Gear Live https://www.gearlive.com Gear Live covers consumer technology, gadgets, artificial intelligence, and gaming with an unhealthy obsession. en Copyright 2026 Gear Live Tue, 29 Sep 2026 21:59:00 +0000 15 Xbox Finally Has a Platinum Trophy, and It’s Called a Mythic Achievement https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/xbox-mythic-achievements-platinum-trophy https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/xbox-mythic-achievements-platinum-trophy Tue, 29 Sep 2026 14:59:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Microsoft Video Games Xbox Mythic Achievement heroic frame shown on a player profile

Unlock every achievement in an Xbox game and nothing much happened. Your Gamerscore went up, the list showed complete, and that was the ceremony. PlayStation has handed out a platinum trophy for the same work for years. On September 29, Microsoft announced its answer, the Mythic Achievement.

The bar is every original achievement in a game. Clear them all and the game goes Mythic. Achievements added later by DLC or a title update don't count against you, and they can't take it back. "It's yours to keep," senior product manager Alex Charters said.

Continue reading Xbox Finally Has a Platinum Trophy, and It’s Called a Mythic Achievement

]]> The Foldable iPhone is Here: Our First Impressions of the iPhone Duo https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/iphone-duo-first-impressions https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/iphone-duo-first-impressions Fri, 25 Sep 2026 09:29:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Apple Smartphones Features Videos

Watch The Foldable iPhone is Here: Our First Impressions of the iPhone Duo on YouTube

Apple has finally made an iPhone that folds. I just spent a lot of time getting hands-on with the iPhone Duo at the Apple launch, and the excitement start right when you open it up. It introduces a completely new way to use iOS.

Let's dive into what this $1,999 device actually does!

Continue reading The Foldable iPhone is Here: Our First Impressions of the iPhone Duo

]]> The iPhone 18 Pro’s Secret Weapon: How a Variable Aperture Camera Will Change Your Photos https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/the-iphone-18-pros-secret-weapon-how-a-variable-aperture-camera-will-change-your-photos https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/the-iphone-18-pros-secret-weapon-how-a-variable-aperture-camera-will-change-your-photos Fri, 25 Sep 2026 09:20:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Apple Smartphones Features Product Reviews

Native camera interface displaying the manual lens aperture dial set to f/1.48 against a blurred outdoor background

Apple just changed how the iPhone Pro thinks. On the surface, the iPhone 18 Pro might look like a standard, iterative update. But underneath the familiar exterior lies a completely rebuilt architecture. We are talking about a new chip, a massive cooling upgrade, and a camera system that finally does something no other iPhone has ever done. Let's dig into what makes this device a quiet powerhouse.

A familiar design with a few smart tweaks

The body uses a high-heat force aluminum unibody, keeping it lightweight but incredibly tough. Apple introduced four colors this year: Black, Silver, Glacier, and Burgundy. The Burgundy finish is deep, sophisticated, and catches the light beautifully without screaming for attention.

Durability is highly impressive. Both the front and back feature Ceramic Shield 2. You can comfortably run this display without a screen protector and not see a single scratch after heavy daily use.

Up top, the Dynamic Island is about 25% smaller but now shows up to three live activities at once. Apple achieved this by hiding the FaceID IR camera directly behind the display pixels, giving you more screen real estate without losing functionality.

Continue reading The iPhone 18 Pro’s Secret Weapon: How a Variable Aperture Camera Will Change Your Photos

]]> M5 Ultra Mac Studio Review: Huge Local AI Performance (for a Price!) https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/m5-ultra-mac-studio-review https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/m5-ultra-mac-studio-review Fri, 25 Sep 2026 09:14:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Apple PC / Laptop Product Reviews Artificial Intelligence Apple Mac Studio with M5 Ultra

The M5 Ultra Mac Studio is the fastest computer Apple has ever sold, and after a couple of weeks with one on my desk, I can tell you immediately that it's shockingly good.

Apple sent me a near-top configuration: 36-core CPU, 80-core GPU, 256GB of unified memory, and an 8TB SSD. That's more computer than I've ever had in a box this size, and the numbers land about where Apple said they would back in August: 30% to 45% more CPU than the M3 Ultra depending on the benchmark, anywhere from 20% to 60% on the GPU depending on the test, and storage that runs two to three times as fast. The bigger change is who this machine is for. It used to be the video editor's Mac. Now it's the Mac for anyone who wants to run a 150GB language model on their desk without paying anyone a monthly fee, and Apple has priced it for exactly that person.

