A new set of Linux kernel patches posted today work to improve the nested VMX performance for benefiting Intel processors making use of KVM virtualization…
Monthly Archives: September 2025
If You Have a Mini-LED TV, You Need to Enable This Setting
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I reviewed the TCL QM7 a year ago, and I’m still impressed at the quality and value for the money offered by this mid-tier QLED TV. Along with Hisense, TCL has raised the bar for QLED TVs, with both brands battling it out to become the go-to for the best value QLED TV.
One of the highlights of the QM7 is its incredible brightness—up to 2,400 nits, thanks to the mini-LED backlight for the display. But this can actually be overwhelming when watching TV at night in a dark bedroom, especially if you’re getting ready to go to sleep (or if someone else in the room is already trying to sleep). But I found a setting that allows me (and my wife) to coexist with this TV in our bedroom—and your QLED TV likely has it too.
Turn on adaptive-brightness
Having to manually lower the TV brightness every night got old pretty quickly (despite the “quick settings” button on the remote that took me directly to the brightness settings), so I started looking for a way to handle it automatically. Lucky for me, my TCL set has a setting for that—and it’s likely yours does too.
Most modern smart TVs will have a setting with a name like “Adaptive Brightness” that will allow it to auto-adjust the screen brightness based on the light in your environment. That’s the setting you need to turn on so you won’t blind yourself if you want to watch some TV before going to bed.
Here is how to turn it on for the QM7; the process is likely similar for other models and brands:
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Press the Settings button (gear icon) on your TCL remote.
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Navigate to Settings and select Display & Sound.
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Choose Intelligent Settings.
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In the Intelligent Settings menu, find Intelligent Picture.
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Turn on the setting called Adaptive Brightness.
The QM7 has a light sensor that detects the light in your room, which it then uses to change your TV’s brightness. My set also offers Adaptive Content, which will automatically adjust your picture settings depending on what’s onscreen. For example, during dark scenes, the TV will dim to preserve shadow detail, and during bright scenes, it will increase highlights to make the picture pop more.
Not every QLED set will offer these exact settings, but most have something similar. Hunt around in the menus and try enabling them if you sometimes find your super-bright screen can be a little overwhelming.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge 256GB Unlocked AI Phone (Titanium JetBlack)
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$699.99
(List Price $1,099.99)
Jaguar Land Rover Extends Shutdown After Cyber Attack
Jaguar Land Rover has extended the shutdown of its UK and overseas factories after a cyberattack forced it to take IT systems offline, disrupting production, dealerships, and suppliers. The BBC reports: Jaguar Land Rover’s (JLR) UK factories are now expected to remain closed until at least Wednesday after work was disrupted by a cyber attack just over a week ago. The car plants at Halewood and Solihull and its Wolverhampton engine facility, along with production facilities in Slovakia, China and India, have been unable to operate since the company fell victim to the cyber attack. Staff who work on the production lines have been told to remain at home. JLR shut down its IT systems in response to the attack on 31 August, in order to protect them from damage. However, this caused major disruption. […]
Under normal circumstances, the company builds about 1,000 cars a day. The production stoppage has had a significant impact on the company’s suppliers, with some understood to have told their own staff not to come into work. As well as forcing the factories to stop building cars, it also left dealerships unable to register new cars and garages that maintain JLR vehicles unable to order the parts they needed — although it is understood workarounds have since been put in place. The attack began at what is traditionally a popular time for consumers to take delivery of new vehicles. The latest batch of new registration plates became available on Monday, September 1.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
This Is the Minimum Amount of Training Necessary to Run a Marathon
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Training for a marathon can be a massive commitment, but not every marathon runner can rework their entire life around a training plan. There are physical roadblocks like injury and illness (which can be difficult to handle, but which aren’t insurmountable). But you’ll also face mental obstacles, like the difficulty of giving up your precious free time. (I skipped a run last week because of a surprise FaceTime from an old friend. I’m happy to have heard from her. I’m stressed to have missed a run.)
