Tech

Teaching a Generation That Questions Everything

Published

1 hour ago

7 February 2026

I’ve been teaching long enough to recognize when something fundamental is shifting in the classroom. Lately, that shift sounds like a single word echoing through my courses: why.

Why are we doing this? Why does it matter? Why should I care?

At first, it can sound like pushback, the kind of challenge that might once have been mistaken for defiance. But I don’t see it that way. When Gen Z students ask “why,” they’re not questioning authority; they’re questioning meaning. They’re trying to understand whether what they’re being asked to learn aligns with a world that already feels crowded with information, competition and contradiction.

And they’re right to ask.

Gen Z has grown up surrounded by constant messaging — some genuine, some hollow. They’ve seen companies preach purpose while chasing profit, influencers claim authenticity while filtering reality, and institutions talk about mental health while rewarding burnout. So when they step into a classroom, they’re not looking for performance. They’re looking for proof.

In many ways, “why” has replaced the old-fashioned raise of the hand. It’s the new signal for engagement, not disengagement. These students aren’t rebellious for sport; they’re searching for relevance. When they ask “why,” they’re asking us to show them the thread between knowledge and purpose.

For educators, that’s both thrilling and challenging. The old classroom contract may no longer be enough. Gen Z expects transparency in exchange for trust. They want to know not only what they’re learning but how it connects to who they’re becoming. That expectation is reshaping how many of us teach.

I’ve noticed that when I take the time to explain why we’re doing something — even briefly — engagement rises. It doesn’t need to be a speech or a slide titled “Why It Matters.” It can be a few sentences woven into the moment: “You’ll use this when you’re leading a team someday,” or “This will help you understand how strategy actually plays out in a business setting.” Framing purpose in passing often lands more effectively than any formal statement could. It tells students that there’s intention behind what they’re being asked to do.

And when the connection isn’t obvious, I try to make the learning process itself transparent. I’ll tell them why I’ve designed a particular project or changed an assignment from last semester. I explain my reasoning the way I’d want a mentor to explain theirs — not to justify, but to include. Once they see the care that goes into the design, their tone shifts from skeptical to curious.

New Perspective

That shift has changed my own mindset as an instructor. I’ve started to see my role less as delivering content and more as modeling thoughtfulness — the same kind I’m asking of them. I don’t have to declare that an assignment matters; I can show that it does by connecting it to a broader purpose, by caring about it visibly.

When things don’t go perfectly, I’ve learned to acknowledge that too. I used to think admitting uncertainty would weaken credibility. It turns out it does the opposite. When I tell students, “I’m still experimenting with how to teach this,” they don’t lose confidence — they lean in. They respect honesty because it mirrors their own experience of figuring things out.

That’s the real undercurrent here: authenticity has replaced authority as the key driver of credibility. Gen Z doesn’t automatically trust titles or experience; they trust consistency between what we say and what we do. They’ve been burned too many times by institutions that preached one set of values and practiced another. In the classroom, they want something simpler — teachers who mean what they say.

This doesn’t mean lowering standards or catering to comfort. If anything, it’s raised expectations. When students believe something has meaning, they work harder. I’ve seen it when my students analyze real company challenges instead of hypothetical ones, or when they present their findings to local business leaders rather than just to me. They’re sharper, more invested, and more willing to push themselves when the stakes feel real.

Even small acts of transparency build trust. Explaining why feedback is framed a certain way, or why participation matters, helps students see that the structure exists for a reason. They might not always agree, but they rarely tune out.

Overcoming Defensiveness

Of course, this approach can be draining. There are days when the “whys” feel relentless — when every question seems to demand another explanation, and you wonder if they’ll ever just take your word for it. But over time, I’ve come to see their skepticism not as defiance but as discernment. They’re not trying to tear down the system; they’re trying to make it make sense.

When a student asks, “Why are we doing this?” they’re really saying, “Help me to see the point.” That’s not cynicism. You might call it curiosity with higher benchmarks. And if we can meet that question with openness instead of defensiveness, the classroom becomes a space of shared inquiry rather than guarded authority.

There’s an irony in all this. The very generation accused of being distracted is, in many ways, the most focused — just not on what older models of education assumed mattered. They’re focused on meaning. They want clarity, fairness and consistency, but they also want a sense of humanity behind it all. They crave professors who teach like people, not policies.

