136 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Richard Lawler

Richard Lawler

Senior News Editor

Senior News Editor

    More From Richard Lawler

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Nintendo fans said Mario’s voice sounded different in new trailers, and they were right.

    After Nintendo’s Direct event in June, many Mario fans noticed something was up with the voices in previews for Super Mario Bros. Wonder and WarioWare: Move It! and started talking about it.

    Now, after announcing longtime Mario voice actor Charles Martinet “will be stepping back from recording character voices for our games,” Nintendo confirmed in an email to Polygon about Wonder that “Charles is not involved in the game”

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    The New York Times links rising airplane “close calls” and a shortage of air traffic controllers.

    NYT animations in this report bring home the close calls of planes loaded with passengers colliding on runways or during takeoffs/landings.

    It said the number of near misses “has more than doubled over the past decade” and that “As of May, only three of the 313 air traffic facilities nationwide had enough controllers to meet targets set by the FAA and the union representing controllers.”

    In response, the FAA writes, “ the agency has hired 1,500 controllers for FY2023” and that “the number and rate of runway incursions are steadily declining since the pandemic.”

    Wes Davis
    Wes Davis
    Breaking down how Nvidia became a leader in AI hardware.

    Nvidia’s AI lead pushed it to become a $1 trillion company, while its H100 chips are so in demand they can be used as collateral even as the next-gen Nvidia GH200 sits on the horizon.

    Now the New York Times describes how it’s established a monstrous lead over other chipmakers, extending a victory tour of editorial recounting Nvidia “hand-delivering processors to Elon Musk and Sam Altman,” how it started in a Denny’s, and CEO Jensen Huang’s SIGGRAPH keynote outlining its decision to focus on AI.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    The Vision Pro is out there.

    With developer kits apparently going out, it was inevitable that someone would get some time inside one of Apple’s Vision Pro headsets without official authorization, and Apple Insider says a “fan” allowed them about two hours with a unit.

    They didn’t get to take pictures (or, more importantly, screenshots) but noted similar experiences to ours from WWDC, saying, “...it feels like there’s almost twice the vertical field of vision on Apple Vision Pro, versus HoloLens,” and that the gesture controls already felt familiar.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Google puts its policies all in one place with a new Transparency Center.

    Not that kind of transparency. No, this new Transparency Center from Google is a one-stop-shop for policies like the ones saying it might use content its bot finds on the open web to train some AI models, as well as host the tools for reporting harmful content or appealing removals.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Maybe I’ve been thinking about travel all wrong.

    I don’t spend a lot of time on The Points Guy or scrolling through vacation destination photos on Instagram, but what if the problem is just that I’ve been using the wrong luggage?

    Give me this suitcase TV from LG and a backpack with my Xbox, and I might even rethink my no-Airbnb policy (it’s not a vacation if I have to do my own dishes).

    An animation of LG’s StanbyME Go TV.
    GIF: LG
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    3DMark’s new ray tracing benchmark can test both Windows and Android gaming machines.

    Meet 3DMark Solar Bay, a new ray tracing graphics test that works on both Windows PCs and Android devices (since those are apparently getting versions of high-powered GPU tech). On Android, the test is available for free via Google Play, while it’s available for those who purchase 3DMark on PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, or directly from the publisher, UL Solutions.

    Solar Bay complements our heavier ray tracing benchmarks, Port Royal and Speed Way, on PC. With Solar Bay, 3DMark has a great range of ray tracing workloads, making it an excellent way to measure how your Windows or Android device’s ray tracing performance scales.

    Videocardz gave the tests a run on a PC with an Nvidia 4090 GPU and Samsung’s Galaxy S23 Ultra — the desktop GPU scored about 24.5x higher.

    3DMark Solar Bay Benchmark
    3DMark Solar Bay Benchmark
    Image: UL Solutions
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Now everyone can post Telegram Stories.

    After launching a few weeks ago as a Premium-only feature, Telegram rolled out Stories to all users starting today in celebration of its 10th birthday (via TechCrunch).

    While lots of platforms have Stories posts (although Twitter / X isn’t one of them — we miss you, Fleets), this one allows editing of live posts. Also, one feature that’s staying Premium-only for paid users is a “Stealth Mode” that erases their views from anything watched for five minutes before and for the next 25 minutes after.

    Animatiopn showing the process of editing a Telegram stories post, with text and stickers.
    Image: Telegram