After running six marathons, I know that training for a race requires careful planning and execution—and the ability to make the most of your limitations. If you’re struggling with that latter part, consider me an authority as the laziest marathon runner you know. It turns out you can be irresponsibly busy, maybe a little lazy, and terrible at sticking to plans, yet still run a marathon without injuring yourself.
Here are my mental hacks to strategize a running plan when you’re short on both time and motivation.
The basics of a marathon training plan
The general consensus is you should follow at least a 14- to 16-week training plan, with 18 to 20 weeks being preferable.
Even if you need to deviate from your training plan, or you need to skip straight to week four to cram everything in, you still need to have a plan in the first place. Here’s my guide to properly choosing a training plan suited to your lifestyle, running experience, job commitments, and race goals. But after picking your plan comes the hard part: Sticking to it, even when nothing is going right.
Even once you have a plan, how can you run a marathon with minimal training? It depends—how do you feel about being too sore to sit down the next day? If you’re determined to do it, here’s the least you can get away with without seriously risking injury.
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Start with a base. You should be able to run 3 to 5 miles comfortably before beginning a plan. If you can’t, spend a month building up to this level. You can try jumping into a training plan weeks ahead of your current fitness level, but then you might hurt yourself or burn out before making it to the marathon starting line.
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Prioritize long runs. Your weekly long run is non-negotiable. If you aren’t able to run at least 16 miles at least two weeks beforehand, I wouldn’t even bother trying to run a marathon.
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Squeeze in training runs whenever you can. Aim for two more runs per week at a minimum. One should be a medium-long run (starting at 4 to 5 miles and building up to 8 to 10), and one can be an easy 3 to 4 miler.
That’s it: the absolute barebones of marathon training. Now, here’s how you can build on that to further prepare yourself without going all-in.
Invest in proper running gear
If you’re going to try to eke out a marathon, you don’t want to sabotage yourself with worn-down shoes or chafing-related setbacks. Here’s the basic gear you’ll need to help be the laziest marathon runner possible:
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Proper running shoes. Think trusted brands like Hoka and Nike. Personally, I’ve been rotating shoes between the Saucony Endorphin Speed 5 and Brooks Ghost Max 3, so that I don’t risk a single blister before race day.
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A running belt. You’ll have a more enjoyable run if you’re not stuck holding your phone or listening to your keys jangle. The two big names in running belts are the SPIbelt and FlipBelt, and you can’t go wrong with either one.
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A fitness trackers or GPS watch. I’ve run plenty of races without a smartwatch, but during training, they can make a world of a difference—particularly when it comes to pacing myself. Serious runners benefit from advanced metrics in $300+ GPS watches, casual runners can opt for a no-nonsense budget option like the Garmin Forerunner 55.
Follow the “I’m busy and inconsistent” strategy
I would love to be a running influencer who can afford to orient my decisions around long runs, but that’s simply not the life I lead. (Yet—Nike, if you’re reading this, shoot me an email.) Until then, the “I’m busy and inconsistent” approach is all about honesty and self acceptance. Follow these tenants whenever you’re training for a marathon on the bare minimum.
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Keep prioritizing long runs. If you’re going to skip some runs, you cannot afford to skip your long run.
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Be flexible. Some runners are rigid about which days of the week correspond to how far they run. Personally, I look at my weekly schedule and work backwards from there. This means that sometimes my classic Sunday long run is actually a Tuesday long run. The exact day or order of your runs won’t matter as much as getting the runs in.
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Focus on time over distance. On busy weeks, focus on time spent running rather than distance. A 30-minute run is better than no run at all. Thinking “time over distance” will help you strategize runs across the board, especially when you have to shorten individual runs to squeeze
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Something is better than nothing. Can’t fit in a full run? Do a 10-minute jog when you can—or even multiple mini-runs throughout the day. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than nothing.
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Don’t overdo it. While you need to prioritize your weekly long runs, it’s still unwise to increase your weekly mileage by more than 10% at a time. If you have to skip a long run, you may want to shuffle long runs around so you aren’t jumping from 10 to 18 miles (for example) on back-to-back weekends.
