If you’re thinking about upgrading to a new graphics card this year, your window for doing so at MSRP has closed. When I first reported on this at the start of December, things were looking bleak but you could still find GPUs from both AMD and NVIDIA at close to their recommended prices. That changed last week when YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed reported that ASUS had stopped producing the RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB due to ongoing memory shortages. 

After Engadget published the news, NVIDIA disputed the report. “Demand for GeForce RTX GPUs is strong, and memory supply is constrained. We continue to ship all GeForce SKUs and are working closely with our suppliers to maximize memory availability,” a company spokesperson told us. 

The next day, ASUS walked back its previous statements. After “explicitly” telling Hardware Unboxed it had placed the 5060 Ti 16GB and 5070 Ti into “end-of-life status,” the company said “certain media may have received incomplete information from an ASUS PR representative regarding these products,” adding it had “no plans to stop selling these models.”  

Whether or not the 5060 Ti 16GB and 5070 Ti remain in production, one thing is certain: the AI boom has created a great deal of uncertainty in the GPU market. After the news, panic buying sent the price of the 5070 Ti through the roof. Right now, it’s impossible to find that model priced at its MSRP of $749. As of the writing of this article, the most affordable version of the 5070 Ti I could find on Newegg was $1,199. 

The bigger problem is that the 5070 Ti isn’t the only GPU selling for far more than MSRP. Tom’s Hardware has been tracking GPU prices for months, and there’s not a single model you can buy at either AMD or NVIDIA’s recommended price. That puts PC builders in a tough spot. What do you do if you want to upgrade to a new graphics card this year? 

If you’re sitting on an older GPU, the best advice I can give is to stick with your current hardware. If you’re fine with the performance of your video card right now, it’s best to wait a year or two for the market to settle down.

On the other hand, if your current GPU is not up to the task of running the games you want to play, try to buy a card with at least 12GB of VRAM — preferably 16GB if your budget allows for it. Unless you plan to play mostly older games on a 1080p monitor, it’s not worth considering a model with 8GB of VRAM — it won’t last you long enough to warrant the purchase price. 

For the most part, the recommendations in Engadget’s recent GPU guide are still as relevant today as they were a few months ago. The recommendations I provide here are pulled from that guide and are grouped from most affordable to most expensive. Where possible, I’ve tried to find options from both Newegg and Amazon. As you go about looking for a new GPU, your best friend is a website like PCPartPicker where you can track pricing across multiple retailers.  

Recommendations

AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

Unfortunately if you’re on a tight budget, there aren’t many great options under $400. For that reason, I would steer you to the Radeon RX 9060 XT as the best “entry-level” option. AMD offers two different versions of this GPU: one with 8GB of VRAM and the other with 16GB. Of the two, the latter is the better purchase, but if it’s outside your budget, the more affordable model is probably the best 8GB GPU on the market right now.

While I couldn’t find the 16GB variant at its recommended price of $350, I did find a few models that weren’t far off. Newegg has options from ASRock and Sapphire priced at $400 and $450. At Amazon, meanwhile, you can find models from PowerColor for $400 and $430.     

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

I’m somewhat hesitant to recommend the RTX 5070. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a decent enough card, but with only 12GB of VRAM, you may end up replacing it sooner than you think. That said, it’s one of the few NVIDIA GPUs that hasn’t shot up massively in price, and I suspect that’s because people have been passing it over in favor of other 50-series models. If you value NVIDIA’s feature set over raw frames, then the 5070 is about the only GPU that makes sense to buy from the company right now.    

On Newegg, I found a 5070 model from Gigabyte for $650. The retailer also has a handful of different MSI variants priced at $630. Amazon has fewer options, but it does have one 5070 from Gigabyte for $585, which is the closest to the card’s $549 MSRP.    

AMD Radeon RX 9070 

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

For a card that offers better price-to-performance than the 5070, the Radeon RX 9070 is your best bet. AMD’s take on NVIDIA features like DLSS aren’t as polished, but the RX 9070 offers more VRAM and excellent performance across the latest AAA games. 

It’s unlikely you’ll find one at its MSRP of $550, which was always more of an aspirational price, but I found a few models priced between $590 and $640. Both Newegg and Amazon have a PowerColor model for $590. The two also have a Gigabyte model priced at $600 after $40 rebate with coupon.      

AMD Radeon RX 9070XT

For those with more to spend, the RX 9070 XT is probably where I would cap things. Beyond that, you’re looking at GPUs like the 5080 that cost far more than MSRP. On Newegg, I found a model from ASRock selling for $730. Amazon, meanwhile, has options from Gigabyte and ASUS for $720. None of those are great deals, but that’s to be expected with a card that’s at the top of the stack.    

