“For many years developers have asked us for one thing, Linux on Snapdragon. We heard you,” says Kedar Kondap, SVP and general manager of compute and gaming at Qualcomm. Speaking at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit, Kondap says Linux support with Debian will be available “at the end of this year” for Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon X2 series of chips. Qualcomm is upstreaming core drivers, including for its Hexagon NPU and Adreno GPU. Ubuntu support is also coming in the first half of 2027.

Microsoft is launching a new digital sketchpad app for Windows next month. Microsoft Ink Canvas will be available first on the new Surface Pro 12-inch, and other supported devices on October 13th. It supports sketching with pen or touch, and includes AI image generation and summaries. It’s essentially an AI-powered version of the various digital whiteboard apps Microsoft has created over the years.

Transportation editor Andrew Hawkins is here to answer your questions about the confluence of cars and gadgets. Could a folding phone replace a dashboard display? What to do about the iPhone Pro Max not fitting the Tesla’s built-in wireless charger? And we hear from a listener who — shockingly — doesn’t care about CarPlay.

There’s still a standby line to get into the Senate Judiciary crime and counterterrorism subcommittee’s hearing about “Flock’s Nationwide AI Surveillance Network.” Chair Josh Hawley (R-MO) invited the CEOs of Flock and its peers, Axon, Motorola Solutions, and Verkada, but said they declined.

After launching its upgraded voice mode on desktop, OpenAI is bringing ChatGPT Voice’s agentic capabilities to its mobile app. With the update, you use your voice to ask ChatGPT to perform tasks across connected apps — like checking your email or summarizing a file in Google Drive — from your phone or CarPlay.

Although accessing the cooling fan requires quite a bit of disassembly and swapping out the battery involves a brief battle with glue, iFixit says Valve has applied the same “repair-friendly thinking” to the Steam Frame’s design as it did with the Steam Deck helping to potentially prolong the headset’s lifespan.

With the new Stream Deck 7.6 update, Elgato is expanding the limited functionality of the $99.99 Neo’s Infobar screen beyond a clock and page indicators. You’ll now be able to make it show other useful info like weather forecasts, what’s playing on Spotify, your PC’s CPU and GPU stats, and when your AI agent needs your attention.

Remember George Hotz, the iPhone-hacker-turned-driver-assist-developer? His company Comma.ai is under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration after three people died and 11 people were injured while using the company’s hands-free driver assist products. The investigation is focused on vehicles crashing into other vehicles that are stopped in the lane, like emergency vehicles. That sounds familiar!

We called the K11 Plus the best robot vacuum for small spaces, but Switchbot’s upgraded K11 Plus Pro could be an even better option. For $399.99 you get a boost from 6,000Pa to 12,000Pa of suction potentially making it a more potent autonomous cleaner for apartments with multiple pets or spill-prone kids.

Disney is also raising prices on its ad-free Hulu plan, ad-free Hulu and Disney Plus bundle, and the standalone ad-supported subscriptions for each, Bloomberg reports. It says Disney could start notifying subscribers about the price increase as soon as today, exactly one year after an earlier Disney Plus price hike and just a month after ESPN raised prices.

Along with a bunch of AI news today, YouTube music exec Lyor Cohen announced a renewed agreement with concert promoter Goldenvoice to keep streaming both weekends of the Coachella music festival for the next four years.

I am prepping this week’s issue a little early again, and I want to know everything you’re into. What are you reading / watching / playing / interested in this week? Tell me so I can tell everyone! (And subscribe to Installer!)

This builds on the feature introduced in May which allows users to build a custom video feed based on AI prompt descriptions of your interests, moods, or favorite topics. The expansion means you can create and save more than one custom feed to your home screen, with YouTube saying it’ll be available for users in the US on web, mobile, and TVs “soon.”

YouTube is expanding its likeness detection tool to include not just facial matches, but vocal matches too. At the company’s Made on YouTube event on Wednesday, executives teased the upcoming expansion that will allow creators to monitor potential synthetic soundalikes posted to the platform.

First announced last March with shipping in late June, the tiny Atom Plus is finally available from retailers like Amazon for $29.99. It’s slightly wider than the 8BitDo Micro but CRKD’s palmable gamepad adds a symmetrical pair of tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) thumbsticks and two pairs of full-size shoulder buttons.

The official trailer for Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary, You Can See Everything has dropped. The movie — which seems to involve Fielder living in Holmes’ home with her born-rich husband and small baby before she heads to prison for the criminal fraud that was Theranos — comes out October 16th.

Netflix has released the first trailer for the film — not to be confused with Raygun — a hardboiled sci-fi feature helmed by Brad Bird, best-known for animated classics like Ratatouille and The Iron Giant. It hits theaters on December 4th before streaming on December 18th.

The platform is testing a way for users to verify their profile by getting people they’ve actually worked or studied with (who are already verified) to vouch for them. LinkedIn is also testing a feature for company pages that forces users claiming current employment to verify themselves, and companies can now instantly remove fake employees from search results.

Ofcom is taking a deeper look at Pornhub provider Aylo’s compliance with online safety rules. The media watchdog’s enforcement director George Lusty says, “We expect tech firms to ensure age checks are highly effective before introducing them.” Aylo relies on Apple’s age verification system, which is not being scrutinized under the investigation.

Des Yap did some initial testing of the new $649.99 T-Rex Dual Solar from Amazfit — the first endurance watch with a bright and colorful OLED to be fitted with teeny-weeny solar panels. The ring around the display can extend life a bit, but the larger rear panel around the heart-rate sensor can add a few percentage points of charge when you arrive at camp, or when the watch is slung off a running vest, so maybe you can leave your ultralight power bank home on your next multi-day adventure.

While Undead Labs is avoiding closing as Xbox’s assortment of developers continues to shrink, the studio announced on LinkedIn that “Unfortunately, today we are also saying goodbye to a significant number of our colleagues. It’s difficult to reach this moment knowing that not everyone who helped get us here gets to make the rest of the journey with us.”