Creative Labs, the maker of Sound Blaster audio cards, has launched a Kickstarter for a modular audio hub called Sound Blaster Re:Imagine. The universal hub, which is reminiscent of Elgato’s Stream Deck, is meant to allow routing from any input to any output with the press of a button. Users can connect their gaming consoles, PC and musical instruments to the Re:Imagine, as well as speakers, wired headsets and wireless headphones, transitioning seamlessly between them.
The system uses magnetic modules including a 3-inch smart screen, four-button pad, rotary knob and dual sliders that can all be rearranged on the base unit. The Horizon base with five slots is the default design for the Kickstarter project, with an expanded six-slot Vertex base listed as a stretch goal.
Re:Imagine sports an octa-core ARM processor with a small NPU, 8GB of RAM, 16GB of flash storage and is expandable thanks to a microSD card slot. The hub’s audio prowess is powered by a high-resolution 32-bit digital-to-analog converter (DAC), and it supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The hub runs on Linux and can be used in a standalone setup, or as a PC-tethered audio hub.
The Re:Imagine also comes with an AI DJ that can generate music, a built-in DOS emulator for retro gaming, one-tap audio recording and more. The modular hub is also developer-friendly, with an included SDK and sample source code that encourage users to build their own custom apps and then share them with the Creative Labs community.
The Kickstarter campaign will run through December and lists an estimated shipping date of July 2026.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/creative-labs-is-crowdfunding-a-modular-sound-blaster-audio-hub-161957129.html?src=rss
One reason to use the Task Manager in Windows is to see if any of the apps running on your computer are misbehaving or using a disproportionate amount of resources. But what do you do when the misbehaving app is the Task Manager itself?
After a recent Windows update, some users (including Windows Latest) noticed that closing the Task Manager window was actually failing to close the app, leaving the executable running in memory. More worryingly, each time you open the Task Manager, it spawns a new process on top of the old one, which you can repeat essentially infinitely (or until your PC buckles under the pressure).
Each instance of Task Manager takes up around 20MB of system RAM and hovers between 0 and 2 percent CPU usage—if you have just a handful of instances open, it’s unlikely that you’d notice much of a performance impact. But if you use Task Manager frequently or just go a long time between reboots, opening up two or three dozen copies of the process that are all intermittently using a fraction of your CPU can add up, leading to a potentially significant impact on performance and battery life.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) does not let people decline to be scanned by its new facial recognition app, which the agency uses to verify a person’s identity and their immigration status, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document obtained by 404 Media. The document also says any face photos taken by the app, called Mobile Fortify, will be stored for 15 years, including those of U.S. citizens.
The document provides new details about the technology behind Mobile Fortify, how the data it collects is processed and stored, and DHS’s rationale for using it. On Wednesday 404 Media reported that both ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are scanning peoples’ faces in the streets to verify citizenship.
“ICE does not provide the opportunity for individuals to decline or consent to the collection and use of biometric data/photograph collection,” the document, called a Privacy Threshold Analysis (PTA), says. A PTA is a document that DHS creates in the process of deploying new technology or updating existing capabilities. It is supposed to be used by DHS’s internal privacy offices to determine and describe the privacy risks of a certain piece of tech. “CBP and ICE Privacy are jointly submitting this new mobile app PTA for the ICE Mobile Fortify Mobile App (Mobile Fortify app), a mobile application developed by CBP and made accessible to ICE agents and officers operating in the field,” the document, dated February, reads. 404 Media obtained the document (which you can see here) via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with CBP.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Sora, OpenAI’s short-form AI video generator, has been out for just about a month now, and already, it’s helping to spread disinformation on social media. Accounts share Sora generations without any transparency, sometimes with the Sora watermark removed, and while shrewd observers see through the AI, many people scrolling by don’t think twice and believe things happened that didn’t. That could be as innocuous as Jake Paul putting on makeup, or as dangerous as a fake interview meant to manipulate viewers towards a political bias. It’s getting scary out there.
