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The Ultimate Ears Miniroll is down to $49.99 on Amazon from its $79.99 list price ahead of October Prime Day, and price trackers show that’s the lowest it has sold for so far. It’s a small, flat, puck-shaped Bluetooth speaker that weighs just over half a pound, with a removable rubber strap you can attach to a backpack, bike handlebar, or shower caddy. For more on the October Prime Day sale, you can follow the latest offers as they come in on our Prime Day 2026 Live Blog, or browse the standout deals and sale announcements on our Prime Day Deals page.
Despite its size, the Miniroll can get surprisingly loud—which PCMag confirms in its review—and at moderate volume, it has enough sound for a kitchen or backyard without sounding thin. Its 40-meter Bluetooth range also means you can leave your phone inside while the speaker sits on the patio, and if you have more than one Miniroll, a long press on the play button connects them through PartyUp for more volume or stereo sound. As for its battery life, you get about 12 hours of playback before it needs a charge over USB-C, while its IP67 rating protects it from dust and a brief dunk in water.
That said, the Miniroll does have its limits, especially with bass-heavy music. Hip-hop and electronic tracks can sound thinner than they would on a larger speaker, and once you turn the volume past roughly 80%, the sound starts to lose definition, and the speaker itself can vibrate. There’s also no companion app, meaning no equalizer, no EQ presets, no codec switching, and no find-my-speaker function, so what you hear out of the box is what you get permanently.
October Prime Day is the fall version of Prime Day, which is the biggest sale Amazon hosts during the spring, summer, and fall. You can find deals on many categories during the sale, including tech, tools, appliances, apparel, and more.
October Prime Day is Oct. 6 and runs through Oct. 7. It happens every year during October.
October Prime Day starts Tuesday, October 6, 2026, at 12:00 a.m. PT / 3:00 a.m. ET.
Raspberry Pi’s stock shot up over 30% in the last week. Why are investors so excited? For the six months ending June 30, revenue for Raspberry Pi Holdings “jumped 90% to $256.9 million,” reports Investing.com, “while adjusted EBITDA more than doubled to $40.3 million, and profit before tax leapt 216% to $19.6 million.”
Underpinning the strong numbers was an acceleration in OEM adoption: direct unit shipments rose 26% to 3.4 million, total unit shipments climbed 17% to 4.2 million, and the customer order backlog doubled during the half to 2.6 million units. Demand was particularly robust in the Smart Home and Aerospace and Defence segments, and the company launched the AI HAT+ 2 for Raspberry Pi 5, extending its edge-AI product line.
DRAM prices have been increasing everywhere,
notes The Times of London, and Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton “said new customers, who required computers or microcontrollers to manufacture other technologies, were choosing Raspberry Pi’s computers because they had a better inventory of components than competitors.”
“There’s always that choice for an original equipment manufacturer as to whether they should ‘make’ or ‘buy’ the computer elements of their platforms,” Upton said. “The supply chain disruption is making ‘make’ a much harder choice and it’s making the cost of repair a much harder choice. So we’re seeing strength there.” Raspberry Pi has already increased its suppliers of Dram more than threefold…
Upton said the increased demand had led to its backlog for units doubling to 2.6 million, which meant production rates would need to increase to prevent the numbers from getting “unhealthy”. New production capacity at the manufacturing facility in Pencoed, Wales was expected to come online this week… Exports were almost evenly split between North America, Europe and the rest of the world, which was primarily China, where demand was growing… Analysts at Peel Hunt said the company was “well positioned for rapid growth in unit shipments in 2027 and beyond” with demand expected from enthusiasts as well as the AI and security sectors.
In other news, Hackaday notes the Raspberry Pi Foundation has “pushed binary-blob bootloader changes that limit your ability to upgrade RAM…”
This change restricts upgrading the RAM chip on your Pi 4 and Pi 5, as well as Compute Modules. By the looks of it, it does not restrict replacing the RAM chip with a chip of a similar size, quote, “locking devices to their original RAM size”. As such, this does not prevent repair of your Raspberry Pi board, but does somewhat limit your repair part choice, at most.
