News

We already basically lost the Gros Michel to Panama disease in the 1950s. The Cavendish replaced it in our fruit bowls, but because it’s sterile and relies on propagation, it’s threatened by climate change and disease. According to the Guardian, scientists may have found a solution:

World Quest and Save My Demonic World have run for over a decade, but they’re built on older tech that the developers say can’t be updated to patch the apocalyptic PHP exploit disclosed this week. Because the vulnerability affects almost 20 years of PHP, big chunks of internet history are in danger of being lost. Per Kotaku:

Launching today, this companion robot-slash-lamp resembles a mushroom, with a glowing head and eyes that emerge from the base. It’s designed to proactively help you relax and connect with nature.

The original $49.98 Wyze Bulb Cam that launched last year had an adjustable camera, but the new $99.98 Wyze Bulb Cam Pan Color doubles the price and introduces a motorized mount so its 2.5K camera can rotate 360 degrees and tilt 180 degrees to keep moving subjects in frame. Installation is as easy as screwing it into a standard E26 socket, and its 1,100-lumen bulb can be set to one of 16 million different colors.

The breach was discovered on October 19th. That’s a lot of exposed Capcom ID email addresses, but thankfully the hackers didn’t leak much else: 196 passwords were changed (but no existing passwords were leaked), and 43 cases involved date of birth, gender, country, and nicknames being revealed.

That’s according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who said Apple is working on next-gen Duo protoypes that have the Face ID sensor located beneath the display on the outer screen. Being demoted to Touch ID has been a step back for the iPhone Duo, but in our review we said it’s “mostly painless” once you get used to it.

The New York Times reports that data centers are “painting gray concrete and gray steel with more gray,” leading to an unexpected boom for paint manufacturers. Gravel producers and wiring companies are also enjoying an uptick, “creating a long tail of unlikely winners.”

CEO Matthew Prince says the company saw thousands of attempts to exploit the PHP vulnerability across the Cloudflare network in the 10 hours before the issue was publicly announced. That jumped to “hundreds of thousands” of attacks in the 2 hours after the disclosure, and “millions” by last night. Yikes.

The court-ordered change takes effect from March 1st 2027, following similar rulings in the EU, Japan, and Brazil. Apple will have to let Fortnite back in the App Store too — one of the last holdouts after a global return — and allow developers to offer alternative payment methods. Apple told Reuters it plans to appeal.

Some Android users are reporting receiving a Google Play system update dated “1 January 2027,” which really seems to be getting ahead of itself. Sadly, all my Android phones are still stuck on September 2026, which now feels entirely old fashioned.

YouTuber Tim Pan put the new Apple foldable through a total of 11,500 folds, a thousand of which were in freezing conditions. Like Joanna Stern, he found the hinge holds up well, but like any other foldable, the crease gets a lot more visible (and a bit more even after only 500), matte display or not.

Even though Mass Effect developer BioWare has been shut down, IGN reports that Amazon is still working on the Prime Video series, citing “sources inside Prime Video.”

AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:

It said in a filing that Zuckerberg “was evaluating relocating his primary residence” if California’s Proposition 40 passes. As Bloomberg reports, Meta’s board issued special shares so that he wouldn’t have to leave:

That’s according to Mark Zuckerberg on the company’s earnings call today. He also says that “About 25% of people who have set up Muse use it on any given day. For our earliest adopters, the longer that they use Muse, the better the retention seems to get.”

TechCrunch reports that layoffs have hit the company’s “communications team, social team, WordPress.com, and its VIP enterprise business.” It’s unclear how many have been laid off.

Microsoft’s annual report reveals the company employed around 223,000 people as of June 30th. That’s 5,000 less than the 228,000 people employed in 2025. It’s the first time Microsoft has had a headcount reduction in 10 years, after the gutting of the Nokia phone business in 2015 and 2016. The reduction comes as Microsoft has laid off more than 9,000 employees over the past year.

As announced last year, Chrome will now show a warning when you visit public websites without an encrypted HTTPS connection. The new warnings will appear the first time you visit a site without a secure connection. If you continue to the site, Google won’t present the warning for another two weeks.

The company is launching ads for ChatGPT Free and Go users across 26 countries, including Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Since bringing ads to ChatGPT in the US in February, OpenAI has rapidly expanded its advertising efforts, which now span 89 countries.