Apple finally shipped the folding phone rumors promised: the iPhone Duo is real, and TechCrunch reports its hinge mechanism was designed with AI-assisted engineering. The rest of the iPhone 18 Pro line gets its own upgrades — variable aperture, a faster chip per Ars Technica, camera work that goes beyond raw megapixels per Engadget, and a new Apple Watch feature called Audio Intelligence that can rewind a conversation you just had. Apple also published documentation on how its new listening features handle privacy, and detailed a system for proving iPhone photos aren't AI-generated — a quiet admission of how much fake imagery is now in circulation.
In orbit, ESA's BepiColombo completed its MTM module separation as it begins final approach to Mercury, and the MTG-I2 weather satellite reached its final geostationary slot. NASA added Relativity Space's Terran R rocket to its official launch services roster, a real vote of confidence for a company that hasn't flown the vehicle yet.
On the software side, Suno released a new AI music model built with input from the record industry, an unusual truce given the lawsuits flying elsewhere in AI audio. Ars Technica reports six Chinese AI firms have been accused of aggressively copying US frontier models, and a researcher published a reverse-engineered version of Stuxnet's source code on GitHub, laying bare the malware that first proved software could cause physical damage. Meanwhile Wired profiles a stealth startup claiming to have found a workaround for the current memory chip shortage.
