LG just revealed several new speakers in the xboom line ahead of CES 2026. These speakers are part of an ongoing collaboration with will.i.am from Black Eyed Peas, who is on board as the “experimental architect” involved with “development, design and brand marketing.”

These speakers are fairly different from one another, but they all have AI in common. Each speaker includes an algorithm that automatically adjusts the EQ after analyzing the audio content and the listening space. Many also feature an AI algorithm for ambient lighting, which will adjust the lights to match the song being played.

The xboom Stage 501 is intended for parties and karaoke sessions. It features additional AI that can remove vocals from “virtually any song” and even adjust the pitch. The battery lasts for around 25 hours and can operate while plugged in. The speaker delivers up to 220W of power, with dual woofers and full-range drivers. It boasts a five-sided cabinet design that allows for vertical and horizontal placement.

LG

The xboom Blast is a boombox with a 99Wh battery that allows for up to 35 hours of continuous playback. That’s a mighty fine metric. This is a modern boombox, so it’s designed for durability. There are edge bumpers and a side rope handle for carrying.

LG

The Mini is a tiny doodad that can be placed just about anywhere. It offers ten hours of battery life per charge and a strap for easy placement. The speaker also includes a built-in tripod mount.

LG

The Rock is a, well, rock-shaped speaker that’s larger than the Mini but can still be held in the palm of the hand. The battery lasts for ten hours and the design is focused on durability. It has been tested to “seven military standards” to ensure reliability in “challenging outdoor environments.” This is an upgrade of the pre-existing XG2 model.

We don’t have pricing or exact availability on this stuff yet, though the speakers will be on display at LG’s booth at CES. The company has said that all four of these gadgets will come out in 2026.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/speakers/lg-announces-new-line-of-xboom-speakers-ahead-of-ces-010052598.html?src=rss

PC Gamer argues that 2025 was a year full of high-profile AI embarrassments across games and entertainment, with Disney and Lucasfilm serving as the “opening salvo.” From the report: At a TED talk back in April, Lucasfilm senior vice president of creative innovation Rob Bredow presented a demonstration of what he called “a new era of technology.” Across 50 years of legendary innovation in miniature design, practical effects, and computer animation, Lucasfilm and its miracle workers at Industrial Light & Magic have blazed the trail for visual effects in creative storytelling — and now Bredow was offering a glimpse at what wonders might come next.

That glimpse, created over two weeks by an ILM artist, was Star Wars: Field Guide: a two-minute fizzle reel of AI-generated blue lions, tentacled walruses, turtles with alligator heads, and zebra-stripe chimpanzees, all lazily spliced together from the shuffled bits of normal-ass animals. These “aliens” were less Star Wars than they were Barnum & Bailey. It felt like a singular embarrassment: Instead of showing its potential, generative AI just demonstrated how out of touch a major media force had become. And then it kept happening.

At the time, I wondered whether evoking the legacy of Lucasfilm just to declare creative bankruptcy had provoked enough disgusted responses to convince Disney to slow its roll on AI ventures. In the months since, however, it’s clear that Star Wars: Field Guide wasn’t a cautionary tale. It was a mission statement. Disney is boldly, firmly placing its hand on the hot stove. Other embarrassing AI use cases include Fortnite’s AI-powered Darth Vader NPC, Activision’s use of AI-generated art in what was widely described as the “weakest” Call of Duty launch in years, McDonald’s short-lived AI holiday ad, and Disney’s $1 billion licensing deal with OpenAI.

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This is a video from 4 Ever Green detailing some of the more exotic species of pigeons from around the world, birds that come in all sorts of wild color and pattern combinations. How about that! Personally, I think standard New York City pigeons are beautiful, but that’s just me and I’m probably biased because I’ve trained a bunch of them to steal coins from tourists. Just a few more years and my bird friends and I should have enough saved to pay last month’s rent.

This is a short video of a robot operator taking a swift kick to the nuts by the Unitree G1 robot that’s copying his moves. In the operator’s own translated words while I pretend to tear my own head off just in case any robots are copying me:

Before that moment, g1 was my alter ego, and after that moment… (Holy cow, I can’t believe I have 1000 followers and can actually promote products! I’ll give it a try!), This video contains algorithm development experiments. The robot is dangerous, so everyone please watch out for your… well, you know.

