Zachary Tong had never designed a chip. He had never programmed an FPGA either, and he will tell you his electrical skills were rough. With about a month left before the first wafer.space deadline, he still decided to write a microprocessor, send the file to a real foundry, and wait to see if silicon came back alive.

After researching old processor ideas, he eventually settled on Transport Triggered Architecture, an unusual choice. A normal chip is told to add one register to another and store the result. BreakingTTAPs mostly moves data. You enter a value into a port on a functional unit, and the operation occurs when the data arrives. He has two 32-bit busses side by side, so he can complete two of those moves in a single clock cycle, which is effectively enough to qualify as superscalar in today’s terms.

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The clock speed is in the 18-20 megahertz range. Program memory featured 1,024 slots, each with two instructions, plus 256 words of stack and 4 kilobytes of general purpose RAM. There are approximately 80 operations spread among 20-30 functional units, including branches, comparisons, math, bitwise operations, and a random number generator for good measure. The pin headers provide sixteen general-purpose inputs and sixteen outputs, as well as an 8-bit parallel boot channel for loading programs. Unfortunately, his SPI is dead on the die, and the UART is a write-off; nevertheless, it may still be recovered.

One specific section of code is a huge pain in the neck since a multiply-and-accumulate unit took up a significant amount of space on the die and fouled up the timing. Tong was still new to this type of stuff, so he didn’t feel comfortable digging into the failure all the way to the bottom of it, thus the clock speed target remained a fight until the file had to be pushed out the door. He developed the logic in Spade, a hardware language he is also learning on the side, and then used open-source tools to arrange the transistors and draw the cables. The handoff process is also rather stringent, as the foundry expects a clean GDS file, and any minor errors in it become permanent as soon as the wafer begins rolling.

Wafer.space, run by Tim out of Singapore, is the shuttle that made the order possible. The designs are printed onto a single reticle on a GlobalFoundries 180 nm wafer using the GF180MCU mixed-signal process. Every time it prints, we receive a wafer with approximately a thousand dies on it after 3-4 months in the oven. Older geometry implies that the silicon is quite large by today’s standards. Unlike a Tiny Tapeout tile, this die contains only one circuit. The bundled parts we received revealed the real chip underneath, which was viewable via clear epoxy and ready to be inserted into the socket.

Bring-up was the short path, not the careful one. A carrier is slapped into a breadboard, a Raspberry Pi Pico starts up and loads a program, and the chip just counts up to 100 before shutting down. That was the proof in a single loop, with no bother. SPI failed just as expected, according to the debugging. The code for the Spade version, as well as the produced Verilog, are all publicly available, and Tong has even been distributing finished BreakingTTAPs boards to anyone who wants to experiment with one on their bench.

The second design is named BTX. That one is already in the foundry line. It’s a special processor designed specifically for ray tracing, with a completely new graphics system planned for it. Spaces on the shuttle are still available for anyone wishing to create their own chip, as you can purchase a slice of the wafer for a few thousand dollars for a thousand dies, with files expected in December 2026.

I was in the audience at Meta’s Connect conference last week when Mark Zuckerberg held up a pendant in his hands and surprise announced the Muse Charm, a little novelty-like device with Meta’s disarmingly adorable Muse AI agent onboard. Muse Charm is coming as soon as December this year.

But the funny thing is, while most people called it an AI Tamagotchi, all I saw was a strapless Apple Watch. Is that what the Muse Charm could be, eventually? A watch as well as a pendant? Is this Meta’s entry to wrist wearables in disguise? I’m still thinking about it…because smartwatches are also on their way to being AI assistants soon, too.

Reports of Meta working on its own watch wearable have been cooking for several years now. At Connect, there were smart glasses galore and even a new glasses-like VR headset coming next year. But things were suspiciously quiet on the wrist wearables front.

Meta already has one wrist wearable, the neural band that comes with the Ray-Ban Display glasses. But it received no hardware updates this year, which surprised me. The sensor-studded band uses electromyography, or EMG, to measure skin-contact electrical signals for a set of gesture controls to navigate the heads-up glasses display. Meta’s already ambitiously promised that EMG could open up all sorts of neural input possibilities, even testing the tech in a smart car dashboard prototype.

As far back as last year, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth told me that some sort of display or watch-like evolution of the neural band could be in the works next. And Meta already introduced a partnership with Garmin to link fitness tracking to smart glasses last year.

AI agents as Meta’s new priority

The Muse Charm, however, brings a different piece of the puzzle to the table. Muse AI is Meta’s biggest priority now, clearly, based on its widespread availability on desktops and smartphones and on the company’s intentions to put the new agentic AI on all its smart glasses and, eventually, Meta’s VR Glasses. And where else could Muse work well? Enter the Charm.

