Technology

What should you cook for dinner on a budget of 20 euros when you have a guest with a gluten intolerance? A shopper might ask a shop assistant for advice or consult, for example, Hopla, the AI-powered shopping assistant launched by French supermarket chain Carrefour. Behind this everyday choice lies a broader question: when faced with a recommendation, who do we trust more? Recent research—on decision-making processes, the impact of errors, etc.—has highlighted a clear and well-established trend: people tend to prefer other people (as opposed to AI systems).

Art in New York sets a high standard this fall, with many remarkable exhibitions. Among them is Overexposed, at the Museum of the Moving Image in Long Island City, which brings a fresh perspective to the relationship between art and science. The result of several years of research by curator Sonia Shechet Epstein, the exhibition is accompanied by a book co-edited with Elisabeth Sherman. Tracing connections between medical research, imagery, and technology, Overexposed reveals how the desire to see beneath the surface has shaped both scientific discovery and artistic imagination. From the beginnings of the moving image and the discovery of X-rays to present-day medical research, it brings together unusual visual material to explore a shared impulse: to make visible what otherwise remains beyond our perception.

A cheap phone charger is at the centre of a Manitoba lawsuit after a couple’s SUV caught fire and their insurance claim was denied. Jason and Christine Philion of Garson are suing Manitoba Public Insurance (MPI) and several companies connected to the charger, according to CBC News. The fire destroyed their 2017 Chevrolet Traverse in Beausejour, east of Winnipeg, on February 17.

Yi Lin, SPEARS testing and research lead at NASA Langley, holds one of the small coin-cell batteries that had just undergone thermal vacuum testing. If you've ever had your car start sluggishly, or not at all, on a particularly frigid winter morning, you know standard batteries do not like extreme cold. That's why NASA researchers are working to develop a battery that could function in the brutal cold of the moon's south pole, where nighttime temperatures plunge to minus 328 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 200 degrees Celsius).

Battist Utinger is studying the oxidative potential of fine particulate matter in the laboratory. A device developed at the University of Basel can measure how much these particles can trigger harmful oxidative reactions. Fine particulate matter consists of tiny particles with diameters in the nanometer range. They are produced, for example, by fuel combustion, remain suspended in the air and can penetrate deep into the respiratory tract. There, they can trigger oxidative stress, a process that promotes inflammation and, over the long term, can lead to serious health problems such as respiratory or cardiovascular diseases.

At Block, the company behind Square, Cash App, and Afterpay, the security team leverages the OpenAI Defense Factory: where AI handles vulnerability discovery, detection, and response at a scale that no human team could keep up with. With AI systems including OpenAI Daybreak, Block is taking just hours to do work that used to take weeks. “AI is compressing the time from human intent to action. For a while, it was assumed that there was an attacker advantage since they’re faster and more nimble. But with things like Daybreak and the advancements in OpenAI’s tooling, defenders are able to fight fire with fire and keep up with the rapid pace of AI adoption.”—James Nettesheim, Chief Information Security Officer, BlockBlock’s security team has been focused on responsibly adopting AI across workflows, whether that’s code generation or security operations. “What it’s really centered on is having a new teammate that you can scale with,” James Nettesheim, Chief Information Security Officer, says. “It’s not like a more traditional automation where you had to go step by step.

The iPhone Duo starts at expensive and goes up to exorbitant for its higher-capacity configurations, and if something happens and you need a repair, the costs could be substantial without AppleCare coverage. The base 256GB storage option is priced at $1,999, but if you want to max out Apple’s new foldable phone with 2TB of space, it’ll cost $3,199. That’s pricey by iPhone standards, compared to the iPhone 18 Pro that begins at $1,199, though in line with the retail prices of Android folding phones like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold.

Google is testing a big firmware update for the Google Home, Home Mini, Nest Mini, and Nest Audio. Google has long operated a Preview Program for speaker firmware. Version 3.79.550760 was posted today with five big features:

The Audio Engineering Society has announced that pioneering digital audio technologist, educator, and longtime AES leader Marina Bosi will deliver the Richard C. Heyser Memorial Lecture at AES Show Nashville 2026, taking place October 30 – November 1 at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee. With a strong emphasis on music recording and production, the 161st AES Convention will also feature sessions with Jack White, John McBride and Vince Gill. The Audio Engineering Society has announced an extensive program for AES Show Nashville 2026, taking place October 30 – November 1 at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Keynote interviews with Jack White, John McBride, and Vince Gill will accompany technical sessions, research presentations, workshops, and professional audio exhibits. Dedicated immersive listening rooms hosted by ADAM Audio and Genelec, together with Marina Bosi’s Richard C. Heyser Memorial Lecture on perceptual audio coding, give the event a strong focus on the technologies connecting production with the listening experience. In a message from the AES association, Brecht De Man, current president,

Google has begun emailing Gemini AI Plus members to inform them when their Gemini subscription will no longer include access to the advanced models – just Flash. A change in Gemini’s subscription model was announced earlier this month. It came right before Google’s new Argon model went live and became the new high-performance offer in Gemini. The company made it clear that Gemini 4 Argon would be included for AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers, but it also said AI Plus members would lose access to AI Pro entirely.

Passkey adoption continues to accelerate, but enterprises still face challenges moving from optional passwordless login to secure, widespread deployment. Even among leaders, uptake struggles to rise beyond marginal, despite the advantages of biometric security. The FIDO Alliance is continuing to address the problem, bringing on board real-world experience and branching out into verifiable credentials. Dashlane report shows passkeys gaining uptake in new sectors

Updated: Oct 14, 2026 9:17pm UTCThe iPhone Duo, Apple's first foldable, is already an incredibly expensive phone, rolling in at $1,999 to start. While the buy-in price is high, it's also going to be extremely expensive if it breaks. Ahead of the iPhone Duo's release next week, the foldable's repair costs were found by 9to5Mac, and they're staggering if you don't have AppleCare+. They range from damage on the glass back of the phone costing you $199 to inner screen damage costing $999 to repair. Apple will apparently also charge up to $1,499 to fix "other damage," though it's not clear what exactly that means. All of these prices will be drastically lowered by having AppleCare+. Because the iPhone Duo is such an expensive and complicated device, anyone dropping the cash to buy one should seriously consider bundling AppleCare with it. I'd even go further and suggest picking up an iPhone Duo case on top of that. As scary as these high repair prices look, Apple basically skipped the era of fragile foldables.

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The Defense Department is giving AI company Anthropic an ultimatum to agree to its terms for the use of AI technology in the military by a Friday deadline or the Pentagon will force it to comply, according to a Pentagon official and a source familiar with the matter. The Pentagon has been using Anthropic's technology as part of a $200 million pilot program in the Department of Defense. But during a Tuesday meeting with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei walked through Anthropic's red lines, which include autonomous weapons -- where AI, not humans, makes final targeting decisions -- and mass domestic surveillance of American citizens, the source said. The Pentagon official says the dispute with Anthropic has nothing to do with mass surveillance and autonomous weapons being used, adding that the Pentagon has always followed the law. "Legality is the Pentagon's responsibility as the end user," the official said. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei delivers a speech during the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, Feb. 19, 2026.