• Apple launched Digital ID, letting users store their US passport in Apple Wallet.
• Digital ID works at TSA checkpoints in over 250 US airports.
• However, it doesn’t fully replace your physical passport.

Apple’s latest iPhone feature could save you from having to fumble for your passport while traveling.

The tech giant launched on Wednesday a way for iPhone and Apple Watch users to carry a virtual version of their US passport using information from the real thing. It can be used for domestic travel at TSA checkpoints at more than 250 US airports, the company said.

The new Digital ID feature in the latest version of iOS 26 adds passports to a range of government-issued IDs that can be included in the Apple Wallet. The iPhone maker touted the security and privacy of the feature.

“We’re excited to expand the ways users can store and present their identity — all with the security and privacy built into iPhone and Apple Watch,” Jennifer Bailey, vice president of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet, said in the news release.

Apple said Digital ID expands access to virtual versions of government IDs and could present an additional ID option for people without Real ID-compliant identification. It can also be used to book some flights or hotels.

However, this new feature doesn’t mean you should leave your physical passport at home. Digital ID can’t be used for international travel or crossing borders, Apple said.

However, for domestic travel, Digital ID allows you to carry your passport, boarding pass, and ID all in one place on your iPhone or Apple Watch.

Here’s how to set it up.

Grab your passport and open up Apple Wallet

Apple Wallet is where you store your debit or credit cards, transit cards, boarding passes, and more. Starting Wednesday, your Digital ID can be found under the Driver’s License and ID card tab.

Before setting up Digital ID, make sure you have your passport in hand. You’ll need the physical copy to create your virtual one.

You’ll find out more about what Digital ID can do

Once you’ve confirmed that you want to proceed, Apple will provide you with information about Digital ID. Then, it’s time to open your US passport to the photo page and scan it with your iPhone’s back camera.

Keep your passport open

Turn to the back of your passport book, and find the barcode. Don’t worry if you, like me, don’t know where to find this; Apple displays a helpful image to guide you. Your phone should read the chip embedded in your passport.

Get ready to take a few selfies

To verify your identity, Apple requires a clear image of your face from multiple angles. This means taking a still photo, plus doing a few movements to get a proper scan.

I had to close my eyes, tilt my head from side to side, and smile before the verification was complete.

Wait for the verification to process

Now that all of your selfies and scans are complete, your verification should be processing. No need for further action — Apple will let you know once it’s done.

For me, it took only one minute to go through. Then, I was all set to use my Digital ID next time I travel domestically.

• The US Mint produced the final penny on Wednesday.
• The coin costs almost $0.04 to make, and ending production will save more than $50 million annually.
• There are still around 300 billion pennies in circulation.

It’s a sad day for piggy banks everywhere. And 99-cent stores. And parents trying to teach their children the most basic idiom about frugality.

On Wednesday, the US Mint produced the final penny, ending the coin’s 232-year-old life. Treasurer of the United States Brandon Beach struck the last one-cent coin in Philadelphia, the US Mint said.

Born in Philadelphia in 1793, the penny had become a copper-coated emblem of government waste for some. The White House DOGE Office targeted the coin earlier this year, and politicians of both major parties have questioned its value. President Donald Trump criticized the penny in a Truth Social post in February.

The US Mint estimated that ending penny production will save $56 million in material costs every year, a spokesperson previously told Business Insider. Each $0.01 coin most recently cost almost $0.04 to produce, according to the US Mint.

Though production has ended, the US Mint said there are still around 300 billion pennies in circulation.

• For years, the pay TV business seemed to defy gravity.
• Even as people were flocking to the internet, cable TV subscriptions stayed in place.
• That’s no longer the case. The business has been eroding for a decade, and it just crossed a symbolic milestone.

You know that the cable TV industry is in steep decline.

You know it because of all the evidence around you. And you know it because we tell you about it over and over.

Still, sometimes you see a stat that helps put it all into even sharper perspective. Like this:

Fifteen years ago, nearly 9 in 10 US households had a pay TV subscription. By the end of 2025, that number will be down to five out of 10.

That estimate comes from Madison and Wall, the technology/media advisory firm. CEO Brian Wieser also helpfully shows what those stats — which include traditional pay TV providers like Comcast, and digital ones like YouTubeTV — look like in chart form:

(That 50.2% number is for Q3 of this year; Wieser thinks that should get down to 50% or lower by the end of December.)