This restriction is easily bypassable. The bootloader is stored in the SPI flash chip, which can be reflashed using the built-in mask ROM over USB and rpiboot, and you are not prevented from flashing older versions of the bootloader, so far. This means even if you manually swap the RAM chip, all you need to do is to also downgrade the bootloader to the last known good release — 2024-09-10 — and then your Pi board or Compute Module will function with upgraded RAM. If you have the skills to upgrade your RAM, you most certainly have the skills to downgrade the Raspberry Pi bootloader. For most regular use, having a two-year old bootloader version won’t really matter…
For the reference, this bootloader change happened almost exactly two years ago, at some point between September 10 and September 23, 2024… The Raspberry Pi Foundation (RPF) justifies this as follows: they saw third-party resellers sourcing low-RAM Compute Modules, upgrading them with RAM from unknown source and unknown stability. My observation is that they’d also be reselling the modules at a markup for purely commercial gain, while undercutting RPF who would otherwise direct that money into RnD, something I much enjoy to see them do. This creates perverse incentives and risk for people buying Raspberry Pi boards online, and RPF decided to limit this primarily for their users’ benefit, plus, if you ask me, some of theirs… The related GitHub issues have a fair few pingbacks, and exploring them makes the problem look grim to me….
My advice: don’t lament Raspberry Pi RAM upgrades, especially given they’re only slightly harder to perform now. Very few hackers ever performed them, the main audience for them turned out to be dodgy hardware resellers online, and in most cases, repair doesn’t seem to be impeded at all, either. Think of the users that will no longer be fooled by a shady seller on Amazon, especially now that the perverse incentives for board mods and reusing harvested RAM chips are at their highest.
Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton answered questions from Slashdot readers in 2011 and 2016.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft is giving its Copilot app another facelift.
After five years of extensive prototyping and testing, Norco has released its new Team DH bike. The high-pivot downhill bike has been developed with the help of four-time world champion Greg Minnaar, and double world champion Danny Hart.
The Norco Team DH has been successful at the highest level already, with team rider Gracey Hemstreet racking up her first three Elite World Cup wins aboard an S1-sized prototype.
The new bike offers 200mm of travel via Norco’s HPV6 suspension system and is mixed wheel-size only, with no accommodation for a 29er rear wheel.
It has been 25 years since the first Norco Team DH was released, and the new bike was in the prototype and development phase for five years.
The bike is centred around a high-pivot rear suspension configuration that uses an inverted four-bar (also known as upside-down FSR/Horst-link) to dictate the rear axle path. Downhill bikes such as the Forbidden Supernought use a similar system. The advantages of a high-pivot setup are that it maintains a more accentuated rearward axle path, which can help carry speed on rough terrain.
The Team DH’s shock is actuated by an additional pair of links extraneous to the four-bar system and Norco calls the whole package the High Virtual Pivot Six-Link (HPV6) suspension system. The six-link is a four-bar suspension system with an extra pair of links to actuate the shock, unlike a six-bar suspension system.
The Team DH uses an idler to control the anti-squat characteristics of the bike, necessary because of the high pivot position. The idler system is an i-Track adjustable version, which enables the rider to tune the level of anti-squat and pedal kickback offered by the HPV6 suspension system.
You can move the idler to find the best compromise between pedalling efficiency with high anti-squat (and the associated high levels of pedal kickback) and lower levels of anti-squat, which enables more pedal bob, but reduced levels of pedal kickback as the rear suspension moves.
There is more adjustment on offer via a patented flip chip on the shock mount. It enables a change of 2.5% in the rate of progression in the shock actuation ratio as the suspension goes through the travel.
The DH Team is supplied with custom shock tunes specified by Norco to work best with the bike’s suspension.
The new Team DH pairs an aluminium front triangle with carbon seatstays and carbon chainstays. Norco says this allows for a stiffer front triangle and explains the carbon rear triangle was chosen to reduce unsprung mass, not alluding to its stiffness or compliance as a factor in the choice.
There are five sizes on offer: S1–S5. The five different aluminium front triangles are paired with size-specific rear centres to give all sizes proportionally similar geometry. The Team DH also includes reach-adjust headset cups for fine tuning the exact reach by +/- 5mm within each size.
Norco says reach ranges from 418mm for the S1 up to 498mm on the S5 in 20mm increments. The rear centre is 440mm on the S1 and S2, growing in 2.5mm increments to 447.5mm on the S5.
