A Windows 11 Insider Preview build rolling out to the Beta and Experimental channels will allow you to right-click the network icon in your system tray and hit “Perform speed test” to run it right in your Quick Settings menu. The feature previously opened a speed test in your browser.
[Windows Insider Blog]
A new accelerated scrolling feature coming to Windows PCs with touchpads will allow you to scroll through long documents and webpages faster, Windows design head Marcus Ash announced on X. Microsoft is also adding the ability to continuously scroll through a page by swiping the edge of your touchpad, along with support for single-finger scrolling.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer was available to stream on Luna at no extra cost to Prime subscribers the same day it launched on other platforms, and in a post celebrating the one-year anniversary of Luna’s relaunch, Amazon says it plans to bring more “major” day-and-date releases to Prime members.
Luna’s user base has also grown “fivefold” since the relaunch, Amazon’s gaming GM, Jeff Gattis, says in the post. I spoke to Gattis earlier this year about Amazon’s plan for games.
[Amazon Game Studios]
Researchers from ETH Zürich’s Robotic Systems Lab used reinforcement learning through simulations and “teacher-student distillation” to teach a quadruped robot how to independently solve an oversized Rubik’s Cube. The feat is even more impressive given the bot has to use its stubby legs and feet to reorient the cube and rotate its sides.
The map comes from security researcher Joshua Michael, who is facing a trademark complaint from Flock after he published an interactive map of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) using information from a data leak. Proton is now hosting the map, but notes that it’s a snapshot from December 2025, so “devices installed or removed since then won’t be reflected.”
In 2024, Hallmark added a tiny version of the original Xbox to its holiday ornament collection and then followed up last year with a miniature Xbox 360. For 2026 it’s returning to Microsoft’s first console, but the translucent green Halo special edition version. It will be available at the end of the month for $27.99 and includes a glowing greed LED and sound effects.
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Research done as part of the Singapore AI Safety Fellowship shows how Anthropic’s AI model can embed hidden messages into images using Morse code, object rotations, colors, and heights. The researchers also found that separate sessions of Fable 5.1 could decipher about 78 percent of the hidden messages based on a screenshot.
According to a user on Reddit, “Had my iPhone Duo for about six hours and had probably opened it fewer than 20 times. I was showing it to a friend, and as I opened it, I felt something around the internal hinge, underneath the screen. As I continued opening it, I heard an audible crack, and the screen broke right along the hinge.”
They also said the Apple Store already replaced it.
After adding the option to annotate Kindle ebooks with handwritten notes on its new Alexa Tablets, Amazon has brought the same functionality to the Kindle Android app, as some users in the Kindle subreddit have discovered. It currently appears limited to Android tablets and phones that support a stylus, and it hasn’t come to the iPadOS version of the app yet.
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The scope of the attack and exactly what data was compromised isn’t clear, only that some “personal information and patient records were affected.” Quest says its investigation is ongoing and it will alert impacted customers “as required by applicable law.” Oddly, as TechCrunch notes, the FAQ about the breach contains “noindex” code, making it difficult for customers to find.
[Quanum | Quest Diagnostics]
According to Reuters’ sources, the FTC was investigating Shein over “delivery delays and other customer complaints,” adding that the settlement would be “equivalent to 44% of Shein’s second-quarter profit.” The European Union also opened an investigation into Shein earlier this year over concerns about “addictive design” features and illegal product listings.
