The original electronics of the VL-1 were largely surplus to requirements for this build. The original interface and speaker were kept in service, while the rest of the monophonic sound synthesis hardware was removed. [Max Vega] enlisted an ESP32-C3 to run the show, turning the VL-1 into a ROMpler instead. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it refers to a keyboard or other instrument that relies on hardcoded sample playback instead of raw synthesis. The ESP32 loads its samples from a microSD card, which provides an enormous amount of storage for different sound packs. Selecting different instruments is handled with a simple interface built around the original buttons and a OLED screen. Playing the instrument is still the same using the simple keyboard, though [Max] also implemented some extra fun modes that play chords at a single touch.
If you want a fun, versatile keyboard instrument that fits perfectly in a backpack, it’s hard to go wrong with a build like this. We’ve seen similar Casio keyboard hacks before, too. Video after the break.
Artificial intelligence is becoming an increasingly visible part of healthcare. From administrative workflows and clinical decision support to remote monitoring and wellness technologies, organizations are exploring how AI can help process information more efficiently and provide greater visibility into health-related data. Yet as adoption accelerates, one challenge continues to influence whether these technologies gain meaningful acceptance.
Trust has become a central issue in the broader conversation around artificial intelligence. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2026 ranked misinformation and disinformation as the second most severe short-term global risk, while concerns about the adverse outcomes of AI technologies rose significantly in the report’s long-term outlook. As organizations introduce AI into increasingly sensitive areas, including healthcare, the findings underscore the importance of transparency, governance, and accountability in building public confidence.
Doug Benoit, CEO of FacialDx, believes trust begins with clarity. FacialDx is an AI-powered wellness intelligence company that uses facial analysis technology to identify visual biomarkers associated with wellness indicators and provide structured observations intended to support awareness. Benoit explains that users increasingly want to understand how conclusions are reached rather than simply receiving results.
Doug Benoit, CEO of FacialDx
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“People want access to the information behind the outcome,” Benoit says. “Trust grows when organizations are willing to show the methodology, the data, and the reasoning that support what the technology is presenting.”
That expectation reflects a broader shift taking place across healthcare and technology. Organizations are facing growing pressure from regulators, providers, employers, and consumers to demonstrate how AI systems function, how data is managed, and where human judgment remains involved. “Transparency is no longer viewed as a supplementary feature,” Benoit notes. “For many stakeholders, it is becoming a prerequisite for adoption.”
Privacy represents an equally important consideration. Benoit explains that healthcare information remains among the most sensitive categories of personal data, which places significant responsibility on organizations developing AI-enabled solutions. Research shows that AI systems handling sensitive health information raise significant concerns around privacy, data protection, and the risk of data breaches, while also highlighting the importance of ensuring that AI supports rather than overrides the judgment of healthcare professionals. Benoit believes those considerations reinforce the need for strong governance, security safeguards, and clearly defined human oversight as AI becomes more integrated into health-related environments.
Benoit notes that conversations around AI have evolved considerably during the past several years. According to him, many organizations have moved beyond asking whether AI should be used and are now focused on understanding how it can be implemented responsibly within existing workflows.
“The concern we hear most often is not whether AI exists,” Benoit explains. “Organizations want to know how it integrates into what they already do, how information is protected, and whether the technology supports the people responsible for making decisions.”
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Human oversight remains central to that discussion. He explains that while AI can help identify patterns, organize information, and improve efficiency, healthcare decisions often involve context, judgment, and interpersonal considerations that extend beyond data analysis alone.
Benoit believes AI should be viewed as a support tool rather than an autonomous authority. “Technology can help surface information faster and more consistently,” he says. “But people still need people. Human oversight provides accountability, interpretation, and the ability to apply professional judgment in ways that technology alone cannot.”
This distinction is becoming increasingly important as organizations define governance frameworks around AI deployment. “Successful implementation often depends on clearly establishing what a system is designed to do, what it is not designed to do, and how outputs should be interpreted within existing professional processes,” Benoit says.
For FacialDx, that philosophy shapes the company’s position within the healthcare ecosystem. Benoit emphasizes that the platform is intended to provide wellness intelligence and observational insights rather than diagnostic conclusions. According to him, maintaining clearly defined boundaries helps support responsible adoption while reinforcing the role of healthcare professionals in evaluating information and determining appropriate next steps.
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He also points to governance and controlled access as important components of trust. “The goal is to make information accessible, understandable, and secure,” Benoit says. “People should know who can access their information, how it is being handled, and what safeguards exist around it.”
As AI continues to expand across healthcare, enterprise wellness, and telehealth environments, trust may ultimately become the factor that separates short-term experimentation from long-term adoption. Innovation remains important, but sustained success will likely depend on whether organizations can balance technological advancement with accountability, transparency, privacy protection, and human oversight.
