If you’re wondering what effect Intel’s blockbuster deal with Nvidia will have on its existing product roadmaps, Intel has one message for you: it won’t. PCWorld: “We’re not discussing specific roadmaps at this time, but the collaboration is complementary to Intel’s roadmap and Intel will continue to have GPU product offerings,” an Intel spokesman told my colleague, Brad Chacos, earlier today. I heard similar messaging from other Intel representatives.

Nvidia’s $5 billion investment in Intel, as well as Nvidia’s plans to supply RTX graphics chiplets to Intel for use in Intel’s CPUs, have two major potential effects: first, it could rewrite Intel’s mobile roadmap for laptop chips, because of the additional capabilities provided by those RTX chiplets. Second, the move threatens Intel’s ongoing development of its Arc graphics cores, including standalone discrete GPUs as well as integrated chips. We’re still not convinced that Arc’s future will be left unscathed, in part because Intel’s claim that it will “continue” to have GPU product offerings sounds a bit wishy-washy. But Intel sounds much more definitive on the former point, in that the mobile roadmap that you’re familiar with will remain in place.

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This is a video documenting the rehabilitation of Princess Edna, a Pokemon 10-day old mole that was accidentally dug up by a man during garden renovations and reached out to Critter Care Wildlife Society in Langley, British Columbia to care for the animal. Look at those front feet! And I thought I had big feet — those are some BOATS. I wonder if other moles call it Bigfoot. I doubt it though because their feet are probably just as big. They’d probably make fun of it if it had small feet. Me? I get made fun of for having smelly feet. My girlfriend won’t even let me in the bed if I don’t scrub them in the shower. She keeps trying to get me to start wearing socks but *wiggling toes* I’m not about that life. “Your feet are disgusting, you need a pedicure.” Hahaha, I tried once but the lady referred me to a horse vet.

I’ve been testing smart glasses for almost a decade. And in that time, one of the questions I’ve been asked the most is “oh, but can you see anything in them?” For years, I had to explain that no, glasses like that don’t really exist yet.

That’s no longer the case. And while I’ve seen a bunch of glasses over the last year that have some kind of display, the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses feel the closest to fulfilling what so many people envision when they hear the words “smart glasses.”

To be clear, they don’t offer the kind of immersive AR that’s possible with Meta’s Orion prototype. In fact Meta considers “display AI glasses” to be a totally separate category from AR. The display is only on one lens — the right — and its 20-degree field of view is much smaller than the 70 degrees on Orion. That may sound like a big compromise, but it doesn’t feel like one.

Karissa Bell for Engadget

The single display feels much more practical for a pair of glasses you’ll want to wear every day. It’s meant to be something you can glance at when you need it, not an always-on overlay. The smaller size also means that the display is much sharper, at 42 pixels per degree. This was especially noticeable when I walked outside with the glasses on; images on the display looked even sharper than in indoor light, thanks to automatic brightness features.

I also appreciated that you can’t see any light from the display when you’re looking at someone wearing the glasses. In fact the display is only barely noticeable at all when you at them up close. 

Having a smaller display also means that the glasses are cheaper, at $799, and that they don’t look like the chunky AR glasses we’ve seen so many times. At 69 grams, they are a bit heavier and thicker than the second-gen Meta Ray-Bans, but not much. As someone who has tried on way too many pairs of thick black smart glasses, I’m glad Meta is offering these in a color besides black. All Wayfarer-style frames look wide on my face but the lighter “sand” color feels a lot more flattering.

Karissa Bell for Engadget

The Meta Neural Band wristband that comes with the display glasses functions pretty much the same as the band I used on the Orion prototype. It uses sensors to detect the subtle muscle movements on your hand and wrist and can translate that into actions within the glasses’ interface.