So far, for the free model, Sora has capped video generations at 30 per day. If you pay for the Pro model, you get 100 generations a day. But if you’re using Sora free of charge, once you produce your 30th video, you aren’t able to make any more. I see that as a good thing, myself: 30 hyper-realistic AI videos a day per user is already way too high.
OpenAI, unfortunately, isn’t consulting me—and Sora now allows users to pay for extra generations once they’ve reached the free limit. Bill Peebles, head of Sora, announced the change in a Thursday post on X. Peebles said the company has been “amazed” by the demand from “power users,” but, as it stands, “the economics are currently completely unsustainable.” According to Peebles, the Sora team thought 30 free generations per day would suffice, but that hasn’t been the case. By offering users the chance to pay for additional generations, OpenAI plans to start pulling in extra revenue from its popular short-form AI video generator.
Peebles also believes that the company will generate future funds from a “new Sora economy.” That would include two parts: rights holders charging users a fee to cameo their characters or real-life people, as well as creators earning money from the videos they post. If you don’t plan on paying for Sora generations, though, there’s some “bad” news: Peebles says the company will bring the number of free generations down as the platforms grows, as the company doesn’t have enough GPUs to manage the demand.
As reported by The Verge, you’ll be able to purchase 10 additional video generations for $4 a pop—though the actual credits each video takes may depend on many different factors. When you reach your limit, the app will let you buy more through the App Store (Sora is currently iOS-only). Those credits will expire after 12 months, which I imagine will be plenty of time for someone making Sora videos. You can also transfer them to use on Codex, OpenAI’s coding platform.
I personally see Sora’s exponential growth as a bad thing. I get the finances: OpenAI is now operating like a for-profit company, and needs to pull in revenue. But OpenAI, along with other AI companies, is blatantly ignoring the deepfake disinformation machine these products have become. The more the company pushes users to generate with Sora, the more realistic AI slop we’ll encounter in our feeds.
The Republican-led FCC has voted on and approved a proposal that would make it harder for consumers to receive itemized bills with accurate information from their ISPs, as originally spotted by CNET. This proposal revises previous “unnecessary” requirements on the grounds that a fact-based list of charges “may confuse customers.”
These changes would minimize the benefit of the so-called “nutrition labels” which are otherwise known as Broadband Facts labels. You’ve likely run into these simple itemized labels when shopping for a broadband plan. They tell consumers exactly what we are paying for, even if it may “confuse” our fragile little minds.
The FCC passed a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on October 28 that would significantly scale back the Broadband Facts label. ISPs have been required to publish these labels since April, 2024. All Republican commission members voted to approve the change, while the lone Democrat dissented.
As previously noted, this is technically just an NPRM. So it’s not a done deal just yet. There will be a final vote in the near future, but it’s expected to pass given the political makeup of the commission.
Once passed, ISPs will no longer be required to read these labels over the phone to customers, make them available in account portals or give a complete accounting of fees to customers. The FCC previously stated that these transparency requirements are “unduly burdensome and provide minimal benefit to consumers.” I happen to think that knowing what I’m shelling $100 out for each month to be of maximal benefit. Maybe that’s just me.
These labels were initially proposed all the way back in 2016, before being implemented by the Biden administration in 2024. They offer a breakdown of every little thing that goes into a bill for a service plan, including many “hidden fees” that ISPs don’t include in advertised plan prices.
It’s worth noting that the labels will technically still exist, they will just be harder to find and won’t be all that useful. Raza Panjwani, senior policy counsel at New America’s Open Technology Institute, refers to this as a political “two-step.” He told CNET that the modus operandi here is to make the labels “less useful” and then say “Oh, look, it’s not that useful. We should get rid of it.”
Anna Gomez, the only Democrat on the commission, called the proposal “one of the most anti-consumer items I have seen” and expressed extreme displeasure with the results of the vote. “What adds insult to injury is that the FCC does not even explain why this proposal is necessary,” she said. “Make it make sense.”
Despite claims to the contrary by Brendan Carr and the current FCC, consumers actually like these labels. A 2024 study of nearly 5,000 broadband customers found an 85 percent satisfaction rate.