Maybe that’s the lesson for us, too. If Gen Z is asking “why,” perhaps we should start asking it of ourselves — not as a challenge, but as reflection. Why do we teach the way we do? Why do we grade like this? Why do we define learning in these terms?

Teaching a generation that questions everything isn’t easy. But it’s not resistance, it’s renewal. Their “why” invites us to rediscover our own.

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2026 Loki Prevost H3-45 Motorhome Could be the Most Luxurious Yet, Costs $2.2-Million

Published

12 minutes ago

7 February 2026

NewsAdmin

2026 Loki Prevost Motorhome H3-45
The 2026 Loki Prevost H3-45, a 45-foot diesel coach, arrives on the scene and completely upends all we thought we understood about what a motorhome should be. Built on the Prevost H3-45 VIP chassis, this beast boasts a 550 horsepower Volvo D13 engine mated with a huge 1,850 pound-feet of torque, resulting in a seriously smooth and confident drive that doesn’t go all dramatic. That chassis, of course, includes all of the bells and whistles, such as self-leveling suspension, electronic stability systems, and driving aids that make long trips a breeze rather than a grind.

Loki Coach approaches the conversion with a perfectly rational perspective, which is more than a bit refreshing. The lines are sleek and minimalist, all black with a hint of a glow from the continuous LED lighting that runs up the edge of the device; no flash, no bother. The quad slides significantly increase the living area, but you’d never know it by looking at it, as it still appears sleek and purposeful, with none of the bulbous overhang seen on some other rigs.

EF ECOFLOW Portable Power Station DELTA 2, 1024Wh LiFePO4 (LFP) Battery, 1800W AC/100W USB-C Output,…

7 X Faster Charging. 0-80% in just 50 mins and 0-100% in 80 mins with AC input. That’s ideal when you need home backup power and a quick charge using…
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Stepping inside, the area unfolds with great care and attention to detail. You’ve got hardwood cabinetry with nice soft-close hinges, all dovetail joinery, and stone surfaces everywhere, on the counters, the farmhouse sink, the dining table, as all the kitchen stuff is top-shelf GE Cafe appliances, such as a convection microwave, double-door fridge, drawer dishwasher, and it all just fits right into this super simple layout. You have two pantries and plenty of storage to keep everything organized, but it still feels wide and open.

2026 Loki Prevost Motorhome H3-45
Living areas, on the other hand, are all about getting it just right; a pull-out sofa anchors the lounge, and the bar setup near the driver’s seat is exactly what you need, and then there’s the workstation, which includes a 27″ monitor on a hydraulic lift, allowing you to simply start working without disrupting the entire flow. The chairs are really comfortable, and the Sonos audio system fills the space with sound, which even reaches outdoors under the power awnings. Of course, you have keyless access, a Ring doorbell camera, and a Garmin command center with all of the settings right at your fingertips.

2026 Loki Prevost Motorhome H3-45
Bedrooms are all about the king bed, which is flanked by dual wardrobes and a rising elevator TV, with padded ceilings throughout to help with acoustics. The back ensuite bathroom features a large tiled shower, a stone vanity, a cosmetics station, and even its own toilet with drawer. You also have a separate half bath up front with a porcelain macerating toilet and mirrored cupboards, a washing and dryer hidden behind retractable doors, a coffee station, and a second pantry.

2026 Loki Prevost Motorhome H3-45
This thing is all about energy independence, with 400 watts of solar on the roof, giant lithium batteries, a commercial onan generator, and hydronic heating that warms up the entire area. The water capacities of 172 gallons fresh, 115 gray, and 60 black are adequate for some extended off-grid living. It all works effortlessly, with the screens rising and falling without your notice, the lighting adjusting without any obvious switches, and everything humming silently in the background.

2026 Loki Prevost Motorhome H3-45
All of this refinement costs around $2.2 million, which is a reasonable sum for all of the artistry and attention to detail that has gone into this project.
[Source]

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Sixteen Claude AI agents working together created a new C compiler

Published

26 minutes ago

7 February 2026

NewsAdmin

Amid a push toward AI agents, with both Anthropic and OpenAI shipping multi-agent tools this week, Anthropic is more than ready to show off some of its more daring AI coding experiments. But as usual with claims of AI-related achievement, you’ll find some key caveats ahead.

