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FBI Director’s Girlfriend Sues Podcaster Over Claim She’s a Spy for Israel

Alexis Wilkins, the country singer and girlfriend of FBI director Kash Patel, filed a lawsuit this week against conservative podcaster Kyle Seraphin over his claims that Wilkins worked for Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad. Social media users have claimed Wilkins was acting as a so-called “honeypot” to get information from Patel and it’s become a popular meme on X in recent weeks, but Wilkins has now filed suit against Seraphin, a former FBI agent. Wilkins first denied she was a spy working f

My Favorite Pixel 10 Feature Makes MagSafe Accessories Last Longer Than Ever

I admit: I'm a fan of magnetic phone accessories that add new features and style to my phone. One of my first Android phones was 2017's Moto Z2 Play. It was from a series of Moto Z phones that touted magnetic accessories called Moto Mods, which included decorative shells, battery packs and -- my favorite -- a JBL speaker attachment that helped boost the audio for music. Moto Mods didn't continue past 2019's Moto Z4. Now here's the good news: The magnetic accessories developed for Apple's iPhon

Ride1Up TrailRush Electric Mountain Bike Review: Quality Components, Bargain Price

Buying a direct-to-consumer bike can be almost as big a gamble as investing in cryptocurrency. While a customer is not likely to lose their shirt investing in a new electric bike, buying a poorly made one may result in a serious crash or catch the garage on fire. For these reasons and more, it’s wise to do some research before clicking on the Add to Cart button. The highest-end legacy-brand e-MTBs retail for upwards of $14,000. So what do you get for $2,095, the price of Ride1Up’s first-ever el

13 Best Android Phones of 2025, Tested and Reviewed

Other Phones to Consider We test a ton of Android phones. We like the ones below, but you'll be better off with one of the options above. If you haven't yet done so, check out our Best Cheap Phones and Best Folding Phones guides for more. Google Pixel 9 series Photograph: Julian Chokkattu Google Pixel 9 series for $599+: The Pixel 9 series (9/10, WIRED Recommends) from 2024 is still a great buy if you can find them on sale. The Pixel 9 is similar to the Pixel 9a but with better build quality

A week later with Google Pixel 10, I'm wondering why anyone should buy pricier flagships

Google Pixel 10 ZDNET's key takeaways The Pixel 10 has officially launched with a starting price of $799. With a three-camera system, Google Tensor G5, and improved battery life, it's Google's best base model smartphone yet. The main and ultra-wide cameras have been downgraded in order to fit the new telephoto. View now at Google Google's entry-level flagship Pixel has proven to be a capable smartphone, with just the right specs and features to please the masses. So when I switched over to th

Topics: 10 ai camera google pixel

This Dell laptop is my top pick for both work and travel - especially at this price

Dell 14 Plus ZDNET's key takeaways The Dell 14 Plus is currently on sale, starting at $649 for the 16GB version. During a time of economic turmoil, this laptop is a lifeline, providing next-gen performance at an affordable price. However, don't expect too much from its display, as it's no OLED or 4K panel. View now at Dell View now at Micro Center more buying choices Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. Back in early 2025, Dell made a bold move. The company announced that it

I replaced my Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra with the Pixel 10 Pro XL for a week - and can't go back

Google Pixel 10 Pro and Pro XL ZDNET's key takeaways The latest Pixel flagships are priced the same as last year, but get meaningful upgrades across the board. The Pro XL model, with its base storage of 256GB and faster wired and wireless charging, is the best Pixel phone right now. You'll just have to settle for the same design and camera hardware as last year. View now at Google View now at Amazon View now at Best Buy more buying choices Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.

Topics: 10 google phone pixel pro

Taylor Otwell: What 14 Years of Laravel Taught Me About Maintainability

Taylor Otwell, creator of Laravel and CEO of Laravel LLC, joins Robby to reflect on his 14-year journey building and maintaining one of the most popular web frameworks in the world. From its PHP 5.3 origins to a full-time business with a 70-person team, Taylor shares what he's learned about code maintainability, developer experience, and what it means to evolve without overcomplicating things. He discusses the importance of simplicity in software design, why sticking to framework conventions le

The Best Gadgets of August 2025

Wow, are we really here again? Already? It’s almost September, folks, and Gizmodo’s consumer tech team is firmly fixed on upcoming events like IFA 2025 in Berlin and Apple’s impending annual iPhone extravaganza (Meta Connect 2025 is mid-month, too!). That being said, there are still a lot of cool gadgets we reviewed in August that deserve one final look back before we dive face-first into a torrential run towards (gulps) CES 2026. ICYMI (make sure it never happens again), I’m rounding up this m