It’s hard to describe, but the gestures for navigating the glasses interfaces work surprisingly well. I can see how it could take a little time to get used to the various gestures for navigating between apps, bringing up Meta AI, adjusting the volume and other actions, but they are all fairly intuitive. For example, you use your thumb to swipe along the the top of your index finger, sort of like a D-pad, to move up and down and side to side. And you can raise and lower the speaker volume by holding your thumb and index finger together and rotating your wrist right or left like it’s a volume knob.

It’s no secret that Meta’s ultimate goal for its smart glasses is to replace, or almost replace, your phone. That’s not possible yet, but having an actual display means you can look at your phone a whole lot less.

Karissa Bell for Engadget

The display can surface incoming texts, navigation with map previews (for walking directions), and info from your calendar. I was also able to take a video call from the glasses — unlike Mark Zuckerberg’s attempted live demo during his keynote — and it was way better than I expected. I could not only clearly see the person I was talking to and their surroundings, I could turn on my glasses’ camera and see a smaller version of the video from my side.

I also got a chance to try the Conversational Focus feature, which allows you to get live captions of the person you’re speaking with even in a loud environment that may be hard to hear. There was something very surreal about getting real-time subtitles to a conversation with a person standing directly in front of me. As someone who tries really hard to not look at screens when I’m speaking to people, it almost felt a little wrong. But I can also see how this would be incredibly helpful to people who have trouble hearing or processing conversations. It would also be great for translations, something Meta AI already does very well.

I also appreciated that the wristband allows you to invoke Meta AI with a gesture so you don’t always have to say “Hey Meta.” It’s a small change, but I’ve always felt weird about talking to Meta AI in public. The display also addresses another one of my longtime gripes with the Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley glasses: framing a photo is really difficult. But with a display, you can see a preview of your shot, as well as the photo after the fact, so you no longer have to just snap a bunch and hope for the best.

I’ve only had about 30 minutes with the glasses, so I don’t really know how having a display could fit into my daily routine. But even after a short time with them, they really do feel like the beginning of the kind of smart glasses a lot of people have been waiting for.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/meta-ray-ban-display-hands-on-discreet-and-intuitive-002334346.html?src=rss

Federal prosecutors charged a UK teenager with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and other crimes in connection with the network intrusions of 47 US companies that generated more than $115 million in ransomware payments over a three-year span.

A criminal complaint unsealed on Thursday (PDF) said that Thalha Jubair, 19, of London, was part of Scattered Spider, the name of an English-language-speaking group that has breached the networks of scores of companies worldwide. After obtaining data, the group demanded that the victims pay hefty ransoms or see their confidential data published or sold.

Bitcoin paid by victims recovered

The unsealing of the document, filed in US District Court of the District of New Jersey, came the same day Jubair and another alleged Scattered Spider member—Owen Flowers, 18, from Walsall, West Midlands—were charged by UK prosecutors in connection with last year’s cyberattack on Transport for London. The agency, which oversees London’s public transit system, faced a monthslong recovery effort as a result of the breach.

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The panel of vaccine advisors hand-selected by anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voted on Thursday to change the federal vaccine recommendations for children, removing safe, well-established vaccine doses from current schedules and realizing Kennedy’s anti-vaccine agenda to erode federal vaccine policy and sow distrust.

Specifically, the panel—the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—voted to remove the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s previous recommendation for use of a measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (chickenpox) MMRV combination vaccine for children under 4 years old.

The context

In June, Kennedy fired all 17 highly qualified, highly vetted members of ACIP and quickly replaced them with seven questionable members, who largely did not have subject matter expertise. Moreover, many of them have clearly expressed anti-vaccine rhetoric and skepticism about pandemic responses and COVID-19 vaccines. At least two new members have been paid witnesses in trials against vaccine makers, a clear conflict of interest. Last week, Kennedy added five additional members, who raise the same anti-vaccine concerns as the first group.

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This is a video of paraglider Ulvi Ercan experiencing a “60 percent asymmetrical collapse” while gliding and losing his GoPro in the process, which captures its fall from 1,100 meters safely to the ground below. Of course it landed in soft grass and not on a boulder, which I’m sure helped. Thankfully, Ulvi was able to recover from the paraglider collapse and track down the camera afterwards.

