Tech
Is China Secretly Fueling America's Data Center Rage?
alternative_right shares a report from Axios: Roughly 200 accounts from a suspected Chinese bot farm have quietly tried to influence Americans to oppose AI data centers on social media, X said Thursday night. The X Safety team probed suspected Chinese accounts involved in influence operations and identified 200,000 accounts, including 200 accounts “posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy,” the team said in a tweet.
The posts included content on how AI strains the electricity grid and increases utility prices and “cartoons that depicted data-center operators enriching themselves at the public’s expense.” It’s unclear what, if any, action X will take to suspend or delete accounts from the bot farm. One of the reports mentioned in the article estimates that opposition campaigns have delayed or obstructed roughly $45.8 billion in data center projects in Virginia alone.
Jim Prosser, a former Twitter communications executive, pushed back on Silicon Valley claims that opposition to data centers is a “Chinese psyop,” arguing that Big Tech is using the label to dismiss legitimate local concerns. “If you can get both Greg Abbott and Kathy Hochul agreeing on something, it’s probably not a Chinese psyop,” he told Axios.
Prosser said the industry needs to spend more time listening to affected communities rather than dismissing them from afar: “If you’re a [venture capitalist] in Atherton or Menlo Park opining about how somebody in Ohio should feel, and you’ve never been to Ohio, that’s a problem.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Tech
Open-weight AI companies are the Valley’s hottest acquisition targets
Everyoneâs waiting for Nvidia to confirm this weekâs most interesting tech deal: A reported $13 billion acquisition of Hugging Face, a platform for sharing open-weight AI models and benchmarks.
Now best known as the target for a team of reward-hacking OpenAI agents, Hugging Face is at the center of the ecosystem of developers building and deploying LLMs that arenât owned by frontier labs. Think of it as a kind of GitHub for the AI era.
Rumors of that deal come after Nvidia struck a $6 billion agreement with Poolside, an open-weight model builder, that will see most of its employees move to the chip-making giant. And two weeks ago, Stripe acquired OpenRouter, the top provider of open-weight models to businesses, for more than $7 billion.
Thatâs a lot of capital pouring into a sector based on giving stuff away, and it reflects the latest trends in the AI sector.
For Nvidia, thereâs a need to avoid further dependence on its deals with the major hyperscalers and frontier labs. Thatâs particularly the case when major AI model builders like OpenAI and Google are also building their own inference chips, like OpenAIâs Jalapeño, whose capabilities were announced this week. If model builders are making chips, Nvidia wants a chunk of the model-making business.
Nvidia already builds its own Nemotron family of open-weight models, but their uptake hasnât been huge. By taking control of the largest U.S. developer space for open models, the company will have access to a mass of users it can drive to its chips and standards.
There are also growing questions about the cost of AI inference, which has companies exploring cheaper models built by Chinese companies like Moonshot, DeepSeek, and Alibaba. Right now, adoption is relatively small but growing â just 6% of companies use open-weight models, according to a survey of spending data by Ramp, or just 2% of software engineers measured by Jellyfish, which makes tools for developers.
Nik Albarran, the AI product lead at Jellyfish, told TechCrunch that open-weight models are primarily used by companies whose products rely on repeated inference workloads, like those providing customer service chats. Because these are high-volume tasks with a lot of repetition, an open-weight model can be tuned to answer the questions cheaply.
Thatâs certainly how Stripe has framed its OpenRouter acquisition. âTokens are the central currency for companies building with AI, and itâs clear that the real-world economic potential will depend on making good use of scarce compute resources,â Patrick Collison, Stripeâs co-founder and CEO, said in a statement.
For coding and agentic tasks, however, varying requests and more reasoning mean that frontier models often win out, in part because the proprietary labs provide easier access, and in some cases a token subsidy. Albarran says that as companies dial in AI workflows, it will be easier to turn to open models. Still, the main reason companies look to those models now is for control and configurability, not because of spending concerns.
