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I used a $170 thermal camera to check my GCFI breaker - here's why this one's worth it

ZDNET's key takeaways HSFTools' HF96V thermal camera is available now for $180. It has a broad temperature range and a high level of accuracy with an eight-hour battery life. It has an IP54 rating for dust and water-resistance, but it's not waterproof. $189.99 at Amazon For a limited time, the HSFTools HF96V thermal camera is $40 off on Amazon, bringing it down to $180. Regular readers will know that I am a little obsessed with thermal imaging cameras. I regularly use them built into smartph

Meta's new AI lab aims to deliver 'personal superintelligence for everyone' - whatever that means

Vincent Feuray / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP/Getty Images Meta has launched a new internal R&D division devoted to building artificial superintelligence, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The division, called Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), will be led by Alexandr Wang and Nat Friedman, the former CEOs of Scale AI and GitHub, respectively. It will also be joined by seven ex-OpenAI engineers, according to an internal memo from CEO Mark Zuckerberg obtained by CNBC. Meta's plans to launch the

How to easily upskill and build IT experience that hiring managers will love - at home

dra_schwartz/Getty Images When I was a kid, my home lab consisted of test tubes and beakers, sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), acetic acid (vinegar), and the occasional boom, followed closely by the sound of my mom in the distance yelling, "David Allen Gewirtz, you stop that right now." When the scold transitioned from "David Gewirtz" to "David Allen Gewirtz," I knew I was in trouble. To be fair, nothing prepared my nontechnical mom and dad to raise a future engineer. I was forever taking thin

PlanetScale for Postgres

Announcing PlanetScale for Postgres By Sam Lambert | July 1, 2025 Today we are announcing the private preview of PlanetScale for Postgres: the world’s fastest Postgres hosting platform. You can request access to PlanetScale for Postgres by visiting this link. We are already hosting customers' production workloads with incredible results. Convex, the complete backend solution for app developers, is migrating their reactive database infrastructure to PlanetScale for Postgres. Read more about t

Cua (YC X25) Is Hiring a Founding Engineer

Cua is building the infrastructure that lets general AI agents safely and scalably use Computers and Apps like humans do. With 8.9k+ GitHub stars in just 4 months and backing from Y Combinator, we’re providing: An open-source framework for building and evaluating general-purpose AI agents A cloud container platform for sandboxed, scalable agent execution environments A blueprint for what production-grade general agent systems should look like - backed by research We're looking for our first

Grammarly Adds Superhuman Email App to Expand Its AI Platform. Here's What That Could Mean for You

Show of hands: Who'd like to spend less time going through their email? That could be in the offing from Grammarly, which announced it's expanding its suite of workplace tools with the purchase of Superhuman, an email efficiency tool. Grammarly, the company behind the popular grammar enforcement app of the same name, has acquired the AI-powered Superhuman app as part of its push to build out its business productivity offerings, the company said in a press release today. "Email is the main comm

Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent Poaching Spree: 'Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries'

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is hitting back at Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent AI talent poaching spree. In a full-throated response sent to OpenAI researchers Monday evening and obtained by WIRED, Altman made his pitch for why staying at OpenAI is the only answer for those looking to build artificial general intelligence, hinting that the company is evaluating compensation for the entire research organization. He also dismissed Meta’s recruiting efforts, saying what the company is doing could lead

Nothing’s ‘first true flagship’ phone plays it a little safe

“The Glyph interface is not a gimmick,” Nothing founder and CEO Carl Pei told the press as he revealed the Nothing Phone 3 for the first time, shortly before announcing that its new iteration lets you play Spin the Bottle on the back of the phone. It’s mixed messaging, but in Nothing’s defense, you couldn’t accuse them of making that mistake elsewhere. The Phone 3, we’re told, is Nothing’s “first true flagship phone,” a point the company is keen to hammer home: flagship chip, flagship camera, f

Bay Area commuters get free rides Tuesday morning due to Clipper card outage

Commuters in and around San Francisco rode into work for free on Tuesday morning due to an outage in the Clipper card system, which is used to handle payments for train, bus and ferry rides. "ATTENTION: The Clipper system is experiencing an outage on all operators this morning," the Bay Area Clipper account wrote in a post on X. "Please be prepared to pay your fare with another form of payment if required by your transit agency." Many buses were waving commuters on without asking for payment,

Threads officially rolls out standalone DMs and debuts visual highlights

Meta just took another step in its belated but very welcome push to detach Threads from its Instagram roots. Starting today, the app is officially rolling out its own direct messaging system and a new visual highlights feature. Here’s how they work. Both updates mark the second anniversary of the app, which was officially launched on July 5th, 2024. And alongside the announcement, Threads also shared an interesting, but completely unsurprising fact, pointing to its increasingly independent futu

