce 256, the first product it labeled a 'GPU,' featuring a hardware transform-and-lighting engine. Offloading graphics work from the CPU wasn't new—Commodore and 3dfx had done similar things earlier—but Nvidia coined and popularized the GPU term with this release. The card particularly benefited systems with weaker CPUs like low-end Celerons.
Microsoft researchers published a study in Nature describing a machine learning system that corrects bias in existing physics-based and AI weather models, improving forecast accuracy two to six weeks ahead. The tool, now available as open-source software, can run on standard CPUs rather than requiring supercomputers or powerful GPUs.
WhatsApp has rolled out a guest calling feature that lets users invite people to a call without requiring them to have a WhatsApp account, by sending a call link that works in a browser. Guests get access to features like screen sharing, hand raising, and emoji reactions under end-to-end encryption, but must wait for host approval and can't see other participants' phone numbers or add others to the call. Meta says Google and Outlook calendar integrations for WhatsApp calls are coming later this year via a plugin.
At its Welcome Home event in New York, Apple demonstrated HomeView, a smart home interface that manages devices entirely through the Apple Home app, without requiring separate third-party apps for setup or control. A CNET reporter watched an Apple representative pair and register a new smart home device on both a phone and the HomeView display in real time.
A short opinion piece contends that calling any group of people 'stupid' is itself a sign of not thinking carefully. The author argues intelligence is better understood as an action—thinking things through—rather than a fixed trait, and that jumping to conclusions, including the conclusion that others are stupid, is the real failure of reasoning.
A leaked product table from LC Tech Leaks outlines seven upcoming Nova Lake-S desktop processors, topped by the Core Ultra 9 4970K BFC, with 'BFC' apparently denoting models that use Intel's large last-level cache technology across three product tiers. The list also shows a shift to four-digit model numbers and includes a 65W cache-heavy chip, the Core Ultra 9 4900 BFC, alongside standard non-BFC variants like the 4950K and 4850K.
The trailer for Greta Gerwig's upcoming film 'Narnia: The Magician's Nephew' features Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven,' marking the first time the band has ever licensed the song for outside use. Gerwig directs the Netflix adaptation of C.S. Lewis's fantasy series.
Square has released a new hardware product called the Square Kiosk, a large pill-shaped touchscreen device that lets customers place orders by speaking with an AI agent. The company says the system understands a merchant's full menu and can respond to spoken requests for modifications or substitutions in real time. The 21.5-inch kiosk also includes presence detection, contactless payment and a card slot, and costs $1,999 plus a $99 monthly software fee for Square Plus or Premium subscribers.
A commentary on B2B marketing contends that AI tools now give marketers far greater capacity to produce content, personalization, audience segments and campaign variations across more channels. The author cautions that this expanded access comes with a need for marketers to be more discerning about how much they trust AI-generated outputs.
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