The Federal Communications Commission is facing widespread criticism after threatening to revoke EchoStar licenses for spectrum bands that rival firms, including SpaceX, want to take over. Opposition to license revocations came from conservatives, telecom consumer advocates, and some industry groups.

The Free State Foundation, a free-market group that has generally supported Republican priorities at the FCC, filed comments saying that “arbitrary” decisions would create instability in the market for wireless broadband deployment. EchoStar is now facing regulatory uncertainty less than a year after obtaining deadline extensions for its wireless network buildout, the Free State Foundation said:

There is widespread agreement that constructing and operating wireless broadband networks depends on significant private market investment. Legal stability is a necessary ingredient for the operation of any marketplace conducive to competition and growth, including today’s dynamic wireless market. Before risking their money in commercial ventures, private investors reasonably seek assurance that their interests and rights will be protected from changes in the rules or agency actions that are arbitrary or unforeseen… Rescission of deadline extension orders granted months earlier undoubtedly creates a type of regulatory uncertainty.

As previously reported, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr directed agency staff to investigate EchoStar’s compliance with obligations to provide nationwide 5G service under the terms of its spectrum licenses. EchoStar bought Dish Network in December 2023 and offers wireless service under the Boost Mobile brand.

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While iOS 26’s Liquid Glass design deservedly got most of the attention at Apple’s WWDC 2025 keynote, there were still several other additions worth talking about. These include a bunch of new Apple Music enhancements, such as lyrics translation, a new DJ-like feature called AutoMix, and animated cover art on the lock screen. Here are all the new Apple Music features in iOS 26.

Lyrics Translation for your favorite songs

Apple Music has had time-synced lyrics for a while now, which works great when you speak the language of the song. However, it’s not as helpful when you’re listening to songs in different languages, and that’s where Lyrics Translation comes in. It adds translations below each time-synced lyric line, making it easy to follow the song’s meaning, too. This hasn’t yet been added to all songs, but I expect that to change over the coming months.

Learn how to pronounce lyrics correctly

Another iOS 26 lyrics upgrade lets Apple Music show you the correct pronunciations for lyrics in foreign languages. Not every song has lyrics in the Roman script, so if you can’t read the alphabet they’re in, this new feature will help you learn how to pronounce those words. It does this by showing you a transliteration from the original script to Roman, which makes it easier to sing along.

AutoMix is an AI DJ for your playlists

AutoMix is a new addition to Apple Music’s playback controls. You’ll see it alongside the Shuffle, Repeat, and Autoplay buttons. When enabled, AutoMix will analyze the audio features of songs and use DJ-like tricks such as time stretching and beat matching to deliver continuous playback. Some people may like this, but I tried this during a run today and I’m not a big fan. I make lots of custom playlists on Apple Music, and some of those are painstakingly curated by matching the sounds at the end of one song with the start of the next one. AutoMix undid all my hard work and made the transitions feel unnatural. This may work for some types of playlists and for people who don’t care much about transitions, but it’s not doing much for me.

Pin your favorite playlists

This is a sweet feature that lets you quickly open your favorite Apple Music playlists. You can press and hold any playlist in the Music app in iOS 26, and pin it to the top of the Library tab. If you’ve pinned your favorite contacts in Messages, then you’ll find music pinning to be a familiar feature.

Animated cover art comes to your lock screen

Animated cover art is one of the more visually appealing features of Apple Music, and now it’s coming to your lock screen as well. When you play a song that has animated album art, you can tap the player on the lock screen to see it in a neat full-screen view.

A karaoke feature for Apple TV users

Apple Music is also getting a new feature called Sing, which only works if you have an iPhone with iOS 26 and an Apple TV running tvOS 26. With all those requirements in place, you can use your iPhone as a mic and have your voice amplified by Apple Music to have a fun karaoke experience right at home.

AI is speeding up the work of America’s intelligence services, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Tuesday. From a report: Speaking to a technology conference, Gabbard said AI programs, when used responsibly, can save money and free up intelligence officers to focus on gathering and analyzing information. The sometimes slow pace of intelligence work frustrated her as a member of Congress, Gabbard said, and continues to be a challenge. AI can run human resource programs, for instance, or scan sensitive documents ahead of potential declassification, Gabbard said. Her office has released tens of thousands of pages of material related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and his brother, New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, on the orders of President Donald Trump.

Experts had predicted the process could take many months or even years, but AI accelerated the work by scanning the documents to see if they contained any material that should remain classified, Gabbard said during her remarks at the Amazon Web Services Summit in Washington. “We have been able to do that through the use of AI tools far more quickly than what was done previously — which was to have humans go through and look at every single one of these pages,” Gabbard said.

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I’ve previously shared the Good News about mosquito dunks, which stop mosquitoes from being able to breed in standing water. For the third year running, I am using dunks to create what’s sometimes called a “mosquito bucket of doom,” a trap that entices mosquitoes to breed in standing water that you have (muahahaha) poisoned against them. 

Summit Mosquito Dunk Tablet, 20 Count (Pack of 1)

$17.56
at Amazon

$21.27
Save $3.71

$17.56
at Amazon

$21.27
Save $3.71

Not only is a bucket of doom easy to create—it took about five minutes, and my elementary-aged daughter did most of the work—it’s also more effective than other mosquito control attempts, like mosquito foggers. 

Why the bucket of doom is more effective than other types of mosquito management

There are three main ways of dealing with a mosquito problem in your yard: 

• Keep the mosquitoes away from you personally, with box fans, bug spray, and barriers like screening. They’re still out there, but at least they aren’t biting you.

• Kill adult mosquitoes, for example with foggers. Those individual mosquitoes won’t be able to bite anymore, since they’re dead, but the small amount you’ve managed to kill is not much of a dent in the mosquito population. This is the least effective strategy.