Benoit believes the future of AI health intelligence will be shaped by that balance. “The organizations that earn trust will be the organizations that remain transparent, stay focused on their purpose, and use AI to support better decisions,” he says. “When innovation and accountability move forward together, people gain confidence in the technology and confidence in how it is being used.“
Xbox console prices are jumping $100 for the 512GB model and $150 for the 1TB models. Microsoft says it will discontinue the 2TB version of the Xbox Series X. Here’s the new breakdown of prices:
Series S 512GB: $500
Series S 1TB: $600
Series X 1TB digital: $750
Series X 1TB disc drive: $800
Microsoft’s blog post said the company spent several months working with suppliers, hoping to avoid another price increase. “Unfortunately, console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5x, and we expect another doubling by the fall of 2027.” It noted that the the components crisis — which was also behind the latest price hike for Apple products — is hitting consoles particularly hard.
That same blog post introduced buy now, pay later and zero-interest financing options, which the company framed as “programs to make XBOX consoles more accessible.”
New products aren’t immune, either. On Monday, Valve revealed the price of its PC gaming console, the Steam Machine, which starts at $1049. The price tag shocked many gamers, as the company had telegraphed that its new hardware should be similarly priced as other home consoles when it was first revealed last November. Instead, it’s $150 more expensive than the PS5 Pro. Valve also hiked the price of its Steam Deck portable console last month.
Corporate America is hemorrhaging money through inefficient IT business processes, and Jay Roland, founder of Varex Solutions, believes that the industry is complacent about it. Technical debt, which is the accumulated cost of deferred IT fixes, misconfigurations, and other operational inefficiencies, is projected to cost US enterprises$2.41 trillion a year, costing $1.52 trillion to fix. With numbers this staggering, Roland argues that awareness, however, remains precariously low.
“The numbers projected only tell part of the story,” he says. “The struggles companies are going through are far greater than any figure on a slide. I’ve walked into organizations spending $251 million a year on IT and found $51 million of it being wasted, year over year, on problems they didn’t even know existed.”
Jay Roland
To address the bottlenecks he witnessed, Roland launched Varex Solutions. The company functions within a specific pressure point, in the gap where enterprises believe their IT is costing them, and what it is actually costing them. Headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, Varex offers a suite of consulting services spanning ITSM (IT Service Management) platform implementations, maturity assessments, health optimization, and SLA practice guidance.
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According to Roland, the company’s key commitment is to uncover bottlenecks, technical debt, misconfigurations, and workflow inefficiencies and then turn those findings into actionable improvements that help increase ROI. This is achieved by Varex’s proprietary technical debt calculator. The tool, he explains, requires just three inputs from a company: industry, employee headcount, and annual revenue.
From those three data points, Roland’s algorithm, which he notes is built on years of archetypal industrial modelling, is designed to autofill an entire financial landscape. The output is intended to encompass a cohesive analysis of expenditure, wasted resources, action steps, and return on investment.
Roland explains, “There’s no AI involved in this entire process. This is all algorithmically structured technical debt assessments. There’s no point in telling someone they’re wasting money unless you can show them how to stop. Otherwise, it’s just noise. When I give you a number, I can show you exactly how I arrived at it, and your own IT team can verify it.”
While most paths follow a direct pipeline shaped by education, Roland’s entry into the industry came through a side door, literally. In November 1999, he tagged along with a friend to a local internet service provider in Pontiac, Michigan, intending to play video games on the T3 line. Someone placed a broken computer on his desk and walked away. He started fixing it. “Ten minutes later, a manager walked by, glanced at the screen, and told me they’d put me on the payroll,” he recalls. “That was my entry into IT.”
He carried that resourcefulness through a career that moved in and out of the industry, through the dot-com crash, through a tech support subscription startup he co-founded, and through a chapter advancing a popular role-playing game that handed him the exact spreadsheet modeling skillset he would later need to build Varex. Roland identifies this as his defining professional trait.
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“No matter what I do, I bring everything with me,” he says. “What started as projective analysis on character leveling in a Dungeons and Dragons-style game converted into using a spreadsheet software to optimize a quoting process, and eventually into the algorithms behind Varex Solutions. You never know when you’re going to need it.”
Roland recalls growing up with modest means, without the cushion of inherited privilege, and he frames that experience as the source of his refusal to accept inefficiency as simply the cost of doing business, which now shapes his work. “The same water that boils the egg softens the potato,” he says. “Different people react differently to the same circumstances. It was sheer will and determination that got me here, to make something, to give my children something.”
He rejects the common notion of walking into a boardroom with abstract consulting promises. Instead, Roland believes in handing executives a specific, verified number. He explains, “I show them: this is what you’re wasting, this is the proof, and this is how to fix it.” The calculator, he says, was built to close the distance between vague projections and hard accountability.
