An alleged benchmark for the M6 Pro has surfaced on Geekbench, calling into question earlier rumors about a shorter Apple Silicon generation that skips the Pro and Max variants altogether.

Before the introduction of the M6 Mac mini, the rumor mill was dead set on the idea that Apple will be shortening the M6 generation of Apple Silicon in favor of moving to M7 faster. After the launch, a benchmark result may have indicated that there will be more to the M6 generation than previously expected.

A Geekbench 7 score surfacing on Reddit for a “Mac18,6” dated September 18 2026 is claimed to run on an “Apple M6 Pro” with one processor and 18 cores. This is apparently split into two clusters of six cores and 12 cores, which may refer to “Super” performance core and efficiency core counts.

The listing adds there is a base frequency of 4.78GHz, which would correlate to the Super cores in use. The version tested also has 48 gigabytes of memory.

A moderate improvement

If genuine, the posted results for the M6 Pro include a single-core score of 4,150 and a multi-core of 37,565.

The M6 Mac mini results that were leaked earlier have a similar single-core score of 4,071, which would be expected here. It would be a result based on the fastest available core.

The alleged M6 Pro single-core benchmark against the leaked M6 Mac mini and the M5 Pro

It is an improvement on the M5 Pro included in the 16-inch MacBook Pro, which scores 3,692.

For multi-core, the number of cores matter for the result. That would explain how the M6 Pro figures are far higher than the 22,783 from the M6 Mac mini and its 12 CPU cores.

Multi-core benchmarks of the M6 Pro against the M6 and the M5 Pro

It is more in the ballpark of the M5 Pro, which also has 18 cores and has a slightly smaller 33,595 score. The generational difference here is expected due to the M6 Pro having better, faster cores.

More life than expected

Despite its plausibility, it’s entirely possible that someone faked the result and posted it to Geekbench. True or not, it’s something that will cause some observers to consider how Apple will be treating the rest of the M6’s lifespan.

Reports in June and July, chiefly from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, insist that Apple will only run the M6 era for a mere six months. This is an ultra-short lifespan compared to other Apple Silicon generations.

Gurman also said that there won’t be an M6 Pro, M6 Max, nor M6 Ultra release in the generation.

Instead, Apple is supposedly planning to bring the M7 out in the first half of 2027, so that Macs can benefit from the AI-centric chip designs. In that generation, M7 Pro and M7 Max chips would come out later in the same year.

If true, the benchmark may be a precursor to the launch of other Mac models under the M6 generation. It may also be a sign that we have a bit of a longer wait before M7 comes along.

BOSGAME E5 Mini PC, priced at $186.99 with promotion code: 5400U45 (was $340), keeps showing up in deal threads because a machine this small almost never arrives with two 2.5-gigabit Ethernet ports, three 4K outputs, and a licensed copy of Windows 11 Pro for less than $300. Inside is a 15 watt laptop processor, a Ryzen 3 5400U with 4 cores and 8 threads to get the work done.

The Ryzen 3 5400U can reach 4.0GHz and has an impressive 8MB of L3 cache, all owing to AMD’s Zen 3 design. In contrast, the Ryzen 3 5300U, utilized in other SKUs, has a maximum clock speed of 3.8GHz and 4MB of L3 cache on the slightly older Zen 2 configuration. What exactly do you get out of that? The E5 has a little more oomph than the Intel N150 and N100 boxes that are widely available in this price range, which is why reviewers continue to use it as an office PC, a light virtualization host, and for any quiet box job such as spreadsheets, browser tabs, and video calls.

BOSGAME E5 11 Pro Mini PC, AMD Ryzen 5400U 4C/ 8T, Business Home Office PC

• 【AMD Ryzen 3 5300U CPU: Outperforms N150 & 3500U】 BOSGAME E5 mini PC is powered by the TSMC 7nm FinFET architecture AMD Ryzen 3 5300U processor…
• 【8GB DDR4 RAM & 256GB NVMe SSD Storage】 Installed with high-speed 8GB DDR4 dual-channel memory and a fast 256GB M.2 2280 SSD, eliminating slow…
• 【High-Capacity Dual M.2 SSD Storage Expansion】 Never worry about running out of space for your business files. In addition to the pre-installed…

However, memory and storage are where things become interesting. The 8GB base units can easily be upgraded with a matching SODIMM to achieve dual-channel speed. There are two slots for accomplishing this, each of which can support up to 32GB of DDR4-3200 RAM, which is important if you’re running virtual machines or a software firewall on the side. Storage amounts to 256GB out of the box, but you do get a second empty M.2 2280 socket, allowing you to swap out the factory SSD for a new NVMe drive (up to 4TB) without having to open the chassis. Even if you open the case, this 8GB/256GB machine can be transformed into a fine daily driver with a $30 memory upgrade and a larger SSD.