Was this user error? 100%. If there’s a robot aping your moves, you do NOT throw any punches or perform any kicks. That’s like, Robot Operation 101. “Didn’t you fail Robot Operation 101?” Yeah, but only because I didn’t go. “What about geometry?” That I failed because shapes are confusing. “And what about colors?” Don’t even get me started.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from DW: India has surpassed Japan to become the world’s fourth-largest economy, according to calculations in the Indian government’s end-of-year economic review. On current trends, India is expected to overtake Germany to become the world’s third-largest economy within the next three years, the review said.

The review said India’s gross domestic product has already reached about $4.18 trillion, and is projected to reach $7.3 trillion by 2030. On current trends, it said, India would trail only the United States and China in economic heft. India’s real GDP grew 8.2% in the second quarter of the 2025-26 financial year, up from 7.8% in the previous quarter and marking a six-quarter high.

Export performance has also strengthened, the review noted. Merchandise exports rose to $38.13 billion in November, up from $36.43 billion in January, supported by engineering goods, electronics, pharmaceuticals, and petroleum products. Official confirmation however depends on data due in 2026 when final annual GDP figures are released. The International Monetary Fund suggests India will surpass Japan next year. The Reserve Bank of India has revised its growth forecast for the 2025-26 financial year upward to 7.3%.

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Axios reports that venture capitalist Alex Davis is warning that a speculative rush to build data centers without committed tenants could trigger a financing crunch by 2027-2028.

“This critique is coming from inside the AI optimist camp,” notes Axios, as Davis’ firm, Disruptive, “recently led a large investment in AI chipmaker Groq, which then signed a $20 billion licensing deal with Nvidia. It’s also backed such unicorn startups as Reflection AI, Shield AI and Gecko Robotics.”

Here’s what Davis had to say in his investor letter this morning: “While I continue to believe the ongoing advancements in AI technology present ‘once in a lifetime’ investment opportunities, I also continue to see risks and reason for caution and investment discipline. For example, we are seeing way too many business models (and valuation levels) with no realistic margin expansion story, extreme capex spend, lack of enterprise customer traction, or overdependence on ’round-trip’ investments — in some cases all with the same company. I am also deeply concerned about the ‘speculative’ data center market. The ‘build it and they will come’ strategy is a trap. If you are a hyperscaler, you will own your own data centers. We foresee a significant financing crisis in 2027-2028 for speculative landlords. We want to back theowner/users, not the speculative landlords, and we are quite concerned for their stress on the system.”
The full letter can be found here.

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China is quietly mandating that chipmakers use at least 50% domestically made equipment when expanding capacity, “as Beijing pushes to build a self-sufficient semiconductor supply chain,” according to Reuters. From the report: The rule is not publicly documented, but chipmakers seeking state approval to build or expand their plants have been told by authorities in recent months that they must prove through procurement tenders that at least half their equipment will be Chinese-made, the people told Reuters. The mandate is one of the most significant measures Beijing has introduced to wean itself off reliance on foreign technology, a push that gathered pace after the U.S. tightened technology export restrictions in 2023, banning sales of advanced AI chips and semiconductor equipment to China.

While those U.S. export restrictions blocked the sale of some of the most advanced tools, the 50% rule is leading Chinese manufacturers to choose domestic suppliers even in areas where foreign equipment from the U.S., Japan, South Korea and Europe remain available. Applications failing the threshold are typically rejected, though authorities grant flexibility depending on supply constraints, the people said. The requirements are relaxed for advanced chip production lines, where domestically developed equipment is not yet fully available. “Authorities prefer if it is much higher than 50%,” one source told Reuters. “Eventually they are aiming for the plants to use 100% domestic equipment.”

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Mac Bauer is fast, but the city’s trams, weighing more than 100,000lbs and traveling at a maximum speed of nearly 45mph, should be far faster than him. And yet as of late December, in head-to-head races against streetcars, the 32-year-old remains undefeated in his quest to highlight how sluggish the trams, used by 230,000 people daily, truly are.

Some races have pushed him closer to his limits as a runner. On other occasions, the car has been so slow he’s had time to nip into a McDonald’s before it reaches the last station. “I don’t like winning. I really don’t. I really, really wish these streetcars were faster than me,” he said. “But they’re not. And this is the problem.” Bauer’s rise as a running celebrity and transit critic embodies the mounting frustration of a city beset by chronic delays, congested streets and decades of under-built transit.

“Streetcars just shouldn’t be stuck in traffic,” he said, adding the system also needed more “signal priority” which gives the streetcars lengthened green lights and shortened red lights. Bauer started racing transit vehicles roughly a year ago after he and his wife realized how long it took them to traverse the city. He posted videos of those races to Instagram and quickly transformed into a minor celebrity. Bauer describes his runs as a form of social activism, and his ability to lay bare the absurdities of Toronto’s beleaguered public transit system — a person can outrun a streetcar! — has struck a nerve with the tens of thousands of commuters who share his Instagram posts.

