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Some Disposable E-Cigarettes Are More Toxic Than Traditional Cigarettes, Study Finds

E-cigarettes have become increasingly popular over the last two decades, especially among young people. These sleek, deliciously flavored smoking devices are often marketed as a safer alternative to conventional cigarettes, but alarming new research challenges that assumption. In a study published June 25 in the journal ACS Central Science, researchers tested three popular disposable vape brands for hazardous metals and metalloids such as lead, chromium, antimony, and nickel. Inhaling these tox

This portable speaker delivers amazingly smooth sound with little distortion - and it's $130 off

Jack Wallen/ZDNET ZDNET's key takeaways The JBL Xtreme 4 Bluetooth speaker at Amazon for 34% off This football-sized speaker produces massive sound and really shines in the metal genre. It's a bit pricey, and the app only offers 3 EQ settings (none of which are customizable). Sometimes, you just need more power and volume than a typical Bluetooth speaker can provide. Say, for instance, you're working in your yard or throwing a party outdoors or in a large space. For those occasions, you w

Texas politicians make headway in effort to wrench space shuttle from Smithsonian

A political effort to relocate the space shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian to Space Center Houston has been merged with the so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill," a major economic and policy package now nearing a vote in the US Senate. The "Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act," first introduced by Texas Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn in April, has now been added to the Senate's version of the bill championed by President Donald Trump. While the latter legislation primarily focuses on tax cuts

Senate GOP budget bill has little-noticed provision that could hurt your Wi-Fi

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has a plan for spectrum auctions that could take frequencies away from Wi-Fi and reallocate them for the exclusive use of wireless carriers. The plan would benefit AT&T, which is based in Cruz's home state, along with Verizon and T-Mobile. Cruz's proposal revives a years-old controversy over whether the entire 6 GHz band should be devoted to Wi-Fi, which can use the large spectrum band for faster speeds than networks that rely solely on the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. Congress

Half a million Spotify users are unknowingly grooving to an AI-generated band

Making art used to be a uniquely human endeavor, but machines have learned to distill human creativity with generative AI. Whether that content counts as "art" depends on who you ask, but Spotify doesn't discriminate. A new band called The Velvet Sundown debuted on Spotify this month and has already amassed more than half a million listeners. But by all appearances, The Velvet Sundown is not a real band—it's AI. While many artists are vehemently opposed to using AI, some have leaned into the tr

Netflix teams up with NASA to boost its live TV offering

Netflix and NASA announced a new partnership on Monday that will bring live space programming to the streaming service later this summer. Subscribers will be able to watch livestreams of rocket launches, astronaut spacewalks, and live views of Earth from the International Space Station, as well as additional content from NASA+, the space agency’s ad-free streaming app, which launched in 2023. Until recently, most of Netflix’s live content was produced in-house or presented as exclusive live ev

NASA will start livestreaming content on Netflix later this summer

This should be a convenient way to watch rocket launches and spacewalks. NASA is bringing live NASA+ programming to Netflix. For the uninitiated, NASA+ is the space agency's very own streaming platform. Content will begin showing up later this summer. This will be reserved for live events, with NASA saying it'll be used to stream "rocket launches, astronaut spacewalks, mission coverage and breathtaking live views of Earth from the International Space Station." NASA+ also streams original docum

Researching LED Displays for the Time Circuits

Now that I have a tentative plan for how I’m going to control all 300-some LED segments, the next step towards making this prop a reality is to figure-out the specifications for the LED displays. The Original Prop Displays I’m going to start, as you’d expect, by looking at the original film props. This image should be familiar by now. This shot is the first time the audience sees the time circuits and is what everyone thinks of when they imagine “the time circuits” from the films. These are t

Forecasters to Lose Hurricane Satellite Data at the Worst Possible Time

In one month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its National Hurricane Center (NHC) will lose access to critical satellite data that lets meteorologists see inside the eye of a storm. This marks the latest blow to the agency’s forecasting abilities as hurricane season gets underway. In an abrupt move that blindsided meteorologists and public officials on Wednesday, June 25, the Navy’s Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center (FNMOC) announced it was shutt

Netflix Is Bringing NASA's Live Content to Your Screens

Curious about outer space and views from the stars? NASA is extending its streaming content's reach with a new partnership with Netflix, the streaming giant announced on Monday. This summer, the agency will launch live programming from its NASA Plus app on Netflix, so you can watch a variety of content such as astronaut spacewalks, rocket launches, video beams of Earth from the International Space Station and much more. The aim is to pique audience interest in space exploration and the work tha

An "Indie Rock Band" That Appears to Be Entirely AI-Generated Is Making Alarming Amounts of Money on Spotify

