Google now lets anyone with a personal or Workspace account use Google Vids to create 1080p videos powered by its Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash-Lite model, free of charge. The feature is accessible via vids.new by selecting 'Create AI videos,' though Google hasn't specified any usage limits for free accounts, and generated videos carry a SynthID watermark. Google also announced plans to add Gemini 3.8 Flash-Lite text-to-speech for voiceovers, supporting over 100 languages.
androidauthority.com
· 2026-09-23
An analysis argues that the cost of running machine learning models is dropping by orders of magnitude annually, driven by GPU efficiency gains that double roughly every two years—a pace not seen since early Moore's Law. The piece distinguishes proprietary models like GPT-6 Astra from open-weight models such as GLM-5.3-flash, noting that hosted and locally-run versions improve at different rates, with per-token pricing for frontier models not falling as consistently as costs for smaller models.
jyn.dev
· 2026-09-23
Amazon is selling Samsung's P9 512GB microSD Express card for $99.99, a $50 discount off its usual $149.99 price and matching its original MSRP before flash memory shortages pushed prices up. The card offers sequential read speeds up to 800 MB/s and is compatible with the Nintendo Switch 2's storage expansion needs.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-22
Google offers ChromeOS Flex, a free operating system that can replace Windows on older machines meeting modest specs: an Intel or AMD CPU, 4GB RAM and 16GB storage, though chips from 2012 or earlier aren't supported. Installation involves using Chrome's Chromebook Recovery Utility to create bootable media on an 8GB-plus USB drive, then booting the target PC into its boot menu to install or trial the OS.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-21
Analysts at Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and TrendForce report that legacy memory types like NOR flash and SLC NAND are facing severe supply shortages as manufacturers redirect production capacity toward more profitable HBM and DRAM chips driven by AI demand. Contract prices for both chip types have already more than doubled in the first half of 2026, with SLC NAND expected to rise another 120-170% in the second half.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-18
A new system called the Transient Artifact and Continuous Learning System (TACLS) combines satellite data and machine learning to help the National Weather Service identify flood-prone areas faster and issue earlier alerts. The technology comes after incidents like the June flash flood in Lanesville, Indiana, where over 8 inches of rain fell in hours and residents received evacuation warnings only after flooding had already begun.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-18
Cactus launched Needle 3, a foundation model small enough to run as a single 8-29MB binary on phones, wearables, robots, smart home hubs and cars. Built on what the company calls a Simple Attention Network, it sacrifices general chat ability to specialize in three tasks: text embedding for local search, structured data extraction from messy text, and tool calling that maps spoken requests to app functions. The company claims it outperforms models ten times larger on mobile tool calls and matches models two to three times bigger on extraction.
cactuscompute.com
· 2026-09-18
Waymo has relaunched paid robotaxi service in San Antonio five months after several of its vehicles got stuck in an April flash flood, with one car swept away by rising water. The company says it updated its software to better detect and avoid standing water, and will now operate dozens of vehicles across a 60-mile zone covering downtown and the airport.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-17
USB 3.0's successors were renamed using confusing 'Gen' labels tied to speeds of 5, 10 or 20 Gbps, making printed USB 3.2 labels unreliable indicators of actual performance. USB-C ports add convenience but say nothing about speed, since USB-C devices can still run at USB 2.0 rates. Real-world tests, like Kingston's DataTraveler Max hitting up to 1,000 MB/s versus Samsung's Fit Plus write speeds of just 58.4 MB/s, show huge gaps hidden behind similar branding.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-17
DeepSeek released V4.1 Flash, a model initially mistaken for a minor update but revealed via its technical report to be a significant architectural overhaul, effectively a V5-class release. It achieves near 420 tokens/second throughput while compressing KV cache by 4x through techniques including cross-layer compression, sparse attention indexing optimizations, and FP4 precision, alongside a YOCO-inspired prefill design that only activates 8B parameters during prefill versus 16B during decode across its 40 layers.
zartbot.github.io
· 2026-09-17
Amazon has discounted UGREEN's DXP480T Plus network-attached storage unit by $150, bringing its price down to $849.99. The device uses all-flash storage rather than spinning hard drives, positioning it for faster data transfers and quieter operation.
androidauthority.com
· 2026-09-16
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash achieved code execution on all 11 vulnerable systems in an AI hacking benchmark while leaving four patched systems untouched, at a total cost of just $4.65 for accepted runs. A manual review found the model discovered five novel attack paths beyond the six expected solutions, including a faster exploit against Grafana that bypassed the intended vulnerability entirely.
enclave.ai
· 2026-09-16
GoKawiil