Marshall’s new Middleton II Bluetooth speaker lasts 30 hours between charges

Marshall has launched its latest compact Bluetooth speaker, the Middleton II. A direct replacement for the first-generation Middleton from 2023, the new speaker promises room-filling 360-degree sound from a device that sits comfortably in the palm of your hand and won’t demand too much space in your backpack for trips. The original Middleton offered bright clear sound that belied its diminutive proportions, and with its successor Marshall says it has engineered deeper bass and "more refined per

Show HN: HackerNewt - Breadth-first exploring HN client for iOS

Don't get lost in big Hacker News discussions! HackerNewt is a Hacker News client that uses an alternative way of displaying comment tree. Advantages over traditional interfaces: - Comment width doesn't get narrower no matter how deep in the tree you are - You always see the parent of the comment you're currently reading - Swiping allows you to move in and out of subtrees with animated transitions that you fully control - You can easily skip subtrees that don't interest you by simply scrolling A

Remark raises $16M to build out human-powered expert models for e-commerce

Startups working on AI-powered e-commerce tools often rely on external data or user signals to build and improve their models. However, a company called Remark is taking a different approach by letting thousands of human experts chat with users while they are purchasing items, and then using that knowledge to train models. Remark also makes those experts “available” all the time by having their AI-powered persona answer questions. Remark said that this resulted in a 10% net revenue gain for par

Brazil’s antitrust watchdog says Apple must face penalties over App Store restrictions [U]

Apple’s week is off to a rough start. First, Proton filed a class action lawsuit in the U.S. Almost simultaneously, a judge in New Jersey rejected Apple’s attempt to dismiss a federal antitrust case. And on Monday night, things got a little worse: CADE, Brazil’s antitrust watchdog, formally recommended that Apple be sanctioned for the “imposition of the exclusive use of its payment system by app developers and the restriction on the distribution and commercialization of third-party digital serv

Best Internet Speed Tests for July 2025

Is your home getting enough internet speed? There's nothing more annoying than discovering that you aren't getting the internet speeds you've been paying for. And on the flip side, it doesn't make sense to pay for speeds you don't really need -- avoiding that mistake can help you save hundreds of dollars on your internet bill. Let's face it, home internet is expensive. In a CNET broadband survey, 63% of US adults paying for home internet said their price increased last year. With those rising c

Grammarly acquires AI email client Superhuman

Grammarly announced Tuesday the acquisition of email client Superhuman in a push to build out its AI for its productivity suite. Neither companies provided details about the financial terms of the deal. Superhuman was founded by Rahul Vohra, Vivek Sodera, and Conrad Irwin. The company raised more than $114 million in funding from backers including a16z, IVP, and Tiger Global, with its last valuation at $825 million, according to data from venture data analytics firm Traxcn. “With Superhuman, w

Threads launches its own DM inbox, as app moves further away from Instagram

Instagram Threads is rolling out users’ most-requested feature to date: the ability to message people directly, without having to switch to another app, like Instagram. The company said direct messages (DMs) will begin rolling out to users globally beginning on Tuesday, alongside a new visual element called highlighter. The latter will emphasize interesting perspectives and conversations, Meta says, starting with Trending Topics. At launch, Threads DMs offer a basic set of features. They’ll su

Mark Zuckerberg’s war chest is Apple’s newest hurdle in the AI race

Meta’s renewed push into AI is throwing the entire market off-balance, and Apple is particularly exposed. With morale arguably at an all-time low inside Cupertino’s AI teams, Zuckerberg’s multimillion-dollar check-cutting spree may have already pulled at least one top researcher out of Apple Park. And there may be more to come. What multimillion-dollar check-cutting spree? According to recent reports, Meta has offered massive pay packages to lure top AI researchers from rivals. And while Open

12 Best Cheap Laptops (2025), Tested and Reviewed

For our full take on what to look for in a laptop, see our guide on choosing the right laptop. Your budget is the most important factor, as it determines what you can expect out of the device you're purchasing. But you should consider display size, chassis thickness, CPU, memory, storage, and port selection. While appropriate specs can vary wildly when you're considering laptops ranging from $200 to $800, there are a few hard lines I don't recommend crossing. For example, don't buy a laptop if

Sharp pencils for hard times

Allison Johnson is a reviewer for The Verge who writes about phones and mobile technology. “Occasionally,” she adds, “I yell at your wireless carrier.” I asked her if there were any items that she especially liked using, and after thinking about it, she eventually came up with… a pencil sharpener. Where did you first hear about the Blackwing One-Step Long Point Sharpener? Last year, I told my husband all I wanted for Christmas was a nice pencil sharpener — and he understood the assignment. In

Something Hilarious Happens When Potential Customers See That a Product Has AI Features

