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This accessory kit was made for tinkerers and has 180 modifications

ZDNET's key takeaways This high-quality screwdriver kit has everything for both the budding enthusiast and professional repairer. This 180-piece kit has 160 quality screwdriver bits and a range of other useful tools, such as plastic prybars, a suction cup, and tweezers. There's no LED light on the front of the screwdriver, so working in dark, cramped spaces can be tricky. $69.99 at Amazon I often get asked about tools, and I genuinely enjoy these conversations because I'm a tool enthusiast. O

xAI starts offering Grok to US government agencies

Just days after apologizing for Grok's recent hard turn toward antisemitism, xAI has announced a suite of AI products for government use. Grok for Government brings together the company's latest commercial products, including Grok 4 and Deep Search, with special considerations given to the needs of federal, state and local agencies. To that end, xAI says it will design custom models for specific national security and research customers. It will also develop specialized AI applications for use i

This accessory kit was made for tinkerers and has180 modifications

ZDNET's key takeaways This high-quality screwdriver kit has everything for both the budding enthusiast and professional repairer. This 180-piece kit has 160 quality screwdriver bits and a range of other useful tools, such as plastic prybars, a suction cup, and tweezers. There's no LED light on the front of the screwdriver, so working in dark, cramped spaces can be tricky. $69.99 at Amazon I often get asked about tools, and I genuinely enjoy these conversations because I'm a tool enthusiast. O

AWS launches Kiro, its Cursor clone

I’m sure you’ve been there: prompt, prompt, prompt, and you have a working application. It’s fun and feels like magic. But getting it to production requires more. What assumptions did the model make when building it? You guided the agent throughout, but those decisions aren’t documented. Requirements are fuzzy and you can’t tell if the application meets them. You can’t quickly understand how the system is designed and how that design will affect your environment and performance. Sometimes it’s b

Bill Gates Sounds the Alarm on a Global Health Catastrophe

Bill Gates will not give up. The Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist is continuing his public campaign against the Trump administration’s drastic cuts to U.S. foreign aid, warning of disastrous and preventable consequences for global health programs. His strategy is twofold: sound the alarm on the immediate human cost while highlighting the long-term benefits of American generosity. He just did both. Gates amplified a harrowing, firsthand account from a doctor in Africa whose clinic, fu

Google Contacts could soon let you control clutter from third-party apps (Updated: Rolling out)

Adamya Sharma / Android Authority TL;DR Google Contacts could soon allow users to show or hide read-only contacts synced from connected apps. The new feature aims to help users troubleshoot issues like duplicated contacts by revealing otherwise hidden view-only entries. Most users likely won’t need this enabled, but the switch offers better visibility for those who occasionally need it. Update, July 14, 2025 (07:08 AM ET): The ability to show and hide read-only contacts is now rolling out to

Google Contacts is making it easier to check when you last contacted someone (Updated: Rolling out)

Adamya Sharma / Android Authority TL;DR Google Contacts could soon start displaying recent calls and texts on contact profiles. The feature will appear as a new “Recent activity” section on contact profiles, listing the last call and text with each contact. Update, July 14, 2025 (07:13 AM ET): Profile pages within the Contacts app now show Recent activity, with the feature rolling out with Google Contacts v4.58.27. Original article, April 30, 2025 (06:53 AM ET): Google Contacts‘ Single Contac

This Galaxy S26 leak is bad news for small-phone lovers

C. Scott Brown / Android Authority TL;DR A Korean outlet reports that Samsung is working on the Galaxy S26 Edge instead of the S26 Plus. The outlet also revealed screen sizes for all three models, and the base model might get a small size bump. The Samsung Galaxy S26 series is still roughly six months away from launch, but that hasn’t stopped the steady stream of leaks. It now looks like we’ve got screen-related details for all three phones. The Elec reports (h/t: Jukanlosreve on Twitter) th

Vast Numbers of Lonely Kids Are Using AI as Substitute Friends

Lonely children and teens are replacing real-life friendship with AI, and experts are worried. A new report from the nonprofit Internet Matters, which supports efforts to keep children safe online, found that children and teens are using programs like ChatGPT, Character.AI, and Snapchat's MyAI to simulate friendship more than ever before. Of the 1,000 children aged nine to 17 that Internet Matters surveyed for its "Me, Myself, and AI" report, some 67 percent said they use AI chatbots regularly

The Scourge of Arial (2001)