• Kill larvae or interfere with breeding. This is where the bucket of doom comes in. You’ll eliminate breeding sites in your yard, except for that very special bucket. The bucket will kill the baby mosquitoes before they can grow up. 

The first and third options are the ones that will make a difference: box fans and bug spray for yourself, mosquito breeding control for your yard. If you’re interested in trying to kill adult mosquitoes, read up on adulticides. They can be toxic to other insects like bees. They also don’t tend to help mosquito problems unless you can manage to kill a lot of the adult mosquitoes, which can be difficult and expensive.

The bucket of doom is an easy and effective form of breeding control, but be aware that it works best in places where there aren’t other breeding sites for the mosquitoes. If you live next door to a swamp, the bucket may not help much. On the other hand, if you’re in a place where you and your neighbors are good about cleaning up stagnant water, the bucket will be more effective.

How a mosquito bucket of doom works

First, you need to understand the mosquito life cycle. (There are different species, with different preferences about who to bite and where to breed, but the same basic facts apply.)

Just as butterflies have a larval stage (the caterpillar), mosquitoes also have a larval stage and an adult flying stage. Females lay their eggs in or near water, and the larvae are aquatic. If you’ve ever looked into a bucket or pond and noticed wriggling wormy things near the surface, those were mosquito larvae. They hang upside down, breathing through a tube in their butts (I promise I am not making this up) but can swim around to hide or to look for microscopic bits of food to eat. 

They pupate (like caterpillars) and emerge from the water as adult mosquitoes. Male and female adults drink flower nectar (!!!) which is enough to keep them alive, but when a female is ready to breed, she needs protein. That’s where the biting comes in. She needs a “blood meal” to be able to build those little baby mosquito eggs. So she bites you, drinks a drop of your blood, and then a few days later she lays her eggs. Then the cycle can begin again.

The entire life cycle only takes a few weeks, so mosquitoes will breed (and bite) continuously all season. We’re going to disrupt this process by poisoning the water that the larvae live in. The eggs will hatch, but the larvae will die.

Is a mosquito bucket of doom safe? 

One of the things I love about the bucket of doom is that it targets mosquitoes and doesn’t affect most other insects, nor people and animals. 

The “poison” that we’re using is actually just a naturally occurring bacterium with the scientific name Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (often abbreviated Bti). This type of bacteria makes a toxin that can kill mosquitoes, fungus gnats, and blackflies, but Bti is nontoxic to mammals, birds, and fish. Insects that don’t breed in water aren’t affected by dunks, so butterflies and bees are safe. 

A bucket of water can be a safety hazard for small children and for animals, just because they could fall into it and drown. If your bucket of doom is in an area where children, pets, or wildlife could access it, consider covering the bucket with a barrier. Chicken wire makes an easy DIY cover, but if you want something a little neater looking, use a hydroponic basket that snaps onto the top of the bucket. 

Tectsia Net Pots 6 Inch for 5 Gallon Bucket Wide Lids (6 Pack), Net Cups Hydroponic Bucket Lids, BPA-Free, DWC Basket Lids for 5 and 3.5 Gallon Bucket

$31.99

$31.99

How to make a mosquito bucket of doom

First, gather your supplies: 

• A bucket (the 5-gallon kind they sell at Home Depot is perfect)

• A package of mosquito dunks or granules that contain Bti

• Some organic matter like leaves or hay

• A lid, as described above (optional)

There’s an area of my yard where we often have a bucket or two around, and those buckets tend to fill up with rain. Obviously I dump them when I notice, but every now and then I’ve seen mosquito larvae in one of those buckets. Gross. So that’s where I decided to set up my first bucket of doom. 

I’ve seen the larvae even when there wasn’t any obvious source of nutrients in the bucket, but the instructions from university websites usually mention adding some hay, straw, or other organic matter. I asked my daughter to gather up some dry leaves from the corners of the yard and driveway. Then we filled the bucket partway with water, before adding the magic ingredient. Here are the steps so you can follow along: 

1. Add plant matter (hay, straw, leaves) to the bucket. 

2. Add water to the bucket, making a nice little pond for the mosquitoes.

3. Drop in ¼ of a mosquito dunk, or the amount indicated on the package.

In case you were wondering how big these things are.
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

How to maintain your bucket of doom throughout the summer

My package said a quarter of a doughnut-shaped dunk is appropriate for controlling mosquitoes in one square foot of surface area, so we used a quarter dunk for our bucket. (Some photos online show people using a full dunk per bucket; that’s probably overkill.) You will need to add a new dunk monthly. 

I got my dunks for a little under $20 for a pack of 20, so let’s say I’m paying 25 cents per month to reduce the mosquito population. Add the cost of the bucket ($4.99 if you don’t already have one sitting around at home) and that’s less than $7 for a summer’s worth of mosquito protection. 

Make more than one bucket if you have a big yard or just want to cover your bases in multiple locations (maybe one in the backyard, one by your front porch). And remember, you still need to dump out all of your non-poisoned standing water. The bucket of doom works best when it’s the mosquitoes’ only option. 

People who use these buckets tend to report that they noticed far fewer mosquitoes in the months that followed, and I have definitely found that to be true. Mosquitoes take a few weeks to go through their life cycle, so don’t expect results instantly—but if you maintain your bucket and take care to eliminate other sources of standing water, you should notice there aren’t as many mosquitoes around this year as usual. 

Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday, broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who’s covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from the past week that you need to know about, including some headlines from outside of Engadget.

Please enjoy — and I’ll see you next week.

Summer Game Fest 2025 will be remembered as the one that happened while the Waymos burned.

