4 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Tech Archive

Archives for July 2026

TC Sottek
TC Sottek
I just want this little yellow ball to be real.

I’ve accepted that Samsung’s Ballie robot may never come out after disappearing from CES 2026. It was one of the cutest and most exciting robots ever… as of six years ago. SammyGuru has a look today at some “early UI design sketches” reminding us of what could have been.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Snap is hosting a Specs launch event in September.

The event, taking place on September 16th at 7PM ET, will be livestreamed.

Snap announced the design for the augmented reality glasses — and their eye-watering $2,195 price — in June, but it’s unclear if anyone can look cool wearing them. (They seem especially heavy on the ears.)

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
“…And we call ourselves Situational Awareness.”

The hedge fund Situational Awareness, founded by former OpenAI employee Leopold Aschenbrenner, who had no previous hedge fund experience, “rapidly sold a large portion of its public equity holdings” as losses mounted. The fund employed only eight people, of whom four were investment professionals. Aschenbrenner named the fund after some essays he wrote.

Hayden Field
Hayden Field
Scale AI has a new CEO: the current COO of Google Cloud.

Francis deSouza will begin as CEO on August 10, taking over from the interim CEO who has been leading the company since Alexandr Wang, its founder and former CEO, joined Meta in June 2025. Joe Osborne, a spokesperson for Scale AI, said the company’s new focus on building AI applications for enterprises and governments, rather than solely data labeling, has it projecting more than $1 billion in 2026 revenue.

Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
The Senate takes another crack at passing the Kids Online Safety Act.

The Senate Commerce Committee will vote on five kids safety bills including KOSA, which passed the chamber last Congress but didn’t get a vote in the House. This year, the House has pushed its own version of the bill that stripped the key duty of care, setting up a fight.

Senate Commerce Committee Kids Safety Markup

[U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation]

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Google Earth now lets you reimagine locations with AI.

Google is bringing its Nano Banana 2 image generation model to Google Earth, allowing you to generate AI images using the satellite, aerial, and 3D imagery in the web app. Some examples shared by Google show how you can give a building a makeover, visualize projects, or create an infographic about what you’re seeing.

Antonio G. Di Benedetto
Antonio G. Di Benedetto
I can’t stop staring through this PC with a curved glass front.

Maingear’s new Zero series of desktop PCs use 4mm-thick curved tempered glass for an airy, panoramic aesthetic. They come in Intel and AMD versions, starting at $2,699, with GPUs ranging from the RTX 5070 to RTX 5090.

Maingear and other manufacturers have done glass setups similar to this before, but the Zero series has no visible seams and it isn’t an ultra-limited edition run like last year’s Doom PC.

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1/6Image: Maingear
Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Winamp enters the streaming era.

The iconic media player of the Napster generation has partnered with Deezer to power Winamp’s own “premium music subscription service,” which is set to launch in the first half of 2027. The new Winamp Player will combine Deezer’s music catalogue with users’ local music libraries, internet radio stations, podcasts, and more. And yes — the interface will be “highly customizable.”