The Supreme Court of the United States declined to review a case challenging the U.S. Copyright Office’s stance that AI-generated works lack the required human authorship for copyright protection, leaving lower court rulings intact. The Verge reports: The Monday decision comes after Stephen Thaler, a computer scientist from Missouri, appealed a court’s decision to uphold a ruling that found AI-generated art can’t be copyrighted. In 2019, the U.S. Copyright Office rejected Thaler’s request to copyright an image, called A Recent Entrance to Paradise, on behalf of an algorithm he created. The Copyright Office reviewed the decision in 2022 and determined that the image doesn’t include “human authorship,” disqualifying it from copyright protection.

After Thaler appealed the decision, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled in 2023 that “human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright.” That ruling was later upheld in 2025 by a federal appeals court in Washington, DC. As reported by Reuters, Thaler asked the Supreme Court to review the ruling in October 2025, arguing it “created a chilling effect on anyone else considering using AI creatively.” The U.S. federal circuit court also determined that AI systems can’t patent inventions because they aren’t human, which the U.S. Patent Office reaffirmed in 2024 with new guidance. The UK Supreme Court made a similar determination.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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“MacBook Neo” appears to be the name of Apple’s long-rumored cheap MacBook, based on a regulatory posting on Apple’s website, MacRumors reports. The gaffe was quickly removed from Apple’s site (pour one out for the poor soul who posted it). Previous rumors didn’t attach a name to the low-cost MacBook — I figured Apple would just revive the clean and simple “MacBook” branding. The name MacBook Neo sounds like something we’d see from ASUS or Acer, it’s just trying a bit too hard to seem cool.

To recap, Apple is expected to unveil its first low-cost MacBook laptop tomorrow (and personally, I think it has a good shot at peeling away disgruntled Windows users). It’s rumored to be powered by one of the company’s A-series mobile chips, instead of the M-series hardware in its laptops and desktops so far. Apple reportedly isn’t skimping on the case — it’s expected to be all metal, except with plenty more colors than the company’s existing lineup. In many ways, the MacBook Neo sounds like a revival of Apple’s cute and colorful iBook laptops, except for far less money than those machines, with no handle for toting around.

Apple kicked off its week of spring announcements with the iPhone 17e and iPad Air M4 yesterday, both of which are relatively modest upgrades. (Still, it’s nice to have MagSafe on the iPhone 17e.) This morning, Apple unveiled the MacBook Air M5 and MacBook Pro M5 Pro/Max systems, both of which are slightly more expensive than the previous models. We also got a new addition to Apple’s monitor lineup with the 5K MiniLED Studio Display XDR. Along with the MacBook Neo, we may also see an upgraded Mac Studio desktop announced tomorrow.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/apples-cheap-macbook-could-be-called-the-macbook-neo-153800133.html?src=rss

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If you’re starting a home tool set or looking to graduate from a beginner set of hand tools to expand the variety of DIY projects you can tackle, a quality set of wrenches and drivers is key. Everyone who does DIY and home repair projects knows that a comprehensive set of bits and sockets will save you hours of aggravation while you’re working. This 104-piece Craftsman tool set is a good investment because it has a variety of sockets, ratchets, and driver tips.

CRAFTSMAN 104Pc Mechanic Tool Set (CMMT45104)

$79.98
at Amazon

$164.00
Save $84.02

$79.98
at Amazon

$164.00
Save $84.02

What comes in the box

This Craftsman 104-piece mechanics tool set comes with a 3/8-inch ratchet, a 1/4-inch ratchet, a hand driver handle, 48 standard sockets, 12 deep sockets, 16 Allen wrenches, two extension bits, a corner adapter, 22 driver bits, and a classic red Craftsman tool box. The ratchets are low profile, allowing them to be used in tight spaces. The sockets come in SAE sizes 5/32-inch through 1/2-inch and metric sizes 4 mm through 21 mm. The bits include flat head, Phillip’s head, Robert’s bits, and star tip. The tool box comes with drawer organizers so there’s a spot for every tool. The driver handle and the ratchets are all standard sizes, so you’ll be able to use them with other sockets and bits or replacements if you lose any parts.

Hand tools can be expensive, and getting a set that includes a wide range of bits and sockets will save you trips to the hardware store while you’re working on a project because it allows you to tackle a variety of fastener types from screws to bolts. This set has 104 pieces, and it’s 51% off at $79.98, making each tool less than $1 apiece. As a bonus, this set comes with the classic red Craftsman tool box, which on its own can cost between $50 and $75.