The SGF Play Days event space, where games media and influencers meet up with developers over a long weekend, is in the fashion district in Los Angeles, and this year it was a few miles from the heart of sprawling protests against ICE. After months of inhumane and legally dubious deportations of LA residents by masked federal agents — emboldened by President Donald Trump’s far-right extremism and equipped with weapons built for war — the bubble of resistance popped. Protestors hit the streets after ICE officers swept up dozens of people across LA in another round of coordinated raids on Friday, June 6. The protests grew over the weekend and Trump called in the National Guard, followed by the Marines. Militarized LAPD officers attacked people with horses and batons, and they fired rubber bullets into crowds and directly at one journalist. On Sunday evening, protestors lit a line of unoccupied Waymos on fire.

The thick, black smoke was visible from the Play Days lot. I saw it as I was leaving the media lounge, heading toward the food trucks, and it stopped me in my tracks just in front of the Capcom booth. The low buzz of helicopters and the cries of police sirens had been a constant companion that weekend, but the smoke was new. I stopped and took a photo as upbeat reggae music pumped out of the speaker beside me. Around the corner, an actor dressed as a Fortnite banana in a suit was enticing passersby to play Ddakji as part of a cross-promotional effort with Squid Game. The dissonance made my head spin.

The sickly pallor of encroaching authoritarianism has hung over every video game convention in the past six months — because it’s shadowed literally everything in the United States this year. I’ve spent a significant amount of this time actively shutting down thoughts about Project 2025, government-sponsored human trafficking, neo-Nazis and all manner of hateful, bigoted policies targeting the United States’ most vulnerable people, because if I didn’t, the stress of these realities would consume me. I think most of us are doing something similar nowadays. We have to deprioritize specific thoughts at certain times, in order to get work done, maintain relationships and make it through the day. Having to ignore these monumental things in favor of, at least in my case, video games is a mindfuck.

The smoke from the burning Waymos, visible from the main alleyway at SGF, felt like a physical manifestation of this constant internal tension. Video games are a vehicle for connection and expression, and they’re deeply valuable to society — but, as with anything else, their importance is a matter of perspective.

Jessica Conditt

The news

Everything — like, everything — announced at Summer Game Fest 2025

Our SGF 2025 roundup post is a comprehensive rundown of all the news from the show, from Day of the Devs to the big Xbox showcase. We’ll be adding our hands-ons and interviews as they’re published over the coming week right at the top of this article, so feel free to keep checking back. Or, Engadget’s Gaming hub will keep you covered.

Resident Evil Requiem is a thing

Arguably the biggest bit of news out of SGF 2025, Resident Evil Requiem is due out on February 27, 2026. It’s a mainline Resident Evil title starring FBI agent Grace Ashcroft, and it features familiar locations from the series, including Raccoon City’s demolished police department.

The Outer Worlds 2 release date

Obsidian’s sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds 2 is heading to PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on October 29 — just in time for everyone to understand your fancy-man moon-head Halloween costume.

There’s an official Xbox handheld, but it isn’t made by Xbox

After months of rumors about Microsoft and ASUS teaming up to make an Xbox-branded handheld gaming device, we finally have relief. The ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X are due out this holiday season, capable of playing Xbox games natively via the cloud or a remote console connection, and with support for other popular PC storefronts like Steam, GOG and Battle.net. There’s no word on price or an exact release date yet, but the Xbox handhelds are definitely, finally coming.

Relooted looks like the kind of fun we need right now

If you only have time to read about one game from SGF 2025, acquaint yourself with Relooted from South African indie studio Nyamakop. It’s a heist game about rescuing African artifacts from the Western colonizers who stole them, and it’s filled with puzzles, action and Afrofuturism. This is one to keep an eye on.

Enter the world of Mat Smith writeups

Engadget’s UK Bureau Chief Mat Smith was on the ground at SGF 2025 and he’s already published a trio of stories directly from the show, each one more delightful than the last. There’s a look at Lumines Arise, complete with input from director Takashi Ishihara; a preview of Patapon spiritual successor Ratatan; and Mat’s thoughts on Supermassive’s sci-fi romp Directive 8020. There’s more coming from Mat, too, so keep that Engadget Gaming tab open.

Sword of the Sea is a return to form for the artist behind Journey

I had a lovely little chat at SGF with Matt Nava, the artist responsible for Journey, Abzû, The Pathless, and the upcoming sand-surfing game, Sword of the Sea. Nava has spent the past decade or so running from his own shadow, but with Sword of the Sea, he’s finally following his intuition again. This story includes impressions of the game — spoiler: it’s fabulous — and development insight from Nava.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/video-games-weekly-the-one-that-happened-while-the-waymos-burned-192959322.html?src=rss

If you weren’t paying close attention to Apple‘s WWDC 2025 keynote, it was easy to miss one of the more notable stories out of the event. For a conference where it aims to show itself as an innovator, this year Apple looked like it was out of new ideas. Whether it was digging up old design concepts or sherlocking even more third-party apps, we saw a company dependent on the work of others. But nowhere was that dependence more striking than the one Apple now has with OpenAI.

For many of the new Apple Intelligence features the company announced on Monday, it was quick to note users could turn to OpenAI’s models, instead of its own in-house systems, to carry out a task. Don’t like the portraits of your friends Image Playground is generating? ChatGPT can help. How about the analysis offered by Visual Intelligence? If Apple’s model isn’t doing it for you, ChatGPT can assist there, too.

Those are just two examples. There are others. OpenAI’s models are also available through the updated Shortcuts app, and, perhaps most notably, in the new version of Apple’s Xcode app development suite. In fact, according to Engadget managing editor Cherlynn Low, who was on the ground in Cupertino, the news that ChatGPT would come built directly in Xcode got one of the loudest cheers of the presentation.

It all felt like an admission by Apple that its own AI models, even the more private, on-device one it would make available to developers through a new framework, aren’t up to snuff. Apple’s dependence on OpenAI is not new. ChatGPT has been an integral part of Apple Intelligence since the start, but what is surprising is how much deeper that dependence has become.

Before Monday, we all knew the company was behind in the AI race. At WWDC 2025, Apple offered few reassurances it would catch up anytime soon. For instance, it had almost nothing to say about the more personalized Siri it previewed at last year’s conference.

