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Tech News
Google has fixed a bug in its Home app that was preventing owners of older Chromecast and Chromecast Audio devices from setting them up. The company confirmed the fix in a Reddit thread and advised affected users to update to Google Home app version 4.26 or later and retry setup. Those still experiencing issues are encouraged to contact Google support.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled a one-year moratorium starting in the 2026-2027 school year that blocks roughly 600,000 students from pre-K through eighth grade from using AI in class, and bars teachers from using AI to grade their work. Companion and mental-support chatbots will be prohibited at all grade levels, individual screens are banned until third grade, and screen time guidance caps middle schoolers at 45 minutes daily. High schoolers will get limited AI access, twice-yearly AI literacy lessons, and a small pilot program testing vetted AI tools in a handful of classrooms.
OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, AMD and over 100 other companies and organizations signed a joint letter urging businesses and governments to urgently strengthen cybersecurity defenses as AI-driven threats accelerate. The signatories called for stronger security tools, wider adoption of both low-cost and frontier AI models, and government funding to help under-resourced sectors like hospitals and water utilities defend themselves.
Google unveiled a special-edition Fitbit Air designed to integrate with the Pokémon Sleep app, timed to Pokémon's 30th anniversary. The device tracks daytime activity metrics like heart rate and movement alongside nighttime sleep data, syncing with both Google Health and Pokémon Sleep. It's priced at $129 and available for preorder now, shipping September 15 through Google Store and Target.
Britain's government has moved to permit plug-in solar kits, but the Institution of Engineering and Technology says the country's electrical infrastructure wasn't built for it. IET technical regulations head Mark Coles says many homes still use older Residual Current Devices designed only for one-way power flow, which can fail or burn out when solar feeds electricity back through them. The IET issued its own warning the same day as the government's announcement, urging homeowners to get professional wiring checks before installing any system.
Across the United States, individuals are disabling, damaging, or stealing Flock Safety surveillance cameras used by local police departments, employing tactics ranging from spray-painting lenses to outright destruction. In Lumpkin County, Georgia, a sheriff's Facebook post offering a $1,000 reward for information about a vandalized camera backfired, drawing over 30,000 comments largely siding with the vandals rather than law enforcement.
Boston Scientific disclosed in an SEC filing that a cyberattack beginning Tuesday has caused widespread outages across its IT systems, hampering its ability to ship and process orders. The medical device maker, which serves roughly 48 million patients annually, has not said whether implanted devices like pacemakers are affected, and has not given a timeline for restoring systems. Reports from Ireland indicate staff at its Cork campus were sent home after internal network communications went down.
The Justice Department seized domains tied to two tools, QTRouter and QScan, that a Chinese hacking group called QTFY used to route attacks through hijacked IoT devices and commercial proxy services. Prosecutors say the network, allegedly linked to Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Company and used by China's Ministry of State Security and PLA, enabled breaches at NASA, the Senate, the Federal Reserve, HHS, NIH, and the DOJ itself since at least 2018.
Boston Scientific detected a cybersecurity incident on August 25 that knocked out access to key IT systems and business applications, halting its ability to process and ship customer orders worldwide. The medical device maker has activated incident response protocols and hired outside cybersecurity experts to investigate and contain the breach, but has not given a timeline for full restoration. In its SEC filing, the company did not disclose details about the attack type, the perpetrators, or whether any data was compromised.
A newly filed class-action lawsuit claims Oura Ring cannot accurately determine sleep stages because it relies on AI inference rather than direct brain-wave measurement, likening its accuracy to a coin flip. The complaint argues Oura is exploiting sleep-deprived consumers by marketing statistical estimates as reliable science. Verge writer Victoria Song notes that no wearable device measures brain activity directly, since all such gadgets rely on motion and physiological proxies interpreted through algorithms.
Nearly a decade after Geoffrey Hinton predicted AI would replace radiologists, the profession has instead grown, with practitioner numbers projected to rise more than 26% over three decades. About three-quarters of the 1,400 AI-enabled medical devices cleared by the FDA target radiology, ranging from tools that draft reports and flag urgent cases to systems that can spot abnormalities humans miss, such as AI-assisted colonoscopies detecting more polyps than standard procedures.
In the latest episode of the Apple @ Work podcast, host Bradley Chambers and 9to5Mac's Arin Waichulis discuss Apple's move to impose caps and cool-down periods on submissions to its bug bounty program. The episode explores how these restrictions could change the way security researchers interact with Apple's vulnerability reporting system.