On Thursday, Anthropic researcher Nicholas Carlini published a blog post describing how he set 16 instances of the company’s Claude Opus 4.6 AI model loose on a shared codebase with minimal supervision, tasking them with building a C compiler from scratch.

Over two weeks and nearly 2,000 Claude Code sessions costing about $20,000 in API fees, the AI model agents reportedly produced a 100,000-line Rust-based compiler capable of building a bootable Linux 6.9 kernel on x86, ARM, and RISC-V architectures.

Carlini, a research scientist on Anthropic’s Safeguards team who previously spent seven years at Google Brain and DeepMind, used a new feature launched with Claude Opus 4.6 called “agent teams.” In practice, each Claude instance ran inside its own Docker container, cloning a shared Git repository, claiming tasks by writing lock files, then pushing completed code back upstream. No orchestration agent directed traffic. Each instance independently identified whatever problem seemed most obvious to work on next and started solving it. When merge conflicts arose, the AI model instances resolved them on their own.

The resulting compiler, which Anthropic has released on GitHub, can compile a range of major open source projects, including PostgreSQL, SQLite, Redis, FFmpeg, and QEMU. It achieved a 99 percent pass rate on the GCC torture test suite and, in what Carlini called “the developer’s ultimate litmus test,” compiled and ran Doom.

It’s worth noting that a C compiler is a near-ideal task for semi-autonomous AI model coding: The specification is decades old and well-defined, comprehensive test suites already exist, and there’s a known-good reference compiler to check against. Most real-world software projects have none of these advantages. The hard part of most development isn’t writing code that passes tests; it’s figuring out what the tests should be in the first place.

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Alpine Skiing at Winter Olympics 2026 Free Streams

Published

39 minutes ago

7 February 2026

NewsAdmin

Alpine skiing live streams at the 2026 Winter Olympics will see Austria attempt to continue their historic dominance of this event, with challenges expected from Switzerland and France.

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Tech

Ski Jumping at Winter Olympics 2026 Free Streams

Published

53 minutes ago

7 February 2026

NewsAdmin

Ski jumping at the Winter Olympics should deliver plenty of drama and entertainment at Milano Cortina 2026.

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Tech

Why these startup founders are leaving Seattle for San Francisco

Published

1 hour ago

7 February 2026

NewsAdmin

Nour Gajial (left), CEO of MathGPT, and Avi Agola, co-founder of Talunt, recently left the Seattle region for San Francisco. (Photos courtesy of Gajial and Agola)

Seattle’s startup ecosystem has its strengths, and the city is a global AI hub. But for some tech entrepreneurs, the gravity of San Francisco is hard to resist — especially in the middle of an AI boom.

We caught up with early stage startup founders who recently relocated from Seattle to San Francisco — a move that echoes earlier eras when entrepreneurs with local roots ultimately built valuable companies elsewhere.

This time, founders say the pull is about being inside the “world’s AI capital” as a way to supercharge their startups.

“I knew that moving to SF — where the largest concentration of startups are — would be the best move for maximizing our success,” said Avi Agola, co-founder of recruiting platform Talunt.

Before he arrived at the University of Washington this past fall, Agola immersed himself in Seattle’s startup scene as a teenager. He worked out of Seattle founder hub Foundations, launched his own company, and sold it last year to a fellow Seattle startup.

Agola credits Seattle’s startup community with helping him develop credibility and understand what it takes to run a company.

But as he got Talunt off the ground, Agola packed his bags for San Francisco. Part of the decision was practical: Investors encouraged the move, and many of Talunt’s early customers are in the Bay Area.

Aviel Ginzburg, a Seattle venture capitalist who runs Foundations, said he understands the strategy.

“I think that anyone in their 20s who wants to build in startups should be living down there right now, simply for building a network to get lucky,” he said.

That was part of the reason Nour Gajial, CEO of MathGPT, also moved from Seattle to San Francisco.

After dropping out of Cornell to pursue her AI education startup full time, Gajial returned home to the Seattle area. She found a supportive, tight-knit tech community and a comfortable place to build.