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/how-to-find-an-affordable-gpu-during-the-great-ramageddon-of-2026-130000654.html?src=rss

As we move through 2026, the narrative surrounding Artificial Intelligence has shifted from the breathless hype of “what if” to the cold, hard reality of execution. For the technology industry, 2026 is becoming a year of reckoning. We are seeing a massive bifurcation between the promise of “Agentic AI” and the fragmented, often frustrating experience of the “AI-PC.” While data centers continue to inhale silicon and power, the devices on our desks and in our pockets are struggling to define their new identity.

The AI-PC Identity Crisis: Fragmentation and Friction

The “AI-PC” was supposed to be the Great PC Renaissance. Instead, it has hit a significant wall characterized by a lack of local application support and a jarring lack of consistency between hardware OEMs. While Microsoft has pushed its Copilot+ standards, the actual user experience varies wildly depending on whether you are running an Intel, AMD, or Qualcomm-based system.

The most significant friction point remains the battle over the Neural Processing Unit (NPU). Microsoft’s vision for the AI-PC is centered on the NPU—a low-power engine designed for always-on background tasks like eye contact correction and local data indexing. However, NVIDIA, the undisputed king of AI hardware, has largely refused to play by Microsoft’s NPU rules. NVIDIA argues, quite effectively, that their RTX GPUs offer significantly more TOPS (Trillion Operations Per Second) than any integrated NPU, making the dedicated NPU redundant for high-end users.

This creates a “split-brain” problem for developers. Do they code for the low-power NPU to ensure battery efficiency, or do they target the massive power of the NVIDIA GPU? Because there is no unified execution layer, we are entering 2026 with a dearth of “killer” local AI apps. Most users are still just using their “AI-PC” to access cloud-based tools, which defeats the purpose of the expensive hardware sitting under the hood.

Generative AI: The Survival of the Smartest

In the realm of Generative AI, the landscape in 2026 is dominated by a few “God-models.” GPT-5 and Claude 4 have moved beyond simple text generation into complex “chain-of-thought” reasoning. These platforms are no longer just predicting the next word; they are simulating outcomes before they present them.

Google’s Gemini 3 is currently performing exceptionally well due to its deep integration into the Android ecosystem and Google Workspace, making it the most “convenient” AI for the average user. However, the shift in 2026 is moving away from these monolithic chat interfaces toward specialized, multimodal models. We are seeing a rise in “Sovereign AI,” where companies and even nations are training smaller, high-quality models on proprietary data rather than relying on the “strip-mined” public internet data that fueled the early versions of GPT.

The Rise of Agentic AI: From Tools to Teammates

If 2024 was the year of the Chatbot, 2026 is the year of the Agent. We are moving from “Prompt-based AI” to “Goal-based AI.” An agentic platform doesn’t wait for you to tell it what to do every step of the way; you give it a goal (e.g., “Organize a marketing campaign for the new Jaguar club newsletter”), and it coordinates with other agents to execute the task.

Microsoft’s AutoDev and Palantir’s AIP are currently the frontrunners in this space, providing robust frameworks for multi-agent orchestration. On the flip side, we are seeing “Agentic Bloat” in the consumer sector, where poorly designed agents from smaller startups are failing due to “jagged intelligence”—the tendency for an AI to solve a complex coding problem but fail at basic scheduling. In 2026, the best-performing agentic systems are those that treat AI as a “microservice,” where specialized agents handle discrete tasks under a central controller.

The AGI Mirage: Is 2026 the Turning Point?

The debate over Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has reached a fever pitch. While Elon Musk and some tech optimists have predicted AGI could appear in 2026, the consensus among researchers is more tempered.

We are seeing “sparks” of AGI, particularly in the way models can now transfer knowledge between completely unrelated domains. However, the “scaling wall” is real. We are running out of high-quality human data to train on, and synthetic data is creating “model collapse” in some instances. While 2026 may be remembered as the year AI became “useful enough” to replace many white-collar functions, a true, self-aware, or fully autonomous AGI remains just out of reach for most.

The Memory Shortage: A Logistics War

The AI explosion has created a catastrophic shortage of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and DDR5. AI servers are consuming the world’s supply of DRAM, driving up costs for PCs and smartphones. This is where the “logistics advantage” becomes the primary competitive differentiator.

Lenovo is currently in the best position to weather this storm. Their massive, vertically integrated supply chain and deep relationships with memory suppliers in Asia have allowed them to stockpile components while others are forced to cut production or raise prices. In 2026, the “best” PC will often be the one that is actually available and affordable, giving Lenovo a significant edge in the enterprise market.

AI Security: The New Arms Race

As AI agents become more autonomous, the attack surface for corporations has exploded. “Prompt injection” has evolved into “Agent hijacking,” where a malicious actor can trick an AI agent into exfiltrating data or bypassing security protocols.