The head angle is 63 degrees on the S1 and S2 sizes and 62.5 degrees on the S3-S5.
There will be two builds available – the DH Team 2 Fox with a Fox 40 Performance Elite fork and a DHX2 Factory shock, and the DH Team 2 RockShox with a RockShox Boxxer Select D2 fork and Vivid Coil Base shock. Both bikes have a SRAM GX drivetrain and Maven Base brakes.
Continuing Norco’s Ride Aligned sizing philosophy, S1-S3 sizes are supplied with 160mm-long Praxis cranks, whereas S4 and S5 sizes get 165mm versions.
It definitely feels like Zwift season is revving up this weekend, with the zFondo series kicking off, the Zwift Ride V2 going on sale, and lots of riders jumping into the game after taking the summer off.
This weekend, I’m featuring some of the most interesting long rides and races on the calendar. Hop in and challenge yourself!
zFondo Series Kickoff: Fuhgeddaboudit
Bonus XP Popular Endurance Challenge Jersey Unlock
This is the first of this season’s zFondo weekends, and it’s on a route we’ve never fondoed before: New York’s Fuhgeddaboudit (79km, 838m). Join whatever pace group you’d like, and hang with that group’s RoboPacer (or try to beat it)! Fondos aren’t official races – some treat them as personal challenges, some as a race. You do you.
Read all about the Zwift Fondo Series >
(I’ll be racing the 5am PT zFondo with YouTuber Ryan Condon. Join us!)
Multiple timeslots this weekend
Sign up at zwift.com/events/tag/zfondos
The Fudging Uber Pretzel
Endurance Challenge Route Badge
Have you conquered The Über Pretzel (128.8km, 2335m) yet? It’s a beast…arguably the hardest route on Zwift. Tough routes like this are always better with a group. Join the Fudging Slackers are knock it out!
You gotta love the event description on this one. “It’s early. It’s long. It’s probably a terrible idea.”
Pro tip: Don’t overcook it early, because it finishes up Alpe du Zwift!
Sunday, September 27 @ 5:30am UTC/1:30am ET/Saturday 10:30pm PT
Sign up at zwift.com/events/view/5690812
The BMTR Fundo
Popular Ride Legacy Leaders Endurance Challenge Kit Unlock
A regularly featured event here on Zwift Insider, the BMTR Fundo consistently draws lots of joiners because it’s well led and run week after week, year after year.
Four distances to choose from – pick the category corresponding to the distance you want to ride. This week’s event has the 100-mile A group on Watts the Limit, with B/C/D on Waisted 8.
Saturday, September 26 @ 12:10pm UTC/8:10am ET/5:10am PT
Sign up at zwift.com/events/view/5710947
Pretzels, Epics and Afterparties p/b Velos
Pace Options Endurance Training Kit Unlock
The Velos squad has been riding a variety of epic routes in September, with the series ending this weekend on Watopia’s Zwift Games 2024 Epic (81.5km, 878m). “Long rides can drag on your own, so jump in, and Team Velos will help the time fly past with the friendly chat and questionable jokes.”
The yellow beacon will lead at 2.5 W/kg, while the red beacon will pace at 2 W/kg. The ride officially lasts 2 hours, but riders are encouraged to press on and finish the route.
Saturday, September 26 @ 11am UTC/7am ET/4am PT
Sign up at zwift.com/events/view/5710928
2026 SISU World Championships – Road Race
Beginner-Friendly Banded Popular
Coinciding with the 2026 UCI Road World Championships in Montréal, SISU Racing is holding the 2026 SISU Worlds Road Race this weekend on Watopia’s Bambino Fondo (52.6km, 581m). Read all about it here, then join in the fun!
Multiple timeslots this weekend
Sign up at zwift.com/events/tag/sisu
We choose each weekend’s Notable Events based on a variety of factors including:
In the end, we want to call attention to events that are extra-special and therefore extra-appealing to Zwifters. If you think your event qualifies, comment below with a link/details and we may just include it in an upcoming post!