“As we’ve shared, we’re continuing our work to deliver the features that make Siri even more personal,” said Craig Federighi, the company’s senior vice president of software engineering. “This work needed more time to reach our high-quality bar, and we look forward to sharing more about it in the coming year.”

The time frame of “in the coming year” would suggest the new Siri may not arrive before the start of 2026 at the earliest. Six months to a year is an eternity in the tech world, especially when Apple’s competitors are moving so quickly.

As if to punctuate things, OpenAI announced on Saturday it had begun rolling out an update to Advanced Voice that gives ChatGPT more subtle intonation, realistic cadence and expressiveness. Those are all upgrades that Siri could use.

Of course, the irony that Apple should choose to turn to OpenAI for help in the AI race is one almost certainly not lost on anyone at either company.

In May, OpenAI announced it was buying Jony Ive’s io hardware startup (for a reported $6.5 billion) to support its ambition to build an AI device. In an interview with The New York Times about the acquisition, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman didn’t explicitly mention Ive’s former employer, but he was obviously thinking about Apple and the iPhone throughout the conversation. “We’ve been waiting for the next big thing for 20 years,” he said at one point. “We want to bring people something beyond the legacy products we’ve been using for so long.”

The fact the AI devices we’ve seen so far, including the AI Pin and R1, haven’t been a success, does not mean Apple is safe from disruption. For one, the pedigree of OpenAI and Jony Ive (even if you include misses like the MacBook Pro with its terrible butterfly keyboard) surpass that of Humane and Rabbit. One of the people that is now working for OpenAI as part of the io deal include Evans Hankey, who was Apple’s head of hardware design for three years after Ive’s departure from the company.

You could make the argument that Apple has found itself in similar situations before and come out unscathed. For years, the company has depended on Google to offer access to a search engine to its users (and Maps before that), but this feels different to me. What’s going on in the AI industry doesn’t play to the company’s usual strengths. The technology is moving faster than Apple’s annual release schedule, with new, more powerful models being announced almost every week. It’s not a space where the company can rely on its usual strategy of waiting for others to work out the wrinkles before it dives in itself.

It’s too early to know if Apple’s partnership with OpenAI will ultimately hurt the tech giant, but it’s safe to say OpenAI isn’t content with being merely a supporting player. Apple is still one of the wealthiest companies in the world, with billions of dollars of cash on hand — but being so dependent on OpenAI is a rare sign of vulnerability in a crucial part of the tech industry.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-won-wwdc-2025-191216116.html?src=rss

Researchers have unearthed two publicly available exploits that completely evade protections offered by Secure Boot, the industry-wide mechanism for ensuring devices load only secure operating system images during the boot-up process. Microsoft is taking action to block one exploit and allowing the other one to remain a viable threat.

As part of Tuesday’s monthly security update routine, Microsoft patched CVE-2025-3052, a Secure Boot bypass vulnerability affecting more than 50 device makers. More than a dozen modules that allow devices from these manufacturers to run on Linux allow an attacker with physical access to turn off Secure Boot and, from there, go on to install malware that runs before the operating system loads. Such “evil maid” attacks are precisely the threat Secure Boot is designed to prevent. The vulnerability can also be exploited remotely to make infections stealthier and more powerful if an attacker has already gained administrative control of a machine.

A single point of failure

The underlying cause of the vulnerability is a critical vulnerability in a tool used to flash firmware images on the motherboards of devices sold by DT Research, a manufacturer of rugged mobile devices. It has been available on VirusTotal since last year and was digitally signed in 2022, an indication it has been available through other channels since at least that earlier date.

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We’re living in a post-privacy world. Every time you leave the house you’re probably on camera. Every time you turn on your television, your viewing habits are being logged. And using the internet in any way is basically just spraying a firehose of your personal information at data brokers—companies that compile your personal information and sell it to marketing companies, people search sites, and anyone else who wants to use it to sell you something.

The phrase “data brokers” might conjure up a bunch of shady companies located in countries with loose privacy laws, but some of the biggest are actually familiar companies like Experian, LexisNexis, and Equifax. The data they gather can include your name, address, birthday, phone numbers, income, known associates (like your family members), and everything you do on social media platforms. Anyone with that info can use it to blast you with endless advertisements and spam emails and texts—and if bad actors get ahold of it in a data leak, they can use it maliciously to steal your identity.

If you want to beef up your online privacy and help protect yourself from spam and scams, one of the main things you need to do is get your personal data out of the data brokers’ servers. You can opt out manually (a tedious, never-ending game of whack-a-mole), or you can pay a service to do it for you.

You can try to opt-out manually

Typically you can choose to opt-out from data brokers and other sites that collect your data, but doing so involves a lot of work. You’ll have to go to each and every individual data broker’s website and look for their opt-out pages, which are typically deeply buried to discourage you. You’ll also need to stem the flow of information headed to them by adjusting the settings on your devices, removing unused apps, clearing your browser history and cache, setting it to forget cookies, and using Google “results about you” tool to remove search results containing your personal information. You might even start using a virtual private network (VPN) to remain as hidden as possible.

You’ll need to stay vigilant, however, and repeat this process on a regular basis, as even once deleted, your information will trickle back out over time.

The good news is, if you don’t want to make your privacy a full-time job, you can pay a service to do it for you. While most data removal services won’t be any more effective than manual efforts, they will do the boring work for you, saving you a ton of time.

The best online data removal services

There are a number of data removal services that can handle clearing your information from data brokers. Here are five of the most useful:

Optery

Optery has a free version that makes manually removing your data from broker sites a little bit easier, but the paid version covers a pretty comprehensive list of brokers, is AI-assisted, and offers removal verification. In one study, it was found to have a successful removal rate of 68%, which is just a hair under the 70% removal rate you can expect if you do it manually. It will continue with automated removals as long as you pay for the service.