Continue reading M5 Ultra Mac Studio Review: Huge Local AI Performance (for a Price!)

]]> Bloomberg: Apple Postponed Its Camera Pendant, and Is Prototyping a Screenless Fitness Band https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/apple-camera-pendant-postponed-screenless-fitness-band https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/apple-camera-pendant-postponed-screenless-fitness-band Fri, 25 Sep 2026 09:08:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Apple Wearables Rumors Concept render imagining a small Apple AI pendant clipped to a shirt. This is an artist's concept, not an actual Apple product.

An always-on camera hanging from your neck is a lot to ask of a person. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that Apple has landed in roughly the same place, at least for now. Gurman says the company has postponed its AI pendant, the small camera-and-microphone wearable that was meant to feed Siri a live look at whatever is in front of you.

Gurman has described it as something you could hang around your neck, clip to your clothes, or wear on your body, with the camera doing the job your phone camera does now when you point it at a menu and ask what to order. Prototype descriptions in the reporting put it near the size of an AirTag, a thin disc of aluminum and glass with a button on the side. Apple has never announced it, never named it, and has said nothing about any of this.

Continue reading Bloomberg: Apple Postponed Its Camera Pendant, and Is Prototyping a Screenless Fitness Band

]]> Nikon’s $1,400 Z5IIC Is a Full-Frame Camera You Can’t Put to Your Eye https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/nikon-z5iic-full-frame-no-viewfinder-1400 https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/nikon-z5iic-full-frame-no-viewfinder-1400 Fri, 25 Sep 2026 09:06:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Cameras Nikon Z5IIC full-frame mirrorless camera in silver, showing the flat top plate with no electronic viewfinder hump, fitted with a NIKKOR Z 26mm f/2.8 pancake lens

Take the electronic viewfinder off a full-frame camera and Nikon will sell it to you for about $300 less. That is the Z5IIC, announced today, a Z5 II with the eyepiece deleted and a $1,399.95 price on the body. Whether that reads as a bargain or a dealbreaker depends almost entirely on what you shoot.

If your footage ends up on YouTube, you already know your answer. Nobody presses a mirrorless camera to their face to film a talking head. The flip-out screen is the whole workflow, and the EVF was a lump on top that you paid for and carried around anyway. If you shoot stills outdoors, the answer runs the other way. No rear LCD beats an eyecup at two in the afternoon in July, and no brightness setting fixes the part where your arms are stuck out in front of you instead of braced against your face.

Continue reading Nikon’s $1,400 Z5IIC Is a Full-Frame Camera You Can’t Put to Your Eye

]]> Oracle Says Its New Mexico Stargate Site Is On Schedule. It Filed to Delay the Rent Anyway. https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/oracle-force-majeure-new-mexico-stargate-project-jupiter https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/oracle-force-majeure-new-mexico-stargate-project-jupiter Fri, 25 Sep 2026 09:05:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Corporate News Misc. Tech Artificial Intelligence Oracle signage outside a corporate office building

Oracle says Project Jupiter, its 2.45-gigawatt AI data center in southern New Mexico, remains on schedule. It has also sent its landlord a force majeure notice, which is the paperwork you file when you think you might not be able to hold up your end.

The notice went to Stack Infrastructure, a Blue Owl Capital unit developing the campus in Doña Ana County. Oracle is the tenant, and per Bloomberg's reporting it cannot walk away from the lease and is not trying to. What the notice does is preserve an argument. If the site misses its 2028 target because the power did not show up, Oracle wants the right to push back when the rent clock starts.

Continue reading Oracle Says Its New Mexico Stargate Site Is On Schedule. It Filed to Delay the Rent Anyway.

]]> Google’s Pixel Watch Can Now Estimate Your Blood Pressure https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/pixel-watch-blood-pressure-insulin-resistance-trends https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/pixel-watch-blood-pressure-insulin-resistance-trends Fri, 25 Sep 2026 09:04:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Wearables Google Software The Google Health app on a Pixel phone showing a Health Guardian monthly summary, with blood pressure trends and insulin resistance trends both flagged High, next to a Pixel Watch

Google's Health Guardian tools start rolling out to the Google Health app this week, which means your Pixel Watch is about to start estimating your blood pressure. It reads your pulse and your motion all month, with no cuff and no calibration, and then tells you whether your numbers have been drifting higher. The first reports land in early October.

