China is now a home to the world's fastest publicly listed supercomputer for the first time since 2017, according to the latest TOP500 ranking released last 23 June.

The system, called LineShine and located at the National Supercomputing Centre in the southern city of Shenzhen, displaced the US machine El Capitan from the top spot.

The TOP500 list, published twice a year, ranks the world's most powerful known supercomputers based on a standardized performance benchmark. The latest edition was unveiled at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) in Hamburg.

LineShine achieved a performance of 2.198 exaflops, equivalent to more than 2 quintillion calculations per second. El Capitan, located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, recorded 1.809 exaflops.

Supercomputers are used for applications including climate modelling, materials research, industrial development and artificial intelligence, making the rankings a closely watched indicator in the technology competition between China and the United States.

El Capitan, Frontier and Aurora, all based in the US, occupied the next three positions in the ranking. Germany's Jupiter Booster system at the Jülich Research Centre ranked fifth.

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About two weeks after his final appearance hosting Apple's Worldwide Developers' Conference (WDC), outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook tells the Wall Street Journal the company plans to raise prices on its products. Cook blamed the rising costs of memory chips and storage.

Cook did not say which products would be affected, or when the price hikes would take effect. Apple is expected to release the iPhone 18 series in September, and many expect it to also announce the company's first foldable phone.

"Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable," Cook told the WSJ. "We're doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us and we've been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable."

Cook warned during Apple's second-quarter earnings call in May that he expected memory costs to "drive an increasing impact on our business," but without offering specifics. And at least one analyst suggested the memory chip crisis could raise the price of iPhones — but maybe not all models.

Insatiable demand from AI companies has driven the cost of memory and storage chips sky-high, leading to a severe shortage of RAM — a situation dubbed RAMmageddon within the industry.

Apple is far from the only company feeling the squeeze and raising prices as a result. Microsoft raised its Xbox console prices in 2025, and Sony raised the cost of its Playstation consoles in April.

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President Donald Trump said last 18 June that Intel had agreed a to deal with Apple to "design and build" its chips in the U.S.

"America needed its Semiconductor Industry to come back to the U.S.A. We design everything, but we need to BUILD it here, NOW!" Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. "So I decided to help Intel because we need to design and build our Chips right here in America."

"Apple has agreed to work with Intel to design and build its Chips in America," he said.

The president has been a vocal supporter of Intel, striking a deal with the company last August that saw Intel sell a stake of about 10 percent to the U.S. government.

Intel's share price was up more than 10 percent when markets opened Thursday.

Trump's announcements came a few hours after the Wall Street Journal published an interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook, where he said the company would have to raise prices due to memory and storage shortages. "Price increases are unavoidable," Cook said.

Demand from AI companies has driven a sharp increase in the cost of memory and storage, leading to a severe shortage of RAM — known as RAMmageddon within the industry.

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Researchers have developed a soft robotic gripper that can inspect fruit for ripeness and harvest it without causing damage, a capability that could help reduce food waste and improve harvesting efficiency.

The device uses soft silicone and polyurethane fingers equipped with multiple sensors to measure a fruit’s size, shape, color and firmness before deciding whether it is ready to be picked. The system was tested on strawberries and can remove the fruit by twisting its stem rather than cutting it.

The gripper was developed by a team that includes Anand Mishra, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering at West Virginia University. The research began at Cornell University and is continuing at WVU.

The technology addresses a major challenge in agriculture: harvesting delicate fruits at the right stage of ripeness. Fruits such as strawberries and raspberries have a narrow harvest window and can bruise easily during picking, transportation and storage.

"Our gripper’s quick, accurate inspections and harvesting can reduce spoilage of fruits and lower supply chain costs," Mishra said.

"Fruit inspections are critical for harvesting decisions that have traditionally been made by human workers. However, using human workers for harvesting involves challenges such as labor shortages, health concerns and inaccuracies in picking."

Agricultural robots have been proposed as a solution, but many existing systems are designed for controlled greenhouse environments rather than outdoor farms. Traditional robotic grippers can also damage soft fruit because of their rigid structures.

The new system combines tactile and visual sensing in a soft robotic design. Stretchable optical fibers embedded inside each finger act as tactile and curvature sensors, while a miniature camera and distance sensor are mounted in the palm.

The five-fingered gripper can identify a fruit’s shape, stiffness and ripeness while also detecting slippage during handling. Researchers reported that the device can open and close in less than two seconds, lift loads weighing up to one kilogram and achieve nearly 100 percent accuracy in shape prediction.

According to the team, the technology could be particularly useful for fruits that do not show obvious visual signs of ripeness. Avocados are one example, where growers often rely on touch rather than appearance to determine harvest timing.

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Apple is popularly known as a company that prioritizes privacy, and that could be a major pillar of its revamped Siri experience launching with iOS 27 later this year. According to a new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is planning a feature for the new Siri app that would auto-delete chats after a set period of time, mimicking a feature in the company's Messages app.

The report notes that you'll be able to adjust the settings for the new Siri app to keep chats for 30 days, one year or forever. Similar settings are already available for iMessage chats, reinforcing Apple's focus on making chatting with Siri similar to the experience its users already have with the Messages app.

That's slightly different from how chatbots from other companies work, requiring you to manually delete chats or affirmatively start a chat in an incognito mode that cuts them off from storage and model training.

Gurman also says that the new Siri experience could still launch with a beta label when it ships with iOS 27 later this year. That's reminiscent of Siri's original launch in 2011, which was tagged as beta to signify that the experience would continue to evolve. It's notable this time, however, as the experience has already been delayed for two years since Apple first announced an AI overhaul for Siri's capabilities at WWDC 2024.

Finally, Apple may be looking to boost Genmoji usage with iOS 27. Gurman notes that the company is planning to add a "suggested Genmoji" option on the iOS keyboard. The experience would create suggested Genmoji "created from your photos and your commonly typed phrases," according to the description attached to a new toggle in the iOS 27 keyboard settings.

All of these updates are expected to be revealed first at WWDC 2026, Apple's annual developer conference kicking off on June 8. That's before iOS 27 is expected to launch to customers with this year's new iPhones this fall.

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Apple is planning to launch a bill-splitting feature in iOS 27, and may introduce the feature as soon as next week at its Worldwide Developers Conference, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports.

Users will be able to take a photo of a receipt, assign items on it to other people and generate requests for payment, according to the report. The payment service will be linked to the company's peer-to-peer payment system Apple Cash, and will be available via its Wallet app and within Messages.

Payment-splitting will likely compete with peer-to-peer payment apps like Venmo and Cash App, and marks Apple's latest foray into financial services, which have been something of a mixed bag for the company.

While its Apple Wallet and Apple Pay features continue to grow in popularity, its Apple Card credit card, which launched in 2019, was not a strong performer for its banking partner Goldman Sachs.

Earlier this year, Goldman reached a deal with JPMorgan Chase to take over its Apple Card business. And Apple's venture into the buy now, pay later marketplace was short-lived, with the company discontinuing its Apple Pay Later program after less than a year.

Apple will be holding WWDC on 8 June, where it's expected to unveil iOS 27, Siri updates, and more.

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