Companies like HP are positioning themselves as the “safe” harbor in this storm. HP’s Wolf Security has pivoted to address AI-specific threats, focusing on hardware-level isolation. By using “Privileged Access Workstations” and strong application isolation, they are aiming to contain AI-assisted attacks that traditional antivirus software simply cannot catch. In 2026, security is no longer about detecting the threat; it’s about isolating the AI so that even if it is compromised, it cannot touch the core enterprise data.

Hardware Roadmaps: Smartphones vs. PCs vs. The New Class

Smartphones continue to eclipse PCs in the AI race because they are “always-on” and “always-with-you.” The Pixel 10 and iPhone 17 (expected later this year) are becoming the primary interfaces for personal AI agents.

However, we are seeing the emergence of a new class of AI-centric hardware—wearables like refined AI glasses and “neck-worn” compute units—that threaten to make both the smartphone and the PC obsolete. These devices prioritize voice and visual “intent” over keyboards and touchscreens. If these devices gain enough traction in late 2026, the PC may be relegated to a specialized tool for “heavy lifting,” much like the mainframe became a back-end tool for the PC.

Transportation: The Level 4 Inflection Point

2026 is the year autonomous vehicles (AVs) move from “beta” to “baseline” in major urban centers. Companies like Waymo and Zoox are expanding rapidly, but the real story is the integration of AI into personal vehicles.

We are seeing Level 3 (L3) autonomy—where the car drives itself but the driver must be ready to take over—becoming a standard option in high-end models from BMW and Mercedes. Meanwhile, the partnership between Lucid and Nuro is pushing the boundaries of “personal robocars.” The AI in these vehicles is no longer just following rules; it is using “World Models” to predict the behavior of pedestrians and other drivers with uncanny accuracy.

Preparing for the AI-Driven 2026

For individuals and companies to survive this transition, the priorities must shift:

1. Redesign Work, Don’t Just Automate: Follow the 80/20 rule. 80% of the value comes from redesigning workflows so agents can handle the routine, allowing humans to focus on strategy.
2. Fix the Data Foundation: AI is only as good as the data it accesses. Companies must prioritize “data hygiene” to ensure their agents aren’t making decisions based on “garbage” data.
3. Invest in “AI-Forward” Talent: The most valuable employees in 2026 are not those who can “prompt” an AI, but those who can orchestrate multiple AI systems.

Wrapping Up

The AI landscape of 2026 is one of incredible power but deep fragmentation. The AI-PC is struggling to find its footing due to hardware-software friction and a lack of local apps, while the cloud-based “Agentic AI” revolution is moving at light speed. Companies like Lenovo and HP are leveraging logistics and security to maintain their dominance, even as new classes of hardware threaten the traditional PC model. Whether or not we reach AGI this year is almost secondary to the fact that AI is now a permanent, autonomous “partner” in the global economy. The winners of 2026 won’t be those with the fastest chips, but those who can most effectively manage the “Supersonic Tsunami” of intelligent automation.

Snapchat is updating its parental control features to give parents more detailed information about who their kids are connecting with in the app and which features they use the most. The app’s Family Center already gives parents visibility into their child’s friend list, but it will now surface contextual details when a new friend is added.

For example, the feature could highlight that the two share mutual friends or have each other’s contact info saved in their phones. It could also indicate that they are classmates if both users have joined the same in-app “community.” If the two have no commonalities, then that could be a sign for a parent to “start a productive conversation,” Snap says. 

The company has long been criticized for making it too easy for teenagers to talk to strangers. The issue has come up in safety-related lawsuits, including an ongoing case brought by New Mexico’s Attorney General. Snap says that adding additional “trust signals” to its parental control features “make it easier for parents to understand new connections and have greater confidence that their teen is chatting with someone they know in real life.”

The update is also adding more granular stats about how exactly teens are spending their time in the app. Family Center’s screen time dashboard now includes a breakdown of how much of their time spent in the app is in its messaging, camera, map or shortform video features. It will still be up to parents to decide what, if any, limits they want to put on their teens. But at a time when there’s increasing conversation around banning teens from social media entirely, having access to more stats could better help parents understand their kids’ relationship with Snapchat.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/snapchat-gives-parents-more-info-on-who-their-kids-are-talking-to-120000077.html?src=rss

Ars Technica’s Benj Edwards reports: On Saturday, tech entrepreneur Siqi Chen released an open source plugin for Anthropic’s Claude Code AI assistant that instructs the AI model to stop writing like an AI model. Called “Humanizer,” the simple prompt plugin feeds Claude a list of 24 language and formatting patterns that Wikipedia editors have listed as chatbot giveaways. Chen published the plugin on GitHub, where it has picked up over 1,600 stars as of Monday. “It’s really handy that Wikipedia went and collated a detailed list of ‘signs of AI writing,'” Chen wrote on X. “So much so that you can just tell your LLM to… not do that.”

