GameStop’s surprisingly extended run may be beginning to come to an end though, with Polygon reporting late last week that GameStop has abruptly shut down 400 stores across the US, with even more closures expected before the end of the month. That comes on top of 590 US stores that were shuttered in fiscal 2024 (which ended in January of 2025) and stated plans to end operations for hundreds of remaining international stores across Canada, Australia, and Europe in the coming months, per SEC filings.
GameStop still had just over 3,200 stores worldwide as of February 1, 2025, so even hundreds of new and planned store closures don’t literally mean the immediate end of the company as a going concern. But when you consider that there were still nearly 6,000 GameStop locations worldwide as of 2019—nearly 4,000 of which were in the US—the long-term trend is clear.
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Winter makes the comfort gaps in your home impossible to ignore. Cold corners, stale air, rooms that never feel evenly warm, no matter how long the heater runs. You can try smaller fixes first—blocking drafts, layering rugs, or improving airflow, which actually helps rooms feel warmer without cranking the thermostat. But if you’re still juggling space heaters, fans, and an air purifier, this deal on the Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool HP1 is worth a closer look. It’s currently $499.95, down from $659.99, and price trackers show this is the lowest it’s ever been.
In winter, the heating mode does most of the heavy lifting. The HP1 warms up quickly and pushes heat out evenly instead of blasting one hot stream at your ankles. Its wide oscillation (up to 350 degrees) helps circulate warm air throughout the room, which can make a space feel comfortable faster and more consistently. That circulation also keeps the air from feeling heavy or damp, especially in closed-up winter homes. When the heater isn’t needed, it works as a cooling fan, and year-round it runs as a sealed HEPA air purifier. Cooking smells, pet dander, and lingering indoor air all clear out faster than you’d expect. That said, filters need replacing about once a year, at around $79.99, which adds to the long-term cost.
Living with it day to day feels very Dyson. The HP1 is tall but slim, with a small base that doesn’t eat up floor space. At about 12 pounds, it’s light enough to carry from room to room. The front-facing LED screen shows temperature, air quality, fan speed, and remaining filter life without forcing you into the app. Most controls happen through the magnetized remote, which snaps to the top of the unit, making the MyDyson app optional. The real benefit of the app is being able to control the HP1 remotely, which is useful if you want the room warmed up before you get there. This still isn’t a small purchase, even on sale, but for homes short on space or anyone tired of juggling separate heaters, fans, and purifiers, it does make daily life simpler without demanding much attention once it’s set up.
Apple’s open-source on-device AI model instantly turns images into scenes, and Vision Pro owners can try it out in the app Splat Studio.
Since visionOS 26, Apple’s own Photos app has included a one-click feature to almost instantly turn any image into a ‘Spatial Scene’. It’s essentially a volumetric photo with a limited area of viewing freedom, which you can slightly lean around to “peak” into.
Meanwhile, over the past year or so multiple open-source and proprietary AI systems emerged that can go much further, turning a photo into a scene that you can freely explore, even walk around. For example, Marble lets you do this in your headset’s web browser and explore the scene in WebXR.
Marble is a computationally expensive server-side model, however, that takes minutes to produce its result. And that’s what makes Apple’s SHARP particularly interesting.
SHARP runs on typical consumer devices, with general CPU support as well as Nvidia CUDA and Apple Silicon Metal hardware acceleration, taking less than a second to complete on most hardware.
In a rare move from Apple, SHARP is free and open-source, with the code available on GitHub. You can easily download and run it on a Mac, for example.
As with almost all of the remarkable advancements in 3D reconstruction over the past few years, it generates a Gaussian splat, fitting millions of semitransparent colored blobs (Gaussians) in 3D space so that arbitrary viewpoints can be rendered realistically in real-time. You receive the result as a .ply file that can be rendered in any standard 3DGS viewer.
For Apple Vision Pro owners, Portugal-based developer Rob Matwiejczyk built a visionOS app that integrates Apple’s SHARP model into an easy-to-use graphical interface and eliminates the need to use a Mac or PC.
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UploadVR testing out Splat Studio, the visionOS app powered by Apple’s SHARP.
Called Splat Studio, the app is available for free on the App Store, and runs entirely on-device. Just choose any image from your Photos library and it instantly gets turned into a 3D scene floating in front of you, which you can rotate, move, and scale with your hands.
I tested Splat Studio on the M5 Apple Vision Pro, using the same Steam Dev Days 2014 VR room I used to test Marble. For comparison, I also turned the same image into a Spatial Scene in the visionOS 26 Photos app. You can see footage of the Splat Studio result above, and of the Spatial Scene below.
The Splat Studio app turned the image into a scene in around 20 seconds, compared to the near-instant result of Apple’s Photos app, but it’s unclear how much of this is truly due to the SHARP model compared to any overhead the Splat Studio app may add.
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The Spatial Scenes feature of Apple Photos in visionOS 26, for comparison.
