Author: News Room
Knowing exactly what your student needs for the school year ahead is next to impossible. Sure, you’ll probably nail the essentials, but there will likely be a few items you forgot to buy, or didn’t think they’d need to have. We’re pulling our weight during the back-to-school season with a new shopping guide that’s a mix of practical and aspirational products for students to use in and out of the classroom.We’re covering items that make writing easier and more satisfying, alarm clocks that can rattle even the most sleep-deprived students from a deep slumber, bags that are just as great…
Your smartphone photos can look way better. If you’re willing to put in a little extra work, use third party apps and spend a bit of time editing, it’s possible to take photos that — under the right circumstances — can rival dedicated digital cameras.I post a lot of smartphone photos online, and “How do I take better photos on my phone?” is a question I get practically every day. It makes sense. As the saying goes, “The best camera is the one you have on you,” and we practically always have our phones on us these days.Over the last…
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 138, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy August, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)This week, I’ve been reading about microwave sounds and Meta glasses and Alex vs. Alix, testing the Logitech Alto Keys K98M to see if I’m ready for the mechanical keyboard life, digging into the history of the first chatbot, clearing space on my desk for a Bob Ross deskmat, doing a full Ted Lasso rewatch ahead of the new season next week, finally…
Flego. That’s the disparaging term our household long used for plastic bricks not made by the leading Danish brand, but often available online for a fraction of the price. No sooner would Lego release a new set than Chinese manufacturers like Lepin would reveal they’d long had their photocopiers fired up. They’d churn out their own versions, barely concealing wanton IP infringement by way of cunning ‘rebrands’ like the infamous ‘Star Wnrs’ universe. And you got what you paid for. The minifigs were janky. The bricks were sometimes worse. Parts were often missing – as were any instruction manuals. As…
If you’ve ever paid $30 plus to access in-flight Wi-Fi, only for it to drop out for at least half of the time you’re in the air, I can’t even begin to tell you how much you will appreciate Starlink. I’ll admit, I boarded my Virgin Atlantic flight with very low expectations of it. Despite being told (very excitedly, I might add) by a fellow journalist that our plane to San Francisco was an A350-1000, which consequently made it one of 12 Virgin Atlantic planes to have the technology installed, I was far from convinced it would be a better experience…
Sharge, the company that makes delightful retro Mac-shaped chargers and see-inside batteries, is finally impressing me with a portable SSD. I couldn’t recommend the Sharge Disk, Disk Plus, or even the Disk Pro, but I’d be happy to own the new Disk Pro 2 Ultra.This isn’t just a drive. It’s a 4K HDMI dock and a USB-C hub too. It’s a veritable USB-C Swiss Army Knife for all your main gadgets: laptop, tablet, phone, Steam Deck, even the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2.And this USB multitool has built-in MagSafe pattern magnets to stick it to your iPhone, Pixel, or anything…
A text prompt was all it took to generate reality-warping images using Google Earth’s satellite, aerial, and 3D imagery with a now-rolled back AI feature, like these images generated by Digital Digging’s Henk van Ess that show “refugees near the Mexican border” and a bomb crater near a hospital in Gaza.Google initially responded to Digital Digging’s AI-altered images, saying, “We take misinformation seriously – every image created with Nano Banana in Google Earth includes the SynthID digital watermark, so if someone is unsure about an image, they can ask the Gemini app or use Lens in Search to see if…
No other gadget knows as much about your home as a robot vacuum. They map your space, learn your routines, and many now carry a camera and microphone into every room in your house. As AI gives them a better understanding of what they see, the privacy and security risks these autonomous robots pose are only growing.That’s why greater scrutiny makes sense, but the ban on foreign-made mobile robots issued by the Federal Communications Commission earlier this week — implemented to address “unacceptable risks to the national security of the United States or the safety and security of United States…
AI firm Anthropic – owner of the Claude AI assistant – has now admitted three cases where test models went rogue, accessed the open internet and hacked other organisations. The news follows on from OpenAI’s recent admissions that test models had done the same. Anthropic wrote a lengthy post about the incidents but has not yet named the organisations involved. The AI firm says it reported the breaches to the companies involved on July 27. However, it’s likely more information will emerge via the organisations involved or people familiar with the matter. As a result of the OpenAI events, Anthropic…
A growing number of Bluetooth trackers can tap into Apple’s Find My network these days, but none combine that with Apple’s latest ultra wideband (UWB) chip, which powers even better Precision Finding than before. Precision Finding uses on-screen arrows and distance indicators in the Find My app to guide you directly to a misplaced item, while the second-generation AirTag’s upgraded chip and extended Bluetooth range make it faster and more reliable to locate tags, even in multistory homes. You can also use Precision Finding to find lost items on an Apple Watch, provided you have a Series 9 or later.…
In the early days of the iPhone, you’d be lucky if the phone’s screen survived a fall from your lap to the living room carpet. Fast forward a couple of decades and you can drop them out of planes and pick them up looking and working pristinely. That’s according to a Canadian couple in the province of Saskatchewan, who took the iPhone 17 Pro on a photography flight only for it to be sucked from the case and sent crashing 1.1km (just over half a mile) to the earth. In an post on Instagram, CBC reports Heather Cline was taking…
Google has shut down Google Earth feature it launched Thursday that allowed users to edit satellite images with text prompts using AI. The tool essentially let users create AI deepfakes of the real world using text prompts; Digital Digging’s Henk van Ess, for example, intentionally generated images adding things like refugees near the Mexican border and a bomb crater by a hospital in Gaza. On Thursday, Google’s initial response to van Ess noted that images generated with Nano Banana 2 in Google Earth included a digital watermark and that the company prevented “image creation on harmful topics.”One day later, Google’s…