The resistance he often encounters tells its own story. “I once asked a CIO if I could help uncover $25 to $40 million a year in unnecessary IT spend,” he recalls. “But the response I received was one of indifference.” Roland believes this dynamic exists because uncovering decades of avoidable waste is a conversation most executives would prefer never to have. “Would you want to tell your CFO that you have been wasting tens of millions of dollars annually for all these years?” he asks.
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The question Roland keeps returning to is a direct one: how bad does a problem have to get before the people responsible for it decide it’s actually a problem? How many misconfigurations have to stack up before the cumulative damage becomes unsustainable? That is the conversation Varex Solutions exists to propel forward, and on Roland’s timeline, it is already overdue.
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from autoevolution: The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security denied Polestar an authorization under the Connected Vehicle Rule. Polestar will continue to sell its existing inventory of Polestar 3 and 4 crossovers in the United States and will continue to offer support to customers and access to its service network. But no new 2027 models will set wheels on American soil.
The Connected Vehicle Rule is a regulation that restricts the import and sale of vehicles equipped with Vehicle Connectivity Systems (VCS) and Automated Driving Systems (ADS) tied to foreign adversaries, primarily from China and Russia. Polestar is owned by Chinese auto giant Geely, which has also been the parent company of Swedish brand Volvo since 2010. However, Volvo has recently been granted authorization to sell connected vehicles in the United States.
The rule, set out by the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), classifies modern vehicles as mobile data centers and is designed to protect national security by keeping sensitive driver data and vehicle control systems out of the hands of foreign governments. Michael Lohscheller, Polestar CEO, confirms that the company is well aware that the automotive industry is entering a new phase, based on regional dynamics. So, Polestar will shift its strategy to its biggest market as it is preparing its exit from the U.S. market. The report notes that Polestar sold 5,384 cars in the U.S. in 2025, with 60,119 units sold globally.
Rent the Runway’s Mark Kenny discusses his role in software engineering and his experiences of working abroad.
“I’m born and bred in Kilkenny and went to college in UL where I studied computer systems followed by a masters degree and I left Ireland in 2005 after finishing college and moved to London,” Mark Kenny told SiliconRepublic.com.
Having moved in his 20s, Kenny, who is a software engineer at Rent the Runway, explained initially the plan was only to stay for a few short years. However, he said he was drawn in by “everything the city had to offer” and ended up staying for a total of nine years.
“At the time, there simply weren’t any jobs in graduate roles,” he said. “I finished my initial undergraduate degree just as the dot-com bubble burst and no one was taking on graduate positions. In order to buy time, I did a master’s degree but the tech sector was still barely in recovery, especially in Ireland.
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“Most of my classmates were either heading abroad or taking roles unrelated to what we had studied. For me, London was the obvious option since it was close to home, a diverse job market, and a chance to explore different career options. It’s important to note that at the time, I didn’t think of it as emigrating, but just being a few years away from home before I came back.”
Here he discusses his return to Ireland and his current day to day.
What made you decide to come back?
My kids, mainly. My wife and I had our first child and spent a year in London and found it difficult. There was no safety net, no-one to pick up children in an emergency or help out in any other way.
Don’t get me wrong, London is a fantastic place to live, especially in your 20s, but we found it to be a different proposition once we were trying to put down roots and raise children. At the time renting, never mind purchasing a house in a decent area, was well beyond our means.
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We wanted our children to grow up around family and to be in an environment where they could stay kids for as long as possible.
How did your current role come about?
After several years of running my own business, I was ready for a new challenge when I joined Rent the Runway last year.
Moving from a start-up environment into a larger corporate company was a significant change, but I have to admit, the people at Rent the Runway made the transition very smooth. During the interview process, it was refreshing to meet a team that really understood my somewhat diverse background and experience.
What does your work involve on a day-to-day basis?
My day to day involves working as a full-stack engineer within a small Ireland-based team. It’s great having the entire team here in Ireland, as it helps foster strong collaboration and close working relationships. I work as part of the larger growth pod that has teams both here in Galway as well as our head offices in Brooklyn, New York.
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What do you like most about your job?
The role itself is very varied, which is something I really enjoy. On any given day I might be working on front-end user experiences, back-end services, integrations, or improving internal tooling and performance. A big part of the role also involves collaborating with product managers, designers and other engineers to plan features and refine requirements, which gives me valuable insight into different areas of the business and how other teams operate.
Working in a smaller team also means there’s a strong sense of ownership. We’re involved throughout the full development life cycle from discussing ideas and technical approaches, to implementation, testing, deployment and monitoring after release. That level of involvement keeps the work interesting. What really stands out though is the people.
How did your employer make it easier for you to move back?
My case is slightly unusual as by the time I joined Rent the Runway, I’d already been back in Ireland for a few years, running my own company. So the practical move home was something I’d organised for myself.
When I moved back I worked remotely so now having flexibility around hybrid working is amazing. There are other nice perks of the job too like half-day Fridays during the summer.
