All the news you need to keep up with the latest developments in the tech world, from product announcements and live events to tariffs, policies, and regulations. Tech touches every aspect of daily news, and our experts are here to keep you informed on what happens and how it all affects you.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s latest patch adds an option to retry battles right after you’re defeated. The game’s checkpoints were already pretty forgiving, but this new pop-up will make jumping back into a battle to practice your parries a little bit faster.
Called AlphaEarth Foundations, the model stitches together data from actual satellite images, radar, climate simulations, and more to map Earth’s land and coastal waters.
”The Satellite Embedding dataset is revolutionizing our work by helping countries map uncharted ecosystems - this is crucial for pinpointing where to focus their conservation efforts,” Nick Murray, director of the James Cook University Global Ecology Lab and Global Science Lead of Global Ecosystems Atlas, said in a Google DeepMind blog post.
[deepmind.google]
The deal, which includes access to the NYT, The Athletic, and NYT Cooking, will have Amazon paying $20 million to $25 million per year, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. In May, the NYT said Amazon will use its content to train AI models and bring article summaries to Alexa.
The guy who renamed Facebook to Meta went long with a blog post this morning about a grandiose AGI-ish vision for artificial intelligence and why his company is so invested in it. It also might help explain why Meta is making huge offers to hire “post-money” AI experts who aren’t completely convinced Meta is the place to be.
We’re still churning through the whole thing, but you can start with Zuckerberg’s accompanying video right here.
Microsoft rarely does limited editions of its Surface products, but it has quietly launched a “Smurface Edition” in time for the Smurfs movie. I was expecting it to be a totally blue design, but instead Microsoft has laser-etched the Smurfs to the front, alongside a blue Surface logo. Other than that, it’s a 13-inch Surface Laptop 7 with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Plus, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage for $999.99. Only 100 units are available, exclusively at Amazon.
Get a first look at the new fascia, NACS charging port, and brake lights on the Bolt, with Chevy promising “More this fall.”
GM killed the Bolt in 2023 before resurrecting it for its newer Ultium battery tech (which... it’s also killing, at least as a brand name). The new Bolt will boast faster charging and multiple models, but that won’t include a small hatchback — only the larger EUV Bolt is making a comeback.
Leaker Sonny Dickson has shared photos of dummy units from Apple’s upcoming iPhone 17 lineup, including a bright orange for the Pro and Pro Max models. Expect the exact hues to be different in the final phones though.
It follows a video yesterday from another leaker that showed similar Pro finishes, plus a model in gray — but with signs of AI generation in that video, we’d put more stock in Sonny’s shots.
Until now it’s stayed quiet on whether it received the same order to open a backdoor to user data as Apple, but a spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that it never did. If it had, Google wouldn’t be allowed to say so.
Apple has pulled iCloud encryption from the UK and appealed its order in the courts. Last week it was reported that the UK is ready to give up the fight following US political pressure.
The search giant has followed OpenAI in signing the EU’s voluntary AI code of practice, after Meta snubbed the agreement over “legal uncertainties.” Google also has its complaints despite signing, saying in a statement:
“We remain concerned that the AI Act and Code risk slowing Europe’s development and deployment of AI. In particular, departures from EU copyright law, steps that slow approvals, or requirements that expose trade secrets could chill European model development and deployment.”
[blog.google]
“Stay away from the coast!” the National Weather Service warns. A magnitude 8.7 earthquake off the east coast of Russia has triggered tsunami alerts across the Pacific. The tsunami advisory means that dangerous currents and waves are possible.
San Francisco could see waves arrive around 12:40AM PT on July 30th.
The company plans on holding mock interviews where it will give coding candidates access to an AI assistant, according to a report from 404 Media.
“We’re obviously focused on using AI to help engineers with their day-to-day work, so it should be no surprise that we’re testing how to provide these tools to applicants during interviews,” a Meta spokesperson told 404 Media.
After months of questionable leaks that haven’t revealed many details, DJI has shared a teaser video and image of its first robot vacuum being announced next week. The DJI Romo features a traditional circular robovac design with a pair of extended brushes and what appears to be a sensor array on the front.
It will also utilize a dock, but despite what the teaser image shows, the transparent version might just be DJI showing off the dock’s internals and functionality.
Nintendo previously let you remap your controller buttons while playing classic N64 and GameCube games through the Switch Online service, but that functionality has now been expanded to Super Nintendo games, too, as spotted by Nintendo Life.
Although the new View/Change Controls option in the SNES app was briefly seen in the Nintendo of America Mario Paint video released yesterday, the Japanese version goes into more detail about how it works.
The Trump administration proposed tossing out the landmark 2009 “endangerment finding” that allows the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas pollution under the Clean Air Act.
Greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and methane cause climate change, of course. Climate change is projected to lead to roughly 250,000 additional deaths each year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat illness between 2030 and 2050, according to the World Health Organization.
This box isn’t anywhere near as customizably cool as the Framework Desktop, and it’s not even that much cheaper! (It’s the same $1,599 for 64GB or $1,999 for an LLM-friendly 128GB, save that Corsair throws in a 1TB SSD and Windows.)
But I guess the new Corsair AI Workstation 300 does come prebuilt, and you aren’t limited to just two front ports: you get two USB-A, one C, full-size SD and audio right out of the box.
And Riot Games is hoping you won’t even notice, apart from the big download. Today’s update moves Valorant from Unreal Engine 4.27 to Unreal Engine 5.3, and there might even be some small performance improvements on some systems. While other PC games using Unreal 5 have run into stutter issues, Riot says its switch shouldn’t even be noticeable for most players.
The streaming platform began testing a new homepage in June, and now it’s starting to roll out a new “surf mode” feature that lets you scroll through a TikTok-like feed of show and movie clips from The Roku Channel. It will also introduce two new rows for the top 10 shows and movies on Roku, as well as add an “In Theaters Now” row where you can explore movie trailers.
