By Paulo Vargas The $399 Signal Ring promises cuff-free systolic and diastolic readings without calibration, but missing FDA clearance and unpublished clinical results make keeping that old arm cuff the sensible move.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Paulo Vargas Amazon briefly listed HTC’s VIVE Eagle smart glasses for a September 1 US launch at $499, then removed the pages before HTC had confirmed the expansion beyond Taiwan.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Deepti Pathak Checking your battery health will not only provide you with information about your iPad’s performance but…
The post Apple Doesn’t Show Battery Health on Older iPads—Here’s How to Check It Anyway appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes

By Hisan Kidwai GIGABYTE has officially entered India’s local manufacturing ecosystem with the launch of the GAMING A16, the…
The post GIGABYTE Launches Its First Made-in-India Gaming Laptop With AMD Ryzen Chips appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes

By Ana Maria Constantin OpenAI has trained an elite hacker, then locked it in a cage. Its whole job is to break OpenAI’s own AI. The company says it is too dangerous to let anyone else near it. The model is called GPT-Red, and OpenAI detailed it this week. It is an automated red-teamer: software that hunts for ways […] This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Ana Maria Constantin For years, musicians have said AI song generators fed on their work without asking. A hacker just opened the black box and showed them exactly how. Leaked source code from Suno, one of the biggest AI music tools, tells the story. It trained its model by scraping millions of songs and lyrics from across the […] This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis on Tuesday reiterated his push for an AI industry self-regulation effort, led by the US government, that is particularly focused on artificial general intelligence (AGI) and national security. 

But it is precisely that focus on national security that may make the results of such an effort, assuming it happens, less than palatable outside of the US.

“The rapid progress we’re seeing in AI requires a new approach to testing frontier AI model capabilities that is dynamic, adaptable, and rigorous,” Hassabis wrote. “The US is well positioned, given its economic and technical standing, to take the first step in developing such a framework. It could establish a new Standards Body modelled on a federally overseen public-private partnership or self-regulatory organization, much like the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), with a board that includes independent leading technical experts and open-source representatives.”

He noted, however, that the funding would need to be substantial, and would most likely come from industry, to allow the new body to attract world-class technical talent and obtain the necessary compute resources for large-scale testing.

Hassabis said he would propose that the organization “be responsible for developing assessment protocols and working with appropriate federal agencies and the US National Labs to conduct testing in areas relevant to national security,” and that AI vendor participants would be encouraged to adopt best practices, such as publishing model cards with technical details, maintaining strong internal cybersecurity, vetting key personnel, and providing sufficient resourcing for safety and security research.

This is not the first time Hassabis has expressed worries about AGI. He has already worked on a US government initiative evaluating AI safety, which involved DeepMind, Microsoft and xAI (now SpaceXAI) working with the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), a division of the US Department of Commerce. It allowed CAISI to conduct pre-deployment evaluations and targeted research to “better assess frontier AI capabilities and advance the state of AI security.”  

The rest of the world may have concerns

Analysts and consultants were mixed about the move, with most expressing concerns about whether an industry-focused group would prioritize the public’s best interests.

“Self-regulation is not viable because it implies everyone is able to regulate themselves and will do so in line with the best interests of the public. Most tech vendors don’t have the capacity to self-regulate. They would just prefer a set of rules within which they can operate,” said Gartner VP analyst Nader Henein. “For-profit organizations are required to do what is best for their shareholders, and external regulation ensures that those organizations are never in a conflict of interest where they have to choose between what is good for their shareholders and what is good for the public.”

And, said Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst at Greyhound Research, given the international nature of AI models, an effort coordinated by the US government might alienate other countries. 

“National security is the proposal’s accelerator in Washington and its poison pill abroad: the framing that opens the only gate available at home invites foreign capitals to read the institution as an instrument of American strategy,” he pointed out.

“The map is already plural,” he said. “Brussels switches on enforcement powers over general-purpose models [starting in August 2026], London runs the AI Security Institute, and Beijing licenses on its own terms. California and New York have legislated for frontier models at home. The durable route is shared technical evidence with sovereign enforcement, sealed through mutual recognition rather than deference, with India and the other major non-Western markets holding authorship rather than seats.”

