Author: News Room
Outside a florist-cum-coffee shop in upstate New York, a row of vintage cars gleam in the sun. It’s unseasonably warm for early October, so there’s a veritable crowd of car enthusiasts snapping photos of Ferraris, Porsches, and a vintage Alfa Romeo. Patient girlfriends and wives roll their eyes, sipping on maple matcha lattes and eating pumpkin spice donuts.At my side, my right hand is twitching like I’m a wizard casting a spell. I’m hunched over, bending my head as I stare at a lime green Lamborghini, shouting, “WHAT MODEL CAR AM I LOOKING AT?” (The lot is quite loud, given…
I have a habit of annoying audiophiles. While I love playing and creating music, I’ve long been suspicious of an industry a little too happy with snake oil. Ludicrously spendy cables with equally ludicrously spendy ‘risers’. Special SSDs that somehow make digital audio sound ‘richer’. Downloadable audio files that feature frequencies only a terrifying bat-elephant hybrid could hear. Headphones that cost as much as a car, with audio output described in the same florid, over-the-top, extravagantly metaphorical way a wine critic might wax lyrical about a glass of plonk. In short: not keen. I vividly recall attending an event for very high-end…
If you’ve got a computer that’s rapidly filling up with files, don’t add to your desktop clutter with a portable SSD – pop open that side panel and slot home a WD Blue SN5100 instead. It’s one of the more affordable M.2 upgrades out there, and uses a slightly older connection type – but that doesn’t mean it’s a slowcoach. The 500GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4GB capacities each use the desktop-standard Type-2280 M.2 form factor, so if your PC is less than a decade old it should have at least one empty slot to house it. And while PCIe Gen…
Some of us take a kind of “I eat to live” rather than an “I live to eat” approach to gadgets. They’re tools that help you get things done, not something you want to invest a lot of time or money in. If that’s you — and there’s no judgment here from a certifiable gadget nerd — then you can probably think of more worthwhile ways to spend $1,000 than on a phone.Budget phones to the rescue. These devices are roughly $500 or under, though not all of them, and they’re more capable than ever. You won’t get all the…
Meta has rolled out an opt-in AI feature to its US and Canadian Facebook users that claims to make their photos and videos more “shareworthy.” The only catch is that the feature is designed for your phone’s camera roll — not the media you’ve already uploaded to Facebook. If you opt in, Meta’s AI will comb through your camera roll, upload your unpublished photos to Meta’s cloud, and surface “hidden gems” that are “lost among screenshots, receipts, and random snaps,” the company says. Users will be able to save or share the suggested edits and collages.If Facebook wanting to look…
Apple has confirmed it its Apple TV streaming service has acquired the rights to broadcast Formula 1 races in the United States. The long-expected accord will begin in the 2026 F1 season and will last for five years with Apple reportedly paying $750 million overall and $150 million (around £103m per year) per season for the exclusive rights on US soil. There’s good news and bad news for F1 fans in the US. The bad news? You’re going to need a $12.99 Apple TV (recently rebranded from Apple TV+) subscription. The good news is that Apple is not charging a…
Samsung’s long anticipated tri-fold smartphone is set to be unveiled to the public on October 31, according to new reporting on Friday. Bloomberg sources say Samsung is planning to debut its latest form factor expansion at the APEC Summit for business leaders in South Korea later this month. However, according to a second report, it’ll be ‘look but don’t touch’ with Samsung not yet willing to allow onlookers to go hands-on with the device. If Samsung does make a public announcement regarding the phone, we’ll have all of the info when it drops. Samsung will showcase its first trifold smartphone…
Now, local US law enforcement agencies that use Flock’s platforms Nova or FlockOS can request video footage from Ring users through the Neighbors app. In the request, Ring says that law enforcement must include details about an alleged crime and its time and location. They must also include a “unique investigation code.” A request for footage will appear in Ring’s Neighbors app feed to all users in certain areas of interest.Ring tells its users that participation in the Community Request program is “completely optional.” Users can turn off notifications for the request entirely, and the company says that law enforcement…
Though the Pokémon games’ Rotom Phones haven’t really changed all that much design-wise over the past few years, each generation has introduced new functionalities that made upgrading a no-brainer. Sword / Shield’s Rotom Phone — the very first one — came with a bare-bones camera that made it easy to snap wide-angle (screen)shots out in the Galar region’s Wild Area. The second-generation Rotom Phone’s camera in Scarlet / Violet was a significant improvement, but the device’s real standout feature was its ability to keep you from plummeting to your death if you fell from a great height.While neither of the…
Large language models are currently everyone’s solution to everything. The technology’s versatility is part of its appeal: the use cases for generative AI seem both huge and endless. But then you use the stuff, and not enough of it works very well. And you wonder what we’re really accomplishing here.On this episode of The Vergecast, Nilay rejoins the show full of thoughts about the current state of AI — particularly after spending a summer trying to get his smart home to work. But before we get to that, we talk about our new ad-free podcast option, which launched this week!…
OpenAI said on Thursday night that it has “paused” deepfakes of Martin Luther King Jr. on its social app Sora after users created “disrespectful” AI-generated videos of the late civil rights leader. It said representatives or estates of other historical figures will now be able to opt out of their likeness being used on the platform.The company said it acted following complaints from King’s estate and his daughter, Bernice King, who asked people on social media to stop sending her AI videos of her father. King is one of many deceased celebrities and historical figures whose likeness has appeared on…
Along with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video is one of the longest-running video streaming services available, but for many, it remains a bit of an enigma. Tied into the retail behemoth’s Prime subscription service and having been known by several slightly different names throughout its life (at the time of writing, Amazon is very keen that we refer to it simply as ‘Prime Video’ rather than ‘Amazon Prime Video’ – go figure), it’s never enjoyed the ubiquity of Netflix or the strong brand appeal of Disney+. So what exactly is Prime Video? What does it offer? How can I watch it?…