GoKawiil
Tech News
An enterprise data and AI executive argues that companies focused on AI's financial costs—compute, licensing, infrastructure—are ignoring a subtler expense: the erosion of employees' cognitive skills. Citing MIT Media Lab EEG research showing reduced brain activity in people who relied solely on ChatGPT versus those working unaided, the piece warns that unused mental faculties like judgment and original thought can atrophy.
Clicks has finalized specifications for its keyboard-first Communicator smartphone, increasing RAM from 8GB to 12GB and boosting battery capacity from a planned 4,000mAh to 4,350mAh rated for over 800 charge cycles. The device will ship with Android 17 preinstalled, with Clicks promising three major OS upgrades and five years of security patches. The phone begins shipping in December, and its $499 launch price is only guaranteed for orders placed before September 30.
Security researchers demonstrated that Raspberry Pi's RP2350 microcontroller (revision A4) can have its permanently disabled Secure debug re-enabled through photon-emission microscopy combined with SWD-guided laser fault injection. By pinpointing the exact register controlling debug enablement and firing precisely targeted laser pulses, the team flipped two bits to restore debugger access to the chip's Secure world, later extracting a protected secret from one-time-programmable memory after a rescue reset bypassed the runtime lock.
At the Fast Company Innovation Festival, design executives from Spotify, Block, and Brooks discussed how generative AI has sped up the process of turning ideas into products. During the New Rules of Great Design panel, Spotify's Emily Galloway argued that speed and volume alone don't equal quality, emphasizing that human judgment remains essential to deciding what actually gets built.
Google is rolling out a new way to trigger the Sidekick overlay in Play Games, letting users open it directly from the notifications panel instead of relying solely on the onscreen drag handle. The option appears under Settings > General > Google Play Games as 'Configure Sidekick access,' alongside the existing in-game-only setting. Evidence also points to a double-tap activation method still in development.
Chinese AI startup Manus is reportedly negotiating a $500 million funding round valuing it at $4 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal, after resuming operations as an independent company. Prospective backers include IDG Capital, Boyu Capital, CATL, and returning investors Tencent, HSG and Zhenfund, with the company also weighing a restructuring ahead of a possible Hong Kong IPO.
The September 18, 2026 episode of 9to5Mac Daily rounds up the day's Apple news, focusing on fresh details surrounding iOS 27 and the rumored dual-screen or dual-device iPhone Duo concept. The podcast, sponsored by task-management app Stuff, is distributed across major platforms including Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and TuneIn.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told a crowd at the Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group he co-founded, that his agency is examining aircraft emissions in relation to so-called 'chemtrails.' The crowd applauded as he described looking into potential health impacts from these emissions, echoing a long-debunked conspiracy theory that planes spray chemicals for population control or weather manipulation.
Amazon has cut the price of Bose's Ultra Open Earbuds from $299 to $199, a $100 discount that marks their lowest price yet. The clip-on, cuff-style buds sit outside the ear canal, offering situational awareness alongside fuller sound than typical open-ear designs.
The systemd project, which provides the core init system and service manager for most Linux distributions, has released a formal brand identity guide. It specifies the official logo—designed by GNOME's Tobias Bernard in 2019 and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0—along with approved colors, typography, and correct spelling conventions for the project's name.
Apple has launched new Silicone and TechWoven MagSafe cases for the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, priced at $49 and $59 respectively, in colors like Burgundy, Mulberry and Taupe. Third-party makers including ESR, Spigen, Nomad and Burton Goods have also released their own iPhone 18 Pro case collections, ranging from budget options starting at $14 to premium leather and stand-equipped designs.
Disney announced it has hired Karandeep Anand, former CEO of Character.AI, to fill a newly created role as senior executive vice president and chief technology officer, effective October 2. Anand will report directly to CEO Josh D'Amaro and oversee enterprise technology, infrastructure, data, AI platforms, product and engineering across the company.