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How did your time working abroad make you better suited for your job?
While living in London I had the opportunity to explore several different career paths.
I worked as a recording engineer, which involved dealing with some very interesting, and often complex personalities. I also worked as a lecturer and managed a college campus before eventually starting my own business, where I designed and built software systems from the ground up.
Each role brought its own unique challenges and learning experiences. During that time, I worked alongside some extraordinarily talented people and learned how to adapt to a wide range of environments and industries. That combination of hands-on engineering experience and real commercial exposure has been genuinely valuable in a role like this, where thinking beyond just the code itself is an important part of the role.
What is the best thing about being back in Ireland?
99s and curry chips.
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But beyond that, it’s definitely the lifestyle, without question. Raising children close to family and old friends, having more space, a sense of community, these are things you really notice once you’ve lived without them for a while.
The tech scene has also transformed beyond recognition since I left. Now Ireland has some of the best engineering opportunities in Europe, with major global companies based here and a thriving start-up ecosystem alongside them. With the rise of hybrid and remote work, you also have the freedom to live in some of the most beautiful parts of the country while still building a strong career.
What advice would you give to others thinking about moving back to their home country?
Don’t wait for the perfect moment, it doesn’t exist.
It’s also much easier to move home when you have fewer ties, so before kids start school or before you become more established in the housing market. If possible, keeping your existing job and negotiating remote work can make the transition much smoother too.
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It’s also important to understand the cost of living changes, when we moved back, USC was a completely new tax for us.
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SUVs and pickup trucks continue to dominate the car market in the United States, with drivers seemingly preferring larger vehicles that offer reliability and capability. The reasons for SUVs’ continued popularity aren’t surprising. First, Americans feel safer inside these boxy beasts, which often have higher safety ratings than smaller vehicles. Safety is especially important for families looking to protect their children — and SUVs also offer more room for kids (and all their stuff).
However, not every SUV is made equal. American buyers have their preferences, and data from Good Car Bad Car shows that these buyers are putting their money where their mouth is. The two best sellers are no surprise — they are all-around capable SUVs that can do it all — but the bottom two points are made for a niche market without the usual broad appeal that SUVs have. Here are the best and worst-selling SUVs of 2026. We explain how we selected these cars at the end.
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Best: Honda CR-V
The Honda CR-V is the best-selling SUV of 2026 so far, with 187,255 units sold. This is actually more than last year’s sales, which were at 182,656 by June 2025. Starting at $32,370 MSRP (plus a $1,395 destination fee), it’s one of the most cost-effective vehicles in its segment while still remaining a comfortable, roomy all-rounder.
The base model’s turbocharged 1.5-liter four-cylinder engine makes 190 horsepower, which is enough to get you to work and school on time, but it isn’t the most exciting. Hill-descent control and traction-management programming ensure a smooth ride, and extra legroom adds comfort even during longer drives. Speaking of which, the CR-V has an EPA-estimated 28 mpg city and 33 mpg highway, which is pretty good for a gas-powered SUV. The hybrid will get you farther, however. Our review of the 2025 model stated: “It offers an impressive balance of capability, efficiency, and fun, all in a package that’s reasonably priced.”
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Best: Toyota RAV4
The Toyota RAV4 Hybrid is the second-best-selling SUV, another name you probably expected to see. What’s interesting, however, is that the 121,605 sales in 2026 thus far represent a nearly 40% decline compared to last year to date (202,641). This doesn’t mean American families don’t want the RAV4: the biggest reason for the drop in sales is due to a massive RAV4 shortage. Toyota claims it will likely lose 55,000 sales due to this shortage. “Our turn rate was 97.6% last month — that means 97.6% of RAV4s available for sale in May were sold,” the VP of Sales for Toyota Motor North America told Automotive News in June 2026. “It just speaks to the demand we’re seeing for [our] bestselling vehicle in the United States.”
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If you’re lucky enough to get your hands on the steering wheel of a RAV4, it’s $33,495 MSRP (and a $1,450 destination fee). Like the CR-V, it’s smooth and efficient, with a 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine and two electric motors that make a combined 226 hp. The base RAV4 also boasts 47 mpg in the city and 40 mpg on the highway, a big upgrade from the previous year.
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Worst: Subaru Trailseeker
The Subaru Trailseeker is essentially an electric Outback — and it’s often acknowledged for its pretty impressive performance. It’s an all-wheel-drive SUV that reaches 60 mph in 3.9 seconds, can tow a small camper, and can handle light off-roading. However, this wasn’t enough to make the Trailseeker a popular SUV option in 2026 — so far, it has only sold 1,655 units.
