GoKawiil
Tech News
Amazon is currently selling the Oura Ring 4 for $319.99, down 20% from its $399 list price, matching the lowest price seen since Prime Day. The smart ring tracks sleep, recovery, readiness, heart rate, temperature and stress, and offers roughly 5 to 8 days of battery life depending on size and settings.
In China, smartwatches designed for children have become a preferred device for parents managing preteens, offering location tracking and communication features without giving kids full smartphone access. These wearables let parents keep tabs on their children's whereabouts while limiting exposure to broader internet content and social apps.
Regulators concluded that Google mishandled location tracking, gathering and storing data that could expose sensitive personal details about users without adequate safeguards. As a result, the company has been fined $462 million.
Apple has built native live step tracking directly into the watch face on the new Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4, joining live heart rate as a standard complication option from the Fitness app. Previously, step data was only viewable inside the Fitness or Health apps, even though third-party apps like Pedometer++ had offered on-face step counts for years.
OpenAI runs an advertising collector at bzr.openai.com that sets a persistent, account-linked cookie called __obi on the openai.com domain. When companies that advertise on ChatGPT embed OpenAI's tracking code on their own websites, that cookie is transmitted back to OpenAI along with details of the page being viewed, including products searched, articles read and purchases made. A security researcher says they reproduced the mechanism on their own device and found it active across 936 advertiser pixels spanning 1,029 hostnames.
A Gamers Nexus investigation accused LG TVs of covertly recording audio and monitoring viewing habits, sparking backlash even after LG issued a response. However, reporting shows this kind of automatic content recognition tracking, which fingerprints audio and video to identify what's being watched, is used industry-wide, not just by LG, and users typically consent to it through dense terms of service.
A new report titled 'Pacing the Frontier' argues that despite widespread agreement among AI leaders that development may need to slow down, there is no clear technical or policy framework for how to actually do it. Coauthor Raymond Douglas of the University of Toronto says the field needs to treat slowdown as an unsolved research problem rather than a vague aspiration, especially as fears grow over AI systems being used to build even more powerful successors.
LeoLabs has built a transportable radar system called Scout-S, a shipping-container-sized unit that can be set up almost anywhere in a matter of hours using just a generator and a Starlink connection. The system is designed to monitor the rapidly growing number of satellites and debris fragments in low Earth orbit, which has swelled from roughly 2,000 objects in 2019 to nearly 17,000 today, with Starlink accounting for most of that growth.
Garmin CIRQA owners report that workouts started directly from the wearable disappear when they tap 'End' from the Activity in Progress prompt in the Garmin Connect app. Garmin has confirmed the bug, is investigating, and is contacting affected users for more details.
Counterpoint Research reports that worldwide smartwatch shipments declined 4% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2026, as consumers kept existing devices longer rather than upgrading. Huawei topped the market in total shipments, while Apple posted the strongest growth rate among the five leading brands. Counterpoint projects only 1% shipment growth for the full year.
Early reviews of the Apple Watch Series 12 point to roughly two-day battery life, a notable improvement over previous generations, alongside upgraded health monitoring capabilities. The source material provided limited detail beyond these headline points, but the general reception appears positive.
Apple has agreed to revise its App Tracking Transparency consent screens for apps distributed in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, and Romania, following antitrust scrutiny led by Germany's competition regulator. The changes include full-page prompts instead of pop-ups, removal of the word 'track,' relabeled buttons reading 'Allow' and 'Reject,' new colors and formatting, and an optional link to more detailed explanations from developers.