Researchers at the National University of Singapore have developed a machine-washable electronic fabric that can turn clothing into an interactive graphical user interface. The prototype reportedly survived 50 gentle machine washes and 1,000 bending cycles, though it still relies on external batteries and controllers. The Register reports: The development could lead – at some point – to a “future in which clothing functions as a pervasive, multimodal human-computer interface,” according to the study published in peer-reviewed science journal Nature this week. The paper shows someone interacting with computing devices using the sleeve of a wool sweater (no jokes about the Windows ugly sweater please, this is serious). The researchers, led by Singapore National University research engineer Fu Heng, claim this is a big leap forward.

“This fiber-centric approach shifts wearable electronics from flexible panels toward truly textile-native architectures, laying the groundwork for fabrics that visualize, sense, communicate and compute as naturally as the garments they inhabit,” the paper says. The researchers claim to have developed a scalable process to make millimeter-thick fibers. Using lasers to strip the insulation from specific spots on the thin copper wires, they attached light-emitting chips to the exposed sections, creating electrical connections to the chips. Thousands of chips were connected to the wires with extreme precision using this process.

The fibers were then fed into a transparent plastic tube, and made pressure-sensitive by adding two strips of a compressible, conductive polymer into a second longitudinal channel in the tube. The paper says they could make fibers 10 meters long using this method, and that they are thin and flexible enough to be woven into or attached to fabrics. The researchers were also able to add “peripherals” such as a microphone, a speaker, a temperature sensor and a light sensor.

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Frustrated by intrusive ads, sluggish interfaces, and data tracking, smart TV owners are using AI coding tools and open-source projects to strip unwanted software from their televisions and build customized home screens. The Verge reports: Several vibe-coded TV-debloating projects exploded in popularity over the weekend. Cleanyourtv (known as tv-vibehack until the 19th), tv-detox, and dumbtv all claim to accomplish similar things — remove sponsored ads, debloat the TV so it runs faster, and block unwanted data collection that tracks what you’re watching — without hacking, or rooting, the TV. By default, they all also replace the TV’s built-in app launcher with simpler ones. Many users are going a step further and vibe-coding their own replacement launchers, like the Pokemon one below.

Most of the projects we’ve seen so far focus on TVs that run on Android and Google TV operating systems (such as TCL, Hisense, Sony, and older Amazon Fire products), using existing developer modes and the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) to tweak settings and apply (and remove) packages. According to the GitHub pages, they can also work with some Fire TV products that use a custom fork of Android (although likely not on the new Vega-based Fire TV Sticks). Because they use built-in developer tools, they don’t require root access or firmware hacking, and they’re reversible. Even projects that totally change the look of the interface just use Android’s ability to install custom launchers — in many cases with an assist from Claude Code or a similar tool to create the new launcher, too.

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During a lengthy news conference NASA on Friday provided a detailed overview of how it plans to return astronauts to the lunar surface, as soon as 2028, as part of its Artemis Program.

Although much of the information behind these plans has been previously reported in Ars Technica and elsewhere, this marked the first time NASA has laid them out in detail and acknowledged some substantial changes in the architecture.

Most notably, for SpaceX’s Starship vehicle, the revised plan calls for the Orion spacecraft to dock with the Starship lunar lander in high-Earth orbit before transiting to the Moon. And for Blue Origin, the mission architecture includes four launches of the New Glenn rocket, but no spacecraft-to-spacecraft refuelings. Additionally, the Blue Origin plans allows for the possibility of its Blue Moon lander rendezvousing with Orion in low-Lunar orbit.

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OpenAI says it will no longer allow frontier models to access the internet during training in an effort to put in new safety measures after a series of incidents.

SpaceX is reportedly seeking access to at least 80,000 cellular tower sites across the U.S. as it prepares to launch Starlink Mobile as a fourth nationwide wireless carrier. “We will be building out our terrestrial networks so there’s broad-based connectivity anywhere that SpaceX and Starlink are allowed to operate,” Musk said during SpaceX’s earnings call this week. Satellite launches plus spectrum acquisition “will pave the way for Starlink Mobile to become a major mobile carrier in the US,” he said. Bloomberg reports: One of the companies they’re in talks with is Crown Castle, which, along with American Tower and Vertical Bridge Holdings, are among the largest owners of cellular towers. When asked on a Wednesday earnings conference call whether Crown Castle is discussing leases with SpaceX, Amazon.com or other satellite-based telecom providers, Chief Executive Officer Chris Hillabrant said, “You can assume that we’re talking to all parties.” He declined to discuss specific customer details.