New research suggests that slapping the "AI" label on products doesn't always go over well with buyers, the Wall Street Journal reports. A new study published this month in Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management found that consumers tended to turn away from products that were promoted as having AI — especially if the items were a high-risk purchase like a car. "When we were thinking about this project, we thought that AI will improve [consumers' willingness to buy] because everyone is p

First-Class Models: The Missing Productivity Revolution

TL;DR: First-class models with branching and merging capabilities represent an almost entirely unused enormous productivity and expressiveness unlock in programming and computer systems. The Current State: Well-Designed Systems, Constrained Users Imagine you’re building an accounting system from scratch. You’d design it properly: a normalized database schema, algebraically defined operations for debits and credits, account reconciliation, and comparison functions. You’d implement data-only, in

Best Smart Speakers for 2025: From My Ears to Your Home

The grass isn't always greener on the other side. John Carlsen/CNET The smart speakers above are our current favorites, but you still have other options if you're looking for something specific in audio performance. Read our breakdown of Alexa versus Google Assistant versus Siri if you'd like to learn the pros and cons of each and decide on a smart home device based on its platform as well. Options that didn't make this list include: Apple HomePod: I really like the HomePod's sound, which is p

Leaked render reveals Meta’s Hypernova smart glasses and wristband controller

TL;DR A newly leaked render shows off Meta’s upcoming “Hypernova” smart glasses alongside its wrist controller accessory. Hypernova is expected to feature a screen in the right lens, an upgraded camera, and the ability to launch apps for taking photos and accessing maps. Users will also be able to see notifications. The “Ceres” neural wristband will reportedly power gesture-based controls for the device. Hypernova is expected to cost $1,000–$1,400 and is said to be coming by the end of the ye

Brazil’s antitrust watchdog says Apple must face penalties over NFC restrictions

Apple’s week is off to a rough start. First, Proton filed a class action lawsuit in the U.S. Almost simultaneously, a judge in New Jersey rejected Apple’s attempt to dismiss a federal antitrust case. And on Monday night, things got a little worse: CADE, Brazil’s antitrust watchdog, formally recommended that Apple be sanctioned for restricting access to the iPhone’s NFC chip and forcing developers to use Apple Pay. In its ruling, CADE’s General Superintendence said Apple’s behavior creates “art

Show HN: Spegel, a Terminal Browser That Uses LLMs to Rewrite Webpages

Spegel - A Terminal Browser That Uses LLMs to Rewrite Webpages June 23, 2025 TL;DR Spegel is a proof-of-concept terminal web browser that feeds HTML through an LLM and renders the result as markdown directly in your terminal. Your browser does not support the video tag. Two weekends ago, after my family had gone to sleep, I found myself unsupervised with a laptop and an itch to build something interesting. A couple of hours later, I had a minimal web browser running in my terminal (no JavaSc

This 6TB Crucial X10 SSD Costs Less Than the 4TB Version, With Limited Stock on Amazon for 4th of July

We may run out of superlatives when it comes to describing the Crucial X10 external solid-state drive, but we should cut to the most important detail of all right away — the massive 6TB model of the #1 new release in external SSDs is nearly half-price right now at Amazon, just $292. That’s even cheaper than the 4TB model of the same highly rated drive. This phenomenal pre-Prime Day deal slashes over $260 from the price of one of the best external drives on the market. The Crucial X10 is palm-si

Shark Pet Cordless Vacuum Cleaner Hits Its Lowest Price at 50% Off to Clear Out Stock Before Prime Day

If you live with pets, you know how quickly fur, crumbs, and dust seem to collect in every corner of your home. Even when you’ve just cleaned, there always seems to be another clump of hair under the table or a fine layer of dirt around the baseboards. It’s kind of the life you’ve chosen when you think about it, because you invited pets into your home. But that doesn’t mean you should have to be punished for living with adorable, furry animals. What can you do, though? You can get a vacuum that’

China's Huawei open-sources AI models as it seeks adoption across the global AI market

In recent years, the company has transformed from a competent private sector telecommunications firm into a "muscular technology juggernaut straddling the entire AI hardware and software stack," said Paul Triolo, partner and senior vice president for China at advisory firm DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group. Huawei has open-sourced two of its artificial intelligence models — a move tech experts say will help the U.S.-blacklisted firm continue to build its AI ecosystem and expand overseas. The Chin

Topics: ai china firm huawei open

Someone brought Flappy Bird back to Android, but there’s a good reason you shouldn’t download it

Joe Maring / Android Authority If, like me, you had an Android phone in the 2010s, you almost certainly played Flappy Bird. And all these years later, I still occasionally find myself itching to play a few rounds. Unfortunately, playing the original Flappy Bird in 2025 is all but impossible. But thanks to one developer, Flappy Bird is back. Recently, a new developer got the attention of the r/Android subreddit by announcing they had reverse-engineered the original Flappy Bird to run on a 64-bi