The source material is a guide from WikiProject AI Cleanup, a group of Wikipedia editors who have been hunting AI-generated articles since late 2023. French Wikipedia editor Ilyas Lebleu founded the project. The volunteers have tagged over 500 articles for review and, in August 2025, published a formal list of the patterns they kept seeing.

Chen’s tool is a “skill file” for Claude Code, Anthropic’s terminal-based coding assistant, which involves a Markdown-formatted file that adds a list of written instructions (you can see them here) appended to the prompt fed into the large language model (LLM) that powers the assistant. Unlike a normal system prompt, for example, the skill information is formatted in a standardized way that Claude models are fine-tuned to interpret with more precision than a plain system prompt. (Custom skills require a paid Claude subscription with code execution turned on.)

But as with all AI prompts, language models don’t always perfectly follow skill files, so does the Humanizer actually work? In our limited testing, Chen’s skill file made the AI agent’s output sound less precise and more casual, but it could have some drawbacks: it won’t improve factuality and might harm coding ability. […] Even with its drawbacks, it’s ironic that one of the web’s most referenced rule sets for detecting AI-assisted writing may help some people subvert it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Blue Origin has unveiled an enterprise-focused satellite internet network called TeraWave, which promises up to 6 Tbps speeds via a mixed low- and medium-Earth orbit constellation. TechCrunch reports: The TeraWave constellation will use a mix of 5,280 satellites in low-Earth orbit and 128 in medium-Earth orbit, and Blue Origin plans to deploy the first ones in late 2027. It’s not immediately clear how long Blue Origin expects it will take to build out the whole network. The low-Earth orbit satellites Blue Origin is building will use RF connectivity and have a max data transfer speed of 144 Gbps, while the medium-Earth variety will use an optical link that can achieve the much higher 6 Tbps speed. For reference, SpaceX’s Starlink currently maxes out at 400 Mbps — though it plans to launch upgraded satellites that will offer 1 Gbps data transfer in the future. “We identified an unmet need with customers who were seeking enterprise-grade internet access with higher speeds, symmetrical upload/download speeds, more redundancy, and rapid scalability for their networks. TeraWave solves for these problems,” Blue Origin said in a statement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

X is rolling out a new feature called “Starterpacks” to all users in the coming weeks, the company’s head of product has announced. It’s made up of compilations of accounts new users can follow based on their interests. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Bluesky launched a very similar feature that’s also called “starter packs” back in 2024. Bluesky allows ordinary users to curate their own packs as long as each one doesn’t exceed 50 accounts. They can then share those lists broadly on the platform or directly with new users via QR code. X, on the other hand, compiled and curated its own lists.

In his announcement, X head of product Nikita Bier said the company “scoured the world for the top posters in every niche and country.” X then compiled them into Starterpacks “to help new users find the best accounts — big or small — for their interests.” Before X announced its own take on the feature, other social media services had already launched their clones of Bluesky’s tool. Threads’ version, which rolled out in late 2024, puts collections of recommended profiles as suggestions in the feeds of new users. Mastodon launched its own in 2025, which gives existing users the freedom to choose whether they can or can’t be included in the lists.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/x-is-also-launching-bluesky-like-starter-packs-050057033.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Weight-loss drugs like Ozempic have transformed millions of lives with easily administered treatments and quick results. Now it turns out the dropped pounds may have a surprising perk for airlines, too: lower fuel costs, as slimmer passengers lighten their aircraft’s loads.

According to a study published last week by Jefferies, a financial services firm, the four largest U.S. carriers — American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines — could together save as much as $580 million per year on fuel thanks to weight-loss drugs, known as GLP-1s. One in eight U.S. adults said they were taking a GLP-1 in a November survey published by KFF, a nonprofit health research group. Fuel is among airlines’ largest expenses. The Jefferies study estimates that the four airlines will together consume 16 billion gallons of fuel in 2026 at a total cost of $38.6 billion, nearly 20 percent of their total expenses.