Cost: $3.99 per month or $39 annually.

EasyOptOuts

With a second-best removal rate of 65%, EasyOptOuts is a relatively effective data removal tool that costs a lot less money than Optery, which is only slightly more effective. EasyOptOuts doesn’t have many fancy bells and whistles, but it slogs through all the online sites that collect your data and requests removal pretty reliably. It will even request removal from sites it can’t crawl, just to be safe. Considering how affordable it is, it’s a worthwhile choice.

Cost: $19.99 annually

IDX

IDX is an effective data removal service that has the most flexible platform in terms of services. It offers three tiers: Identity (mainly just monitoring, with no removal services), Privacy (probably the best choice if data removal is your priority), and Complete (which includes lots of other tools, like a credit locker).

Cost: $8.96/month (Identity), $11.66/month (Privacy), $32.90/month (Complete), with family plans also available

Kanary

Kanary also offers a free version that’s relatively limited and doesn’t help you with manual removal of your data—it just reports where your data has been located—but you can use it without a credit card, so you can test the service out before deciding whether to pay for it to actually remove your data from those sites. On the other hand, its app is only available for Apple devices, with a waitlist for Android phones and tablets. Some reviews have noted that Kanary’s net is a bit too wide, flagging your social media accounts for cleanup, which you probably don’t want it to do.

Cost: $12 per month or $105 annually (family plans are also available)

Permission Slip

Launched by Consumer Reports, Permission Slip is a free data removal service app. Some folks have raised privacy concerns about it due to its fairly complex user agreement, but for zero dollars it can definitely automate a lot of the work required to delete your private data from broker sites, and so it’s worth considering.

Cost: Free (donations appreciated)

Do you need one of these services?

Whether one of these services is a good deal for you depends on how much spare time you can donate to clearing up your data footprint, and how annoyed you are that faceless corporations know so much about you. You could always start with Permission Slip as a free option to see if it makes a difference, then evaluate a paid option later. But whether you do it yourself or pay someone to handle it, removing your personal data from data brokers is always a good idea, given data breaches have become a near everyday occurrence.

A NASA-backed project using observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has released more than 1.5 TB of data for open science, offering the largest view deep into the universe available to date. From a report: The Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS), a joint project from the University of California, Santa Barbara and Rochester Institute of Technology, has launched a searchable dataset for budding astrophysics enthusiasts worldwide.

As well as a catalog of galaxies, the dataset includes an interactive viewer that users can search for images of specific objects or click them to view their properties, covering approximately 0.54 square degrees of sky with the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and a 0.2 square degree area with the Mid Infrared Instrument (MIRI). Although the raw data was already publicly available to the science community, the aim of the COSMOS-Web project was to make it more usable for other scientists.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last week, Poshmark announced that it’s in the early stages of a partnership with Facebook Marketplace that could significantly increase the reach of sellers’ listings. As a diehard user of both digital resale platforms, I found this news particularly exciting, so I reached out to Poshmark for more information. Here’s what you need to know about the fledgling venture and what it may mean for you—whether you buy, sell, or both on either marketplace.

The major Poshmark and Facebook Marketplace news

The partnership is in the testing stage: Right now, only a few Poshmark sellers will see their listings crossposted to Facebook Marketplace. If and when it expands, sellers can expect to see their Poshmark listings appear on Facebook Marketplace. Essentially, any item listed on Poshmark will automatically be shown to potential buyers on Facebook Marketplace—and any resulting purchase or transaction will take place through Poshmark’s established platform, even if they don’t have a Poshmark account.

“Shoppers can seamlessly purchase Poshmark items through the Facebook app, regardless of whether or not they have the Poshmark app installed,” the rep tells me. “Clicking ‘Check out now with Poshmark’ will direct the shopper to our guest checkout webpage, embedded within the Facebook app.”

Why this collaboration seems useful

I use Poshmark every day to sell my clothes, but I also browse Facebook Marketplace pretty frequently to source home decor. I’m a seasoned resale seller and shopper, but never really considered looking for clothing or accessories on Facebook. As the rep pointed out to me, though, Facebook does have an “expansive audience”: Over three billion people use the app. Of course, not all of them are using Marketplace. But if even a few extra eyeballs land on my listings, that increases my chance of making a sale.

Why it’s useful for sellers

Per the rep, “This collaboration is about making Poshmark closets more accessible.” I know from my own experience that though there are people who browse a variety of marketplaces, there are pretty distinct populations on each app. Putting my listings on multiple platforms increases the chance that they’ll be seen by someone who might not have seen them if I’d kept to one app.

With this new integration, the chances are higher that your listings will be seen by brand-new prospective buyers.

Why it’s useful for buyers

If you’re not a Poshmark user but you (like, apparently, most people) use Facebook Marketplace, you’ll now be able to access listings for the kinds of things Poshmark is best known for offering. That mean you can browse for clothing, accessories, and shoes, in addition to broader categories like electronics and decor—alongside the local goods offered on Facebook Marketplace. It makes the buying experience that much easier.

Things to keep in mind

You should know that the Facebook Marketplace experiment isn’t fully replicating the Poshmark experience. Poshmark is full of unique ways to buy and sell that aren’t being translated over to Facebook at this time, including live shows where everyday people can auction off goods on a QVC-style stream and Posh Parties, which are landing pages featuring specific categories of listings.

Another reason Poshmark is great is that buyers can “bundle” multiple listings from a seller’s storefront (known as a closet). If you like three things someone has for sale in their closet, you can put them in a bundle so the seller only has to ship one package. This saves you a lot on shipping, but most of the time, sellers will give you bundle at a discount, too, saving you even more.

That’s not happening with the Facebook Marketplace cross-listing, at least not right now.