Why I recommend Craftsman tools

Craftsman is known for the lifetime warranty on their hand tools, and everything in this tool set is covered by that besides the tool box and the drawer inserts. Although their tools are often covered by a warranty, I have only used it once on a 20-year-old ratchet that finally slipped its gears; most of the time, you’ll be free from the hassle of even needing to get a replacement.

In addition to the warranty, Craftsman tools are known for being durable. I had a mechanics tool set very similar to this one that I got as a teenager, and I still have most of the tools that came with it, save for a few that went missing over the years. I’ve used the sockets for car repair, to fix a heat pump, to assemble carts with wheels, and on a variety of construction projects, and I’ve had very few issues with them.

Craftsman tools have a good reputation for durability and the sets that come in the red portable tool boxes are a classic for home DIY shops. Having a simple and efficient way to pack up your tools when you’re working on an outdoor project or away from home will make your tool set much more accessible, and you’ll use it more if you can quickly grab it and go.

There’s more waffling going on about the future of electric vehicles in America right now than you might expect at a Belgian breakfast buffet. Some brands like Hyundai are staying committed, some brands like Honda are dialing back, and everyone else is simply doing their damndest to provide as many propulsion options as possible

Count Audi in that last category. On the EV side, it recently launched the new Q6 E-Tron and refreshed the ballistic E-Tron GT. On the internal combustion side, it has a new A6, and there’s a full-size, three-row SUV coming in the form of the Q9. The company’s latest car, though, can be found in the middle: Meet the new RS5, Audi’s latest and greatest plug-in hybrid.

RS stands for “RennSport,” or “Racing Sport” in German, the moniker applied to Audi’s highest performing cars. RS designates an elite group of machines intended to be a bit more edgy and exclusive than your BMW M cars or Mercedes-Benz AMGs. The 2027 RS5 marks the first time an RS has come with both a big battery and a big engine, but the RS5 is much more than a novelty with a plug.

Tricky diff

Tim Stevens for Engadget

The main grunt of the new RS5 comes from a 2.9-liter, twin-turbocharged V-6 mounted up front under the hood. On its own, that engine produces 503 horsepower, a figure that you might think is plenty. Here, though, it has some help here in the form of not one but two electric motors.

The first is a typical hybrid arrangement, a 174-hp motor wedged in between the engine and transmission. This is the primary means of electric propulsion for the car, giving it a total, maximum system output of 630 hp and 609 lb-ft.

Because that motor is positioned where it is, the RS5 can still make full use of its eight-speed automatic transmission when driven only by the electric motor. That means a top speed of 87 mph before the engine kicks in. Once it does, it’ll take you all the way up to 177 mph.

There’s a second motor at the back, though, which is far more interesting. No, it isn’t there to drive the rear axle like on the RAV4 Hybrid. The RS5 has a traditional Quattro setup with a mechanical differential in the middle to distribute power between the front and rear wheels.

The small, 11-hp motor at the back exclusively controls a new type of system that Audi calls Dynamic Torque Control. This motor uses planetary gearsets to selectively and effectively magnify the power to either the left or the right axle at the back. It may be small, but this motor makes the RS5 do some wonderful things.

Drift time

Tim Stevens for Engadget

For maximum fun in the new RS5, dial it over to what Audi calls Torque Rear mode. This configures the new rear differential to send maximum twist to the outside rear wheel. Combine that with the center differential, which can send up to 85 percent of the engine’s power to the rear, and the result is a remarkably willing drift partner.

After less than 30 seconds behind the wheel on a closed track in Marrakesh, I was confidently sliding my way through a set of cones in a slalom, then pirouetting around a cone at the end in a tight circle, clouds of tire smoke hanging in the air. Normally, drifting a 5,200-pound, 630-hp machine rolling on sticky tires is a real nightmare. It’s delightfully easy in the RS5.

The car’s differential setup not only makes this easy but also tracks just how successful you are at it. It records the time, length and even angle of your most dramatic drifts. You can even replay them on the touchscreen if you’re so inclined, scrubbing back and forth to see what kinds of G forces you were generating.

This is part of a new extension to its infotainment system called the Audi Driving Experience. It’ll also track lap times around race tracks, giving you a bit more information in the timeless pursuit of tenths of a second.