The savings from skinnier passengers would amount to just 1.5 percent of fuel costs. But airlines and pilots must scrutinize even the smallest changes to a plane’s weight and balance, and a lighter payload means each jet burns less fuel to generate the thrust necessary to fly. Investors could also stand to benefit: The researchers estimated that a 2 percent reduction in aircraft weight could boost earnings per share by about 4 percent. “Please note savings are before any lost snack sales,” the Jefferies analysts added.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

alternative_right quotes a report from The Intercept: Federal prosecutors on January 9 charged Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones, an IT specialist for an unnamed government contractor, with “the offense of unlawful retention of national defense information,” according to an FBI affidavit (PDF). The case attracted national attention after federal agents investigating Perez-Lugones searched the home of a Washington Post reporter. But overlooked so far in the media coverage is the fact that a surprising surveillance tool pointed investigators toward Perez-Lugones: an office printer with a photographic memory. News of the investigation broke when the Washington Post reported that investigators seized the work laptop, personal laptop, phone, and smartwatch of journalist Hannah Natanson, who has covered the Trump administration’s impact on the federal government and recently wrote about developing more than 1,000 government sources. A Justice Department official told the Post that Perez-Lugones had been messaging Natanson to discuss classified information. The affidavit does not allege that Perez-Lugones disseminated national defense information, only that he unlawfully retained it.

The affidavit provides insight into how Perez-Lugones allegedly attempted to exfiltrate information from a Secure Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, and the unexpected way his employer took notice. According to the FBI, Perez-Lugones printed a classified intelligence report, albeit in a roundabout fashion. It’s standard for workplace printers to log certain information, such as the names of files they print and the users who printed them. In an apparent attempt to avoid detection, Perez-Lugones, according to the affidavit, took screenshots of classified materials, cropped the screenshots, and pasted them into a Microsoft Word document. By using screenshots instead of text, there would be no record of a classified report printed from the specific workstation. (Depending on the employer’s chosen data loss prevention monitoring software, access logs might show a specific user had opened the file and perhaps even tracked whether they took screenshots).

Perez-Lugones allegedly gave the file an innocuous name, “Microsoft Word – Document1,” that might not stand out if printer logs were later audited. In this case, however, the affidavit reveals that Perez-Lugones’s employer could see not only the typical metadata stored by printers, such as file names, file sizes, and time of printing, but it could also view the actual contents of the printed materials — in this case, prosecutors say, the screenshots themselves. As the affidavit points out, “Perez-Lugones’ employer can retrieve records of print activity on classified systems, including copies of printed documents.” […] Aside from attempting to surreptitiously print a document, Perez-Lugones, investigators say, was also seen allegedly opening a classified document and taking notes, looking “back and forth between the screen corresponding the classified system and the notepad, all the while writing on the notepad.” The affidavit doesn’t state how this observation was made, but it strongly suggests a video surveillance system was also in play.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In an opinion piece for The Atlantic, senior editor Saahil Desai argues that media outlets are increasingly treating prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi as legitimate signals of reality. The risk, as Desai warns, is a future where news coverage amplifies manipulable betting odds and turns politics, geopolitics, and even tragedy into speculative gambling theater. Here’s an excerpt from the report: […] The problem is that prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes as much about gambling as about the event itself. This kind of thing has already happened to sports, where the language of “parlays” and “covering the spread” has infiltrated every inch of commentary. ESPN partners with DraftKings to bring its odds to SportsCenter and Monday Night Football; CBS Sports has a betting vertical; FanDuel runs its own streaming network. But the stakes of Greenland’s future are more consequential than the NFL playoffs.

The more that prediction markets are treated like news, especially heading into another election, the more every dip and swing in the odds may end up wildly misleading people about what might happen, or influencing what happens in the real world. Yet it’s unclear whether these sites are meaningful predictors of anything. After the Golden Globes, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan excitedly posted that his site had correctly predicted 26 of 28 winners, which seems impressive — but Hollywood awards shows are generally predictable. One recent study found that Polymarket’s forecasts in the weeks before the 2024 election were not much better than chance.

These markets are also manipulable. In 2012, one bettor on the now-defunct prediction market Intrade placed a series of huge wagers on Mitt Romney in the two weeks preceding the election, generating a betting line indicative of a tight race. The bettor did not seem motivated by financial gain, according to two researchers who examined the trades. “More plausibly, this trader could have been attempting to manipulate beliefs about the odds of victory in an attempt to boost fundraising, campaign morale, and turnout,” they wrote. The trader lost at least $4 million but might have shaped media attention of the race for less than the price of a prime-time ad, they concluded. […]

