This week was a big one for Apple. The company announced a slew of new products, including the “affordable” iPhone 17e, the M4 iPad Air, M5 series MacBooks, and, of course, the low-cost MacBook Neo. That’s a jam-packed list of updates affecting most of Apple’s product lineup.

Amid all the hullabaloo, however, Apple quietly issued a small update for its lineup of products—notably, for the iPhone. iOS 26.3.1 is the latest version of Apple’s iPhone OS, and comes just three weeks after the release of iOS 26.3. Keen observers will note that the 0.0.1 updates are usually pretty minor, and 26.3.1 is no exception. There are no new features here like you’d expect from a 26.3 update (in fact, Apple is saving those for iOS 26.4). Instead, this update adds support for Apple’s new Studio Display and Studio Display XDR monitors, which are currently available to preorder, and smooths out the rough edges of iOS, patching bugs and fixing glitches that weren’t fixed with the last update.

What are those bug fixes, you ask? Good question. Apple is being pretty cagey with this latest update, and isn’t saying much outside of acknowledging the existence of bug fixes in general. The company didn’t even issue proper security notes for 26.3.1, but does list these updates on its security release site. That could mean a couple of things: Either there aren’t any major CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) entries to note here, or there aren’t any Apple is comfortable disclosing at this time. If there are security vulnerabilities that Apple wants to patch without cluing in bad actors, they might quietly ship a security update without noting them. Of course, that’s pure speculation since we don’t have the notes here, so there may be no major patches to note here.

iOS 26.3.1 isn’t the only update Apple released, either. According to Apple’s security site, the company also shipped macOS 26.3.1, as well as iOS 18.7.6. Interestingly, Apple released visionOS 26.3.1 on Feb. 26. If there are any security patches in this 26.3.1 series, the company addressed them on Vision Pro ahead of iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

How to install iOS 26.3.1

To update your iPhone, open Settings, then head to General > Software Update. Here, wait for iOS to load, then follow the on-screen instructions to download and install iOS 26.3.1.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei is not happy — perhaps predictably so — with OpenAI chief Sam Altman. In a memo to staff, reported by The Information, Amodei referred to OpenAI’s dealings with the Department of Defense as “safety theater.” “The main reason [OpenAI] accepted [the DoD’s deal] and we did not is that they cared about placating employees, and we actually cared about preventing abuses,” Amodei wrote.

Last week, Anthropic and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) failed to come to an agreement over the military’s request for unrestricted access to the AI company’s technology. Anthropic, which already had a $200 million contract with the military, insisted the DoD affirm that it would not use the company’s AI to enable domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weaponry. Instead, the DoD — known under the Trump administration as the Department of War — struck a deal with OpenAI. Altman stated that his company’s new defense contract would include protections against the same red lines that Anthropic had asserted.

In a letter to staff, Amodei refers to OpenAI’s messaging as “straight up lies,” stating that Altman is falsely “presenting himself as a peacemaker and dealmaker.” Amodei might not be speaking solely from a position of bitterness, here. Anthropic specifically took issue with the DoD’s insistence on the company’s AI being available for “any lawful use.” […] “I think this attempted spin/gaslighting is not working very well on the general public or the media, where people mostly see OpenAI’s deal with the DoW as sketchy or suspicious, and see us as the heroes (we’re #2 in the App Store now!),” Amodei wrote to his staff. “It is working on some Twitter morons, which doesn’t matter, but my main worry is how to make sure it doesn’t work on OpenAI employees.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has pledged “at least” $50 million through 2030 on “projects designed to eliminate superpollutants.” The company will be joined by a handful of other companies including Amazon and Salesforce in the newly formed Superpollutant Action Initiative.

In total, these companies have committed $100 million to the project, hoping to “accelerate the reduction” of superpollutants like methane, black carbon and refrigerant gases. Google says these are responsible for close to half of all planetary warming.

