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BMW ConnectedDrive lets me control my returned rental car (Sixt)

Last week I rented a BMW from Sixt (Italy). The default rental driver profile had Bluetooth disabled, so I created my own BMW ID, paired it with the car, removed the existing profile, and even triggered software updates. When returning the car, I told the Sixt representative that I had linked my BMW ID — they assured me that the vehicle would be reset. Today — just before deleting the “My BMW” app — I checked out of curiosity. Surprise: I still had full remote access: - live location tracki

What Muscles Do Squats Work? Plus, Personal Trainer Tips for the Best Squat

Squatting is a common exercise that many likely learned in gym class. However, do you know the proper form for a squat and what muscles it works? Ensuring you're doing a squat correctly is essential to help you increase your strength and avoid injury. That is why we reached out to certified personal trainers to learn everything there is to know about squats, how to do them and their benefits. How to do a squat Ellen Thompson, NASM-certified personal trainer and area personal manager at Blink F

Groq just made Hugging Face way faster — and it’s coming for AWS and Google

Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more Groq, the artificial intelligence inference startup, is making an aggressive play to challenge established cloud providers like Amazon Web Services and Google with two major announcements that could reshape how developers access high-performance AI models. The company announced Monday that it now supports Alibaba’s Qwen3 32B language mode

Jokes and Humour in the Public Android API

Jokes and Humour in the public Android API Previously I have covered a relatively obscure now-removed placeholder string in Android that doubles as an easter egg, the fictitious carrier by the name of El Telco Loco. But this time it is about methods and other parts of the publicly facing Android API that may generally be more humourous than they are useful. Easter eggs, jokes, whatever you want to call them, that are visible to Android app developers rather than regular users. ActivityManager.

Childhood leukemia: how a deadly cancer became treatable

Childhood leukemia: how a deadly cancer became treatable Before the 1970s, most children affected by leukemia would quickly die from it. Now, most children in rich countries are cured. In the past, when I’d hear the words childhood leukemia, I’d picture a young child who suddenly became seriously ill, and whose parents were told their child had only a few years to live. I’d wonder how a child might grasp the idea of limited time, or how painful it must have been to face the possibility of miss

These are the best iPad deals right now, just in case iPadOS 26 made you rethink things

A short while ago, I was browsing Apple deals on Amazon (as one does) – and something stuck out to me. High-end iPad Pros, particularly 12.9-inch models, are surprisingly cheap. I saw M1 models with 1TB and cellular for under $700. Given the recent iPadOS 26 overhaul that makes the iPad much more Mac-like, I figured these deals would be worth a share. While renewed iPad deals are the focus here because of their affordability, new iPad deals are also mentioned at the end. Renewed M1 iPad Pro de

Anubis ransomware adds wiper to destroy files beyond recovery

The Anubis ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation has added to its file-encryptimg malware a wiper module that destroys targeted files, making recovery impossible even if the ransom is paid. Anubis (not to be confused with the same-name Android malware with a ransomware module) is a relatively new RaaS first observed in December 2024 but became more active at the beginning of the year. On February 23, the operators announced an affiliate program on the RAMP forum. A report from KELA at the

Infinite Grid of Resistors

Infinite Grid of Resistors Remain, remain thou here, While sense can keep it on. And, sweetest, fairest, As I my poor self did exchange for you, To your so infinite loss, so in our trifles I still win of you: for my sake wear this... Shakespeare There is a well-known puzzle based on the premise of an “infinite” grid of resistors connecting adjacent nodes of a square lattice. A small portion of such a grid is illustrated below. Between every pair of adjacent nodes is a resistance R, and w

The World Birth Rate Is Now Dropping Precipitously

Image by Getty / Futurism Studies Whoever wrote in the Book of Genesis "be fruitful and multiply" never accounted for the cost of children these days, especially when you factor in expenses like college tuition, sports, tutors, clothes and childcare. And that's one of the reasons why people are having less kids, according to new reporting from the BBC. A new paper from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has revealed that one in five adults in 14 countries don't have, or think they won

Implementing Logic Programming

Most of my readers are probably familiar with procedural programming, object-oriented programming (OOP), and functional programming (FP). The majority of top programming languages on all of the language popularity charts (like TIOBE) support all three to some extent. Even if a programmer avoided one or more of those three paradigms like the plague, they’re likely at least aware of them and what they’re about. Or they’re applying one of the paradigms while denying that they’re doing so, like Has

Apple's Workout Buddy Is Friendly, but What if It Could Adopt Other Personalities?