But as MathGPT gained traction, Gajial and her co-founder started making trips to San Francisco. They noticed more startup events, younger founders, and more frequent in-person interactions with people building and funding AI companies.

“There’s always some new AI research that’s going on, or some event that will open your eyes about something,” Gajial said. “I don’t see that energy as much in Seattle.”

Gajial said she’s grateful to have met “some really cool founders” in Seattle. MathGPT co-founder Yanni Kouloumbis lauded the region’s talent pool. But they felt that being in Silicon Valley gives them better odds at making it big.

“We just want to put ourselves in the best possible situation for these spontaneously good things to happen to us,” Kouloumbis said.

Nistha Mitra spent three years in Seattle, where she worked at Oracle. She later launched Neuramill, an early stage company developing software for manufacturing, and noticed a clear divide between Seattle’s corporate tech culture and startup life.

“I don’t think my community in the Big Tech world had any awareness of startups and how startups work,” Mitra said.

Mitra moved to San Francisco six months ago. “In SF, everyone knows what’s going on, no matter who they are,” she said.

She described a hard-charging atmosphere where it’s normal behavior to work 15-hour days on your startup. Being in that environment “really changes how you perform,” Mitra said.

When she worked long days in Seattle, friends worried about her. “I feel like in SF, it’s kind of normalized, that kind of lifestyle,” she said.

The same calculus is playing out for more experienced techies.

Vik Korrapati, a Seattle-based founder who spent nearly a decade at AWS, recently announced that his AI startup Moondream is moving from Seattle to San Francisco. He framed the decision around the scale and urgency of the current AI moment.

Artificial intelligence, Korrapati wrote in an online post, is “the biggest platform shift we’re going to see in our working lives,” and relocating was about being “in the right place, with the right people” as his company builds high-performance vision models.

Korrapati said the move wasn’t driven by a lack of talent in Seattle, but by differences in risk tolerance and default behavior. “The issue isn’t ability. It’s default settings,” he wrote, describing a culture where many engineers optimize for stability and incremental progress rather than the uncertainty of early-stage startup work.

In San Francisco, he said, he found more people who had already left Big Tech roles and were willing to make the startup leap. “Seattle has been good to me,” Korrapati said. “I learned how large systems work here. I got the space to spin up Moondream here. I’m not leaving angry.”

Ethan Byrd, a former engineer at AWS, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, helped launch Seattle software startup Actual AI in 2024. Now he’s working on a new startup called MyMX — and is strongly considering a move.

Seattle isn’t a bad place to build a startup, Byrd said, and he loves the city. But San Francisco is just on a different level when it comes to entrepreneurship.

“Everything is easier: hiring, talking to customers, raising money, hosting events,” he said. At the end of the day, as he tries to grow his new startup, Byrd said moving to Silicon Valley “just seems unavoidable.”

But not all Seattle founders are headed south.

“There’s a really good pool of talent right now, especially with the layoffs unfortunately happening,” said Ankit Dhawan, CEO of Seattle-based marketing startup BluePill. “We don’t feel any need to move out of here.”

Silicon Valley is great for fundraising and making connections. “But there comes a moment when it’s too much noise,” said Alejandro Castellano, CEO of Seattle AI startup Caddi. “You just need a place to actually focus on work.”

And when a trip to the Bay Area is needed — some of Caddi’s investors are based there — it’s a short flight away. “You can come back the same day,” Castellano said.

Sunil Nagaraj (left), founder of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Ubiquity Ventures, interviews Auth0 co-founder Eugenio Pace at an event at AI House last week. Nagaraj traveled to Seattle to host the event and visit with Seattle-area startups in Ubiquity’s portfolio. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor Soper)

Many Silicon Valley investors also make trips up to Seattle. Earlier this week, Sunil Nagaraj, managing partner of Palo Alto-based Ubiquity Ventures, hosted a startup event at Seattle’s AI House. During his fireside chat with Auth0 co-founder Eugenio Pace, he called out the various Seattle-based founders in the crowd that he’s backed. “Ubiquity Ventures ❤️ Seattle!!” Nagaraj wrote on LinkedIn.

Yifan Zhang, founder of AI House and managing director at the AI2 Incubator, said she wants to get more out-of-town investors connected to the Seattle region.

