Author: News Room
Slim TVs might look slick on your living room wall, but they don’t leave much space for speakers. And if there’s one way to ruin movie night, it’s with disappointing audio. Don’t fancy filling your room with surround sound speakers? These contenders for the title of best soundbar deliver beefy bass, room-filling volume and clarity that won’t leave you reading subtitles – all from a single bar that sits neatly beneath your TV. So you don’t need a fleet of separates to sort your sub-par sound. Better yet, you don’t have to drop thousands to give your ears an upgrade…
Hublot doesn’t usually do subtle. This is a brand best known for bold designs, bright colours and materials that shout from the wrist. But the new Classic Fusion Essential Taupe? It’s super subtle – and that’s exactly why I love it. Available in two sizes – 42mm and 45mm – this online-exclusive drop is the fourth instalment in Hublot’s Essential series, which spotlights single-colour watches in strictly limited runs. It could be one of the brand’s best watches. Following the sell-out success of the grey editions, Hublot has now gone taupe. A moody, modern blend of grey and brown that’s…
If you’re after a budget-friendly tablet that doesn’t skimp on features, a good choice can be hard to find. Battery life and the screen are usually first to go in order to cut the price. But Oppo’s latest tablet promises quite the opposite. The new Oppo Pad SE is a budget-friendly tablet that manages to squeeze in some surprisingly solid features, with a battery that frankly sounds like it belongs in a flagship device. The headline feature is the enormous 9340mAh battery. Oppo reckons it’ll give you up to 11 hours of video playback or 80 hours of music playback.…
Both custom and pre-made Gems will now be available to use via the side panel in Workspace apps. Google is giving Workspace users a way to access “Gems” — customizable versions of its Gemini AI assistant that specialize in specific tasks — without opening the Gemini app. Gems are now available directly in the side panel of Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, Drive, and Gmail, allowing users to access custom chatbots they’ve created or a selection of pre-made offerings without switching between apps. “Gems can help you further leverage the power of Gemini in a way that’s customized to your needs…
Introduction Honor looked to be onto a good thing with its new mid-range 400 series. There was seemingly something for everyone, with a three-camera mid-ranger leading the way, an iPhone-aping Lite chasing cheap phone supremacy, and this, the Honor 400, sitting in the middle. It promised a lot for your £399/€499 (as ever with Honor, there’s currently no official way to buy one in the US), including a 200MP lead snapper and more AI-infused software than you’d usually find at this price. It was most of the Honor 400 Pro for half the money. Job done, right? Maybe… until the…
Microsoft says that Phil Spencer, Microsoft Gaming CEO and the head of Xbox, isn’t retiring “anytime soon.” The company has responded to rumors of Spencer’s retirement, which have spread online today following Microsoft’s major layoffs.“Phil is not retiring anytime soon,” says Kari Perez, head of Xbox communications, in a statement to The Verge. The denial comes after Call of Duty leaker GhostOfHope claimed “Phil Spencer will be retiring from his role as CEO of Microsoft Gaming after the launch of the next generation Xbox” and that Xbox president Sarah Bond would be taking over as CEO of Microsoft Gaming.While Microsoft’s…
A mandatory update for Google’s mid-range Pixel 6A phones is coming next week that is meant to reduce the risk of the battery overheating on some devices. According to a support page post, Google is issuing the mandatory Android 16 update starting July 8 to all Pixel 6A devices. However, only users with “Impacted Devices” will see any effect on their battery.Google says affected users will get a notification when the phone has completed 375 cycles, giving them a heads-up that the new battery management features will be activated soon. Once these management tools are in effect, the battery won’t…
Racist videos that appear to be created with Google’s AI video generation tool Veo 3 have raked in millions of views across TikTok, according to findings from the nonprofit media watchdog Media Matters. The AI-generated videos uncovered by the organization are filled with racist tropes, many of which target Black people.Media Matters determined that the videos — one of which received 14.2 million views — were generated with Google Veo 3 because of the “Veo” watermark in the corner of the clips. Some users also listed hashtags, captions, or usernames pertaining to Veo 3 or AI, according to Media Matters.…
Microsoft’s layoff of roughly 9,000 employees is continuing to have downstream effects at the company’s subsidiaries. Aftermath reports that as many as 100 developers at Blizzard have been impacted, and as a result the studio is winding down development on its mobile tower defense game Warcraft Rumble.In an announcement, Blizzard wrote that while the game will not be abandoned entirely, the company will cease development on any new content. “Moving forward, we’ll continue supporting Rumble with updates focused on regular, systemic in-game events and bug fixes, but no new content. ”Blizzard continued, saying Rumble, “struggled to find its footing relative to…
There’s always a reason why universal USB-C ports don’t “just work” like you’d expect. In the early days, it was incompetence or naiveté. Later, manufacturers often cheaped out. But in the case of Nintendo’s Switch 2, it appears to be intentional.With the Nintendo Switch 2, it should be easy to plug your new, more expensive console into video glasses or TVs when you’re traveling away from home. USB-C makes it so. But Nintendo has intentionally broken the Switch 2’s compatibility with those devices, using a new encryption scheme and some form of dedicated encryption chip, two accessory manufacturers tell The…
With less than a week until Prime Day kicks off, we’re already seeing some exciting early deals pop up. And now we can add two more great discounts to the list: the refurbished ad-supported Kindle Paperwhite is down to $106.99 ($37 off) at Amazon, while the refurbished Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition is $126.99 ($53 off) at Amazon. Both discounts bring the like-new e-readers to all-time lows — just in time to read Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary before the movie adaptation hits theaters next year.The Kindle Paperwhite is one of our favorite e-readers, especially for those who are already in…
The subtitles for one of Crunchyroll’s newest anime series make it pretty clear that the company is going all in on ChatGPT.This week as viewers logged on to Crunchyroll to check out Studio Gokumi’s Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show, many were surprised to see that the series’ subtitles were filled with typos, grammatical errors, and explicit references to ChatGPT. The subtitles seemed very much like text that had been generated with AI and slapped onto Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show without first being reviewed and edited for accuracy.Errors in subtitles aren’t unheard of, but sentences like “Is gameorver.…