Gogia added that the rules enacted by even such a group may not address all of the key concerns of enterprise IT. A US government effort along the lines that Hassabis is proposing would result in testing that “sits close to intelligence and industrial policy, and those functions will not stay neatly separated. A model can pass every catastrophic-risk test and still fail the enterprise on privacy, reliability, and liability,” he noted.

Walmart’s former director of cybersecurity Steven Eric Fisher, who is now an independent cybersecurity consultant, said he found the proposal “well-intentioned, but it addresses a highly polarized topic at a time when commercial interests carry unprecedented political influence, which is not always applied benevolently.”

He added, “an exclusive US standard that is not globally respected or enforceable would likely fail to achieve its core purpose and would place US companies at a competitive disadvantage.”

Aman Mahapatra, chief strategy officer for Tribeca Softtech, a New York City-based technology consulting firm, said that a deep dive into how FINRA operates today is illustrative of what IT leaders can expect from this effort, assuming the industry adopts that model.

“When the CEOs of the five companies that would be regulated are also the primary drafters of the standards, the standards will reflect those companies’ interests. FINRA has an independent board, but the operational reality is that member firm perspectives dominate the working groups that write the actual rules,” he said. “There is no reason to expect an AI equivalent to work differently, and every reason to expect it to work worse, because AI standardization is happening faster than any industry has ever attempted to standardize itself, and speed is the enemy of independent oversight.”

Carmi Levy, an independent technology analyst, was even more emphatically opposed to the Hassabis proposal.

“Asking Big Tech companies to self-police is analogous to allowing foxes to guard the henhouse. It hasn’t worked to date, and it won’t work going forward. Expecting these organizations to somehow change their ways at this point in time represents the height of naïve thinking,” Levy said. “The framework proposed by Demis Hassabis is a self-serving roadmap for an industry bent on racing to the AI horizon regardless of the harms caused along the way. It is impossible to quantify the dangers to broader society should frameworks allowing self-regulation become the norm.”

Some love the proposal

An almost completely opposite stance came from Yuri Goryunov, CIO of consulting firm Acceligence, who applauded the proposed move.

“This is one of the rare setups where industry self-regulation has a real shot, and enterprise IT should be enthusiastically rooting for it,” he said. “It fails when harms are externalized, such as in social media content moderation. Or when the overseer outsources judgment to the overseen, such as the FAA’s delegation to Boeing before the 737 MAX. It works when everyone in the industry shares the catastrophic downside.”

He suggested, however, that the best precedent here isn’t FINRA, it’s INPO, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, which the nuclear industry created within months of the 1979 Three Mile Island partial reactor meltdown “on the logic that an accident anywhere is an accident everywhere. INPO peer-reviews every US plant, its evaluations move insurance premiums, and it sits on top of the NRC’s statutory floor. That is a public-private stack very close to what Hassabis is describing. Frontier AI has the same structure: one lab’s catastrophic failure brings regulation down on all of them.”

For enterprise CIOs and other IT executives, Goryunov said, that model has the potential for being a big win.

“Today, every enterprise duplicates the same AI diligence of red-teaming, eval suites, governance committees and each does so with less information than any certifying body would have,” Goryunov said. “A credible standards regime does for AI what UL did for electrical equipment and SOC2 did for cloud: it converts an unknowable risk into a procurable product and gives boards a defensible standard of care. That’s not red tape. That’s peace of mind with an audit trail.”

However, Mahapatra said, “the countervailing view is that the alternative to industry-led standards is probably not thoughtful legislation. It is probably no standards, or state-by-state fragmentation, or the current pattern of ex-post enforcement actions where regulators surface concerns years after harm has already occurred.”

Thus, he noted, “Hassabis is making the reasonable argument that imperfect fast standards are better than perfect slow ones, and there is genuine merit to that view for topics like agent identity, evaluation methodology, and interoperability, which are exactly the areas OpenClaw is also targeting.”

This article originally appeared on CIO.com.