Zhang built her first startup in San Francisco. For certain types of founders, she said, Silicon Valley is a better place to create serendipitous relationships that can lead to a funding round or a large customer.

“But it’s also easy to get lost in the mix, or get distracted by the hype,” Zhang noted. “It really depends on who you are, but no matter where you’re based, founders still need to do the hard work of selling and building an incredible product and scaling it.”

Seattle is still drawing in many founders from out of town. Real estate startup RentSpree moved here from Los Angeles last year, attracted to the tech talent base and concentration of other real estate and proptech companies.

“Seattle is really great for talent that balances both an aggressive growth perspective, but also building sustainable companies over time,” RentSpree CEO and co-founder Michael Lucarelli told GeekWire in December.

Vijaye Raji, founder and CEO of Seattle-area startup Statsig (acquired by OpenAI last year for $1.1 billion), has called it a “quiet talent” that may be under-appreciated.

Drone startup Brinc is another transplant that landed from Las Vegas. The company, now ranked No. 7 on the GeekWire 200, raised $75 million last year and employs more than 100 people. CEO Blake Resnick has cited the engineering and tech talent pool in Seattle for his decision to relocate.

The city’s technology anchors — including Microsoft, Amazon, the University of Washington, and Silicon Valley engineering centers — also help import workers who go on to launch companies. Overland AI CEO Byron Boots came to the UW’s computer science school in 2019 as an associate professor, and later helped launch the Seattle-based autonomous driving startup that just raised $100 million.

Caleb John, an investor and engineer at Seattle startup studio Pioneer Square Labs, previously worked in San Francisco. He noted that founders in Seattle “are not as deep in the rat race” relative to entrepreneurs elsewhere.

“Your thinking is not as clouded by the hype train,” he said in an interview with Foundations. He also cited a “really strong community of younger people who work in startups” across the Seattle region. “People just don’t know there are startup people here,” John said, noting that the startup scene has grown since he arrived in 2021.

Ginzburg said even as some founders move to San Francisco, it’s important to keep building community in Seattle. He noted that Agola, for example, still remains tethered to Seattle through the Foundations network.

Agola said he’d consider returning to Seattle at some point as his new startup grows.

“I don’t think the Bay is the best for long-term startup growth when it comes to post-series B,” he said. “Moving to Seattle would be the best play to keep the best talent flow while minimizing overhead costs.”

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Investors worried after Big Tech plans $650bn spend in 2026

Published

1 hour ago

7 February 2026

NewsAdmin

Big Tech capital expenditure for this year is predicted to rise 60pc from $410bn in 2025.

Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft are signalling a collective 2026 capital expenditure package of around $650bn, with AI, cloud and data centres as unsurprising high-ticket items. Wary investors, however, seem unhappy, and the Financial Times reported that Amazon, Google and Microsoft are set to lose $900bn in market cap altogether.

Big Tech capital expenditure predictions would mark a rise of 60pc from the $410bn spent in 2025 and 165pc from the $245bn spent the year before.

The four competitors see the race to provide AI compute as “the next winner-take-all or winner-takes-most market”, Gil Luria, an analyst at DA Davidson told Bloomberg. None of the companies are “willing to lose”, he added.

Amazon shares fell by 11pc after the company’s earnings call yesterday (5 February) in which company president and CEO Andy Jassy announced a $200bn capital expenditure (capex) plan for the year, growing more than 50pc since last year.

He reasoned that a 24pc revenue growth in Amazon’s cloud offerings and a 22pc growth in advertising is evidence that the heavy spending is paying off. This year’s spending will be focused on AI, chips, robotics and low-Earth orbit satellites, Jassy said.

Meanwhile, Microsoft announced a $37.5bn quarterly capital expenditure bill on 28 January, just slightly more than analyst estimates. But the company was the worst hit among the four for a while, dropping 18pc since the announcement.

The company had also, for the first time, disclosed the true nature of its close economic relationship with OpenAI. It reported that roughly 45pc of its $625bn expected in future cloud contracts was from the start-up, leading to investor wariness on its over-reliance on one customer.

Google parent Alphabet initially dropped 4pc in share price after it reported its earnings on Wednesday (4 February), but climbed back up to being just below 0.5pc since yesterday. Sales and earnings per share grew by 18pc and 31pc respectively during Q4, beating analyst expectations, while Alphabet’s cloud backlog grew by 55pc quarter-over-quarter to $240bn.

