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The best gaming handhelds for 2025

Handheld gaming systems are having a moment. While people have been gaming on the go since the halcyon days of the Game Boy, recent years have brought an avalanche of devices that let you play all sorts of games anywhere you want. But new machines seem to arrive every week, and figuring out which ones are actually worth buying can be overwhelming. Depending on your tastes, the right handheld could be a $70 emulator or an $800 portable PC. To help you narrow things down, we’ve spent months resear

Int. Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals

The IAPSOP is a US-based private organization focused on the digital preservation of Spiritualist and occult periodicals published between the Congress of Vienna and the start of the Second World War. Our all-volunteer staff digitizes, indexes and makes available free-of-charge these periodicals, in our archive, for use by students and researchers. We have a standing want list and will respond promptly to inquiries and offers from sellers. We accept contributions of material and labor to furt

Croatian freediver held breath for 29 minutes

How Croatian freediver held breath for 29 minutes The world record for longest underwater breath-hold using oxygen is often viewed as much as a conjuring trick as an athletic feat – and at one time the title was indeed held by US magician David Blaine. But now a remarkable new mark has been set by a Croatian already recognised for his more conventional competitive freediving achievements. Vitomir Maričić has set a new Guinness World Record (GWR) of 29min 3sec for “the longest breath held volun

The Download: pigeons’ role in developing AI, and Native artists’ tech interpretations

People looking for precursors to artificial intelligence often point to science fiction by authors like Isaac Asimov or thought experiments like the Turing test. But an equally important, if surprising and less appreciated, forerunner is American psychologist B.F. Skinner’s research with pigeons in the middle of the 20th century. Skinner believed that association—learning, through trial and error, to link an action with a punishment or reward—was the building block of every behavior, not just

iOS 18.6.2 could be coming very soon to your iPhone

Last week, Apple released iOS 18.6.1 with support for the newly re-implemented blood oxygen Apple Watch feature. But per a reliable leaker, it seems iOS 18.6.2 could be here very soon. iOS 18.6.2 build number shared by leaker Today, an anonymous X user with a history of leaking Apple software build numbers posted about iOS 18.6.2. Per the known leaker, iOS 18.6.2 has the build number 22G100. Although the account didn’t provide details on features or release date, historically it has shared v

How to Play Battlefield 6 Beta: Officially Ended After Two Weekends

EA's DICE studio has blown the lid off the multiplayer for its upcoming military shooter Battlefield 6 and held a beta to give players a taste of the game and generate feedback. Battlefield 6's first public beta was available to everyone, but after an early release and two weekends of play, it has officially ended. The Battlefield 6 open beta was the first chance for players to experience the game's multiplayer before its full release on Oct. 10. Those with early access got a couple extra days

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 plummets to new record-low price, saving you $300!

Ryan Haines / Android Authority OK, now we are talking! We’ve seen some great Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 offers, including storage upgrades and free gift cards, but this is the first time we’ve seen an actual discount on the device, and it’s a pretty good one! You can take the Galaxy Z Fold 7 home at a $300 discount. Buy the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 for just $1,699.99 ($300 off) This offer is available from Amazon as a “limited time deal.” The discount applies to all color versions available from

Here's the Mystery Flavor of McDonald's New Pink and Blue Shake

I tried the McDonaldland Meal at my local McD's on Aug. 12, the day it came out. And I don't want to say that I've been thinking about the mystery flavor of its pink-and-blue Mt. McDonaldland shake ever since, because that would make me sound truly bizarre, but...I have pondered it. When I tasted the shake, I guessed it was maybe blue raspberry, maybe cotton candy, maybe mixed berry. It's sweet but not sickeningly so, though I'd never order it again. (I'm a chocolate fan.) But I kind of wanted

RFK Jr.'s Wi-Fi and 5G conspiracies appear to make it into MAHA report draft

The Trump administration's plans to improve Americans' health will include a push to review the safety of electromagnetic radiation, echoing long-held conspiracy theories and falsehoods about Wi-Fi and 5G touted by health secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. On Friday, Politico obtained a draft version of the "Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy," a highly anticipated report from the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission intended to steer the administration's he

RFK Jr.’s Wi-Fi and 5G conspiracies appear to make it into MAHA report draft

The Trump administration's plans to improve Americans' health will include a push to review the safety of electromagnetic radiation, echoing long-held conspiracy theories and falsehoods about Wi-Fi and 5G touted by health secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. On Friday, Politico obtained a draft version of the "Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy," a highly anticipated report from the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission intended to steer the administration's he