I didn’t realize it fell off. I was able to find the rough location by analyzing flight log and spot the location collapse I had. After that, just used Quik app and wished for the best. Just turning it on and off to listen the beep sound. Rest was easy.

Damn, that was some smart thinking, because I definitely would not have recovered that camera. I can’t even recover my phone, and I know it’s in the house and can hear it every time somebody calls. “Awww, you have friends.” Hahahaha, no, I have relentless scammers.

Does alcohol enhance one’s foreign language fluency? Do West African lizards have a preferred pizza topping? And can painting cows with zebra stripes help repel biting flies? These and other unusual research questions were honored tonight in a virtual ceremony to announce the 2025 recipients of the annual Ig Nobel Prizes. Yes, it’s that time of year again, when the serious and the silly converge—for science.

Established in 1991, the Ig Nobels are a good-natured parody of the Nobel Prizes; they honor “achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think.” The unapologetically campy awards ceremony features miniature operas, scientific demos, and the 24/7 lectures whereby experts must explain their work twice: once in 24 seconds and the second in just seven words.

Acceptance speeches are limited to 60 seconds. And as the motto implies, the research being honored might seem ridiculous at first glance, but that doesn’t mean it’s devoid of scientific merit. In the weeks following the ceremony, the winners will also give free public talks, which will be posted on the Improbable Research website.

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Google has added Gemini features to Chrome for all desktop users in the US browsing in English following a limited release to paying subscribers in May. The update introduces a Gemini button in the browser that launches a chatbot capable of answering questions about page content and synthesizing information from multiple tabs. Users can remove the Gemini sparkle icon from Chrome’s interface.

Google will add its AI Mode search feature to Chrome’s address bar before September ends. The feature will suggest prompts based on webpage content but won’t replace standard search functionality. Chrome on Android already includes Gemini features. The company plans to add agentic capabilities in coming months that would allow Gemini to perform tasks like adding items to online shopping carts by controlling the browser cursor.

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It turns out the “lifestyle logging” feature introduced with Garmin’s Venu 4 watch announcement isn’t limited to that watch—it seems to be available to all Garmin users, which means the app has made a huge stride in catching up with competitors like Whoop. 

What is lifestyle logging? 

This feature lets you track different habits, behaviors, or factors that might impact your health metrics. For example, you can log when you have caffeine or alcohol at night, and see how this affects your sleep. (Garmin tends to refer to these as “behaviors,” even though some of them are more like environmental factors or states of being—illness, for example—but I’ll allow it.) 

Whoop, the screenless tracker with the expensive (but arguably worth it) subscription, has long had this kind of feature, and it will give you detailed breakdowns of how your habits have affected your recovery. The Apple Watch app Bevel provides similar functionality as well, while the Oura ring has “tags” in its app, although they are more for labeling than analysis. 

Garmin’s version uses your logged behaviors to generate reports that show how the factors you logged affect: 

• Your sleep score

• Your overnight HRV

• Your overnight stress

These seem to be the only outcomes, so you won’t see whether these behaviors affect, say, your running performance. And as with any feature of this type, the app can’t actually tell you if your behaviors are causing the positive or negative results you get. 

For example, Whoop told me that I sleep worse on nights I take melatonin, but that’s just a correlation: The melatonin probably isn’t making my sleep worse; it’s more likely that the connection is because I take melatonin on nights when I’m already up late or expect to have trouble sleeping. 

Which Garmin devices can use lifestyle logging? 

Logging your behaviors doesn’t require any specific device; I was able to activate it on an account that had no wearable devices paired at all. However, Garmin notes that to get meaningful reports, you’ll need a device that is capable of measuring HRV (which also contributes to your sleep score and overnight stress). Most of the popular Garmin wearables have HRV capabilities, including Venu, Vivoactive, and Forerunner watches, and the new Index sleep monitor. 