What I’d like to see

If the beta test is successful, I hope to see this rolled out on a larger scale. It would be cool if bundling became possible via Facebook Marketplace; simulcasts of live show streams would also be ideal. Poshmark’s live shows are popular and innovative (I watch them all the time and have been playing around with the idea of hosting one), and I’d like to see them broaden their reach to Meta’s substantial audience.

Resale is poised to see a massive increase in the post-tariff economic landscape. With the threat of everything becoming more expensive, buying used is becoming an attractive option for more people, placing platforms like Poshmark and Facebook Marketplace at the forefront of the boom. Whether you’re an established seller or buyer or new to all of this, this joint venture may very well help you navigate what’s to come a little more easily.

OpenAI has struck a deal to use Google’s cloud computing infrastructure for AI despite the two companies’ fierce competition in the space, reports Reuters. The agreement, finalized in May after months of negotiations, marks a shift in OpenAI’s strategy to diversify its computing resources beyond Microsoft Azure, which had been its exclusive cloud provider until January.

Microsoft’s long-standing partnership with OpenAI dates back to 2019, with significant expansions of investment from the computer giant in 2021 and 2023. In October, The Information reported that the ChatGPT maker had begun to seek data center deals elsewhere, citing the need for more AI data center servers faster than Microsoft could supply them.

Under the new deal, Google Cloud will provide additional computing capacity to help OpenAI train and run its AI models. For OpenAI, the partnership addresses growing demands for computing power as the company’s annual revenue reached $10 billion as of June, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke to Reuters.

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It’s hard to look at Apple’s new “Liquid Glass” aesthetic and not think about Windows Vista, Microsoft‘s much-maligned OS which also touted transparencies and glass-like effects as a bold new vision for computing. You can see the similarities between Apple‘s UI and Vista’s “Windows Aero” design language everywhere, from the glassified app icons in iOS 26 and macOS Tahoe 26 which look a lot like VIsta’s glossy icons, to the transparent backgrounds used in drop down menus, which hearken back to VIsta’s transparent window borders. The key difference is that Apple is just doing it all better. (Sorry, not sorry, Windows fans.)

While Microsoft started off with an intriguing idea, it failed to execute the Windows Aero UI well in Vista. Mostly, that’s because Vista itself was a huge mess — it was far slower than Windows XP, it was notoriously buggy and it handled drivers poorly. And if you actually wanted to partake in the glory of Aero transparency bars, you needed a computer with a powerful GPU. That was far more rare in 2007 than it is today, when even integrated graphics can run basic 3D and fancy UI elements well. With its homegrown chips, Apple also provides decent graphics capabilities in its devices that support iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and other new software releases with Liquid Glass.

It also helps that Liquid Glass isn’t really a huge change for Apple, unlike the jump from Windows XP to Vista. Apple has been creeping towards a flashier UI and more widespread use of transparencies ever since iOS 7 was released in 2013, which dropped the archaic skeuomorphic design trend in favor of a flatter and more stylish aesthetic. So sure, your icons and menus may have a bit more shine to them in iOS 26, but they mostly work the way you remember. (You could also argue Apple itself kickstarted the move towards transparencies in desktop operating systems with the original Mac OS X in 2001, which gave its iconic dock a glossy background.)

Apple

I can argue for the overall wisdom of Apple’s Liquid Glass, at least compared to Windows Vista, and personally I also think it gives iOS a much-needed dose of personality. But I can’t really convince you otherwise if you think it looks ugly, as many of my Engadget colleagues do. Senior News Editor Avery Ellis calls it “busy and obnoxious,” and Editor-in-Chief Aaron Souppouris noted that “it truly feels like Aero, rooted in the mid ’00s…. I don’t need light refracting around my pause button.” Fair complaints! And as usual, you can also reduce transparency effects and motion elements in Apple’s Accessibility Settings, if these elements truly bother you.

But after spending a bit of time with the first iOS 26 developer beta, I’m more intrigued by Liquid Glass than anything else. It makes app icons look like tiny jewels that I just want to touch, and I dig the transparency effects throughout the OS — they almost seem like a preview for a future where we’re using holographic Apple devices. (That’s also something I felt while using visionOS on the Vision Pro, which served as the launchpad for Liquid Glass.) I also genuinely love iOS 26’s revamped Safari, which lets you browse completely in full screen. As you scroll down, the location bar at the bottom of your screen shrinks and gets out of the way. But if you scroll up or tap into the location bar, it pops back up to give you the sharing and navigation options you’re used to.

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

It could also be that I’m a sucker for novelty. Back in my Windows XP days, I used to use apps like WindowBlinds to customize the OS and add transparent effects. And there are signs that Apple may be going a bit too far with transparencies, like with the iOS 26’s Control Center (above). It looks fine if you’re swiping it down while inside an app, but if you’re on the home screen, it’s just one of many levels of glass-like windows. I could see that being a bit overbearing for some users.

It’s also worth noting that interface redesigns are often rejected at first glance, especially since you’re seeing them abstracted through screenshots and videos. Even Apple’s slick marketing magic doesn’t replicate the experience of using Liquid Design. In my experience, iOS 26 really isn’t that different from everything that came before. Once you get over the initial shock of a new interface, you may see it with new eyes.

Apple

There’s also still plenty of time until Apple’s new operating systems arrive this fall though, and the company is often quick to tweak major design changes if beta users complain about them. I could see Apple toning down the Control Center’s transparent background, or even better, giving users more control over the amount of Liquid Glass elements on your screen. Personally, I don’t mind it when companies stretch their interface ideals a bit too far – there’s always room to move back. That’s far better than being too conservative and never really pushing your aesthetic vision forward.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/apples-liquid-glass-is-windows-vista-done-well-181954910.html?src=rss

BrianFagioli writes: Ubuntu 25.10, known as Questing Quokka, is taking a big turn under the hood. Canonical has dropped support for the GNOME desktop running on Xorg. Starting with this release, the default Ubuntu session now uses Wayland only. Yes, folks, there’s no longer an option to log into GNOME on Xorg.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is rolling out the finished, stable version of Android 16 today, while also releasing a new Pixel Drop for June 2025. These drops bring exclusive features to Pixel phones and tablets, on top of the general Android codebase that’s available to every Android phone manufacturer, including Samsung, Nothing, Sony, and Motorola.

