TechCapsules

Apple’s Series 12 and Ultra 4 introduce new health complications—live heart rate, step count, and readiness score—displayable on watch faces. Users can enable music detection via Smart Stack, allowing automatic song recognition without Siri. The Siri Modular face offers customizable layouts and colors. To activate readiness, users must complete Health Details, set up Activity, overnight vitals, and sleep tracking for at least seven nights. The Vitals app now shows daytime metrics, enhancing health insights. Upcoming features include Siri Recap [...]

Meta released version 129 for its Ray‑Ban Meta smart glasses, adding audio‑balance and mono‑playback options. The update also includes Spatial Audio support, anti‑tampering camera safeguards, and new location features. Version 128, now broadly available, introduced turn‑by‑turn walking navigation that pulls data from the paired phone and can share routes from mapping apps to Meta AI. These enhancements aim to improve user experience and privacy on the glasses.

Rapidus Corporation announced the creation of the Rapidus Collaborative Open Rapid Ecosystem (CORE), a global framework aimed at accelerating the development and mass production of 2nm semiconductors. The initiative partners 17 design firms—including Cadence, Synopsys, and Wipro—to provide design resources, expertise, and early-stage collaboration for customers worldwide. CORE will expand to include EDA tools, IP, and other ecosystem components, positioning Rapidus to support the entire semiconductor value chain from research to manufacturing.

Apple has increased the number of personalized email addresses that can be created with custom domains on iCloud+. The update, announced on September 30 via a quietly revised Apple Support page, lifts the limit from three to ten addresses per domain. Users can now set up to five custom domains, and each shared user may create up to ten personalized addresses. The change applies per user, not per account, and is expected to benefit families and small businesses [...]

Google has confirmed that the Googlebook, an Android-based tablet, now allows users to unlock its bootloader, enabling custom OS installations or advanced app testing. The process mirrors that of Pixel devices, requiring OEM unlocking in settings, then a specific key sequence (Esc + F2 + power). Google cautions most users need not unlock the bootloader. Additionally, Magisk root support is in development, with developer John Wu noting the Googlebook’s suitability for modding and anticipating future tweaks for full root functionality. [...]

Reflection AI announced Beam, a 501‑billion‑parameter open‑weight model that claims to match Chinese rivals like Z.ai’s GLM‑5.2 on advanced reasoning benchmarks while using 3‑4× less inference compute. Beam, trained on 23.8 trillion tokens with a 1‑million‑token context window, is positioned as a “workhorse” for enterprises, governments, and developers. The Brooklyn‑based startup, backed by Nvidia, Sequoia, and Lightspeed, aims to enable “AI factories” that let institutions train custom models on proprietary data.

OpenAI announced a new text watermarking system, textGrain, to comply with the EU AI Act. The invisible statistical signal will be added to ChatGPT and Codex outputs in the EU and to select API models globally, with opt‑in available. OpenAI also opened limited access to a detector for researchers, noting current false‑positive and false‑negative rates and limited effectiveness on short or heavily edited passages. The company plans to refine the technology and release it as open source. [...]

Microsoft partnered with Indonesian NGO Yayasan Rumah Energi and regional disaster agencies to deliver clean water during a drought emergency in Karawang and Bekasi regencies. In August 2026, El Nino‑driven low river levels and failing irrigation left 46 villages without reliable water for cooking, washing and bathing. Microsoft supplied 28 portable storage tanks, each holding 5,000 litres, and filled them with 140,000 litres of drinking water for 12 villages. The tanks were placed after joint mapping by BPBD officials and [...]