Meta has withdrawn from RE100, the global corporate clean energy initiative it joined a decade ago as Facebook, after the Climate Group confirmed the company can no longer meet the programme’s technical criteria. The departure follows Meta’s commitment to building 10 natural gas plants to power its Hyperion AI data centre campus in Louisiana, a project now valued at more than $200 billion. Meta is the highest-profile company to leave the initiative since its founding in 2014.

RE100 requires members to source 100 percent of their electricity from renewable sources. Meta claimed to have met that threshold every year since 2021, using environmental attribute certificates to match its consumption with renewable generation on an annual basis. But the scale of its gas commitments, more than seven gigawatts of new fossil fuel capacity for Hyperion alone plus a 200-megawatt gas plant in Ohio, created what the Climate Group called a structural incompatibility with continued membership.

The Climate Group, which co-founded RE100 with the Carbon Disclosure Project in 2014, said Meta had “withdrawn” because it was “no longer able to meet the technical criteria due to investments made in new gas power.” The initiative still counts 444 corporate members, including Apple, Google, and Microsoft, all of which have also expanded their data centre footprints but have not made gas commitments on the same scale. Microsoft recently signed a 20-year gas deal with Chevron for a Texas data centre, raising questions about whether other tech giants may face similar scrutiny from RE100 in the months ahead.

Meta still claims to match its electricity usage with “100 percent clean and renewable energy” through certificate purchases, a practice that environmental analysts have long criticised as paper compliance rather than genuine decarbonisation. Jonathan Bruegel, an energy finance analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, described the gap between Meta’s certificate claims and its physical energy mix as a structural divergence that RE100’s exit makes visible. Meta has also signed a deal to beam solar energy from space to its data centres starting in 2030, but that technology remains unproven at commercial scale.

The departure underscores a tension running through the entire AI industry. Companies that spent years building renewable energy credentials are now racing to secure electricity at a pace that renewables alone cannot match, and natural gas has emerged as the default bridge fuel. Whether Meta’s exit from RE100 becomes an isolated case or the beginning of a broader withdrawal by tech companies will depend on how quickly the industry’s power demands outstrip the available renewable supply.

A working 1977 Apple-1 expected to garner at least $300,000 leads RR Auction’s sprawling sale of rare hardware, prototypes, and Steve Jobs memorabilia from Apple’s earliest years.

The Apple-1 comes from Apple’s second batch of 50 machines, according to the auction house. Known as the “Neumark” computer, it sits inside a modified Smith-Corona typewriter case and was restored to working condition by Apple-1 specialist Corey Cohen in June 2026.

Apple sold the Apple-1 as an assembled circuit board rather than a complete consumer computer, so buyers had to add the other components and an enclosure themselves. The Neumark machine stands out because it still works inside the suitcase. The auction also includes surviving documentation.

RR Auction’s estimates aren’t guarantees of what buyers will pay. Final prices will depend on how much competition each lot attracts before the sale closes.

The auction, titled “Steve Jobs & the Computer Revolution: The Apple 50th Anniversary Auction Part Two,” spans early Apple hardware, prototypes, business records, marketing material, and items connected to Jobs and his family.

Other notable lots include a factory-sealed 4GB first-generation iPhone and the P68 “Stealth iPod”, an oversized development prototype Apple used to hide the original iPod’s dimensions. RR Auction estimates each could sell for about $50,000.

Steve Jobs Signed 1976 Apple Computer Company Check to Apple’s First Bookkeeper, Elizabeth Holmes.

The sale also includes an early ventless Apple II with a Rev. 0 logic board and an Apple Lisa-1 with its original “Twiggy” drives. The two computers help show Apple’s progression from its earliest consumer machines to the hardware that paved the way for the Macintosh.

A Jobs-signed Apple business card graded PSA GEM MT 10 carries an estimate of $60,000 or more. A July 29, 1976, Apple check signed by Jobs and made payable to Elizabeth Holmes, whom RR Auction identifies as Apple’s first bookkeeper, is estimated at $25,000 or more.

Jobs family items add a more personal record

Some of the auction’s most unusual items matter less for their technical importance than for what they reveal about Jobs and his family.

A Jobs-signed Apple business card graded PSA GEM MT 10. Image credit: RR Auctions

One is an eighth-grade science fair project Jobs built called “What is the Silicon-Controlled Rectifier?” RR Auction estimates it could sell for $20,000 or more.

The project predates Apple by years and offers an early glimpse of Jobs’s interest in electronics.

The sale also includes a Macintosh 512K and an Apple II that Jobs gave to his father, both with their original accessories and software. RR Auction estimates each computer at $5,000 or more.