While real artists struggle to earn money on Spotify, a seemingly AI-generated "band" has garnered enough streams to actually make a buck. As Music Ally reports, the act in question, The Velvet Sundown, recently appeared out of the blue on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and even YouTube — despite having no digital footprint prior to this summer. Despite being so seemingly young, The Velvet Sundown — whose name is a clear ripoff of Lou Reed's legendary psych-rock band The Velvet Un

This $499 Windows laptop easily replaced my ThinkPad for one key reason

ZDNET's key takeaways Acer's Aspire 14 AI is on sale at Costco for $499. It has a fantastic battery and some of the latest hardware: all for a very approachable price point. I suggest opting for the OLED, since the low-end display isn't the best. $645 at Amazon I went hands-on with Acer's Aspire Go 15 last year, and praised it as one of the best cheap laptops you can get, priced at around $300. This year, one of the latest additions to Acer's Aspire line, the Aspire 14 AI, is a few steps up i

Save $400 on this LG 5K display and get a free smart monitor - here's how to qualify

Looking to upgrade your work-from-home setup or need a high-end display for graphic design and other creative work? Right now at LG, you can save $400 on the 40-inch UltraWide 5K2K curved monitor, bringing the price down to $1,400. Through July 6, you can also get a 27-inch My View smart monitor for free when you bundle with the UltraWide, or you can save up to an additional 10% if you bundle two or more UltraWide 5K2K monitors. Also: The best Prime Day 2025 monitor deals live now Of course, t

Bose SoundLink Plus Review: Big Bass, Big Beach Vibes, and a Big Price That’s Worth It

2025 There are lots of different types of speakers out there for lots of different kinds of people. You’ve got rugged speakers for the outdoorsmen and doomsday preppers; you’ve got little speakers for anyone that needs to travel light; you’ve got party speakers for anyone that needs to annoy the ever-loving-shit out of their neighbors. And, of course, you have your regular old portable Bluetooth speakers for your everyday carry—sorry for the loaded terminology, pun intended. It’s hard to stand

Show HN: Open-Source International Space Station Tracker ESP32/Arduino for $20

International Space Station Tracker SpaceStationTracker is an application that displays the current position of the International Space Station on a 2D world map. It runs on a ESP32-2432S028R ILI9341 device with a 2.8" screen, commonly known as the CYD "Cheap Yellow Display", which costs $20 or less. The code was written using Arduino IDE / ESP32 development environment in c++. I used this project to learn programming for ESP32/Arduino/CYD. It includes topics such as graphics using LVGL, wifi

5 of my favorite tech purchases, besides my Pixel

Rita El Khoury / Android Authority I’m a Pixel fan. I’ve been using one of Google’s phones for a few years now and genuinely don’t plan on switching to another brand. It’s easily my favorite and most-used tech product, but over the years, I’ve made plenty of other tech purchases that have proven to be well worth the money. Today, I’ll walk you through a list of my top five essential devices that I own and use regularly — at least once a week. What’s interesting is that some of these were actua

Spotify Discover Weekly gets personal update, letting you offer it guidance

Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist has been around for a full decade now, aiming to introduce you to singers and bands you don’t know but may like, with particular emphasis on emerging artists. It’s been great for me, but if it isn’t quite hitting the spot, you can now help it do better … Discover Weekly is an algorithmic playlists that looks at your existing favorite artists, finds other subscribers with the same tastes, and shows you what else they are listening to. It’s been a highly–succes

Spotify adds genre controls to Discover Weekly

Spotify's Discover Weekly is celebrating 10 years of being a very ok feature. To celebrate the milestone, Spotify is giving Discover Weekly a full refresh, letting you choose between up to five genres for the playlist. The option will appear at the top of your playlist and provide songs based on your listening history. The 30-track playlist will update accordingly. There are also visual changes, with Spotify stating, "the playlist's vibrant new design reflects its ever-evolving nature and the d

New proof dramatically compresses space needed for computation

Once upon a time computers filled entire rooms, reading numbers from spinning tapes and churning them through wires to do chains of basic arithmetic. Today they slip into our pockets, performing in a tiny fraction of a second what used to take hours. But even as chips shrink and gain speed, theorists are flipping the question from how much computation space we can pack into a machine to how little is enough to get the job done. This inquiry lies at the heart of computational complexity, a measu

‘Project Hail Mary’s’ First Trailer Takes Us on an Epic Sci-Fi Journey

You wake up, alone, on a ship in the middle of space. Where are you? What are you doing there? Are you forgetting something important? Something like, maybe, the fate of the world is in your hands? That’s the situation Ryan Gosling finds himself in in Project Hail Mary, the new film from directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, and the first trailer is here. Set for release March 20, 2026, Project Hail Mary is based on a book by The Martian author, Andy Weir. It’s about a professor on a space miss

