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Apple Adds 13, 16 and 18 Plus Age Ratings to Apps and Games: What to Know

In an effort to help parents decide which apps they should download or avoid for their kids on iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, Apple Watches, Apple TVs and the Apple Vision Pro, Apple has added three new age ratings: 13 plus, 16 plus and 18 plus. To make things a little clearer, Apple removed the 12- and 17-plus ratings (but kept the 4- and 9-plus ratings). Apple said the new age ratings will be present on any Apple device running iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, tvOS 26, visionOS 26 and watchOS 26

Google Maps crashes keeping you from planning a route home? You’re far from alone

Andy Walker / Android Authority TL;DR Google Maps is crashing for some users when attempting to get transit directions. Other transportation methods do not appear to be affected. Not everyone on the same version of the app is experiencing the problem, though, and we’ve reached out to Google for more information. Modern navigation software is superior to paper maps for more reasons than we can count, and one great example is how well they can integrate with mass transit systems. Instead of dr

Brave and AdGuard now block Microsoft Recall by default

The Brave web browser and the ad-blocker AdGuard have both announced that they are blocking Microsoft Recall by default . For the uninitiated, Recall is an AI-powered tool that accompanies Windows 11 and it records everything on a PC's screen . It's pretty obvious why a privacy-minded web browser like Brave and an ad-blocker would make this move. AdGuard said the decision was made due to a "privacy concern," going on to say that "the very idea of background screen captures is unsettling." A blo

A Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern combination would redraw the railroad map

Combining Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern into the first transcontinental railroad in the U.S. would create a 52,215-mile colossus that could offer seamless service from coast to coast, bypassing longtime interchange choke points in Chicago and at gateways along the Mississippi River. The two railroads confirmed today that they are in advanced merger discussions. The talks, they said, may not result in a deal. Plus, there’s the potential for a bidding war if BNSF Railway, UP’s Western rival,

AI referrals to top websites were up 357% year-over-year in June, reaching 1.13B

AI referrals to websites still have a way to go to catch up to the traffic that Google Search provides, but they’re growing quickly. According to new data from market intelligence provider Similarweb, AI platforms in June generated over 1.13 billion referrals to the top 1,000 websites globally, a figure that’s up 357% since June 2024. However, Google Search still accounts for the majority of traffic to these sites, accounting for 191 billion referrals during the same period of June 2025. One p

Internet Archive is now a federal depository library

While documents stored on microfiche or microfilm are easy to copy, they aren’t easy to access. The GPO has been moving toward digital preservation since 2016 and runs an online database of government records, and in recent years, it has ramped up efforts to digitize the Federal Depository Library Program. Participating libraries have largely pivoted to the GPO’s digital approach, but digitizing countless physical documents is a massive undertaking — one that the Internet Archive has experience

Implementing a functional language with graph reduction (2021)

Implementing a Functional Language with Graph Reduction Posted on December 27, 2021 by Thomas Mahler Abstract Implementing a small functional language with a classic combinator based graph-reduction machine in Haskell. The implementation is structured into three parts: A λ-calculus parser from A Combinatory Compiler which was extended to cover a tiny functional language based on the untyped λ-calculus. A compiler from λ-calculus to combinatory logic combinators (S,K,I,B,C and Y) which i

Apple Adds 13, 16 and 18 Plus Age Ratings to Its Apps and Games: What to Know

In an effort to help parents decide which apps they should download or avoid for their kids on iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, Apple Watches, Apple TVs and the Apple Vision Pro, Apple has added three new age ratings: 13 plus, 16 plus and 18 plus. To make things a little clearer, Apple removed the 12- and 17-plus ratings (but kept the 4- and 9-plus ratings). Apple said the new age ratings will be present on any Apple device running iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, tvOS 26, visionOS 26 and watchOS 26

Vanilla JavaScript support for Tailwind Plus

There are a lot of UI blocks in Tailwind Plus that need JavaScript to really be useful, like dialogs, dropdowns, command palettes, and more. And unless you're a React or Vue user, using those UI blocks has always meant writing all of that tricky JavaScript yourself. Well today that finally changes — every UI block in Tailwind Plus is now fully functional, accessible, and interactive, including the plain HTML examples. Now you can use any dropdown, command palette, dialog, drawer, and more in a

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Reindeer Flee to Cities as the Arctic Bakes in Unprecedented Heatwave

For two straight weeks, Finland has been roasting under record-high temperatures. The country is facing its most intense and persistent heatwave in its recorded history, which has brought beach weather to towns above the Arctic Circle. Friday marked the 14th consecutive day that at least one part of Finland reached a temperature above 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius), according to the Finnish Meteorological Institute. Local weather stations across the country have also reported record