We all have different ways of motivating ourselves to exercise, so when Apple announced Workout Buddy for the Apple Watch at WWDC 2025, it made us think about what sorts of verbal encouragement would spur us to complete our workouts. We couldn't help but imagine the different types of future Workout Buddies -- and how they might help, cajole or even bargain with us to hit our fitness goals. Workout Buddy in WatchOS 26 will be available at the outset in eight workouts (such as running and cyclin

Show HN: I wrote a BitTorrent Client from scratch

A BitTorrent client implementation in Go that supports downloading files using the BitTorrent protocol. This project implements the core functionality of a BitTorrent client, including torrent file parsing, peer discovery, and file downloading. Features Bencode Encoding/Decoding Support for all Bencode types (strings, integers, lists, dictionaries) Robust error handling and validation Torrent File Processing Parse .torrent files (both single-file and multi-file torrents) Info hash calculation

Apple will at long last let you customize snooze times on alarms in iOS 26

We've been covering all the news Apple announced at WWDC 2025, but possibly the most exciting element coming to iOS 26 wasn't discussed on stage. The next update to the operating system will let people set custom snooze times. MacRumors reported that iOS 26 will offer anywhere from one to 15 minute snoozes that users can select when setting the alarm. For years, Apple has kept the snooze timing locked at nine minutes. If you wanted to doze at a different interval, you'd need to set separate ala

Google services are experiencing a partial outage

Users have also reported issues with Spotify, Discord, Snapchat and more. Update: At about 2:30PM ET, Google posted that "All product impacts except Google Meet have recovered. Google engineers continue to work on full mitigation." However, reports of issues have remained high for some other platforms. Original story: Google reported disruptions to several of its services today. According to the company's app status page, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Chat, Google Cloud Search, Google Docs,

Unpacking AI Agents

In the past six months, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and others have released web-browsing agents that are designed to complete tasks independently, with only minimal input from humans. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has even called AI agents “the next giant breakthrough.” On today’s episode, we'll dive into what makes these agents different from other forms of machine intelligence, and whether their capabilities can live up to the hype. You can follow Michael Calore on Bluesky at @snackfight, Lauren Good

Meta urged to go further in crackdown on 'nudify' apps

Meta urged to go further in crackdown on 'nudify' apps 8 minutes ago Share Save Tom Gerken Technology reporter Share Save Getty Images Meta has taken legal action against a company which runs ads on its platforms promoting so-called "nudify" apps, which typically using artificial intelligence (AI) to create fake nude images of people without their consent. It has sued the firm behind CrushAI apps to stop it posting ads altogether, following a cat-and-mouse battle to remove them over a series

Apple's iOS 26 requires kids to get parental permission to text new numbers

As part of new updates to its parental controls announced at WWDC 25, Apple has introduced a new feature that requires kids to get permission to text new numbers. That's among other new child safety settings including more granular age-based app ratings that will be introduced to the new iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, visionOS 26, and tvOS 26 operating systems coming this fall, Apple announced. The new feature called Communication Limits (part of Child Accounts) gives parents th

Topics: 26 app apple new parents

Government considers social media time limits for children

Government considers social media time limits for children 3 days ago Share Save Adam Hale BBC News Zoe Kleinman • @zsk Technology editor Share Save Getty Images Plans being discussed by ministers include limiting the time children can spend on social media apps The government is considering introducing tougher online safety measures to limit the amount of time children can spend on social media, the BBC understands. Proposals include a two-hour cap on the use of individual social media apps

China's electric cars are becoming slicker and cheaper - but is there a deeper cost?