Texas AG accuses Meta, Character.AI of misleading kids with mental health claims

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched an investigation into both Meta AI Studio and Character.AI for “potentially engaging in deceptive trade practices and misleadingly marketing themselves as mental health tools,” according to a press release issued Monday. “In today’s digital age, we must continue to fight to protect Texas kids from deceptive and exploitative technology,” Paxton is quoted as saying. “By posing as sources of emotional support, AI platforms can mislead vulnerable users

Ars Technica System Guide: Five sample PC builds, from $500 to $5,000

Sometimes I go longer than I intend without writing an updated version of our PC building guide. And while I could just claim to be too busy to spend hours on Newegg or Amazon or other sites digging through dozens of near-identical parts, the lack of updates usually correlates with "times when building a desktop PC is actually a pain in the ass." Through most of 2025, fluctuating and inflated graphics card pricing and limited availability have once again conspired to make a normally fun hobby a

I love my Samsung Z Fold 7, but these Google Pixel upgrades would win me over

The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold (left) competed with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 (right) last summer. Kerry Wan/ZDNET ZDNET's key takeaways The Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold is expected to launch on August 20, but it might not go on sale till October 9. It will be difficult for Google to beat Samsung in the foldable segment this year due to design differences. Unless there's an actually useful AI feature or significantly better battery life, I'll stick with my Galaxy Z Fold 7. Get more in-depth ZDNE

Topics: 10 fold google pixel pro

Pixel 9 Pro Fold one year later: How Google caught up to Samsung in just two generations

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold was one of my favorite gadgets of 2024 to the point where it even landed on our list of the biggest winners of the year. Not only was it a worthy alternative to Samsung's long-running Galaxy Z Fold phones, its straightforward design once again proved that keeping things simple is often the wisest way to go. It turns out, the best approach to foldable phone design is to make something that's the same size and shape as a regular handset, but just happens to have a big flexible

The circular economy could make demolition a thing of the past

Most of us are already quite comfortable recycling our household waste. In Spain, for instance, millions of tonnes of packaging are processed every year, but did you know that buildings and their materials can also be recycled, or that an entire building could be completely dismantled and reassembled? Formula 1, often a laboratory for innovation, offers us a real-world example of this in the form of the Red Bull team’s “pit box”, known as the F1Holzhaus – literally, “the wooden house”. It made

MCP doesn't need tools, it needs code

Your MCP Doesn’t Need 30 Tools: It Needs Code I wrote a while back about why code performs better than MCP (Model Context Protocol) for some tasks. In particular, I pointed out that if you have command line tools available, agentic coding tools seem very happy to use those. In the meantime, I learned a few more things that put some nuance to this. There are a handful of challenges with CLI-based tools that are rather hard to resolve and require further examination. In this blog post, I want to

MCP Doesn't Need 30 Tools: It Needs Code

Your MCP Doesn’t Need 30 Tools: It Needs Code I wrote a while back about why code performs better than MCP (Model Context Protocol) for some tasks. In particular, I pointed out that if you have command line tools available, agentic coding tools seem very happy to use those. In the meantime, I learned a few more things that put some nuance to this. There are a handful of challenges with CLI-based tools that are rather hard to resolve and require further examination. In this blog post, I want to

Ars Technica System Guide: Four sample PC builds, from $500 to $5,000

Sometimes I go longer than I intend without writing an updated version of our PC building guide. And while I could just claim to be too busy to spend hours on Newegg or Amazon or other sites digging through dozens of near-identical parts, the lack of updates usually correlates with "times when building a desktop PC is actually a pain in the ass." Through most of 2025, fluctuating and inflated graphics card pricing and limited availability have once again conspired to make a normally fun hobby a

Is Roblox Getting Worse?

Roblox can’t keep up. After years of criticism that its platform isn’t safe for the young gamers it caters to, the multibillion-dollar company announced in July that it was rolling out new measures to protect users, including an AI-powered age-verification system and other privacy tools. But researchers, experts, and lawyers have concerns the changes won’t stop Roblox’s bigger problem: staying ahead of individuals using the platform to exploit players. On Roblox, kids do what they want. Launche

How Microschools Became the Latest Tech Mogul Obsession

Elon Musk had a question: “Does anybody have any experience with first principles analysis?” He was speaking to a room full of kids, many of whom knew Musk as the CEO of companies that made rockets and cool-looking cars—and as the founder of Ad Astra, the microschool they attended in his Bel Air mansion, per a video posted by the YouTube channel Newsthink. To five of them, he was simply “Dad.” Generation iPad Young people entering classrooms this fall need a totally different tool set than the