Microsoft gives Copilot a face - here's how to try your new Appearance chat buddy

Microsoft Microsoft has a new experiment, called Copilot Appearance, that's designed to bring its AI assistant to life -- visually, anyway. Also: Microsoft's Copilot Vision can now see and analyze your entire Windows desktop Available now as an early preview in Copilot Labs, this feature layers real‑time facial expressions and non‑verbal cues onto Copilot's voice interactions. The goal is to make conversations with Microsoft's AI feel more natural, human‑like, and animated. What is Copilot A

Games Look Bad: HDR and Tone Mapping (2017)

This is Part 1 of a series examining techniques used in game graphics and how those techniques fail to deliver a visually appealing end result. See Part 0 for a more thorough explanation of the idea behind it. High dynamic range. First experienced by most consumers in late 2005, with Valve’s Half Life 2: Lost Coast demo. Largely faked at the time due to technical limitations, but it laid the groundwork for something we take for granted in nearly every blockbuster title. The contemporaneous revi

Neon Now Runs in VS Code

Developers love using Neon branches for a local development, due to the agility they provide (e.g. fast resets, isolated environments, and the ability to test without polluting production data). But using Neon branches still requires you to manage separate connection strings for different branches and ensure your application and its environment is properly set up to connect. Today, that gets a lot easier, especially if you’re a VS Code user! We’re launching Neon Local Connect, a new VS Code ext

Internet Archive Is Now a Federal Depository Library

While documents stored on microfiche or microfilm are easy to copy, they aren’t easy to access. The GPO has been moving toward digital preservation since 2016 and runs an online database of government records, and in recent years, it has ramped up efforts to digitize the Federal Depository Library Program. Participating libraries have largely pivoted to the GPO’s digital approach, but digitizing countless physical documents is a massive undertaking — one that the Internet Archive has experience

Implementing a Functional Language with Graph Reduction

Implementing a Functional Language with Graph Reduction Posted on December 27, 2021 by Thomas Mahler Abstract Implementing a small functional language with a classic combinator based graph-reduction machine in Haskell. The implementation is structured into three parts: A λ-calculus parser from A Combinatory Compiler which was extended to cover a tiny functional language based on the untyped λ-calculus. A compiler from λ-calculus to combinatory logic combinators (S,K,I,B,C and Y) which i

Elon Musk Swipes Back at Trump After Apparent Peace Offering

Yesterday, President Trump seemed to offer an olive branch to his former “first buddy,” Elon Musk, amidst their ongoing spat. In a post made to Truth Social, Trump claimed that he didn’t wish any harm on Elon or his businesses. “Everyone is stating that I will destroy Elon’s companies by taking away some, if not all, of the large-scale subsidies he receives from the U.S. Government. This is not so! I want Elon, and all businesses within our Country, to THRIVE, in fact, THRIVE like never before!”

Mistral’s new “environmental audit” shows how much AI is hurting the planet

Despite concerns over the environmental impacts of AI models, it's surprisingly hard to find precise, reliable data on the CO 2 emissions and water use for many major large language models. French model-maker Mistral is seeking to fix that this week, releasing details from what it calls a first-of-its-kind environmental audit "to quantify the environmental impacts of our LLMs." The results, which are broadly in line with estimates from previous scholarly work, suggest the environmental harm of

I've Had It with Microsoft

Screenshot by the author. Photo: Microsoft . Generative AI is nothing but a con dressed up in big promises that become harder to believe with every passing month. After narrativizing chatbots and image generators into the next big thing, to such an extent that credulous governments now believe access to the technology is key to their geopolitical position in the world, tech companies can’t allow the bubble to burst. But keeping the bubble inflated costs hundreds of billions of dollars, and tha

Quantum Scientists Have Built a New Math of Cryptography

Hard problems are usually not a welcome sight. But cryptographers love them. That’s because certain hard math problems underpin the security of modern encryption. Any clever trick for solving them will doom most forms of cryptography. Several years ago, researchers found a radically new approach to encryption that lacks this potential weak spot. The approach exploits the peculiar features of quantum physics. But unlike earlier quantum encryption schemes, which only work for a few special tasks,

Can Vibration Plates Help You Lose Weight? We Asked Experts to Find Out

If you have any type of social media, you've likely seen someone trying to sell you a vibration plate claiming that they've lost weight by just standing on a small platform that vibrates. Similar to the mid-20th-century vibrating belt machines, vibration plates have been said to provide the body with various benefits and can even be a tool for weight loss. But is the hype backed by science and expert opinions, or is it all social media hearsay? To find out if you should add a vibration plate to