Again, this is not news for people who invest in or operate media companies. It explains, for instance, why everyone from Comcast to Warner Bros. Discovery to A&E is trying to sell, spin off, or otherwise ditch most of their cable TV assets. (Larry and David Ellison’s Paramount, meanwhile, insists that it won’t spin off its cable channels, even while it acknowledges that “each quarter is accelerating decline.”)

It also has implications for advertisers, who stuck with TV for a long time, even when it became clear it was in decline, because that was a tried-and-true way of reaching a lot of people. No longer.

“Linear TV can still deliver high levels of reach and retains an outsized share of inventory, but higher levels of audience reach can be found elsewhere,” the Madison and Wall report published Tuesday notes. “As consumers migrate to streaming, endemic digital video, and even social video, those environments increasingly deliver similar awareness outcomes.”

As many TV executives, employees, and investors note, pay TV isn’t shutting down tomorrow — the business still makes money, even as it shrinks. Which reminds me a bit of my AOL’s dial-up internet business, which stuck around for many years after just about everyone had moved on to broadband.

AOL finally shut it down in September.

• Inference rolled out an open-science CEO named “Project AELLA.” The OnlyFans model Aella responded: “Lmfao.”
• Aella is a sex worker and Substack researcher whose theories have been praised by Marc Andreessen.
• CEO Sam Hogan changed the name and responded to Aella on X, “I didn’t know who you were until today.”

Inference CEO Sam Hogan announced the open-science initiative Project AELLA on Tuesday. Nine hours later, he changed it to Project OSSAS.

In the hours leading up to the change, Hogan learned that Aella wasn’t just the name of an “open-science initiative to make scientific research accessible via structured summaries created by LLMs,” as the company described it. It was also the name of a famous OnlyFans model, sex worker, and Substack researcher.

“Thank you to those who brought the context surrounding this name to our attention, and to our partners and the research community for their ongoing support,” Hogan wrote on X.

Aella reposted Hogan’s renaming: “Lmfao.”

In 2020, Aella was in the top 0.04% of OnlyFans creators in terms of monthly revenue generated, telling Business Insider that she made up to $100,000 a month. She is also an escort. On the “Dating Talk” podcast in February, Aella said that she charges $4,000 for the first hour, and then $1,000 for every additional hour.

Now, Aella makes most of her money through research, she said on the podcast. Aella launched the Substack “Knowingless,” which analyzes sex and relationships via data mining. Her approach has taken off within tech circles. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen called one of her ideas “fantastic.”

The naming debacle sparked a broader conversation between Hogan and Aella.

“I didn’t know who you were until today,” Hogan wrote. “Now I do! Love your work.”

“Your work seems great too!” Aella responded. “I love ppl working on making science better.”

Hogan’s Inference closed an $11.8 million seed round in October, per PitchBook. The round was led by Multicoin Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.

On LinkedIn, Hogan described Inference as “the world’s largest GPU cluster for LLM inference.”

The exchange between Hogan and Aella seems to have ended with an opportunity for collaboration. “Would be cool to do visualizations for some of your surveys,” Hogan wrote. Aella responded: “I’d love that!”

There are also signs that the name change itself may be short-lived.

“After seeing your work I don’t think naming this project AELLA is crazy at all,” Hogan wrote. “If you’re open to it, could we have your blessing to change the name back?”

Aella responded that he was welcome to, though “it might be confusing/googleable issues for people tho.”

She suggested an alternative: “maybe some mild modification AELLA-B or something idk?”

Each quarter, corporate America opens its books, and the numbers tell the story. Earnings reveal which companies are thriving, which are struggling, and where the economy is headed next.

Business Insider’s “Spotlight: Earnings Season” is your go-to destination for the latest analysis from the top market movers, such as Meta, Tesla, Apple, Amazon, Uber, DoorDash, Palantir, and more.

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Stay tuned here for the latest reports, charts, and key takeaways behind quarterly earnings.

• Ukraine has an online market that allows troops to buy weapons with points earned for Russian kills.
• This platform will soon let troops earn points for using robots to evacuate their wounded comrades.
• A top Ukrainian official said troops will earn significantly more points than they would for a kill.

Ukrainian soldiers will soon be able to purchase weapons from an online “Amazon”-style marketplace using points earned for evacuating wounded comrades from the battlefield with ground robots, a top government official told Business Insider on Wednesday.

Mykhailo Fedorov, the first deputy prime minister of Ukraine and its minister of digital transformation, said that the new incentive will begin within a month and fall under guidance from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“We are already tracking and incentivizing logistics,” Fedorov said in an interview, speaking through a translator and confirming the future rollout of the new points feature.

Earlier in the war, Ukraine launched the Brave1 Market, a first-of-its-kind program that awards “ePoints” to soldiers for killing Russian troops or destroying their equipment and verifying the successful hit by uploading drone footage to a military network.

The Ukrainian soldiers can use the reward points to buy drones, robots, electronic warfare devices, and other defense technology and systems from an online marketplace. Each Russian target has its own value; killing a soldier might be worth a dozen points while destroying a tank may be worth as many as 40. Wounding or damaging a target yields fewer points.

The portal allows military units to order directly from manufacturers, skirting government-run supply chains and streamlining the overall procurement process. Weaponry can be delivered straight to the front lines in a matter of days.

Last week, Zelenskyy said Ukraine should include soldier evacuation by robot as a way for troops to earn points. “I think this is fair because saving a person’s life, our person’s life, is a priority.”

Fedorov, who spearheads Ukrainian defense innovation, said that a soldier who saves their comrade using the evacuation robots will earn “10 times more points” than if they were to kill a Russian.

‘A believer’ in robots

Uncrewed ground vehicles have emerged as valuable tools for the Ukrainian military because of their many battlefield functions — some of which would otherwise be tremendously dangerous tasks if performed by humans.

These remotely controlled robots can carry out logistics and combat missions, including evacuating wounded soldiers, delivering ammunition to the front lines, carrying weapons, launching assaults on Russian positions, placing mines, and even exploding next to enemy armored vehicles.

“We are truly a believer in UGVs,” Fedorov said, sharing that more and more Ukrainian brigades are opting to use the robots for logistics missions. Some units are using them to move tens of thousands of tons of cargo and supplies.

Fedorov said there are some “high-profile cases” of the UGVs helping to evacuate soldiers, and many other instances that are less public. The new incentives on the Brave1 Market could significantly increase the frequency of this particular mission for the robots.

Casualty evacuation is particularly challenging in Ukraine, given the difficulties of bringing wounded soldiers back from vulnerable spots near the front line, US military veterans who have fought there previously told Business Insider.

The prevalence of drones for surveillance and strikes makes it dangerous for the wounded and medical personnel to carry out an evacuation, even at night under the cover of darkness.

UGVs lower the risk to medical crews, presenting a less valuable target, but Ukrainian soldiers have said that the ground robots have issues as well at times. A severed connection, for instance, could leave a wounded soldier exposed and vulnerable.

Russia also fields UGVs, one tool in an ever-expanding inventory of uncrewed systems. Kyiv and Moscow also operate aerial and naval drones, and both sides continue to make modifications to their uncrewed weapons to make them harder to stop, such as by leaning more on jamming-resistant fiber-optic cables instead of radio frequency connections.

‘Living its own life’

The Brave1 Market catalog is extensive, and soldiers can use it to buy all sorts of military equipment, from drones, ground robots, and guns to electronic warfare devices, cameras, batteries, engines, and satellite communication systems.

Units from across Ukraine’s armed forces compete, and a leaderboard tracks the accumulation of points. “Birds of Madyar,” a prominent drone brigade, topped the Brave1 Market charts last month.

Fedorov calls it the “Amazon for war” because soldiers can purchase hardware directly from manufacturers in just a few clicks; when they exchange their “ePoints,” the Ukrainian government foots the bill.

In just three months, Ukrainian units have already procured some 6 billion hryvnias ($142 million) worth of equipment, Fedorov said, adding that the Brave1 Market plays a crucial role by showcasing defense products for quick purchase rather than forcing soldiers to rely on a slower-moving, centralized, government-led procurement process.

The development of the marketplace highlights Ukraine’s efforts to accelerate the delivery of arms and other military equipment to the front lines through more grassroots-level initiatives. Crowdfunding, for instance, has been a way for the government to quickly raise funds that are then used to purchase weapons.

However, the marketplace also amplifies some long-standing concerns about drone warfare — that the ability to kill an enemy remotely and share the footage dehumanizes conflict.

For Ukraine, Brave1 Market is yet another example of government innovation brought on by the full-scale invasion.

Fedorov said the platform allows manufacturers to list new technology that the government — or military units — might not have known about otherwise. Tens of thousands of drones alone have already been ordered through the platform.

“It’s kind of living its own life,” he said. “So in a network-centric war, in hindsight, this feels like a very revolutionary — yet logical — step.”