Startups & Ventures

🤖 Beijing Robot Games Fuel Endless Memes

The footage is endlessly memeable.

The robot weighs 16 kg.

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🤳 Nothing OS 5.0 Puts Customisation First

The update brings a new visual layer with transparency and a light frosted-glass effect. Surfaces now have depth, making it clearer what sits in front. The system font is Geist, while the dot matrix becomes mostly decorative.

A new colour engine can take shades directly from your wallpaper. They flow into icons, widgets, and controls, so changing the wallpaper changes the interface. Essential Apps Builder is now a phone app that turns a text description into a custom AI widget.

Comments under the announcement are less enthusiastic. Users say a year of work brought a font, more colour settings, and transparent widgets, while Nothing still lacks its own clock and calculator.

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🍏 Apple Refreshes Mac mini and Studio

Preorders are open, with shipments starting September 22. Both desktops come with macOS 27 Golden Gate and the new Siri AI.

The Mac mini keeps its tiny body, but gets M6 or M5 Pro chips. M6 starts at $899 and uses Apple’s first 2nm process, with 12 CPU cores and 170 GB/s memory bandwidth. Both models cost $100 more.

Mac Studio now starts at $2,499 with M5 Max. M5 Ultra starts at $5,499. Its four-die design reaches 36 CPU cores and 80 GPU cores, with 1.2 TB/s memory bandwidth. With Mac Pro discontinued, it is Apple’s most powerful computer.

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🍏 Apple’s Camera AirPods Leak by Mistake

An internal development branch was accidentally merged into the macOS Tahoe 26.7 release candidate. It brought a demo video showing unannounced AirPods with cameras.

In the clip, a man points the earbuds at a book so Visual Intelligence can read its title. The cameras capture the surroundings in low resolution and act as eyes for Apple’s AI features, including turn-by-turn navigation and answers about what is in front of the user.

Gurman also says early reactions to the foldable iPhone are warm. Testers liked its pocket fit, hinge and iPad-style app layouts, but there is no telephoto lens. Pricing remains open.

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⚠️ Xianglong Blasts Through Mixed Ground

The 4.5-meter Xianglong tunnel boring machine was developed by Tsinghua University and Wuhan-based CRSIC. Its cutting head retracts behind the shield, exposing built-in drills.

The drills bore holes several meters into the rock. Low-power, high-speed charges create microcracks without throwing debris or producing a strong shockwave. The shield absorbs what does fly back, then the head returns to crush and clear the broken rock.

The system targets mixed geology, where standard machines struggle when soft ground turns into rock. Chinese state media says it raises boring speed by 30%, while the shield diameter can be adjusted for different lining segments.

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🤖 Claude Code Built a Mac Driver

In about 4 hours, 19-year-old Kuber Mehta used Claude Code to reverse-engineer the proprietary printer language behind the HP Laser 1008a. The result is a working Mac driver built from scratch.

The driver translates macOS print commands into a format the printer understands. It runs HP’s codec inside a lightweight container, then sends the data directly over USB. The budget printer was designed for Windows, with no Mac support or AirPrint.

After a one-command installation, printing works from any Mac app through Cmd+P. Mehta published the project on GitHub along with a full transcript of the Claude Code session.

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🎥 Same Video, New Angle

As Sarah Connor said: “When they chase you, always run toward a wall.”

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🤖 Robot Sets 100-Meter World Record

On the first day in Beijing, Tiangong Ultra finished in 9.39 seconds. Several robots broke the record, while Usain Bolt’s official human mark is 9.58 seconds.

The event covers athletics, football, tennis, combat sports, dancing, plus household tasks such as opening bottles and sorting. Tiangong Ultra was developed by Beijing innovation centers.

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🔍 Google Adds Remote Control to Antigravity

Agents running in Antigravity can now be controlled from a phone or another computer through a regular browser. The original machine keeps working on the task.

Users can check progress and send new commands from the browser. The agent’s files and settings remain on the machine where it started.

Antigravity also sends phone notifications when an agent finishes a stage or needs a reply. A long task can continue on a work computer after the user leaves it.

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6️⃣ GTA VI Leak Case Reaches Court

Take-Two asked a court to make Microsoft and Discord identify Cyberleek, the group leaking gameplay from a fully working GTA VI build. The companies have until September 4 to provide the hackers’ data.

The request also covers people who merely connected to the same servers. Take-Two is seeking the attackers’ identities. A previous Rockstar hacker was sent to a psychiatric hospital indefinitely in 2023.

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☀️ Solar Prototype Produces Extra Power

More than 1,700 solar cells cover a flexible photovoltaic skin on a boxfish-inspired prototype built by graduate students at Clemson University with BMW support. Flat surfaces reduce drag, while Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute helped develop the skin.

The car weighs 550 kg. A skeletal chassis with 3D-printed metal joints and lightweight composite panels keeps it light.

Simulations say a 20 km daily trip uses 1.6 kWh, while a sunny day could produce 5.7 kWh, adding up to 50 km of extra range while parked. These are not measurements and assume ideal weather and an open parking spot. Battery, speed, crash-testing, and comfort details were not disclosed.

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