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Grok 3 AI is now free to all X users – here's how it works

Screenshot by Lance Whitney/ZDNET X's new Grok 3 AI-powered chatbot is now free for anyone to use. Launched earlier this week, the latest flavor of Grok initially required a paid subscription, but that restriction has now been lifted, according to a new post from xAI, the AI company created by Elon Musk. Beyond the usual AI chat features, Grok 3 offers a DeepSearch mode. Similar to the Deep Research option from ChatGPT Pro, Gemini Advanced, and Perplexity AI, this capability uses a virtual age

Topics: ai grok mode new prompt

Running Pong in 240 browser tabs

Running Pong in 240 Browser Tabs Finally a use for my unclosed tabs Feb 20, 2025 What do you do with your unclosed browser tabs? I find that they take up a lot of screen space. So this week I figured out how to run pong inside mine. Loading... putting that space to good use That’s 240 browser tabs in a tight 8x30 grid. And they’re running pong! The ball and paddles are able to cleanly move between the canvas in the foregrounded window and all of the tabs above. You can see the (awful) code h

Fly To Podman: a script that will help you to migrate from Docker

Migrate from Docker to Podman. fly-to-podman is a small bash script that helps you migrate from Docker to Podman. It will migrate your Docker containers, images, and volumes to Podman, as well as keep your container data and configurations (mounts, ports, etc.) intact. Full blog post: From Docker to Podman: full migration to rootless

Posh (YC W22) Is Hiring

About POSH POSH is revolutionizing the battery energy storage industry by providing innovative, intelligent, and sustainable solutions for commercial and industrial (C&I) applications. We help businesses optimize power management and reduce carbon footprints. We are seeking an Energy Analysis & Modeling Engineer to support our mission by developing, analyzing, and optimizing energy storage models that improve system performance, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. Responsibilities Develop, v

Launch HN: Massdriver (YC W22) – Self-serve cloud infra without the red tape

Hi HN! We’re Cory, Dave, and Chris, the founders of Massdriver ( https://www.massdriver.cloud/ ), an infrastructure automation platform. Massdriver enforces organizational standards and delivers consistent, compliant deployments—no more endless approvals, red tape, or broken Terraform plans. Here’s a demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6T5p0qXcFE&t=4s Infrastructure as Code (IaC) workflows were designed to help developers and work fine for small teams, but as organizations scale, they

More than 376,000 Tesla Model Y, Model 3s have faulty steering

Some Tesla owners have yet another thing to worry about. As sales crash in Europe and protests gather outside Tesla showrooms in the US as a result of the CEO's political engagement, it now emerges that more than 376,000 Model Y crossovers and Model 3 sedans are at risk for power steering failure. So far, it has resulted in more than 3,000 warranty claims and caused 570 crashes, according to Tesla and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Federal investigators have known about the

Nissan’s latest desperate gamble—see if Tesla will buy the company

Senior politicians in Japan are not going to let Nissan die easily. The automaker has been struggling for some time now, with an outdated product portfolio, ongoing quarterly losses, and soon, the closure of factories and thousands of layoffs. The Japanese government has been trying to find a suitor and had hoped that Honda would do its patriotic duty and save its rival from extinction. That deal—one branded "a desperate move" by former Nissan CEO and fugitive from Japanese justice Carlos Ghosn

DeepSeek goes beyond “open weights” AI with plans for source code release

Last month, DeepSeek turned the AI world on its head with the release of a new, competitive simulated reasoning model that was free to download and use under an MIT license. Now, the company is preparing to make the underlying code behind that model more accessible, promising to release five open source repos starting next week. In a social media post late Thursday, DeepSeek said the daily releases it is planning for its "Open Source Week" would provide visibility into "these humble building bl

DeepSeek to open source parts of online services code

In Brief Chinese AI lab DeepSeek plans to open source portions of its online services’ code as part of an “open source week” event next week. DeepSeek will open source five code repositories that have been “documented, deployed and battle-tested in production,” the company said in a post on X on Thursday. Code repositories are storage locations for software development assets, and typically contain source code as well as configuration files and project documentation. “As part of the open-sou

Report: AI coding assistants aren’t a panacea

In Brief As they gain in popularity, AI coding assistants such as GitHub Copilot may appear to be boosting productivity. But in reality, they could be causing overall code quality to decline. That’s the top-line finding from a new report released by software engineering platform GitClear, which analyzed 211 million code lines from 2020 to 2024. According to GitClear’s analysis, there was a remarkable decline in code reuse last year — a potential cause for concern, given that code reuse is a co

