Author: News Room

Elon Musk promised Neuralink would bring superhuman abilities and minds merged with AI. Then he fueled a runaway hype train for his brain implant technology, which ended up with a grisly record for implants in monkeys and some success with human subjects. But for all of the hype, he’s still further away than Mars from his goal. And that’s because his relentless ambition is once again hitting the wall of scientific reality.The heart of the issue is how brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) translate thought into results. Neuralink’s products have all been brain-to-cursor interfaces, which allow patients to control a mouse with…

Apple and Samsung have both been strongly linked with plans for foldable phones in a boxy, wide aspect ratio, but it looks like another company will get there first. Huawei has just revealed the design of the Pura X Max, a new foldable it’s launching in China next week, and its passport-esque form factor is a dead ringer for early leaks of the iPhone Fold.We don’t know too much about the Pura X Max yet, which will get a full release on April 20th alongside the colorful Pura 90 series, but early images shared by Huawei show blue, white, orange,…

In celebration of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie coming to theaters, Nintendo is making it a little cheaper to get both Super Mario Galaxy games when you buy a $449.99 Nintendo Switch 2 console. Now through May 9th, you can buy a Switch 2 with Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 for $499.99 ($20 off) from Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, and Target. It’s a small discount, but it’s a good deal if you were planning to pick up a console and both games anyway.Amazon makes it easy to buy the game and console bundle with a single click.…

Rockstar confirmed on Saturday that some of its data was compromised in a breach of a third-party provider. The group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility, saying it had gained access to the company’s Snowflake instances (a cloud-hosting provider popular with enterprise customers) via Anodot, a cost-monitoring and analytics service. The group is demanding a ransom by April 14th, or it will leak the data it has stolen.In a statement provided to Kotaku, the company said that the compromised data was limited in scope and “this incident has no impact on our organization or our players.”It’s unclear exactly which data was compromised, but…

For years, even decades, virtually everyone in the United States had the same phone. Nobody really thought about it, it didn’t even matter what it was called – it was just The Phone. Well, The Phone was called the Western Electric 500, and when landline phones ruled the world, the Western Electric 500 ruled the landlines. It was so ubiquitous for so long that even if you’ve never touched a landline, you’ve encountered the 500. The Phone app on your iPhone? Looks like a 500.On this episode of Version History, we tell the story of the Western Electric 500, and…

RGB LED TVs have been the talk of the TV world this year, with models coming from all the manufacturers, and the first one of 2026 is here — the Hisense UR9. It’s the first look at the viability of the new backlight technology outside of demo rooms, and it’s a step above the traditional mini-LED TVs of years past. HDR is colorful and accurate, it has great brightness, and it is capable of showing colors beyond the P3 color space for movies and TV shows that have wider color. But at $3,500, the 65-inch model I reviewed is priced…

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the AI coding and vibe-coding booms, follow David Pierce. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.Writing code was a killer app for AI even before anyone was really talking about AI. In the spring of 2021, 18 months before the world knew the word “ChatGPT,” Microsoft debuted the very first product of a partnership with a nonprofit called OpenAI: a tool called GitHub Copilot that watched developers as they wrote code and…

I love black-and-white photography. I also adore compact cameras you can always have by your side. So I’m a total mark for the Ricoh GR IV Monochrome, a fixed-lens camera that can’t zoom and can’t record color — at all. It’s a formula that makes the average person ask, “Why?”I’ve tested the GR IV Monochrome for over a month, taking it with me everywhere and photographing everything. Let me explain how this pricey little point-and-shoot is likely to go down as one of my all-time-favorite cameras.$2197The GoodExcellent black-and-white image qualityEverything great about the standard GR IV: sharp lens, small size,…

Amazon is planning to launch its Leo satellite internet service in the middle of this year, the company’s CEO has told shareholders. That means people fancying some high-speed internet from low-Earth orbit without giving money to Elon Musk are soon to be in luck! CEO Andy Jassy says Leo (fka Project Kuiper) will offer download speeds of 1Gbps, which could whoop the tail end off Musk’s Starlink service, which tends to max out at 280Mbps. Jassy says Leo is part of a plan to “close the digital divide for rural communities” who currently lack high speed internet access or, in…

If you’ve ever worried about porch pirates stealing packages while you’re away, a video doorbell can offer some peace of mind, letting you keep tabs on deliveries no matter where you are. Google offers some of the best around, and right now, its battery-powered, second-gen Nest Doorbell is available for $129.99 ($50 off) from Amazon and Best Buy, beating its recent Amazon low. If you’d rather go wired, the third-gen Nest Doorbell is also on sale for $139.99 ($40 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and the Google Store, matching the lowest price we’ve seen.If you want something renter-friendly, it may…

Polymarket bets started popping up in Google News alongside legitimate news articles. But now those results aren’t showing, and Google says they were never supposed to. Spokesperson Ned Adriance told The Verge that “Google News is designed to show sources that create content about current issues, events, and important topics, and we have policies for sites to be eligible to appear. This site briefly appeared in Google News in error, and it is no longer surfacing in News.”The links led directly to betting markets tied to specific news events. For instance, before the results were removed, Futurism searched “will ships…

Nintendo seemingly designed its latest console to be a mystery for third-party accessory makers. With the Switch 2, the company changed the wireless protocol for connecting controllers to the new system, as well as how it outputs video over USB-C, making it clear at launch that every third-party manufacturer needed to start over from scratch.Figuring out how to speak the Switch 2’s language — and ensuring reliability even after system updates — is an ongoing challenge. But now there are two reliable USB-C dock alternatives I can recommend, if you need one. Jsaux was one of the first to land…