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Here's How to Add a Background to Your Text Chats in iOS 26

The iOS 26 beta brings chat backgrounds to Messages, giving a visual identifier for each chat so you can easily tell if you're messaging the right person or group. It's a nice quality-of-life update that can help you distinguish whether you're texting your family chat or your family chat minus your one uncle you don't get along with. Apple released the first public beta of iOS 26 on July 24, and that beta brought a new Liquid Glass design and other new features to the iPhones of developers and

The AirPods Pro 2 have dropped to a new low price - here's why they're still legit in 2025

Jada Jones/ZDNET During Apple's September hardware event last year, the company announced the iPhone 16 lineup, new AirPods, and an upgraded Apple Watch. I was most happy to see the AirPods 4 model, which introduced noise cancellation to the lineup for the first time and upgraded software features -- but I was secretly hoping for the AirPods Pro 3. Also: 4 headphones I swear by (and how I use each pair differently) Unfortunately, a new AirPods Pro model didn't appear. Instead, Apple announced

Earth Is Spinning Weirdly Faster, Making Tuesday One of the Shortest Days Ever

Earth's rotation is randomly speeding up, and nobody is quite sure why. These speedups, which have occurred several times over the last few years, haven't had any effect on daily life, but they also haven't gone unnoticed by science. Tuesday, Aug. 5 is the next date when Earth's rotation is expected to speed up, shortening the day by between 1.25 and 1.51 milliseconds. According to Time and Date, the current prediction is set by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service and

Call to vet YouTube ads like regular TV to stop scams

Call to vet YouTube ads like regular TV to stop scams Google, which owns YouTube, has said it strives to support an "advertising ecosystem that's trustworthy and transparent for users". Last week, Ofcom's annual report found that YouTube had overtaken ITV to become the UK's second most-watched media service behind the BBC. The party wants more YouTube ads to be screened for potentially harmful content before they appear on the platform and for media regulator Ofcom to issue fines. Ads on You

Someone is folding the Galaxy Z Fold 7 200,000 times live on YouTube (Updated: Speaker broken)

Update: August 5, 2025 (10:14 PM ET): The Galaxy Z Fold 7 has now crossed 180,000 manual folds. The YouTuber stopped folding and unfolding the device to report on its condition at 175,000 folds, and it looks like the speaker of the phone is no longer functioning. However, the display, hinge, and everything else remains intact. The YouTuber also shared some noteworthy findings along the way. Between 6,000 and 10,000 folds, the YouTuber reported that the Galaxy Z Fold 7 experienced a reboot error.

Today's NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for Aug. 6, #787

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today's Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles. Today's NYT Connections puzzle has one of those purple categories at which the New York Times' editors are experts. They love to add letters to related words to make other words, and it can be tough to see that connection -- which is the point of the puzzle. Read on for cl

Earth Is Spinning Weirdly Faster, Making Today One of the Shortest Days Ever

Earth's rotation is randomly speeding up, and nobody is quite sure why. These speedups, which have occurred several times over the last few years, haven't had any effect on daily life, but they also haven't gone unnoticed by science. Tuesday, Aug. 5 is the next date when Earth's rotation is expected to speed up, shortening the day by between 1.25 and 1.51 milliseconds. According to Time and Date, the current prediction is set by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service and

Today's NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Aug. 6 #521

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles. Today's NYT Strands puzzle is a tough one. I guess I don't look closely enough at traditional paintings to immediately make the connections I needed. If you need hints and answers, read on. I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story. If you're looking for tod

A new database on police use of force and misconduct in California

For Immediate Release August 4, 2025 Contact: [email protected] A new database on police use of force and misconduct in California makes public 1.5 million pages of once-secret police records Public records about use of force and misconduct by California law enforcement officers — some 1.5 million pages obtained from nearly 500 law enforcement agencies — will now be searchable by the public for the first time thanks to a new database built by UC Berkeley and Stanford University and pub

We Should Reject the Switch 2’s Bogus Game-Key Cards or This Will Be the End of Physical Games

On Sunday, Nintendo propped up a survey for players to share a few thoughts about how they prefer to play games on the Switch 2. By Tuesday, Nintendo pulled the survey, but not before the poll went viral and offered gamers a new outlet to let loose about the lack of Switch 2 games you can buy that come entirely on physical game cards. There’s a larger issue at play. The Switch 2 is an inflection point showing how the last few strands of actual game ownership are fraying. Nintendo’s most-dedicate