How Sakana AI’s new evolutionary algorithm builds powerful AI models without expensive retraining

Want smarter insights in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get only what matters to enterprise AI, data, and security leaders. Subscribe Now A new evolutionary technique from Japan-based AI lab Sakana AI enables developers to augment the capabilities of AI models without costly training and fine-tuning processes. The technique, called Model Merging of Natural Niches (M2N2), overcomes the limitations of other model merging methods and can even evolve new models entirely from scra

Delete Tests

You should delete tests We’ve had decades of thought leadership around testing, especially coming from wholistic development philosophies like Agile, TDD, and BDD. After all that time and several supposedly superseding movements, the developers I talk to seem to have developed a folk wisdom around tests. That consensus seems to boil down to simple but mostly helpful axioms, like “include tests for your changes” and “write a new test when you fix a bug to prevent regressions”. Unfortunately, on

Magic: The Gathering PAX Panel Previews Seriously Sinister Supervillains

Spider-Man is one of the most recognizable superheroes in the world, with decades of comics history, multiple movie franchises, animated shows and a long list of video games, including three recent titles on PS5 and PC. And now he's crawling his way into Magic: The Gathering with September's Spider-Man set. This is the third full Universes Beyond set -- Magic's name for products based on outside properties. While Universes Beyond has introduced myriad properties from Stranger Things to Spongebo

Today's NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Saturday, Aug. 30

Gael Cooper CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.

Reloading Classes in Python

For some housekeeping, if you are not signed up, also make sure to sign up for the RSS feed of my crime de-coder blog. I have not been cross posting here consistently. For the last few posts: For ASEBP, conference submissions for 2026 are open. (I will actually be going to this in 2026, submitted a 15 minute talk on planning experiments.) Today will just be a quick post on two pieces of code I thought might be useful to share. The first is useful for humans, when testing code in functions, you

Taylor Swift Is Engaged. Her Post Is (Still) Climbing Instagram's Most-Liked List

Nobody is shaking this off: Pop superstar Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce announced their engagement on Instagram on Tuesday, and the likes exploded like pyrotechnics at a concert. The post broke Instagram's record for reposts, even though, to be fair, reposting just started on Instagram in August. Still, the post hit 1 million reposts in less than 6 hours and earned 14 million likes in just the first hour. By Friday, it had topped 34.7 million likes, vaulting it to n

We Know When the iPhone 17 Will Be Announced, but When Can You Get It? Our Best Estimates

After months of tracking leaks and speculation, we now have a solid date for when the iPhone 17 will be announced. Apple sent out invitations -- once again with an enigmatic design that raises even more questions -- for its fall event, which is happening Sept. 9. Although it's entirely possible that the secretive company could pull a head-fake and not announce a new flagship iPhone lineup, that's about as likely as catching Taylor Swift riding a giraffe. But we don't know everything yet. Once t

Spotlight on AI at TechCrunch Disrupt: Don’t miss these sessions backed by JetBrains and Greenfield

TechCrunch Disrupt isn’t just about showcasing the startups of tomorrow — it’s also about surfacing the boldest ideas shaping technology today. Thanks to the support of our partners JetBrains and Greenfield, the TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 program, happening October 27–29 at San Francisco’s Moscone West, brings two must-see sessions that put AI front and center. Monday, October 27 — Builders Stage 1:40 p.m. – 2:10 p.m. PT Who’s Defining AI’s Future in 2025? The AI Disruptors 60 Unveiled Presente

The CDC’s New Acting Director Is a Peter Thiel Pal (and a Total Nightmare)

As America's pivotal health agency descends into chaos, the White House has selected the worst possible person to run it. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention is in chaotic disarray, as a slew of resignations and an unprecedented walkout of staff have roiled the agency. At the center of the controversy is the CDC’s weirdo director, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose most recent contribution to public health dialogue was a bizarre rant about what passes through his mind as he stares at childr

Lego Will No Longer Ship Individual Pieces Thanks to Trump Tariffs

The aftershocks of President Trump’s tariffs are hitting major retailers around the world. As global shipping is set to get more expensive, most industries, including the toy industry, are already feeling the financial impact. Unfortunately for the toy consumer, particularly the Lego fanatic, things are about to get more complicated. According to 404 Media, Lego will now stop shipping individual pieces. What used to be an easy way to replace random lost or missing bricks is now going to be a wo

Starlink's New Customer Deal: Get Half-Off a Dish and Hundreds in Year-One Savings

For people living in rural areas or places where traditional internet providers don't reach, Starlink has been a game changer. The satellite-powered service makes reliable connectivity possible in areas that were often left out. Now, the company is making it even more affordable for new customers to sign up with the lowest monthly prices we've seen so far. The Starlink standard kit is currently available for $175 - half off its usual $349 cost. Unlike previous discounts that were restricted to

Today's Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for Aug. 30, #1533

Gael Cooper CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.

