Author: News Room

The updated Fire TV OS makes it easier to find something to watch no matter which model you choose. It pulls recommendations from your subscriptions and adds tabs across the top of your screen for categories like TV shows, news, sports, and live content, so you can quickly jump to what you want to watch. There’s also a redesigned apps row that lets you pin up to 20 favorites instead of just six, making it quicker to jump between services. You can also navigate with your voice thanks to support for Alexa Plus, which lets you issue specific commands like…

Today, I’m talking with Jim Lanzone, who is the CEO of Yahoo.It’s basically impossible to sum up the Yahoo story, but the short version of it is that a long time ago Yahoo paid Google to run the search box on its website, and basically everything has gone sideways since. You’ll hear Jim refer to that deal as Yahoo’s original sin, actually. After a long series of mergers and spinouts and an extremely odd moment where it was part of Verizon, Yahoo is once again an independent, privately held company. And it has big properties in sports and finance, and,…

While Amazon’s previous lineup of Echo speakers and smart displays was boring, frankly, its late 2025 hardware refresh brought better hardware, improved performance, and Alexa Plus to several models. If you feel like your room(s) could benefit from speakers to deliver tunes, audiobooks, or podcasts to more corners of your home, or screens to show recipes, photos, or videos, there are some great early Big Spring Sale deals that are worth checking out.In terms of smart displays, Amazon’s Echo Show 11 is a great deal at $169.99 (was $219.99), while the smaller Echo Show 8 with an 8.7-inch screen is…

As noted by Apple, the AirPods Max 2 offer active noise-cancellation that’s 1.5 times more effective when compared to the original AirPods Max, which launched in 2020. The AirPods Max 2 also add conversation awareness, a feature that lowers volume when someone starts speaking nearby; voice isolation to prioritize your voice and reduce background noise during phone calls; and a feature to automatically lower loud sounds in your environment.The AirPods Max 2 support 24-bit, 48kHz lossless audio when connected with a USB-C cable — two features that Apple added to its first-generation AirPods Max years after their launch. Similar to…

The $29.99 case is available through Amazon and comes in two parts that attach to the bottom and hinged lid of the AirPods Pro 3’s charging case. Even wrapped in its vintage disguise the case can still open as designed, and its USB-C port and status LED are still accessible. Spigen’s case also includes a lanyard connector, as it blocks the one on the AirPods’ charger. It’s not a functional mouse, but its large gray button serves as a locking mechanism preventing the case’s lid from accidentally opening.Spigen’s Classic LS collection also includes a MagSafe wallet matching the aesthetic of…

OpenAI’s delayed “adult mode” for ChatGPT is expected to support saucy text conversations at launch, but not the chatbot’s ability to generate images, voice, or video. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, an unnamed OpenAI spokesperson described content that will be provided by the upcoming feature as smut rather than pornography, allowing ChatGPT users to generate textual chats with adult themes.The delay was also due to internal concerns and technical challenges around safeguards for the feature, according to The Wall Street Journal’s reporting. A council of advisers selected by OpenAI warned the company in January that ChatGPT’s adult mode may…

Aether OS puts a full-fledged desktop in your browser that ties directly into the AT Protocol. That means it connects to your Bluesky account and other public records. It offers a pretty full suite of apps, 42 in total, covering text editing, task management, and social media. There’s even a rudimentary tracker for making chiptunes, a DAW, and a video editor.Of course, part of the appeal is also the cyberpunk good looks that draw obvious inspiration from The Matrix.Right now, the project is in alpha, and there are a lot of rough edges. Documentation is also basically non-existent. So, if…

In 2020 and 2021, the social media world seemed to be on the verge of complete change. A new app called TikTok was ascendant, bringing a whole new kind of vertical video to phones everywhere. And another app — not as popular, but growing fast, and already hugely influential among the tech set — looked like it might have an entirely new social idea on its hands. It was called Clubhouse, and it was a huge bet that audio might be the future. It was the next big thing, until it wasn’t.On this episode of Version History, we tell the…

Samsung promised “more than a design refresh” for its new top-end Galaxy Buds – it added upgraded woofers for improved, dual-amped hi-fi sound, a new blade design, clearer call performance, and better noise cancellation. Ultimately, while the $249.99 Galaxy Buds 4 aren’t a huge leap forward over the previous model, they keep what was good about the Buds 3 and improve on most of what wasn’t — as long as you use Samsung Galaxy devices.That’s because, much like the AirPods Pro 3 with Apple gear, the Buds 4 Pro still work best when paired with another Galaxy device. This unlocks…

Last fall, President Donald Trump’s executive order raising the fee for H-1B visas to $100,000 — like many of his immigration policies — led to near-immediate chaos. Thousands of workers who had flown overseas to renew their visas ended up stranded abroad. Details about who would be affected only emerged after the fact. Six months later, the disorder from the initial announcement has mostly subsided. The H-1B registration season for the next fiscal year has just begun. With H-1B applications open until March 19th, it’s unclear what effect, if any, the new rules will have on hiring, immigration, and the…

In September, Donald Trump claimed that “the United States is getting a tremendous fee” for brokering the TikTok deal. Now sources tell the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that fee is expected to be in the range of $10 billion. The money is supposedly being paid by new investors, including Oracle and Silver Lake. Reports are that $2.5 billion was already paid to the Treasury when the deal closed on January 22nd. The rest will be paid out in installments.This is the latest example of the Trump administration inserting itself into private business in unprecedented ways, including…

According to Reuters, Meta is looking to offset spending on AI and data centers with a massive round of layoffs. Sources familiar with the matter say the company could lay off as much as 20 percent of its staff, eliminating roughly 15,800 positions. That would be the largest series of layoffs at the company since it terminated 22,000 workers over just a few months between November 2022 and early 2023.Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Read the full article here