Underpinning the iX3 on the automated driving (AD) front, Snapdragon Ride Pilot has been developed over
OnePlus and Hasselblad are ending their five-year partnership, according to an official blog post. The smartphone maker has started developing its own camera system, which it has dubbed the DetailMax Engine.
There was no reason given for the split, though OnePlus heaped praise on Hasselblad in that blog post. It lauded the camera maker’s “obsession with precision and detail” and opined about “nights in the lab chasing the perfect balance of light and shadow.” The company also said that “Hasselblad’s refined aesthetic sense is now part of our imaging DNA, woven into every future OnePlus camera.”
As for every future OnePlus camera, the proprietary imaging system is still in the early stages. OnePlus CEO Pete Lau said he’s already testing an early prototype that’s been “designed from the ground up to deliver the clearest and most real photos on a smartphone.”
The two companies first paired up for the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro flagship smartphones and the Hasselblad logo has been a mainstay of higher-end OnePlus devices since then. The Verge reports that the logo is likely to disappear with the release of the upcoming OnePlus 14, which may be renamed the OnePlus 15 to avoid the unlucky number “4” in China.
There’s one final wrinkle to this story. Oppo, which is the parent company of OnePlus, is sticking with Hasselblad for the time being. As a matter of fact, it officially extended the partnership back in July, with both companies promising a new mobile imaging system in the near future.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cameras/oneplus-and-hasselblad-are-ending-their-five-year-partnership-154217176.html?src=rss
This is a video of “Slinky Josh” Jacobs at a pool hall in Guangdong, China demonstrating his Slinky skills with a friend. Not to brag or anything, but I almost had a Slinky go all the way down the stairs once. “Only almost?” Just five stairs shy. This though, this might honestly be even more impressive.
Panasonic’s market value has remained flat at approximately $25 billion over the past decade while rivals Hitachi, Sony and NEC have increased their valuations sixfold during the same period. The Osaka-based conglomerate announced a restructuring plan in May 2025 to eliminate 10,000 positions and streamline operations across its six operating companies and hundreds of product lines. The company generates $57 billion in annual revenue and maintains dominant positions in several markets. Financial Times reports: Within Panasonic’s six operating companies and hundreds of product lines are industrial technology gems. The company supplies 70 per cent of the world’s in-flight entertainment systems, its facial recognition technology is being used to measure brain health, and its EV battery plants are among the world’s most efficient, according to auto industry insiders.
Panasonic chief said in January that AI-driven hardware and software solutions would constitute 30% of revenues by 2035, compared to approximately 10% currently. But Goldman Sachs analyst Ryo Harada wrote recently that investors are seeking a growth strategy beyond the announced reforms.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
It has been a lot of fun over the past month looking at the performance of AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ Strix Halo powering the Framework Desktop. The newest area being explored is how the upcoming Ubuntu 25.10 is looking compared to the current Ubuntu 25.04 release.
Of everything mentioned in the Fall 2025 “This Season on Zwift” Press Release, Zwift’s planned release of personalized recommendations carries the most potential as a game-changing feature. Launching this November, the promise of these AI-powered recommendations is that your fitness data and preferences can be used to serve up a recommended activity, any time you ask.
Let’s dive deeper into this, Zwift’s first public use of AI, and discuss planned features and future potential.
Veteran Zwifters like myself are always asking for more. More roads, new features, fresh events. But do we consider what Zwift is like for someone new to the game and/or new to cycling?
It must be overwhelming.
There are thousands of events each week. Hundreds of routes you can ride and workouts to choose from. Thousands of riders milling about, around the clock.
In addition to all that content, numerous metrics are floating around that new cyclists don’t understand. What is FTP? Why does Companion say I’m “overreaching,” and how is that tied to my Training Score and Stress Score? What is XP, what are Drops, and do I care? What’s a good weekly goal? What’s an ideal cadence? Is my heart rate too high? How does Zwift Racing Score work? And let’s not even talk about zMAP and zFTP…
On top of all this, consider that, while every Zwifter wants to maximize their training results, everyone is targeting different results. Some are training for a particular outdoor event. Some want to lose weight. Some are just looking to maintain fitness until they can head outside again, while others are dedicated indoor riders training to win Zwift races. And fitness levels vary: while one rider might consider a full hour on the trainer to be a max effort, another may need two hours before it qualifies as a challenge.
Zwift has built an ecosystem that can be leveraged to build cycling fitness efficiently and effectively, but many customers need help figuring out how to make that happen.
