TechCapsules

X announced on Monday that its “Under the Hood” transparency tool will now disclose when posts are shadow‑banned or down‑ranked because the company is complying with local legal demands. The update expands the existing feature, which already shows account‑level labels, to include post‑level data for users who have posted at least ten times in the past month. Users can download a JSON file that lists any visibility restrictions, the specific posts affected, and the country that issued [...]

Microsoft spent 2026 adding developer‑friendly features to Windows 11, including faster WSL, built‑in Linux containers, Coreutils and a one‑command “Windows Developer Configurations” setup. Yet a recent poll by Gergely Oros​z of The Pragmatic Engineer, posted on X, received about 4,000 responses and showed macOS at 61.6%, Linux 24.2% and Windows only 12.8%. A similar LinkedIn poll of 6,000 voters produced comparable results. Orosz notes the sample reflects startup and Big‑Tech developers, not the broader community. By contrast, [...]

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has transferred development of the next mainline Halo title to Activision, the studio behind Call of Duty and a core asset of Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition. The move follows a series of layoffs at Halo Studios—formerly 343 Industries, which was rebranded less than a year ago—and a history of uneven critical reception for Halo 4, 5 and Infinite, attributed by insiders to management inefficiencies and reliance on contractors. Activision secured regulatory approval after navigating antitrust scrutiny, positioning its multi‑studio pipeline [...]

Apple’s latest Mac mini models, the M6 and M5 Pro, have reverted to soldered internal SSDs, ending the aftermarket upgrade option that existed on the earlier M4 and M4 Pro units. Expand Mac mini confirmed the NAND chips are now permanently attached to the logic board, making removable storage modules impossible. The company, which previously sold 1 TB and 2 TB upgrade kits for the M4 line at $300 and $420 respectively, says support for the new models “looks unlikely.” Apple’s [...]

Arista Networks disclosed that attackers are actively exploiting a newly identified vulnerability in the on‑premises VeloCloud Orchestrator (VCO), the management server for Arista’s SD‑WAN Edge devices. The flaw, catalogued as CVE‑2026‑93952, receives a CVSS 3.1 rating of 10.0 and permits unauthenticated remote users to invoke privileged internal functions on VCO hosts that use certificate‑based authentication for Edge devices. Only orchestrators configured for certificate acquisition or required modes are vulnerable, and exploitation requires network access to the VCO web [...]

Apple’s hardware launch has encountered problems. Within hours of the September 18 release, owners of the Apple Watch Series 12 and Watch Ultra 4 reported reboots that display the Apple logo before returning to watchOS. Crash logs show a Neural Engine timeout, with a command exceeding the 2,000‑millisecond limit by 20 ms, triggering kernel panics. The failures occur during Siri AI use, watch‑face editing, app launches, calls, workouts, and when idle, and persist despite the watchOS 27.0 build and an update. A [...]

Babcock International and Arqit Quantum demonstrated a quantum‑safe data link at Defence Vehicle Dynamics (DVD) 2026. Scenario data collected at Millbrook was encrypted with Arqit’s software and transmitted to Babcock’s Ground Deployed Advanced Mortar System (GDAMS) at a second site without any physical inline encryptors. The test used a layered encryption network that can operate over 4G/5G, Wi‑Fi, satcom and legacy tactical radios, showing end‑to‑end protection for headquarters‑to‑platform communications in contested environments. The exercise follows a newly [...]

Kairos Power announced that Samsung C&T will partner to construct a 50‑megawatt demonstration nuclear reactor for Google, targeting completion by 2030. Samsung will contribute up to $100 million in equity and in‑kind engineering services, with $70 million as a cash equity stake. The collaboration leverages Samsung’s experience on a dozen reactors worldwide. Kairos, already building two reactors in Oak Ridge, Tennessee—Hermes 1 (a low‑power test unit) and Hermes 2 (its first commercial‑scale plant)—will deliver the first 50 MW of power under its [...]