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All the news you need to keep up with the latest developments in the tech world, from product announcements and live events to tariffs, policies, and regulations. Tech touches every aspect of daily news, and our experts are here to keep you informed on what happens and how it all affects you.

Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
Steve Wozniak launched an online merch shop.

While announcing that he was planning to share more of his adventures on X, Steve Wozniak also revealed a new merchandise store. WozMerch.com carries everything from wireless power banks, to $700 carry-ons, to t-shirts featuring inspirational phrases and colorful images of the Apple co-founder himself.

A black t-shirt featuring a rainbow image of Steve Wozniak.
Image: WozMerch
Thomas Ricker
Thomas Ricker
Behold the Carhartt WIP x Omnium Mini-Max.

This cargo bike is meant to get your workman juices flowing by fitting “bear trap” pedals to a limited edition Omnium Mini-Max with a stainless-steel frame, left raw (but clear coated) to revel in the heat discoloration of its welds. There’s no motor here — if you need one, this collab isn’t for you. Just 150 units will be sold in Europe for €4500 starting September 24th.

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Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
Apple will use the iPhone 18 Pro to shoot some of tomorrow night’s Giants vs. Dodgers game.

After using four iPhone 17 Pros during a Tigers vs. Red Sox game in 2025, Apple will use 14 of its new iPhone 18 Pro to capture “unique perspectives that would be difficult to achieve with traditional broadcast cameras” at tomorrow night’s season final of Friday Night Baseball. The cameras will record “positions within the pitch clock, backstop, foul pole, and both bullpens.”

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An iPhone 17 Pro used to capture a MLB game at a stadium.
One of the four iPhone 17 Pro phones used to capture an MLB game in 2025.
Image: Apple TV Plus
Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
Judge orders Google to make its ad tech work with rivals and share ad data with customers.

US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema said in her unsealed ruling on Google’s ad tech trial that measures to break it up were “neither realistic nor needed,” the New York Times reports. Brinkema also called for Google to appoint a monitor to make sure it complies with the order.

Tom Warren
Tom Warren
Bill Skarsgård is the lead role in Kojima’s Physint.

Physint just switched publishers from PlayStation to Xbox, and Hideo Kojima appeared at Xbox’s Tokyo game show stream today to reveal the lead role for the game. Swedish actor and producer Bill Skarsgård, best known for playing Pennywise the Clown in the It horror films, will portray the lead role alongside Charlee Fraser in Kojima’s upcoming action-espionage game. Kojima says Physint “continues to make steady progress,” months after Sony gave the studio an unexpected cancellation notice in June.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
OpenAI reveals six more “concerning” AI incidents under its new rules for reporting safety issues.

A Wednesday night blog post OpenAI benignly titled “Our framework for reporting model misalignment” lays out some new self-created reporting standards for when it notices AI behaving badly.

It is also “inaugurating” the process with six new reports, ranging from searching for exposed API keys without permission and then making them up, to uploading files to the internet to use as a citation, or adding instructions to conceal mistakes:

Summary During 5.6-sol training, some model instances added instructions to their summaries to conceal mistakes or misaligned behavior from the user. For example, compaction summaries included instructions to invent missing data without disclosing it and to hide failures. These instructions were often followed. These are examples of how misaligned behavior can persist across contexts through the compaction summaries. What happened During 5.6-sol training, we observed misaligned behavior from the model where it added instructions in compaction summaries to remind itself to conceal information such as mistakes or misalignment from the user. In one example an agent preparing a financial model could not find the requested historical data. Its summary proposed inventing reasonable historical values and withholding that fact unless asked.
One of OpenAI’s new Misalignment Notices and Reports
Screenshot: OpenAI
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Show’s over!

Spiegel just wrapped us up. I got to try the Specs, check out my story!

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Imogen Heap is onstage and doing an improv music show with Specs.

Heap is a Specs “visionary” (a celebrity partner), and she’s interacting with digital elements she can see in the Specs to make a song in real-time. It’s all very sci-fi.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Specs will have a Harry Potter-themed app.

Spiegel is trying it out now. He’s been flipping through a virtual book to try out different experiences, and got a letter from a virtual owl that was “sitting” on his arm. He’s also doing a Wingardium Leviosa spell.

I wore Snap’s $2,200 smart glasses

Snap has spent half a decade working toward its first consumer pair of AR glasses. They’re finally here — and they’re bold as can be.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Snap is opening a pop-up store for Specs where you can try the AR glasses.

The “SPECS First Look” opens at Westfield Century City in LA on October 1st, where you can “experience SPECS in person, meet members of the team, and check out what we’re building,” Snap says. Meta has also used pop-up shops as a way to show off its hardware.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Snap’s Specs are getting a charging case with cellular connectivity.

The case, available as part of a bundle for $2,395 (a $200 increase over the Specs on their own), gives you an option to more easily get internet while wearing the Specs. In the US, Snap is working with Verizon to offer data plans and financing options.

An image of the Snap Specs case.
The Snap Specs case.
Image: Snap
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Specs for your hobbies.

After a brief interlude about how Specs can work in enterprise environments, Spiegel is pitching how Specs can help you learn things. Spiegel is down a live demo showing himself practicing drawing. He’s using a real pen to trace a digital alien mascot that’s layered over a real piece of paper.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Even on stage, you can see a glow in front of Speigel’s eyes.

I usually can’t see his eyes — they’re hidden behind the digital content he’s looking at.