Mobile networks rely on antennas placed on towers across the country to transmit wireless signals. Carriers such as AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and T-Mobile US Inc. typically lease room for their equipment at the tower sites because it’s more cost effective than owning and maintaining them, in part because the facilities can be shared. The value of the deals with SpaceX could reach into the billions.

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Garmin users are taking to the company’s support forums with a common grievance: The newly introduced “OK Garmin” hands-free voice feature appears to be eating through battery life. The feature arrived through Garmin’s September software updates, bringing hands-free voice activation to the Fenix 8, Forerunner 570 and 970, Venu 4, and several other models. Here’s how to make sure Garmin’s new updates aren’t slashing your watch’s battery life.

Garmin’s latest feature updates for select smartwatches

Last month’s updates for select watches also brought all-day fall detection, a set of new Quick Workouts and Garmin Run Coach plans, as well as that “OK Garmin” hands-free voice command feature. It’s exactly what it sounds like: Instead of pressing a button, users can simply say “OK Garmin” to activate voice commands. However, it looks like “OK Garmin” in particular is what causes some watch’s projected runtimes to drastically drop, allegedly by roughly 35% to 50% in some cases.

Garmin does acknowledge that enabling these settings shortens battery life, though it doesn’t say by how much. The tradeoff makes sense, since the watch has to listen constantly for its wake phrase. Even so, giving up several days of runtime is a steep price for a feature that many people may seldom use. Luckily, the fix is simple: Turning off “OK Garmin” should restore your battery life estimates right away.

How to stop Garmin’s new feature from draining your watch’s battery

If your watch has been draining faster since the update, go to Settings > System > Voice and disable “OK Garmin.” If needed, you can also switch off the Phone Assistant wake word from the same area. The good news is that turning this feature off won’t even take voice commands away—you can still trigger them manually using the watch’s physical controls.

Keep in mind that these numbers are battery estimates rather than independently tested, real-world runtimes. Some of the battery complaints that surfaced after the update may also stem from unrelated issues. Still, trading away as much as half your battery life just to avoid pressing a button is a difficult bargain to defend.

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This week Garmin’s screenless Cirqa smart band received a firmware update that fixes one of its most obvious gaps: the lack of alerts from your phone. With Version 4.20, you can now set up your smart band to buzz your wrist for texts, calls, and other smart notifications from your phone. The addition is listed on Garmin’s forums as “Support vibration for smart notifications/incoming calls.” Reaction has been upbeat, too—users on the Garmin subreddit have been glad to see the feature arrive.

Amusingly, Garmin’s own FAQ still states that the Cirqa does not vibrate for text messages, phone calls, or other smartphone notifications. Clearly that page is now out of date, so Garmin will want to correct it. Since Garmin doesn’t yet have step-by-step instructions, I tested the text-message vibrations myself. Here’s how you can set up your Cirqa smart band to vibrate for calls and texts, in addition to a number of other promising updates to check out.

How to set up call and text alerts on your Garmin Cirqa

To receive these alerts, your band must be running firmware 4.20 or later. Here is how to get everything configured.

1. Update the firmware. Open your Garmin Connect app and sync your Cirqa, so the app can check for and install version 4.20 or newer.

2. Grant the necessary phone permissions. In your phone’s settings, make sure Garmin Connect has permission to access SMS, Contacts, and Phone.

3. Configure notifications in Garmin Connect. Back in Garmin Connect, tap the Menu (or More) tab. Select Garmin Devices, then choose your Cirqa Smart Band. Go to Notifications & Alerts (or Smart Notifications) and turn on text and call alerts.

Troubleshooting tip: If alerts aren’t coming through, check that Do Not Disturb, Sleep Mode, and any aggressive Battery Saver settings are turned off on both your phone and the band.

What else is new with the Garmin Cirqa

For most a lot of Cirqa fans, the phone alerts are the headline, but the 4.20 update carries a solid list of other improvements and bug fixes:

• Trail Run: Run/Walk detection is now available for Trail Run activities.

• Timestamp fix: Resolved a problem where an activity’s recorded time didn’t match the time on your phone.