The company announced capex for the year between $175bn and $185bn, doubling expenses to meet customer demand and capitalise on the growth of the company’s AI offerings. Though despite fears of heavy spending, Gemini Enterprise is selling 8m seats and the Gemini App now has more than 750m monthly active users, which, Motley Fool reported, is keeping investors relatively content.

Lastly, Meta has announced its total expenses for 2026 to be in the range $115bn to $135bn. The growth, it said, is driven by an increased investment to support its Meta Superintelligence Labs efforts as well as its core business.

While the stocks rose 10pc after the earnings announcement, the Financial Times reports that it lost those gains after overall investor fear has pushed the tech-heavy Nasdaq down 4pc over the week.

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

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Europe’s social media age shift: Will tougher rules change how teens use the internet?

Published

2 hours ago

7 February 2026

NewsAdmin

It is just the beginning of 2026, and things are happening even faster than last year. Not only in technology, but also in regulations, laws, and in how we deal with all the information around us. As a person born in the 90s, social media was once an unknown land for me, a place that felt genuine in the beginning. It still had dangers, but it seemed less risky, or maybe our parents’ rules were stricter. I don’t want to go down the psychological path here, but I want to look at where we are headed with so much risk,…
This story continues at The Next Web

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UiPath pushes deeper into financial services with WorkFusion acquisition

Published

2 hours ago

7 February 2026

NewsAdmin

UiPath, the Romanian unicorn, has agreed to buy WorkFusion, bringing a specialist in AI agents for financial-crime compliance into its fold as part of a broader push into agentic automation for the banking sector. The deal closed in UiPath’s first quarter of fiscal 2027; financial terms were not disclosed. WorkFusion’s software focuses on repetitive and resource-intensive parts of compliance work, from customer screening and anti-money-laundering (AML) checks to know-your-customer (KYC) investigations. “Financial institutions need intelligent solutions to combat sophisticated financial crimes and navigate evolving compliance requirements,” said Daniel Dines, CEO of UiPath. Those capabilities now sit alongside UiPath’s existing automation…
This story continues at The Next Web

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Adaptive Power in iOS 26 Is Boosting Your iPhone Battery in the Background

Published

2 hours ago

7 February 2026

NewsAdmin

Other Apple Intelligence features get all the attention, but in iOS 26 one of my favorite tools does its thing quietly in the background. On iPhone models that are capable of running Apple’s AI tech, the Adaptive Power setting is at work behind the scenes to extend battery power, even on many older iPhones.

Currently, the iPhone uses as much power as it needs to perform its tasks. You can extend battery life by taking a few simple steps, such as reducing screen brightness and disabling the always-on display. Or, if your battery is running low, you can turn on Low Power Mode, which limits background activity, like fetching mail and downloading data, and dims the screen to help extend battery life. Low Power Mode also kicks in automatically when the battery level reaches 20%.

If Low Power Mode is the hammer that knocks down power consumption, Adaptive Power is the scalpel that intelligently trims energy savings here and there as needed. Based on Apple’s description that accompanies the control, the savings will be felt mostly in power-hungry situations such as recording videos, editing photos or even playing games.

Apple says Adaptive Power takes about a week to analyze your usage behavior before it begins actively working. And it works in the background without needing any management on your part.

Here’s how Apple describes it in the iPhone user guide: “It uses on-device intelligence to predict when you’ll need extra battery power based on your recent usage patterns, then makes performance adjustments to help your battery last longer.”

Watch this: The iPhone 17 Pro Max Has Incredible Battery Life

12:10

Which iPhone models can use Adaptive Power?

The feature uses AI to monitor and choose when its power-saving measures should be activated, which means only phones compatible with Apple Intelligence get the feature. These are the models that have the option:

• iPhone 17
• iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max
• iPhone Air
• iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus
• iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max
• iPhone 16e
• iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max

Although some iPad and Mac models support Apple Intelligence, the feature is only available on iPhones.

How to turn Adaptive Power on

Adaptive Power is on by default on the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max and iPhone Air. For other models, you must opt in to use it. In iOS 26, you’ll find the Adaptive Power toggle in Settings > Battery > Power Mode. To be alerted when the feature is active, turn on the Adaptive Power Notifications option.