This time around there are several new features to talk about. These should show up automatically on all currently supported Pixel phones and tablets in the coming days—so right back to the Pixel 6—but you can also check manually via System > Software updates in Settings on your device.

1. Pixel VIPs

Your Pixel VIPs are the most important contacts on your device, and now they get their own special widget as a spin-off from the Contacts app. This widget lets you see recent messages and calls from these people across messaging apps, including WhatsApp, as well as more details about them (including their birthdays and notable anniversaries).

You can now make some of your contacts VIPs.
Credit: Google

These special VIPs get extra permission to bypass the Do Not Disturb mode on your Pixel, which should make sure you don’t miss anything important when notifications are muted. If you’re currently sharing your location with these Very Important contacts, these details appear in the widget too, but all this information is kept locally on your device.

2. Custom stickers in Gboard

Stickers made with generative AI are coming to the default Pixel keyboard, Gboard, with the latest Pixel Drop. With the help of Pixel Studio, you can create stickers of anything you like: An excited jelly avocado, a sad starfish wearing sunglasses, and sparkly blue sneakers are the examples Google gives. And yes, it does sound a lot like Genmoji on the iPhone.

Get creative with your stickers in Gboard.
Credit: Google

As you might have gathered from the mention of Pixel Studio, this will only work if you have a phone from the Pixel 9 series, as your device needs a certain amount of AI power to produce graphics without contacting the cloud. If you’ve got a compatible device, the new feature will be available via a button above any text input box when Gboard is enabled.

3. Expressive Captions

If you use Live Captions on your Android device, you’ll know it can be a useful way of getting live subtitles on screen for video and audio content, even if they weren’t included in the original file or stream. Expressive Captions adds more feeling to this feature, so you’ll see labels like “whispering” or “yawning” alongside the actual words themselves.

Expressive Captions in action.
Credit: Google

If words are stretched out—like “gooooooooal!”—that should show up too. This feature isn’t completely new, because it was announced last month for Android 15 devices: As far as I can make out from Google’s announcement, it seems the Pixel Drop may be introducing more of these expressions, or possibly making them more widely available.

4. New accessibility features

The new Pixel Drop includes several smaller new features worth mentioning, including improved support for hearing aids with LE audio features: You can now access presets and volume controls from inside a dedicated panel on your phone, as long as it’s a Pixel 9 or newer handset running Android 16 (rolling out at the same time as this update).

Then there are improvements to the Magnifier app (exclusive to Pixel phones), which now incorporates live search. You can type what you’re looking for (like something on a menu), then move your phone camera around, with matches highlighted in real time and accompanied by a little vibration. You no longer need to take a photo first and then search.

5. Battery health indicator

If you own a Google Pixel 8a or newer, this latest Pixel Drop brings with it a new battery health indicator screen, which we were first made aware of in April. It shows details of the battery’s remaining capacity, based on charging and usage patterns, and the feature should help you get more use out of your battery (and show you when it needs replacing).

6. Improve your photography skills

There’s a neat little feature arriving in the default Camera app for Pixel phones and tablets: If you tap the new question mark icon that appears in the corner of the Camera screen, you get a visual guide to what each camera mode does, plus some instructions on how to use it. The idea is to “help you get the most out of your Pixel Camera,” Google says.

We’re still waiting for the latest AI features in Google Photos.
Credit: Google

7. AI edits in Google Photos

In its June 2025 Pixel Drop announcement, Google has again mentioned the enhanced AI editing tools coming to Google Photos that it also announced last month—for Android and iOS devices. This upgrade is still coming soon, and apparently won’t be a Pixel exclusive, but it’s worth flagging that Google has again mentioned it in its latest blog post.

8. Expanded feature availability

Finally, a couple of notes on availability: The Pixel satellite SOS feature that lets you get help when you’re beyond wifi and cellular range is expanding to Australia, while the Pixel-exclusive Recorder app is adding French and German to the list of languages it can work with when it comes to transcribing and summarizing audio conversations.

After months of beta testing and following an extensive preview ahead of Google I/O 2025, Android 16 is now complete and is rolling out to devices. As usual, Pixel phones and tablets are going to be first in line for the software update, with handsets from other manufacturers following later (Samsung’s One UI 8 upgrade, based on Android 16, is already in testing).

As per Google’s documentation, every Pixel phone and tablet since the Pixel 6 and the Pixel 6 Pro are eligible for Android 16. Those phones were introduced in 2021, so if you’ve got either of those handsets or something newer, you’re good to go.

Perhaps the biggest update in Android 16 is the revamped Material 3 Expressive design language, which Google has already previewed. It’s designed to encourage more engagement and to create more emotional pull, as well as being more intuitive and easier to use. However, this Android 16 release only “lays the foundation” for the revamp: Google says the redesign will roll out gradually across the course of the year.

The Android 16 redesign isn’t included in this first stable release.
Credit: Google

Notifications are getting some improvements. Android 16 introduces Live Updates, which are similar to the Live Activities already available on iOS. Essentially, it gives real time updates more prominence on the home screen and the lock screen, so you won’t have to keep opening an app for sports scores or to see where your Uber is.

Samsung has already implemented something like this with the Now Bar in One UI 7, and it should improve the experience for apps like Google Maps and food delivery apps. The feature will launch with “compatible ride-share and food delivery apps,” Google says, with more integrations to follow.

Live Updates give more prominence to important notifications.
Credit: Google

Another notification tweak: Similar alerts will be grouped together automatically, to avoid “information overload.” One of the examples Google shows is a security camera: Rather than every notification appearing separately every time motion is detected, you’ll get them all together in one grouped package.