Source:: Computer World

When Apple sued OpenAI last week, the argument it made was that former employees had stolen Apple data and then used it to benefit OpenAI. 

The technical details — an employee used “a rare, previously unknown authentication bug to access Apple’s shared network folders” — are interesting. But the larger story is Apple’s ridiculous attempt to stop its people from using anything they learned at Apple in other jobs.

“Hiring managers don’t mind some files being brought into the org during onboarding, but suddenly take umbrage when that same employee exits with some files later on,” said Mike Wilkes, enterprise CISO at Aikido Security. “Legal should be equally concerned about both events.”

The lawsuit focused on Chang Liu, an employee who had been recruited to work at OpenAI after working at Apple for eight years as a Senior System Electrical Engineer. The full text of the filing depicts a comedy of errors by Apple, offering the perfect “do not do” list of handling employee resignations — especially when they’re going to a direct competitor. 

“When Apple contacted Mr. Liu to sign Apple’s confidentiality reminder, schedule an exit interview, and confirm that he had returned his devices and complied with other exit procedures, Mr. Liu did not respond.” And “after leaving Apple, Mr. Liu failed to return an Apple-issued work laptop that he had previously authenticated to Apple’s network.”

First, typical procedure for handling departures is to tie the return of all equipment and the signing of documents to any final payments. With Apple, that is likely to be a large amount of money. The lawsuit does not say whether Apple exerted any financial pressure on their employee for compliance. 

But in terms of equipment with high-level access, why weren’t all privileges revoked, both for the employee and any and all company-issued devices? Did they not maintain a remote-wipe capability for these devices? Although remote-wipe is usually used when devices are missing or stolen, it should work as well when a departing employee refuses to return company equipment. 

According to Apple, Liu apparently had help at Apple from Tang Yew Tan, who was supposedly also interviewing with OpenAI. “While employed by OpenAI, [Liu] accessed and used his former colleague’s Apple-issued work computer that was authenticated to Apple’s network, without Apple’s authorization.”

Apple tried to make much of this Liu’s fault. Legally, yes, there might be liability there; still, Apple made itself look as if it couldn’t protect its own data. “Upon discovering that he had this unauthorized access to Apple’s systems, [the former employee] did not report it, return his stolen Apple-issued work laptop or delete the program that allowed the access.” 

Really, Apple? Your data-protection plan relies on ex-employees to “delete the program that allowed the access”? I’m not so sure you didn’t bring some of this data-leakage on yourselves. 

This gets worse: “Over several weeks, while developing hardware for OpenAI, Mr. Liu surreptitiously accessed and downloaded dozens of Apple’s confidential hardware-related files, including voluminous, detailed information about unreleased products, engineering presentations, technical specifications, and proprietary project data.”

Setting aside the issue of privileges, access, and unreturned equipment that apparently had its own privileges, that statement points to massive data exfiltration from Apple systems. Even if it is coming from a current employee, why didn’t that raise any red flags? 

Let’s get back to the broader implications. When professionals move from one company to another, they — of course — are bringing their experience and knowledge with them. Can Apple reasonably tell them that they can’t do so? Isn’t that experience and knowledge exactly why another company would want to hire them?

Now, to be sure, stealing diagrams and product spec sheets is a clear violation. Let’s say Apple spent a lot of money on some hardware research projects. A member of that technical team would learn an awful lot, all on Apple’s dime. 

But is it fair and reasonable for Apple to say that the former employee can’t leverage that knowledge at his or her next job? 

This brings us back to the point Wilkes made: If Apple is going to try to prevent any former employee from leveraging on-the-job experience, then it should instruct all new employees not to use anything they learned in a previous job. 

That would be ridiculous. Companies pay for experienced talent because of that experience. Why pay for expertise if you insist employees not leverage any of it?

Then there’s the amorphous nature of knowledge. So, it’s wrong to take detailed diagrams and spec details and hand them over to a new employer. But what if that worker heading out the door memorizes the documents (photographic memory) a day before resigning? Is a person prohibited from using something from memory?