âThere are not many companies where that is the case yet ⊠[but] if the prices continue to go up from the frontier labs, more and more companies will be forced to at least consider it,â Albarran told TechCrunch. âWhen your AI-driven workflows are much more mature, thatâs when it makes sense to invest in self-hosting models.â
Lin Qiao is the CEO of Fireworks, a leading open-weight models router and host for corporate users that is often discussed as a potential acquisition for a tech giant. Qiao says her company processes 40 trillion tokens a day, more than either of Geminiâs or OpenAIâs APIs.
Fireworksâ bet is on model diversity: As LLMs proliferate and improve, it will be easier for companies to train them specifically for their needs. âEvery single app company should consider hiring an in-house researcher,â she told TechCrunch last week. âThey can use their product and product data to build their own model. The future is actually specialized intelligence. Literally, every single company should have their own model per use case, and that will happen automatically.â
Itâs easy to forget how early we are in the development of AI as a tool and a business. The dominance of OpenAI and Anthropic, however, isnât inevitable. As the tech giants look to hedge their bets on the biggest labs, the allure of open technology is proving tough to resist.
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Tech
Smart rings focus on the heart. I saw the future, and it’s a sweat-sensing lab on your finger.
We have entered the age of biohacking now. And no, I am not talking about the extreme cases like Bryan Johnson, who is spending millions of dollars on ambitious health and de-aging goals. The average audience for wearables is now asking for more. They are feeding the sensing data collected by smartwatches, bands, and rings to AI agents, and pulling in more insights about their bodies. I created one such dashboard for myself using Claude in less than 10 minutes to make sense of the data collected by my smart ring.Â
But there is only so much you can do with these wearables. And thatâs owing to the limitations of the underlying light-based sensor. These sensors started with measuring heart rate, and in a decade, they made impressive advancements and can now measure ECG, blood pressure changes, temperature fluctuations, and blood oxygen saturation levels. They canât, however, dig into the biochemical side of things, the kind of stuff that requires a hospital visit or sophisticated medical gear.Â
When it comes to health and wellness, light-based analysis of the human blood is not the holy grail. Far from it, actually. There are a bunch of other fluids that are a treasure trove of health data. Saliva, urine, tears, and cerebrospinal fluid are among them. But in the realm of wearables, sweat has long been seen as the next big avenue for biosensing, especially for mass-market wearables. The challenge? Itâs an entirely different kind of engineering challenge.
But why sweat?

We are dealing with fluids here, and to perform a chemical analysis, one needs nothing short of a mini lab. Microfluidics is the field that has been trying to create these mini labs. Caltech researchers recently made a skin patch that can measure cholesterol levels using a sweat sample. The folks over at Pennsylvania State University also developed a similar patch back in 2023. But cramming all that sensing kit into something as small as a ring that enables continuous monitoring (and that too, for multiple chemicals at the same time) has been a daydream, so far.Â
Enter Tamoghana Saha, whose team at the University of California San Diego has developed a smart ring that can keep an eye on glucose, ketones, vitamin C, uric acid, lactate, and even alcohol levels by reading a sample of your sweat. And itâs not a one-off analysis. The ring, which the team calls the Continuous Health Analyzing Ring Module (CHARM), can perform continuous sweat analysis for a spell of 12 hours per charge, and maintain its calibration for a spell of two months.Â
Itâs a huge milestone that just needs some time and polish.
The ring is bulky. Itâs not waterproof. It has not been validated in clinical settings on human subjects. It canât do multi-day monitoring. But itâs still a ring, with upgradability and repairability as a key design principle. But above all, itâs living proof that chemical analysis of your sweat is now possible right on your index finger. And itâs going to be far more versatile than a typical smart ring that can only perform a proxy light-based analysis of the blood flowing in the vessels under your skin.Â

Digital Trends sat down for an interview with Saha to discuss the CHARM ring, the challenges, and what it says about the future of smart rings. Letâs start with the basics. The CHARM smart ring is capable of measuring glucose, ketones, vitaminâŻC, uricâŻacid, lactate, and alcohol levels from your sweat. Thatâs a sizeable selection of biomarkers, and what they can reveal about your health and fitness levels is even more diverse.
