Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Techpresso.
In today's Techpresso:
🤦 Meta CTO explains why the smart glasses demos failed
🧠 Neuralink plans a brain speech trial
💼 Trump adds a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas
🔮 xAI launches Grok 4 Fast
✈️ Cyberattack triggers airport chaos across Europe
📈 iPhone 17 may be an unexpected early hit for Apple
🎁 + 16 other news you might like
🔮 + 5 handpicked research papers and tools
🤦 Meta CTO explains why the smart glasses demos failed LINK
Meta's CTO said the Live AI assistant failed because the voice command activated every pair of glasses in the building, creating a DDoS attack against their own development servers.
The second glitch, a failed video call, was blamed on an obscure bug that made the display sleep the instant a notification arrived, preventing the answer tool from ever appearing.
Andrew Bosworth stated he isn't concerned about the incidents, framing them as demo malfunctions instead of product failures, and confirmed the specific bug for the calling issue is now fixed.
🧠 Neuralink plans a brain speech trial LINK
Neuralink plans to begin a new US clinical trial in October using its implant to translate a person's imagined speech directly into text under an FDA investigational device exemption.
The study aims to help people with speech impairments by picking up signals from the patient's speech cortex, which is a more direct method than controlling virtual keyboards with thought.
Company president DJ Seo said that in about three to four years, a healthy person could get a Neuralink implant to speak with LLM models at the speed of thought.
💼 Trump adds a $100,000 fee for H-1B visas LINK
The Trump administration imposed a $100,000 fee on H-1B applications, a dramatic increase from $215 that redefines access to skilled foreign workers in tech Founders and tech leaders warn the change could stifle future Teslas, SpaceXs, and Instagrams, many of which were built by immigrants on H-1B visas. Venture capital groups argue the change threatens the broader startup ecosystem by cutting off the pipeline of global talent that underpins U.S. tech competitiveness.
🔮 xAI launches Grok 4 Fast LINK
xAI claims its Grok 4 Fast has the best price-to-intelligence ratio among available models, running nearly 47 times cheaper than the company's prior Grok 4 for comparable results.
The new model features a two-million token context window and a unified architecture that integrates reasoning with non-reasoning modes, helping developers adjust the computational effort for their tasks.
This AI was trained with reinforcement learning to autonomously decide when to use external resources, such as performing code execution or web browsing to synthesize information in real time.
✈️ Cyberattack triggers airport chaos across Europe LINK
A cyberattack on technology company Collins Aerospace disrupted check-in and boarding systems, causing significant flight delays and cancellations at major European airports like London's Heathrow.
The incident stopped all automatic systems from working at Brussels and Berlin terminals, forcing a switch to manual procedures and leading to ten scrapped flights with one-hour waits.
Parent firm RTX stated the issue was limited to electronic customer check-in and baggage drop, with airlines like Delta Air Lines already implementing workarounds to minimize the impact.
📈 iPhone 17 may be an unexpected early hit for Apple LINK
A Chinese government subsidy for electronics under $823 is fueling massive pre-orders for the standard iPhone 17, which the company strategically set at the 5,999 yuan price limit.
After seeing forecasts exceeded, Apple reportedly told suppliers like Luxshare to increase output of the $799 phone by up to 40%, a reversal of early Pro model sales trends.
Buyers are more wary of paying over $1,000, so the base iPhone 17 is more compelling with its upgrades to the chip, display, storage, and camera systems.
Other news you might like
- Microsoft is raising prices on Xbox consoles in the US againLINK
- Oracle is in talks with Meta over a $20 billion cloud computing agreementLINK
- Elon Musk's xAI raising $10 billion at $200 billion valuation: sourcesLINK
- Tesla Robotaxi is headed to a new U.S. state following latest approvalLINK
- Google isn’t kidding around about cost cutting, even slashing its FT subscriptionLINK
- OpenAI plans $100 billion in extra spending on reserve serversLINK
- NASA puts in an order with Blue Origin to work on sending VIPER rover to moon’s south poleLINK
- Windows 11 is adding another Copilot button nobody asked forLINK
- Tim Cook Swears Tariffs Aren’t to Blame for iPhone 17 Pro Price HikeLINK
- Elon Musk says X’s algorithm will run fully on AI by NovemberLINK
- Science journalists find ChatGPT is bad at summarizing scientific papersLINK
- SpaceX Eyes 15,000 More Satellites for Cellular Starlink, Hints at Carrier PlansLINK
- How developers are using Apple’s local AI models with iOS 26LINK
- AI-powered robots are helping AWS extend the life of data center electronicsLINK
- After a very slow start, Europe’s reusable rocket program shows signs of lifeLINK
- Starship will soon fly over towns and cities, but will dodge the biggest onesLINK
Latest research and tools
Zedis: a Redis-compatible in-memory data store written in Zig that stores multiple data types for learning and experimentation purposes.LINK
S3-Cache: a high-performance cache for object storage that accelerates data retrieval and improves reliability by using redundant data sources for any given object.LINK
Supporting Our AI Overlords: Redesigning Data Systems to Be Agent-First: this paper argues that data systems need to be rebuilt from the ground up to serve autonomous AI agents as their main users, rather than humans.LINK
Is there evidence for exponential quantum advantage in quantum chemistry?: the paper argues there is not yet clear evidence for an exponential quantum advantage in chemistry, as improved classical computer algorithms continue to solve many of the same challenging problems.LINK
Is Chain-of-Thought Reasoning of LLMs a Mirage?: this paper suggests that a language model's reasoning process may be an illusion rather than a genuine understanding of the problem.LINK
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