That word "estimating" is carrying a lot of weight. Blood pressure trends, insulin resistance trends and sleep breathing quality are all free on the Pixel Watch 3, 4 and 5. Google's own fine print calls all three general wellness features, says they cannot diagnose anything, and says they are not a replacement for the cuff in your bathroom drawer.

Continue reading Google’s Pixel Watch Can Now Estimate Your Blood Pressure

]]> The OLED iPad mini Is Reportedly Close. Not Every Rumor About It Is Solid. https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/oled-ipad-mini-rumors-how-well-sourced https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/oled-ipad-mini-rumors-how-well-sourced Fri, 25 Sep 2026 09:03:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Apple Handhelds Rumors Apple iPad mini held in one hand, showing the Touch ID power button on the top edge

The iPad mini has the smallest and most stubborn fan base Apple has. It is the tablet people read on in bed, wedge into a jacket pocket, and keep for five or six years because nothing else is quite that size. It also goes the longest between updates, which means every mini rumor gets picked over harder than it deserves.

This round is the biggest in years. Reporting from Bloomberg, plus a scatter of supply chain leaks, points to a new iPad mini as early as October with an OLED screen, a much faster chip, and a sealed body that survives a splash. Apple has announced nothing, and these claims are nowhere near equally solid, so here they are sorted by how much weight the sourcing carries.

Continue reading The OLED iPad mini Is Reportedly Close. Not Every Rumor About It Is Solid.

]]> Nissan’s Pixo Is a 161-Mile Electric City Car. It Is Not Coming to the US. https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/nissan-pixo-electric-city-car-europe-161-miles https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/nissan-pixo-electric-city-car-europe-161-miles Thu, 24 Sep 2026 11:01:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Transportation Purple Nissan Pixo electric city car shown from the front three-quarter angle in an official Nissan press photo

Nissan revived the Pixo name on September 23, and you cannot buy one. The Pixo is a European car. It is built in Slovenia, it is sold in Europe, and it is not scheduled for the United States at all.

What Europe gets is a small electric hatchback with a 27.5 kWh lithium iron phosphate battery and 259 km of WLTP range, which is 161 miles. Nissan says customer deliveries begin in early 2027. It has not said what the car costs. Market pricing arrives from December 2026 onward, and the under-20,000-euro figure being quoted today (roughly $23,000 before incentives) is an expectation, not a number Nissan has announced.

Continue reading Nissan’s Pixo Is a 161-Mile Electric City Car. It Is Not Coming to the US.

]]> Samsung Pushed a Test Build to Korean Fridges Two Days Before Chuseok https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/samsung-test-build-korean-fridges-chuseok https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/samsung-test-build-korean-fridges-chuseok Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:54:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Corporate News Smart Home Misc. Tech A Samsung smart refrigerator with its touchscreen door panel, the kind of connected appliance affected by the faulty software update in South Korea

Your refrigerator does not have a reboot ritual. You don't sit down with a coffee and watch a progress bar crawl across the door panel. It runs for a decade, and the only time you think about it is when the ice maker jams. On the afternoon of September 22, a batch of Samsung owners in South Korea found out that deal had quietly changed.

Samsung has confirmed that a test version of a refrigerator software update went out through SmartThings by mistake instead of the finished release. Units froze partway through. The panel sat on an update message and then went dark. Interior lights stayed off, the door's auto-open feature stopped responding, the SmartThings app listed the fridge as offline, and unplugging it and plugging it back in did nothing. What it stopped doing, above all, was refrigerate.

Continue reading Samsung Pushed a Test Build to Korean Fridges Two Days Before Chuseok

]]> Alibaba Says the Zhenwu V900 Is China’s Most Powerful AI Chip. It Won’t Say How Fast. https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/alibaba-zhenwu-v900-most-powerful-no-flops https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/alibaba-zhenwu-v900-most-powerful-no-flops Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:53:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Corporate News Artificial Intelligence Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu on stage at the 2026 Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, in front of a slide showing Alibaba Cloud's 20GW data center capacity target for 2032.