One of the best Android smartwatches I've tested is not a Google or Samsung

ZDNET's key takeaways The Mobvoi TicWatch Pro 5 Enduro is available in Obsidian black for $349 (but on sale for $160 at the time of writing). This Google Wear OS smartwatch offers long battery life, dual-display technology, and a sapphire glass display. The watch currently runs Wear OS 3.5 and is available in one larger size. $157.5 at Amazon For the past couple of years, I've been switching between various Google and Samsung Galaxy Watch models to pair with my Android, as Google's Wear OS is

Event – Fast, In-Process Event Dispatcher

Fast, In-Process Event Dispatcher This package offers a high-performance, in-process event dispatcher for Go, ideal for decoupling modules and enabling asynchronous event handling. It supports both synchronous and asynchronous processing, focusing on speed and simplicity. High Performance: Processes millions of events per second, about 4x to 10x faster than channels. Processes millions of events per second, about than channels. Generic: Works with any type implementing the Event interface

Cross-Compiling Common Lisp for Windows

By Colin on 2025-06-28 I recently enabled Windows support for my Raylib bindings library and a game of mine that uses it, Aero Fighter. The process was surprisingly smooth. This article describes how to: cross-compile C code for Windows from Linux install a Windows-based SBCL with Wine run that SBCL as your REPL in Linux-based Emacs load .dll files into a Lisp image files into a Lisp image produce a .exe executable of a Lisp program Cross-compiling C We can easily produce Windows execut

New Proof Dramatically Compresses Space Needed for Computation

Once upon a time computers filled entire rooms, reading numbers from spinning tapes and churning them through wires to do chains of basic arithmetic. Today they slip into our pockets, performing in a tiny fraction of a second what used to take hours. But even as chips shrink and gain speed, theorists are flipping the question from how much computation space we can pack into a machine to how little is enough to get the job done. This inquiry lies at the heart of computational complexity, a measu

Spotify Is Giving You More Control Over Your Discover Weekly Playlist

Spotify — a CNET Editor's Choice award-winning service — offers Premium subscribers ($12 a month) a huge catalog filled with millions of songs to enjoy at home, on the go and everywhere in between. The streaming app is an easy way to find new musicians thanks to the Discover Weekly playlist. On Monday, Spotify announced it is revamping the Discover Weekly playlist on the mobile app, giving subscribers more control over what genres of music they will discover. Read more: Best Music Streaming Ser

13 Best French Presses (2025): Plastic, Glass, Stainless Steel, Travel

The French press is an unassuming piece of coffee-making equipment. It doesn’t require electricity, yet experts agree that it can brew a richer and more full-bodied cup of joe in comparison with its more technologically advanced peers. For example, natural oils that would otherwise be filtered out in a drip coffee maker remain fully intact, making the coffee aromatic and robust. The French press method of making coffee is straightforward, cost-effective, easy to do, and hard to mess up. The dev

Spotify will let users personalize the genre of Discover Weekly playlists

Spotify is adding new personalization features to Discover Weekly, the popular and influential playlist streamed by millions of users. The regularly updated playlist will now have buttons for genres like pop, R&B, and funk at the top, allowing users to tell Spotify what they want more of. The Discover Weekly playlist is one of the more noteworthy things Spotify has introduced: the company says songs on the playlist have been streamed more than 100 billion times. The weekly mixtape — generated v

Spotify revamps its Discover Weekly playlist after 10 years

Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist, which shares new listening recommendations every Monday, is getting an update. Ten years after the debut of Discover Weekly (yes, we feel old, too), Spotify Premium users will see new controls at the top of the playlist, which allow them to push their recommendations toward certain genres. So, if you mostly listen to 80s rock, but you’re starting to develop a soft spot for K-pop, you can select different genre filters to push the algorithmic curation in the r

How thin is the Galaxy Z Fold 7? New leak claims it’s nearly record-breaking

Evan Blass TL;DR According to a new leak, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is expected to be just 8.9mm thick when folded, making it significantly thinner than last year’s model, which measured 12.1mm. The Galaxy Z Flip 7 is also reportedly getting slimmer and lighter, with upgraded display specs and a larger 4,300mAh battery. Samsung’s new foldables are just a few days away, and the leaks are coming in fast. The latest one spills out key specs of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Flip 7, including details about ho

Kuo: Apple working on 7 head-mounted products, roadmap starts in 2025

In a blog post today, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo detailed his updated roadmap forecast for Apple’s headset and smart glasses markets. According to him, the company has at least seven head-worn devices in development across two product families, one coming in 2025. According to Kuo: Apple views head-mounted devices as the next major trend in consumer electronics. The company currently has at least seven projects in development, comprising three Vision series products and four smart glasses variants.