On the back, you’ll discover a couple of Realtek RTL8125 ports, which, believe it or not, are the reason this model is still suggested for home laboratories. Each port operates at 2.5Gbps, allowing you to connect one cable to the WAN and one to the LAN and run pfSense or OPNsense without a cumbersome USB adaptor. Want to run a small NAS or link-aggregate your network? Same ports, same story. However, the most important element here is wired speed. Wireless is kind of a compromise. According to the boxes, this device features Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0, which is fine; after all, you wouldn’t expect Wi-Fi 6 at this price.

The graphics don’t skimp out. You get HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort, and a full-function USB-C port, so you can connect three 4K panels at 60Hz without a problem. The Vega 6 graphics can manage that load with ease, and it even decodes 4K video like nobody’s business. Want to play older games or imitate them? You can do this at 1080p with low settings.

The USB ports are quite mixed. You’ll find a front USB-C port as well as a handful of USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, allowing you to connect disks and docks to the front panel. The rear panel also includes two USB 2.0 connections and a 3.5mm combo jack. To top it all off, the chassis measures approximately 130mm square and 46mm height, making it compact enough to hide behind your monitor even if you don’t already have a VESA plate.

The fintech announced a $182m investment in the country over the next five years.

Revolut has applied for a Swiss banking licence as part of its continued global expansion campaign. The UK fintech has established or is aiming to set up authorised banking entities across the globe, including in Colombia, the US, France, Peru, the UK, Australia and Mexico.

Revolut already has more than 1.3m customers in Switzerland, currently served by Revolut Bank UAB, which is licensed in Lithuania. Obtaining a Swiss banking licence would mean the fintech can offer its customers Swiss IBANs, salary accounts, e-bills, merchant acquiring and deposit protection under the country’s strict standards.

The company also announced plans to invest more than 150m Swiss francs ($182m) in Switzerland over the next five years to create local jobs and support product development. Revolut also intends to make a number of senior leadership appointments to further strengthen its local banking build-out.

“Together with our existing banking licences and regulatory infrastructure across Europe, this would further strengthen our compliance, governance and regulatory framework,” said David Tirado, Revolut’s chief commercial officer.

Julian Biegmann, Revolut’s general manager for Switzerland, added: “Revolut is already Switzerland’s leading fintech. With our own banking licence, we would become a true Swiss bank, able to offer our more than 1.3m customers our leading Revolut banking product with a Swiss finish.”

Earlier this year, reports suggested that the fintech was on its way to a $200bn valuation in an eventual initial public offering expected around 2028. It was last valued at $75bn after a major share sale last November.

News of the company’s continued expansion comes just days after it disclosed a data breach that is understood to have affected nearly 700 customers globally, including 12 in Ireland.

In a community alert last week, the company explained that it disclosed sensitive customer data to an unauthorised fraudulent party after receiving requests for information from an email with a government agency domain.

The company mistakenly fulfilled the data requests before realising that the sender was phishing for data, it said. The disclosed data included full names, dates of birth, occupations, addresses, contact details, passports, drivers’ licences, financial statements and facial verification images.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

First look: Valve has open-sourced Lepton, the Android compatibility layer built for the Steam Frame headset, giving VR developers a way to bring existing Android games to the device without rebuilding them for an entirely different platform. The newly available code also offers a detailed look at how Valve tailors an Android environment for VR gaming on SteamOS, covering everything from graphics access to development and profiling tools.

The code is now available through Valve’s GitLab repository.

The release follows the Steam Frame’s launch and builds on Valve’s March announcement of Lepton alongside the Steam Frame Verified certification requirements.

In purpose, the project resembles Proton, Valve’s tool for running Windows games on SteamOS and Linux, though it takes a different technical route: rather than translating Windows software interfaces, Lepton provides a purpose-built, game-tuned Android environment.

Valve has kept that environment deliberately narrow. Lepton isn’t designed to turn Steam Frame into a general-purpose Android device, nor does it aim to support every Android app. To keep overhead low, the software disables Android services that aren’t needed for gaming – a trade-off that can affect apps relying on those services.

Lepton is built to work closely with the SteamOS host system, mounting host libraries for graphics drivers, Steam and Steamworks, and Vulkan layers. Valve lists support for graphics stacks including Mesa and Zink, along with Vulkan tooling for foveated rendering and render-pass optimization.