Right now, doing a live demo where he’s trying to watch a YouTube video in a browser on the Specs, and it’s not working. He’s starting all the way over. (It eventually worked.)

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Snap is going to stream Spiegel’s point of view from Specs he’s wearing onstage.

We’ll see how this goes! Right now, he’s showing some menus, including quick access items that he pulled up by looking at his palm.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Evan Spiegel is on stage at the Specs event.

He’s giving an overview of the Specs AR glasses, which were initially announced in June. He says we’ll get live demos.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
I’m seated for Snap’s big Specs launch event.

Made a friend walking in the door. I should have asked what he’s looking at.

The show starts at 7PM ET, and I’m planning to post anything interesting out of it. You can catch a livestream on Snap’s website.

Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
iFixit now has guides for repairing your Steam Machine.

The new guides cover everything from replacing the motherboard to cleaning the heatsink, and offer a neat look at the Steam Machine’s internals.

A partially disassembled Steam Machine
A partially disassembled Steam Machine
A partially disassembled Steam Machine
1/3Image: iFixit
Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
Monster Hunter Wilds players won’t have to pay to edit their characters starting next year.

Capcom’s getting rid of its character edit vouchers with the upcoming Ascendance expansion, so you can change your character’s appearance for free without needing workarounds. Capcom is giving players 10 free character and Palico edit vouchers to tide them over in the meantime.

Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
Cricket Wireless offers home internet now, too.

Similar to home internet offerings from Mint Mobile and Straight Talk, customers can bundle Cricket’s 5G home internet with a phone plan starting at $75/month for new customers or as a $45/month add-on for existing customers. Both prices factor in an autopay discount.

Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
Memory chip giant SK Hynix is reportedly in talks with Intel about making chips in the US.

A Reuters report claims SK Hynix is considering leasing part of Intel’s Ohio chip factory or forming a venture with Intel and other companies.

However, SK Hynix says “nothing has been finalized regarding cooperation with any specific companies mentioned in the article,” while Reuters notes any deal to produce HBM or DRAM chips may face opposition from South Korea’s government.

Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
NASA’s Curiosity rover celebrates 5,000 days on Mars with a new “postcard.”

The shot marks 14 years since Curiosity landed on the Martian surface in 2012. NASA created it by merging two black-and-white panoramas from Curiosity’s navigation cameras then added color “for an artistic interpretation of the scene, with blue representing the morning panorama and yellow representing the afternoon one.”

A panorama of the Martian surface from NASA’s Curiosity rover from September 2026
Image: NASA
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
This week in the big AI data center buildout.

AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:

Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
Spider-Man: Brand New Day just set a brand-new record at the box office.

It has officially dethroned Star Wars: The Force Awakens as the highest-grossing domestic release to date, Variety reports. So far, Brand New Day has pulled in over $936 million domestically and $2.45 billion globally, making it the third highest-grossing film of all time, behind Avatar and Avengers: Endgame.

Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
Spotify puts up Taylor Swift’s whole official music video catalog.

Swifties with a Premium subscription can watch all 58 of Taylor’s videos in Spotify’s “Switch to video” mode, from her first-ever video for 2006’s “Tim McGraw” to “Opalite.”

Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
Xteink’s next tiny e-reader runs Android.

Following an already busy year of releases, Xteink’s new S4, which is launching in China first, is the company’s first pocketable E Ink device to run Android 11 giving it access to both the Kindle and Kobo mobile apps. The S4 also features a 4.3-inch frontlit touchscreen, 32GB of storage, a proper USB-C port, and a generous 1,400mAh battery, according to Good e-Reader.

The Xteink S4 e-reader next to its packaging.
The Xteink S4 is launching in China but the company has made no announcements about eventual international availability.
Image: Xteink
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Meta’s Threads is making podcasts more prominent in the feed.

As part of a few new podcast-focused features for Threads, there are new podcast cards that will show up in posts and profiles that make the podcast stand out. Could be useful for creators trying to promote their show.

A screenshot of a podcast card in Threads.
A podcast card in Threads.
Image: Meta
Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
The Switch 2’s Joy-Cons are more durable than expected.

That’s according to Gal Silver, a technician at GameTraderZero who’s modded and repaired more than 1,000 Switch 2 Joy-Cons over the past year. You can read their findings on NintendoLife but despite using older thumbstick tech, the new Joy-Cons have much improved durability with fewer issues and no instances of “drift issue straight out of the box.”

A photo of the Joy-Con 2 controllers for the Nintendo Switch 2.
Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
Boox’s tiny Picco e-reader is now available.

Alongside the new Palma 3 announced yesterday, Boox’s Picco, a direct competitor to Xteink’s tiny e-readers, is now listed for preorder for $99.99. The Picco has a 3.97-inch, 235ppi, frontlit E Ink touchscreen, physical page turn buttons, and a 920mAh battery. It also uses microSD for storage, and includes a USB-C port for charging.

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The Boox Picco e-ereader on a wooden table next to its packaging.
Image: Boox
Thomas Ricker
Thomas Ricker
Two Google Deepmind researchers lend voices to the AI apocalypse.

Bilal Chughtai and Josh Engels, who both worked on Deepmind’s AI safety team, left to join organizations dedicated to AI safety. “I now think that there’s a terrifying chance that AI systems cause immense harm in the next five years,” said Engels. “I earnestly believe that AI has the potential to kill us all,” wrote Chughtai.