Robot

Google DeepMind has unveiled artificial intelligence models that further advance reasoning capabilities in robotics, enabling them to solve harder problems and complete more complicated real world tasks like sorting laundry and recycling rubbish. The company’s new robotics models, called Gemini Robotics 1.5 and Gemini Robotics-ER 1.5, are designed to help robots complete multi-step tasks by “thinking” before they act, as part of the tech industry’s push to make the general-purpose machines more useful in the everyday world.

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Batteries

Battery materials startup Sila is starting operations today at its automotive-scale manufacturing facility, located in Moses Lake, Wash. The plant is producing a silicon-carbon anode material that replaces graphite in lithium-ion batteries like those used to power electric vehicles, smartphones and other consumer devices. Batteries using Sila’s Titan Silicon can hold 20% more energy than traditional batteries.

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Keyboard

Logitech left solar-powered keyboards in the dark for over a decade, but it’s launching a new one today. Just like the K760 before it, its new $99.99 Signature Slim Solar Plus K980 can only be powered with light. There’s no USB port or swappable batteries. Instead, it features a cell that can convert solar or artificial light- 200 lux at minimum- into power to charge its battery, which the company says will last for up to 10 years. 

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OpenAI

OpenAI is now reportedly considering making ChatGPT glasses, despite CEO Sam Altman's public rejection of the form factor. Outside the Sun Valley Conference, back in July, Altman took questions from the press while wearing a pair of white sunglasses with strangely thick temples. When asked "are you wearing smart glasses? are these smart glasses?", he replied "no, absolutely not, I don't like smart glasses".

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Google

Penske Media Corporation, the publisher of Rolling Stone and The Hollywood Reporter, has become the first major American media company to sue Google over its AI summaries. The company claims that the AI Overviews that often appear at the top of search results leave users with little reason to click through to the source, hurting traffic and illegally benefitting from the work of its reporters. While Penske Media is the biggest name to take on Google over its AI Overviews, it’s not the first.

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YouTube

 YouTube’s big Made On event for the “next 20” years of its streaming platform includes new features that will change the way creators make money off of the videos you watch. They include new links directing viewers on where to find products online and the ability to switch up the sponsored ads you see featured by creators. Support for dynamically inserting brand segments that can be swapped in and out, allowing creators to resell slots to another brand in future instead of having a permanent product ad in long-form videos. YouTube says it will start testing early next year before rolling it out later in 2026.

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Sun

 The Parker Solar Probe zoomed by the sun on Tuesday during a record-breaking flyby, coming within 3.8 million miles of the solar surface during humanity’s closest approach to a star... The mission has been building up to this historic milestone since it launched on August 12, 2018- an event attended by the probe’s namesake, Dr. Eugene Parker, an astrophysicist who pioneered the solar research field of heliophysics.

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Apple Watch

Apple’s new hypertension notifications- announced Tuesday alongside the new Apple Watch SE3, Series 11, and Ultra 3-  use data from the watches’ existing optical heart sensor to “analyze how a user’s blood vessels respond to the beats of the heart.” An algorithm will review this data over a 30 day period and notify users if it detects signs of high blood pressure.

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AirPods

We first spotted that AirPods Live translation was coming a month before the announcement. Initial language support is listed as English, French, German, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish – with four more languages coming later this year. But while European languages are supported, you won’t necessarily be able to take advantage of that if you are within one of the countries in which they’re spoken …

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Internet

Internet connectivity in multiple countries including India and Pakistan has been affected due to subsea cable outages in the Red Sea, internet monitoring group Netblocks said. Similar internet disruptions were also observed on Etilasat and Du networks in the United Arab Emirates, Netblocks said. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the damage but Netblocks identified failures affecting cable systems near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

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