Check out this brief overview of what an analysis of these chemicals can reveal about body health and recovery in response to medication, diet changes, and workouts in general:
| Glucose | âą Type 1 & Type 2 Diabetes: Linked to glycemic excursions (postprandial hyperglycemia, hypoglycemia).
âą Metabolic Syndrome & Insulin Resistance: Flags impaired fasting glucose and early metabolic dysfunction. |
| Ketones | âą Diabetic Ketoacidosis (DKA): Linked with dangerous acid accumulation in insulin-deficient states.
âą Nutritional Ketosis: Helps track fat oxidation during ketogenic diets, fasting, or endurance exercise. |
| Vitamin C | âą Nutritional Status: Helps identify dietary insufficiency, hypovitaminosis C, and scurvy risk.
âą Immune & Tissue Health: Assesses antioxidant status, collagen synthesis, and wound-healing support. |
| Uric Acid | âą Gout & Hyperuricemia: Monitors purine metabolism dysfunction and inflammatory flare risks.
âą Cardiorenal Health: Serves as a marker for chronic kidney disease (CKD) risk and hypertension. |
| Lactate | âą Athletic Performance: Identifies anaerobic threshold, exercise intensity zones, and muscle fatigue.
âą Clinical Hypoxia: Detects systemic tissue hypoperfusion, shock, and metabolic acidosis. |
| Alcohol | âą Intoxication & Sobriety: Tracks transdermal ethanol excretion and estimated blood alcohol concentration (BAC).
âą Liver & Behavioral Health: Aids alcohol-related liver disease risk assessment and addiction recovery. |
Hereâs the most encouraging bit. What you see in the table above is just surface-level analysis. Once you combine it with data collected from other wearables â letâs say a smartwatch or fitness band â the potential is nearly endless. Interestingly, thatâs also a long-shot goal for the team at UC San Diego.
Itâs a whole new lab
But why not just focus on the current crop of light-based sensors you get on the likes of the Apple Watch Series 11 or Oura Ring? Why explore sweat instead of taking an optical peek at the blood vessels?

âWe wanted to target nutrition and diabetes in general, because if you take the individual biomarkers, their sensing mechanisms are quite well established,â Saha tells Digital Trends. âThis project was mostly about showing that if you miniaturize everything, you can integrate the necessary sensors, and you can shove everything into a small form factor like that of a ring.âÂ
It wasnât just the technical feasibility that was a crucial victory here. The team also demonstrated that a small portion of our finger was enough for sweat analysis, and that you donât necessarily have to stick a sensor patch on a wider area like your biceps, thighs, or back.Â
âI think, through this paper, we conveyed that, first of all, your ring location area, which is called the proximal phalanx, is a viable location to do sweat sensing, which people hadnât done. I think this was a major, major message that we wanted to send out to everyone who works in these fields.â

And finally, itâs the convenience of having a non-invasive, low-effort system to analyze sweat without you even noticing it. âUnlike other existing sweat-based wearables, which mostly function with exercise, or use chemical stimulation (they inject a drug that makes you sweat), we work with passive sweat.â
That means you wonât have to exercise to generate sweat, or worry about a chemical acting in your body to pull sweat on your skin. Instead, the team relied on a compact circular slot on the ring that contains hydrogel, which uses osmotic pressure difference to draw out sweat from the skin.
âSo thatâs the unique part, and the thing is completely passive. The hydrogel is acting like a pump. There is no power consumption in sweat extraction,â Saha tells me. Talking about power consumption, the team created its own rechargeable battery that lasts up to 12 hours per charge.Â
Trust and versatility

The biggest victory is the versatility. The CHARM ring can measure four biomarkers simultaneously. Additionally, the sensing system, which is based on a sensorâmicrofluidic assembly, can maintain its stability for two months, which means you wonât have to frequently calibrate it based on the readings you get from a traditional blood-based test.
But what about the accuracy? Saha says the team measured the ringâs accuracy against commercially available blood meters and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), and the accuracy was analyzed across multiple metrics. Readings were taken in different scenarios, such as after alcoholic drink consumption, having a candy, and post-dinner, in order to measure the rise and fall in biomarker levels such as glucose, lactate, and alcohol.