Those capabilities are crucial for VR games, where rendering efficiency and stable frame delivery are central to comfort and image quality. By exposing the host graphics stack to the Android environment, Valve appears to be avoiding some of the overhead that can come with a more isolated container approach.

The project also ships with tools aimed at developers porting games to the platform, including support for debuggers such as strace, GDB, LLDB and RenderDoc, plus Perfetto for performance profiling. The flatscreen application window stays hidden by default, though developers can surface it for testing and troubleshooting.

Valve says Lepton runs without root access or root-level setup tools, with every process inside a Lepton instance running as the same non-root user. Per the project’s documentation, there’s no enforced isolation between apps within an instance, so each app is expected to run in its own separate Android container.

For developers, the open-sourced code offers a clear window into Valve’s approach to Android game support on SteamOS, including its use of host graphics libraries, Vulkan layers and a reduced Android software stack. It also gives Linux developers a base for experimenting with other uses, though Valve cautioned that those are outside Lepton’s main purpose.

The initiative aims to ‘position Ireland as a leading testbed for insurance innovation by connecting emerging companies directly with insurers, industry experts, investors and experienced founders’.

12 Ireland-based insurance technology start-ups will participate in the second edition of InsTech.ie’s Foundry, a pre-accelerator programme run in partnership with Furthr, one of the country’s four Business Innovation Centres.

InsTech.ie is a national body that aims to connect start-ups, insurers, investors and policymakers to accelerate innovation and help Irish insurtech companies scale globally.

It is supported by 24 insurance industry members, tracks more than 120 Irish insurtech companies, and has eight innovation partnerships, including with IDA Ireland, KPMG and Enterprise Ireland.

The Foundry initiative is designed to create a direct route between established insurance expertise and younger or smaller companies developing technologies capable of shaping the insurance sector’s future, according to InsTech.ie.

The programme aims to “position Ireland as a leading testbed for insurance innovation by connecting emerging companies directly with insurers, industry experts, investors and experienced founders”, according to its operator.

“The first Foundry cohort showed what can happen when ambitious founders are given direct access to the insurance expertise, networks and decision-makers that can help turn promising ideas into commercially viable businesses,” said Gary Leyden, CEO of InsTech.ie.

“With cohort two, we want to build on that momentum and give another group of companies the opportunity to validate their solutions, develop meaningful industry relationships and accelerate their path to market.

“Ireland has a unique combination of insurance expertise and technology talent, and the Foundry is about bringing those two strengths together.”

The 12 selected companies, and their technological offerings, are:

Alteric AI

An AI orchestration layer for commercial brokerages to automate workflows across servicing, renewals, claims and new business.

Fairwrite

A start-up aiming to make life and protection insurance more inclusive for people with mental health conditions, disabilities or neurodivergence through a more individualised approach to underwriting.

Finch AI Systems/LitAgent

An explainable AI platform to support personal-injury reserving and settlement valuation, producing consistent, traceable assessments while keeping the final decision with the claims professional.

Global Nutrition Value

This company is creating a time-stamped evidence trail for food safety and compliance data with applications across underwriting, loss prevention, claims and product recalls.

Insurteam MGA

A start-up creating a solution that combines embedded travel insurance distribution with AI-enabled claims handling, allowing partners to offer cover at checkout and customers to manage claims through WhatsApp.

Maximo

A platform connecting pensions, tax and open banking to help consumers better understand and increase their pension contributions and access associated tax relief.

Model Library/Elliptic

This start-up is developing a climate-risk modelling platform to help insurers and other risk-transfer providers understand and quantify basis risk in parametric insurance.

RMI Agentic

A solution designed for managing risks created when autonomous AI agents transact on behalf of consumers.

SeatFair Technologies

This start-up is exploring how preference-pricing and optimisation technology could support complex reinsurance placements involving price, capacity, counterparties and terms.

TalkTerms AI/Swift Settle

An AI decision-support platform designed to help insurance professionals manage complex claims and complaints while retaining human oversight.

Vardus

A pre-send compliance platform that checks customer communications, identifies potential regulatory issues and provides greater oversight of recurring compliance risks.

Voxalytics

This start-up’s solution analyses broker-client calls to automate administration and identify portfolio-level signals around customer retention, churn, cross-sell and growth.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Tonight’s UFC 331 headline bout is a classic case of revenge or repeat as Joshua Van puts the UFC flyweight title he won against Alexandre Pantoja on the line at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. The Fearless won the belt in controversial fashion in December 2025 and the Cannibal is determined to right the wrong he has felt ever since.