Other items from the Jobs family home include framed magazine covers, a rainbow Apple logo stained-glass decoration from Jobs’s childhood bedroom, and electronic components stored at the Los Altos property tied to Apple’s early history.

The Jobs family items probably won’t approach the Apple-1’s price, but they provide personal context that the computer hardware can’t. The magazine covers, stained-glass Apple logo, and stored electronic parts show how Apple’s early history remained intertwined with the Jobs family home.

4GB first-generation iPhone

Bidders must place an initial bid by 6 p.m. Eastern on August 20 to keep participating after the deadline. RR Auction’s 30-minute extended-bidding rule begins at 7 p.m. Eastern.

Multi-color filament printing has always carried a heavy tax. Every time a printer switches filaments mid-layer it pauses, pulls the old plastic back, primes the new one, and often dumps a blob of mixed waste into a purge tower. On complex painted models those swaps can number in the thousands. Print times stretch into days and entire spools disappear into the scrap bin.

YGK3D has just demonstrated a completely new method of printing that can significantly reduce costs. Sentient Stardust, a developer, integrated the approach in issue into a modified version of the Orca Slicer software called OraSlicer-ImageMap. The key to it all is that this software simply applies one solid color to every layer. When you move from one layer to the next, the new color appears on top of the old one, rather than a slew of interrupted tool changes within the same layer.

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How does it determine the color to show on the surface? It’s all down to clever geometry. The program just widens the extrusion on the current layer or moves the perimeter route a fraction of a millimeter to the right. This leaves a small amount of plastic hanging over the edge, which ultimately slides down far enough to cover the layer beneath. The software determines which colour will dominate any given region of the model by altering how much each colour projects out from the layer behind it.

The same principle can be applied to many different colors, not just two or three. With cyan, magenta, yellow, and black loaded into the machine, the rotation of colors across successive layers produces these really nice, fine patterns, and because they are stacked vertically, just like full-spectrum dithering, those patterns optically blend into all kinds of intermediate shades. Gradients also appear much smoother because the colours simply sit side by side rather than competing for space.

He had an owl model that used to take about 5 days and 4,000 tool changes, but with this new process, it took only 3 days and he had already decreased the amount of filament needed in half. The amount of garbage decreased from two kilograms to a few hundred grams. The software begins by taking an already painted 3MF file, converting the surface colors into a texture map, and then applying the overhang modulation automatically as the model is sliced.

This idea comes from a 2018 research report on line-based half-toning for dual-extrusion printers. This early experiment demonstrated how controlled overhangs could disguise one filament behind another. Sentient Stardust has taken that concept and expanded on it, adding image-projection features and putting everything as a usable slicer fork that anyone can download and explore.

Of course, there are certain limits. With three colors on a 0.2mm layer height, the print can appear as if it was done on 0.6mm layer height. Steep walls also limit the software’s options, making the blending effect less effective. Models with very mild curves also limit the technique’s possibilities. However, for the majority of painted objects, the time and material savings outweigh any difference in surface appearance.
[Source]

Europeans now get a direct look at the faces and landscapes that could soon fill their wallets. This week the European Central Bank unveiled ten shortlisted design proposals for the next series of euro notes and opened an online survey so the public can weigh in before a final choice arrives at the end of the year.

These proposals stem from two clear themes that were picked years ago after extensive public involvement and professional opinion was taken into account. One theme honors European culture in common places and concludes with some of Europe’s most well-known figures. The other walks down rivers from their mountain source to the sea, pairing each bit of water with a bird that lives there, as the one on the other side of the river is a key European institution. Both sets include the classic euro denominations from five to two hundred, and don’t worry, there will never be another 500 euro note.

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In the culture series, Maria Callas appears among a group of street performers on the five euro note. Ludwig van Beethoven appears on the tenth with a choir of young singers attending a festival. Marie Curie anchors the twenty in a classroom or at a university. Miguel de Cervantes gives the fifty to readers in a library. Leonardo da Vinci takes over the hundred, among children and adults learning art, while Bertha von Suttner, on the two hundred, has people gathered in a tree-lined square, as she was the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. The back of each note depicts ordinary Europeans participating in the cultural life associated with that figure.

The Rivers and Birds series tells a very different story. On the five euro note, a wall creeper is depicted near the source of a river, with the European Parliament in the backdrop. On the tenth, a kingfisher waits by a waterfall, with the European Commission in the background. Bee-eaters are nesting in a sand bank along a river valley on the twentieth, and they are paired with the ECB building in Europe’s financial district. A white stork soars over a meandering river on the fifty, with the European Court of Justice in the background. An avocet is skimming across a river mouth on the hundredth anniversary of the European Council. A northern gannet is surfing the ocean waves on the two hundred, along with the European Court of Auditors. You can expect that water and wings are up front, whereas institutions are at the back.