As an aside, Americans pay a lot for internet service when compared to many other countries throughout the world. We pay around twice as much as customers in Europe and most of Asia.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/trumps-fcc-is-officially-moving-to-make-it-easier-for-internet-companies-to-charge-hidden-fees-155004909.html?src=rss
When one considers the core gameplay loop of Pac-Man,
The speedy demolition of the East Wing of the White House last week has health advocates and Democratic lawmakers seeking answers about what efforts were taken, if any, to keep workers and passersby safe from potential plumes of asbestos that could arise from the destruction, according to a report by The Washington Post.
The East Wing was originally constructed in 1902 and was renovated in 1942, and asbestos was used extensively in government buildings during this period, according to the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO), a nonprofit focused on preventing asbestos exposure. Anyone who inadvertently breathes in asbestos fibers launched into the air by construction work could be at heightened risk of lung diseases and cancer.
“Every building of this age must undergo full asbestos inspection and abatement before any demolition begins,” Linda Reinstein, president and cofounder of ADAO, said in a press statement.
Perplexity AI has agreed to a multi-year licensing partnership with Getty Images that will allow its users to access the latter’s extensive library of images. Leveraging Getty’s API, Perplexity will integrate the visual media distributor’s huge collection of stock and editorial imagery within its AI search and discovery tools, with correct attribution being a key part of the agreement.
In a press release, Getty said that Perplexity will be “making improvements on how it displays imagery, including image credit with link to source, to better educate users on how to use licensed imagery legally.” As generative AI tools become more widely accessible, thorny issues around copyright and attribution have been the source of a number of lawsuits, no shortage of which have been targeted at Perplexity.
In August, the company was sued by two Japanese media groups, Nikkei and Asahi Shimbun, for allegedly copying and storing article content from the pair’s servers illicitly, as well as crediting them with inaccurate information Perplexity supplied. It was also one of four companies sued by Reddit earlier this month for allegedly using scraped data without the correct license. Even the dictionary has taken the AI company to court.
Getty itself has bumped up against AI many times on the road to its new deal with Perplexity. Back in 2022 the company outright banned AI-generated art on its platform due the legal murkiness around copyright, and it later sued the AI art tool Stable Diffusion over for allegedly copying and processing millions of protected images from its collection.
On the Perplexity agreement, Getty Images’ Vice President Strategic Development, Nick Unsworth, said that “partnerships such as this support AI platforms to increase the quality and accuracy of information delivered to consumers, ultimately building a more engaging and reliable experience.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/perplexity-signs-deal-to-use-getty-images-152343900.html?src=rss
Two chunks of ocher unearthed at ancient rock shelters in Ukraine were actually Neanderthal crayons, according to a recent study. The pair of artifacts, unearthed from layers 47,000 and 46,000 years old, showed signs of being deliberately shaped into crayons and resharpened over time. A third piece of ocher had been carefully carved with parallel lines. The finds add to the growing body of evidence that Neanderthals had an artistic streak.
This piece of yellow ocher was used as a crayon and resharpened before finally being worn blunt and discarded.
Credit:
D’Errico et al. 2025
Rock shelters, occupied by Neanderthals between 100,000 and 33,000 years ago, dot the landscape near the modern city of Bilohirsk in Crimea (a peninsula in southern Ukraine). Archaeologists studying those rock shelters have unearthed dozens of chunks of an iron-rich mineral called ocher. Many of them have flakes knocked out or grooves gouged into their surface, which mark how Neanderthals extracted powdery red, orange, or yellow pigment from the stone. D’Errico and his colleagues used X-ray fluorescence and scanning electron microscopes to examine 16 ocher chunks to better understand exactly what ancient Crimean Neanderthals were doing with the stuff.