Navidrome is an open-source music server that lets you stream your personal audio collection anywhere. It gives you freedom to listen to your music collection from any browser or mobile device. It’s like your personal Spotify! In this guide, we will explore how to get Navidrome up and running securely using Podman on Fedora Linux. […]
Netflix has a stacked lineup of both new and familiar content coming in October. Political thriller series The Diplomat (Oct. 15) and French mystery thriller Lupin (Oct. 23) both return for fourth seasons alongside season three of Nobody Wants This (Oct. 22), the Emmy-nominated rom-com starring Kristen Bell and Adam Brody and season 11 of Love Is Blind (Oct. 14).
New next month is East of Eden (Oct. 1), a limited mini-series adapted from the John Steinbeck novel of the same name. Created by Zoe Kazan, the show stars Florence Pugh as Cathy Ames alongside Christopher Abbott. On the film side is Animals (Oct. 9), a crime thriller written and directed by, as well as starring, Ben Affleck. Affleck plays an LA mayoral candidate whose son is kidnapped with only hours to pay a ransom. Gillian Anderson and Kerry Washington co-star.
Netflix has a handful of documentaries coming in October, including The One About Matthew Perry (Oct. 27), a series chronicling the actor’s life, work, and death, as well as Tyson (Oct. 13), a four-episode series about Mike Tyson. Netflix will also host the second Six King Slam tennis tournament on Oct. 21, live at 9:30 a.m. PT.
Here’s everything else coming to Netflix in October, and everything that’s leaving.
The Gift of Deceit—Netflix Series
Crazy Rich, Incredibly Broke—Netflix Film
East of Eden—Netflix Series
The Ramparts of Ice: Season 2—Netflix Series
21 Jump Street
22 Jump Street
8 Mile
A Haunted House
A Haunted House 2
A Madea Family Funeral
Ad Astra
Angels & Demons
Are We There Yet?
The Bourne Identity
The Bourne Legacy
The Bourne Supremacy
The Bourne Ultimatum
Bring It On
Call Me by Your Name
Cowboys & Aliens
Crimson Peak
Dallas Buyers Club
The Da Vinci Code
The Devil Wears Prada
Dracula
The Equalizer
Evil Dead
Friday the 13th
Happy Death Day 2U
Horton Hears a Who!
The Huntsman: Winter’s War
Hush
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Jason Bourne
Lake Placid
Love Actually
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
The Menu
Moonlight
NCIS: Seasons 20-22
Ouija
Ouija: Origin of Evil
Pearl Harbor
Point Break
The Prestige
Psycho
Psycho II
Psycho III
Red Dragon
Seven Years in Tibet
The Sixth Sense
Split
The Strangers
Top Chef VIP: Seasons 3-4
Twilight
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 1
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 2
The Way Home: Season 4
Underworld: Blood Wars
#Love—Netflix Series
Schumacher ’94 — The Birth of a Legend—Netflix Documentary
Tyler Perry’s Doing Life—Netflix Film
Ranma1/2: Season 3—Netflix Series
Blue Box: Season 2—Netflix Series
The Boogeyman
Lorne
Mayor of Kingstown: Seasons 1-4
Super BOOMi: Season 1
All American: Season 8
Love Village: Season 3—Netflix Series
Mojo Brookzz: I Know You Lying—Netflix Comedy Special
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Inside The Circle—Netflix Series
Less of a Stranger—Netflix Film
Real Men: Season 2—Netflix Series
Who Is Martin Mull?—Netflix Documentary
Below—Netflix Series
Unicorn Academy: Secrets Revealed: Chapter 2—Netflix Family
Animals—Netflix Film
Haunted Hotel: Season 2—Netflix Series
Is It Cake? Halloween: Season 2—Netflix Series
Take Charge of My Heart—Netflix Series
100 Days of Deception—Netflix Series
The First Monday in May
Fire Spike: Season 1
Free Leonard Peltier—Netflix Documentary
Señora Acero: Seasons 1-5
Wayne: Season 1
Cocaine Bear
Love Is Blind: Season 11: Boston—Netflix Series
Hollywood Arts—Netflix Series
The Diplomat: Season 4—Netflix Series
The Storm—Netflix Film
The Disciple—Netflix Documentary
Heat
The Fate of the Furious
Money Trap: The Karun Treasure—Netflix Series
Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald—Netflix Documentary
Sacrifice—Netflix Film
SERIOUSLY SINGLE TOO—Netflix Film
Therapy Done Right—Netflix Film
Blindspotting: Seasons 1-2
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2—Netflix Series
Emily