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OneXPlayer is quickly establishing itself as a company that isn’t afraid to get weird as hell. (Take, for example, its transforming dual-screen gaming portable.) Its latest venture is another retro gaming handheld that, at first glance, looks like a standard dual-screen model. But the Android-powered OneXSugar Wallet uses a single foldable screen instead.

The device was teased via a 54-second video on the Chinese video-sharing platform Bilibili. Retro Handhelds reports that the Wallet uses an 8.01-inch OLED with a 2,480 x 1,860 resolution. (That’s a 4:3 aspect ratio when unfolded.) The video also shows an asymmetrical analog stick layout with a D-pad and four action buttons.

OneXPlayer / Bilibi

Given foldable phones’ long-term durability concerns, we aren’t necessarily betting on the OneXSugar Wallet being a wise purchase. We also don’t know how much it will cost. (The aforementioned weird dual-screen device retails for a whopping $799.) But at the very least, don’t be shocked if the novel form factor ends up sparking a few copycats in the competitive retro gaming industry.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-onexsugar-wallet-is-an-upcoming-retro-handheld-with-a-43-foldable-screen-215528433.html?src=rss

The demand building out AI infrastructure has placed on PC component makers has already led to the death of one consumer-facing RAM brand, but a new report from the International Data Corporation (IDC) suggests it could have an even worse impact on the PC industry at large. In its worst-case-scenario model, the IDC predicts PC shipments could shrink by up to 8.9 percent in 2026 because of the high cost of memory.

“Instead of expanding conventional DRAM and NAND used in smartphones, PCs and other consumer electronics, major memory makers have shifted production toward memory used in AI data centers, such as high-bandwidth (HBM) and high-capacity DDR5,” IDC writes. That’s continued to drive up the price of the RAM that is available for PC makers, which has naturally led to them to raise the price of their own products to stay above water. For example, modular PC maker Framework has already had to raise prices on some of its laptops and parts, and says “further cost and price increases are highly likely over the next months.” The IDC says prices could rise by 6 to 8 percent in 2026 if its most pessimistic scenario comes true.

The timing of this RAM crunch is particularly ironic because selling “AI PCs” — computers with neural processing units that can run AI models locally — were supposed to be one of the things pulling the PC industry out of its post-pandemic slump. Instead, those computers’ larger RAM needs leave them more vulnerable to the effects of the AI industry itself. Computers aren’t the only electronics impacted, either. The IDC says the average selling price of a smartphone could grow by 6 to 8 percent in its most pessimistic scenario, and smartphone shipments could shrink by as much as 5.2 percent. 

Companies like Apple and Samsung, with cash to spare and long-term supply agreements, could weather these higher RAM prices and keep things consistent for a year or two, according to the IDC. For everyone else, though, the near-term is looking much more expensive, and by necessity, much less adventurous.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/idc-warns-of-major-pc-market-downturn-due-to-memory-crunch-214510197.html?src=rss

Freedom of speech is a foundational principle of healthy democracies and hence a primary target for aspiring authoritarians, who typically try to squash dissent. There is a point where the threat from authorities is sufficiently severe that a population will self-censor rather than risk punishment. Social media has complicated matters, blurring traditional boundaries between public and private speech, while new technologies such as facial recognition and moderation algorithms give authoritarians powerful new tools.

Researchers explored the nuanced dynamics of how people balance their desire to speak out vs their fear of punishment in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The authors had previously worked together on a model of political polarization, a project that wrapped up right around the time the social media space was experiencing significant changes in the ways different platforms were handling moderation. Some adopted a decidedly hands-off approach with little to no moderation. Weibo, on the other hand, began releasing the IP addresses of people who posted objectionable commentary, essentially making them targets.

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Two cybersecurity professionals who spent their careers defending organizations against ransomware attacks have pleaded guilty in a Florida federal court to using ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware to extort American businesses throughout 2023.

Ryan Goldberg, a 40-year-old incident response manager from Georgia, and Kevin Martin, a 36-year-old ransomware negotiator from Texas, admitted to conspiring to obstruct commerce through extortion. Between April and December 2023, Goldberg, Martin, and a third unnamed co-conspirator deployed the ransomware against multiple U.S. victims and agreed to pay ALPHV BlackCat’s operators a 20% cut of any ransoms received. They successfully extracted approximately $1.2 million in Bitcoin from one victim, splitting their 80% share three ways before laundering the proceeds. Both men face up to 20 years in prison and are scheduled for sentencing on March 12, 2026.

