8 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Tech Archive

Archives for April 2026

THE PEOPLE DO NOT YEARN FOR AUTOMATION
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Software brain is changing the world, but most people still aren’t buying.

Nilay Patel
Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
8BitDo’s Xbox-themed keyboard gets a matching numpad.

Nearly a year-and-a-half after launching its bright green Retro 87 Mechanical Keyboard - Xbox Edition, 8BitDo has announced a matching version of its wireless numpad/calculator. Even the 8BitDo Retro 18 Mechanical Numpad - Xbox Edition’s LCD display is green, and you can preorder it now for $44.99 with shipping starting on May 6th.

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<em>The numpad is officially licensed and compatible with Windows and Android devices.</em>
<em>Battery life is estimated to be up to 160 hours of use, depending on whether you use Bluetooth or 2.4GHz connectivity.</em>
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The numpad is officially licensed and compatible with Windows and Android devices.
Image: 8BitDo
Thomas Ricker
Thomas Ricker
Parents of Instagram and Messenger teens can see what they’re asking AI.

The new supervision feature shows the topics that teens have asked Meta AI about over the last week and is available now in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and Brazil. It also works on Facebook… as if teens use Facebook. It builds upon previous work to alert parents if their kids repeatedly search for self-harm topics.

<em>Parents can see the topics their teen has been asking Meta AI about in that specific app over the past week.</em>
<em>Parents can tap on a topic to see the different categories within. Categories within Health and Wellbeing, for example, include fitness, physical health, and mental health. </em>
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Parents can see the topics their teen has been asking Meta AI about in that specific app over the past week.
Image: Meta
Emma Roth
Emma Roth
“We cannot accept a world where every adult is expected to hand over ID.”

In a blog post, Proton CEO Andy Yen calls out the privacy and security concerns about the rapid expansion of age verification, but says “the scope of places where age verification is required must be strictly confined to areas like pornography and social media:”

If as a society we conclude that a narrowly drawn age-verification system is both necessary and inevitable, it must be done right. Checks must be conducted entirely client-side, on the user’s device. They should rely on facial scans, not uploaded IDs, that are instantly discarded once processed. The answer to the binary question of whether the user is “of age” must be fully anonymized.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Bluesky posts can now have higher quality images.

The platform has doubled the maximum file size to 2MB, and the resolution limit has been upped to 4000x4000. There are photo carousels now, too.

A screenshot of Bluesky’s photo carousels.
Check out the carousels in motion in Bluesky’s post.
Image: Bluesky
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
The company behind Sam Altman’s World orb said it had a partnership with Bruno Mars, except it actually doesn’t.

Wired has the story about the not-real partnership, which was promoted alongside other announcements last week. How did this happen??

Stevie Bonifield
Stevie Bonifield
Google says 75 percent of all its new code is AI-generated.

That’s “up from 50% last fall,” according to a blog post from Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Google recently created a “strike team” to improve its AI models’ coding capabilities and catch up to Anthropic, which as of February writes 70 to 90 percent of its code with Claude Code.

Jacob Kastrenakes
Jacob Kastrenakes
Spotted on the Google stage: a giant Apple logo.

Per 9to5Mac, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian was excited to boast about Gemini’s big new customer. The upgraded Siri is still coming “later this year.”