When compared against devices that are used in clinical settings, the CHARM ring impressed with a low error range and high reliability in measuring the spikes and drops in biomarker levels. Additionally, all the data points collected by the ring fell in the A and B Zones (as per the Clinical Error Grid accuracy metric used by the US FDA), which means the results are either accurate or they are safely within a range where they wonât cause any harm if the readings are slightly off. Â

The team also went with paper-based microfluidics instead of the traditional microfluidic channel architecture. Saha tells me that conventional microfluidics is susceptible to fouling, with one of the core issues being salt accumulation. Using paper also proved to be the more cost-effective choice, while the hydrogel acts like a passive pump to draw out sweat without using any energy.Â
Itâs still a work in progress. Beyond the engineering challenges, thereâs the long process of clinical validation, which can easily take years, before the underlying tech makes it to the market. Why not just put it out there with a disclaimer? The likes of Google, Apple, and Samsung make it clear that their watches and rings can measure heart rate and sense blood pressure, but they are not meant as a replacement for medical-grade devices for measuring biomarkers, even though these mass-market wearables offer a high degree of accuracy.Â
For now, Sahaâs team has no such plans, but there are a few bright prospects. When asked where he envisions the device to be a better fit â at home or in a hospital setting â he tells me it could be suitable for both.Â

âI would say that such a form factor, to be honest, is applicable everywhere, even in a hospital setting. For example, if a person is septic. Now, lactate is a key biomarker for septic patients, and sepsis is a slow process where your blood lactate levels are very high, and then they become extremely high over a period of time,â he explains. âSo, I think if a patient comes to the clinic, instead of hooking up wires or bulky devices, a smart ring like CHARM can give information about their well-being by continuously recording their blood lactate levels and warning them about any worrisome spikes.â
Fixing historical flaws
I also asked about the repairability and upgradability aspects, because these happen to be the biggest weak spots of modern-age smart rings, and even smart watches with a fused sensor assembly. They can handle splashes, but if anything goes awry, the only option left is an expensive replacement. Repairs are simply out of the question. For the CHARM team, it is âa key consideration,â Saha tells me.Â
The team is currently focused on fixing a few underlying problems. Making the ring waterproof is one of the key areas of improvement. The ring currently has an open hinge-lock design, but the team hopes to achieve a fully enclosed architecture, like the current crop of smart rings. Replaceable modular components are a key objective, alongside a rechargeable battery format and sustained multi-day biosensing.Â

The team also aims to conduct clinical tests among a wider pool of patients with different tiers of diabetic ailments, and hopes to add more biomarkers to the support pool. How about merging a light-based sensor with a microfluidic-based sensing module on the same ring?Â
âThat is possible,â Saha tells me, adding that we might see such an all-in-one model in a year or two. The CHARM team refers to that vision as a multimodal chemo-physical hybrid ring. The ultimate goal is to develop a âpractical, user-friendly multi-biomarker wearable monitoring platformâ that looks like a ring.Â
Itâs an extremely ambitious idea, but Saha is also extremely cautious about giving a definitive roadmap. Biosensing is a field that has been built atop decades of work, and measuring biomarkers is not a straightforward lab-to-body journey. The painstakingly monitored clinical analyses and external validation are the real litmus test. It takes years, if not decades, before one can confidently push an entirely new kind of multi-biomarker wearable device.
You donât want a repeat of what Oura is going through right now, after all!
Thankfully, CHARM is in the hands of an academic institution, and not a corporate entity hell-bent on maximizing profits riding atop zealous claims. Saha notes that the CHARM ring is a proof-of-concept with promising results. It would, however, take some time before we see a ring with the underlying tech appear in a retail shop. The future of wearable sensing, nonetheless, is full of possibilities.
Tech
Xbox Project Helix Is A ‘Family Of Devices,’ CEO Reveals
Looks like Xbox is developing more than one next-gen console.