Most of those ocher chunks could have been used for nearly anything. Ocher is handy not just as a pigment but also for tanning animal hides, mixing with resins into adhesives for hafting tools, or even repelling insects and preventing infection. Knapping a few flakes off a hard nodule of ocher, then crushing them into powder (or just carving out a chunk of a softer, more crumbly piece), is a good way to prepare it for any of those uses. But two pieces, both from a site called Zaskalnaya V, were clearly different.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the company’s latest big round of layoffs — about 14,000 corporate jobs — wasn’t triggered by financial strain or AI replacing workers, but rather a push to stay nimble. From a report: Speaking with analysts on Amazon’s quarterly earnings call Thursday, Jassy said the decision stemmed from a belief that the company had grown too big and too layered. “The announcement that we made a few days ago was not really financially driven, and it’s not even really AI-driven — not right now, at least,” he said. “Really, it’s culture.”
Jassy’s comments are his first public explanation of the layoffs, which reportedly could ultimately total as many as 30,000 people — and would be the largest workforce reduction in Amazon’s history. The news this week prompted speculation that the cuts were tied to automation or AI-related restructuring. Earlier this year, Jassy wrote in a memo to employees that he expected Amazon’s total corporate workforce to shrink over time due to efficiency gains from AI. But his comments Thursday framed the layoffs as a cultural reset aimed at keeping the company fast-moving amid what he called “the technology transformation happening right now.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Adobe brought together 10,000 marketers, filmmakers and content creators to its annual conference this week to persuade them that the company’s software products are adapting to AI and remain the best tools for their work. But it’s Adobe’s investors, rather than its users, who are the most skeptical that generative AI technology won’t disrupt the company’s business as the top seller of software for creative professionals.
Despite a strong strategy, Adobe is “at risk of structural AI-driven competitive and pricing pressure,” wrote Tyler Radke, an analyst at Citigroup. The company’s shares have lost about a quarter of their value this year as AI tools like Google’s video-generating model Veo have gained steam. In an interview with Bloomberg Television earlier this week, Adobe Chief Executive Officer Shantanu Narayen said the company is undervalued as the market is focused on semiconductors and the training of AI models.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
About an hour after sunrise over the Mojave Desert of Southern California, NASA’s newest experimental supersonic jet took to the skies for the first time on Tuesday. The X-59 Quesst (Quiet SuperSonic Technology) is designed to decrease the noise of a sonic boom when an aircraft breaks the sound barrier, paving the way for future commercial jets to fly at supersonic speeds over land.
The jet, built by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, took off from US Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. Flown by Nils Larson, NASA’s lead test pilot for the X-59, the inaugural flight validated the jet’s airworthiness and safety before landing about an hour after takeoff near NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.
“X-59 is a symbol of American ingenuity,” acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said in a statement. “It’s part of our DNA—the desire to go farther, faster, and even quieter than anyone has ever gone before.”
SpaceX on Thursday released the most detailed public update in nearly two years on its multibillion-dollar contract to land astronauts on the Moon for NASA, amid growing sentiment that China is likely to beat the United States back to the lunar surface with humans.
In a lengthy statement published on SpaceX’s website Thursday, the company said it “will be a central enabler that will fulfill the vision of NASA’s Artemis program, which seeks to establish a lasting presence on the lunar surface… and ultimately forge the path to land the first humans on Mars.”
Getting to Mars is SpaceX’s overarching objective, a concise but lofty mission statement introduced by Elon Musk at the company’s founding nearly a quarter-century ago. Musk has criticized NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return US astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the last Apollo lunar mission in 1972, as unambitious and too reliant on traditional aerospace contractors.
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The JBL Charge 6 is currently available for $169.95 at Walmart, down from its original $199.95. That small drop might not look dramatic on paper, but considering this model only came out recently, it’s one of the better deals you’ll find on a premium portable outdoor speaker.
The Charge 6 keeps the same rugged, travel-friendly design JBL’s known for while improving on what made the Charge 5 such a crowd favorite. It’s built for the outdoors—durable enough to survive a few bumps and rated IP68, meaning it’s both dustproof and waterproof. You can drop it in a pool or take it to the beach without worrying about damage. JBL also added a looped handle, which makes it easier to carry from one spot to another.
Sound-wise, it’s a noticeable step up from the previous generation. Inside are a 2.1-by-3.7-inch woofer and a 0.8-inch tweeter that combine for 45 watts of power, backed by passive radiators on each end for extra low-end punch. The audio has weight and clarity, and while you won’t get chest-rattling bass, it’s more than enough for a backyard gathering or a long afternoon by the pool, notes this PCMag review.