The real reason why oil and gas companies are bullish on carbon capture

Two years ago, oil and gas company Occidental bought carbon capture startup Carbon Engineering. The transaction was hailed as a win-win: A climate tech company scored a significant exit, and a fossil fuel company gained a foothold in a sector that could be worth up to $150 billion by 2050. Now we have a better idea why Occidental was keen to pick up the pricey technology: They want to use it to pump more oil. Previously, the company had said it would use the technology to zero out its climate

Joe Rogan Is No Longer the King of Podcasts

Following the 2024 Presidential election, it seemed like there was one big winner who wasn’t on a ballot: Joe Rogan. The podcast host seemingly succeeded in putting his finger on the scale and using his platform to help propel Donald Trump back into the White House. But ever since Trump took office, Rogan’s numbers have been slipping. According to The Daily Beast, he got knocked out of the top spot on the charts by anti-Trump podcast MeidasTouch, and he’s not taking it particularly well. On Twi

Together AI’s $305M bet: Reasoning models like DeepSeek-R1 are increasing, not decreasing, GPU demand

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More When DeepSeek-R1 first emerged, the prevailing fear that shook the industry was that advanced reasoning could be achieved with less infrastructure. As it turns out, that’s not necessarily the case. At least, according to Together AI, the rise of DeepSeek and open-source reasoning has had the exact opposite effect: Instead of reducing the need for infrastructure, it is

How test-time scaling unlocks hidden reasoning abilities in small language models (and allows them to outperform LLMs)

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Very small language models (SLMs) can outperform leading large language models (LLMs) in reasoning tasks, according to a new study by Shanghai AI Laboratory. The authors show that with the right tools and test-time scaling techniques, an SLM with 1 billion parameters can outperform a 405B LLM on complicated math benchmarks. The ability to deploy SLMs in complex reasoni

Best Over-Ear Headphones for 2025

Shure Aonic 50 Gen 2: A lot of us liked Shure's original Aonic 50 headphones, but they had pretty middling noise cancellation. Well, the 2nd-gen version addresses that issue -- the noise canceling is much improved -- and Shure has more than doubled the the battery life to around 45 hours (they now have a quick-charge feature) and also shrunk the headphone's carry case a bit, although it's still not that compact. Those upgrades make the Aonic 50 Gen 2 a top noise-canceling headphone. The Aonic 50

iPhone 16e debuts Apple's first in-house modem, putting it one step closer to cutting ties with Qualcomm

In brief: Apple is a step closer to becoming silicon-independent. Its new C1 modem in the iPhone 16e marks Cupertino's first attempt at handling connectivity without outside help. The Silicon Valley tech giant has already cut ties with Intel, and Qualcomm could be next on the chopping block. Apple claims the C1 will improve power efficiency, helping the iPhone 16e achieve up to 26 hours of video playback. If the claim proves accurate, the 16e will become the longest-lasting 6.1-inch iPhone Cupe

Topics: 16e apple c1 iphone modem

OpenInfer raises $8M for AI inference at the edge

OpenInfer has raised $8 million in funding to redefine AI inference for edge applications. It’s the brain child of Behnam Bastani and Reza Nourai, who spent nearly a decade of building and scaling AI systems together at Meta’s Reality Labs and Roblox. Through their work at the forefront of AI and system design, Bastani and Nourai witnessed firsthand how deep system architecture enables continuous, large-scale AI inference. However, today’s AI inference remains locked behind cloud APIs and host

OpenAI’s ChatGPT explodes to 400M weekly users, with GPT-5 on the way

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI’s ChatGPT has surpassed 400 million weekly active users, a milestone that underscores the company’s growing reach across both consumer and enterprise markets, according to an X post from chief operating officer Brad Lightcap on Thursday. The rapid expansion comes as OpenAI faces intensifying competition from rivals such as Elon Musk’s xAI and China’s DeepSeek, b

9to5Mac Daily: February 20, 2025 – iPhone 17 rumors, more iPhone 16e tidbits

Listen to a recap of the top stories of the day from 9to5Mac. 9to5Mac Daily is available on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts app, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players. Sponsored by ChargeASAP: Check out the Flash Pro Ultra, featuring a new 275W power bank with an OLED screen that can charge up to 6 devices simultaneously, including your MacBook, phone, smartwatch, and more! New episodes of 9to5Mac Daily are recorded every weekday. S

Apiiro unveils free scanner to detect malicious code merges

Security researchers at Apiiro have released two free, open-source tools designed to detect and block malicious code before they are added to software projects to curb supply chain attacks. The two tools consist of a comprehensive ruleset for Semgrep and Opengrep designed to detect malicious code patterns with minimal false positives and PRevent, a GitHub-integrated scanner, that detects and alerts on suspicious code in pull requests (PRs). According to Apiiro's security researcher Matan Gilad