Shortly after she was named CEO of Xbox, Asha Sharma announced “Project Helix,” which she said was the code name for the brand’s next-generation console. Now, in a new interview with BBC News at gamescom 2026, Sharma said that Xbox has been hard at work developing a “great family of devices” for Helix, indicating that it’s working on not just one console.Â
Sharma didn’t reveal more details about the devices’ development, but she promised that Xbox will be sharing more soon. The CEO also said that Xbox will “continue to push the boundaries of performance” and reiterated that Helix will be able to play both console and PC games, though it’s unclear now if she means all of the devices in the lineup will be capable of doing so.
As The Verge has noted, she made that statement in response to being asked whether the next Xbox will be a discless device. If you’ll recall, Sony announced last month that the PlayStation will go full digital and will stop making disc-based games by 2028. Sharma didn’t answer that question. Xbox is planning to ship the alpha versions of the Helix console â or perhaps consoles, if Xbox truly is making more than one â to developers starting next year.
Tech
Daily Deal: Raspberry Pi Pico With Ultimate Starter Kit
from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept
The SunFounder Raspberry Pi Pico With the Ultimate Starter Kit offers a rich IoT learning experience for beginners aged 8 and up. With over 450 components, 117 projects, and expert-led tutorials, this kit makes learning microcontroller programming and IoT engaging and accessible. It also features 27 video lessons by renowned educator Paul McWhorter, simplifying microcontroller programming and IoT concepts. Packed with diverse hardware, including sensors, actuators, LEDs, and LCDs, it enables endless experimentation and creativity. Supporting three programming languages, MicroPython, C/C++, and Piper Make, the kit caters to varying skill levels while fostering coding versatility. With dedicated technical support and a vibrant online community, this all-in-one starter kit ensures a seamless, hands-on journey into the world of IoT. Itâs on sale for $65 for a limited time.
Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackSocial. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.
Filed Under: daily deal
Tech
Amazon Launches Preorder M6 Mac mini Deals, Save up to $30
Preorder deals are in effect on the just-announced M6 Mac mini at Amazon. Pick up the 2026 desktop for as low as $879.99.
Save $20 on Apple’s brand-new M6 Mac mini that was announced this week, bringing the price of the standard model down to $879.99. This configuration has the new M6 chip with a 12-core CPU and 12-core GPU, along with 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage.
Buy M6 Mac mini 256GB for $879.99
If you want the flexibility of additional storage, the 512GB Mac mini with the same 12-core M6 chip is $30 off, bringing the price down to $1,069.99.
Buy M6 Mac mini 512GB for $1,069.99
These are the lowest preorder prices available, according to our M6 Mac mini Price Guide, with the compact desktop officially launching on Sept. 22.
Tech
Google Health gets better workout logging and more reliable tracking in latest update
Google Health 5.07 is rolling out with a number of changes to how the app records and displays your workout and health data. Trail and incline runs will now count toward your Running Distance totals, manually logged workouts can include more information, and Google has fixed an issue that could cause Health Connect to disconnect for some Android users.
The update is rolling out on Android and iOS starting today and should reach more devices over the next week. It follows version 5.05, which added two-way Apple Health syncing and Smart Health Links, and version 5.06, which gave users the option to remove the Health Coachâs lengthy guidance from the Today tab.
More of your workout data should show up properly
For users who manually log their workouts, Google Health will now let you add and adjust more metrics. Google also says that any changes you make should show up in workout summaries more quickly.
Swimming workouts are getting a similar change. Users will be able to record more metrics when switching between pool and open-water swimming. Google is also fixing something that should have been counted already. Trail runs and incline runs will now be included in your Running Distance totals, giving you a more complete figure if either activity is part of your regular workouts.

Maps are getting some attention as well. Google says they should load faster and render more smoothly. An issue that could occasionally cause maps to disappear when using your phone to track a run, walk, or bike ride has also been fixed.
Health Connect gets a much-needed fix
Some Android users have been running into an issue where Health Connect would lose its connection with Google Health. Version 5.07 fixes the problem. If you were affected, Health Connect should now appear under Partner Apps in the Connections screen. Google has also recalibrated the dynamic minimum and maximum range of the weight graph. The change should make weight trends and changes easier to see at a glance.