There are a few possible sore spots for the Trailseeker. First, it’s an all-new electric vehicle. EVs are having a tough time in the United States as policies continue to change and incentives are removed. It’s possible that Americans are opting for the Outback instead — it had 48,884 sales in comparison. When it comes to off-road adventuring, the Trailseeker’s lower ground clearance and unimpressive range are big pain points. Our review concluded: “Now if Subaru could just improve its range and charging a bit…” The $41,445 starting price (including a $1,450 destination fee) is also not the most competitive when you’re not getting the best range in the category.
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Worst: Genesis GV60
At the bottom of the list for 2026 models is the Genesis GV60 with 338 sales (down nearly 68% from last year’s 1,050 sales by June 2025). Starting at $54,029 (with a $1,495 destination fee), it’s a more expensive SUV option — and Americans are growing tired of the rising average cost of new vehicles. Despite the higher price point, the GV60 struggles to keep up with the competition. You get a good range and plenty of features, but a cramped cabin and underwhelming driving performance.
Still, you’ll get the luxury you desire from an electric Genesis. Our review of the 2025 model stated: “Compared to the other interiors in Genesis’ range, the cabin of the GV60 is far more whimsical.” This includes a center-console gear selector that resembles a colorful crystal ball, a 27-inch infotainment screen that spans the dashboard, a heated steering wheel, and a wireless charging pad. Still, it may not be enough to deter drivers from choosing the GV60’s cheaper siblings, like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6, both built on Hyundai’s Electric-Global Modular Platform.
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How we chose the best and worst-selling SUVs of 2026
Marioguti/Getty Images
When putting this list together, we started with the sales figures gathered from Good Car Bad Car. The Year to Date column showed the number of sales made in 2026 as of June, six months into the year. The two top sellers were in the lead by a good amount (although the Ford Explorer was holding its own).
However, the worst-selling SUVs were not as straightforward to select. At the very bottom of the list were the Ford Edge with 0 sales, the Toyota Venza with 6 sales, and the Acura ZDX with 85 sales. It doesn’t get lower than zero sales, but the Ford Edge still didn’t make it onto the list. Why? It wasn’t sold in the United States for 2026 (it’s over in China). The discontinued Venza and ZDX also didn’t have 2026 models in the U.S. market. The sales figures were from previous years’ models selling, which didn’t seem like a very fair comparison to the top sellers. For that reason, we went with the two worst sellers that have a 2026 model in the United States.
Photo credit: NASA / Daniel Rutter Astronomers poring over years of data from NASA’s planet-hunting satellite have confirmed a pair of worlds that rank among the largest and least dense ever detected. A sun-like star called TOI-791 hosts them both, sitting roughly 1,113 light years away in the southern constellation Volans.
One planet spans roughly Jupiter’s width yet contains barely 3% of its mass. The other is larger than Jupiter but weighs only 5.9 percent as much. Densities this low put these objects in unique company, with material scattered so thin that it resembles cotton candy rather than rock or normal gas giant innards. Repeated dips in the star’s brightness alerted researchers to the possibility of planets crossing its face. TESS gathered the necessary data throughout the course of a seven-year effort spanning more than 1,100 days. These extended orbital periods, 139 days for the inner planet and 232 days for its outer companion, need continuous monitoring from high Earth orbit.
Superior Optics: 400mm(f/5.7) focal length and 70mm aperture, fully coated optics glass lens with high transmission coatings creates stunning images…
Magnification: Come with two replaceable eyepieces and one 3x Barlow lens.3x Barlow lens trebles the magnifying power of each eyepiece. 5×24 finder…
Wireless Remote: This refractor telescope includes one smart phone adapter and one Wireless camera remote to explore the nature of the world easily…
Ground-based follow-up work then pinpointed the masses using a smart indirect path. The gravitational force between the two planets causes the exact timing of each transit to fluctuate by minor but significant amounts. These time adjustments revealed the very low weights without requiring exact speed estimates from the star itself.
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The investigation was led by George Dransfield of Oxford University and published in the Royal Astronomical Society’s Monthly Notices. He pointed out that only a few of these super-puffy planets are known anywhere, so finding two in the same system is even more remarkable. Their extraordinary features make them ideal targets for studying how planets form and evolve. Jon Jenkins, who directs TESS science processing at NASA’s Ames Research Center, provided a clear picture of the larger conundrum. These planets stand out because existing models of big planet creation did not account for things this huge with such little mass. They pose a direct challenge to conventional assumptions about how such worlds come together.
Steve Howell, also at Ames, observed that the largest planets frequently direct the long-term evolution of their entire systems via gravity and orbital motion. Studying these lighter equivalents provides new insights into that influence, despite the fact that the planets themselves are significantly lighter than Jupiter. Further observations with the James Webb Space Telescope could reveal the gasses that fill their bloated envelopes. Such information could reveal which substances help keep the worlds inflated against their weak surface gravity and whether they formed further out before traveling to their current broad pathways.