In the past, Zwifters who wanted to train with intentionality may have paid a cycling coach for a training plan, or dug in and done their own research, or perhaps asked a knowledgeable friend for advice. Zwift’s personalized recommendation engine will soon be the new option on this list. And it will be front and center in the game and Companion, a flagship feature continuously improving thanks to the constant influx of fresh data.
No, I’m not going to dive into the depths of LLMs and other AI tech. But let’s talk about how Zwift’s personalized recommendations will work from the perspective of a common Zwifter.
Here’s the first screenshot Zwift shared, showing the beta personalized recommendation block at the top-left of the homescreen:
A few things to note here:
If you want to do something different from what Zwift recommends, there’s a shiny “Tune” button, which takes you here:
The Tune screen gives you access to a vast array of recommendations, but through a very simple interface. There are just two things you can tune:
The secret sauce, of course, is the recommendation engine at work behind the scenes. Since it is constantly learning from your activities and feedback, the recommendations it puts forth – regardless of the tuning options you choose – will be tailored to you. That means:
Already working through a training plan, or working with a coach? No problem. Zwift tells me that, if you’re using a third-party workout provider like TrainerRoad, their workout of the day will take preference as the recommendation.
Zwift says, “Personalized Recommendations will display both in the home screen in the main Zwift App and also in Zwift Companion.” That’s a very good thing, and I’m hoping the tuning tool is also available in Companion, so we can dial in our next activity before hopping on the bike.
Zwift announced two features/changes rolling out in September that will work in tandem with personalized recommendations.
First, an improved onboarding experience will help more Zwifters hook up connections to Wahoo, Garmin, and Hammerhead so their outdoor rides are automatically brought into Zwift and included in key fitness metrics. Outdoor connections launched back in April 2025, and Zwift knows that if riders do significant training outdoors, Zwift needs to see those activities before providing helpful day-to-day recommendations.
Second, Zwift is rolling out the option to have your weekly goal auto-adjust. Instead of having a static goal to hit a particular number for kilojoules, stress points, calories, distance, or time, Zwift will use your recent activities to “adjust your upcoming weekly target goal, helping to support your continual development.”
Zwift says personalized recommendations will launch in November 2025.
Of course, the launch of this feature doesn’t mean the end of its development. That’s not how AI works! I’ve already heard many positive things from Zwift staffers who use the tool internally, and they’re promising that the recommendation engine will continue to improve as it receives feedback from an increasing number of users.
(You can improve an engine like this by changing the parameters used to make decisions, but you can also improve it by feeding in post-activity feedback, such as a star rating scale asking something like, “How well did this activity help you work toward your fitness goals?” Zwift will be doing both.)
Ever since Zwift launched their Fitness Metrics in April, some Zwifters have been asking when running and other workout types will be included. This has been the only consistent complaint about Zwift’s fitness metrics, in fact.
It’s a fair question… because lots of Zwift riders don’t just ride. Many run, lift, ski, hike, swim… you get the picture.
For these athletes, Zwift’s Fitness Metrics, and therefore their personalized recommendations, may not prove useful until Zwift begins to support a wider variety of activities. And there are lots of activity types! As one reader commented recently, “After all, cycling is represented by about 8 of the ~180 activity profiles on a regular Garmin watch. In Strava, I believe cycling is 5-6 out of the 48 available activity types (but lots of activities there are logged under a false flag since the actual activity type is missing).”
Zwift has said they will support running in their Fitness Metrics, but they haven’t given an ETA. Hopefully they’ll figure out a way to do it sooner rather than later, and hopefully they’ll also figure out how to easily include other activity types.
There are things about AI that concern me, such as search engines presenting AI-generated answers to questions and stealing traffic from actual content creators. (This impacts my bank account directly.) The unknowns of AI are even more concerning. Where will it all take us? What are the unintended consequences?
But using AI to deliver personalized recommendations? That’s a use case I can get behind. It’s been discussed for years, and some training platforms have actually done it. But if it can be done well by Zwift, in a way that leverages their massive community and content library, it will enhance the training of tens (hundreds?) of thousands of riders worldwide.
And that’s a big deal.
What do you think of Zwift’s plans to offer personalized recommendations? Share your thoughts below!
Mahle has released an updated version of its X20 electric bike motor.
Here are three key things you need to know:
The X20 is a drive system designed for premium and lightweight road, gravel and urban bikes that cut a similar silhouette to unassisted bikes.