Five design teams worked on each theme. On the cultural side, one of the teams, Studio Joost Grootens, clipped historical pictures around the eyes and lips, leaving only observation and expression – it’s like a thread that runs across the designs. Another company, Neue Gestaltung GmbH, positioned the humans against the stars and purposefully selected some featureless modern people to fill out the scenes. Myrsini Vardopoulou organized a team based on circular symbols from each personality’s work in the culture portrait series. Meanwhile, Jan Robert Dünnweller created hand-drawn portraits with textured backgrounds. Rubio and del Amo, along with their sidekicks Cruz más Cruz, designed the notes to feature people gazing you directly in the eyes with the words “EURO” written in vertical blocks.

On the nature side, PunktFormStrich converts birdsong and aircraft speed into graphic data. Rudy Guedj and François Girard-Meunier pair those abstract landscapes with a continuous ribbon of light that evolves throughout the series. Meanwhile, Atelier Goppel-Toperngpong uses water as a metaphor for collective power in their work. Isabelle Daëron’s work combines hand-drawn elements with digital patterns to explore the relationship between mobility and interdependence. Ville Tietäväinen sequences the notes like a river, gradually approaching the sea with each successive value.

Getting to those ten proposals wasn’t easy. When the contest went live in 2025, more than 1200 graphic artists from throughout the EU applied. From there, 25 of them were requested to further develop their concepts into whole series, and by April 25th, a total of 39 complete proposals had arrived. An independent jury of 21 specialists, each selected by a different euro-area central bank, then began evaluating them in the dark (i.e., without knowing whose work they were reviewing). They reduced it down to five suggestions per subject based on criteria such as inventiveness, thematic clarity, accessibility, and how effectively the resulting designs will function in everyday life.
[Source]

Microsoft says a bug in its automated network maintenance request system caused Thursday’s massive outage by mistakenly removing IP routes from more devices than intended, disrupting Azure and Microsoft 365 services.

The outage began at 10:44 AM ET on Thursday, July 23, and mostly affected customers accessing Microsoft 365 services through network infrastructure connected to Microsoft’s West US Azure region.

At 11:11 AM ET, Downdetector had recorded 2,403 outage reports, sharply above its normal baseline of 29. SharePoint accounted for 78% of the complaints, followed by Excel at 11% and the Microsoft 365 Admin Center at 6%.

Microsoft tracked the Microsoft 365 outage under incident ID MO1437424 and confirmed that multiple Microsoft 365 services were impacted:

• Microsoft OneDrive – Access to OneDrive was intermittent.
• SharePoint Online – Users received “Something went wrong” errors.
• Microsoft Teams – Chat functionality was degraded, including images not loading.
• Microsoft 365 Admin Center – The Admin Center loaded slowly or not at all.
• Power Automate – Automate flows did not load.
• Copilot Chat – Users experienced intermittent delays or failures when performing actions and queries.
• Microsoft Loop – Users were unable to open or load Loop pages.

Other affected services included Fabric and Power BI, Power Apps, Copilot Studio, Windows 365, and Microsoft Defender.

Some Defender customers experienced delays receiving responses from Microsoft Defender Experts, while investigations, workflows, and remediation actions triggered through Threat Explorer and Advanced Hunting could fail.

Microsoft initially attempted to mitigate the outage by rerouting traffic through alternate network paths, which helped customers, but many services continued to be affected.

Before determining what caused the outage, Microsoft warned customers that they might need to review their business continuity and disaster recovery plans and take actions appropriate for their environments.

The company later identified a recent networking change as the cause and began reverting it.

Microsoft completed the reversion at 2:26 PM ET and confirmed through service telemetry and customer reports that the Microsoft 365 incident had been resolved.

Maintenance bug caused outage

In a preliminary Post Incident Review for the Azure incident, Microsoft said the outage was triggered during routine device maintenance in its West US Azure region, where specific network paths were being isolated.

Microsoft says its maintenance process converts these types of requests into system-readable instructions and checks that at least one of two redundant paths remains healthy before the work begins.

However, a bug in the request conversion system incorrectly marked additional network devices as part of the maintenance event.

As a result, IP routes were removed from more devices than intended between Microsoft’s West US datacenter and its wide-area network.

The removed routes disrupted network traffic entering or leaving the West US region. However, Microsoft said traffic remaining entirely within the region was not affected.