“Superpollutants are a major part of the equation to limit atmospheric warming. Experts agree that eliminating them where we can is one of the most powerful levers we have to deliver near-term impact, playing a vital and complementary role to removing CO2,” said Randy Spock, Google’s carbon credits and removals lead. The gases break down faster than CO2 but can trap heat thousands of times more efficiently, and the coalition claims that aggressive action could prevent more than half a degree Celsius of warming by 2050.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, reported $132 billion in net income in 2025. Google’s five-year, $50 million pledge works out to about three hours of that. The company is also set to spend billions building massive data centers for AI that it claims are more resource conscious than others. So far, Google’s AI infrastructure buildout drove an 11 percent rise in the company’s total emissions last year.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-pledges-roughly-three-hours-of-its-annual-profit-to-fight-climate-change-164808010.html?src=rss

The Canadian government says that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has agreed to take steps to immediately strengthen safety protocols, according to a report by Wall Street Journal. This follows a mass shooting incident at a high school in which OpenAI flagged the suspect and suspended his account, but did not alert authorities.

These changes look to primarily involve law enforcement, with commitments to notify police about potentially suspicious use of ChatGPT. We don’t have any confirmation from the company at this time, but Canada’s Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon says he “asked OpenAI to take several actions, which Altman has agreed to do.”

Solomon attended a virtual meeting with Altman to discuss how the company “would include Canadian privacy, mental health and law enforcement experts into the process to identify and review high-risk cases involving Canadian users.” He says OpenAI has pledged to provide a report to outline these new protocols.

He also asked Altman to make these changes retroactively and to review previous suspicious incidents on the platform, providing law enforcement with data when necessary. We don’t know if OpenAI has consented to that part.

Engadget has reached out to OpenAI to ask about these changes and if they’ll be exclusive to Canada. We’ll update this post if we hear back.

This isn’t the first step the company has made to make things right with Canada. Ann O’Leary, OpenAI’s VP of global policy, recently suggested that the company would be tweaking its detection systems to better prevent banned users from returning to the platform. The company banned the alleged shooter’s original account due to “potential warnings of committing real-world violence” but he was able to make another one.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/canadian-government-says-openai-will-take-further-steps-to-strengthen-safety-protocols-164151618.html?src=rss

Smart ring maker Oura has acquired Doublepoint, a company that specializes in gesture recognition for wearables. The Finnish startup uses smartwatches and wristbands as examples of products that benefit from its technology, but Oura will clearly be looking to incorporate it into its rings, in theory allowing you to control your connected devices with hand movements.

Oura said in a press release that the deal sees it inherit an “exceptional team of AI architects and builders from Doublepoint,” including Doublepoint’s four founders. The newly-acquired company will remain in its native Helsinki, where it will work with Oura’s international teams.

It added that Doublepoint’s expertise in helping devices register subtle hand movements will be key, as nobody wearing a smart ring is going to engage with gesture control if they have to thrash their hand around like a conductor.

Oura says it believes that the next generation of wearable AI-powered tech will use a combination of gesture and voice control, and Doublepoint’s background in biometric integration with devices will give it an edge in a competitive market.

Oura’s most recent release is the Oura Ring 4, which Engadget’s Daniel Cooper called “the smart ring to beat” in his long-term review last year. He praised the design, improved data collection and app interface, but was disappointed that even using basic hardware features requires a paid subscription.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/oura-buys-gesture-navigation-startup-doublepoint-163758659.html?src=rss

Iranian state media said on Wednesday that it targeted Amazon’s data center in Bahrain due to the company’s support of the U.S. military. The drone strike that occurred on Sunday disrupted core cloud services and caused “prolonged” outages. Two data centers in the UAE were also damaged by drone strikes. CNBC reports: All of the facilities remain offline, according to the Amazon Web Services health dashboard. The attack in Bahrain was launched “to identify the role of these centers in supporting the enemy’s military and intelligence activities,” Iran’s Fars News Agency said on Telegram.

In addition to structural damage, the data centers also experienced power disruptions and some water damage after firefighters worked to put out sparks and fire. Some popular AWS applications experienced “elevated error rates and degraded availability” due to the incident. AWS advised cloud customers to back up their data, consider migrating their workloads to other regions and direct traffic away from Bahrain and the UAE.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.