• Distance calibration: You can now calibrate distance for Treadmill Run, Indoor Rowing, and Indoor Cycling before saving the activity on the device.

• Duration alerts: Duration time alerts for speaking out now accumulate.

• Stress alerts: Stress alerts are now blocked while Auto Activity Detection is recording.

• Bedtime reminders: Fixed an issue where the bedtime approaching notification sometimes failed to trigger.

• Live Activity: Heart rate now appears on the Live Activity screen before recording begins.

• Pinned activity bug: Fixed an issue where the pinned activity reverted to Timed Activity after changing the phone’s language.

• Workout editing: Fixed a problem that prevented editing reps during a workout.

• Stability: General system stability improvements.

The New York Knicks reportedly sent employees a fake offer of complimentary NBA championship rings as part of an internal phishing test, requiring anyone who clicked the link to attend mandatory cybersecurity training. “Congratulations, your Employee Championship Ring is here,” the email said. According to The New York Times, Madison Square Garden employees who clicked that link “were forced to attend a mandatory cybersecurity class to help satisfy some of [owner James] Dolan’s growing cybersecurity concerns.” Ars Technica reports: The offer wasn’t implausible, either. “Typically, most employees for NBA teams receive rings, even if they are not as fancy and expensive as the ones the players receive,” wrote Joe Vardon, senior NBA writer for The Athletic, which was bought by The New York Times in 2022 and then merged into the parent news organization. Vardon’s article was primarily about how Knicks assistant coaches did not get rings on Tuesday when the team raised its first league championship banner since 1973. The assistant coaches were handed boxes without rings inside, though they are expected to receive rings later on.

“Ring orders, designs, and measurements can take time, and not every coaching staff for every defending champion gets its rings on ring night… The Knicks assistants were told they would receive championship rings eventually, but many longtime employees at Madison Square Garden, including some who work in the Knicks’ business operations, will not receive rings at all, team sources told The Athletic,” Vardon wrote. MSG employee hopes were raised “at the end of September when the Knicks sent an email to a long list of employees, which gave recipients a first glimpse at their would-be championship rings,” Vardon wrote. The email included “a graphic of two differently styled rings” that the lucky employees could supposedly choose from, the article said.

“(Employee name), this one is on the house. MSG is issuing a complimentary employee championship ring. The same jeweler, the same craftsmanship, personalized with your name. No cost to you,” the email said. “There are two designs to choose from: Championship Gold and Garden Classic. Reserve the one you want below.” Vardon wrote that “multiple team sources” confirmed the email was a phishing test. It’s not clear how many employees clicked the link or whether any of the employees who received the email will eventually get some type of championship ring. We contacted the Madison Square Garden Sports organization with these questions and will update this article if we get a response.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: AI agents left to explore a virtual island without a specific task began inventing challenges of their own. MIT researchers say the behavior bears the hallmarks of play. The researchers put 13 AI agents called Eko, each running on Claude Opus 4.7, alone on a simulated desert island for 30 hours. They describe the experiment in a paper posted on arXiv, a site where researchers share studies before peer review. Afterward, they gave the agents specific challenges, like getting as many objects as possible onto the island’s tallest rock spire. The Eko agents that had spent those 30 hours playing generally beat identical agents that had never set foot on the island.

Today, developers decide in advance what AI should practice and what counts as success. The researchers see this technique — exploring without a goal — as a different way for AI agents to learn skills, especially skills that could one day be used to control robots. “We normally develop artificial agents by deciding in advance what they should practice, what they should optimize, and what counts as progress,” the researchers write in their report. “Play suggests another regime: give an agent a sufficiently rich and safe world, let it choose what is interesting, and allow useful knowledge to accumulate from the history that follows.” UC Berkeley cognitive scientist Eunice Yiu told MIT Technology Review she was impressed with the findings but that more evidence is needed to determine whether AI models are genuinely playing. “It could be the case that the models are genuinely playing, but we don’t know based on the paper,” says Yiu. “If you only have the behavioral piece, it could be the case that they’re just trying to abide by the prompt, trying to imitate humans.”

MIT professor and coauthor of the paper, Phillip Isola, added: “It’s not like this is a system that just suddenly magically decided to play. It’s an artifact that learned from our culture, was trained by engineers at Anthropic, and was then placed on an island by us. It does things that surprise us and that are causally related to its future skillful behavior.”

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