TechCapsules

Microsoft has rolled out a faster, more streamlined XBOX PC app for Insiders, claiming up to 60% quicker launch times and easier navigation. The update also expands the refreshed web experience to a broader audience, adding a unified Library tab that consolidates cloud and Game Pass titles, and introduces dark/light and high‑contrast themes. Compatibility extends to supported TVs and VR headsets, ensuring a consistent interface across devices. Feedback channels remain open, with Insiders encouraged to share suggestions [...]

Payday Aces High, released on Meta Quest, SteamVR, and Steam Frame, returns the series to its cooperative heist roots with four new characters and VR‑specific mechanics. The game features six unlockable missions, a free seventh mission launching December 14, and cross‑play support across platforms. Players can customize stats, upgrade guns, and collect character masks, while community challenges unlock special loot. Though it lacks some traditional stealth and physical interaction options, the VR‑centric gameplay delivers immersive, physics‑based action and [...]

Microsoft’s PowerToys suite received version 0.102 on October 21, moving the Color Picker and Text Extractor utilities from WPF to native WinUI 3. The migration introduced a redesigned overlay, editor and magnifier for Color Picker and a new borderless‑window snipping system for Text Extractor, while extracting OCR logic into a PowerOCR.Core library. This update follows earlier transitions of Keyboard Manager, Image Resizer, Quick Accent and Mouse Jump, bringing the total of WinUI 3‑based tools to six this year and 17 utilities [...]

Apple achieved its highest‑ever global smartphone revenue share in Q3 2026, according to Counterpoint Research. The iPhone’s average selling price rose to $1,031, a 19% year‑over‑year increase, driven by the premium iPhone 18 Pro launch, the omission of a base iPhone 18, and price hikes on older models. Apple’s shipments were nearly flat year‑over‑year, but the company leveraged pricing power to offset rising memory costs. Samsung remained the shipment leader with 22% of units, while Apple held 21%; both brands [...]

Ambi Robotics is gearing up for the surge by installing its AmbiSort B Series at eight facilities before peak season. Co‑founder Stephen McKinley says customers typically see a 25‑40% lift in throughput during Black Friday, and this year the company anticipates a 9‑10% increase over last year’s peak. The firm will split its workforce, sending half of its staff to on‑site visits while keeping the other half on standby to resolve issues quickly. In addition to adding [...]

On November 5, 2026, NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk completed a 6‑hour‑59‑minute EVA to install the eighth and final International Space Station Roll‑Out Solar Array (iROSA) on the starboard side of the station’s truss. The new 63‑foot carbon‑composite array, delivered by a SpaceX Dragon cargo craft, augments the legacy solar wings and can boost ISS power generation by up to 30 percent. After an initial shunt‑current anomaly, Mission Control and the crew inspected connectors, [...]

A critical vulnerability in OpenSSH allows attackers to log into password‑less accounts on Alpine Linux servers that use the default openssh‑server package without PAM. By supplying a password between 257 and 1,024 bytes, an attacker who knows a valid username can bypass authentication whenever password logins are enabled and at least one other account on the system has a password. The flaw stems from how sshd interacts with musl, Alpine’s C library, and affects only musl‑based builds [...]

Motorola unveiled the Signature 27, a premium flagship slated for a November 26 launch at $1,599. The phone sports a 6.8‑inch Extreme AMOLED Duo display capable of 12,000 nits peak brightness and 34 % higher efficiency. Under the hood sits Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 SoC, paired with an enlarged ArcticMesh cooling system. Its camera array includes a 50 MP Sony primary sensor, a 200 MP periscope telephoto offering up to 100× AI‑enhanced zoom, a 50 MP ultrawide, and a 50 MP selfie lens, plus a [...]