Android 16 is also bringing with it improved support for hearing aids, with the option to switch to your phone’s mic for audio input when you’re on a call—which should mean better results in noisy environments. Also, native control for hearing devices will be appearing in Android 16, providing access to settings such as volume levels.

There’s a big security upgrade as well, which we’ve already seen in the Android 16 beta. It builds on the existing Advanced Protection mode, which is described as “Google’s strongest security for mobile devices yet” in official communications: Previously available for Google accounts on the web, it’s now specific to mobile devices, too, with Android 16, which means you can manage these protections from your phone or tablet.

Advanced Protection is now available on phones and tablets.
Credit: Google

There are multiple different elements to Advanced Protection, including preventing USB connections while your phone is locked, stopping automatic connections for unsecured wifi networks, and real time warning for scam calls. All of this can be configured through the Advanced Protection menu in Settings.

Android 16 is also bringing with it an improved desktop mode, along the lines of Samsung DeX. Google says it’s actually worked with Samsung to improve window support on Android tablets, so you now have more control over how your apps are positioned in devices with larger screens.

Android 16 works better on bigger screens.
Credit: Google

It sounds like the bigger updates for this feature are still to come: Custom keyboard shortcuts, an improved taskbar, and support for external displays (for the full DeX experience) are all arriving “later this year,” so you’ll have to wait a little longer to use this new desktop mode to its fullest.

As usual, there are numerous new features behind the scenes for developers too: They cover easier access to camera settings like night mode and color temperature, better support for adaptive layouts that work on any screen size, and even improved consistency for progress bars. Look out for improvements to your Android apps, and wider support for the new Material 3 Expressive redesign, as time goes on.

Android 16 also includes a wealth of more minor tweaks and improvements that you might not notice for a while (or might never see at all). If you have a Pixel phone or tablet, you should get the update automatically in the coming days, but you can also check for it manually: From Settings, choose System and Software updates.

After months of speculation and beta testing, Google is rolling out Android 16 starting today. The new software will arrive first on Pixel phones, but you can expect to see updates on other phones in the coming weeks—or more likely months.

For those with Pixel devices, the OTA should begin appearing soon. If you just can’t wait, Google will have system images and update files on its developer pages. You probably don’t need to get up in arms about potential delays, though. Like other recent Android updates, there aren’t many changes bundled into this version. Many of the most interesting changes are coming later this year.

Android 16 has landed

Despite the light feature set at launch, there are a few things of note. Right at the top of the list is a cleaner notification shade. Google launched bundled notifications in Android 7.0 Nougat, which has helped to clean up phones ever since. With Android 16, Google is stepping up notification bundling by forcing it on apps. Now, multiple notifications from a single app will be merged together into a single expandable item. Neat.

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This refurbished Lenovo 300E Chromebook is on sale for just $79.99 right now on StackSocial. It’s a practical pickup if you need a machine for casual use, a backup device around the house, or something safe for kids to hammer on. It’s listed with a Grade “B” rating, meaning there might be some light scuffs or dents, but nothing that’ll get in the way of day-to-day use.

The specs are modest: a quad-core Intel N3450 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage. It’s not built for heavy multitasking or serious workloads, but it can run Chrome OS smoothly enough for web browsing, streaming, and schoolwork. The 11.6-inch touchscreen is handy for more interactive tasks and folds back into a tablet mode if you want something a little more flexible. Chrome OS also means you get access to Google Play apps, and the system will keep getting updates until 2028. Storage is tight, so you’ll want to lean on cloud storage or an external drive if you have a lot of files, but for everyday apps and online use, it’s enough to get by.

That said, the screen maxes out at 1366×768 resolution, which isn’t going to win any beauty contests, and at just over three pounds, it’s a little chunky for an 11-inch device. But it has wifi and Bluetooth, a decent webcam, and a battery that can handle a day of light tasks. If you need something inexpensive and durable for kids, travel, or just light web work, this Chromebook does the job without much fuss. At this price, you’re not expecting perfection—you’re looking for a tool you won’t panic over if it gets scratched, dropped, or left in a coffee shop, and that’s exactly what this delivers.

Snap’s next generation of standalone augmented reality glasses will arrive next year and will be smaller, lighter and more powerful than the developer-focused device the Snapchat maker introduced last year. CEO Evan Spiegel announced the upcoming glasses, which will be called “Specs,” during a keynote at Augmented World Expo (AWE).

“Specs are coming next year, in a much smaller form factor, at a fraction of the weight, with a ton more capability,” Spiegel said. He said the glasses will be “ready for public release,” but didn’t provide details on how much they may cost. The current fifth-generation glasses are available only to approved developers willing to commit to a year-long $99/month subscription.

Still, a smaller pair of AR glasses from Snap should be welcome news to Snapchat fans curious about the company’s standalone AR device, but who may have been put off by its bulky, oversized design. Spiegel shared few details about the glasses, but in a blog post Snap suggested that AI will play an important role. “It’s clear that today’s devices and user interfaces are woefully inadequate to realize the full potential of AI,” the company wrote. “Chatbots will soon give way to immersive experiences that bring AI into the world through augmented reality, empowering us to express ourselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together.”

The existing version of Spectacles already has some AI-powered experiences, thanks to a partnership with OpenAI. And Snap today also announced new integrations with OpenAI and Google that allow developers to build multimodal lenses for Spectacles that can use the built-in cameras to react to the wearer’s surroundings. Developers have already created experiences for recipe generation, translation and currency conversion, Snap said.

Spiegel did confirm that the AR lenses that developers are building now will work with the next-generation of frames. So whenever they do launch, there should be an established catalog of AR experiences for the glasses. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/snap-says-new-lightweight-ar-glasses-will-come-in-2026-171020059.html?src=rss