Author: News Room

If you’re looking for a simple way to streamline your workflow, the Elgato Stream Deck Plus is a handy productivity tool for automating everyday tasks. Right now, it’s on sale for $159.99 ($40 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and B&H Photo, which is its best price to date.Like the standard Stream Deck, the Stream Deck Plus comes with eight programmable keys you can use to automate tasks, such as muting yourself on a video call or turning off smart lights. The Plus, however, adds more customizability with four rotary dials that let you make fine adjustments, like changing the volume…

The United Kingdom has walked back plans to make its upcoming digital ID scheme a mandatory requirement for working adults. While the UK government remains “committed to mandatory digital right-to-work checks,” an unspecified government spokesperson told The Times, digital ID will now be optional when the initiative is introduced sometime in 2029.The national digital ID plans were announced by Prime Minister Keir Starmer in September with the aim of cracking down on illegal migrant workers, specifying that digital ID “will be mandatory for right to work checks by the end of the Parliament.” The digital ID will include a person’s…

Lawsuits seeking damages from Google’s illegal ad tech monopoly are piling up following the Justice Department’s successful antitrust case. Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company, is the latest in a wave of media companies that have filed suit against Google, seeking to be reimbursed for the monopoly profits the tech company allegedly made at publishers’ expense.“Absent Google’s conduct, Vox Media would be able to make available even more, higher quality impressions for purchase on Vox Media’s webpages and create more high-quality, premium journalism,” Vox Media alleges in its lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the Southern District of New York. The Atlantic,…

Naya has already shipped one successful Kickstarter for a weird keyboard. The Naya Create was an ergonomic split deck with four swappable controller addons: a touchpad, a trackball, a rotary encoder, or a 6DoF spatial mouse. The Connect takes that modular concept, applies it to a more traditional flat keyboard form factor, and expands the ecosystem to be even more flexible. And clearly, people are into the idea, because it hit its minuscule funding goal in just six minutes.The Naya Connect has four main components: a low-profile 75% mechanical keyboard called the Naya Type, a 24-key multipad, a six-key programmable…

The Apple Arcade subscription gaming service is about to receive its most high-profile library entry yet – the iconic PC strategy game Sid Meier’s Civilization VII. The AAA title will arrive as a special Arcade Edition on Apple Arcade for iPhone, iPad and Mac (M-series required) on February 5. Gamers will be able to play across those Apple devices. Apple says this is the same base game experience as appeared on the PC version, so it’s not dumbed down from the authentic experience, it’s just missing the DLC that’s been available on other platforms. In a media release, Apple says:…

If you want to win in AI — and I mean win in the biggest, most lucrative, most shape-the-world-in-your-image kind of way — you have to do a bunch of hard things simultaneously. You need to have a model that is unquestionably one of the best on the market. You need the nearly infinite resources required to continue to improve that model and deploy it at massive scale. You need at least one AI-based product that lots of people use, and ideally more than one. And you need access to as much of your users’ other data — their personal…

If you’re concerned that Apple’s Siri will just become Google Gemini under a different name, following the AI partnership the pair announced this week, a new report suggests Apple will retain plenty of autonomy over how the AI responds to iPhone users. The Information has published an in-depth report detailing what its sources say about the inner workings of the new deal, which will see Gemini powering Apple’s Foundational Model, including the new conversational Siri that’s primed to offer much greater personalisation. According to the report: “Apple can ask Google to tweak aspects of how the Gemini model works, but…

The first big outage of 2026 is here, as Verizon customers across the US, including several of our phones, complain that service has been spotty or nonexistent starting at around noon ET, with phones switching to SOS Mode and being unable to connect. This cell service outage follows a “software issue” that cut off service for many people in August for several hours, and while Verizon has acknowledged the issue, there is no word yet on when it will be fixed.Verizon:We are aware of an issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers. Our engineers are engaged and…

A smart lock is an easy solution to some common problems. Locked yourself out? Need to let a friend in to water the plants? Your latchkey kid lost their key? Hands are full, and it’s raining cats and dogs? A smart lock solves all of these problems and more.One of the best smart home upgrades you can make, a smart lock gives you remote control access to your house from anywhere, plus easy, key-free ways to unlock and lock your door. Smart locks also remember everything that happened, so they can tell you when your door was unlocked, and sometimes…

If you were thinking you’d have to upgrade your Amazon speaker or streaming device to access the new-gen Alexa+ GenAI assistant, you may not. Amazon says a whopping 97% of first-party devices that can support the more personal, more conversational, agentic Alexa+ assistant. That means there’s a good chance your Echo or Fire TV device will support the upgrade if you’d like to use it. That’s the “vast majority” of the 600 million devices currently out there, says Amazon Alexa and Echo VP Daniel Rausch. “Ninety-seven percent of devices we ever shipped can support Alexa+,” Rausch told TechCrunch in an…

Although Bose introduced a second-gen pair of the QC Ultra in September, the original flagships offer many of the same hallmarks for $120 less, at least at the moment. They feature a comfortable build and a foldable design that makes them ideal for long flights and road trips, along with a commendable 24 hours of battery life. More importantly, they offer best-in-class noise cancellation and a pleasing, balanced sound signature that preserves highs and lows even when you dial back the volume. That’s on top of a natural-sounding transparency mode designed to pipe outside noise in and an Immersive Audio…

Parents can now manually set a time limit on their kids’ YouTube Shorts feed, ranging from fifteen minutes to two hours (with an option for zero minutes coming soon). The update, announced on Wednesday, takes the Shorts time limit feature YouTube introduced in October and adapts it for under-18 accounts. Kids and teens can’t change or disable the time limit setting on their end.Similarly, parents can set custom “Bedtime” and “Take a break” reminders for their kids’ accounts, which are also available as optional features for adult users. The new features are rolling out after YouTube began a push to…