When Apple finally caved to the memory crisis and increased prices across Mac and iPad on June 25, 2026, most people reacted with disbelief, frustration, or resigned acceptance. Mine was a quiet, slightly wicked smile, and in about two to three minutes, you’ll understand exactly why.
My M1 MacBook Air (8GB, 256GB) has been showing its age since last year. It was starting to crack under pressure. Whenever I opened more than 10 or 15 Chrome tabs, it would protest quietly before crashing, forcing me to ration them. Video exports, even casual ones, started taking noticeably longer. I did everything I was supposed to do, but none of it made a meaningful difference.
Thai Nguyen / Unsplash
My M1 MacBook Air gave up after four years
Even though the constant lagging and slowdowns were pushing me to get a new one, I held off the purchase for as long as I could. But then one day, my MacBook simply won’t turn on. That was the tipping point for me. I started comparing all the available options in my budget, and one device made perfect sense to me: the M4 MacBook Air.
The smart play, on paper, was to grab the M4 MacBook Air (13-inch) at a discounted price. But when I actually ran the numbers, the M4 model with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage was only $70 to $80 cheaper than the already-discounted M5 equivalent, here in India. That’s not savings; that’s a rounding error.
The M5 MacBook Air, for a slightly higher price, offered twice the storage at 512GB, meaningfully better immediate performance, and enough headroom to use it for at least three to four years, or maybe even five. That made the decision for me.
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Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
The M5 vs. M4 math didn’t add up
You see, Apple launched the 13-inch M5 MacBook Air in the US at $1,099. In India, the launch price translated to INR 119,900, or around $1,270 at current rates. And thanks to prevalent discounts and offers, I saved around $200 on the purchase, which mattered since it was an unplanned purchase.
On June 15, 2026, I got the M5 MacBook Air in India for INR 101,824, or roughly $1,078, from a third-party online retailer. Even then, I wasn’t entirely convinced I’d made the right decision. Part of me kept wondering whether I should have repaired my old MacBook instead.
Then, all of a sudden, Apple itself made me feel a whole lot better about that purchase.
The plot twist came 10 days after my MacBook Air arrived at my door, when Apple raised the retail prices for a bunch of its products, including the M5 MacBook Air.
Apple
Then Apple changed everything
The company briefly took its entire online store down, and when it came back up, the US price for the baseline M5 MacBook Air had jumped by $200, taking it to $1,299. In India, the price moved from around $1,270 to $1,587 (over $300). The effective price, even via third-party retailers, now stands around Apple’s previous MSRP in the region.
I genuinely couldn’t believe it when I saw the numbers change. If I had hummed and hawed for a few more days, bought the device from the same seller, and had it shipped from the same warehouse, it would have cost me another $200.
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The discount I got is gone now, and there’s no way Apple is reducing the prices anytime soon.
Moinak Pal/Digital Trends
I dodged the Macflation bullet by just 10 days
Given how long I plan to use this device, that’s quite a small margin. The memory crisis finally caught up to Apple, and I’m just glad that I got my MacBook before it did.
AI agents are becoming more sophisticated. They are evolving from answering questions to autonomously executing multi-step complex tasks.
But before these agents can be trusted to book trips or conduct financial analysis on behalf of users, model providers and the startups building such agents want to ensure that they perform reliably across a vast range of scenarios.
AI labs often use benchmarks to show off their model’s prowess, but a high score, even on an agent-oriented benchmark, doesn’t actually prove that an AI can accomplish various complex, real-world jobs correctly.
Patronus AI, a startup founded in 2023 by former Meta AI researchers Anand Kannappan and Rebecca Qian, is helping model makers and companies fine-tune models to do just that by building simulated digital environments in which to evaluate the agents’ performance.
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The San Francisco-based startup must be solving an important problem. Virtually every frontier AI lab and many emerging startups are now customers, according to Glenn Solomon, a managing director at Notable Capital, who describes demand for the company’s simulated environments as nearly insatiable.
Patronus’ revenue has grown 15-fold over the past year, fueling significant investor interest. On Thursday, the company announced a $50 million Series B round led by Greenfield Partners, with participation from Notable Capital, Lightspeed, Datadog, and Samsung. The round brings the company’s total funding to $70 million.
Patronus uses what it calls “digital world models” to create replicas of websites and internal systems. In these environments, agents are stress-tested after training using reinforcement learning, which iteratively rewards successful task completion and penalizes errors.
AI labs see great value in these digital simulations because they give agents a chance to try different, sometimes unpredictable, scenarios. The company compares its approach to how Waymo trained autonomous cars by first building synthetic worlds to test vehicles against rare hazards, such as severe weather or a child running after a ball.
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The difference with AI agents is that they tend to take shortcuts, which means they fail to complete the task correctly. “Patronus is really good at spotting the hacks and making sure they are holding the models accountable,” Solomon said.
Patronus is currently providing its simulated digital worlds for software engineering and finance, but these are just the start, according to Kannappan.