The Lives and Loves of James Baldwin

An interviewer once asked James Baldwin if he’d ever write something without a message. “No writer who ever lived,” Baldwin said, “could have written a line without a message.” This is true. People write because they have something to say. Baldwin had something to say, and he spent his life saying it. But many who thought they got his message didn’t get it at all. Baldwin was high-strung and emotionally labile. He wasn’t exactly charismatic—there was a strangeness about him which he did nothing

Web apps in a single, portable, self-updating, vanilla HTML file

Experience the Zen of making, hosting, and sharing great software in a single, portable, self-updating, vanilla HTML file Build web apps like you're sculpting clay, not managing infrastructure. Modern web development forces you through layers of abstraction: config files, build steps, magic frameworks, deployment pipelines. Hyperclay returns to a simpler model: your app is a single HTML file you (and your clients) manipulate directly. Edit the file through its visual UI and it persists its own

Topics: app apps build html like

Google is adding "Projects" feature to Gemini to run research tasks

Google's Gemini is now testing a new feature called "Projects." This will be similar to OpenAI's Project Feature for ChatGPT. With Projects, you can add files, documents or your code. Then, you can ask Gemini to reference those files in project conversations. Google describes this as a feature where you "start by adding files to the project. Gemini can reference these files in project conversations and use them to generate new documents and code." With Projects, you can group similar tasks to

Watch Figure 02 Humanoid Fold Laundry in New AI Demo

When the newest demo of the Figure 02 humanoid robot folding towels dropped, I knew I had to make a video about it. CNET's robot coverage always gets comments from viewers asking if robots could do their laundry. In the demo, Figure 02 folds towels at a rate of approximately 22 seconds per towel. Figure With advancements in AI and robotics, the dream of automated household chores feels closer, but it's not quite here yet. I tested my laundry-folding skills against Figure 02's robot to see just

This Country Is Teaching Children How to Build and Operate Deadly Drones

Now well into its third year, it's safe to say the Russo-Ukraine war has ushered in a new type of warfare fit for this decade. As resources run low and manpower becomes irreplaceable, combatants on both sides have resorted to McGuyver-esque tactics, such as jury-rigged drone cages, improvised wooden armor, and eScooter cavalry. One especially important development has been the deployment of various drones, from hobbyist models flung up to do recon flights, to drone boats in the Black Sea. But

Made by Google 2025: Here Are the Top Pixel 10 Leaks and Rumors Ahead of Launch

The new Pixel 10 line will debut on Aug. 20 at the Made by Google event, and it almost feels like we've already seen the phones revealed thanks to the plethora of rumors and presumed leaks of the handsets, which seem like they'll include both traditional smartphones and a foldable option. Google isn't hiding that the Pixel 10 is coming, as the company itself has posted multiple stylized shots of the phone to promote its launch event. However Google is still keeping detailed specs and features o

Topics: 10 fold pixel pro tensor

The 20 Best Xbox Games Right Now

Over the past two decades, Microsoft has turned the Xbox brand into a veritable juggernaut in the console gaming world. The Xbox Series X and Series S, the combined fourth generation of the Xbox, have sold over 21 million units. The Xbox One, which was still supported until 2023, sold over 58 million units worldwide. As Microsoft shifts its focus toward supporting console and PC gamers alike with the Game Pass subscription service, there's never been a larger ecosystem of Xbox consoles to choos

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold is $600 off ahead of the new model’s debut

Some people like to stay on the cutting edge of technology. If that’s you, you already know that Google is going to officially unveil its Pixel 10 phones (including a new Fold) during its August 20th event. But if you’re someone who prefers to use these opportunities to save on last-gen tech, you’ve been rewarded with a sweet deal on the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. The base 256GB version in obsidian (black) is down to $1,199 at Amazon and Best Buy, which is 33 percent off its original $1,799 price. It was

Report: Deadpool Will Make His MCU Return in ‘Avengers: Doomsday’

It seems Ryan Reynolds wasn’t trolling his fans after all. Earlier this week, the Deadpool actor posted a logo from Deadpool & Wolverine teasing a connection to the Avengers. Was he joking? Was he not? Well, it turns out, he wasn’t. Deadpool will reportedly appear in some capacity in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday. He just won’t be a member of the team. The Hollywood Reporter reported the news of the character’s addition and io9 has reached out to Marvel Studios for any clarity or confirmation

Every Free Battlefield 6 Open Beta Challenges Reward You Can Earn

The Battlefield 6 open beta has taken the gaming world by storm, as hundreds of thousands of players have queued up to trade shots, blow up buildings and rack up killstreaks. The final beta period is in full swing: It began on Thursday, Aug. 14 and goes through Sunday, Aug. 17, so you'll want to join the playtest now if you want to experience the next era of Battlefield chaos before the full release on Oct. 10. Familiar maps and modes are making a return, as players play tug-of-war in Rush sec