Google Health has received several larger additions since replacing the Fitbit app in May. Version 5.07 is a much smaller update, but most of its changes deal with making sure the workout and health information already in the app is recorded and displayed properly.
Tech
Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Review: Master of Phone Calls
Noise canceling is also top-tier. The buds have the standard noise cancellation, transparency, adaptive, and off modes, and you can fine-tune ANC strength (from one to five) using the case or Soundcore app. The only earbuds that noticeably canceled more noise were the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen) and Sony WF-1000XM6.
Video: Harry Rabinowitz
Video: Harry Rabinowitz
Out of the box, the sound profile (called Soundcore Signature) isn’t an immediate slam dunk like call quality and ANC are. It’s bass-heavy, so much so that I would bet even an untrained ear would notice the bass boost, especially compared to other earbuds from Apple or Bose. There are five preset sound profiles (I preferred Soundcore Balance), an eight-band custom equalizer to play with, and a personalized HearID mode, which tunes the profile to your preferences based on an audio quiz where you select which clip you prefer.
Using the Soundcore Balance or custom HearID profile, the Liberty 5 Pro sounds great. Again, it’s not quite as detailed as AirPods Pro 3 or QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds, but it’s close enough to be enjoyable for most people, especially given the significantly lower price.
Daily Versatility
Photograph: Harry Rabinowitz
It’s not often that a new pair of earbuds becomes my go-to. The convenience of the Apple ecosystem usually means AirPods Pro 3 are, begrudgingly, my earbuds of choice. But I’m still using the Liberty 5 Pro; I’m using them as I write this review. The Liberty 5 Pro is comfortable, sounds good, has great ANC, works well on iPhone and Android devices, and fits securely, making it well suited for almost any task. An IP55 rating means the earbuds should hold their own against dust and light rain. Most importantly, it offers such dramatically better call quality that I enjoy phone calls more, even with my mumbling and NYC street noise.
Sure, sound clarity isn’t perfect. Yes, the buds are a bit large. But when those are the only complaints I have about earbuds that cost nearly $100 less than most of my other top recommendations, that’s a big deal. In 2026, the Liberty 5 Pro might be the best value earbuds you can get.
Tech
OpenAI to stop supplying models to Cursor after SpaceX acquisition
OpenAI is ending its contract to supply models to Cursor following SpaceXâs $60B acquisition, with access shutting off on 12 November and its forthcoming Astra model withheld. Cursor and SpaceXAI shipped Grok 4.5 together in July, which is available in Cursor on every plan.
OpenAI is ending its contract to supply models to Cursor. The shutoff date is 12 November, the company said on Saturday.
The reason given is unusually direct. OpenAI said it cannot be confident SpaceX will use its technology within its terms of service, âbased on our experience with Elon Muskâs companies violating contractsâ.
Bloomberg reported it first. OpenAI published the same notice on X and on its own website.
Two grounds are named, both about earlier conduct. SpaceXâs acquisition of Twitter breached OpenAIâs terms, the company said, and xAI violated them in a way Musk admitted under oath this year.
The buyer completed its purchase this month. SpaceX closed the $60B all-stock acquisition of Cursor after agreeing it in June.
OpenAI says it gave the maximum notice its contract allows, about two and a half months. Astra, its next model, will not be supplied to Cursor at all. It added that it is ready to go above and beyond to support developers moving off.
The leverage in that is thinner than it looks. Cursor and SpaceXAI shipped Grok 4.5 together in July, a model Musk called Opus-class, available in Cursor on every plan.
So OpenAI is removing a supplier from a company that now owns a frontier lab. The gesture costs Cursor less than it would have in June, when the deal had only been agreed.
What it costs developers is real. Europe wrote rules for exactly this dependency, and since September 2025 cloud customers have been able to switch on two monthsâ notice and port their assets within 30 days. From January 2027 the provider cannot charge for any of it.
Whether those rules reach this is unresolved. The definition sweeps in as-a-service models broadly, and nobody has ruled on whether a model API counts as one.