Van’s victory at UFC 323 came after Pantjoa suffered a dislocated elbow 26 seconds into the original fight when the former fell and landed on the latter. The Brazilian has felt ignored by Dana White ever since, despite having championship victories against Brandon Moreno, Brandon Royval, Steve Erceg, Kai Asakura, and Kai Kara-France on his resumé. The 36-year-old has the experience and fuel from that defeat to inspire him. He’ll become the third flyweight champion to regain the belt after Moreno and Deiveson Figueiredo if he wins.

Andrew Bosworth used an AMA on his personal Instagram to argue that the conversation about Meta’s glasses should not be shaped by a relatively small number of bad actors. Katie Notopoulos reported the exchange for Business Insider.

Most people use the glasses normally, he said, much as they would a phone camera, only more convenient and more hands-free. He pointed to the indicator light and the anti-tampering measures that stop recording when it is covered.

The first defence is probably true and does not answer the question

Almost certainly most wearers are doing nothing objectionable. That is true of most technologies and it has never been the test for a device carried through public space.

The phone comparison is where the argument gives itself away. A raised phone is a visible act that the person opposite can see and respond to, and the entire selling point of the glasses is that recording no longer looks like anything.

More in the moment is the same property as harder to notice. The convenience and the problem are one feature.

The second defence has already failed in public

The recording light is the mechanism Meta has staked its answer on, and it has been closing holes in it all year. A software update stopped a loophole where a wearer could start recording, wait, then cover the light, and it bricked cameras on units where the light had been drilled out.

That enforcement was real and it was not small. Meta described the action as covering fewer than one in a thousand glasses ever sold, which on seven million pairs in a year is a great many devices.

The fix is also already beaten. TNW reported this month that a $2 sticker defeats the feature, which is a poor foundation for a privacy guarantee.

The roadmap is the strongest rebuttal

The Information reported this week that Meta is preparing a camera-free version of the glasses, codenamed Luna, with six microphones and no camera at all. TNW covered the report, which points to an unveiling at Connect on 23 September and shipments in October.

Companies do not remove the defining feature of a product to placate a small number of bad actors. They remove it when the category has a perception problem they cannot moderate their way out of.

Bosworth said at the end of the AMA that there is more to say at Connect. That is five days after he said the discourse had been captured by a fringe.

What Luna would actually change

Taking the camera out addresses the bystander problem directly, and that is a real answer rather than a cosmetic one. It also removes the thing most people buy the glasses for.

Six microphones is not nothing, though. The visual privacy question would be solved and replaced by an audio one, and there is no equivalent of the recording light for a microphone.

Nobody has established a convention for signalling that a face-worn device is listening. Luna would ship into that gap.

Europe is not treating this as discourse

The enforcement is concrete and it is mostly happening on this side of the Atlantic. Paris prosecutors have opened a criminal inquiry into sexual harassment linked to smart glasses used to film women in the street, and the French cybercrime unit has been testing the devices.

Norway is weighing restrictions on camera-equipped wearables. Hamburg’s data protection commissioner has suggested the glasses may already fall foul of German rules on concealed recording equipment.

The regulatory question is also further along than the product one. The LED update arrived alongside French and European data protection scrutiny, and the European Data Protection Board has a report coming on the category.

The moderation record is mixed by its own reporter’s account

Bosworth said harassing content will be removed and accounts taken down where the behaviour is systematic. Business Insider, which examined how the policy was working over the summer, found the moderation uneven.

The targeting has also been narrow. Videos of men harassing women have drawn action, while prank clips tormenting retail workers have been reported as a growing problem.

The competitive read

Meta is not the only company weighing this. Apple is targeting 2027 for its own glasses and has not settled the camera question.

If the market leader ships a camera-free model this autumn, that becomes the reference point for everyone still deciding. The bad actors framing looks weaker every week the roadmap moves the other way.

What to watch

Watch Connect on 23 September. If Luna appears without a camera, the product has conceded what the AMA did not.

Watch what Meta says about the microphones. A camera-free device that listens continuously needs its own indicator, and the company has not proposed one.

Garmin’s toughest smartwatch just got $250 cheaper, and this is the one rated to handle a 40-metre dive like it’s nothing.

Durability like that comes standard on the fenix 8 AMOLED GPS Smartwatch, 47mm, now cut to $749.99, down from its usual $999.99 price tag, a straight saving of $250 on one of Garmin’s most feature-packed watches to date this year.