Alibaba's chip unit spent part of its Apsara Conference keynote in Hangzhou this week calling the Zhenwu V900 the most powerful AI chip in China. Then it declined to say how fast it is. No FLOPS figure, no process node, no foundry, no power number. What you get instead is 216GB of memory, 1,200GB/s of inter-chip bandwidth, and native support for FP8 and FP4.

Those are real specs on a real chip, and T-Head has shipped enough silicon that its existing Zhenwu parts serve more than 650 customers, so none of this is vapor. But the line everybody repeated afterward, Alibaba Group CEO Eddie Wu's claim that the V900 delivers "three times the performance of its predecessor, the Zhenwu M890," is a vendor number with nothing underneath it yet. The M890 had 144GB and 800GB/s. Do the division and both of those are exactly 1.5x. Tripling performance off 1.5x on memory and 1.5x on bandwidth means the compute engine has to be doing a great deal more work per clock, and that is the part Alibaba described with an adjective instead of a number.

Continue reading Alibaba Says the Zhenwu V900 Is China’s Most Powerful AI Chip. It Won’t Say How Fast.

]]> Quake Champions Tore Out the Battle Pass and Loot Boxes. Now It Costs $10. https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/quake-champions-drops-free-to-play-10-dollar-steam-game https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/quake-champions-drops-free-to-play-10-dollar-steam-game Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:48:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Corporate News Video Games Quake Champions key art, as id Software drops the free-to-play model and makes the arena shooter a $10 paid game on Steam

Games go free-to-play. That is the direction the traffic moves, and it has been for a decade. On Wednesday, id Software and Bethesda drove the other way. They took a nine-year-old free-to-play arena shooter, pulled the monetization out of it, and put a $9.99 price tag on the Steam page.

The 1.31 point release notes do not bury it. "Today's update marks a new chapter for Quake Champions as we transition the game from a free-to-play service to a paid application on Steam," id wrote. "Battle Passes and microtransactions have been removed. Quake Champions is now available for one low price on Steam." One sentence later, id adds that "No additional content updates are planned at this time."

Continue reading Quake Champions Tore Out the Battle Pass and Loot Boxes. Now It Costs $10.

]]> Meta’s Muse Charm Puts Your AI Agent on a Keychain by December https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/meta-muse-charm-keychain-ai-agent-device https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/meta-muse-charm-keychain-ai-agent-device Wed, 23 Sep 2026 21:01:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Wearables Artificial Intelligence Mark Zuckerberg holds up Muse Charm, a small black puck on a cord with a screen showing his toga-wearing Muse avatar, at Meta Connect 2026

Meta saved its oddest piece of hardware for the last two minutes. At the end of tonight's Connect keynote, Mark Zuckerberg did a "one more thing" and held up a small black puck on a cord. It's called Muse Charm, Engadget's Karissa Bell put it at about the size of an Apple Watch, and its job is to give your Muse agent a body you can carry around. Zuckerberg said the design isn't finalized, but Meta plans to ship it "in time for the holidays," in December.

The Charm has a screen, and your Muse avatar lives on it. In Zuckerberg's case that's Agrippa, the toga-wearing Roman he'd been talking to all night. Tom's Guide's live notes say Meta has "only built a few of these so far," that you tap a fingerprint sensor in the corner, and that the "entire Muse AI" is built in. Engadget's Cherlynn Low said it "feels like a Tamagotchi met an AI wearable," and the stage shots back her up.

Continue reading Meta’s Muse Charm Puts Your AI Agent on a Keychain by December

]]> YouTube Will Build a Feed From Your Description https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/youtube-custom-feeds-shorts-as-shows-gifs https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/youtube-custom-feeds-shorts-as-shows-gifs Wed, 23 Sep 2026 21:00:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Google Internet Artificial Intelligence YouTube's new AI-generated custom feeds interface, showing a prompt-built feed tab on the homepage

Your YouTube homepage is a guess. Most days it's a good one, built out of everything you've watched, skipped, and let autoplay through at one in the morning. It is still YouTube deciding what you're in the mood for, though, and soon you'll be able to tell it directly instead.