There is a further gap in them. The switching rules protect a customer who wants to leave a provider, not a customer whose provider decides to leave. Nobody drafted for a supplier walking out.
Which is where European developers on Cursor now sit. Seventy-five days of notice, granted by a contract they never saw, with nothing statutory underneath it.
Tech
Appleâs new Macs will ship with the next version of macOS
Appleâs latest Mac mini and Mac Studio models are reportedly set to ship with macOS Golden Gate, rather than macOS Tahoe.
The upcoming software appears to be mentioned on the product pages for both new Macs, giving us an early indication that Apple plans to have its next-generation operating system ready before the computers arrive.
According to Daring Fireballâs John Gruber, the new Mac mini and Mac Studio are âslated to shipâ with macOS Golden Gate. Appleâs product pages already reference features coming with the next version of macOS, including Siri AI, further suggesting that the software will be installed on the machines from launch.
Apple itself also refers to the upcoming operating system in its announcement for the new Mac mini, saying that the computer will launch with âthe upcoming macOS 27â. The company highlights Siri AI, Apple Intelligence features and improvements designed to make the Mac more responsive and reliable.
Thereâs some additional evidence behind the claim, too. FCC documents and other findings reported by MacRumors reportedly point towards macOS Golden Gate being pre-installed on the new Macs.
That also gives us a fairly narrow window for when Apple needs to release the software. Apple says the new Mac mini and Mac Studio will be released on Tuesday, September 22, meaning macOS Golden Gate would need to arrive before then if customers are to receive the machines with the new operating system already installed.
Apple hasnât confirmed an exact release date for macOS Golden Gate yet, but its previous release patterns provide a reasonable clue. The software could arrive during the week beginning Monday, September 14, giving Apple enough time to get it onto the new Macs before they start shipping.
For existing Mac owners, this means the launch of Appleâs latest hardware could also mark the arrival of the next major macOS update. However, Apple has yet to officially confirm the release date, so weâll have to wait for further details before treating that timing as final.
it seemed odd that Apple announced these new Macs, and then said it wouldnât ship them until late next month.
However, this makes a lot more sense now. Apple probably also wants to get these out (at least the official launch of them) before the real fun stuff starts to arrive, like the firxt foldable iPhone.
Opinion
Tech
Is the best way to watch a movie on a pair of sunglasses?
I am nothing if not a huge movie buff. I watch way too many of them, and Iâm always on the hunt for a new format in which to experience them. So when XREAL, the smart glasses company, sent me an a01 â one of its newer models, which it released in May of this year â I was eager to give them a spin as the newest vector by which to satisfy my media fanaticism.
The a01 isnât a particularly sophisticated smart glasses model. Unlike more software-heavy AR glasses like, say, the Meta Orion or Snapâs Specs, itâs basically just an external monitor. It also doesnât have a battery or an internal power mechanism. Instead, a simple USB-C cable plugs the glasses into a device of your choosing, which then becomes the headsetâs power source. Itâs also not so expensive, at an accessible price point of around $300.
The a01 is actually optimized for gaming, in that it can be plugged into a Steam Deck or other handheld gaming device. However, XREAL also advertises them as a way to watch movies and TV â and since thatâs more my speed, once I had the a01 in hand, I plugged it into my personal laptop and booted up the Criterion Channel. I then sat watching David Lynchâs film âWild at Heartâ for a while, enjoying a sequence where Nicolas Cage, dressed in a snakeskin jacket, beats up a guy in a bar and then sings an Elvis song.
Iâll say this: The images look quite good. The glasses, which come outfitted with dual mini OLED panels, provide quite a nice image (those panels offer a 1080p resolution with up to 1,600 nits of brightness), with very vibrant colors. If you aim the glasses at a wall, it feels vaguely like youâre using a really vivid home projector â or perhaps are at a drive-in movie. In a dark room, youâre one step closer to the in-theater experience.
However, the overall experience also brought some questions to mind. Namely, why would I sit next to my computer with glasses on my head watching a thing that is also playing on my laptop only 14 inches away? The reason, XREAL offers, is that the glasses are more immersive (they claim the deviceâs projections are equivalent to viewing content on a 147-inch screen). Still, the redundancy of watching a movie while it plays right next to you makes you question what the actual purpose of the device is.
