Technology News: Latest Updates from 2026-04-17
This report is a summary of technology news from 2026-04-17 and is based exclusively on the original texts of the sources.
Xbox Gives First Look at Metro 2039
According to news.xbox.com, the Xbox First Look presentation with 4A Games and Deep Silver delivered the world premiere of Metro 2039 – the fourth main installment of the post-apocalyptic first-person shooter series. The game is described as a story-driven single-player campaign and is being developed by a global team that remains predominantly based in Ukraine.
Players take on the role of a new, first-ever fully voiced protagonist named “The Stranger,” who must return to the Moscow Metro, now ruled by a fascist regime under a so-called Fuhrer. Co-Creative Director and Lead Audio Designer Pawel Ulmer describes the Stranger as “a hermit, plagued by violent nightmares.” The Ukrainian studio speaks openly about how the experience of Russia’s invasion has profoundly shaped their perspective and fundamentally changed the game.
An initial gameplay glimpse showed familiar elements of the series: handcrafted weapons, in-game objects instead of traditional UI elements, and battles against returning monsters called Nosalises. Executive Producer Jon Bloch emphasized the detailed level design: “Nothing is prefabricated – everything is unique and grounded.” Creative Director Andriy Shevchenko described the approach to environmental storytelling as “frozen stories,” where attentive players can piece together micro-narratives through deliberately placed objects and scenes.
Metro 2039 was once again developed in the in-house 4A Engine, whose technological foundation according to Bloch now spans over 15 years and enables the studio to build upon all previous titles.
Apple Reaches Record Level of Recycled Material
According to apple.com, Apple announced on April 16, 2026 that a record 30 percent of material in all products shipped in 2025 came from recycled material. The company states it now uses 100 percent recycled cobalt in all Apple-designed batteries and 100 percent recycled rare earth elements in all magnets. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, stated: “These milestones show that ambitious goals can also be powerful engines for innovation.”
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Recycled material in products (2025) | 30 percent |
| Recycled cobalt in batteries | 100 percent |
| Recycled rare earth elements in magnets | 100 percent |
| Recycled gold/tin on circuit boards | 100 percent |
| Greenhouse gas reduction compared to 2015 | over 60 percent |
| Plastic avoided (5 years) | over 15,000 tons |
| Renewable energy from suppliers | over 20 gigawatts / over 38 million megawatt-hours |
Apple has also completed the transition to 100 percent fiber-based packaging, completely eliminating plastic from packaging. The company states it has avoided over 15,000 tons of plastic over the past five years – the equivalent of approximately 500 million plastic water bottles. Even the largest packages, such as for the Studio Display XDR, can according to Apple be folded down into smaller pieces that fit in a recycling bin.
In the area of recycling technology, Apple has launched the new Cora recycling line at the Advanced Recovery Center in California. Additionally, the machine learning-based recognition system A.R.I.S. was developed, which runs on the Mac mini and is designed to help recyclers classify and sort electronic waste more efficiently.
Chrome Gets AI Mode for Smoother Browsing
According to blog.google, AI Mode in Chrome is being expanded with new features designed to eliminate the need to switch between tabs while researching. Web pages can now be opened side-by-side next to AI Mode on desktop, allowing users to compare content and ask follow-up questions without losing the context of their search.
As an example, the source mentions searching for a coffee machine: users can open a retailer’s page next to AI Mode in Search and ask targeted questions, such as “How easy is this to clean?” – AI Mode then provides information from the open page and the web. Similarly, for topics like McLaren Racing and their pit crew training, users can seamlessly switch between related pages while AI Mode answers follow-up questions in real-time.
Additionally, on Chrome Desktop or mobile devices, it will be possible to include already-open tabs in a search via a new “Plus” menu on the New Tab page. Users can combine multiple tabs, images, or files such as PDFs. For example, when researching hiking trails, open tabs can be included to ask about similar kid-friendly routes in a different location. Students can also, according to the source, bring in notes and lecture slides from open tabs to prepare for a statistics exam, for instance.
Amazon CloudWatch with Cross-Region Rules
According to aws.amazon.com, Amazon CloudWatch now supports auditing and enabling telemetry configurations across multiple AWS Regions from a single region. Customers can enable telemetry monitoring for their account or organization across all supported regions simultaneously and create enablement rules that are automatically applied to selected or all available regions.
For example, a central security team can create a single organization-wide enablement rule for VPC Flow Logs that applies across all regions. This ensures consistent telemetry collection for every VPC in every account. Rules configured for all regions automatically expand to new regions as they become available, according to the source.
The cross-region telemetry configuration supports AWS services such as Amazon EC2, Amazon VPC, and AWS CloudTrail. The feature is available in all commercial AWS Regions. Standard CloudWatch pricing applies for telemetry ingestion. More information can be found in the Amazon CloudWatch documentation.
Cloudflare Builds Unified AI Inference Layer
According to blog.cloudflare.com, Cloudflare is turning its platform into a unified inference layer: one API to access any AI model from any provider. Developers can now call third-party models through the existing AI.run() interface. The company states that over 70 models from more than 12 providers are available through a single API, one line of code to switch, and a unified billing system. For users without Workers, a REST API is expected to be provided in the coming weeks.
According to the source, most companies today call an average of 3.5 models from multiple providers. AI Gateway therefore offers a central place to monitor and manage AI spending. Through custom metadata – such as attributes like teamId or userId – costs can be broken down by various criteria, for example by free and paying users or by specific workflows.
| Provider (model access via AI Gateway) |
|---|
| Alibaba Cloud |
| Bytedance |
| Pixverse |
| Recraft |
| Runway |
| Vidu |
Furthermore, Cloudflare is working on a feature that will allow users to bring their own fine-tuned models to Workers AI, according to the source. This uses the Cog technology from Replicate, which is designed to simplify containerizing machine learning models. For example, the Python version (3.13 in the example) can be defined in a cog.yaml file and the inference code in a Python file. The model offering is also being expanded to include image, video, and speech models to enable multimodal applications.
Conclusion
Today’s news highlights important developments in the tech industry that bring both opportunities and challenges.
Frequently Asked Questions
On what basis were these news items summarized?
Exclusively based on the original texts of the linked sources.
📚 Sources
- 🔗 news.microsoft.com: Xbox gives gamers a first look at Metro 2039…
- 🔗 apple.com: Apple accelerates progress with highest-ever recycled material in its …
- 🔗 blog.google: A new way to explore the web with AI Mode in Chrome…
- 🔗 aws.amazon.com: Amazon CloudWatch now supports cross-region telemetry auditing and ena…
- 🔗 blog.cloudflare.com: Cloudflare’s AI Platform: an inference layer designed for agents…