As for the result, while the Apple Photos Spatial Scene lets you peer into the scene, the degree to which you can move in each direction is relatively limited. Meanwhile, the SHARP result in Splat Studio lets you freely move around the scene. The tradeoff, as with many generative AI results, is some detail loss, as well as hallucinated details the further you go from the original perspective of the image.
A major new review by the Cochrane collaboration — an independent network of researchers — evaluated 73 randomized controlled trials involving about 5,000 people with depression and found that exercise matched the effectiveness of both pharmacological treatments and psychological therapies.
The biological mechanisms overlap considerably with antidepressants. “Exercise can help improve neurotransmitter function, like serotonin as well as dopamine and endorphins,” said Dr. Stephen Mateka, medical director of psychiatry at Inspira Health. Dr. Nicholas Fabiano of the University of Ottawa added that exercise triggers the release of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which he calls “Miracle-Gro for the brain.”
Exercise has been adopted as a first-line treatment in depression guidelines globally, though Fabiano noted it remains underutilized. The meta-analysis found that combining aerobic exercise and resistance training appeared more effective than aerobic exercise alone, and that 13 to 36 workouts led to improvements in depressive symptoms. Light to moderate exercise proved as beneficial as vigorous workouts, at least initially.
On Monday, UK media regulator Ofcom confirmed that X may have violated the UK’s Online Safety Act, which requires platforms to block illegal content. The proliferation of “undressed images of people” by X users may amount to intimate image abuse, pornography, and child sexual abuse material (CSAM), the regulator said. And X may also have neglected its duty to stop kids from seeing porn.
“Reports of Grok being used to create and share illegal non-consensual intimate images and child sexual abuse material on X have been deeply concerning,” an Ofcom spokesperson said. “Platforms must protect people in the UK from content that’s illegal in the UK, and we won’t hesitate to investigate where we suspect companies are failing in their duties, especially where there’s a risk of harm to children.”
XREAL, the Beijing-based AR glasses maker, announced it has raised $100 million in a recent funding round.
The News
Xreal co-founder and CEO Chi Xu broke the news on Bloomberg Television, noting the company secured funding from “supply chain partners” in addition to other backers, which Xu declined to disclose.
According to Crunchbasedata, the company has raised a total of $433 million in outside funding since its founding in 2017.
Its second most recent funding round came in May 2025 when Xreal secured ¥200 million RMB (~$28.6 million USD), led by Pudong Venture Capital. The startup is now said to be valued at $1 billion.
ROG XREAL R1 | Image courtesy Asus ROG
This follows the unveiling of ROG XREAL R1, a pair of 240Hz “gaming glasses” built in collaboration with Asus Republic of Gamers, and the announcement that Google is extending its partnership with Xreal, positioning it as a lead hardware partner for the Android XR ecosystem.
Xu told Bloomberg Television that its current Android XR glasses, Project Aura, is on schedule for release this year.
My Take
I’ve never been particularly enthused with the sort of optics Xreal relies on in all of its AR specs, mostly because when I think of AR glasses of the near future, I think of something indistinguishable from regular glasses. To me, Xreal’s existence hinges on an interesting technological byway, and doesn’t really offer the answer to the actual problem.
That said, Xreal’s birdbath and newer flat prism optics (seen on XREAL One Pro and detailed by Karl Guttag) provide good clarity, okay brightness, and a comparatively wide field of view (FOV)—wider than most waveguide optics can. All of that at a per-unit price that is much cheaper than waveguides at comparable specs—the reason it can even sell AR consumer glasses this early in the first place.
Jimmy Fallon tries on Xreal One Pro | Image courtesy XREAL
That, and the company clearly isn’t struggling either, considering it’s existed for nearly a decade now, and has clearly shown it can attract outside funding on the regular in addition to closing partnerships with Google and Asus.
Still, birdbath and its newer flat prim optics make for a bulkier overall package, which is why you won’t often see marketing material focusing on the thing’s side profile with an actual person—they sit a few centimeters farther from where typical glasses might.
Additionally, both style of optics typically involve thick beam splitters and mirrors sitting in front of your eyes, which means noticeable light loss not only from the device’s display, but also ambient light sources, making for dimmer pictures than you might expect and a dimmer physical environment overall. I really want to see Project Aura before judging, but I have my doubts it will make a great pair of all-day AR glasses simply based on that alone.
With Xreal very much the now of AR, it will be interesting to see how the company eventually makes the leap to the future of AR. The usual cadre of hardware competitors will eventually release their first salvos onto the market—rumored to kick off somewhere between next year and 2030—and you can bet they’ll be aiming for thin, stylish and packed with apps just itching to replace your smartphone.
Microsoft has officially retired the traditional phone-based activation system for Windows and Office that served as a reliable fallback for users for over two decades.