There’s also the fruit-of-the-poisonous tree legal argument. Even if a former employee doesn’t directly use stolen data, what if their knowledge leads to other money-saving insights for the new employer? 

Given that Apple hires as many specialists as it loses to rivals, wouldn’t it make sense to leverage everything your workforce knows and then let new employers do the same? But before you do that, Apple, tighten your exiting employee tech controls. 

Then maybe you wont’t have to file lawsuits like this down the road.

Source:: Computer World

By Pranob Mehrotra Samsung is teasing its next Galaxy Watch as an AI-powered health companion ahead of Galaxy Unpacked on July 22.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Moinak Pal Penn State researchers have created a washable paint-on tattoo that monitors heart, brain and muscle activity, offering a colorful alternative to bulky wearable health sensors.

Source:: Digital Trends

First Impressions — Lobby as a Living Room

There’s a particular comfort to opening an online casino lobby that feels more like stepping into a lively lounge than a sterile storefront: curated thumbnails, soft animations, and a soundtrack that doesn’t shout. The browsing moment is the gateway to the evening, where a friendly interface and welcoming visuals invite you to wander rather than rush.

Many modern platforms think of the lobby like a magazine spread—stories to explore, featured rooms to sample, and timely events highlighted in gentle banners. For a quick sense of how an operator presents its entertainment, an informational reference such as https://fakestakeapp.com/ can show how curation and discovery are stitched into the browsing experience without overwhelming newcomers.

Feature Spotlight — Live Tables and Theatrical Play

Live dealer sections feel like theater: dealers act as hosts, the table is a stage, and the camera framing gives you multiple angles to soak in the action. It’s less about rules and more about atmosphere—chatty dealers, the hum of a real casino, and the satisfaction of seeing a hand dealt or a spin settle in real time.

What stands out is how these rooms are produced. Lighting, camera transitions, and stage-like backdrops elevate the session into something social and cinematic. Whether you’re there for casual conversation or the buzz of a group event, these live formats make the experience feel collaborative and dynamic.

Feature Spotlight — Themed Slots and Mini-Experiences

Slots are where storytelling meets instant gratification: compact narratives, memorable soundtracks, and visual surprises that reward curiosity. Developers treat each title like a mini-movie—complete with characters, arcs, and set pieces that keep a session feeling fresh as you explore different themes from classic retro to futuristic cityscapes.

Beyond the reels, many games include small interactive moments—animated cutscenes, cascading visuals, or short sequences that interrupt the flow in delightful ways. Those interludes are less about outcomes and more about the joy of being entertained, like a short musical number in the middle of a film.

Session Flow — Comfort, Rhythm, and Atmosphere

Good session flow feels deliberate yet effortless: a gentle rhythm of discovery, play, pause, and return. It’s the kind of night where you wander from lounge to lounge, trial a few themes, and settle into a room with a playlist that fits your mood. The best experiences let you set that tempo without pressure—ambient sound levels, tidy navigation, and the visual cues that help you find your place again after a break.

Comfort features matter more than they might seem at first glance. Thoughtful touches—like adjustable audio, a clear chat panel, and a calming color palette—mean a longer, more relaxed session. It’s the difference between feeling like a guest at a friend’s house and feeling like you’re being rushed through a commercial.

Feature Spotlight — Social Layers and Community Feel

Community features add heartbeat to the entertainment: chat threads that feel like bar banter, leaderboards used more for friendly rivalry than hardcore competition, and scheduled events that turn a quiet evening into a shared happening. These elements transform solitary browsing into a social ritual.

Platforms are experimenting with layered social tools that let you dip in and out—soft notifications for friends’ activity, public lobbies for casual talk, and private tables for more intimate gatherings. The result is a sense of continuity: you can leave and return to a session that still feels warm and familiar, as if you never really left the room.

• Curated discovery: themed collections and editor’s picks that invite leisurely exploration.
• Atmospheric production: live feeds and slot animations that prioritize immersion over noise.
• Comfort-oriented UI: subtle sound controls, clear navigation, and tasteful design.