How to use Garmin’s lifestyle logging

The feature is kind of hidden, so I wouldn’t blame you for not knowing that it’s there. Make sure your Garmin Connect app is up to date, and then tap the three-dot menu in the bottom right corner. Go to training and planning, then health stats, and then lifestyle logging. 

The first time you do this, you’ll get a few information screens explaining the feature and asking you to acknowledge that it’s not medical advice.

You’ll then select the items you want to log. Garmin recommends choosing “only a few” items to log at a time, so you can learn more about those specific things rather than trying to wade through mountains of data. The app’s info screen wisely points out that if you log many different factors, “you may get conflicting data and have a difficult time determining what’s really impacting your health stats.”

A non-exhaustive list of what you can log

• The lifestyle category includes alcohol, caffeine (morning or late), exercise (light, moderate, or vigorous), late meals, and intermittent fasting.

• The self-care category includes cold showers, journaling, and sunlight.

• The treatments category includes acupuncture and massage.

• The sleep-related category includes CPAP machine use, eye masks, reading in bed, and having a pet in your bedroom.

• The life status category includes allergy symptoms, caregiving, illness, and vacation.

You can also create custom items to log. You can give them a quantity if you like, or just set them up as a yes/no answer. You can also indicate if the item is daytime or bedtime related. Finally, after choosing the behaviors you’d like to log, the app will ask if you’d like related morning and/or evening reminders. 

To see results from any of your behaviors, you’ll need to accumulate five yeses and five nos for each. (As with Whoop’s version of this feature, it’s not useful to track a behavior that you always do or never do—there’s just not enough data to work from.) 

You can view your results from the Training and Planning menu, as above, and you can also add a card to the “at a glance” section of your Garmin Connect app home screen. The card will show whether you’ve logged your behaviors for the day, and tapping on it will show what you’ve logged today and in the past. The Venu 4 watch also has a widget for lifestyle logging on the watch itself. 

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Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source.

The iPhone Air is a brand-new type of phone for Apple, shrinking down the iPhone’s internals into the thinnest form factor yet, at just 0.22 inches thick. Despite all that, Apple is promising up to 27 hours of video playback, which is just three hours fewer than it’s estimating for the iPhone 17.

Honestly, I’m skeptical—and I’m not alone in that. Most of the phones I test don’t quite live up to their official battery life estimates, which are always done in ideal conditions and usually come with a number of caveats. It’s possible the iPhone Air will have significant battery shortcoming compared to the other new iPhones, which I’ll confirm when I’ve been able to test it. But despite not getting extended time with the phone, I have gotten to hold the iPhone Air, and I will admit that it feels downright magical in the hand, almost like a credit card that can make phone calls.

I won’t blame you if you’re willing to sacrifice some battery life or camera potential to snag one for yourself, but if you do, here are the settings you’ll want to turn on to eke out some extra battery life.

Low Power Mode

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

The most obvious way to extend battery life on your phone is to turn on Low Power Mode. On an iPhone, doing so is as simple as swiping down from your Home Screen’s top right corner and tapping the battery icon in the control center (or you can go to Settings > Battery > Power Mode and toggle on Low Power Mode from there).

This will make the most battery life-extending changes for you, but will also come with the biggest hits to performance and usability. That means it’ll reduce your background activities, lower your refresh rate and brightness, and limit features like 5G and iCloud syncing. It’ll also cut some animations and start automatically locking your phone after 30 seconds of inactivity. Essentially, it’s probably not how you’ll want to use your phone most of the time, but it can help in a pinch.

Adaptive Power mode

Adaptive Power mode is kind of like a less aggressive Low Power Mode. You’ll find it in the same menu as Low Power Mode, under Settings > Battery > Power Mode, although you’ll need an iPhone 15 Pro or above and iOS 26 to access it.