The motor is housed in the hub of the rear wheel and, on the Orbea Gain pictured, a 350Wh battery is found in the down tube. Mahle says this provides a range of around 140km, and you can add a range extender to give you another 60km of motor-assisted pedal power.
With 275 watts of peak assistance, there’s plenty of power on tap for steep climbs. Beyond the increase in power, Mahle says one of the key features of the new X20 is the increase in torque, from 55Nm to 65Nm.
Torque plays an important role in how quickly an electric bike can deliver its power and, as a result, the acceleration, as well as its ability to handle a variety of terrain and surfaces, is ideal for e-gravel bikes.
Each bike manufacturer that works with Mahle defines specific motor mapping, so every bike brand has its own ‘riding DNA’ pre-configured from the factory. Riders can then fine-tune within the ranges defined by each brand via the app.
Mahle says the torque sensor is central to the natural pedaling feel: the more torque applied by the rider, the more assistance the system provides. The motor is also designed so that it doesn’t just cut out above 25km/h, it reduces resistance gradually until 27.5km/h, for a smoother ride, according to Mahle.
The total system – motor, torque system, a small 250Wh battery and a bike computer – weighs a claimed 3.2kg.
You can find the X20 on ebikes from mainstream brands including Van Rysel, Ribble, Rose, Ridley, 3T, Wilier, Bianchi and Mondraker – and smaller boutique brands such as Pashley, Origine, Conor and Nordic Bikes.
Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source.
Whether you’re running or lifting, it’s all too easy to overdo it during your workout. While I’m marathon training, 80% of my runs are much easier than you’d expect. Lately I’ve been a huge fan of how my Garmin Forerunner 165 (which I review here) helps me pace myself on these deliberately slower runs.
But you shouldn’t need a watch to be in touch with your body and know whether you’re pushing too hard (or not hard enough) during your workouts. There’s a simple solution that doesn’t require fancy gadgets or complex calculations: the talk test.
The talk test is exactly what it sounds like: Can you hold a conversation while exercising? This method uses your breathing patterns and ability to speak as indicators of how hard your body is working. The beauty of the talk test lies in its simplicity: no heart rate monitors, no complicated zones to memorize; just you and your ability to string words together.
Here’s how it breaks down:
Easy conversation: You can speak in full sentences without any trouble.
Somewhat breathless: You can speak, but in shorter phrases with some effort.
Very breathless: You can only manage a few words at a time.
Can’t speak: You’re breathing too hard to talk at all.
Your body’s ability to speak during exercise directly reflects how your cardiovascular and respiratory systems are handling the workload. As intensity increases and you cross into anaerobic territory (where your body can’t supply oxygen as efficiently), speaking becomes much more difficult. This is what makes the talk test so reliable—it’s based on your body’s natural physiological responses, not arbitrary numbers that might not match your individual fitness level.
Many beginners make the mistake of thinking every workout needs to leave them completely breathless. This “no pain, no gain” mentality often leads to burnout, injury, or simply giving up entirely. The talk test helps you avoid this trap by keeping most of your training at a sustainable intensity that you can maintain consistently over time.
Another common error is being too rigid about the test. Look, some days you might feel chatty at a pace that normally leaves you breathless. Other days, you might struggle to speak at what’s usually an easy pace. This is normal—factors like sleep, stress, weather, and hydration all affect how your body responds to exercise. If you’re new to exercise or feeling overwhelmed by conflicting advice about workout intensity, here are some straightforward ways to use the talk test:
Building fitness (aka 80% of your training). Most of your workouts should happen at a conversational pace. Yes, this might feel “too easy” at first, especially if you’re used to thinking that exercise has to be painful to be effective. You should be able to speak in short sentences, even if you need to take a breath between them. If you’re gasping for air or can only grunt responses, slow down.
Pushing your limits (20% of your training). Sometimes you’ll want to work harder—during interval training, hill climbs, or when you’re feeling strong. During these efforts, speaking should be difficult or even impossible. These harder efforts are important, but they shouldn’t make up the majority of your training time.
Just getting started. If you’re just starting out with an exercise routine and can only maintain conversational pace for 10 minutes, then that’s your starting point. Don’t worry about what others are doing or what a training plan says you “should” be able to handle. Your conversational pace will naturally get faster and last longer as your fitness improves.
When athletes talk about “conversational pace,” they’re referring to that sweet spot where you can still maintain a conversation, even if you’re working a bit harder than a leisurely stroll. This is where many people get confused, especially when they hear about training zones.