The irony of prediction markets is that they are supposed to be a more trustworthy way of gleaning the future than internet clickbait and half-baked punditry, but they risk shredding whatever shared trust we still have left. The suspiciously well-timed bets that one Polymarket user placed right before the capture of Nicolas Maduro may have been just a stroke of phenomenal luck that netted a roughly $400,000 payout. Or maybe someone with inside information was looking for easy money. […] As Tarek Mansour, Kalshi’s CEO, has said, his long-term goal is to “financialize everything and create a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion.” (Kalshi means “everything” in Arabic.) What could go wrong? As one viral post on X recently put it, “Got a buddy who is praying for world war 3 so he can win $390 on Polymarket.” It’s a joke. I think.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is reportedly planning a major Siri overhaul in iOS 27 and macOS 27 where the current assistant interface will be replaced with a deeply integrated, ChatGPT-style chatbot experience. “Users will be able to summon the new service the same way they open Siri now, by speaking the ‘Siri’ command or holding down the side button on their iPhone or iPad,” says Gurman. “More significantly, Siri will be integrated into all of the company’s core apps, including ones for mail, music, podcasts, TV, Xcode programming software and photos. That will allow users to do much more with just their voice.” 9to5Mac reports: The unannounced Siri overhaul will reportedly be revealed at WWDC in June as the flagship feature for iOS 27 and macOS 27. Its release is expected in September when Apple typically ships major software updates. While Apple plans to release an improved version of Siri and Apple Intelligence this spring, that version will use the existing Siri interface. The big difference is that Google’s Gemini models will power the intelligence. With the bigger update planned for iOS 27, the iOS 26 upgrade to Siri and Apple Intelligence sounds more like the first step to a long overdue modernization.

Gurman reports that the major Siri overhaul will “allow users to search the web for information, create content, generate images, summarize information and analyze uploaded files” while using “personal data to complete tasks, being able to more easily locate specific files, songs, calendar events and text messages.” People are already familiar with conversational interactions with AI, and Bloomberg says the bigger update to Siri will be support both text and voice. Siri already uses these input methods, but there’s no real continuity between sessions.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Because apparently people will buy anything except what I’m selling, Bravest Studios and artist Canyaon have made Toe Slides. They’re slides that look like big toes. They’re…what’s the word I’m looking for? “Not to be worn around foot fetishists?” Unnerving. That’s the word. Available in men’s sizes 4 – 15 (size down two for women’s), they cost $110. But the looks on people’s faces when they see you wearing them! And can you really put a price on your feet being the stars of tens of poorly viewed Instagram stories?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Spotify and several major record labels, including UMG, Sony, and Warner, have taken legal action against the unknown operators of Anna’s Archive. The action follows the shadow library’s announcement that it would release hundreds of terabytes of scraped Spotify data. Unsealed documents reveal that the court already issued a broad preliminary injunction, ordering hosting companies, Cloudflare, and domain name services, to take action. […] All these documents were filed under seal, as the shadow library might otherwise be tipped off and take countermeasures. These documents were filed ex-parte and kept away from Anna’s Archive. According to Spotify and the labels, this is needed “so that Anna’s Archive cannot pre-emptively frustrate” the countermeasures they seek.

The lawsuit (PDF), which was unsealed recently, explains directly why Anna’s Archive lost several of its domain names over the past weeks. The .ORG domain was suspended by the U.S.-based Public Interest Registry (PIR) in early January, while a domain registrar took the .SE variant offline a few days later. “We don’t believe this has to do with our Spotify backup,” AnnaArchivist said at the time, but court records prove them wrong. The unsealed paperwork shows that the court granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) on January 2, which aimed to target Anna’s Archive hosting and domain names. The sealed nature of this order also explains why the .ORG registry informed us that it could not comment on the suspension last week. While the .ORG and the .SE domains are suspended now, other domains remain operational. This suggests that the responsible registrars and registries do not automatically comply with U.S. court orders.

[…] While the unsealed documents resolve the domain suspension mystery, it is only the start of the legal battle in court. It is expected that Spotify and the music companies will do everything in their power to take further action, if needed. Interestingly, however, it appears that the music industry lawsuit may have already reached its goal. A few days ago, the dedicated Spotify download section was removed by Anna’s Archive. Whether this removal is linked to the legal troubles is unknown. However, it appears that Anna’s Archive stopped the specific distribution of Spotify content alleged in the complaint, seemingly in partial compliance with the injunction’s ban on ‘making available’ the scraped files.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A federal judge today ordered the US government to stop searching devices seized from the house of a Washington Post reporter. It may be only a temporary reprieve for the Post and reporter Hannah Natanson, however. Further proceedings will be held on whether the search can resume or whether the government must return the devices.

Natanson herself isn’t the subject of investigation, but the FBI executed a search warrant at her home and seized her work and personal devices last week as part of an investigation into alleged leaks by a Pentagon contractor. The Post filed a motion to force the return of the reporter’s property, and a separate motion for a standstill order that would prevent review of the seized devices until the court rules on whether they must be returned.

“Almost none of the seized data is even potentially responsive to the warrant, which seeks only records received from or relating to a single government contractor,” a Post court filing today said. “The seized data is core First Amendment-protected material, and some is protected by the attorney-client privilege.”

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Websites that authenticate users through links and codes sent in text messages are imperiling the privacy of millions of people, leaving them vulnerable to scams, identity theft, and other crimes, recently published research has found.