The Charm has another watch-like tell. It’s powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear Elite chipset, which already runs on Samsung’s latest smartwatches. The Wear Elite, as I learned from Qualcomm earlier this year, is optimized for a range of AI-ready wearables, ranging from watches to pendants to even glasses. There’s no reason why Meta’s Charm couldn’t easily get a wrist strap…and a watch OS to go with it.

Many reasons for a Meta smartwatch

A smartwatch would benefit Meta on several fronts. Clearly, the company wants to keep breaking into lifestyle wearables, and watches could offer another way onto people besides faces. Fitness and health tracking would give Meta data that Muse and its smart glasses could use. And watches are a key part of the glasses interface’s future. Google’s glasses will work with Wear OS watches soon. Apple’s rumored glasses will likely work with Apple Watches.

And Meta has to find a better way to make its neural band more wearable. I find the first-gen neural band fascinating in theory, but an annoying extra thing to charge in practice. If it doesn’t become a watch, or at least a fitness tracker, why wear it at all? The neural band doesn’t even control anything other than Meta’s one line of display glasses right now, but chances are Meta’s going to try to figure out ways it could work with the rest of its smart glasses lineup, and VR too.

Google and Apple are already showing how quickly smartwatches are becoming more like AI companions. Gemini lives on Wear OS watches. Apple’s adding memory-assisting audio intelligence modes to its new watches later this fall. Both can tap into Gemini and the new Siri, respectively.

Meta has Muse now. And a charm by the end of the year. Is the watch after that? Meta didn’t have any comment on the topic when I reached out to ask, but I think we’re seeing the beta test in action right in front of our eyes. Or is this the pivot to a modular idea that could be a pendant and a wristworn device, without committing to either? 

One thing’s clear, no matter what: Meta’s looking for ways for that disarmingly adorable Muse mascot to be with us all the time, even without glasses. And the Charm looks like the experiment.

Scott Stein

Editor at Large

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I started with CNET reviewing laptops in 2009. Now I explore wearable tech, VR/AR, tablets, gaming and future/emerging trends in our changing world. Other obsessions include magic, immersive theater, puzzles, board games, cooking, improv and the New York Jets. My background includes an MFA in theater which I apply to thinking about immersive experiences of the future.

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Blaming a “significant rise” in AI submissions, Google has paused its open source bug bounty program until next year.

Last year, TechCrunch reported that cybersecurity experts were warning of that AI slop posed a serious risk to bug bounty programs. Looks like that’s the issue confronting Google’s Open Source Software Vulnerability Rewards Program, where researchers were rewarded for finding vulnerabilities in the company’s open source software.

In posts on X and the program website, Google said the bug bounty program was paused as of October 1, with a promise to provide “an update” in the first quarter of 2027. According to Tom’s Hardware, Google engineers and open source maintainers were overwhelmed by reports that were invalid or contained hallucinations.

“This pause is due to a significant rise in automated submissions, the vast majority of which are not valid,” the company said.

In the meantime, participants are encouraged to consider Google’s other bug bounty programs.

Google OSS VRP: History and Scope

Google’s Open Source Vulnerability Rewards Program (OSS VRP) was launched in August 2022. It rewards security researchers for identifying vulnerabilities in Google’s open-source software projects.

The program covers the latest versions of open-source software hosted in public repositories owned by Google on GitHub, as well as selected repositories on other platforms.

It also includes repository configuration settings, such as GitHub Actions workflows, access control rules and GitHub application configurations.

Rewards range from $100 to $31,337 based on the severity level of the reported flaws and the project’s importance.

The OSS VRP is one of several bug bounty programs operated by Google and has a relatively narrow focus.

Vulnerabilities in Google’s open source projects that are closely linked to Google Cloud or AI products are directed to the Google Cloud Vulnerability Reward Program (Cloud VRP) or the AI Vulnerability Reward Program (AI VRP), allowing reports to be routed to the teams best placed to assess and address them.

Google Plans OSS VRP Overhaul

The suspension will not affect OSS VRP supply-chain reports or any reports already submitted, Google said.

The company plans to “reformat” the program and expects to provide an update in the first quarter of 2027.

“As an alternative, we encourage you to find impact across our other VRP programs and submit there instead, or pursue the Patch Rewards Program,” Google said.

Bottom line: Steam is on course to generate more than $20 billion in gross revenue in 2026, a first for the platform, after posting record results for September and the third quarter, according to estimates from Alinea Analytics. The gains came from a mix of new releases, established franchises and free-to-play games that keep drawing spending long after launch. With one quarter left, Valve’s PC gaming platform needs roughly $3.5 billion to reach the milestone.

