Author: News Room

Pokémon turns 30 this year, and Casio’s marking the occasion in the best way (in my opinion) possible: a chunky, colourful G-Shock. The G-Shock x Pokémon GA-110PKM-7A watch is out today, and it’s packed fully of fun little Pokémon easter eggs. Casio’s taken the classic GA-110 case and dressed it in red, blue, and green. That’s the same colour palette from Pokémon’s original 1996 Gameboy release (I had Blue). It’s a clever bit of nostalgia. Those three colours are burned into the brain of anyone who grew up with a Game Boy Colour. The fun continues at 9 o’clock, where…

Would you pay $20 a month for access to AI hardware you already own? That appears to be one of Meta’s next bets. This week, it quietly announced that your glasses’ Conversation Focus feature will soon be limited to three hours of use per month, unless you pay for a $19.99 Meta One Premium subscription.In a help article, the company insists that it won’t require a subscription to use your glasses, period; it’s merely erecting a “rate limit” for certain AI features. Even premium subscribers will only get 15 hours of Conversation Focus per month under that “rate limit,” it…

LG has announced the StanbyME 2 Max – a 32-inch, battery powered touchscreen tablet that can be transported around on wheels. The whopping great tablet on a stick is larger than the 27-inch iteration released previously and is designed for viewing media content via the same webOS software featured on LG’s brilliant televisions. It supports phone mirroring for easy casting of content and there’s also a specific app launcher built for this product. The display supports up to 4K resolution and 60Hz refresh rate and Dolby Vision HDR. The built-in battery can last for 4.5 hours before you’ll need to…

With not long to go until Samsung’s next-gen foldable phones get their official debut, the firm has released a series of social media sneak peeks that essentially confirm what the rumour mill has been saying for months: the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is going wide. Samsung’s teaser videos show rectangular chocolate bars, pizza slices and Korean Dalgona candy being cut down to size, going from tall and skinny to shorter and wider. The old shape is reminiscent of the Galaxy Z Fold7, while the new one is what leakers predict is on the cards for its successor. We should reportedly…

Boost Mobile and Gen Mobile aren’t included in the bankruptcy process and will continue to operate as normal.Due to the delayed 5G spectrum sale, Dish says that it didn’t have “sufficient liquidity” to repay $2 billion in debt due on July 1st. Dish gave up on becoming the US’s fourth major carrier last year, saying it would sell off chunks of its spectrum to AT&T and SpaceX. Neither deal has closed, according to The Wall Street Journal.“EchoStar has been at the forefront of telecommunications for over 45 years, and these steps will position the business for an even stronger future,”…

Users of Google’s Pixel phone series of handsets have taken to support forums to complain of a strange issue of the handsets ignoring incoming phone calls. Now, we know phones are often used for everything except having a little chat these days, but a phone not abiding by the functionality that gives it its name is still kind of a big deal. The word comes from Android Authority, which has noticed an increasing spate of users on Reddit, as well as Google’s own issue tracker, complain the phones aren’t alerting them to incoming calls. There’s quite a wide gamut of…

The Federal Trade Commission fined Amazon $2.25 million to settle claims that the company failed to help customers who fell victim to identity theft, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. In its complaint, the FTC accuses Amazon of refusing to provide customers with information about purchases made with fraudulent accounts, in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).As alleged in the filing, identity theft victims who contacted Amazon “would often enter a Kafkaesque sequence” where a support agent wouldn’t provide records related to a fraudulent account unless they could name the person who opened it.In one instance, a victim attempted…

Apple is making a point of releasing a number of iPhone security fixes it would have previously bundled into the soon-to-be-released iOS 27, as a sign of the changing face of cyber security operations at the company and the tech world at large. iOS 26.5.2 came out on Monday and contains 29 fixes, many of which are in response to rapidly emerging security concerns pertaining to generative AI. Mostly, they’re fixes for kernels and webkit vulnerabilities. Thankfully, Apple says that the potential exploits have not been taken advantage of in the wild. The Reuters report says: “The company told Reuters…

Google’s NotebookLM is adding a new way to catch up on your notes: TikTok-style AI videos. The new feature is rolling out to Google AI Ultra and Pro subscribers, allowing NotebookLM to generate 60-second vertical AI clips based on the sources you upload to the app.The example shared by Google details Australia’s unsuccessful war on emus, pairing paper cutout-style AI art of emus with narration. It adds to some of the other ways NotebookLM lets you interact with your research, including by generating AI podcasts, cinematic videos, and visual explainers.To generate a 60-second clip, head to NotebookLM on the web…

Microsoft is set to announce a wave of layoffs for its Xbox studios and employees next week. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge that the layoffs will lead to studio closures or spinoffs, potential mergers of studios, and canceled games.I understand Microsoft is currently weighing closing at least five studios, including the developers behind Marvel’s Blade. Sources tell me Microsoft wants to cancel Blade as part of a wave of cost cuts and job losses that are planned for the company’s Xbox gaming division.Developed by France-based Arkane Studios, best-known for the Dishonored series, Blade was originally supposed to…

The GIF-picking interfaces in some of your favorite online platforms might look different going forward, as Google prepares to shut down the Tenor API today. While the Tenor website, along with its searchable GIF library, will remain live, platforms like X, Discord, Bluesky, and WhatsApp that previously integrated the API are now having to migrate to alternative GIF picker services.Google acquired the Tenor GIF platform in 2018. Both its website and API allow users to search for GIFs using keywords, similar to competing services like Giphy and Klipy. Google will continue using Tenor across its own services, including Google Messages…

Workers at Grand Theft Auto VI developer Rockstar Games have submitted a request for their union, the IWGB Game Workers Union, to be voluntarily recognized, according to a press release. The request follows Rockstar firing more than 30 staffers last year in a move accused of being “union busting.”According to the release, IWGB members have been “actively” organizing since 2019 and “claim they now represent a significant proportion of the workforce across each of the studio’s sites in Edinburgh, Dundee, Lincoln, Leeds and London.” As the union has grown, “Rockstar has already made improvements to workers’ conditions including unprecedented average…