That's the headline feature in a batch YouTube announced today. Custom feeds let you describe what you want in a conversational prompt, and YouTube builds a tab for it. The examples run to a feed for workouts, one for long documentaries, and one that surfaces new creators in a niche you care about. It's coming to web, mobile and TV, in the US first, and the only timing attached to it was "soon."

Continue reading YouTube Will Build a Feed From Your Description

]]> Meta’s $1,299 VR Glasses Weigh 100 Grams Because the Computer Rides in Your Pocket https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/meta-vr-glasses-1299-100-grams-compute-puck https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/meta-vr-glasses-1299-100-grams-compute-puck Wed, 23 Sep 2026 20:59:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Wearables Displays Video Games Meta VR Glasses shown above the clip-on compute puck they connect to by cable

Every VR headset asks you to strap a computer, a battery, and two screens to your face. Meta's new VR Glasses take the computer and the battery off. The glasses weigh about 100 grams, roughly a deck of cards, and everything heavy lives in a phone-sized puck that clips to your pocket and runs a cable up to your temple. They cost $1,299.99 and go on sale in spring 2027.

Mark Zuckerberg spent a big chunk of tonight's Connect keynote on them. Meta had been focusing less on the metaverse unless there was a breakthrough, he said, and then: "This is a breakthrough." He called it the result of more than a decade of work. It's Meta's first new VR hardware in about two years, since Quest 3S in fall 2024, and the pitch on stage came in three words: "Cinema. Computer. Console."

Continue reading Meta’s $1,299 VR Glasses Weigh 100 Grams Because the Computer Rides in Your Pocket

]]> YouTube Studio Will Soon Test Three Cuts of Your Video to Find the Best Hook https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/youtube-studio-video-ab-testing-three-cuts-ai-thumbnails https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/youtube-studio-video-ab-testing-three-cuts-ai-thumbnails Wed, 23 Sep 2026 20:58:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Google Software YouTube Creation Tools graphic showing Ask Studio in YouTube Studio, a Get feedback button over a video, and a Help me edit prompt on a phone

Every creator has an intro they aren't sure about. You cut the cold open, put it back, trim four seconds, and publish whichever version was on screen when you ran out of patience. YouTube Studio is about to let your audience make that call.

The biggest Studio news from Made on YouTube today is video A/B testing, which lets you run up to three cuts of the same video to see which hook performs best. YouTube says it's coming soon. It arrives with a batch of AI additions to Studio: feedback on early drafts, thumbnails generated to match your channel, and thumbnails that change depending on who's looking.

Continue reading YouTube Studio Will Soon Test Three Cuts of Your Video to Find the Best Hook

]]> Beat Saber Goes Controller-Free and Supernatural Comes Back in Meta’s Connect Games Slate https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/meta-connect-2026-vr-games-beat-saber-supernatural https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/meta-connect-2026-vr-games-beat-saber-supernatural Wed, 23 Sep 2026 20:56:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Wearables Video Games Beat Saber's new Flux mode, with glowing red and blue hands channeling energy toward circular notes inside a neon tunnel

"VR gaming is alive and well," Andrew Bosworth said on the Connect stage tonight. It's a confident thing to say eight months after Meta closed three of its own VR studios, and Meta backed it up with a games slate built around playing without controllers.

Most of these games are coming to Meta's new VR Glasses, the $1,299.99 lightweight headset that ships next spring (we covered the hardware separately), and most also run on Quest. The headliner is a Beat Saber you can play with bare hands. The surprise is Supernatural, the fitness app Meta bought and then stopped updating, which returns this fall without Meta.

Continue reading Beat Saber Goes Controller-Free and Supernatural Comes Back in Meta’s Connect Games Slate

]]> YouTube Is Putting a Gemini Editor in Shorts That Trims Your Pauses for You https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/youtube-shorts-gemini-conversational-editing-assistant https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/youtube-shorts-gemini-conversational-editing-assistant Wed, 23 Sep 2026 20:56:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Google Artificial Intelligence YouTube's Gemini-powered conversational editing assistant on three phones, showing suggested prompts like Trim to highlight best moments and Add trending music and sync to the beat

Most of editing a Short is grunt work. You scrub through a clip to find where you stopped saying "um," you nudge a cut until it lands on the beat, and you shuffle clips around until the thing moves fast enough that nobody swipes away. YouTube wants a chatbot to do that part.