Steam took in an estimated $1.7 billion in September, 13% more than the previous September record, set in 2025. Its estimated third-quarter revenue reached $5.5 billion, up 12% from the same period last year.

The September result came from a familiar mix: big paid releases, durable franchises and free-to-play titles built around in-game purchases. The numbers suggest Steam no longer depends on a single kind of game sale to drive revenue.

New releases can produce a sharp burst of revenue, while games such as Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2 keep earning money through active player communities and digital-item sales.

Through the first nine months of 2026, Steam generated an estimated $16.5 billion, compared with $14.5 billion over the same stretch of 2025. At that pace, the platform needs about $3.5 billion in the final quarter to clear $20 billion for the year.

New games played a meaningful role in September. Among Steam’s 500 top-grossing titles that month, games released in 2026 accounted for about 33.6% of revenue, according to Alinea, and new intellectual property made up 20.5% of that.

That doesn’t mean newer games displaced the industry’s biggest brands. Established franchises, which include remakes and remasters, accounted for almost 80% of revenue among the top 500. The two figures overlap because they slice the data differently, by release year and by franchise, so a 2026 sequel counts in both. Steam’s strongest performers still tend to be games with recognizable names, built-in audiences and frequent content updates.

Free-to-play games remained a major source of revenue as well. Counter-Strike 2, Apex Legends, PUBG and Dota 2 together generated almost $168 million in September, per Alinea’s estimates, or nearly 10% of Steam’s estimated monthly revenue.

Those games show why PC platforms can’t be judged by unit sales alone. Free-to-play titles may cost nothing to download, but they can drive steady spending on cosmetic items, battle passes and other digital content. For Steam, those transactions turn a large player base into recurring revenue.

Paid games accounted for several of the month’s biggest individual performances. PvP shooter Wardogs brought in an estimated $86.9 million in the roughly three weeks after it entered Early Access on September 10. Onimusha: Way of the Sword generated $30.4 million during the month, and The Blood of Dawnwalker added $26.9 million.

EA Sports FC 27 contributed another $20.7 million from Steam copies, though most of its sales were on consoles.

Wardogs’ Early Access performance is notable because it shows how large a role the model now plays on Steam. Developers can release a game before it’s finished, collect revenue early and use player feedback to shape updates. For multiplayer games, that can also help build a community before a full launch.

• Oregon’s data center tax breaks have become a major political flashpoint statewide
• A warning about one election cycle helped accelerate Oregon’s grassroots organizing
• More than $450 million in exemptions intensified scrutiny of Oregon data centers

Oregon’s expanding data center industry has triggered an increasingly organized political backlash involving residents, environmental groups, educators, farmers and elected officials.

The dispute intensified after reports showed Oregon data centers receiving more than $450 million in property tax exemptions during 2026, including about $85 million in the Hillsboro area.

In this week’s Sunday Reboot, the expansion of Apple Pay and Apple Music to some countries has taken a decade longer than they really should. They also demonstrate how delays can happen for many different reasons.

Sunday Reboot is a weekly column covering some of the lighter stories within the Apple reality distortion field from the past seven days. All to get next week underway with a good first step.

Apple Music adds to its territory list

It may be a surprise to some readers, but I’m not in the United States. I’m one of the few members of the editorial team based in the United Kingdom, but trained to write in the American way, and forget about the letter U in some words.

This does lead to some issues when it comes to trying out Apple’s new services. It’s a problem when your whole job is to talk about them.

Thankfully, the UK does have access to almost all of Apple’s services, but there are blind spots and differences.

For example, while I have access to Apple Pay, I cannot use services like Apple Card because they are US-only for the moment. Except that I have to change region sometimes for reporting, and now I annoyingly have an Apple Cash card permanently visible in the Wallet app that I cannot use at all.

A little less pressing is the lack of puzzles in News+ over here. Though I can understand the financial problems in setting up Apple Card in the UK, it seems there would be fewer obstacles in adding brainteasers to Apple News, just as U.S. users enjoy.

That said, I am still quite glad to be in the UK where Apple products and services come into play. Partly because we don’t suffer from the EU blackout of some upcoming features.

We at least get the updates fairly quickly. Unlike some service updates that happened this week.

Apple Music has expanded into four new countries, including Albania.

On Wednesday, an update to Apple Music finally rolled it out into four countries: Albania, Brunei, Burkina Faso, and Pakistan.

This sounds fairly OK, until you remember that Apple Music was unveiled in June 2015 in over 100 countries. It’s taken over 11 years for Apple Music to be available in those four countries.

There’s no real explanation for the lack of support in those countries, nor why it took so long.

The more time-consuming problems would revolve around licensing negotiations. However, both Apple and record labels like money, and so you’d expect negotiations to happen at a fairly quick pace.