Concern Grows That Elon Musk Is Having Some Kind of AI Meltdown

With all the frenzied news swirling around these days, it's understandable if you let Elon Musk slip from the top of your mind. While the billionaire's mental state was arguably frayed during his stint as DOGE czar — thanks in no small part to what's been reported as a constant stream of illicit drugs — it's become visibly more concerning since his dramatic departure earlier this summer. Seemingly trying to distract himself from the decline of Tesla, the world's richest man has embarked on a n

Samsung multi-fold leak teases some of the phone’s wireless features

Samsung TL;DR New animations for Samsung’s upcoming multi-fold phone have leaked. The animations show off the phone’s design and a few of its features. The device appears to be capable of wireless charging, reverse wireless charging, and NFC payments. It’s not a secret that Samsung is working on a device that the industry popularly but misleadingly calls a “tri-fold.” Although it’s known that the device is on the way, Samsung has remained quiet on the details. But thanks to leaks, we’ve lear

Hate voicemail? Pixel's new feature replaces it with something way better

Kerry Wan/ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways Google's Take a Message is available for the Pixel 4 and newer. The feature essentially replaces voicemail. You can see why someone is calling and answer a call you declined. Google has quietly dropped a pretty cool call screening feature, and most Pixel phones from the past six years are getting it. When the Pixel 10 debuted last week, among its new features was something called Take a Message. A

Data engineering and software engineering are converging

TL;DR: · If you’re an engineer building realtime analytics or AI-powered features, you need the right data infrastructure coupled with the right developer experience (DX). · A great DX for data infrastructure should empower both software devs and data engineers, while taking inspiration from the best of modern web development (git-native, local-first, everything as code, CI/CD friendly, etc). · MooseStack by 514 offers a fully open source implementation of a DX layer for ClickHouse. Da

Windows 11 25H2 update hits its last stop before release to the general public

Microsoft's fifth major iteration of Windows 11 is nearing its release to the general public—the Windows Insider team announced today that Windows 11 25H2 was being put into its Release Preview Channel, the final stop for most updates before they become available to everyone. That's around two months after the first Windows builds with the 25H2 label were released to the other preview channels. Putting a new yearly Windows update in the Release Preview channel is analogous to the "release to ma

With new in-house models, Microsoft lays the groundwork for independence from OpenAI

Microsoft has introduced AI models that it trained internally and says it will begin using them in some products. This announcement may represent an effort to move away from dependence on OpenAI, despite Microsoft's substantial investment in that company. It comes more than a year after insider reports revealed that Microsoft was beginning work on its own foundational models. A post on the Microsoft AI blog describes two models. MAI-Voice-1 is a natural speech-generation model meant to deliver

Yooka-Laylee remaster comes to consoles and PC on October 9

Yooka-Replaylee, the remaster of the platformer Yooka-Laylee , will be available on October 9. It'll be playable on PC, Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and Switch 2. It's getting both a digital and physical release, and preorders for the physical versions are up right now. Speaking of physical copies, the Switch 2 version will include the full game on the cartridge and no game-key card. Nintendo has given developers the option to release cartridges that are basically empty shells, called game-key cards, t

Battlefield 6 dev apologizes for requiring Secure Boot to power anti-cheat tools

Earlier this month, EA announced that players in its Battlefield 6 open beta on PC would have to enable Secure Boot in their Windows OS and BIOS settings. That decision proved controversial among players who weren't able to get the finicky low-level security setting working on their machines and others who were unwilling to allow EA's anti-cheat tools to once again have kernel-level access to their systems. Now, Battlefield 6 technical director Christian Buhl is defending that requirement as so

Taco Bell's Attempt to Replace Drive-Thru Employees With AI Is Not Going Well

That distant ringing? It's the sound of the Taco Bell death knell, tolling for the restaurant chain's shambolic AI-powered drive-thrus. We exaggerate, but only a little. The much-maligned tech experiment, which has been deployed at 500 Taco Bell locations across the United States, isn't quite dead yet. But it's received enough backlash since being unleashed on hangry motorists that even one of the company's top executives is having second thoughts. "We're learning a lot, I'm going to be honest

Topics: ai bell drive taco thrus