A final piece of advice
Remember, everything above is about doing the bare minimum. Most marathon runners are not “bare minimum” people. You’ll be more comfortable and less likely to injure yourself if you can fit in more training. But if life gets in the way and you need to cut corners, focus on gradually building your long run and getting in at least two other runs or cross-training sessions per week.
Even if you had planned to stick to an ambitious training plan, sometimes the bare minimum is all you can manage. If so, don’t sweat it. Listen to your body. If you’re feeling pain (not just normal soreness), take a break. It’s better to arrive at the starting line slightly undertrained than injured. Now lace up those shoes and get moving. Or don’t—there’s always tomorrow, right?
Conjuring 4 Just Had The Biggest Opening Weekend In Horror Movie History

The Conjuring: Last Rites beat expectations and brought in nearly $200 million globally over its first few days in theaters
The post <i>Conjuring 4</i> Just Had The Biggest Opening Weekend In Horror Movie History appeared first on Kotaku.
NASA-Backed Study Finds Space Travel Drastically Accelerates Aging In Cells

With support from NASA, a team of six researchers from the University of California, San Diego ISSCOR laboratory investigated the effect of spaceflight on human cells. The results show that being in space increases the rate at which human hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells age.
In the study published in the scientific journal, Cell
All IT Work To Involve AI By 2030, Says Gartner
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: All work in IT departments will be done with the help of AI by 2030, according to analyst firm Gartner, which thinks massive job losses won’t result. Speaking during the keynote address of the firm’s Symposium event in Australia today, VP analyst Alicia Mullery said 81 percent of work is currently done by humans acting alone without AI assistance. Five years from now Gartner believes 75 percent of IT work will be human activity augmented by AI, with the remainder performed by bots alone.
Distinguished VP analyst Daryl Plummer said this shift will mean IT departments gain labor capacity and will need to show they deserve to keep it. “You never want to look like you have too many people,” he advised, before suggesting technology leaders consult with peers elsewhere in a business to identify value-adding opportunities IT departments can execute. Plummer said Gartner doesn’t foresee an “AI jobs bloodbath” in IT or other industries for at least five years, adding that just one percent of job losses today are attributable to AI. He and Mullery did predict a reduction in entry-level jobs, as AI lets senior staff tackle work they would once have assigned to juniors.
The two analysts also forecast that businesses will struggle to implement AI effectively, because the costs of running AI workloads balloon. ERP, Plummer said, has straightforward up-front costs: You pay to license and implement it, then to train people so they can use it. AI needs that same initial investment but few organizations can keep up with AI vendors’ pace of innovation. Adopting AI therefore creates a requirement for near-constant exploration of use cases and subsequent retraining. Plummer said orgs that adopt AI should expect to uncover 10 unanticipated ancillary costs, among them the need to acquire new datasets, and the costs of managing multiple models. The need to use one AI model to check the output of others — a necessary step to verify accuracy — is another cost to consider. AI’s hidden costs mean Gartner believes 65 percent of CIOs aren’t breaking even on AI investments.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Whistleblowers Claim Meta Suppressed Research on Kids’ Safety in VR
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A group of current and former Meta employees are accusing the company of suppressing its own research on child safety in virtual reality. According to two current and two former Meta employees, Meta’s lawyers are screening, editing, and vetoing internal studies about youth safety in virtual reality in order to minimize the risk of bad press, legal actions, and government regulation.
To back up the accusations, the group has presented a trove of internal documents to members of a Senate Judiciary Committee, ahead of hearings on the issue to be held on Tuesday. First obtained by The Washington Post, the documents include thousands of pages of internal messages, presentations, and memos that the group says detail a years-long strategy, led by Meta’s legal team, to shape research on “sensitive topics.”
Meta denies the accusations. In a statement to The Washington Post, company spokesperson Dani Lever categorized the accusations as a “few examples…stitched together to fit a predetermined and false narrative; in reality since the start of 2022, Meta has approved nearly 180 Reality Labs-related studies on social issues, including youth safety and well-being.”
Meta and child safety
Internally, it appears Meta has long been aware of questions related to child safety and virtual reality. An internal message board post from 2017 included in the trove is titled, “We have a child problem and it’s probably time to talk about it.” In it, an unnamed Meta employee writes, “These children are very obviously under our 13-year-old age limit…” and goes on to estimate that 80 to 90 percent of users were underage in some virtual reality spaces.