Conversational pace is not the same as “Zone 2” training, which you might have read about online. First of all, Zone 2 is overrated. While Zone 2 is typically described as an easy, aerobic base-building intensity, conversational pace actually includes most of Zone 3 as well. You might be breathing a bit harder and speaking in shorter sentences, but as long as you can still chat with a workout partner, you’re still within that conversational range.
Think of it this way: If you were walking with a friend and could easily discuss weekend plans, that’s easy conversational pace. If you were on a brisk hike and could still ask “How are you feeling?” and get a response, but longer conversations require some effort, that’s still conversational, just at the upper end.
The beauty of the talk test is that you can use it anywhere, anytime, with any type of exercise. Whether you’re walking, cycling, swimming, or dancing in your living room, your ability to speak (or in swimming’s case, how you feel you could speak if you weren’t underwater, I suppose) gives you immediate feedback about your effort level.
If you usually exercise alone, try the talk test by speaking out loud occasionally, singing along to music, or even just paying attention to your breathing rhythm. You’ll quickly develop a sense of what different intensities feel like for your body.
Remember, the goal isn’t to make exercise complicated—it’s to make it sustainable and effective. The talk test gives you a simple, reliable way to ensure you’re working at the right intensity for your goals, without needing to become an expert in heart rate zones. Start easy, stay conversational most of the time, and trust that consistency at the right intensity will take you much further than sporadic bursts of unsustainable effort.
Qualcomm’s driver-assistance system Snapdragon Ride Pilot will debut on the BMW iX3 electric SUV, offering hands-free highway driving, automatic lane changes and parking assistance. The jointly developed software stack announced today will be powered by Snapdragon Ride system-on-chips and will make its first formal appearance at IAA Mobility 2025.
Snapdragon Ride Pilot is a Level 2+ driver-assistance system, not self-driving, which means drivers will still be responsible for supervising the vehicle’s movements and paying attention to the road while these features are in use.
The software stack is structured into a series of layers that come together to power the autonomous features. The first is 360-degree perception, which uses a camera-based vision stack to detect objects, interpret traffic signs and provide parking assistance among other functions. An advanced context-aware driving layer uses a combination of rules-based and AI-based models to plan and predict behavior during complex driving scenarios.
The stack also uses what Qualcomm is calling a safety-first approach, which includes cybersecurity features and enforces strict global car safety rules like ISO’s Automotive Safety Integrity Levels and Functional Safety standards.
Snapdragon Ride Pilot is now being offered by Qualcomm to all global automakers, and the chipmaker says the system is already validated in 60 countries worldwide, with the aim of availability in more than 100 countries by 2026.
This new partnership is the latest high-tech product for cars from the semiconductor company. Last year they began working with Google on AI voice systems for vehicles. They have also worked with Volvo on the automaker’s infotainment systems.
Qualcomm is not the only player betting on self-driving, with companies like NVIDIA and Mobileye also developing chips and software to power advanced driver-assistance systems.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/bmw-and-qualcomm-announce-jointly-developed-driver-assistance-system-144922600.html?src=rss
Like almost all human endeavors, open-source software development involves
a range of power dynamics. Companies, developers, and users are all
concerned with the power to influence the direction of the software — and,
often, to profit from it. At the 2025 Open
Source Summit Europe, Dawn Foster talked about how those dynamics can
play out, with an eye toward a couple of tactics — rug pulls and forks — that
are available to try to shift power in one direction or another.
AI agent system said to have found more than 100 zero-day flaws in production appsAI models get slammed for producing sloppy bug reports and burdening open source maintainers with hallucinated issues, but they also have the potential to transform application security through automation.…
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai stood smiling in a leafy-green California garden in September 2020 and declared that the tech behemoth was entering the “most ambitious decade yet” in its climate action. “Today, I’m proud to announce that we intend to be the first major company to operate carbon free — 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year,” he said, in a video announcement at the time.
Pichai added that he knew the “road ahead would not be easy,” but Google “aimed to prove that a carbon-free future is both possible and achievable fast enough to prevent the most dangerous impacts of climate change.” Five years on, just how hard Google’s “energy journey” would become is clear. In June, Google’s Sustainability website proudly boasted a headline pledge to achieve net-zero emissions by 2030. By July, that had all changed. An investigation by Canada’s National Observer has found that Google’s net-zero pledge has quietly been scrubbed, demoted from having its own section on the site to an entry in the appendices of the company’s sustainability report.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
We’re just days away from Apple’s September 9th iPhone 17 event, and the hype seems practically nonexistent. Did the many (many) leaks splash cold water on an enthusiasm, or are we just tired of annual iPhone events? In this episode, Deputy Editor Nathan Ingraham joins Devindra to discuss why even the rumored iPhone Air isn’t really tingling our gadget geek senses. Also, we dive into the final repercussions of the US. v. Google antitrust trial: Turns out Google doesn’t have to sell Chrome, or give up much of anything else.