At the heart of online casino entertainment is that gentle balance between spectacle and solace. When an experience is designed around session flow—where discovery feels natural, live moments feel cinematic, and social touches feel organic—the night can stretch pleasantly, each revisit offering a familiar yet new rhythm. For many players, it’s less about chasing wins and more about enjoying a well-produced evening where every click feels like turning a page in an engaging story.

Online casino entertainment lives or dies in the details. Beyond the headline features — games, jackpots, and live streams — there are dozens of little touchpoints that shape whether a session feels polished or makes you shrug and log off. The tactile click of a button, a subtly animated chip stack, or an effortless account overlay can shift the whole mood from transactional to intentionally designed.

First impressions: tiny details that signal care

When you land on a casino site or open an app, the immediate cues tell you whether someone invested time in the experience. Premium spaces tend to have considered color palettes, restrained animations that guide attention rather than shouting, and consistent typography that makes menus readable at a glance. Those choices aren’t flashy, but they make interaction feel effortless.

For a practical look at how different apps present those details, see https://fakestakeapps.com/ — the comparison highlights interface choices and how micro-interactions change perceived value.

The sensory layer: sound, haptics, and animation

Sound design and subtle motion are where many casinos either win or lose players. Instead of a cacophony of jingles, the better experiences use layered soundscapes: soft ambient tracks, restrained button clicks, and occasion-specific cues that reward attention without overstaying their welcome. On mobile, haptic feedback on key actions adds a physical sense of consequence that a silent tap can’t deliver.

These elements are powerful because they operate beneath conscious notice. A smooth reel animation or a slow, confident transition between menu screens primes you to trust the product. Conversely, mismatched or loud audio, jumpy graphics, or inconsistent frame rates break immersion and make the experience feel cheap.

Usability trade-offs: convenience versus clutter

Good UX decisions are often invisible; bad ones get in the way. The trade-off most platforms wrestle with is offering a wealth of features without overwhelming the user. On one hand, curated game collections, contextual help, and quick filters reduce friction. On the other, too many badges, banners, or modal windows turn browsing into a scavenger hunt.

Premium services tend to respect attention: they prioritize clarity in navigation and keep secondary options tucked away until needed. That restraint makes returning to the platform easier and helps sessions feel more like entertainment than an itemized checklist of upsells.

• Clear visual hierarchy (what’s primary vs. secondary)
• Minimal interruptive overlays (only when they add value)
• Responsive menus and predictable animations
• Readable typography that scales across devices

When the shine fades: realistic drawbacks

No matter how polished, digital entertainment has its downsides. Sometimes premium flourishes mask underlying slow load times, or a high-fidelity graphic set pushes battery drain on mobile devices. Other times the abundance of options can lead to decision fatigue; too many “nice” choices become another form of clutter.

There are also moments when what feels premium to one person feels superfluous to another. Avid players might prize deep stats and extended leaderboards, while causal users prefer an uncluttered, visually rich entry point. That mismatch is why even well-crafted platforms can’t be everything to everyone.

• Potential performance trade-offs with rich visuals
• Design choices that may not match all user preferences
• Feature abundance causing decision fatigue

Final take: how small things add up

The most memorable online casino experiences are rarely built on a single headline feature. Instead, they’re the sum of many small, deliberate decisions: micro-animations that soothe, audio cues that punctuate moments, and navigation that anticipates needs without shouting. Those elements don’t guarantee a perfect session, but they create a feeling of care that users notice and return for.

Balanced design also accepts trade-offs. A premium-feeling platform may cost more to develop and may not appeal universally, but when those tiny details are consistent, they deliver an experience that reads like quality rather than like an advertorial flash. For anyone curious about how different interfaces balance these elements, comparative write-ups can shed light on what the small differences actually mean in practice.

What hits you first?

Q: When I open an online casino, what grabs my attention immediately?

A: The visual tone — color palette, layout breathing room, and the hero imagery — sets the mood within seconds. A dark, moody scheme feels like a late-night lounge; bright neon evokes an arcade energy. Even small animations, like a card flip or a ribbon sweep, cue you into what kind of evening that site wants you to have.

Q: Can sites borrow real-world motifs effectively?