The links are sent to people seeking a range of services, including those offering insurance quotes, job listings, and referrals for pet sitters and tutors. To eliminate the hassle of collecting usernames and passwords—and for users to create and enter them—many such services instead require users to provide a cell phone number when signing up for an account. The services then send authentication links or passcodes by SMS when the users want to log in.

Easy to execute at scale

A paper published last week has found more than 700 endpoints delivering such texts on behalf of more than 175 services that put user security and privacy at risk. One practice that jeopardizes users is the use of links that are easily enumerated, meaning scammers can guess them by simply modifying the security token, which usually appears at the right of a URL. By incrementing the token—for instance, by first changing 123 to 124 or ABC to ABD and so on—the researchers were able to access accounts belonging to other users. From there, the researchers could view personal details, such as partially completed insurance applications.

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According to a report by The Information (paywalled), Apple is reportedly developing an AirTag-sized, camera-equipped AI wearable pin that could arrive as early as 2027.

“Apple’s pin, which is a thin, flat, circular disc with an aluminum-and-glass shell, features two cameras — a standard lens and a wide-angle lens — on its front face, designed to capture photos and videos of the user’s surroundings,” reports The Information, citing people familiar with the device. “It also includes three microphones to pick up sounds in the area surrounding the person wearing it. It has a speaker, a physical button along one of its edges and a magnetic inductive charging interface on its back, similar to the one used on the Apple Watch…” 9to5Mac reports: The Information also notes that Apple is attempting to speed up development in hopes of competing with OpenAI’s first wearable (slated to debut in 2026), and that it is not immediately clear whether this wearable would work in conjunction with other products, such as AirPods or Apple’s reported upcoming smart glasses. Today’s report also notes that this has been a challenging market for new companies, citing the recent failure of Humane’s AI Pin as an example.

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This is a video documenting Youtuber The Lab-X’s quest to build an AI-powered water turret to keep his cat Cookie off the kitchen counter. The 3D printed bot, named Puffy, uses computer-vision to track the cat’s movement and spray him when he’s detected on the counter. Lab-X plans to sell build-it-yourself kits and assembled units in the future if you’re interested. Over the course of six weeks, Cookie, who is far more calm than my cats (but equally stubborn) took fewer and fewer sprays to get down. Eventually, just the sound of Puffy opening was enough to deter him. How about that! Alternatively, keep your cats off the kitchen counters the same way I do: not having counters. Plus I don’t have to open drawers, I can just reach right in there for a spoon. “Do you rent or own?” Right now I’m squatting.

Last week, Apple finally admitted it will need to team up with Google to finally make good on that contextual Siri promise it made two years ago, which would have allowed the virtual assistant to integrate with content like your texts or emails to answer personal questions and take actions for you. Now, according to a new report, the iPhone company might actually go one step further and turn Siri into a full-fledged AI chatbot—one on par with the likes of ChatGPT, and perhaps even more sophisticated.

Currently, Siri has AI implementation, but only technically, and it’s certainly underwhelming: You can use it to get tech support on Apple products or shunt questions off to ChatGPT, but otherwise, Siri basically works as it always has. But according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who has reliably reported on insider information at Apple before, the company is finally not only looking to make Siri smarter, but also change the way you interact with it. Currently planned for iOS and macOS 27 under the name “Campos,” Siri’s new chatbot interface will still be powered by Gemini, but will allow you to both type and talk to Siri, with full continuity between your conversations. This upgrade will be in addition to the overdue features that were already announced.

In other words, it’ll look something like the chatbot interface from the ChatGPT app or the standalone Gemini app. Yes, you can technically type to Siri right now, but it mostly works like a separate input method, rather than as a full conversation. You can’t scroll through your previous questions to Siri or peruse the assistant’s previous answers, and if you ask Siri to reference a message you sent it two weeks ago, it’ll have no idea what you mean. That’s far behind what other AI chatbots offer right now.

The update will also apparently further expand Siri’s capabilities even beyond the contextual or personalization upgrades that were already revealed. Gurman says that, while the contextual upgrades will be able to pull information from other apps like Messages, the chatbot-style Siri will be “integrated into all of the company’s core apps, including ones for mail, music, podcasts, TV, Xcode programming software and photos.” Essentially, Siri will have more access to your iPhone than other AI chatbots, and those integrations will go beyond what was previously promised. That could make it more or less appealing to you, depending on your tastes in AI integration.

When the new Siri could arrive

With the chatbot interface planned for iOS 27, it’s likely to come after the contextual upgrades, rather than at the same time. That’s because, as Gurman said previously, those upgrades are set for the spring. He predicts we’ll learn more about it during this year’s WWDC, which, if it follows the standard set by previous years, will take place in June.