At Made on YouTube today, YouTube announced a conversational editing assistant built on Gemini for Shorts and the YouTube Create app. You start with one of its suggested prompts or type your own, and it builds a first draft. From there you keep chatting, and it offers personalized suggestions: trim the pauses, reorder clips for better pacing, reorder frames, and trim music and sync it to the beat. You can jump out to the regular timeline and edit by hand at any point, then come back to the chat. YouTube didn't say when it ships or in which countries.

Continue reading YouTube Is Putting a Gemini Editor in Shorts That Trims Your Pauses for You

]]> Muse Is Replacing Meta AI on Meta’s Glasses, and You Get to Name It https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/meta-muse-ai-glasses-replaces-meta-ai-custom-name-voice https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/meta-muse-ai-glasses-replaces-meta-ai-custom-name-voice Wed, 23 Sep 2026 20:54:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Wearables Artificial Intelligence A pair of black Meta AI glasses with camera lenses in each corner of the frame

Talking to your glasses in public is awkward enough without starting every request with a corporation's name. At Meta Connect tonight, Meta said Muse, the personal AI agent it launched on September 8, is coming to its AI glasses and taking over from the built-in Meta AI assistant. You'll be able to give the assistant on your glasses your Muse's name and voice, which gives you an alternative to saying "Hey Meta."

Mark Zuckerberg showed it live. His Muse is a toga-wearing Roman named Agrippa, and Zuckerberg talked to it through a pair of Meta's glasses using Muse's new voice mode, reading off a long, complicated list of tasks. Agrippa gave the answer every good assistant gives before it goes off to do the work: "working on sending you options now."

Continue reading Muse Is Replacing Meta AI on Meta’s Glasses, and You Get to Name It

]]> YouTube Shopping Is Headed to 35 Countries, and Ask YouTube Wants to Answer Your Shopping Questions https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/youtube-shopping-35-countries-ask-youtube-shopping https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/youtube-shopping-35-countries-ask-youtube-shopping Wed, 23 Sep 2026 20:53:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Google Internet YouTube Business Tools graphic showing Ask Studio drafting a brand pitch and a Shorts video with a YouTube Shopping product tag that earns commission

If you've ever bought a pair of headphones because someone held them up to a camera and talked about the bass for eleven minutes, you already use YouTube as a shopping search engine. At Made on YouTube today, the company leaned into that from both ends: more ways for creators to get paid when you buy something, and an AI that will answer the shopping question for you.

The creator half is the more concrete one. The YouTube Shopping affiliate program, which lets creators tag products in their videos and earn a commission on sales, is expanding to 35 countries by the end of the year. YouTube says more than 1.3 million creators are already in the program, and that gross merchandise volume through it has grown 13x over the last two years.

Continue reading YouTube Shopping Is Headed to 35 Countries, and Ask YouTube Wants to Answer Your Shopping Questions

]]> Bentley’s First EV Charges to 80 Percent in 16 Minutes. It Also Pipes In Fake Engine Noise. https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/bentley-torcal-first-electric-suv-revealed https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/bentley-torcal-first-electric-suv-revealed Wed, 23 Sep 2026 20:52:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Design Transportation Bentley Torcal electric SUV driving on a mountain road

A lot of what you paid for in a Bentley was sound. The big engine clearing its throat outside a restaurant did real work for the sticker price. The Torcal, Bentley's first electric car, revealed in London today, has none of that. So Bentley composed some and named it Bentley Dynamic Symphony.

The car under the soundtrack is serious. It's a five-meter SUV, designed, engineered and built in Crewe, with two permanent magnet motors driving all four wheels. That's 821 PS in the standard car and 888 in the S, good for 0 to 60 mph in 3.3 seconds, or 2.8 if you buy the S. Top speed is 155 mph, or 162 in the S. Those are the numbers Bentley led with. The one it left out is the price.

Continue reading Bentley’s First EV Charges to 80 Percent in 16 Minutes. It Also Pipes In Fake Engine Noise.