A: Absolutely. Designers borrow cues from chic bars, retro casinos, or boutique clubs to suggest texture and history. For example, an Aussie-inspired visual language might echo sunburnt amber tones or coastal gradients; you can see mockups and aesthetic case studies at fake stake australia when comparing how themes translate online.

How does sound shape the experience?

Q: Do sounds matter in a place I can mute?

A: Yes — sound is one of those subtle mood-shapers. Fendered synth stabs, vinyl crackle, or a soft crowd murmur can make a digital session feel tactile. Thoughtful sites let audio underscore moments (like a win animation) without overwhelming the interface, so the ambience supports rather than competes with choice.

Q: Are audio cues part of branding?

A: They are a refined part of the brand toolkit. A single, short sound used consistently becomes a sonic logo: it signals identity and punctuates micro-interactions in a way that visuals alone sometimes can’t.

What about layout and navigation?

Q: How does layout influence my emotional response?

A: Layout controls pacing. Generous spacing and clear hierarchy feel luxurious and calm; dense cards and rapid-fire carousels feel electric and urgent. Designers choose grid systems and chunk content to guide attention toward featured areas without shouting — like a maître d’ guiding you to the best seat in the room.

Q: Can typography change the tone?

A: Typography is personality. A modern geometric sans speaks efficiency and tech; a serif with soft terminals gives a nod to tradition and craft. Font weight shifts and letter spacing can subtly communicate whether a platform is playful, formal, or anything in between.

How do live and social spaces feel different?

Q: What distinguishes live dealer rooms from the rest of the site?

A: Live rooms are staged like small theaters: camera angles, warm lighting, and visible studio backdrops craft intimacy. Chat overlays, dealer wardrobe, and camera movement all contribute to the sense that you’re sharing space with others, which changes the emotional texture from solitary play to social presence.

Q: How are social elements designed to feel natural?

A: Designers borrow social UI patterns — threaded messages, reaction icons, and ephemeral badges — but they tune them to the casino context. The goal is to let interactions feel spontaneous and light, not forced, keeping the vibe closer to friendly banter than a bulletin board.

Which small details make the biggest difference?

Q: What micro-design choices really stick with you?

A: Micro-animations, transition timing, and the way overlays dim the background all leave impressions. A tiny shimmer on a jackpot number or a smooth fade when opening a modal can feel surprisingly luxe. These details tell you whether a product is polished or patched together.

Q: How do designers balance spectacle and comfort?

A: By dialing visual drama up or down depending on the space. Homepages and promotions may be cinematic; account areas and cashier flows are intentionally restrained. That contrast is what makes the theatrical moments feel earned rather than exhausting.

• Key visual elements: color, motion, imagery, and type.

• Atmospheric tools: sound, lighting, and pacing.

• Social cues: chat tone, presence indicators, and subtle rewards.

Q: In a sentence, what should a well-designed casino deliver?

A: It should feel like an invited night out: coherent, atmospheric, and expressive of a distinct personality — a place that promises a consistent mood before you even decide what to do next.

By Varun Mirchandani SpaceX has introduced the new Starlink V5 kit with a smaller, lighter design, lower power consumption, and download speeds of up to 375 Mbps, focusing on efficiency rather than raw speed.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Varun Mirchandani Frontier Airlines has announced a partnership with SpaceX’s Starlink to bring high-speed, low-latency Wi-Fi across its fleet, with installations beginning in early 2027.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Ana Maria Constantin Anthropic is committing $10 million CAD to eight Canadian research institutions to fund work on beneficial and responsible AI applications. The partnerships span Canada’s three leading regional AI institutes, Amii in Edmonton, Mila in Montréal, and the Vector Institute in Toronto, along with children’s hospital CHEO, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Université Laval, […] This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Ana Maria Constantin A security researcher published a wire-level analysis on July 12 proving that xAI’s Grok Build coding CLI was packaging developers’ entire tracked repositories, including full Git history, committed secrets, and API keys, and sending them to a Google Cloud Storage bucket. The upload volume was roughly 27,800 times greater than the data the coding task […] This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

Apple has released the first public betas of its “27” series of operating systems, and feedback so far suggests they’re already very stable builds, even at this early end of the release cycle. 