Arial is everywhere. If you don’t know what it is, you don’t use a modern personal computer. Arial is a font that is familiar to anyone who uses Microsoft products, whether on a PC or a Mac. It has spread like a virus through the typographic landscape and illustrates the pervasiveness of Microsoft’s influence in the world. Arial’s ubiquity is not due to its beauty. It’s actually rather homely. Not that homeliness is necessarily a bad thing for a typeface. With typefaces, character and history a

A Century of Quantum Mechanics

Lieber Pauli... Read the translation of the letter sent by Werner Heisenberg to Wolfgang Pauli on 9 July 1925. The original letter is preserved in CERN’s Wolfgang Pauli Archive. (Copyright: Heisenberg Society) Dear Pauli, If you believe that I read your letter laughing mockingly, then you are gravely mistaken; quite the contrary – since Helgoland, my views on mechanics have become more radical with each passing day, and it is my firm conviction that Bohr’s theory of the hydrogen atom, in its pre

Today's NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for July 14, #294

Looking for the most recent regular 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 and Strands puzzles. Today's Connections: Sports Edition might be tough, if timely. I guess I'm not up on the 2025 HR Derby, but maybe you are. Read on for hints and the answers. Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 9. That's a sign that the game has earned e

These are the pros and cons of buying from Apple’s refurbished store: Is it worth it?

Apple has long offered a refurbished store on its website, where it sells recent generation products at a pretty sizable discount. Unlike other refurbished offerings, Apple guarantees a replaced outer shell, battery, and glass – ensuring no wear and tear. You also get a 1 year Apple warranty and the ability to add AppleCare if you’d like. That sounds great, but is it actually worth it? Well, it depends. We’ll be delving into Apple refurbished listings, and comparing it to other offerings on the

Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market

While reading the latest results from Prosus, I realized there seems to be a trend that nobody is talking about. There is an obvious wave of consolidation in the food delivery market happening right before our eyes. The once-hot food delivery sector has gone cold faster than your DoorDash order. New entrants have disappeared as most of the VC money chases the cool and hip AI startups. Alongside a wave of acquisitions, the world's food delivery market is consolidating in the hands of 5 companies.

Bethesda Wants to Meet ‘Fallout’ Hype With Show Tie-Ins and New Games

If you’re a fan of Prime Video’s Fallout show and the games it’s based on, it sounds like Bethesda’s getting ready to capitalize on its current and future success. Talking to Variety, Fallout 76 creative director Jon Rush teased that game’s team and the creative forces behind the series have discussed “lining things up with the seasonal releases of the show.” The implication is some in-game tie-ins to the show, maybe skins for the key characters or an in-game event reminiscent of certain episod

Study warns of ‘significant risks’ in using AI therapy chatbots

Therapy chatbots powered by large language models may stigmatize users with mental health conditions and otherwise respond inappropriately or even dangerously, according to researchers at Stanford University. While recent coverage in The New York Times and elsewhere has highlighted the role that ChatGPT may play in reinforcing delusional or conspiratorial thinking, a new paper titled “Expressing stigma and inappropriate responses prevents LLMs from safely replacing mental health providers” exam

How agentic AI is transforming the very foundations of business strategy

Jiojio/Getty Images Business is on a never-ending quest to boost efficiency, cut costs, and increase productivity. Some of the earliest known businesses -- ancient Mesopotamian traders -- inspired the invention of writing. (Record keeping -- now that's a competitive advantage!) Similar needs have existed in every economic period. The big difference now is that AI technology can boost these efficiencies in new and exponentially profitable ways. Agentic AI is at the core of this efficiency boost

Show HN: ArchGW – an intelligent edge and service proxy for agents

Hey HN! This is Adil, Salman and Jose and and we’re behind archgw [1]. An intelligent proxy server designed as an edge and AI gateway for agents - one that natively know how to handle prompts, not just network traffic. We’ve made several sweeping changes so sharing the project again. A bit of background on why we’ve built this project. Building AI agent demos is easy, but to create something production-ready there is a lot of repeat low-level plumbing work that everyone is doing. You’re applyi

ISRO successfully conducts hot tests of Gaganyaan propulsion system

ISRO has successfully conducted two hot tests of the Gaganyaan Service Module Propulsion System (SMPS) at the space agency's Propulsion Complex in Mahendragiri on July 3. The short-duration tests, lasting 30 seconds and 100 seconds respectively, were aimed at validating the test article configuration, ISRO said in a statement on Wednesday (July 8, 2025). Also read: What will Gaganyaan change for India? | Explained "The overall performance of the propulsion system during these hot tests was no