]]> Meta’s Glasses Can Now Be a Hearing Aid, If You Pay $150 to Turn It On https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/meta-glasses-hearing-enhancement-hearing-aid-150 https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/meta-glasses-hearing-enhancement-hearing-aid-150 Wed, 23 Sep 2026 20:51:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Wearables Portable Audio / Video Mark Zuckerberg on stage at Meta Connect 2026 in front of a slide reading Hearing enhancement turns your glasses into a hearing aid

Meta's glasses can now work as a hearing aid. The feature is FDA-cleared for mild to moderate hearing loss, it held up in early hands-ons, and after a 30-day free trial it costs $149.99 on top of the glasses, a number Meta left out of its keynote.

Meta announced Hearing Enhancement at Connect on Wednesday night. Last year it showed Conversation Focus, which helps anyone pick out a voice in a noisy room. Hearing Enhancement goes further. The FDA cleared it as a self-fitting, over-the-counter hearing aid for people with mild to moderate hearing loss, so you don't need a prescription. It arrives in the US later this year on Meta Glasses, the line Meta launched with EssilorLuxottica in June starting at $299. The new Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 3) and the camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio get it after that.

Continue reading Meta’s Glasses Can Now Be a Hearing Aid, If You Pay $150 to Turn It On

]]> OpenAI Hired Three Patreon Leaders to Build Creator Products https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/openai-hires-three-patreon-leaders-creator-products https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/openai-hires-three-patreon-leaders-creator-products Wed, 23 Sep 2026 20:50:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Corporate News Artificial Intelligence Patreon co-founder Sam Yam, who is joining OpenAI to lead its new Creator Product division

Patreon spent over a decade working out how to get money from fans to the creators they support, every month, without either side having to think about it. OpenAI just hired three of the people who did that work.

Sam Yam, who co-founded Patreon and served as its CTO for more than a decade, is joining OpenAI to lead a new Creator Product division. He oversaw the development of Patreon's creator economy tools. Two colleagues are going with him: Drew Rowny, Patreon's former SVP of Product, who was at Google before that, and Shannon Ma, who ran engineering at Patreon and came from Facebook. Tubefilter reported the moves, and The Next Web and other outlets covered the same details.

Continue reading OpenAI Hired Three Patreon Leaders to Build Creator Products

]]> Meta Muse Can Now Run Your Mac and Shop at Walmart, and Meta Takes a Cut of What It Buys https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/meta-muse-connect-2026-mac-computer-use-shopping https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/meta-muse-connect-2026-mac-computer-use-shopping Wed, 23 Sep 2026 20:48:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Software Artificial Intelligence Meta Muse personal AI agent graphic with chat bubbles offering to order Halloween costumes and adjust a budget

Mark Zuckerberg opened tonight's Meta Connect keynote with software you can't wear. Before any glasses or headsets, he and Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang spent the first stretch of the show on Muse, the personal AI agent Meta launched on September 8. Muse can now operate any app on your Mac, it works with Box and GitHub, it can shop at Walmart, Best Buy, Sephora and a long list of other stores, it's getting its own email address, and you can rename it and change how it looks and sounds.

Zuckerberg also explained how Meta gets paid. Muse is free, with a large allowance of tokens, and over time Meta expects to make money by taking a small fee on the transactions Muse handles. Meta makes money on Muse when Muse spends your money.

Continue reading Meta Muse Can Now Run Your Mac and Shop at Walmart, and Meta Takes a Cut of What It Buys

]]> YouTube Music Is Getting an AI Voice That Pitches You Podcasts Every Week https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/youtube-music-podcast-lineup-ask-music-ai https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/youtube-music-podcast-lineup-ask-music-ai Wed, 23 Sep 2026 20:46:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Google Music YouTube Music's Ask Music chat on a phone, with sample prompts like who produced this and make me a Euro summer mix

There are more podcasts than you will ever get to, and the one you'd love is usually the one nobody told you about. YouTube's answer, announced at Made on YouTube today, is an AI voice that tells you about a few of them once a week.

It's called Your Podcast Lineup, and it lives in the YouTube Music app. YouTube describes it as a personalized AI audio guide: a quick weekly spoken preview of recommended shows that explains why you'll like them, then jumps into suggested episodes. YouTube calls the experience "completely eyes-optional and hands-free," so it's built for the commute or the dishes. It's coming soon to YouTube Music and Premium subscribers worldwide, and 9to5Google reports testing starts later this year.