After leaked Meta studies led to congressional hearings in 2021, the company strongly reiterated the importance of transparency, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg writing, “If we wanted to hide our results, why would we have established an industry-leading standard for transparency and reporting on what we’re doing?”
But according to the whistleblowers, behind-the-scenes, Meta’s legal team began screening, editing, and even vetoing research about youth safety to “establish plausible deniability,” detailing potential strategies to “mitigate the risk” of conducting sensitive research. In a November 2021 slide presentation, Meta’s lawyers suggested researchers could “conduct highly-sensitive research under attorney-client privilege,” and have all highly sensitive studies reviewed by lawyers and shared only on a “need-to-know” basis.
Another strategy from the slide suggests researchers “be mindful” of how studies are framed, avoid using terms like “illegal” or “not compliant,” and avoid saying anything violates a specific law, in favor of leaving legal conclusions to attorneys.
An example of Meta’s policy in practice is given in the documents, and involves conversations between Meta researchers and a German woman. The unnamed mother reported that she did not allow her sons to interact with strangers in Meta’s virtual reality, but her teenage son interrupted to say that adults had sexually propositioned his brother, who was younger than 10, numerous times.
According to one of the researchers and Jason Sattizahn, then one of Meta’s specialists in studying children and technology, higher-ups at Meta ordered that the recording of the teen’s comments should be deleted, and that no mention of it should be made in the company’s report. Sattizahn says he was eventually fired from Meta after disputes with managers about restrictions on research.
How many children are actually using Meta’s virtual reality?
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to know exactly how many kids are actively using Meta’s VR platforms. Anecdotally, I’ve spent enough time in virtual reality to believe there are a lot of people under 13 in just about every virtual reality space, including (and especially) Meta’s own “Horizon Worlds.” I can’t say for certain that the people behind the avatars are children, but it sure seems like a lot of kids to me, a conclusion suggested by documents in the trove. One report indicates that only 41 percent of users gave the same date of birth they’d used previously when asked. “These findings show that many users may be unwilling to provide us with their true DOB,” the analysis says.
Maintaining that “gray area” of not really knowing (or publicly acknowledging) the ages of users of the service may be in Meta’s best interest. According to a document included in the trove, one of Meta’s lawyers wrote, “In general, the context is that we should avoid collection of research data that indicates that there are U13s present in VR or in VR apps (or U18 currently in the context of Horizon) due to regulatory concerns.”
The combination of the documents and Meta’s response indicate a company walking a thin line—publicly promising transparency and safety, while privately managing its research process to limit blowback in the form of liability and regulators’ attention. Whether Meta is suppressing damaging information or exercising understandable legal caution is an open question, but hopefully these congressional hearings (as messy as they’re likely to be) get us closer to the real goal of protecting children in immersive spaces.
Former WhatsApp security boss in lawsuit likens Meta’s culture to a “cult”
Over the past year, Meta has blanketed TV screens around the world with commercials touting the privacy of Whatsapp, its encrypted messenger with a monthly user base of 3 billion people.
“It’s private,” one ad campaign featuring the former cast of the Modern Family TV show says. “On Whatsapp, no one can see or hear your personal messages … not even us,” a different series of ads declares.
“Serious risks to user data”
On Monday, the former head of security for the Meta-owed messaging app filed a federal whistleblower lawsuit that tells a far different narrative. The suit, filed in US District Court for the District of Northern California, recites a litany of purported security and privacy flaws that Meta not only didn’t fix after becoming aware of them, but also kept secret, allegedly in violation of a $5 billion settlement then-Whatsapp parent company Facebook reached with the Federal Trade Commission. The complaint was filed by Attaullah Baig, who became head of WhatsApp security in 2021.
America’s First Private Nuclear Fuel Recycling Facility to Open in Tennessee
The end goal is to create an “advanced fuel center” in Tennessee, which will recycle used nuclear fuel for a host of purposes.