Three iPhone screenshots of the Settings app showing how to enable Adaptive Power. — In iOS 26, turn on the Adaptive Power setting to help extend battery life.
Screenshots by Jeff Carlson/CNET

Adaptive Power sounds like an outgrowth of Gaming Mode, introduced in iOS 18, which routes all available processing and graphics power to the frontmost app and pauses other processes in order to deliver the best experience possible — at the notable expense of battery life.

iPhone screenshot showing a notification that says "Adaptive Power: iPhone is adjusting performance to help extend your battery life." — When the iPhone is using Adaptive Power, a notification appears.
Screenshot by Jeff Carlson/CNET

What does this mean for your charging habits?

Although we all want as much battery life as possible all the time, judging by the description, it sounds as if Adaptive Power’s optimizations will not always be active, even if you leave the feature on. “When your battery usage is higher than usual” could include a limited number of situations. Still, considering that according to a CNET survey, 61% of people upgrade their phones because of battery life, a feature such as Adaptive Power could extend the longevity of their phones just by updating to iOS 26.

I also wonder whether slightly adjusting display brightness could be disruptive, but in my experience so far, it hasn’t been noticeable. Because the feature also selectively de-prioritizes processing tasks, the outward effects seem minimal. When it’s activated on my iPhone 16 Pro, the only indication was the Adaptive Power alert that appeared.

We’ll get a better idea about how well Adaptive Power works as more people adopt iOS 26 and start buying new iPhone models. Also, remember that shortly after installing a major software update, it’s common to experience worse battery life as the system optimizes data in the background; Apple went so far as to remind customers that it’s a temporary side effect.

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Why PlayStation Graphics Wobble, Flicker And Twitch

Published

3 hours ago

7 February 2026

NewsAdmin

Although often tossed together into a singular ‘retro game’ aesthetic, the first game consoles that focused on 3D graphics like the Nintendo 64 and Sony PlayStation featured very distinct visuals that make these different systems easy to distinguish. Yet whereas the N64 mostly suffered from a small texture buffer, the PS’s weak graphics hardware necessitated compromises that led to the highly defining jittery and wobbly PlayStation graphics.

These weaknesses of the PlayStation and their results are explored by [LorD of Nerds] in a recent video. Make sure to toggle on subtitles if you do not speak German.

It could be argued that the PlayStation didn’t have a 3D graphics chip at all, just a video chip that could blit primitives and sprites to the framebuffer. This forced PS developers to draw 3D graphics without such niceties like a Z-buffer, putting a lot of extra work on the CPU.

This problem extends also to texture mapping, by doing affine texture mapping, as it’s called on the PS. This mapping of textures is rather flawed and leads to the constant shifting of textures as the camera’s perspective is not taken into account. Although this texture mapping can be improved, the developers of the game have to add more polygons for this, which of course reduces performance. This is the main cause of the shifting and wobbling of textures.

Another issue on the PS was a lack of mipmapping support, which means a sequence of the same texture, each with each a different resolution. This allows for high-resolution textures to be used when the camera is close, and low-resolution textures when far away. On the PS this lack of mipmapping led to many texture pixels being rendered to the same point on the display, with camera movement leading to interesting flickering effects.

When it came to rendering to the output format, the Nintendo 64 created smooth gradients between the texture pixels (texels) to make them fit on the output resolution, whereas the PS used the much more primitive nearest neighbor interpolation that made especially edges of objects look like they both shimmered and changed shape and color.

The PS also lacked a dedicated floating point unit to handle graphics calculations, forcing a special Geometry Transformation Engine (GTE) in the CPU to handle transformation calculations, but all in integer calculations instead of with floating point values. This made e.g. fixed camera angles as in Resident Evil games very attractive for developers as movement would inevitably lead to visible artefacts.

Finally, the cartridge-based games of the N64 could load data from the mask ROMs about 100x faster than from the PS’s CDs, and with much lower latency. All of these differences would lead to entirely different games for both game consoles, with the N64 being clearly superior for 3D games, yet the PS being released long before the N64 for a competitive price along with the backing of Sony would make sure that it became a commercial success.