Programming Affordances That Invite Mistakes

Many of my philosophies in work life, my volunteer life, and my personal life stem from experiences. As a developer, many of those come from being burnt by rough edges or mistakes. Just as health & safety principles come from accidents, my development practices come from bugs, errors, and mistakes. With that in mind, here’s a war-story from my days running an R&D startup when we lost all the data we thought we gathered from a psychology study. I founded an R&D startup that worked closely with

Hill Space: Neural nets that do perfect arithmetic (to 10⁻¹⁶ precision)

When understood and used properly, the constraint W = tanh(Ŵ) ⊙ σ(M̂) (introduced in NALU by Trask et al. 2018 ) creates a unique parameter topology where optimal weights for discrete operations can be calculated rather than learned . During training, they're able to converge with extreme speed and reliability towards the optimal solution. Most neural networks struggle with basic arithmetic. They approximate, they fail on extrapolation, and they're inconsistent. But what if there was a way to m

Should Student Loans Borrowers in SAVE Switch to Another Repayment Plan? It's Complicated

Interest will restart for SAVE borrowers whose loans remain in a general forbearance on August 1. Viva Tung / CNET Starting Aug. 1, borrowers enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education plan will start accruing interest charges on their loan balances. The trouble is, their payments remain on hold in a general forbearance. Now they're being encouraged to choose a new payment plan or face interest charges. The Department of Education "urges all borrowers in the SAVE plan to quickly transition

Today's NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for July 13, #293

Looking for the most recent regular 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 and Strands puzzles. Today's Connections: Sports Edition has some fun categories. There's only one requiring last names, and one requiring teams, so if you can sort those easily, you should be in good shape. Read on for hints and the answers. Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Sup

Indie App Spotlight: ‘Timescape’ is a big-picture calendar for year-round planning

Welcome to Indie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact. Planning things accordingly can be hard. Timescape aims to make that easier by providing you a big picture look at your entire year, making it easy for you to see what long-term events you may already have booked. Top features There are obviously a lot of calendar apps on the App Store, but Timescape s

Grok team apologizes for the chatbot's 'horrific behavior' and blames 'MechaHitler' on a bad update

The team behind Grok has issued a rare apology and explanation of what went wrong after X's chatbot began spewing antisemitic and pro-Nazi rhetoric earlier this week, at one point even calling itself "MechaHitler." In a statement posted on Grok's X account late Friday night, the xAI team said "we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced" and attributed the chatbot's vile responses to a recent update that introduced "deprecated code." This code, according to the statement,

Vibe-Coding a PCB – surprisingly good

After "vibe coding" a software-based vibing button in my last video, I decided to take things one step further: vibe-coding the actual hardware. The challenge? Let AI design a working ESP32-S3 development board, from scratch. Tools of the Trade For this experiment, I used Atopile — a tool that lets you define a hardware project using code and turns it into a KiCad PCB. I also enlisted Claude, an AI coding assistant that seemed to outperform Cursor for this task. The Prompt The board needed t

Today's NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for July 13 #497

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 isn't so tough if you're used to reading the labels in your outfits. 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 answers, y

Horrifying Research Finds Melting Glaciers Could Activate Deadly Volcanoes

Scientists are warning that glaciers melting due to global warming could trigger explosive — and potentially deadly — volcanic eruptions around the world. As detailed in a new study presented at the Goldschmidt international geochemistry conference this week and due to be peer-reviewed later this year, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison analyzed six volcanoes in southern Chile to study how retreating ice sheets may have influenced past volcanic behavior. Using advanced argon

Working through 'Writing A C Compiler'

Some time ago I decided I wanted to create a c compiler for the Hack processor in the nand2tetris book. After several dead end attempts that I might describe later I found this book : Writing a C Compiler | No Starch Press I decided to work my way through it. I plan to do blog posts as I progress through it, probably chapter by chapter. I have emailed the author a couple of times and have got helpful timely replies! – thank you What makes the book so good? Step by step By the end of chapter

The U.S. Is Testing Tiny Nuclear Reactors That Can Go Practically Anywhere

In contrast to other technological advances, the objective for next-generation nuclear reactors seems to be to scale down, not up—an initiative backed by the Department of Energy (DOE). Earlier this month, the DOE announced a conditional agreement made with private firms Westinghouse and Radiant to conduct the first reactor tests at its Demonstration on Microreactor Experiment (DOME) facility, located at Idaho National Laboratory. These experiments, featuring two trailer-sized microreactors, w