Tech

New York state is the latest place to prohibit smart glasses and other recording tech in courtrooms. Says Syracuse.com:

We have all become desensitized. Every place is like every other place, every experience is happening at a remove and on a screen. And Ian Bogost, a Washington University professor and a writer at The Atlantic, argues in a new book called The Small Stuff that this “dematerialization” is making our life worse. He tells us of the magic of paper tickets, why he’s kind of obsessed with the rubber on his water bottle, and why you don’t need to throw phone into the ocean — but you should probably watch more ASMR videos.

Omida reports that memory costs can make up more than half the cost of low-end phones. That’s leading to a gradual retreat from the low-end market, as low-end products are “already becoming unprofitable and face a high risk of weakening demand as retail price continues to rise.”

Pete Holmes has a lot of good tech takes in this Wired interview. He also, against all odds, made me want the iPhone Air:

Following the 12 new sets announced last month featuring Smart Brick interactivity, Lego is once again expanding its Pokémon collection with five new sets. They range in price from a $69.99, 757-piece Munchlax to an elaborate $299.99, 2,386-piece Poké Ball that opens to reveal a battle scene and Professor Oak’s laboratory.

As Windows Central reports, Valve has released Windows drivers for the Steam Machine, like it previously did for the Steam Deck, so you can replace its Linux-based SteamOS if you want. However, the Steam Machine still doesn’t support dual-booting, so you can only have one OS installed at a time.

The trillionaire’s legacy of death under DOGE had a spotlight put on it recently, including from us. Musk responded with threats, including a threat to sue Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) for citing the same study we did. Now he’s in a losing war against the reality of his ghastly conduct. The Guardian explains the saga so far:

9to5Google points to a report from Dealabs claiming that all configurations of the Pixel 11 will cost around €100 more than the Pixel 10. While the base Pixel 11 might be a bit pricier, it could also include 256GB of storage, rather than the current 128GB. According to Dealabs, the Pixel 11 could arrive as soon as August.

The $69.99 HyperMegaTech! Super Pocket Activision Edition! comes with 34 retro games pre-installed that were all available on Atari consoles decades ago. Bundled titles include Pitfall!, Chopper Command, and River Raid, but the handheld is also compatible with Evercade’s ever-growing collection of multi-title cartridges.

Filings spotted by leaker Digital Chat Station claim that the iPhone 18 Pro’s battery will be 4,288 mAh, while the Pro Max’s will be 5,567 mAh, as MacRumors reports. Both would be a modest boost over the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max’s batteries, especially the 479 mAh bump for the iPhone 18 Pro Max.

Reddit is clamping down on spammy AI activity, a problem that is definitely not, in any way, shape, or form, a problem of Reddit’s own making.

Meta says four US states are seeking $1.4 trillion in penalties, according to Reuters, in a filing published ahead of an upcoming August trial that accuses the company of purposefully designing Facebook and Instagram to addict young users. Meta’s market cap is $1.5 trillion and it’s already lost back-to-back trials on the matter and settled another.

Memory chip demand by AI datacenters continues to be very good for Samsung, and some of its workers who are eligible for average annual bonuses of $340,000 this year. Per Reuters:

Remarkable positions its e-ink tablets as the best tablets for thinking, but what about for talking to the abyss? Riddle is a new open-source project for the Remarkable Paper Pro that lets it write back to you like an evil diary. Anyone else realize these tablets were this open?

It’s been missing from the first two versions of the beta, but you can now continue conversations from your phone on your wrist, and vice versa. I’m playing around with it now, but I’m curious to hear from fellow smartwatch nerds. (You’ll need a Series 9, Ultra 3, or SE 3 and later to run the dev beta.)

Jason Snell, long-time writer of all-things-Apple for Macworld, recently announced his tenure is coming to an end after nearly 30 years at the publication. (Snell also contributed some great pieces to The Verge; you can read his work here.) What a run! You can read his farewell letter here:

The company says its AI-powered spam detection tools are blocking 23 million spam views each day, while catching around 25,000 new “spammy posts and comments,” and revoking nearly 2 million “inauthentic votes.” Reddit is also working to combat “coordinated patterns of fake behavior and artificial hype,” which we’ve seen with AI systems trying to game AI search results.

We promised ourselves a while back that, if and when the Trump Phone ever arrived, we would immediately go live and talk about it. I’m still not entirely sure why. But we are people of our word, and Dominic Preston and I now have Trump Phones! Update: Thanks to everyone who watched and commented! You can catch up on the stream below, or wherever you get podcasts.

As Bloomberg reports, the new Broadcom chips will be in “multiple generations of Apple products.” It’s an expansion of Apple’s existing partnership with Broadcom, which is also collaborating with Apple on AI server chips and has long been making 5G and wireless components for Apple devices.

Tomorrow you can buy a Tom Ford jacket worn by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at auction, but you might have stiff competition in the bidding.

The new affordable earbuds will launch alongside the Phone 4B, but WinFuture has published what appear to be official promo shots of the buds in all four colors: yellow, pink, white, and black. Will we see a return of the odd charging case microphone Nothing introduced in the more premium Ear 3?