Author: News Room

If you’re in the market for workout earbuds, now’s your chance to make a move. The Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 are back down to $199.99 ($50 off) in multiple colors at Amazon and Walmart. Although we saw the wireless earbuds drop to $179 earlier this year, they weren’t discounted during Amazon’s most recent Prime Day sale, making today’s promo a great opportunity to get a jump on your holiday shopping.The Powerbeats Pro 2 remain our favorite pair of earbuds for sports and working out thanks to their secure fit, effective noise cancellation, and helpful transparency mode, which pipes outside noises…

Today, I’m talking with Sean Fitzpatrick, the CEO of LexisNexis, one of the most important companies in the entire legal system. For years — including when I was in law school — LexisNexis was basically the library. It’s where you went to look up case law, do legal research, and find the laws and precedents you would need to be an effective lawyer for your clients. There isn’t a lawyer today who hasn’t used it — it’s fundamental infrastructure for the legal profession, just like email or a word processor.But enterprise companies with huge databases of proprietary information in 2025…

AMD has sealed a $1 billion deal with the US Department of Energy to develop two supercomputers, Lux and Discovery, in collaboration with Oracle and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). Both supercomputers will live at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Lux is slated to come online fairly soon in early 2026, with Discovery following in 2029.Both build on the work that went into the Frontier supercomputer, which is also housed at ORNL and was the fastest in the world until El Capitan came online last year at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. AMD also helped develop those supercomputers,…

After using the original Pokémon theme song in a montage of ICE raids, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is using another popular video game franchise to promote itself on social media: Halo. This morning, the DHS posted an image featuring Halo characters, a Warthog vehicle from the games, and the text “DESTROY THE FLOOD” and a link to ICE’s recruitment website. The DHS captioned the post, “finishing this fight.”Like with its Pokémon-themed post, which was captioned, “Gotta Catch ‘Em All,” the DHS’s Halo post implicitly compares immigrants to creatures from video games — this time, the parasitic alien species…

With the Nintendo Switch 2 leading the way for handheld games consoles, and Microsoft getting in on the act with Xbox-branded third-party devices, portable console gaming is all the rage again. Which is why any hint that Sony might rejoin the scene with a next-generation PSP is swiftly latched onto by PlayStation fans and the wider gaming industry alike. The online scuttlebutt reached fever pitch last week when Sony added a new and rather impressive power-saving mode to the PS5 consoles in a new firmware release. In tests conducted by Digital Foundry, certain games ran 50% more efficiently. Right now…

Spotify has announced a redesigned version of its Apple TV app that the company says has been “rebuilt from the ground up for a faster, smarter, more visual experience.” The tvOS version of the Spotify app is also gaining several welcome features from the mobile version, but the biggest updates include the addition of video podcasts and music videos.Some users have had access to the update for a few days already, but the new version is now available to download for everyone through Apple’s App Store, while devices using automatic updates should get the new experience by mid-November. Users of…

Haven’t you heard? Phones are boring now. And that’s just fine! Most people buying a new phone just want something familiar that works better than the device they’re replacing. If that’s your MO, then you’re sure to find something reliable in my recommendations below.But even if you’re looking for something a little more extra, you’ve got some great options. They’re going to be pretty iterative compared to whatever you’re using now — we’re in more of a software era than a hardware innovation cycle these days — but you can still find a delightful new device. We finally have a…

Google has revealed it will release new Fitbit-branded fitness tracking hardware in 2026 for the first time in more than two years. It was September 2023 when Google last launched a new Fitbit wearable, which was the Charge 6 wristband. Most of the company’s hardware energy has gone into the Pixel Watch series in recent years with the Fitbit smartwatch series falling by the wayside. However, Google has continued to develop health and fitness software under the Fitbit name and that’s how we’re hearing about new software today – as part of the personalised, AI-powered Fitness Coach Preview, Google said…

Last week, General Motors CEO Mary Barra caused a stir when she said that the company would eventually kill Apple CarPlay and Android Auto in all of its gas cars. The company had already successfully removed phone mirroring capabilities from most of its electric vehicles, and now it was plotting how to drop support from its internal combustion engine vehicles too.But today, the company is clarifying that this won’t happen overnight.“We are not making any changes to existing vehicles,” Malorie Lucich, a spokesperson for GM, said in a statement. “If your car supports Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, that will…

The legendary Technics’ SL-1200 turntable series’ modern iterations are getting final Master Editions, with upgraded tech and a renewed, look, the Japanese brand has announced. The Technics SL-1200G (silver) SL-1210G (black) Master Edition models are a ‘culmination’ and the ‘final evolution’ and most advanced SL-1200 series models ever made, the company says. After that there’ll be no more updates to the classic line that’s been around since 1972 The main upgrade is the inclusion of the company’s ΔΣ-Drive (Delta Sigma Drive) motor control system, which had previously been available in other variants like the SL-1200GR2 and SL-1300G technologies. In a…

In case you didn’t know, the last-gen Kindle is nearly just as good as the current model. Not only is the reading experience nearly identical, it also has the same sharp 300PPI display with dark mode, an adjustable front light, and USB-C charging. If you want a great e-reader, but you also want to save some money, you can grab the refurbished 2022 Kindle with ads and 16GB of storage at Woot with a 90-day Amazon warranty for just $64.99 through October 30th when you apply the promo code FIREFIVE at checkout.The $109.99 2024 model is my current favorite budget-friendly…

After last week’s major Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage took Signal along with it, Elon Musk was quick to criticize the encrypted messaging app’s reliance on big tech. But Signal president Meredith Whittaker argues that the company didn’t have any other choice but to use AWS or another major cloud provider.“The problem here is not that Signal ‘chose’ to run on AWS,” Whittaker writes in a series of posts on Bluesky. “The problem is the concentration of power in the infrastructure space that means there isn’t really another choice: the entire stack, practically speaking, is owned by 3-4 players.”In the…