Motorola and Swarovski team up for a super fancy Razr

Motorola and Swarovski are teaming up to create the crossover they knew we always wanted: a crystal-laden edition of the Razr . For those who just felt that their retro cell phone wasn’t special enough, the fancy new Pantone Ice Melt Razr features a 3D quilted leather-inspired finish with 35 hand-positioned Swarovski crystals, including one larger, 26-facet crystal on the hinge. The Pantone Ice Melt will cost a cool $1,000, though it will include a pair of the Moto Buds Loop . These open-ear bu

Google agrees to pause AI workloads when power demand spikes

Google will pause non-essential AI workloads to protect power grids, the advertising giant announced on Monday. The web giant already does this sort of thing for non-essential workloads like processing YouTube vids, which it moves to datacenters where power is available rather than continuing to run them in places demand for energy strains the grid. Under an agreement with Indiana Michigan Power (I&M) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Google will use the same techniques for AI workload

GNOME's new AI assistant can even run Linux commands for you - here's how

Pakpoom Makpan/Getty ZDNET's key takeaways Newelle is an AI assistant for the GNOME desktop. It's capable of standard chats and even running commands. However, Newelle does require Flatseal to run commands on Linux. There's a new AI assistant available for the GNOME desktop, and it just reached version 1.0 status. That new AI assistant is called Newelle, and it's already proven to be a worthy contender for your desktop. Newelle isn't just another large language model manager, but a full-bl

Can you block it? A simple Ad Block Tester

Can You Block It was built to help you test if your ad-blocker is working as intended. The various tests help you in identifying what formats of advertisements are blocked or unblocked so that you can understand your ad-blockers effectiveness. Use the various tests to test ad-blockers such as AdBlock, AdBlock Plus, AdBlocker Ultimate, AdGuard, Ghostery, uBlock Origin, Pi-Hole, NoScript and more with various ad formats such as Web Banners, Native Ads, Pop-Unders, In-Page Push Ads, etc from popula

Three weeks after acquiring Windsurf, Cognition offers staff the exit door

Cognition, the AI coding startup that acquired rival company Windsurf three weeks ago, laid off 30 employees last week and is offering buyouts to the roughly 200 remaining employees on the team, reports The Information. This is the latest bout of whiplash that Windsurf employees have faced after a tumultuous stretch for the company. The startup was initially almost acquired by OpenAI, then lost its CEO, co-founder, and research leads to Google in a $2.4 billion deal known as a reverse-acquihire

Chinese tablet brands chasing the iPad hard, but iPadOS 26 changes the game

Three Chinese tablet brands have all enjoyed dramatic growth over the past year as they try to compete with the market-leading iPad. While even their combined shipments can’t compete, their growth rate suggests they could become a threat within a year or two. However, iPadOS 26 looks set to change the game significantly, making it harder than ever for competing brands to catch up … The iPad dominates the tablet market The iPad launched way back in 2010, and dominated the tablet market ever si

Apple's AirPods Pro 2 drop to $169 on Amazon

Engadget has been testing and reviewing consumer tech since 2004. Our stories may include affiliate links; if you buy something through a link, we may earn a commission. Read more about how we evaluate products . They might be nearly three years old at this point, but Apple’s second-generation AirPods Pro remain some of the most popular wireless earbuds around for a reason, and right now they’re down to $169 on Amazon. That’s a not-insignificant 32 percent off the usual $249 price of the noise-

Topics: airpods anc apple lot pro

Google’s new AI model creates video game worlds in real time

Google DeepMind is releasing a new version of its AI “world” model, called Genie 3, capable of generating 3D environments that users and AI agents can interact with in real time. The company is also promising that users will be able to interact with the worlds for much longer than before and that the model will actually remember where things are when you look away from them. World models are a type of AI system that can simulate environments for purposes like education, entertainment, or to hel

The Future Beyond Meta Quest and Vision Pro Is Coming in Glasses Form. What Will VR Look Like Then?

