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9 stories published
Technology
iOS 27 Arrives With Siri AI in Beta as Apple Rolls Out Its Biggest Assistant Overhaul Yet
Apple has released iOS 27, making the long-promised Siri AI available to users with the assistant now able to draw on personal context from texts, emails and calendar events and to take actions on a user's behalf, such as moving appointment details from a text message into the calendar. The release, downloadable since September 14, also adds a dedicated Siri app, spatial reframing in photo editing, a Liquid Glass opacity slider and new child safety controls, alongside around 120 security patches. Siri AI remains labeled a beta, launches in English first with French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish following in October, and its voice customization is limited to iPhone 17 and newer M-series devices. macOS 27, iPadOS 27, watchOS 27 and visionOS 27 shipped the same day.
Technology
Anthropic Folds Cowork Into Claude and Launches Docs and Slides Editors
Anthropic is merging Cowork, its tool for longer-running tasks, into the main Claude app and launching two new beta editors, Claude Docs and Claude Slides, letting users create, edit and export documents and presentations directly from conversations, according to a company blog post Wednesday. The redesign removes the need for users to choose between chatting with Claude or assigning it a task — Claude now decides how to handle each request — with task breakdown, tool use and background work becoming standard chat features. Docs and Slides, in beta for paid plans, support single shareable links across desktop and mobile, in-app slide presentation, and export to Google formats, PowerPoint or PDF. Pro and Max subscribers get the changes first in the coming weeks, with enterprise administrators receiving at least 30 days' notice. The move puts Anthropic in direct competition with Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 and follows OpenAI's July merger of ChatGPT and Codex.
Technology
Swift 6.4 Unifies Building Across Linux, macOS and Windows as SwiftPM Makes Swift Build the Default
Swift 6.4 has been released by the Swift project with Swift Build now the default build system inside Swift Package Manager, meaning projects build the same way on Linux, macOS and Windows for the first time. The release, published September 15 by Apple's language team, also ships Subprocess 1.0 as a stable cross-platform way to run other programs, bridges Swift's Span directly with C++20's std::span, extends Swift-Java interop, and accelerates WebAssembly bridging through JavaScriptKit by up to 40 times. With embedded, Android, browser and server targets all gaining capability, the release marks Swift's deepest step yet beyond its Apple origins.
Technology
AI Coding Startup Factory Raises $200 Million at $5 Billion Valuation to Automate Software Development
Factory, the San Francisco startup using artificial intelligence agents to automate complex programming tasks, announced a $200 million funding round backed by Blackstone, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital and NEA, with angel investors including Marc Benioff, valuing the company at $5 billion, up $3.5 billion from April. Developers enter high-level descriptions of tasks such as porting an application to a new language, and Factory breaks each task into sub-steps assigned to a group of AI agents running in virtual environments called Droid Computers. "Across the world's largest enterprises, we are seeing a move from individual coding agents to software factories that serve as the core foundation from which an entire software company operates," said co-founder and CEO Matan Grinberg. The platform is used by hundreds of thousands of developers, including at Nvidia, Adobe and Palo Alto Networks.
Technology
Visual Studio 2026 September Update Brings Bring Your Own Key AI Preview
Microsoft has released the Visual Studio 2026 September update, describing it as the beginning of a new era for the development environment with deep platform integration of AI, stronger fundamentals and improved performance. The 18.10.0 update, released on 8 September 2026, introduces Bring Your Own Key in preview across Community, Professional and Enterprise editions, letting developers connect AI models from Microsoft Foundry, OpenAI, Anthropic and Ollama with or without a GitHub sign-in. The release also adds a Git agent for pull request exploration, inline branch highlighting for C# debugging, and Podman container support in Attach to Process. A follow-up 18.10.1 build arrived on 15 September, while security release 18.9.3 patched multiple remote code execution vulnerabilities including CVE-2026-77907 and CVE-2026-77906 tied to crafted PDB files.
Technology
FBI Takes Down Tools Used by Chinese State-Sponsored Hacking Group QTFY
The FBI recently announced that it has taken down two tools that the DOJ says are used by QTFY an alleged Chinese state-sponsored hacking group. The DOJ says that the group has targeted numerous US agencies including the US Senate and the DOJ itself. The disruption represents a significant counter-cyber operation against state-sponsored threats. The tools were used to gain unauthorized access to government networks and exfiltrate sensitive data. The operation was conducted in coordination with international law enforcement partners. The FBI operation involved seizing command and control servers and deploying sinkhole techniques to redirect malicious traffic.
Technology
Vue 3.6 Enters Release Candidate Phase With Vapor Mode Feature Set Complete
The Vue.js team says version 3.6 has entered the release candidate phase after completing the intended feature set for Vapor Mode, the framework's most significant rendering change to date, alongside a major refactor of the @vue/reactivity package built on the alien-signals library. Vapor Mode lets compiled components update the DOM directly without a virtual DOM layer, cutting overhead for high-frequency UI updates, and remains opt-in so existing applications keep their current rendering path. The 3.6 line follows an extended 3.5.x maintenance series that has shipped regular patch releases, including version 3.5.42 in August. Teams planning migrations can test Vapor incrementally per component, but the core team has not announced a final stable date.
Technology
PostgreSQL 17 Arrives With Vacuum Overhaul Cutting Memory Use by up to 20 Times
The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announced the release of PostgreSQL 17, the latest version of the world's most advanced open source database, bringing a rebuilt memory management system for vacuum that consumes up to 20 times less memory, up to twice the write throughput for high concurrency workloads, and the SQL/JSON JSON_TABLE command for developers. The release, announced Sept. 26, also simplifies major version upgrades by preserving logical replication slots, adds incremental backup support to pg_basebackup, and continues a development history that now spans more than 35 years from its origins at the University of California, Berkeley. Administrators running high-availability deployments gain failover controls for logical replication, while developers receive new SQL/JSON constructors and query functions alongside faster bulk loading and export options.
Technology
GitHub Copilot X Now Writes 46 Percent of Code Across Enterprise Repositories
GitHub reported that its AI coding assistant Copilot X now generates 46 percent of all code committed to enterprise repositories, up from 38 percent six months ago. The figure, disclosed during GitHub Universe on September 1, covers over 77,000 organizations using Copilot Business and Enterprise tiers. CEO Thomas Dohmke said the tool has saved developers an estimated 4.2 million hours of coding time since its launch in March 2025. Microsoft, which owns GitHub, reported that Copilot contributed $2.1 billion in annualized revenue, making it the fastest-growing product in the company history.