“Today we’re very focused on the problems that are verifiable, so the problems that you can immediately check and verify, but there are a ton more areas that are very non-verifiable or very hard to verify,” he said.
Just because these processes are verifiable doesn’t mean they are simple. “We want to be able to actually create the environment in which you can operate an agent that can run for 10 hours or 10 days or 10 weeks,” Kannappan said.
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As for rivals, Patronus believes it is primarily competing against the internal teams AI labs have already built to evaluate agent behavior. While human-data firms like Mercor and Surge help model makers with reinforcement learning, Patronus operates differently by evaluating how agents behave without any human involvement.
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Most family bizs don’t last this long, but Yong Seng Coffee is still roasting after 5 decades
For more than five decades, Yong Seng Coffee has been a fixture at Tiong Bahru Market.
It has weathered the rise of instant coffee, the café boom that’s transformed the neighbourhood in the 2010s, and, more recently, the emergence of a specialty coffee scene that has made Singaporeans increasingly discerning about what goes into their cup.
Through it all, the Tay family has continued roasting the same honest Nanyang-style kopi that they first sold door-to-door in the 1960s.
Vulcan Post spoke with Marcus Tay, 34, the third-generation owner of Yong Seng Coffee, about how a family business built on trust and tradition has remained relevant across generations—and how he is carefully introducing the brand to a new generation of coffee drinkers without losing the values that have sustained it for decades.
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Going from door-to-door to sell coffee
Founder of Yong Seng Coffee, Tay Yiong Theng./ Image Credit: Yong Seng Coffee
The story begins with Marcus’s grandfather, Tay Yiong Theng, who started his career in the coffee industry at just 13 years old, taking orders and delivering drinks at a coffee stall. The stall owner noticed his interest and eventually taught him the art of Nanyang coffee roasting.
Armed with that knowledge, Tay struck out on his own in 1960, roasting coffee in the mornings and selling it in the evenings. Back then, roasting was done in a wok over wood fire, requiring constant attention and careful control of the heat.
To get customers, he did what any resourceful hawker of that era did. He knocked on doors in the neighbourhoods around Tiong Bahru and Jalan Kukoh, moving through the streets on foot with his hawker cart while he roasted coffee beans on the go.
Eventually, the hustle paid off. Tay earned enough to formally incorporate Yong Seng Coffee in 1974, opening a stall at Tiong Bahru Market and pooling resources with partners to operate a shared roastery—giving him the capacity to supply not just walk-in customers but also businesses at coffee shops, school canteens, and other businesses, too.
Marcus’s father joined the fold in the late 1970s and early 1980s, helping with deliveries and working the factory floor. By the time Marcus was old enough for primary school, he was already spending his school holidays following his grandfather around on his coffee deliveries.
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A business built on trust
Marcus, the third-generation owner, mainly runs the stall at Tiong Bahru Market./ Image Credit: Yong Seng Coffee
What has kept Yong Seng Coffee going across three generations? Marcus’s answer centred on ethics.
“My grandfather had a very strong principle of being honest and transparent with his customers,” he said. “Because of that, he built a lot of trust, and a lot of our long-term customers have been with us since they were kids.”
Over the years, the trust between customers and Yong Seng Coffee has been tested by rising costs.
According to Marcus, coffee bean prices have climbed two to three times since before COVID-19, driven by adverse weather conditions in the Indonesian archipelago—where most of their beans are sourced—reduced supply, and surging global demand, including from large international coffee chains buying up Indonesian beans in bulk.
Rising energy costs have also followed, making each roasting batch more expensive as gas prices rise.
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Faced with that pressure, the family made a difficult choice. Rather than quietly reduce the quality of their coffee while holding prices steady, they raised prices and told their customers why.
“Surprisingly, they understood,” Marcus said. “A lot of them gave feedback that they would rather pay a bit more and have the same quality, than maintain the same price and experience a drop in quality.”
That personal relationship with customers, especially with regulars, has become a defining feature of how Yong Seng Coffee operates.
Keeping the roasting process traditional
Yong Seng Coffee’s former roastery, which the business operated out of until 2021 before shifting production to a facility run by its long-time roasting partners. / Image Credit: Yong Seng Coffee
Yong Seng’s roastery operation runs through a partner facility today, but the Tay family controls every step of the process and craft detail. The original shared roastery wound down around 2021 when the older partners retired.
The setup involves a 60kg roaster for the core kopi blends and a 15kg roaster for specialty coffees. Each month, the team processes just over 1,000kg of beans, roasted in weekly batches and stored in an 800 sqft processing facility where blending and online orders are also handled.
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For traditional kopi specifically, the roasting process runs in two stages: first roasting the beans, then coating them with sugar and margarine, before cooking them, taking roughly 40 minutes per batch.
On the other hand, the specialty coffees undergo a cleaner, shorter process at around 20 minutes.