Spice86 – A PC emulator for real mode reverse engineering

Spice86 - A PC emulator for real mode reverse engineering Spice86 is a tool to execute, reverse engineer and rewrite real mode DOS programs for which source code is not available. Release are available on Nuget. Pre-releases are also available on the Release page NOTE: This is a port, and a continuation from the original Java Spice86. It requires .NET 8 and runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Approach Rewriting a program from only the binary is a hard task. Spice86 is a tool that helps yo

Star Trek: Voyager‘s First Brush With Getting Home Is One of Its Best

Star Trek: Voyager‘s premise was both its greatest boon and its biggest curse. Flinging the titular Starfleet vessel tens of thousands of lightyears away from Federation space into unchartered territory wasn’t just a fantastic evolution of the franchise’s original intent to boldly go where no man had gone before, but a vector for fascinating story ideas about resource management, ethics, first contact, and a million other Star Trek ideas that could be re-imagined in a context where the world est

OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 May Arrive Next Week, but GPT-5 Is Just Around the Corner

OpenAI may be preparing to slap a new coat of paint on ChatGPT with an updated AI model, GPT-4.5, as early as next week. If that’s not enough to get users excited, the Sam Altman-led company is on the path toward its ultimate model while trying to hint that this next step will finally achieve “AGI.” Spoiler alert: it won’t. Based on anonymous sources, the Verge’s Tom Warren first reported that OpenAI’s next model could hit the scene sometime this month. Microsoft reportedly plans to host the co

NASA Makes Big Update to Asteroid Potentially on Collision Course With Earth in 2032

The potentially hazardous asteroid 2024 YR4 caused consternation over the last few weeks as its odds of hitting Earth in 2032 dramatically rose. Now, those odds have plummeted to near-zero, as astronomers’ calculations of the asteroid’s path have been updated to indicate that Earth is almost certainly not in the space rock’s plans. Almost. According to NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), the asteroid’s current chance of hitting the planet in 2032 is 0.28%, or a 1-in-360 shot. T

12 Best Foods for Optimal Eye Health

Taking care of your eyesight is essential. You can help strengthen your eyes in simple ways, like taking screen breaks, wearing sunglasses and even eating nourishing foods, vitamins and minerals. The best part is that most of these foods are probably already in your home. Read more: Best Places to Buy Glasses Online Best foods for healthy eyes Anjelika Gretskaia/Getty Images Whether you've got a family history of vision problems or you're trying to fight eye strain in your day-to-day life, h

10 of the Best Peacock Shows to Stream Now

Peacock's supply of original series continues to grow, offering more choices when TV time rolls around. From the buzzy Eddie Redmayne assassin series The Day of the Jackal to season 3 of the twist-filled reality competition show The Traitors, you probably haven't explored all the highly-rated options on the streamer. If you're poking around Peacock for something to watch, here are 10 standout shows to try. Each of them scores around 70 or higher on Metacritic. Peacock costs $8 per month or $80

Small study suggests dark mode doesn’t save much power for very human reasons

If you know how OLED displays work, you know about one of their greatest strengths: Individual pixels can be shut off, offering deeper blacks and power savings. Dark modes, now available on most operating systems, aim to save power by making most backgrounds very dark or black, while also gratifying those who just prefer the look. But what about on the older but still dominant screen technology, LCDs? The BBC is out with a small, interesting study comparing the light and dark modes of one of it

Topics: bbc dark light mode power

Microsoft’s new AI agent can control software and robots

On Wednesday, Microsoft Research introduced Magma, an integrated AI foundation model that combines visual and language processing to control software interfaces and robotic systems. If the results hold up outside of Microsoft's internal testing, it could mark a meaningful step forward for an all-purpose multimodal AI that can operate interactively in both real and digital spaces. Microsoft claims that Magma is the first AI model that not only processes multimodal data (like text, images, and vi

Netflix Plans to Spend $1 Billion Making Content in Mexico Over the Next 4 Years

Streaming juggernaut Netflix plans to spend $1 billion on film and TV production in Mexico over the next four years. CEO Ted Sarandos announced the plan Thursday during a press conference with Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum. The injection of capital could fund 20 productions per year, on average. During Thursday's event, Netflix also announced a $2 million investment in Mexico City's Churubusco Studios to improve the facilities. The goal is to strengthen the national film industry. “Our

Nickelodeon’s next Avatar animated series is finally coming together

is a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years. Rumours about the next mainline Avatar series have been circulating ever since Nickelodeon announced that Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko were returning to lead Avatar Studios. But now, we finally know a bit more about where the franchise is heading after The Legend of Korra. Today, Nickelodeon announced that the Avatar saga (w