The move to turn Siri into a chatbot could come across as a a much-overdue modernization, as Google has already done the same with Gemini over on Android, but it’s also a bit of a surprise, as Apple had previously said it did not intend to turn Siri into a “bolt-on chatbot on the side” for Apple Intelligence.

But Apple was likely talking about quality of the experience rather than expressing any significant anti-chatbot bias among the development team, meaning the fact that Siri is turning into a chatbot could mean the company is finally happy with the direction it’s headed. But it’s also possible that the professed skepticism about turning Siri into a chatbot was meant to appeal to AI skeptics in general. Unfortunately, if you’re still skeptical about AI, it currently seems like iOS 27 will be a boring update for you, as Gurman indicated the new Siri chatbot will be the “primary new addition” to the operating system.

However you feel about it personally, Siri as a full-fledged AI chatbot could seriously upset ChatGPT’s market dominance—ironic, given its early integration with Apple Intelligence. Currently, OpenAI has reportedly admitted it’s in a Code Red situation, as it is losing market share to Google and introducing ads to bolster its bottom line. The new Siri, being powered by Gemini, is unlikely to hurt Google (although it will have more access to your phone than the standalone Gemini app), but its ease-of-access might make it the new go-to for iPhone users, and that could hurt pretty much every AI company Apple isn’t in business with directly.

In a small clinical trial, customized mRNA vaccines against high-risk skin cancers appeared to reduce the risk of cancer recurrence and death by nearly 50 percent over five years when compared with standard treatment alone. That’s according to Moderna and Merck, the two pharmaceutical companies that have collaborated on the experimental cancer vaccine, called intismeran autogene (mRNA-4157 or V940).

So far, the companies have only reported the top-line results in a press release this week. However, the results align closely with previous, more detailed analyses from the trial, which examined rates of recurrence and death at earlier time points, specifically at two years and three years after the treatment. More data from the trial—a Phase 2 trial—will soon be presented at a medical conference, the companies said. A Phase 3 trial is also underway, with enrollment complete.

The ongoing Phase 2 trial included 157 patients who were diagnosed with stage 3 or stage 4 melanoma and were at high risk of having it recur after surgical removal. A standard treatment to prevent recurrence after such surgery is immunotherapy, including Merck’s Keytruda (pembrolizumab). This drug essentially enables immune cells, specifically T cells, to attack and kill cancer cells—something they normally do. But, in many types of cancers, including melanoma, cancer cells have the ability to bind to receptors on T cells (called PD-1 receptors), which basically shuts the T cells down. Keytruda works by physically blocking the PD-1 receptors, preventing cancer cells from binding and keeping the T cells activated so they can kill the cancer.

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Nova Launcher has been acquired by Instabridge, which says it will keep the app maintained but is evaluating ad-supported options for the free version. Android Authority reports: Today, Nova Launcher announced that the Swedish company Instabridge has acquired it from Branch Metrics. Instabridge claims it wants to be a responsible owner of Nova and does not want to reinvent the launcher overnight. However, the launcher still needs a sustainable business model to support ongoing development and maintenance. To this end, Instabridge is exploring different options, including paid tiers and ad-supported options for the free version. The new owners claim that if ads are introduced, Nova Prime will remain ad-free. However, this is misleading, as ads are already here for some users. Last year, the founder and original programmer of Nova Launcher left the company, signaling its “death” as he had been the sole developer working on the launcher for the past year.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: The Belarusian government is threatening three HAM radio operators with the death penalty, detained at least seven people, and has accused them of “intercepting state secrets,” according to Belarusian state media, independent media outside of Belarus, and the Belarusian human rights organization Viasna. The arrests are an extreme attack on what is most often a wholesome hobby that has a history of being vilified by authoritarian governments in part because the technology is quite censorship resistant.

The detentions were announced last week on Belarusian state TV, which claimed the men were part of a network of more than 50 people participating in the amateur radio hobby and have been accused of both “espionage” and “treason.” Authorities there said they seized more than 500 pieces of radio equipment. The men were accused on state TV of using radio to spy on the movement of government planes, though no actual evidence of this has been produced. State TV claimed they were associated with the Belarusian Federation of Radioamateurs and Radiosportsmen (BFRR), a long-running amateur radio club and nonprofit that holds amateur radio competitions, meetups, trainings, and forums. Siarhei Besarab, a Belarusian HAM radio operator, posted a plea for support from others in the r/amateurradio subreddit. “I am writing this because my local community is being systematically liquidated in what I can only describe as a targeted intellectual genocide,” Besarab wrote. “I beg you to amplify this signal and help us spread this information. Please show this to any journalist you know, send it to human rights organizations, and share it with your local radio associations.”

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