Tim Stevens for Engadget

Audi also added a few custom screens showing the power distribution of the car and letting you monitor things like critical system temperatures and tire pressures at every corner. Otherwise, though, it’s much the same interface as seen on most new Audis, with a 14.5-inch central touchscreen, an 11.9-inch gauge cluster and an optional 10.9-inch display way over on the right for the passenger.

That’s a lot of displays, with the left two encased within an oversized, sweeping panel that stands tall and proud out of the dashboard. Too tall, actually. If big bezels ruin your day, look away, because there’s a lot of wasted space here.

Likewise, if you don’t like steering wheels with capacitive touch controls, you’re not going to love the RS5. Audi has brought back the little scroll wheels under your thumbs, at least, but everything else on there is just a flat surface.

Putting the power down

Tim Stevens for Engadget

I spent the better part of a day driving the RS5 through the wild streets of Marrakesh and up into the Atlas Mountains to the south. In the city, I left the car in EV mode, letting that primary electric motor and the car’s 25.9-kilowatt-hour battery (22 kWh net) do the heavy lifting. Audi says the car can cover up to 54 miles in this mode, and while I didn’t have time to go that far on battery power, it seemed like an achievable estimate.

The car is perfectly pleasant in this mode, silent and even reasonably quick. In Comfort mode, the suspension is at its softest, and despite those giant wheels, the RS5 did perfectly fine over the decidedly imperfect Moroccan roads. But it wasn’t until I got far away from the city that I could start to open things up a bit, working my way through the various drive modes and eventually all the way up to RS Sport, the most performance-oriented.

Here, the suspension is at its stiffest and the throttle at its sharpest, transmission swinging through its ratios eagerly to keep the engine singing. Jump on the gas, and the car really does leap forward, the electric motor doing its part to cover the power delay caused by the turbochargers in the mix.

You can feel that rear differential here, too, adding an extra bit of pivot to the rear when you’re powering out of corners. But, on the way in, you really can feel the substantial weight of this car, the front end scrubbing and pushing forward when you ask too much of it.

Again, this model gained more than 1,000 pounds over the old RS5, and though the improved suspension, drivetrain, tires and even giant, ceramic brakes all help to reduce its feel, there’s no hiding that much mass.

Wrap-up

Yes, the RS5 has gained a lot of weight, and that hurts its nimbleness on track, but remember that this is a large, luxury sedan. It was never meant to be a lithe track toy. Despite that, the new RS5 actually feels far more fun and aggressive than its predecessor, a characteristic at least partially due to that trick new rear differential and the instant response of the new hybrid system. 54 miles of emissions-free range doesn’t hurt, either.

The big question is cost, and sadly, Audi’s not ready to answer that one yet. You do, at least, have a little time to save. The new RS5 doesn’t hit American shores until sometime in 2027.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/2027-audi-rs5-first-drive-big-thrills-with-a-big-battery-152057907.html?src=rss

Apple updated its low-end MacBook Pro with the Apple M5 back in October of last year, but the higher-end 14-inch and 16-inch Pros stuck with the M4 Pro and M4 Max chips. This morning Apple circled back around and updated the rest of the lineup, adding the M5 Pro and M5 Max to the higher-end machines and bumping the base storage—the M5 Pro now comes with 1TB of storage by default, while M5 Max chips come with 2TB of storage by default. The internal storage is said to be “up to 2x faster” than the previous-generation Pros. Apple is also bumping the base storage for the M5 MacBook Pro from 512GB to 1TB.

Unlike Apple’s other announcements this week, though, these upgrades also come with increases to their starting prices; the 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M5 Pro now starts at $2,199 instead of $1,999, and the 16-inch model with an M5 Pro starts at $2,699 instead of $2,499. The M5 MacBook Pro now starts at $1,699, up from $1,599. Granted, you’re getting double the storage you used to get in those old base models, but you no longer have the option to pay less if you don’t need 1TB of space.

The M5 Pro and M5 Max look like fairly major updates from the M4 Pro and M4 Max. Both use an 18-core CPU with six higher-performing cores and 12 lower-performing cores, but Apple is changing how it talks about each kind of core. The high-performance cores are now called “super cores,” a change that Apple says will retroactively apply to the high-performance cores in the basic Apple M5; M5 has four of them, and M5 Pro and M5 Max have six of them.