If you want more control, JBL’s seven-band EQ in the companion app gives you plenty of room to tweak the sound to your liking. As for its battery life, the Charge 6 is said to last up to 24 hours on a full charge (depending on usage) and can even double as a power bank for your phone through the USB-C port, which also supports lossless audio when plugged in.
Connectivity and features are strong for this size and price. The Charge 6 runs on Bluetooth 5.4 for stable connections and now supports Auracast, a newer broadcast feature that lets you tune into compatible audio streams or sync multiple speakers for group listening. Codec support is limited to AAC and SBC, which may disappoint anyone wanting higher-end audio over Bluetooth, but the wired option partly makes up for that. JBL skipped including a charging brick or cable, which is a letdown for something in this price range. Still, if you’re after a speaker that’s loud, portable, and can handle real-world abuse while sounding great, the Charge 6 fits the bill, and this price makes it even more appealing.
Google’s AI ambitions are global in scale, so much so that it has just agreed to give Gemini away for free in India to people using the country’s biggest mobile provider. Thanks to a deal with Reliance Intelligence, an AI-focused subsidiary of Reliance Industries, people signed up to Jio’s Unlimited 5G plan will be offered Google AI Pro at no extra cost for 18 months.
That means that qualifying users will have access to Gemini 2.5 Pro, Google’s most advanced AI model. They will also benefit from higher limits for the Nano Banana and Veo 3.1 AI image and video generators, plus expanded access to NotebookLM. The plan also includes 2TB of cloud storage across Google’s apps, for a total combined worth of around 35,100 rupees ($396) per user.
The offer will initially be exclusive to Jio customers between the age of 18 and 25, but will eventually extend to all people on an eligible plan via the MyJio app. Jio is India’s largest mobile network operator, and a company in which Google purchased a 7.7 percent stake worth $4.5 million in 2020.
India is fast becoming a key battleground for AI expansion. Back in July, Perplexity AI partnered with Bharti Airtel, Jio’s rival carrier, to offer a year-long Perplexity Pro subscription worth $200 to all of Airtel’s 360 million customers. OpenAI is also adopting an aggressive strategy in the country, recently debuting its cheapest ChatGPT subscription to date, at 390 rupee ($4.60), in India first. ChatGPT Go offers users 10 times more message limits, image generation and file uploads than the free version.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-brings-free-gemini-access-to-indias-largest-carrier-130627625.html?src=rss
NVIDIA has teamed up with with South Korea’s biggest companies and the country itself, as they build out their AI infrastructure. One of those companies is Samsung, which is building a new AI factory that will use 50,000 NVIDIA Blackwell server GPUs and other NVIDIA technologies to make its own chips. This “AI-driven semiconductor manufacturing,” as the companies call it, will help Samsung improve its processes, better predict maintenance needs and improve the efficiency of its autonomous operations. NVIDIA will help Samsung adapt its chipmaking lithography platform to work with its GPUs, and it will apparently result in 20 times greater performance for Samsung.
Korean carmaker Hyundai will also use 50,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs to develop its AI models for manufacturing and autonomous driving. Meanwhile, the SK Group conglomerate, which includes SK Telecom and DRAM and flash memory chip supplier SK Hynix, will use 50,000 NVIDIA Blackwell server chips to launch an industrial AI cloud. The facility, NVIDIA says, will power the “next generation of memory, robotics, digital twins and intelligent AI agents.” As Bloomberg reports, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, who’s in South Korea for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Summit, was recently photographed with Samsung’s Jay Y. Lee and Hyundai’s Chung Euisun in a local restaurant.
Finally, NVIDIA is working with the South Korean government for its sovereign AI infrastructure, or AI it will have control over. The Korean government will deploy 50,000 NVIDIA GPUs to the National AI Computing Center it’s establishing, as well to facilities owned by local companies that include Kakao and Naver.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/samsung-is-using-nvidia-chips-to-build-its-new-ai-chip-factory-130057773.html?src=rss