For most intrepid public beta testers, the big attractions here are Siri AI and the heavily improved Apple Intelligence tools – though Siri AI is not yet available in Europe due to regulatory problems there. Overnight social media commentary has been highly positive, with Siri widely seen as delivering on what we always thought it should be rather than the limited product it became.

Caveat emptor

Once installed, the new operating system is fast and better performing on the iPhone, though there are some limitations anyone considering the beta should consider first:

This is beta software; things can and sometimes do go wrong. So don’t install it on your primary device unless you know how to restore your device and its data.

Some critical apps such as banking tools, VPNs and some smart home management software are reported to be unstable at times.

Once the public beta is first installed, there’s a lengthy period during which your device will rebuild its database; this can take many hours and performance will be affected.

As the OS beds in, users might experience sudden battery drain or the device might seem warmer than usual.

You’ll need to join a lengthy Siri waitlist before you can install the updated Siri AI.

Siri AI requires significant hardware capabilities and only runs on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 and iPhone 17 models. Alternatively, you must have an M1 or later Mac or an iPad running an M1 chip or later, or A17 Pro (iPad mini).

Siri AI is a big improvement

Siri AI is the big reward here. Joanna Stern called it “significantly better.” It will provide you with much better responses than its predecessor, and its contextual understanding is sophisticated and advanced. 

That’s because Siri can search across your messages, emails, photos and more to help you find what you’re looking for and has some understanding of where you are and what you are doing to help it make even more accurate decisions. It is faster than it’s ever been with a dedicated app (which includes logs of your interactions) and a new glowing design when activated. 

The assistant can now hold an ongoing conversation with you, understands what’s on screen, and take some actions in apps. One way that might be useful is if you are looking at a recipe online, you can ask Siri to write up a shopping list for the recipe ingredients and paste it in a Note. Siri has become much more knowledgeable than in the past thanks to its expanded and updated world knowledge database.

Apple Intelligence has been beefed up, too, with keyboard tools much improved on the last version. Siri can even reflect your personal tone and style based on the person you’re communicating with when sending a Mail or Messages post. 

Apple and the image

The Camera app now has a new Siri mode; it can do things like identify objects and people, or import event details from a leaflet. You can easily search or ask questions about what’s around you, and there are useful new actions you can take, such as getting nutritional insights about a plate of food.

Image Playground wasn’t terribly impressive when it first appeared, and a lot of people did little with it. It seems much better now, capable of generating photo-realistic images in virtually any style from natural language prompts or editing existing images. It’s a useful step up.

Another impressive feature is Spatial Reframing. This lets you shift the composition of a photo after you’ve taken it, using AI to create accurate renditions of what is outside the frame. A new Extend tool lets you expand images, which is useful for adjusting aspect ratios or creating Lock Screen wallpapers.

The future on your wrist

If you use an Apple Watch, you’ll be impressed, as the contextual AI extends to that device. So, you can have context-savvy conversations with your watch and ask it to do tasks on your behalf. It makes it feel like a bona fide computer on your wrist and bodes well for other future wearable products from the company. 

There are lots of other interesting features in the beta. Call Context can automatically surface the information you need, like a confirmation code or reservation number, when calling up a business. And a new Notify Me feature in Safari lets you know when a web page changes, so you can watch for stock availability or ticket sales.

How to install the beta

If you’re interested in installing the new OSes, Apple’s Beta Software Program website should be your first port of call. You’ll need to sign in to access the betas using your Apple Account. Once you’ve done that, open Settings and go to Software Update; there you can select Beta Updates and choose the 27 series Public beta. Tap Update Now and the installation will begin.

You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky, LinkedIn, Mastodon, and subscribe to The Core.

Source:: Computer World

Microsoft’s big lead over AI competitors like Google and others has vanished, and the company is now playing catch-up. As a result, Microsoft’s stock has tanked in the last year — down roughly 23% compared to a year ago, due mainly to its massive AI spending and an inability to monetize Copilot. 