The Azure incident caused connectivity failures, increased latency, and problems accessing numerous cloud services, including Azure App Service, Application Gateway, Azure AD B2C, Azure AI Search, Azure API Management, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Databricks, Azure Firewall, Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure Monitor, Azure Virtual Desktop, ExpressRoute, Log Analytics, Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Sentinel, Power BI Embedded, Virtual WAN, and VPN Gateway.

Microsoft said its engineers began investigating the issues immediately after the outage began at 10:44 AM ET.

The problem initially presented itself as large-scale route churn in Microsoft’s WAN. Engineers later traced the route removals to a datacenter in the West US region and linked them with the recent maintenance activity.

Microsoft initiated a rollback of the maintenance change at 1:45 PM ET, which was completed at 2:26 PM ET.

The rollback restored the affected network infrastructure and allowed Microsoft 365 services to recover. Some Azure services continued recovering after the fix was put in place, with Microsoft reporting that all affected services had fully recovered by 3:41 PM ET.

Microsoft is now conducting a full internal review focused on the safety checks and automated processes used to execute maintenance requests.

“We will be preforming a full analysis focusing on safety checks, automated maintenance request change process, and more as we progress through our post mitigation internal retrospective,” explained Microsoft.

The company said it will publish a final Post Incident Review after completing its investigation, which is usually within 14 days.

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Players may be unable to log into their account, play online or purchase games from the PlayStation Store.

If you remember Jibo, you’ll probably also remember its emotional farewell. The social robot, once named one of TIME’s Best Inventions, shut down in 2019 with a message asking owners to “say hello” to future robots. Singapore-based AI hardware startup Lingverse, the team behind the original visoon, has announced $29 million in Pre-A funding to develop iKairos, a wearable AI companion that the company describes as the spiritual successor to Jibo. Unlike existing AI wearables, iKairos is designed to understand both its user and their surroundings, allowing it to offer proactive assistance instead of simply responding to prompts.

iKairos Wants to Be More Than Another AI Wearable

AI wearables have gained momentum over the past year, but most products still rely on a single camera or microphone to interpret the world from the wearer’s perspective. Lingverse believes that’s only half the picture. The company says iKairos is the first dual-perspective AI wearable, featuring a modular design that can be worn on the body or used as a desktop device. Users can switch its field of view between themselves and their surroundings, allowing the AI to build context about both the person wearing it and the environment around them.

The goal is to make the device less reactive and more proactive. Instead of waiting for voice commands, iKairos is designed to recognize situations where reminders, suggestions, or questions might be useful based on what it observes over time.

Beyond that, the company says iKairos includes a physical camera shutter that completely blocks visual recording whenever users want additional privacy. It also claims that personal data is either processed locally on the device or encrypted during transmission, and that user data won’t be used to train its AI models.

Speaking on the matter, Jiawei Gu, Founder and CEO of Lingverse, said:

Today, with iKairos, we can finally pick up where the Jibo team left off and deliver on the promise. iKairos continuously observes both you and your surroundings, creating the context that today’s AI lacks. Once the AI understands your life instead of just your prompts, iKairos can begin to act as a personal AI guardian, which is capable of unlocking entirely new experiences and proactively adapts to and works around your lifestyle.”

Dynaudio’s decision to close its U.S. subsidiary raised the question every owner wanted answered first: would the warranty still mean anything once the company packed up and left? The answer is yes, but the repair network, service contacts and future North American distribution plan are still being worked out.

A warranty promise is good news. A warranty promise without a named repair center, service contact or explanation of where your loudspeaker goes when something fails is still only half an answer.

Dynaudio has now addressed the most important consumer question following its decision to close its U.S. subsidiary and end direct commercial operations across North America this fall: existing warranties will remain valid.

In an email interview published by Stereophile, Dynaudio Chief Commercial Officer Julien Bergere stated: “All warranties of existing products in the US market will be honored.” He also confirmed that products purchased through official Dynaudio dealerships during the transition will retain warranty coverage. 

That should provide some reassurance to current owners and anyone considering remaining dealer inventory. What Dynaudio has not provided is the support structure required to turn that promise into an actual repair.

What Dynaudio Has Confirmed

Dynaudio’s confirmation applies to products already sold in the United States and to new purchases made through authorized dealers while the company winds down its North American operation. Buying from an official dealer remains important; a deeply discounted grey market speaker with no authorized sales record is unlikely to become more appealing because the U.S. office is closing.

Dynaudio’s published warranty policy currently provides up to 96 months of coverage for registered passive loudspeakers, provided registration occurs within 12 months of purchase. Registered active products receive up to 96 months on passive components and 36 months on electronics, while OEM drivers and automotive aftermarket products carry 24 months of coverage. Terms vary by product and local warranty law. 

