It’s time for another Apple event, with a spooky twist. The company announced a surprise “Scary Fast” event last week, prompting the rumor mill to speculate that Apple would be revealing new chips to power a new lineup of Macs. As our resident Apple expert Brian Heater wrote, a new 24-inch iMac and a MacBook…

Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified Monday in the U.S. government’s antitrust trial against the company. The executive defended Google’s business tactics, including its deal with Apple and other partners to make Google the default search engine. In January, the Department of Justice, along with eight states including New York, California and Colorado, demanded a jury…

Norway-based Soundboks just released its latest $1,000 Bluetooth speaker. Now in its fourth generation, the latest Soundboks speaker is just like the older models: It’s a large, unabashed black box designed to withstand a rowdy, off-the-grid weekend of music. While the speaker has been wildly popular in Norway and Sweden, co-founder and CEO Jesper Thomsen…

OpenAI today announced that it’s created a new team to assess, evaluate and probe AI models to protect against what it describes as “catastrophic risks.” The team, called Preparedness, will be led by Aleksander Madry, the director of MIT’s Center for Deployable Machine Learning. (Madry joined OpenAI in May as “head of Preparedness,” according to…

This week, I heard from an ex-colleague I hadn’t heard from in a few years. Let’s call him Jeremy. He wrote me a lovely email, referring to a moment I have such a clear memory of. He asked about my health, mentioned that he’d seen I recently had pneumonia. After telling me a little bit…

Google is adding a slew of new updates for Maps, including a few AI-powered features that are designed to make it easier for users to search, explore their surroundings and get to their destinations. The company is making it easier to find specific items near you and find inspiration for things to do, rolling out…

Apple released iOS 17.1 on Wednesday to all users, with features including improved AirDrop sharing and updates to Apple Music. The biggest change with this release is the ability to use AirDrop when you move out of Wi-Fi range. AirDrop uses Bluetooth to securely create a peer-to-peer Wi-Fi network between two Apple devices when you…

Meta said today that its text-based social network Threads has less than 100 million monthly users three months after its launch. Mark Zuckerberg noted during the company’s latest earnings call that the social networking giant is happy with Threads’ progress — with the current growth rate, it could achieve the mark of a billion users…

The Asia Internet Coalition, a powerful industry group that represents Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft and many other tech companies, has requested India’s IT Ministry for an extended deadline to comply with certain provisions of a newly approved data protection regulation governing user data processing. In a Thursday letter to India’s IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and…

Elon Musk announced Wednesday that an early version of video and audio calling is now available on X, formerly known as Twitter. The move is another step toward Musk’s goal of turning X into an “everything app” that can handle everything from online payments to news to food delivery. Not all users can access it…