Gladiator
Gladiator II
The Mothers of Penguins: Season 2—Netflix Series
The New Stanford Prison Experiment—Netflix Series
Six Kings Slam: Season 2—Netflix Live Event
Bottle Shock
Couldn’t Agree Less with Allison & Isaac—Netflix Podcast
Did Someone Happen to Mention Me?—Netflix Series
Nobody Wants This: Season 3—Netflix Series
Fading Grandeur—Netflix Series
Lupin: Part 4—Netflix Series
Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story—Netflix Documentary
Surviving Hurricane Otis—Netflix Film
Minimum Wage—Netflix Series
Dangerous Liaisons: Season 1
The One About Matthew Perry—Netflix Documentary
Zainab Johnson: Toxically Optimistic—Netflix Comedy Special
Champions
Balaraw: Blood Island—Netflix Series
You, Me, Us—Netflix Film
A Couple of Lies—Netflix Series
Akka—Netflix Series
Beat Luke Littler—Netflix Live Event
The Birthday Gift—Netflix Film
Collision Course—Netflix Film
How to Ruin Diwali: Meet the Parents—Netflix Series
SCTV: The Greatest Show You’ve Never Heard Of—Netflix Documentary
A Dog’s Purpose
A League of Their Own
Aloha
Angel Eyes
Apollo 13
Baby Mama
Beginners
The Beguiled
The Boss Baby
Blue Is the Warmest Color
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Cinderella Man
Clueless
Fargo
The Fifth Element
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters: Answer the Call
Gone Girl
Halo: Seasons 1-2
High Fidelity
The Hitman’s Bodyguard
The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard
Identity Thief
Inside Man: Most Wanted
Krampus
The Lazarus Project
Nomadland
Out of Africa
Parenthood
The Parkers: Seasons 1-5
Queen & Slim
Savages
The Shack
U-571
The Vow
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
The Wandering Earth
Dawson’s Creek: Seasons 1-6
Nurse Jackie: Seasons 1-7
Poldark: Seasons 1-5
Scream
After
A Quiet Place Part II
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Death Note
The Smurfs 2
Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins
Deadwind: Seasons 1-3
SpaceX has completed a wet dress rehearsal for Starship, in preparation for its first orbital test flight.
Google has introduced Gemini 3.8 live avatars designed for customer service and other tasks.
“F-Droid, a third-party app repository that only distributes free and open-source software packages for Google’s Android mobile platform, on Thursday announced version 2.0 of its Android app,” reports The Register.
Though they also note “a big banner across the top of the F-Droid site” pointing to a site describing pending changes from Google that threaten the future of F-Droid…
[D]evelopers who want their apps broadly distributed outside the official Google Play Store will need to register with Google and verify their identities. Google’s Full Distribution option includes paying a one-time $25 fee, handing over a copy of a government-issued ID to verify one’s identity, and conforming to Google’s terms of service. Google also offers a free Limited Distribution option that doesn’t require government ID verification but restricts distribution to 20 authorized devices, while apps from unverified developers can still be installed by users who enable Android’s advanced installation flow.
The potential death warrant hanging over its head hasn’t stopped the F-Droid team from rolling out a bunch of new features for an app it says it intends to keep working on for years to come… The team also credited the EU’s many Digital Markets Act decisions against Google for making the installation experience smoother for users. F-Droid can now use a unified installation service for its apps thanks to the availability of a pre-approval API that allows users to approve an installation when they request it, rather than waiting until the app has finished downloading. That, said the F-Droid team, “brings the F-Droid install experience on official Android devices much closer to what the built-in app store can provide.” Additionally, F-Droid 2.0 can fetch and install app updates automatically, which it now does by default.
All of those changes, however, won’t matter much if Google pushes ahead undeterred with its plans to force registration onto non-Play Store developers. F-Droid’s announcement on Thursday makes it seem that the team isn’t going to go quietly.