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Apple is continuing to announce new products ahead of its big March 4 event. Yesterday, it was the iPhone 17e and M4 iPad Air. Today, it’s all about the Mac. Apple made a number of announcements: a new M5 MacBook Air, M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros, and new Studio Display options for anyone who wants to take out a mortgage on their external displays. All of these new products will be available preorder tomorrow, and go on sale March 11.

M5 MacBook Air

This first announcement isn’t all that exciting, but it does make sense for Apple. The company is now shipping MacBook Airs with the M5 chip, following the M5 MacBook Pro it launched in October. That doesn’t come with any real design or feature changes: These are largely the same 13 and 15-inch MacBook Airs you can buy with M4. However, you do get Apple’s latest-gen chip, which comes with performance upgrades.

M5 comes with a 10-core CPU and four “super” cores and six efficiency cores, up to a 10-core GPU, a 16-core neural engine for AI processing, and 153GB/s memory bandwidth. Apple says that M5 can process AI tasks up to four times faster than M4, and comes with 28% more memory bandwidth. While those are the direct comparisons with M4, many of Apple’s stats in its press release compare the M5 to M1, likely for two reasons. The year-over-year gains between chips aren’t huge, and, because of that, people tend to hold onto M-series Macs for a long time. Apple is likely trying to target M1 MacBook Air users who might be starting to think about an upgrade.

The biggest change aside from M5 is the starting storage amount: The M5 MacBook Air now comes with 512GB of storage in the base model, so 256GB is no longer an option. That’s good news, as the latter can run out fast, but it does mean the MacBook Air now starts at $1,099, rather than the $999 the machine has been known for. You can configure the new Airs with up to 4TB of storage, too, if you need it, though any storage you get is going to be faster than previous MacBook Airs. Apple says the new SSDs are 2x faster in regard to both read and write speeds.

The M5 chip also supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, which is an upgrade over M4’s support for Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. Apple is shipping the new Airs with a 40W “Dynamic Power Adapter” that can charge up to 60W.

M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros

If you’re looking for the fastest MacBooks money can buy, turn your attention to the MacBook Pros. This is bigger news than the MacBook Air, as Apple already shipped products with the M5 chip. Now, the company is debuting M5 Pro and M5 Max for the first time in the new MacBook Pros—though, once again, these chips are really the only thing new about these machines.

Still, that’s a big deal, if you take Apple at its word. The company says that M5 Pro and M5 Max have the world’s fastest CPU Core (“using shipping competitive systems and select industry-standard benchmarks”), and are built using Apple’s new “Fusion Architecture.” That means these chips combine two dies on one chip, with a CPU up to 18 cores and a GPU up to 20 cores (M5 Pro) or 40 cores (M5 Max). M5 Pro can be configured with up to 64GB of RAM and 4TB of storage, while M5 Max can go up to 128GB of RAM and 8TB of storage.

The name of the game for Apple here is AI processing. The company says that M5 Pro can generate AI images 3.7 times faster than M4 Pro, and process LLM prompts 3.9 times faster. Meanwhile, M5 Max can generate AI images 3.8 times faster than M4 Max, and LLM prompt processing is four times faster. The gains are even larger when compared to M1 Pro and M1 Max, of course, which Apple highlights for similar reasons to the M5 MacBook Air: M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pro owners are holding onto their laptops.

As with the M5 MacBook Air, Apple is doubling the read/write speeds of the SSDs in these MacBook Pros. The base model M5 Pro MacBook Pro now comes with a 1TB SSD, while the M5 Max comes with 2TB. It also comes with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 support. Those upgrades come at an increased base cost, however: The 14-inch M5 Pro MacBook Pro now starts at $2,199, while the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro starts at $2,699—$200 more than before.

Studio Display and Studio Display XDR

Apple also announced refreshes to its external displays—Studio Display and Studio Display XDR. The Studio Display refresh is rather minor: It now comes with a 12MP Center Stage camera, with some image enhancements and support for Desk View—Apple’s feature that lets you show off your desk with just the webcam. It also has improved microphones and speakers, and Thunderbolt 5 support. But the display itself is much the same as the previous model, and still starts at $1,599.

If you want features like a high refresh rate 120Hz display, you’ll need to look to the Studio Display XDR. This display packs Apple’s “pro” features: It comes with a 27-inch 5K display with mini-LED, and can reach 1,000 nits of brightness (2,000 nits in HDR). Those features come at a cost, however: $3,299, to be exact.