Owners should register qualifying products now, retain the original receipt and document the authorized dealer. This is not the moment to discover that the invoice disappeared with an email account from 2021.

The Repair Network Is Still Unresolved

Bergere acknowledged that Dynaudio is still studying how warranty service will be delivered after the subsidiary closes. The company has not named replacement service centers, explained whether repairs will remain inside the United States or confirmed how parts and technical support will reach dealers. 

Dynaudio’s current contact page still lists Dynaudio North America and its existing U.S. sales contact, but that does not explain who takes over once the Northbrook, Illinois, operation shuts down. 

For a small bookshelf speaker, uncertain shipping logistics are irritating. For a large floorstander, active loudspeaker or professional monitor, they become expensive very quickly. Owners need to know who authorizes the repair, where the product is shipped, who pays the freight and how long replacement drivers or electronics will remain available.

“We will honor it” is welcome. “Here is how” is the part still missing.

Dealers Can Place Final Orders

Dynaudio has offered U.S. and Canadian dealers the opportunity to place final orders before the transition is completed. Bergere said remaining inventory will be returned and “shipped back to be sold elsewhere.”

That could make some models harder to find once existing dealer stock is depleted. It could also produce discounts, although buyers should not let a sale price distract them from asking who will provide support after the local subsidiary disappears.

The company has also left open the possibility of returning through an independent distributor or selling more directly to retailers. Dynaudio says it would consider either arrangement if it could maintain the required level of brand representation and customer service. No agreement has been announced, and nobody should confuse willingness to consider a distributor with actually having one. 

Tariffs Mattered, but Greenland Did Not

Dynaudio says the U.S. importer, rather than Dynaudio A/S in Denmark, pays tariffs at the border. Those costs are then absorbed through lower margins, higher retail prices or some combination of both. The company deliberately used the broader phrase “economic challenges and market uncertainty” in its original announcement rather than turning the release into a seminar on customs policy. 

Bergere also rejected online speculation that tensions between the United States and Denmark over Greenland played a role in the decision.

Greenland did not drive Dynaudio from North America. The spreadsheet appears to have been sufficiently persuasive on its own.

Dynaudio maintains that the move is strategic, allowing it to concentrate on Europe, Asia and new premium products including the Legend loudspeaker, Confidence i range and Symphony Opus One system. That makes the timing no less strange after prominent appearances at AXPONA and High End Vienna, but it provides a clearer explanation than geopolitical revenge involving an island with fewer people than Hoboken. 

The Bottom Line

Dynaudio’s warranty confirmation is genuinely good news. Existing owners are not being abandoned, and authorized purchases made during the transition will remain covered.

The unresolved issue is execution. Dynaudio still needs to identify the repair network, publish the service process and explain how parts, freight and customer communication will work after its U.S. subsidiary closes.

A warranty is a promise. A functioning service network is how that promise gets kept.

Consumers do not need to panic, and the loudspeakers did not suddenly become worse because the company changed its regional strategy. But anyone buying Dynaudio inventory in the coming months should register the product immediately, keep every document and ask the dealer for a clear explanation of who will handle future service.

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Despite their small size, mosquitoes are one of the deadliest creatures on Earth, and keeping them away from you is one of the best ways to stay safe. DEET has been the mainstay of insect repellents for decades, but what if there was a repellent you could grow yourself?

Researchers at Cardiff University found that the essential oil from catnip plants (Nepeta cataria) could be as effective as DEET at repelling mosquitoes when applied as a 6% lotion. The oil has been shown to be effective against many species of mosquitoes, ticks, and mites in previous research. You can look at the paper for details, but the catnip oil was obtained through steam distillation followed by some processing with hexane. The essential oil was then mixed with “water, glycerin, emulsifying wax, cetyl alcohol, cetyl stearyl alcohol, shea butter, glycerol monostearate, olive oil, coconut oil, sunflower oil, methyl paraben, propyl paraben and silicone oil.” We suspect that list will look familiar to anyone who’s read an ingredient label of most any store bought lotion, unless it was paraben free.

The Guardian’s coverage quotes one of the researchers, [Dr. Simon Scofield]: “We did not conduct any experiments to see if it is attractive to cats, but given that the active ingredient [nepetalactone] has well-known cat-attractive properties, I would expect they would quite like it,” he said. Depending on how your cats react, you may want to consider applying the lotion shortly before departing home.

If you want some more options in your mosquito defense, how about becoming a bug zapper, using drones and sonar, or genetically modifying mosquitoes to curb their numbers.