XREAL has suggested that the glasses can function as a âsecond monitorâ (indeed, theyâve actually been referred to as a âwearable displayâ) but the functionality of this is, again, questionable. Itâs rather difficult to see anything other than what the glasses are projecting â which would make it quite difficult to, say, work on a laptop while also wearing them.
The glasses can also be connected to your phone. Unfortunately, I have an older iPhone, which means that the a01âs cable is not compatible with the phoneâs port. An adapter would have been necessary to link the two.
The user experience is easy enough to imagine, however. Connecting the glasses to a phone means that youâre not captive to an indoor experience anymore as you would be with a heftier device like a laptop. You can watch a movie while youâre traveling on a plane or a train (or, hell, while youâre walking down the street â although I would say this last option is generally ill-advised unless you want to accidentally walk into traffic).

However, there are still inconvenient limitations with using the device this way. For one thing, the glasses still only function as a screen-mirroring device â meaning that the screen of your phone needs to remain active while youâre using the glasses. This brings us back to the redundancy problem. Youâre watching a video on a screen attached to your face while the same video plays on a different screen that is located less than a foot away. You could partially solve this issue by putting the phone in your pocket, but the chances seem high that any jostling might upset the deviceâs playback functionality.
Itâs worth noting that the device can also be paired with a separate device, dubbed the Beam Pro, which is essentially a mini-tablet and can act as an isolated streaming hub. Users download shows and movies onto the Beam, connect it to the glasses, and watch. However, this device will cost you another $200.
Then thereâs the heat. It doesnât take long for the a01 to start warming up â producing an odd tingling sensation on the bridge of your nose and over your eyes. This is, of course, not an experience unique to XREALâs products â itâs a well-known defect of most XR glasses. You can only cram so much computing into a small plastic device before all the electrical processing begins to warm everything up. Still, itâs a tad disconcerting, and not exactly what you would want from an accessory that youâre wearing on your face.
I will say that â heat aside â the a01 is a relatively lightweight and comfortable device â and it isnât overly cumbersome like other smart glasses that Iâve worn. (Having given Snapâs Specs a try at CES earlier this year, I promise you those are significantly heavier â although itâs also a very different kind of device than the a01.)

XREAL continues to iterate its product line, with each new device seeming to improve upon the previous one. Indeed, some of the existential dilemmas present in the a01 and previous XREAL headsets seem to have been ironed out in the companyâs newest (and yet to be released) device: Project Aura â which I caught a glimpse of during my visit to Google I/O earlier this year â promises a significantly more immersive and convenient experience.
The Aura is powered by Android XR, an extended reality operating system developed by Google and Samsung. The Aura comes with native hand tracking (which is absent in the a01), as well as access to the Google Play Store, giving the glasses significantly more interactive abilities and AR potential. It also comes with a puck, tethered to the glasses, that acts as both the charging source and a compute node. The puck, which can be easily placed in your pocket, means that â unlike the a01 â you have substantially more mobility and you donât have to keep it plugged into a separate device.
Letâs return to the a01, though. Unfortunately, from a cinephileâs perspective, watching movies on a pair of sunglasses just isnât ideal. In general, movie fans like a big screen â the bigger, the better, really. In a world of 4K OLEDs of varyingly gargantuan sizes, consumers have a lot of options. My TV â a 55-inch TCL S-series â isnât even a particularly powerful device, but it provides a home-viewing experience that is more comfortable and satisfying than what the a01 can provide. To my mind, watching a movie at home on a large flat screen is second only to actually going to a theater. Watching a film on tiny screens less than an inch from your eyes, meanwhile, is an interesting experience for its distinct sense of immersion but not what Iâd call optimal.
The a01 is an interesting glimpse into a hardware industry that continues to evolve and that is still finding its footing with consumers. Iâm curious to see how the user experience shifts with XREALâs upcoming Aura, and Iâm game to reevaluate my movie-watching preferences when that time comes.
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