Continue reading YouTube Music Is Getting an AI Voice That Pitches You Podcasts Every Week

]]> Ray-Ban Meta Audio Ditches the Camera, Keeps the Mics, and Costs $349 https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/ray-ban-meta-audio-camera-free-glasses-349 https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/ray-ban-meta-audio-camera-free-glasses-349 Wed, 23 Sep 2026 20:45:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Wearables Portable Audio / Video A woman wearing black rectangular Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses, which have no camera, asking Meta AI a question

The quickest way to stop people calling your smart glasses creepy is to take out the camera. Meta did that tonight. Ray-Ban Meta Audio, announced at Connect, is Meta's first pair of glasses with no camera at all: speakers, microphones, and an AI assistant in a Ray-Ban frame, starting at $349.

Meta says audio has been the most popular feature on its glasses since day one, and this pair is built around it. At 43 grams, Meta calls them its lightest and slimmest AI glasses yet. They're rated for up to 12 hours of music, podcasts, calls, and assistant use on a charge, plus up to 48 more hours from the included charging case. Pre-orders are open now, and they ship October 13.

Continue reading Ray-Ban Meta Audio Ditches the Camera, Keeps the Mics, and Costs $349

]]> YouTube Live Borrows TikTok’s Gift Battles, and Most of It Waits Until 2027 https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/youtube-live-showdown-go-live-together-auto-dubbing https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/youtube-live-showdown-go-live-together-auto-dubbing Wed, 23 Sep 2026 20:39:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Google Internet YouTube Live Go Live Together co-hosting feature announced at Made on YouTube 2026

If you've spent any time in TikTok LIVE, you know the split screen: two creators, a score bar, and viewers sending gifts to push their side ahead. YouTube wants that on its own platform, and at Made on YouTube on Wednesday it laid out how it plans to get there.

Timing is the catch. Of the four Live features YouTube announced, one starts rolling out later this year. The other three are dated 2027, and one of those is a pilot. YouTube already has the viewers. It says more than 600 million logged-in viewers watched live content (archives included) each day on average in August 2026.

Continue reading YouTube Live Borrows TikTok’s Gift Battles, and Most of It Waits Until 2027

]]> Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 Adds Aviators, an Action Button, and $70 to the Price https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/ray-ban-meta-gen-3-aviators-action-button-449 https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/ray-ban-meta-gen-3-aviators-action-button-449 Wed, 23 Sep 2026 20:38:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Wearables A man wearing Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 smart glasses with dark green lenses, with a Hey Meta voice prompt shown beside him

Meta's third-generation Ray-Bans are slimmer, last an hour longer, and come as Aviators. They also cost $449, which is $70 more than Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) cost when it launched a year ago, and on the same night Meta put a pair of its own glasses on sale for $249.

Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 3) was announced at Connect on Wednesday night and is available today. Meta calls the line the world's best-selling AI glasses, and Gen 3 changes the parts you touch and hear more than the parts you shoot with. Tom's Guide's live blog greeted it with "Does it need to be, though?" For anyone already wearing Gen 2, I think the answer is no.

Continue reading Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 Adds Aviators, an Action Button, and $70 to the Price

]]> YouTube Shorts Now Come in Seasons, and YouTube Wants You Watching Them on TV https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/youtube-shorts-series-seasons-episodes-microdramas-tv https://www.gearlive.com/news/article/youtube-shorts-series-seasons-episodes-microdramas-tv Wed, 23 Sep 2026 20:36:00 -0700 Andru Edwards Google Internet A TV showing a YouTube Shorts series page for The Silent Order, with three episodes from @heybrandonb, Play episode and Episodes buttons, and a Season 1 row of thumbnails

The picture YouTube chose for its newest Shorts feature is a TV. On screen is The Silent Order, three episodes from @heybrandonb, with a Play episode button, an Episodes menu, and a Season 1 row of thumbnails along the bottom. It could pass for a show page on any streaming service. Every episode is a Short.

That's Shorts series, announced today at Made on YouTube and rolling out to creators starting now on web, mobile, and TV. Creators can sort their Shorts into seasons and episodes, give each episode its own custom thumbnail, and have them play in order. YouTube says it builds on its Creator Shows feature. If you liked episode one, sequential playback means episode two comes next, and you don't have to dig through a creator's channel to find it.

Continue reading YouTube Shorts Now Come in Seasons, and YouTube Wants You Watching Them on TV

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