Then again, it could easily be because Apple has bigger problems at hand than adding support to some countries it’s seemingly forgotten about for over a decade.

Regardless, it’s a good thing that Apple Music is now available in four more territories that endured a very long wait.

It also reminds me that I’m lucky to live where I do. While there are always going to be differences between US and UK availability for things, I’m not realistically going to be waiting for a decade for anything.

Wait, Apple Pay wasn’t in India already?

Slightly less puzzling is the Apple Pay update on the same day. After launching in 2014, Apple finally brought Apple Pay live in India.

It certainly makes sense for Apple to do so, because it is a massive market, and an emerging one at that.

The problem here is that Apple said back in 2017 that it was trying to bring Apple Pay to India. That’s a nine-year wait.

As for why it took so long, we could certainly blame regulations for that. In June 2022, more financial laws were introduced, which got in the way.

While in the rest of the world you could use Face ID for a transaction, India instead wanted everyone to use its Aadhaar ID system instead. The laws also covered subscriptions, requiring banks to notify users 24 hours in advance of any recurring transactions, and allowing them to cancel.

Apple Pay is finally available in India.

There’s also the matter of a card tokenization framework, which required the use of encrypted tokens issued by local banks in India. This would’ve required Apple to make changes to how Apple Pay’s security and authentication ultimately functioned.

Support for the country’s Unified Payments Interface also caused problems.

It was so bad that, in 2022, Apple gave up on credit and debit cards completely in the country.

During this time, both Google Play and Samsung Wallet opted to comply with the law instead of ceasing card payments. It was clearly a case of Apple seeing a massive amount of work and rules that it would have to comply with, and the belief that it could work around or negotiate the hurdles away.

After negotiating with banks to get around the problematic elements, Apple eventually tested card payments in India in July 2026, months before Apple Pay’s rollout.

The final introduction of Apple Pay in India is certainly a good thing for Apple, especially in such an important market.

It will be interesting to see how much change Apple Pay will make to iPhone sales in India. It’s main rivals have a very large head start because of Apple’s unwillingness to abide by the new laws, so it has a lot of catching up to do.

Finally, eventually

Apple’s decision to expand the reach of two of its services at the same time demonstrates that there can be a variety of reasons for a delay of a service rolling out in a country.

For Apple Pay in India, as well as the various features EU users cannot access, it’s a regulatory problem. When you have to deal with legal issues affecting over a hundred countries simultaneously, you have to prioritize and pick your battles.

Even if it’s something that can take years to fully resolve.

For others, like bringing Apple Music to Albania, it seems to be less about legal issues and sticking to the letter of the law. It could just as easily be Apple making it a very low priority for it to work on because there’s not enough value to work harder at it.

With Apple Pay in India, there’s enough of a carrot for Apple to work to fix it. Even if it does take close to a decade to resolve.

Last week’s Sunday Reboot discussed Apple’s fitness changes, Apple Watch nagging, and how the Whoop-like device could be a very beneficial wearable.

The camera housing on my Meta Nova glasses is smaller than on the Gen 2 glasses. From a distance, they might even read as rivets at a glance. (I asked my colleague Reece Rogers how they looked on my face, and from a few feet away in the WIRED office, he didn’t even notice they were camera-enabled glasses at first.)

They feel and function the same as before. You can interact with an AI assistant or snap photos and video with the press of a button. Conversation Focus, a mode that helps hard-of-hearing people better pick up spoken words, is a feature that only works in early access on Meta’s Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses. It seems very helpful, but my Meta-designed frames don’t have it yet.

They also don’t have integration with Meta’s Muse AI, which the company says is coming later this year. I’m intrigued by that, even if having access to a camera on your face will certainly help a service that seems better at surveilling than helping its users. That said, I’ve found Muse more useful than Meta’s current AI assistant, and I look forward to asking my entirely too cute AI buddy to assist me via my glasses.

Unfortunately, Meta’s current AI assistant on the glasses is still terrible. I tried to ask what features the glasses I was wearing had, and it failed miserably. The AI couldn’t get any of the details right, even when I told it specifically which frames I was wearing and let it snap a picture of the Meta product page for reference. I wouldn’t want to depend on the AI to help me sort out anything with some real complexity.

If you pretty much ignore the AI entirely, the Gen 3 glasses do just about everything Meta promises. They capture nice photos and video, all while maintaining an indicator light that has recently been made more tamper-proof. (That’s not necessarily enough to deter the creeps.) The frames are wearable, and the software is competent enough. They’re also pricey, so maybe you can save some cash sticking with the Gen 2. They’ll all do what you probably expect them to do. Just maybe don’t be weird about it, all right?