The Justice Department noted that all three conspirators possessed specialized skills in securing computer systems against the very attacks they carried out. ALPHV BlackCat has targeted more than 1,000 victims globally and was the subject of an FBI disruption operation in December 2023 that saved victims an estimated $99 million through a custom decryption tool.

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On Monday, the ACLU announced that it and other organizations representing medical researchers had reached a settlement in their suit against the federal government over grant applications that had been rejected under a policy that has since been voided by the court. The agreement, which still has to be approved by the judge overseeing the case, would see the National Institutes of Health restart reviews of grants that had been blocked on ideological grounds. It doesn’t guarantee those grants will ultimately be funded, but it does mean they will go through the standard peer review process.

The grants had previously been rejected without review because their content was ideologically opposed by the Trump administration. That policy has since been declared arbitrary and capricious, and thus in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, a decision that was upheld by the Supreme Court.

How’d we get here?

Immediately after taking office, the Trump Administration identified a number of categories of research, some of them extremely vague, that it would not be supporting: climate change, DEI, pandemic preparedness, gender ideology, and more. Shortly thereafter, federal agencies started cancelling grants that they deemed to contain elements of these disfavored topics, and blocking consideration of grant applications for the same reasons. As a result, grants were cancelled that funded everything from research into antiviral drugs to the incidence of prostate cancer in African Americans.

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The global airline industry is on track to post an all-time profit high of nearly $40 billion in 2025, according to trade group IATA, surpassing the pre-pandemic 2019 figure of $26 billion, but carriers are still managing a net margin of just 4% — roughly $7.90 per passenger. Economist adds: Not everything has been in the ascent. European and North American airlines, which account for three-fifths of the industry’s net profits, have had to contend with circuitous long-haul routes to avoid Russian airspace since the start of the war in Ukraine. This year parts of the Middle East became no-go zones after Israel’s strike on Iran in June. America’s airlines were hit by a government shutdown that stopped federal workers from travelling and kept unpaid air-traffic controllers at home, disrupting flights.

What is more, despite a drop in fuel prices, which account for 25-30% of airlines’ operating expenses, other costs have risen. Airlines flew 4.8 billion passengers in 2024, beating the 2019 peak, and that figure likely reached 5 billion in 2025 as combined revenues topped $1 trillion for the first time and load factors hit a record of nearly 84%.

But the industry is flying older planes because Boeing and Airbus can’t deliver enough new ones. The duopoly shipped under 1,400 aircraft in 2025, well below the 2018 record of just over 1,600. Boeing has struggled since two fatal 737 MAX crashes in late 2018 and early 2019 led to a 20-month grounding, and a fuselage panel blew off another 737 MAX mid-flight in early 2024. Airbus cut its 2025 delivery target from 820 to 790 in early December due to a supplier’s production flaw, and Pratt & Whitney engine problems have grounded a third of the global A320neo fleet.

IATA estimates the aircraft shortage won’t resolve before 2031 at the earliest, and the global fleet’s average age has climbed to 15 years from 13 in 2019. Annual fuel efficiency gains have slowed from about 2% to 0.3% in 2025, and an IATA and Oliver Wyman report pegs the cost of aging fleets — extra fuel, repairs, spare parts — at over $11 billion in 2025.

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Determining how “successful” Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) truly was depends on who you ask, but it’s increasingly hard to claim that DOGE made any sizable dent in federal spending, which was its primary goal.

Just two weeks ago, Musk himself notably downplayed DOGE as only being “a little bit successful” on a podcast, marking one of the first times that Musk admitted DOGE didn’t live up to its promise. Then, more recently, on Monday, Musk revived evidence-free claims he made while campaigning for Donald Trump, insisting that government fraud remained vast and unchecked, seemingly despite DOGE’s efforts. On X, he estimated that “my lower bound guess for how much fraud there is nationally is [about 20 percent] of the Federal budget, which would mean $1.5 trillion per year. Probably much higher.”

Musk loudly left DOGE in May after clashing with Trump, complaining that a Trump budget bill threatened to undermine DOGE’s work. These days, Musk does not appear confident that DOGE was worth the trouble of wading into government. Although he said on the December podcast that he considered DOGE to be his “best side quest” ever, the billionaire confirmed that if given the chance to go back in time, he probably would not have helmed the agency as a special government employee.

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