GoKawiil
Tech News
The Public Domain Review has republished a piece on Dr. Julius Neubronner, a German apothecary who patented a miniature camera harness for carrier pigeons in the early 20th century. The device automatically snapped aerial photographs as the birds flew, producing some of the earliest examples of aerial photography.
India's National Payments Corporation announced that starting October 15, merchants will pay a 0.4% fee on UPI transactions exceeding ₹2,000, capped at ₹300 for payments of ₹75,000 or more. Consumers will still use UPI for free, and small merchants earning up to ₹100,000 monthly through UPI, along with transactions of ₹2,000 or less, are exempt. Certain sectors like railways, telecom, insurance and fuel will instead pay a flat ₹5 fee on larger transactions.
Copyright lawsuits by The New York Times, Ziff Davis and other publishers against OpenAI are moving into a new legal phase after discovery concluded, with both sides asking a federal court to rule on whether OpenAI's use of published material qualifies as fair use. Ziff Davis CEO Vivek Shah publicly criticized a Trump administration filing arguing licensing requirements would burden AI firms, contrasting the U.S. music industry's roughly $20 billion in annual royalties with OpenAI's projected $750 billion computing spend through 2030.
Leaker Jaykihn reports that Intel has cancelled a Nova Lake-S desktop chip variant pairing 4 P-cores, 8 E-cores, 4 LPE-cores with a 12 Xe3P integrated GPU. Instead, that high-graphics APU configuration is said to be delayed and reintroduced with Razor Lake, the architecture succeeding Nova Lake.
Evvy, a women's health startup, has closed a $40 million Series B funding round led by Catalio Capital Management. The company operates an at-home vaginal microbiome test that uses mNGS sequencing, serving over 100,000 patients and 3,000 practitioners across the US, and has produced 15 peer-reviewed publications from its data.
Google is rolling out a Play Services update that lets a phone's IMEI number appear in emergency info accessible from the lock screen, without unlocking the device. The feature targets devices running Android 12 or newer and is meant to help identify a phone's owner if it's lost or found. Users can disable it through Settings under Security & Privacy, Lost Device Protection, and Theft Protection.
San Francisco startup Foundation, backed by Eric Trump, has signed a $24 million contract with the Pentagon to advance its Phantom MK1 humanoid robot for military use. CEO Sankaet Pathak says the machines aren't yet capable of combat but envisions a future where they could enter buildings to complete missions instead of airstrikes, and hasn't ruled out arming them. The company has already deployed about ten robots, including with the Air Force and in logistics support roles in Ukraine.
Jexxa is a new dictation tool that runs its speech recognition model entirely on the user's device, converting speech to text in any application while holding a key to talk. It avoids uploading audio or transcripts, sending only subscription and update checks, and can correct and learn from misrecognized names or jargon over time.
Elegoo's Centauri Carbon 2 Combo, a beginner-friendly 3D printer, is currently discounted to $369 from its usual $449. The printer supports four filament rolls simultaneously and includes a fully enclosed print chamber, an auto-leveling bed, and a large touchscreen interface for managing print jobs.
iOS 27 brings a new 'Recurring' section to Apple Card in the Wallet app, letting users see predicted subscription and recurring charges in calendar or list form. The update also adds optional notifications that warn users ahead of upcoming recurring charges, plus a redesigned Apple Pay checkout screen with clearer shipping and billing details.
Mixue, the Chinese soft-serve and tea chain founded by brothers Zhang Hongchao and Zhang Hongfu, now operates more than 47,000 stores worldwide, more than McDonald's, per the Wall Street Journal. The company built its footprint by targeting smaller Chinese cities and towns with cheap products, such as 45-cent cones, rather than competing in major urban markets. Mixue recently went public in Hong Kong and is valued around $10 billion.
An entrepreneur with over 15 years running a public relations firm outlines five practical habits for scaling a business without letting customer service quality slip. The core recommendation is treating business development as a scheduled, recurring task rather than an afterthought squeezed in during slow periods.