F-Droid has gone 10 years without a major update, notes Ars Technica — and spent over a year developing F-Droid 2.0:
The new F-Droid client was redesigned from scratch in Kotlin Compose, which is the standard for modern Android apps. This makes the store much more responsive, and there’s optional support for Android’s Material theming. The interface has also been cleaned up considerably, making the most important functions easier to access and hiding some others in overflow menus… Unlike the Play Store, F-Droid doesn’t track your taps and installs to push ads and suggestions — it helps you find things and gets out of the way.
F-Droid now includes a huge number of categories, drilling down to specialized niches like firewalls, password managers, and VPNs. You can see all these groups in the search tab. There are also higher-level categories listed on the main Discover page. When searching for apps, F-Droid will now be able to return results based on app descriptions rather than just names.
“One of the goals of the rewrite was to lower the barrier for new contributors,” F-Droid said in their announcement. “We are excited to begin rolling out F-Droid 2.0 to users over the coming weeks after 14 test releases.” (And if you want the 2.0 release right now, it’s available on the versions page.)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Orange Pi has published hardware details for the OrangePi O1, a 90 × 70mm SBC based on the Sophgo BM1688 processor. It pairs eight Arm Cortex-A53 cores with a RISC-V C906 coprocessor and a 16-TOPS INT8 TPU, along with up to 16GB of LPDDR4/LPDDR4X memory. The BM1688 integrates eight Arm Cortex-A53 cores operating at up […]
There’s no shortage of excellent mountain bike shoes on the market, but you’d struggle to mistake most of them for something you’d choose to wear down the pub.
Drift is looking to change that with its new ARC, a waterproof leather cycling shoe that hides an SPD-compatible sole beneath what looks, at first glance, like a fairly conventional sneaker.
The ARC is the first new shoe from Drift, which has recently relaunched and has roots stretching back more than 15 years.
The people behind Drift previously founded DZR, which launched in 2010 with the aim of producing cycling shoes that could be worn on and off the bike. The brand says it returned to the drawing board in 2024, working with a footwear craftsman to develop its latest range.
The ARC continues that original concept, but brings a decidedly premium construction and a $240 price tag.
Unlike the synthetic uppers used on many mountain bike shoes, the ARC is constructed from full-grain leather.
A waterproof lining sits underneath, with Drift pitching the shoe as an all-season option capable of dealing with the wet conditions the brand encountered while developing its footwear around Squamish, Victoria and Whistler in British Columbia.
There’s a reinforced toe box to add some protection from rocks and other trail debris, while a small cover snaps over the laces to keep them out of the way while riding.
Underneath, things get considerably more bike-specific.
The rubber outsole hides a two-bolt cleat mount, making the ARC compatible with Shimano SPD and other two-bolt mountain bike pedal systems.
Drift has also added a stiff composite shank through the sole, which it says improves power transfer to the pedals.
This should give the ARC more support underfoot than its casual appearance might suggest, although I’ll have to get them out on the trails to see how they compare to more conventional mountain bike shoes.
The rubber outsole is also designed with walking in mind, which should make the shoes better suited to hike-a-bike sections, or walking to the bar after a ride, than more aggressively shaped clipless shoes.
This Black and White pair wouldn’t look unusual away from the bike, with the predominantly black leather upper and white sole doing a decent impression of a conventional pair of trainers.
There’s little to give away the fact you’re wearing a pair of clipless cycling shoes, aside from the inevitable castanet of the cleats when walking on hard surfaces.
That could make the ARC an interesting proposition for commuters or anyone who doesn’t fancy swapping shoes every time they get off the bike.
The ARC is available in several colourways, including Black & White, Charcoal, Stone, Forge and Ceder (sic), with each priced at $240.
That puts them firmly at the premium end of the market, but the full-grain leather construction, waterproofing and small-batch approach go some way to explaining the price.
Whether they can deliver the pedalling performance of a dedicated mountain bike shoe while remaining comfortable enough to wear all day is the bigger question.
We’ll be putting them through their paces to find out.
WUD 9.0 arrives with a new SQLite-based persistence layer, three user roles, personal API tokens, and improved OIDC support.