For every new coffee bean that comes in, Marcus first runs a small-batch test roast on a 1kg machine to develop its ideal roast profile before scaling it up on the main roaster.
The challenge, he said, is that consistency still relies heavily on human skill and intuition. Roasters need to read the beans, account for changes in humidity, and spot subtle differences before the machines can.
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Yong Seng’s coffees start at S$7.60 per 300g.
Making the online shift
Yong Seng Coffee’s coffee is offered in drip bags, apart from being freshly ground on the spot./ Image Credit: Yong Seng Coffee
When Marcus joined the family business in 2019, Yong Seng was entirely a physical operation. He was in his late 20s, coming from a career in internal audit, and the gap between how the business operated and how his generation shopped was immediately obvious.
As such, Marcus went on to modernise Yong Seng Coffee’s packaging and launched a website to open the store to online orders.
The timing turned out to be fortuitous. Not long after, COVID-19 hit, and the wet market was no longer easily accessible. Customers who couldn’t get to Tiong Bahru Market found them online instead, and that period helped establish a digital customer base that has stayed.
Going online also opened the door to expanding the product range in ways that the physical stall—with its early morning hours and limited space—couldn’t accommodate. Yong Seng now offers multiple grind sizes (fine, medium, and coarse), a range of online-exclusive formats including single-serve sachets, batch brew sachets, and drip bags, bringing in new customer profiles by providing convenience.
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Expanding Yong Seng’s range of grind sizes was a meaningful shift, particularly for customers buying its specialty coffee beans. For years, offering only a medium grind kept operations simple and order fulfilment efficient.
Introducing more grind options meant processing orders individually rather than in batches, inevitably slowing things down. But for home brewers using equipment such as moka pots, pour-overs, or French presses, the right grind size can make a significant difference to the final cup.
It’s a trade-off Marcus is happy to make—one that reflects the care and craftsmanship he believes good coffee deserves.
We figured we should do it. It allows the coffee to be better presented to the customer, and they’re able to brew it better.
Bridging Asian kopi and specialty coffee
Yong Seng Coffee offers both kopi (Nanyang coffee) and specialty coffee./ Image Credit: Yong Seng Coffee
Perhaps the most personal addition Marcus has made to the business is the #dYScover collection—a rotating lineup of single-origin specialty coffees that changes every two months, chosen by Marcus himself, from beans sourced through a trusted trader.
The idea came from his own relationship with coffee. He used to prefer specialty coffee over kopi, and when he first joined the business, he half-wondered whether the future was in moving entirely toward specialty. Moreover, with many café concepts popping up in Singapore over the years, Marcus realised the demand for specialty coffee was becoming on par with local kopi.
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What the #dYScover range does is give customers a reason to come back regularly and explore beans from all over the world, from South America to the Caribbean.
Marcus selects each offering with an eye toward variety, avoiding repeated origins and flavour profiles where possible. The current offering for Jun and Jul includes beans from Guatemala, alongside the core collection blends that have been there since the beginning.
The collection has also helped shift some customers’ perceptions of kopi itself. Many older customers, accustomed to the earthier, more bitter profile of traditional Nanyang coffee, initially resist anything that tastes acidic, a quality that’s natural in Arabica beans and which Marcus finds adds sweetness and complexity to a cup.
However, with the #dYScover collection, getting customers to try something new besides kopi, and to understand why it tastes the way it does, has become a norm for Yong Seng Coffee.
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“I get to educate my customers, and they get to enjoy good coffee,” he said. “I think that’s a win-win.”
Staying deliberately small
Yong Seng Coffee typically roasts about 1,000kg of coffee a month./ Image Credit: Yong Seng Coffee
One thing Yong Seng has not done is expand aggressively.
There are no plans for multiple outlets, no wholesale push into supermarkets, and no ambition to see their beans sitting on shelves in chain stores—not because the opportunity hasn’t arisen, but because Marcus is wary of what that would mean for quality.
“We can’t control how quickly it moves,” he said of wholesale retail. “It could sit on the shelf for two or three weeks, and by the time the customer gets it, it’s not the experience we want them to have.”
The business, as Marcus’s grandfather always ran it, has avoided taking on significant debt and prioritised keeping cash flow healthy. Growth has come slowly and deliberately.
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The online store expanded its reach without requiring new physical space. “We evolve very slowly, but consistently,” Marcus said.
For now, Marcus is focused on deepening what Yong Seng already does well—roasting honest kopi, introducing customers to good coffee from around the world, and being transparent with the people who keep coming back.
His advice to anyone looking to enter the coffee business in Singapore distils the same philosophy his grandfather started with: offer something consistent, improve openly, and don’t rely on marketing spend to do the work that product quality should.
“Consumers in Singapore are smart enough to see that,” he said. “If you’re consistently improving and transparent about it, I think the local consumers appreciate that and will support the business.”
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