Indeed, the “slui 4” command has up until now been served PC builders, privacy advocates, and IT administrators well since the days of XP. It allowed users to activate a
Apple has struck a multi-year partnership with Google to power a more capable version of Siri using Gemini AI models, ending months of speculation about which company would help the iPhone maker catch up in the generative AI race. In a statement, Apple said it had determined after “careful evaluation” that “Google’s technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models.”
The deal comes after Apple delayed its planned Siri AI upgrade last March, acknowledging that the project was taking “longer than we thought.” Bloomberg had reported in August that Apple was in early talks with Google about using a custom Gemini model. Apple also explored potential partnerships with OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity, and CEO Tim Cook has said the company plans to integrate with more AI companies over time. The upgraded Siri is expected to perform actions on users’ behalf and understand personal context.
The new Chevrolet Equinox EV is a solid entry into the compact crossover market, and with a (just) sub-$35,000 starting price, it also counts as affordable by the standards of 2026. But if you think that’s too rich for your blood, or that the Equinox is still too large for your needs, take heart—the Chevrolet Bolt is back in dealerships now as well.
The Bolt was GM’s first modern electric vehicle, following on from the hand-built, pre-lithium ion EV1 and the compliance car that was the Spark EV. We’re big fans of the Bolt here at Ars Technica. It offered well more than 200 miles of range in a mass-produced EV at a reasonable price well before Tesla’s Model 3 started clogging up our roads, it got more efficient over time, and it managed to be fun to drive in the process.
General Motors (which owns Chevrolet) probably feels less well-disposed toward the Bolt. It lost thousands of dollars on each car it sold, even before the entire fleet had to be recalled for a costly battery replacement. The issue was due to improperly folded tabs on some cells that could cause a battery fire, giving GM (and its battery partner LG) plenty of bad press in the process. That recall alone cost $1.8 billion.
Older adults can dramatically reduce the amount of ultraprocessed foods they eat while keeping a familiar, balanced diet—and this shift leads to improvements across several key markers related to how the body regulates appetite and metabolism. That’s the main finding of a new study my colleagues and I published in the journal Clinical Nutrition.
Ultraprocessed foods are made using industrial techniques and ingredients that aren’t typically used in home cooking. They often contain additives such as emulsifiers, flavorings, colors, and preservatives. Common examples include packaged snacks, ready-to-eat meals, and some processed meats. Studies have linked diets high in ultraprocessed foods to poorer health outcomes.
My team and I enrolled Americans ages 65 and older in our study, many of whom were overweight or had metabolic risk factors such as insulin resistance or high cholesterol. Participants followed two diets low in ultraprocessed foods for eight weeks each. One included lean red meat (pork); the other was vegetarian with milk and eggs. For two weeks in between, participants returned to their usual diets.
India is considering new smartphone security rules that would require device makers to allow government access to source code for “vulnerability analysis.” It would also require companies to notify the government of major software updates and security patches before rollout, according to Reuters.
This is the latest in a raft of unprecedented proposals by the Indian government under the guise of security, as it weighs making a package of 83 security standards drafted in 2023 legally binding in the world’s second-largest smartphone market with nearly 750 million smartphones.
Under the proposals, any source code review would be analyzed and potentially tested at designated labs in India. Major phone manufacturers have reportedly warned the Indian government that such a move risks revealing proprietary information.
The source code proposal comes alongside a series of additional recommendations such as restrictions on background permissions for apps and the option to remove all preinstalled apps. Reuters also reports the package would mandate periodic malware scanning and require phones to store system logs for at least 12 months, requirements that industry groups told the publication would drain battery life, run into storage limits and slow the rollout of necessary security updates.
The nation’s IT ministry told Reuters it “refutes the statement” that it is proposing manufacturers hand over their source code. This was despite a review of internal government and industry documents as part of the reporting. Government officials and industry executives are reportedly due to meet Tuesday for more discussions.
Last month, India was set to require a state-owned cybersecurity app be preinstalled on every smartphone in the nation before backpedaling after intense backlash. Just two days later, there was reportedly a proposal to require that smartphones keep location services on at all times with no way to turn them off.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/india-is-proposing-another-far-reaching-security-rule-for-smartphones-155204829.html?src=rss
Linux Mint 22.3 “Zena” is here, and the upgrade path from Linux Mint 22.2 “Zara” is now open for those who want to upgrade their installations to the latest release of this popular GNU/Linux distribution.
Apple has confirmed reports that it will use Google Gemini’s models to help it power the new version of Siri and other generative AI features. “After careful evaluation, we determined that Google’s technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models and we’re excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for our users,” Apple said, according to CNBC. The outlet reported that Apple and Google have a multi-year agreement in place.
This story is developing; please refresh for updates…
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/apples-siri-ai-will-be-powered-by-gemini-153636649.html?src=rss
Panic over soaring memory costs in the second half of last year didn’t stop the PC market from rebounding in a big way, with global shipments of desktops, laptops, and workstations surging 10.1% to 59 75 million units in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to Omdia. The last-quarter surge propelled the full-year tally to 279.5 million units