Skydance deal allows Trump’s FCC to “censor speech” and “silence dissent” on CBS

The Federal Communications Commission has approved Skydance's $8 billion acquisition of Paramount, which owns CBS. But the agency's approval drew fiery dissent from the only Democratic commissioner, Anna Gomez, after requiring written commitments from Skydance that allow the government to influence editorial decisions at CBS. Gomez accused the FCC of "imposing never-before-seen controls over newsroom decisions and editorial judgment, in direct violation of the First Amendment and the law." Und

How to use AppleCare One with the iPhone Upgrade Program

Earlier this week, Apple announced an all-new AppleCare One subscription service. AppleCare One lets you get AppleCare coverage on up to three devices for $20 per month. Dan Moren at Six Colors got the answer to a something I’d been wondering: can AppleCare One coexist with the iPhone Upgrade Program? One of the nice benefits of the iPhone Upgrade Program is that you pay a single monthly fee to get a new iPhone each year and AppleCare coverage. Apple spokesperson Anna Mitchell confirmed to Si

Microsoft’s AI CEO thinks Copilot will age and ‘have a room that it lives in’

is a senior editor and author of Notepad , who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years. Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft’s AI CEO, has a vision of Copilot that involves it being so highly personalized that “it will age.” Microsoft has been increasingly pushing Copilot to be a personalized AI assistant, with a big redesign last year that included a conversational voice mode. Now, Suleyman’s Microsoft AI team is launching a new Copilot virtual character that will interac

Breaking down Trump’s big gift to the AI industry

President Donald Trump’s plan to promote America’s AI dominance involves discouraging “woke AI,” slashing state and federal regulations, and laying the groundwork to rapidly expand AI development and adoption. Trump’s proposal, released on July 23rd, is a sweeping endorsement of the technology, full of guidance that ranges from specific executive actions to directions for future research. Some of the new plan’s provisions (like promoting open-source AI) have garnered praise from organizations t

Motorola is finally beating Samsung at its own game

Ryan Haines / Android Authority When you buy a smartphone in 2025, it’s often rare that you pay the full MSRP of the phone you’re looking at. Between trade-in deals, price discounts, store credits, and more, virtually every smartphone brand is always running some kind of promotion on its Android handsets. For years, Samsung has been one of the best at this game. Even for phones that are still in the pre-order phase or have just recently launched, it’s not uncommon to find Samsung throwing in f

Everything you need to know about AppleCare One

Apple this week launched a new AppleCare One plan – a way to buy AppleCare+ for multiple devices for one monthly fee. The exact coverage it offers depends on the mix of devices you have, and the cost depends on how many, but you’ll almost certainly save money over buying separate plans for each. Does this mean you should subscribe? That depends … Understanding AppleCare AppleCare can be somewhat confusing, because the company has historically used the branding to describe both the standard wa

How to buy the Galaxy Z Fold 7, Z Flip 7 and Galaxy Watch 8 series

Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 7 features several notable upgrades over its predecessor. For starters, at 8.9mm, it's almost as thin as the S25 Ultra's 8.2mm and 26 percent thinner than the Fold 6. It also has some updates to its image quality, including a jump from a 50MP to a 200MP main camera. It also offers a 10MP 3X optical zoom camera, a 12MP ultra-wide camera and a 10MP cover screen selfie camera. Plus, the screen is a smidge bigger at 8 inches, up from 7.6 inches. The Fold 7 also features mult

CRISPR can stop malaria spread by editing a single gene in mosquitos

CRISPR gene-editing therapy has shown great potential to treat and even cure diseases, but scientists are now discovering how it can be used to prevent them as well. A team of researchers found a way to edit a single gene in a mosquito that prevented it from transmitting malaria, according to a paper published in Nature. These genetically modified mosquitos could eventually be released into the wild, helping prevent some of the 600,000 malaria deaths that occur each year. Mosquitos infect up to

Ember’s Travel Mug 2 with Find My is $30 off right now

Engadget has been testing and reviewing consumer tech since 2004. Our stories may include affiliate links; if you buy something through a link, we may earn a commission. Read more about how we evaluate products . The annoying thing about coffee is that its ideal temperature is fleeting. Get caught up in a particularly lively debate in your morning meeting and by the time you return to your cup of joe, it’s cooled right down. That’s where Ember’s smart heated mugs come in, and right now one of i