Apple's new iPhone 18 Pro launches at $1,199, a $100 increase over the iPhone 17 Pro, adding a variable aperture camera system for photographers. Google's Pixel 11 Pro also rose $100 to $1,099, gaining a larger 48-megapixel telephoto sensor with 30x optical-style zoom and a 120x AI-enhanced Pro Zoom mode. Beyond cameras, the two phones diverge sharply in design, colors and software, running iOS 27 and Android 17 respectively.
The FAA plans to roll out SMART, a cloud-based AI platform built by Air Space Intelligence, to help air traffic controllers manage workflows and flight routing amid an ongoing staffing shortage. The system analyzes airline schedules, weather, airport capacity and airspace conditions to predict traffic flows and flag potential conflicts before they happen, at a cost of $875 million over 12 years, starting in the Washington, D.C. area before wider rollout.
Swedish startup Scaleout Systems, born from Uppsala University research in 2018, has shifted its machine learning work from commercial vehicles toward military applications following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The company now builds compact computer vision models that run directly on drones, pilot tablets, and field command hardware to detect and select targets, and has joined NATO's DIANA accelerator program for a project called Federated Aerial Intelligence for Recon.
Oskar Flodstrom, a 23-year-old Los Angeles artist who skipped college to pursue creative work, transformed a free acrylic base found on Facebook Marketplace into a pill-bottle-shaped side table. The design went viral on social media, leading to a partnership with the brand NO LOGO and roughly $150,000 in sales within two weeks.
Code strings found in version 17.59.17.sa.arm64 of the Google app reveal a feature called 'Ephemeral Video Mode' tied to Gemini's internal codename Robin. The strings describe enabling an ephemeral mode specifically for video input during Gemini Live sessions, suggesting Google is testing a way to keep certain video interactions from being saved.
A writer tested AliveMoment, an image-to-video AI tool launched in August 2025 that animates and restores old photographs without requiring text prompts, using it on childhood pictures and a photo of her grandmother. The tool runs on a credit-based subscription and includes photo restoration to fix grainy or low-quality images before animating them. Results varied: one animation felt unsettling while another evoked genuine emotional warmth.
Waymo announced plans to bring its autonomous ride-hailing service to Singapore, with vehicles arriving within months to begin mapping and safety-driver testing in 2027 ahead of a public launch in 2028. The company must first pass safety assessments from Singapore's Land Transport Authority and its CETRAN testing center before carrying passengers, and it has already set up a local entity and joined the city-state's autonomous vehicle steering committee.
Crock-Pot has teamed up with paint maker Valspar to release six new slow cooker colors, each paired with a corresponding house paint swatch for kitchen walls. The collaboration launches ahead of fall, traditionally slow cooker season, and is designed to let shoppers coordinate their kitchen decor directly around the appliance's color.
Apple's macOS 27 Golden Gate update skips a visual overhaul for Photos but packs in a new Tools pane with Apple Intelligence features, including an upgraded Clean Up tool, a generative Extend tool for expanding images, and a Spatial Reframing option that builds a 3D scene model to shift camera perspective. iCloud Shared Albums also gain full-resolution sharing across all photo and video formats and now let Android and Windows users contribute via iCloud.com.
A new essay argues that writers should draft their own work entirely by hand, then feed it to a large language model purely to spot flaws, never to supply finished phrasing. The author lays out two guiding rules: never use a specific wording an LLM suggests, and treat the model strictly as a copyeditor rather than a co-writer, to avoid producing text that reads as generic machine output.
Apple is hosting a three-day photography exhibition in New York City, running September 18-20, featuring work by photographers Alex Prager, Jack Davison, and Jimmy Chin shot entirely on the iPhone 18 Pro. Curated by former New York Times Magazine photo director Kathy Ryan, the show titled 'What Holds Us' spans subjects from mountain climbers in British Columbia to intimate portraits inside a London warehouse.
A university-affiliated blogger describes being blocked from editing a PowerPoint file on a Mac despite having an institutional Microsoft account, receiving a message saying editing isn't allowed on Mac under that license. The writer argues this stems from restrictive licensing terms tied to costly institutional contracts that effectively push users toward Windows machines.
GoKawiil