All You Need To Know About Playing Borderlands 4: Launch Times, Day-One Patch, And More

Gearbox’s massive co-op shooter is nearly here and we have all the answers to your Borderlands questions
The post All You Need To Know About Playing <i>Borderlands 4</i>: Launch Times, Day-One Patch, And More appeared first on Kotaku.
Kodi 22 “Piers” Promises HDR Passthrough on OpenGL and HDR on Wayland
Kodi 22 (codename Piers) has entered development for this powerful open-source, free, and cross-platform media center and entertainment hub software for all your digital media.
Microsoft Azure Outage Due To Undersea Cable Cuts Raises Serious Questions

If you had trouble or slow speeds when trying to connect to Asian websites (or vice-versa) over the weekend, you’re not alone. The underlying reason for the slowdowns were a few undersea fiber cables cut nearby Jeddah, South Arabia. According to Microsoft, the cut happened around 5:45 on the morning of September 6th.
Microsoft and other
Amazon Will Double Your Storage on a New Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 for Free
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Samsung’s newest tablet, the Galaxy Tab S11, just released this month, and you can already score a deal when buying one. Right now, Amazon is selling it with a free storage upgrade (from 128GB to 256GB) for $799.99 (originally $859.99).
At its latest Galaxy Event, the company unveiled three other devices alongside the Galaxy Tab S11: the Galaxy Buds 3 FE, the Galaxy Tab S10 Lite, and the Galaxy S25 FE phone. All of these devices are seeing similar deals right now.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 comes in two models: the Galaxy Tab S11, which is the one available with a free storage upgrade; and the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra, which starts at $1,200. Both come with 12GB of RAM, but the Ultra has a giant 14.6-inch screen, while the Galaxy Tab S11 is a more portable 11 inches, replacing the Plus model from previous generations.
You can add more storage with the microSD slot (up to 2TB), but you might not need it with the free upgrade to 256GB. The 8,400 mAh battery should last about 18 hours, depending on use, which is on par with other Tab devices since the Tab S9. The front camera has a 12-MP Ultrawide lens, while the rear camera is a 13-MP. The Mediatek Dimensity 9400 Plus processor is about 25% faster than the previous model’s, so you should notice AI tools and apps running a little more smoothly.
The S Pen is included with the tablet, which is fair considering you need it to get the most out of the device. It comes with Samsung’s DeX mode, so you can hook it up to a screen, making it a pseudo computer with the addition of a keyboard. You can read more about the tablet on CNET’s first-look.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge 256GB Unlocked AI Phone (Titanium JetBlack)
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$699.99
(List Price $1,099.99)
In court filing, Google concedes the open web is in “rapid decline”
Is the web thriving or faltering? Google has an unexpected take in a new legal filing. Google is heading back to court soon in hopes of convincing a judge that it should not have to split up its ad business. The company lost its adtech antitrust case earlier this year, and now it’s up to the court to decide on remedies for the illegal conduct. In its response to the Department of Justice’s requested remedies, Google made a startling claim: “The fact is that today, the open web is already in rapid decline.”
Google says that forcing it to divest its AdX marketplace would hasten the demise of wide swaths of the web that are dependent on advertising revenue. This is one of several reasons Google asks the court to deny the government’s request. The DOJ also tried to force a divestment of Chrome in the search antitrust trial, but the judge in that case declined to order that in the remedies.
Google’s advertising business has turned it into an unrivaled Internet juggernaut. Google increasingly is the Internet—websites have no choice but to adhere to Google’s standards for search and ads because there’s no substantial competition. The court in this case ruled that in tying its display ad services with the AdX marketplace, Google suppressed the adoption of rival technologies, and this gave it an opportunity to preference its own services in ad auctions.
I Don’t Care About Digimon And I’m Still Hyped For Digimon Story: Time Stranger

The Pokémon competitor has a new turn-based RPG that’s shaping up just fine
The post I Don’t Care About <i>Digimon</i> And I’m Still Hyped For <i>Digimon Story: Time Stranger</i> appeared first on Kotaku.