When enabled, this will use Apple Intelligence to adjust your phone’s performance on the fly, rather than immediately battening down all hatches like Low Power Mode. Based on your usage patterns, it’ll attempt to predict when you’ll need more battery life than usual, and will make tweaks like stopping background apps from refreshing, lowering screen brightness by 3%, or just generally making “performance adjustments.” How it works is all very new and behind the Apple curtain for now, but the idea is that while you’re only meant to turn Low Power Mode on when you absolutely need it, you can set Adaptive Power mode and forget it. And it’s not one-or-the-other, either. You can still use Low Power Mode in addition to Adaptive Power Mode. In fact, if your phone is at less than 20% battery, Adaptive Power Mode will turn Low Power Mode on for you.

The catch? Adaptive Power Mode needs seven days to learn your charging habits, so you’ll need to enable it at least a week before you actually want to use it.

Turn down your brightness

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

Let’s say you don’t trust Apple’s various power modes to adjust your phone’s settings for you, or you only want to limit a few things. That’s totally an option. In that case, let’s start with brightness. Keeping your phone at max brightness all the time isn’t just eye-searing, but it’ll also drain your battery faster. That’s why you’ll probably want to turn it down to just what you need for the situation you’re in.

You’ve got a few options here. The easiest is to simply swipe down from your Home Screen’s top right corner, then adjust your brightness using the slider with the sun icon on it. If you prefer to adjust your brightness in the Settings app, you can head over to Settings > Display & Brightness and scroll down until you see the slider there. You’ll see a bunch of other options here, but they’re more about color temperature, and won’t actually help you adjust your brightness (although we will return to them later on in this guide).

But if you’re like me, manually controlling your brightness all the time will get a bit tiring. That’s why I prefer to turn on Auto-Brightness. Simply toggle it on under Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Auto-Brightness, and your phone will automatically lower the brightness when you’re in a dark environment or turn it up while you’re surrounded by sunlight. It gives you a bit less control, but it’s pretty convenient.

Turn down the amount of time until your phone auto-locks

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

Back in Settings > Display & Brightness, you’ll see a toggle called Auto-Lock. This is what kicks you out of your phone and back to your lock screen after a certain amount of inactivity. Personally, I like to leave it at five minutes, so I can safely read long articles or check recipes while cooking without being kicked out for not tapping the screen enough. But that does drain my battery faster.

To eke out more battery life from your phone, try turning it down to the 30-second or one-minute mark. You might need to remind your phone that you’re there more often than you’d like, but it’ll keep you from needlessly draining your battery if you accidentally get up and leave your phone behind without locking it first.

And don’t worry: even with the auto-lock set to its strictest settings, it won’t lock the screen while you’re watching a video or playing a game.

Turn off the always-on display

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

The iPhone’s always-on display, added with the iPhone 14 Pro, is one of my favorite things about Apple’s most recent iPhone models, since it makes it easy to check notifications or the time at a glance. But it will drain your battery, even if it’s set to a low, 1Hz refresh rate.

To turn it off, again head to Settings > Display & Brightness, then tap Always On Display and toggle off Always On Display at the bottom of the menu that pops up. If you want to compromise, you can simply toggle off Show Wallpaper at the top of the same menu. This will keep the always on display on, but everything except for the clock and your widgets will be black. That’ll save you some battery life needed to display color, which brings me to my next tip.

Turn on Dark Mode

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

Here’s my final tip for Settings > Display & Brightness. At the top of this page, you’ll be able to select whether you want your phone in Light Mode or Dark Mode. If you want to save battery life, choose Dark Mode. That’s because the iPhone uses an OLED screen, so each individual pixel is self-illuminating. If a pixel only needs to display black, it just won’t turn on, saving you battery life.

Dark Mode won’t work across all apps, but in ones that support it, it’ll swap your background to black, which should help your phone last longer over time.

Manage your data consumption

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

Connecting to a network to use data actually drains more power than wifi, because a cellular connection requires a stronger signal over long distances. That means, to save battery life on your iPhone, you’ll want to be a bit strict about data consumption.

