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Tech News
A writer highlights the growing habit of people playing videos, music, and phone calls aloud on speakerphone in public spaces rather than using headphones. This behavior, dubbed 'loudcasting,' is turning trains, buses, and waiting rooms into unwanted shared audio experiences for everyone nearby.
Swedish company Flow Neuroscience has launched a prescription-only wearable device in the US designed to treat depression through daily brain stimulation at home. Worn on the forehead for 30 minutes a day and paired with a companion app, the headset delivers low-intensity electrical current to the brain's left frontal lobe, an area linked to mood regulation. The device received FDA approval in December and joins a growing category of consumer neurotech products that read or stimulate brain activity.
Perplexity has expanded its Portable Computer agent, previously Linux-only, to Windows through partnership with Nvidia. The tool requires a GeForce RTX or RTX PRO GPU with at least 24GB of VRAM plus a Perplexity Pro or Max subscription, and runs multistep agent tasks locally instead of in the cloud. The Windows release adds scheduled recurring tasks, local MCP servers for desktop apps, connectors for Word, Drive, Gmail, Slack and GitHub, and one-click local model downloads.
At the launch event for GPT-6 Astra, OpenAI president Greg Brockman claimed the company's new model marks the start of the 'AGI era,' referencing systems capable of matching or exceeding human performance across nearly all cognitive tasks. Independent AI researchers dispute this framing, arguing that Astra's strong benchmark scores do not constitute proof that artificial general intelligence has actually been achieved.
Apple's new AirPods 5 lineup starts at $129, with a $149 version including a wireless charging case, both undercutting the $179 AirPods 4 with ANC by at least $30. Unlike the previous generation, both new models include active noise cancellation, adaptive audio, transparency mode, and an IP57 rating, while the pricier version adds swipe-based volume controls on the stem for the first time on non-Pro AirPods.
Voicemod has released the Key Pocket, a USB-C hardware dongle that lets Android and iOS users apply real-time voice changing and sound effects during calls, streaming, or mobile gaming. It works as an external audio bridge, routing microphone input through Voicemod's app before passing it to other apps like Fortnite, Discord, or calling apps, sidestepping mobile OS restrictions on altering live mic audio. It costs $99.90 alone or $129.90 bundled with a lifetime Voicemod Pro license.
Walmart CEO John Furner is leading an aggressive effort to embed AI and automation throughout the company's 5,200 U.S. stores, aiming to speed up operations and compete more directly with Amazon. The initiative was highlighted alongside a lavish company event featuring performers like Benson Boone, Shaboozey and Pink, underscoring Walmart's broader push to modernize its image and operations simultaneously.
Fast Company's latest coverage examines how major companies including Walmart, Meta, Anthropic, and Adidas are ramping up the pace at which they adopt and deploy AI tools across their operations. The piece follows an earlier editor's note describing executives as struggling to keep pace with AI-driven change, based on a CEO survey the publication conducted.
A review of System76's Pangolin Pro laptop highlights its large glass trackpad, a basic 2-MP webcam, and an easily accessible chassis secured by nine visible screws that allows users to upgrade RAM, SSDs, and WiFi cards. The review also notes that AMD Ryzen chips still lack Coreboot support, meaning the laptop doesn't run fully open firmware, and praises the bundled Pop!_OS Linux with its Cosmic Desktop for a smooth daily-use experience.
Climate scientist Zeke Hausfather analyzed his own usage of Anthropic's Claude Code assistant and calculated that a typical day of work consumed between 1.2 and 5.9 kilowatt-hours of electricity, comparable to running two refrigerators nonstop for a day. He found that 96 percent of the roughly 3.2 billion tokens processed over eight weeks came from the agent repeatedly re-reading its own accumulated memory at each step, rather than generating visible output.
Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works unveiled a full-scale model of Vectis, its uncrewed combat aircraft meant to fly alongside the F-35, at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference. The company is growing the program from one to five prototype vehicles and aims to fly the first one by the end of 2027.
A developer evaluated SeaweedFS version 4.06 as an alternative to MinIO for running a single-node local S3-compatible storage setup, swapping out Docker images while keeping the MinIO client tool mc in place for testing. The switch required minimal changes, though SeaweedFS needed a separate auth configuration file, which the author inlined directly into the Docker Compose setup.