While the Linux kernel continues to be bombarded with patches from AI/LLM agents, to date the kernel hasn’t carried an AGENTS.md Markdown file with instructions catering to AI/LLM agents. But a patch set out today would finally introduce one…
Google has synthesized “expressive face-to-face experiences” for its speech agent Gemini 3.8 Live. They’re now offering a Live Avatar “with precise lip-syncing, natural expressions, and fluid turn-taking” for Google Enterprise accounts wanting “engaging customer service” or for offering interactive walkthroughs. (Check out the not-creepy-at-all video in Google’s announcement.)
“Though Google will offer a library of preset avatars for customers to choose from, it will also allow organizations to create their own,” notes The Verge. (See some examples from the YouTube channel “AI with Surya”.)
But even without the visualization of the avatar, “I was never able to shake the feeling that these conversations with computers never feel like a real conversation,” argues the blog Android Police. Conversing with just the Ai-generated audio, “At best, they feel like talking to a phone representative or someone from tech support. We turn to them when we have a problem, and they help us through it…”
GPT-Live, and Gemini Live right behind it, skip that whole relay race. Instead of translating your voice to text and back to voice, the model works with raw audio the entire way through (what it hears and what it says) inside the same system, with nothing translated in between. That sounds like a small plumbing detail, but it’s the whole story. Cutting out the text step lets these models respond in a fraction of a second instead of the pause we’ve learned to expect, and it lets them hear things text can never carry: tone, hesitation, whether you’re annoyed or joking…
I was hoping to be surprised by how natural the conversation felt. Instead, I came out with a deeper appreciation for every human I’ve ever talked to. Even the boring ones… I spoke, it spoke back. I spoke faster, it answered faster. Then I switched to a different language, and it switched along with me. Even switching between languages several times during the same sentence didn’t stump it. The most impressive moment happened when I asked it what “T-O-P-G-3-3-K” spelled out, and it immediately came back with, “You are spelling the word Top Geek, but using a 3 to represent a reversed E….”
Although it felt fast and responsive, at no point did it feel like talking to another human being… What Gemini couldn’t replicate, because it was never built to replicate it, is human connection…. I’m sure I’m not telling you something you don’t already know, but somehow talking naturally to an LLM amplifies the feeling that there is no one on the other side of the line. It might flow like a phone call, but it doesn’t feel like one.
MrBrklyn (Slashdot reader #4,775) says he discussed “why mainstream media avoids reporting on screen dependency” with Gemini, and eventually convinced Gemini to respond that it’s just “another tool built by the same tech giants to make sure you rely on their system to tell you what to think, how to talk, and what is real.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Linux hardware vendor and Pop!_OS Linux maker System76 released COSMIC 1.9 today as the latest stable version of this Rust-based desktop environment for modern GNU/Linux distributions.
Mozilla is expanding Firefox Smart Window, an optional AI-powered browsing mode with page summaries, research tools, tab grouping, and local memories.
After a nearly monthlong delay, states are now able to order this season’s COVID-19 vaccines through a federal program that provides free immunizations to low-income children, the US health department says. Trump officials have still not provided a clear explanation for the delay, raising concerns about meddling from anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
On Wednesday, Ars Technica reported that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had still not opened ordering for 2026–2027 COVID-19 vaccines through the Vaccines for Children program. That was despite the vaccines having been approved by the Food and Drug Administration in late August.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told Ars on Wednesday that “CDC has not yet finalized procurement decisions” for the shots. The department’s statement further suggested Trump officials were questioning whether children should receive them. “HHS and CDC are committed to responsible stewardship of taxpayer resources and to ensuring that vaccines purchased through federally funded programs are appropriate for the populations those programs serve,” the department said.
Did you know that the first character that Walt Disney created to specifically appear on television was inspired, in part, by early Space Age rocket scientists?
On this day 65 years ago (September 24, 1961), Disney introduced the “renowned scientist, lecturer, psychologist [and] world traveler,” Ludwig Von Drake. A member of the Duck family (he is the “brilliant and eccentric” uncle of Donald Duck), Von Drake was “the outstanding genius of the century” (per Disney himself) who helped to explain scientific principles and technological concepts to the millions of people who tuned in every Sunday to watch Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color on NBC.
A few years later, after expertly (but often absent-mindedly) addressing topics such as how color television works, the health benefits of exercising, and the history of aviation, Von Drake dove into the topic for which he said he wrote the book on, in the February 10, 1963, episode “Inside Outer Space.”