You’ve got a few options here. The easiest is to simply turn off data altogether, by swiping down from the Home Screen and turning off the small green data icon next to the Bluetooth icon in the top left corner. This will turn off data altogether, but because it doesn’t discriminate between apps, it’s not ideal for everyday use.

To be a bit more specific with how your iPhone uses data, you’ll need to navigate to Settings > Cellular. Here, you’ve got a few controls at your fingertips.

The easiest choice to make here is disabling Wi-Fi Assist, which supplements your wifi with data connection when it’s running slow. Since our goal here is to reduce our reliance on data, having it on isn’t ideal.

You might also want to turn off iCloud Drive and iCloud Backup, which will use your cell network to transfer and backup files to iCloud when wifi isn’t available.

Above these toggles, you’ll also be able to see your most data hungry apps and restrict their access to your network. This can be helpful even if you’re not trying to increase battery life, as you can probably cut down on unnecessary data usage here as well.

Finally, let’s enable Wi-Fi Calling. This will allow your phone to make calls over the internet while you’re connected to wifi, saving you some cellular data. Head back to the main Settings menu, then scroll down to Apps > Phone. Here, scroll down to Calls and ensure Wi-Fi Calling is turned on. If you want to, you can even scroll up and uncheck Cellular Data under Allow Phone to Access, although this will keep you from making calls unless you’re connected to wifi.

Manage background app refresh

Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt

Just because you’ve navigated away from an app on your iPhone doesn’t mean it isn’t running anymore. Instead, plenty of apps will continue to refresh in the background, updating their content but also draining your battery. Luckily, you have a few choices here.

To see your options, head to Settings > General > Background App Refresh. You’ll see your phone’s general approach to refreshing apps in the background, as well as toggles for every app on your phone.

Click the Background App Refresh button in the menu and you can choose whether to turn it off, keep it on all the time, or only enable it when you’re on wifi. Off is the most battery efficient option, but if you’re not that strict, you can also choose Wi-Fi to at least keep the feature from using your data (which, again, drains more battery).

With that done, if you’ve left the feature on, you can now scroll through your list of apps and select which apps you want to allow to refresh in the background. This could save you some battery life if you don’t want to turn the feature off altogether, but do want to disable it for certain hungry apps. Unfortunately, unlike with the Cellular Data menu, you won’t see how hungry your apps are here, so you’ll have to guess.

Just buy an external battery pack

Credit: Apple

Finally, you could just give up and buy an external power pack. The iPhone Air will work with any external batteries that your other iPhones do, and despite being so thin, it will securely attach to compatible batteries via MagSafe. As much as I hate to suggest “just spend more money” as an option, Apple doesn’t share that concern. In fact, it’s even made a MagSafe battery designed specifically for the iPhone Air, which it says will give you “65 percent additional charge” while still maintaining a slim profile.

It costs $100, and whether that’s worth it to you will depend on your priorities. Personally, I’m not quite sure myself, since you’d presumably be buying the iPhone Air because it’s thin and light. If that’s the case, why slap an external battery on it? But I can also see why you’d want a MagSafe battery some of the time and a slim form factor at other times. Just be aware: This battery is a bit tall, so it won’t fit vertically on either the iPhone 17 or iPhone 17 Pro.

As Air Force One journeyed from the US to the UK this week, it came within eight lateral miles of a Spirit Airlines flight heading up the East Coast from Fort Lauderdale to Boston. An alert air traffic controller in the New York control center reached out to the Spirit flight, telling it to execute an immediate right turn to avoid any possibility of colliding with Air Force One.

But the Spirit pilots did not respond immediately, leading the testy air traffic controller to scold them repeatedly. (You can listen to the audio archive on LiveATC.net; it begins at around the 23:15 mark.)

“Pay attention!” said the controller after his first instruction was not acknowledged. “Spirit 1300, turn 20 degrees right.”

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