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently declared that the gadget of the future is AI-infused glasses. Zuckerberg and Meta have been interested in these types of peripherals for years, but the focus has clearly been shifting lately from VR on our faces to glasses on our faces. Meta's not alone here. Apple sees a future in AR. Google does too. So does Samsung. The list of players goes on and on. As VR has shifted to mixed reality, and smart glasses promise augmented reality features to come, and AI evo

Someone is folding the Galaxy Z Fold 7 200,000 times live on YouTube (Updated: Still going)

Ryan Haines / Android Authority TL;DR A YouTuber is currently folding and unfolding the Galaxy Z Fold 7 live on YouTube. The phone has already survived over 160,000 folds. The goal of the YouTuber is to manually fold the device 200,000 times and see if it survives. Update: August 5, 2025 (12:57 AM ET): The YouTuber has now surpassed 160,000 folds and shared some noteworthy findings along the way. Between 6,000 and 10,000 folds, the YouTuber reports that the Galaxy Z Fold 7 experienced a rebo

Deterministic Simulation Testing in Rust: A Theater of State Machines

It's been just a year since we wrote about how we implemented deterministic simulation testing (DST) of our Go database (FrostDB). Since then, we have been hard at work writing our new database backed by object storage in Rust (read more here about why). In this blog post, I want to lay out the approach we took to build our new Rust database with DST principles front-and-center and how it compares to the approach we took with FrostDB. As a quick recap, DST tests are randomized full system integ

Today's NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for Aug. 5, #786

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today's Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles. Today's NYT Connections puzzle is a challenging one. My favorite category, however, was the blue group, which left me humming a certain Christmas carol four months ahead of the holiday. Read on for clues and today's Connections answers. The Times now has a Connections Bot

AirPods Pro 2 get better every year, and iOS 26 extends that streak

Amid ongoing uncertainty around when AirPods Pro 3 might finally arrive, one thing is very clear: AirPods Pro 2 just keep getting better. Here’s how the trend of AirPods Pro 2 improvements will continue in iOS 26. New iOS 26 features coming to AirPods Pro 2 I’m as eager as anyone else for Apple to debut AirPods Pro 3. But if I’m honest, they’ll have a hard time living up to the value I’ve gotten out of their predecessor. I bought AirPods Pro 2 back in 2022 when they first launched. At the tim

Today's NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Aug. 5 #520

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles. Today's NYT Strands puzzle is a tough one -- and at lease one answer is especially tricky to unscramble. If you need hints and answers, read on. I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story. If you're looking for today's Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword a

Content-Aware Spaced Repetition

Content-aware Spaced Repetition Spaced repetition systems are powerful, but they have a fundamental blind spot: they don’t understand what your flashcards are about. To your SRS, a card asking “what’s the capital of Italy?” and another asking “what country is Rome the capital of?” are treated independently, each with its own isolated review history. It has no concept that reviewing related material should reinforce your memory of the whole topic. At the heart of every SRS is a memory model wh

The Best Open Earbuds You Can Buy Aren’t Actually Earbuds at All

Back in my day, the name of the game when it came to wireless audio was noise cancellation. That’s to say, how much noise can your wireless earbuds possibly block? And sure, active noise-cancellation (ANC) wireless earbuds are probably never going to fall out of vogue entirely, but in recent years, audio companies have recognized that it is, in fact, nice to sometimes be aware of your surroundings. Thus, a market for open earbuds was created. If you’re not familiar with “open earbuds,” as they’

Diet Swap Study Reveals How Ultra-Processed Foods Can Derail Weight Loss

In case you needed more incentive to cut down on ultra-processed foods, a new diet swap study out today reveals that people experienced greater weight loss while eating minimally processed foods than they did when they ate a nutritionally similar, ultra-processed diet. In a six-month trial led by scientists at University College London, study participants were assigned one of the two diet regimes to follow for eight weeks, and then took a four week break before swapping to the other diet for an

I asked four former friends why we stopped speaking (2023)

On a warm July evening, I dove into bed and grabbed my phone, giddy and anxious. As I scrolled through TikTok, attempting to calm my nerves, a Google Calendar notification flashed on the screen: “VIDEO CALL WITH SIMONE.” Before I could swipe the reminder away, Simone FaceTimed me. I attempted to rehearse my greeting as the call buffered: Should I keep it cool with a, “Hey, what’s good?” No, that sounds cold. What about a Keke Palmer-esque, “Girl!” No, that’s doing too much. “Good evening?” No,