China's electric cars are becoming slicker and cheaper - but is there a deeper cost? 2 days ago Share Save Theo Leggett International Business Correspondent Share Save BBC Listen to Theo read this article In China, they call it the Seagull, and it has looks to match. It is sleek and angular, with bright, downward-slanting headlights that have more than a hint of mischievous eyes about them. It is, of course, a car. A very small one, designed as a cheap city runabout – but it could have huge s

Americans pay trillions in rent, but few get credit score boost for it

Esusu has deals with Goldman Sachs, Mercy Housing, and Cushman & Wakefield, and partnerships with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to increase the number of units nationally that report rent as part of credit. Esusu is a credit score reporting service which has partnered with 75% of the largest rental companies and more recently created a direct line for renters to report their rent payments. "We have democratized access because you have a long tail of people who don't live in commercially managed h

Google Home now lets you control your smart devices, your way

TL;DR Google Home now lets you set up different Favorites for each device. That means you can pin the front door as a favorite on your smartwatch, while the lounge light is pinned on Google TV. This should be useful if you tend to control different smart home gadgets via specific devices. Google has just announced the stable release of Android 16, while also revealing a few features for ecosystem users. It turns out there’s a notable addition to the Google Home app as well. The search giant

Nothing to see here: Leaked Nothing Phone 3 render confirms death of the Glyph (Update: Or does it?)

TL;DR Nothing Phone 3’s back panel design has leaked in a new render. The render confirms the removal of Nothing’s signature Glyph lighting system, though the back panel still retains a quirky design. The Nothing Phone 3 is confirmed to launch on July 1, and is expected to bring a flagship-grade camera, a flagship chip, and a large battery for about $800. Update, June 10, 2025 (02:31 PM ET): Earlier today we got a peek at some very professional-looking imagery that purported to depict the upc

Apple’s Circle to Search competitor for iOS 26 looks awful

Earlier this week, during the WWDC keynote, Apple showed off its new iOS 26. For the first time since iOS 7 in 2013, Apple is revamping the operating system’s look and feel, introducing a very Windows Aero-esque design language called “Liquid Glass” (RIP Windows Vista), and since this was the flashy new thing at the keynote, it’s been the week’s hot topic. However, we also saw teasers of other new features that aren’t getting the same level of attention. Within the segment on iOS, for example,

iOS 26 tells you how long it will take for your iPhone battery to finish charging

iPhone battery settings get a nice update in iOS 26, including a new intelligent battery saver mode called Adaptive Power. The iPhone will also now track extra battery stats, like your average power consumption throughout the day. But perhaps the most notable enhancement is that the iPhone can now tell you exactly how long it will take for your battery to charge. Right at the top of your lock screen, when plugged in to power, your phone will now show the estimated time to charge until it hits 8

iOS 26: Apple will expand family tools with smarter child account setup, age-based app filters, more

Apple today announced a sweeping set of updates aimed at helping parents protect kids and teens online, as part of its broader push to make Apple platforms safer, more transparent, and more age-aware. Here’s what’s coming. The new features, many of which land with iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, visionOS 26, and tvOS 26 this fall, expand on existing parental controls and introduce smarter ways to manage Child Accounts, share age ranges with apps, and limit risky interactions. He

Apple’s updated parental controls will require kids to get permission to text new numbers

is a news editor covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme. Apple is introducing a suite of updated child safety features, including one that will give parents more control over who their kids can communicate with. The features are set to arrive with iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, visionOS 26, and tvOS 26, which will launch this fall. Children will now be required to get parental approval when they want to communicate

Topics: 26 age app apple parents

The Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine

What is Ren'Py? Ren'Py is a visual novel engine – used by thousands of creators from around the world – that helps you use words, images, and sounds to tell interactive stories that run on computers and mobile devices. These can be both visual novels and life simulation games. The easy to learn script language allows anyone to efficiently write large visual novels, while its Python scripting is enough for complex simulation games. Ren'Py is open source and free for commercial use. Where does