The company clearly needs to do something. And last week it did, though not what you might expect. It laid off 4,800 people, a little more than 2% of its worldwide workforce, with its Xbox division hit hardest. And it’s not reducing its massive spending on AI data centers or other AI-related costs.

The New York Times explained the cuts this way: “It is Microsoft’s latest employee culling as it plows tens of billions of dollars into the infrastructure for building artificial intelligence.”

Was cutting back on gaming (while still going all-in on AI) the right move for Microsoft? To answer that, let’s take a look at the details of the company’s July layoffs.

A year of layoffs

The recent cuts come in the wake of larger Microsoft workforce reductions over the last year or so. In May 2025, the company laid off 6,000 employees, about 3% of its workforce. Then a few months later, it laid off 9,000 more, about 4% of its workers. In both rounds of cuts, the company’s gaming division was hit — though it wasn’t the primary target.

This year, in April and May, the company rolled out its first voluntary retirement program for US employees. Approximately 3,000 people took the money and ran.

Then came last week, when Microsoft primarily targeted gaming. When the cuts take full effect over the next year, 2,850 gaming employees will be let go. In addition, Microsoft is cutting loose several of its gaming studio brands, which will become independent companies or be sold to buyers.

The layoffs hit the two remaining gaming studios, Activision Blizzard, which makes the big-selling games Call of Duty and Candy Crush, and ZeniMax Media, which publishes series including Fallout and The Elder Scrolls. Three years ago, in 2023, Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard for $69 billion. That followed its purchase of ZeniMax Media in 2020 for $7.5 billion. Both seemed like sizable acquisitions at the time. 

Compared to Microsoft’s AI spending now, they’re chump change.

Follow the money

A memo sent to employees about the July layoffs by Amy Coleman, Microsoft executive vice president and chief people officer, made clear the layoffs were more about AI than they were about gaming. 

Of the cuts, she wrote: “The “why” is this: our business is changing because the world around it is changing. The way technology is built, deployed, and used is transforming faster than at any point in my time here. Our customers’ needs are shifting, the business models that serve them are shifting, and that means the work itself — what we do, where we focus, and how we’re organized — has to transform, too.

“Our customers are navigating this same shift, and they’re counting on us to help them through it.”

That last sentence is an oblique reference to the early July launch of the Microsoft Frontier Company, which will embed 6,000 engineers inside customers’ businesses to help them more effectively deploy AI. The cost: $2.5 billion.

That sounds like a substantial amount of money. But it’s only a drop in the bucket of how much money the company plans to spend on AI. In April, Microsoft told investors it would spend $190 billion on data centers and other AI infrastructure this year, a 60% increase over what it spent last year. At the same time, Microsoft said it would shrink its workforce.

Its latest layoffs are clear-cut evidence of that. It’s also evidence that the company recognizes how badly Xbox has performed, and that it needed to do something about it. 

In early June, Microsoft sent a memo to everyone in its Xbox division entitled “Next 100 Days: XBOX Reset.” The memo laid out the problems with its ailing game business and pulled no punches. It noted that beyond the $69 billion the company spent three years ago to buy Activision, “Over the past five years, we have spent over $20 billion on ongoing investments in our content, platform, and hardware subsidy, but our annual revenue has declined nearly half a billion during that time. Going forward, this cannot continue.” 

The layoffs and spinoffs were the first steps. They won’t be the last.

There’s no doubt this is just the beginning of Microsoft’s disinvestment in gaming. The issue isn’t just that the company’s investments haven’t paid off. It’s that Microsoft’s AI ambitions are so large and expensive that it can no longer afford to seriously fund gaming.

Ultimately, it was the right thing to do, at least from a business perspective. The future is AI. It’s not in gaming.

So, for the foreseeable future at Microsoft, when it comes to AI — the sky’s the limit. But when it comes to gaming, things look much less rosy.

Source:: Computer World

By Deepti Pathak The Esports World Cup 2026 has just begun in Paris and is expected to see thousands…
The post Esports World Cup 2026 Opens in Paris: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes