Author: Nick Gold

What could that mean? Well, the modular repairable gadget company did raise $18 million last April to expand beyond the laptop, but it’s not at all clear that’s what we’ll see, and a spokesperson wouldn’t comment when I asked. Instead, the company’s choosing to tease us with some pictograms! Look:So we’re getting a “beach ball downward facing dog,” something Flash-y, and something worthy of a gamepad-only LAN party that serves knockoff Cheetos, yes?Three more things that caught my eye:Here’s the event page, with a live countdown and notify me button. Lastly, here’s the pre-prepped livestream which should go live at…

The European Union says it will channel €200 billion (about $206 billion) into artificial intelligence investments in a bid to compete with the US and China. At the AI Action Summit in Paris on Tuesday, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the bloc would spend €50 billion (about $51 billion) to top up €150 billion (about $154 billion) in funding already pledged by a collective of private investors called the European AI Champions Initiative.“We want Europe to be one of the leading AI continents, and this means embracing a way of life where AI is everywhere,” said Von…

Hacker Eric Council Jr. pleaded guilty Monday to charges of conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud after he took over the SEC’s X account in January 2024. Once Council gained access to the account, his unnamed co-conspirators posted a doctored image, message, and fake quote by then SEC Chairman Gary Gensler saying Bitcoin Exchange Traded Funds (ETC) have been approved, which caused the currency’s value to spike more than $1,000.The 25-year-old Alabama resident had used a SIM-swapping attack to move a phone number associated with the @SEC account to the SIM card in an iPhone he…

Google Maps now shows the “Gulf of America” in place of the “Gulf of Mexico” for users on both web and mobile in the United States. It made the change after the Trump administration formally changed the name today of the body of water spanning between the eastern coast of Mexico and the Florida panhandle. Google says it follows the GNIS, or Geographic Names Information System, a US database of location information.Users in Mexico will continue to see “Gulf of Mexico,” while the rest of the world will see the original name with “Gulf of America” in parentheses. Google says…

Google, OpenAI, Roblox, and Discord have formed a new non-profit organization to help improve child safety online. The Robust Open Online Safety Tools (ROOST) initiative aims to make core safety technologies more accessible for companies and provide free, open-source AI tools for identifying, reviewing, and reporting child sexual abuse material.The initiative was partially motivated by changes that generative AI advancements have made to online environments and aims to address “a critical need to accelerate innovation in online child safety,” according to founding ROOST partner and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Details about the CSAM detection tools are slim beyond that…

T-Mobile’s Starlink-powered direct-to-cell satellite messaging service is now open for anyone in the US to try for free — including people who aren’t T-Mobile customers. The service will be limited to text messaging at first but the company hopes to have some apps and even limited multimedia support ready by the time it goes live this summer. It will cost T-Mobile users $15 per month once the free testing period ends in July, or $10 for customers who participated in the beta trial. Verizon and AT&T customers can also try the service for free according to T-Mobile’s press release, and…

The Bigme Hibreak Pro is currently available for preorder through the company’s online store for $439. What sets it apart from similar Android-based E Ink devices that often feel sluggish is that it’s powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 1080 2.6GHz processor paired with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. It’s a two-year-old processor used in midrange devices like the Samsung Galaxy A34 that could help Android 14’s user interface feel more responsive on the Hibreak Pro, even if it’s lacking the latest OS updates.The experience won’t be comparable to what you get on smartphones like the $499 Pixel 8a,…

Apple CEO Tim Cook was seen making the rounds yesterday in New Orleans, where the Super Bowl LIX matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles is being played today. Accompanying him for at least some of that time has been fellow Apple senior VP of services Eddy Cue.Thanks to his mild-mannered vibe, Cook tends to stand out a little in certain situations. Like in this video where he and Cue are hanging out with DJ Summit while he performs on a balcony overlooking a street-side rave on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street:Someone in the crowd caught the moment,…

Following the huge PlayStation Network (PSN) outage that ended yesterday, Sony is giving an automatic five extra days of service to PlayStation Plus subscribers, according to a post from the official Ask PlayStation support account on X.“Network services have fully recovered from an operational issue,” the company wrote in the post. “We apologize for the inconvenience and thank the community for their patience.” Sony didn’t offer further specifics.The outage lasted about a full day, with the first indications of problems seemingly cropping up around 6PM ET Friday. Sony posted that service had been restored just before 7PM ET Saturday.During the…

Apple is expected to announce a new iPhone SE as early as next week, and it could mark a major shakeup to the company’s affordable iPhone, adding in Face ID and killing off the classic home button. We have a pretty good idea of what’s coming after months of leaks and rumors, so here’s everything we expect to see next week.There won’t be a home button…The biggest change is that Apple is upending the iPhone SE’s design, after leaving it broadly unchanged since the series’ inception in 2016. The 2022 SE is the last iPhone still using a home button,…