Hackers Hijack npm Packages With 2 Billion Weekly Downloads in Supply Chain Attack
An anonymous reader shares a report: In what is being called the largest supply chain attack in history, attackers have injected malware into NPM packages with over 2.6 billion weekly downloads after compromising a maintainer’s account in a phishing attack.
The package maintainer whose accounts were hijacked in this supply-chain attack confirmed the incident earlier today, stating that he was aware of the compromise and adding that the phishing email came from support [at] npmjs [dot] help, a domain that hosts a website impersonating the legitimate npmjs.com domain.
In the emails, the attackers threatened that the targeted maintainers’ accounts would be locked on September 10th, 2025, as a scare tactic to get them to click on the link redirecting them to the phishing sites.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google expands AI Mode beyond English for the first time
Google is opening up AI Mode to more languages. Starting today, the AI chatbot the company is integrating into Google Search is available in Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean and Brazilian Portuguese.
The company has been rapidly expanding access to the search experience. In May, Google started offering it to everyone in the US (and later the UK and India) after starting public tests just two months earlier.
Google added more features to AI Mode in July, including support for the Gemini 2.5 Pro model and Deep Search. As of last month, AI Mode has been present in more than 180 countries. But until now, AI Mode had only been available in English. This is the first language support expansion for the chatbot.
“Building a truly global Search goes far beyond translation — it requires a nuanced understanding of local information,” Hema Budaraju, Google’s vice president of search product management wrote in a blog post. “With the advanced multimodal and reasoning capabilities of our custom version of Gemini 2.5 in Search, we’ve made huge strides in language understanding, so our most advanced AI search capabilities are locally relevant and useful in each new language we support.”
Google has been claiming recently that traffic to websites from Search is “relatively stable” since the rollout of AI Overviews and that “the web is thriving.” However, the company admitted something very different in a court filing last week. Its lawyers stated that “the open web is already in rapid decline.” That, plus the expansion of AI Mode, will surely be welcomed with open arms by publishers who are seriously feeling the pinch of declining web traffic.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-expands-ai-mode-beyond-english-for-the-first-time-192245955.html?src=rss
Nobel laureate David Baltimore dead at 87
Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist and former Caltech president David Baltimore—who found himself at the center of controversial allegations of fraud against a co-author—has died at 87 from cancer complications. He shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology for his work upending the then-consensus that cellular information flowed only in one direction. Baltimore is survived by his wife of 57 years, biologist Alice Huang, as well as a daughter and granddaughter.
“David Baltimore’s contributions as a virologist, discerning fundamental mechanisms and applying those insights to immunology, to cancer, to AIDS, have transformed biology and medicine,” current Caltech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum said in a statement. “David’s profound influence as a mentor to generations of students and postdocs, his generosity as a colleague, his leadership of great scientific institutions, and his deep involvement in international efforts to define ethical boundaries for biological advances fill out an extraordinary intellectual life.”
Baltimore was born in New York City in 1938. His father worked in the garment industry, and his mother later became a psychologist at the New School and Sarah Lawrence. Young David was academically precocious and decided he wanted to be a scientist after spending a high school summer learning about mouse genetics at the Jackson Laboratory in Maine. He graduated from Swarthmore College and earned his PhD in biology from Rockefeller University in 1964 with a thesis on the study of viruses in animal cells. He joined the Salk Institute in San Diego, married Huang, and moved to MIT in 1982, founding the Whitehead Institute.
Everything We Know About the Apple Watch Ultra 3
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Apple’s “Awe Dropping” event kicks off tomorrow, Sept. 9, and all of the tech world is focused on the iPhone 17. But new iPhones aren’t the only upgrades Apple is set to unveil tomorrow. If rumors are to be believed, we’ll also get a look at the company’s upcoming Apple Watches, including the Apple Watch Ultra 3.
This device would mark the first new “Ultra” since 2023’s Ultra 2. The Ultras are Apple’s “pro” watch line, focused on durability and lengthy battery life. They tend to be pricier than other Apple Watches, but they also come with unique features, including Apple’s largest and brightest watch display. Based on what we know, the Ultra 3 won’t be a reinvention, but it should offer some interesting upgrades that might entice customers (provided they are OK with spending $800 on an Apple Watch).