The iPhone 17 is almost here, does anyone care? – 1:36
U.S. antitrust judge rules that Google won’t have to sell Chrome – 23:24
More Gemini-powered smart home products will be revealed on October 1 – 30:02
The Browser Company’s sale to Jira parent company Atlassian shows how hard upstart browsers have it – 33:15
After 15 years Instagram is finally getting an iPad app – 40:41
Dolby announces Dolby Vision 2 with a bunch of AI features that seem useful – 44:25
There’s AI in your pizza oven: Ooni’s Volt V2 will cook a pie in 90 seconds using machine learning – 49:02
Around Engadget: Remarkable Paper Pro Move, Acer Chromebook 14 Spin Plus, and Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 – 52:51
Working on – 56:55
Pop culture picks – 57:20
Hosts: Devindra Hardawar
Guest: Nathan Ingraham
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O’Brien
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/engadget-podcast-the-curious-calm-before-the-iphone-17-storm-143000763.html?src=rss
With Wine 10.15 expected to be released next Friday there will be initial support for using the NTSYNC driver found within the Linux kernel…
Amazon’s Project Kuiper has landed its first airline deal with JetBlue and plans to offer satellite-powered in-flight Wi-Fi starting in 2027. The Verge reports: Yesterday, Amazon’s Panos Panay showed off a speed test using an “enterprise-grade customer terminal” (aka, dish) to achieve a download speed of just over a gigabit. Fine, but we’ll have to wait to see how it performs once individuals using consumer dishes at scale. Amazon says the first customers will start using the service this year, ahead of a broader rollout in 2026.
Project Kuiper-powered Wi-Fi will be available on “select” aircraft initially. Amazon says its satellites will provide lower latency and “more reliable service” for passengers, as they orbit between 367 and 391 miles above Earth — far closer than the geostationary satellites that orbit around 22,369 miles above the planet. Amazon has also struck a deal with Airbus to build Project Kuiper’s satellite internet service into its aircraft.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Fine-particulate air pollution can drive devastating forms of dementia by triggering the formation of toxic clumps of protein that destroy nerve cells as they spread through the brain, research suggests. Exposure to the airborne particles causes proteins in the brain to misfold into the clumps, which are hallmarks of Lewy body dementia, the second most common form of dementia after Alzheimer’s disease. The finding has “profound implications” for preventing the neurodegenerative disorder, which affects millions worldwide, with scientists calling for a concerted effort to improve air quality by cutting emissions from industrial activity and vehicle exhausts, improving wildfire management and reducing wood burning in homes.
The researchers began by analyzing hospital records of the 56.5 million US Medicare patients. They looked at those who were admitted for the first time between 2000 and 2014 with the protein damage. Armed with the patients’ zip codes, the scientists estimated their long-term exposure to PM2.5 pollution, airborne particles that are smaller than 2.5 thousandths of a millimeter. These can be inhaled deep into the lungs and are found in the bloodstream, brain and other organs. They found that long-term exposure to PM2.5 raised the risk of Lewy body dementia, but had less of an impact on rates of another neurodegenerative brain disease that is not driven by the toxic proteins. Lewy bodies are made from a protein called alpha-synuclein. The protein is crucial for healthy brain functioning, but can misfold in various ways to produce different kinds of harmful Lewy bodies. These can kill nerve cells and cause devastating disease by spreading through the brain.
To see if air pollution could trigger Lewy bodies, the team exposed mice to PM2.5 pollution every other day for 10 months. Some were normal mice, but others were genetically modified to prevent them making alpha-synuclein. The results were striking: in normal mice, nerve cells died off, leading to brain shrinkage and cognitive decline. The genetically modified mice were largely unaffected. Further work in mice showed that PM2.5 pollution drove the formation of aggressive, resilient and toxic clumps of alpha-synuclein clumps that looked very similar to Lewy bodies in humans. Although the work is in mice, the findings are considered compelling evidence. The work has been published in the journal Science.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.