Here’s what the rumors suggest we’ll see tomorrow.
An upgraded processor
Apple frequently introduces a new processor, or chip, with new Apple Watches. The Ultra 2 uses the S9, while the Series 10 uses the S10. As such, the rumor mill has been back and forth on whether the Ultra 3 will adopt the Series 10’s S10 chip, or ship with a brand new one.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, signs point to the latter. Gurman believes Apple’s newest Ultra watch will introduce the S11 chip. Not only that, but it seems possible Apple’s other new smartwatches, the Series 11 and the new SE, will also feature the S11.
That doesn’t mean these watches will wildly outperform the company’s previous chips. MacRumors analyzed the S11’s leaked architecture, and found the S9 and S10 chips have the same underlying tech as the new S11. That’s still a high-performing chip: The S9, S10, and, presumably, S11, are all 64-bit dual-core processors with a quad-core Neural Engine, with second-gen Ultra Wideband and 64GB of internal storage. However, this does suggest that speed upgrades might not be the reason to pick up any of Apple’s newest watches this year. We’ll have to see what the company announces tomorrow.
A bigger, better display
The Ultra series has the largest display you can get on an Apple Watch, and according to rumors, the Ultra 3 could have an even larger screen. MacRumors says the new watch could bump up the display resolution from 410 x 502 to 422 x 514. That wouldn’t be a dramatic increase, but it would make it the largest watch screen Apple has ever made.
The Ultra 3 will likely also borrow from the Series 10’s display technology: The latter’s LPTO3 OLED display allows the watch to refresh its display faster than the Ultra 2, which would enable Always-On watch faces with a moving second hand. The Series 10 also comes with a wide-angle OLED display, which increases the brightness of the display when viewed at an angle. The Ultra 3 could follow suit.
Satellite connectivity
Ever since the Series 3, Apple has offered customers the option to buy a watch that supports cellular connectivity, but the Ultra 3 could be Apple’s first smartwatch to support satellite connectivity. What this means is, whenever your watch is out of range of a cellular signal, it would be able to connect to a satellite instead. This type of connection is usually much slower than a traditional cellular connection, but it does work, and would allow you to contact friends, family, or emergency services when you have no service. Suddenly, there are no more “dead zones.”
This isn’t coming out of the blue. Satellite connectivity is all the rage: Apple has offered it on the iPhone for years now, first for simple messages to emergency services, then later expanding support to include standard text messages. In addition, T-Mobile officially rolled out its satellite service for customers this year, so it’d be fitting to have a cellular Apple Watch offer similar satellite capabilities.
Faster cellular connections
But the connectivity improvements aren’t limited to areas without cell service. The Ultra 3 may also be the first Apple Watch to support 5G, as Apple may tap MediaTek for the device’s embedded modem. Cellular-enabled Apple Watches only support 4G LTE, so users upgrading to a theoretical 5G Ultra 3 would improve speeds in areas with 5G connections.
Quick charging
MacRumors believes the Ultra 3 could introduce a faster charging experience, following in the footsteps of the Series 10. That watch can charge to 80% in 30 minutes, while the Ultra 2 needs 60 minutes to charge to 80%. MacRumors highlights that the difference comes down to the material the watches are made out of: The Series 10 has a metal casing with a larger charging coil, while the Ultra 2 uses the usual crystal casing most all other Apple Watches have used.
A blood pressure monitor
The Ultra 3 could also introduce a blood pressure monitor for the first time in an Apple Watch. This is something Apple has reportedly been working on for some time, and the Ultra 3 could be its debut. That said, Gurman suggests that Apple has run into “regulatory and engineering” issues with the feature, so it’s possible we won’t see it until the launch of the Ultra 4 or Series 12.
It’s interesting timing, as Apple just got the all-clear to bring back the Apple Watch’s blood oxygen sensor. The company was forced to disable the feature for Series 9 and Ultra 2 devices following a lawsuit, though a subsequent case allowed the company to reinstate the feature. (Older watches with the blood oxygen sensor never saw it disabled.)