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Samsung’s very expensive Family Hub fridges will now treat you to ads on their displays

If you’ve just shelled out thousands of dollars on one of Samsung’s smart fridges , you’d be forgiven for expecting it to leave you alone, rather than encouraging you to spend even more money. But that is no longer the case — following a recent update, you’ll start seeing ads on the fridge’s display. According to Android Authority , the new software update is being rolled out to Samsung’s Family Hub refrigerators in the US, and will now display ads and promotions while the display is idle. In a

Samsung brings ads to US fridges

Samsung is committed to innovation and enhancing every day value for our home appliance customers. As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen that value, we are conducting a pilot program to offer promotions and curated advertisements on certain Samsung Family Hub refrigerator models in the U.S. market. As a part of this pilot program, Family Hub refrigerators in the U.S. will receive an over-the-network (OTN) software update with Terms of Service (T&C) and Privacy Notice (PN). Advertising wi

When Your Father Is a Magician, What Do You Believe?

When Your Father Is a Magician, What Do You Believe? A childhood spent under the spell of sleight-of-hand taught me skepticism, curiosity, and the habit of looking beneath appearances. By: Richard Cytowic A↑ A↓ Off Bright Dark Blues Gray BeeLine Reader uses subtle color gradients to help you read more efficiently. My earliest lessons in observation came not from a laboratory but in the living room, with my father in his tuxedo and top hat. To everyone else, he was “Big Ed,” a larger-tha

AI's $344B 'Language Model' Bet Looks Fragile

Every investor knows not to put all your eggs in one basket. So why is Silicon Valley betting on just one way to build artificial intelligence? This year the world’s four largest tech firms will spend $344 billion on AI, mostly on data centers used to train and run so-called large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT that can process text, audio and visual content. The technology is largely underpinned by the same technique of predicting tokens that appear next in a sequence.

NASA’s acting chief calls for the end of Earth science at the space agency

Sean Duffy, the acting administrator of NASA for a little more than a month, has vowed to make the United States great in space. With a background as a US Congressman, reality TV star, and television commentator, Duffy did not come to the position with a deep well of knowledge about spaceflight. He also already had a lot on his plate, serving as the secretary of transportation, a Cabinet-level position that oversees 55,000 employees across 13 agencies. Nevertheless, Duffy is putting his imprin

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

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

Linda Hamilton rocks Stranger Things’ S5 extended teaser

Netflix has finally released an extended teaser for the fifth and final season of Stranger Things, airing late this year. It's got everything we could hope for in terms of the conclusive showdown—spooky shots of the Upside Down bleeding into Hawkins, attacking demo-dogs, flamethrowers—plus an armed and dangerous Linda Hamilton taking on the monsters beside our plucky Hawkins crew. (Spoilers for prior seasons below.) S4 ended with Vecna—the Big Bad behind it all—opening the gate that allowed th

Apple Weather app is returning after total outage

Apple’s Weather app went down for many users, showing no data. The issue applied on all platforms, suggesting a server issue. However, it now seems to be slowly returning … In what appears to be a relatively brief complete outage, many users reported that the app was showing no weather for any location. We were able to confirm that the issue applied across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. The outage lasted around 15-20 minutes. While the underlying issue appears to have been resolved, it seems to be ta

DC Is Considering Spinoff Shows for ‘Superman’ Supporting Characters

Superman has barely taken off in theaters, but two of its supporting characters already could be moving ahead. A new report from the Wall Street Journal says that DC Studios president and Superman writer-director James Gunn is considering spinoffs centering on Mister Terrific, played by Edi Gathegi, as well as Jimmy Olsen, played by Skyler Gisondo. io9 has reached out to Warner Bros. for comment or clarification and will update this story if or when we hear back. The move makes sense, though, s

Wildly Beautiful and Rare "Red Sprite" Flare Seen on Earth From Orbit

Red Sprite NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers, currently stationed on board the International Space Station, shared an incredible image of a sprite — a rare weather phenomenon that's triggered high above the clouds by "intense electrical activity in the thunderstorms below." The image shows the rare electrical discharge in the shape of a starkly red, upended umbrella, hovering high over a brewing storm, like some sort of occult tower from "Lord of the Rings." "Just. Wow," Ayers tweeted. "As we went

YouTube is introducing a new age restriction next month

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority TL;DR YouTube will raise the minimum age to livestream from 13 to 16 starting July 22. 13–15-year-olds can still appear in streams, but only with an adult visibly present. Live chat may be disabled or streams removed if underage users appear alone. Back in February, Google announced it would start using machine learning to estimate users’ real ages on YouTube, aiming to catch people who lie about their date of birth. The platform now looks to tightening th

Apple’s sports app now shows tennis scores

Apple Sports, the company’s sports app for iPhone, now shows scores for tennis matches. “Tennis fans can access live scores for Grand Slam and 1000-level tournaments, and can track every point across all men’s and women’s singles matches, beginning with Wimbledon,” Apple says in a press release . The company is also adding a “brand-new home experience” to the app. “Events and matchups are now grouped by league, with intuitive controls for fans to set their preferred order, ensuring their top le

Elon Musk’s Lawyers Claim He ‘Does Not Use a Computer’

Elon Musk’s lawyers claimed that he “does not use a computer” in a Sunday court filing related to his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI. However, Musk has posted pictures or referred to his laptop on X several times in recent months, and public evidence suggests that he owns and appears to use at least one computer. Musk and his artificial intelligence startup xAI sued OpenAI in February 2024, alleging the company committed breach of contract by abandoning its founding agreement to develop

Minecraft now has a photo mode with Vibrant Memories

Photo modes are a pretty common feature for video games where players go bounding around an interesting open world. Today, Minecraft joined their ranks, making an in-game camera available in the Minecraft Marketplace as a free add-on called Vibrant Memories. The feature requires a copy of Minecraft's Bedrock Edition on any platform; the Java version doesn't appear to support the camera. As well as capturing the moment as-is and saving particular camera angles to reuse later, Vibrant Memories wi

Threads adds new dedicated feed for fediverse content

Meta’s Threads is deepening its integration with the fediverse , a collection of decentralized social media platforms that includes Mastodon . Starting today, users who have enabled sharing to the fediverse in Threads will be able to see posts from federated accounts that they follow. These posts will now appear in a dedicated feed. From this feed, users can now search for federated users from within Threads. These posts will populate in reverse chronological order, ensuring the newest posts fr

Instagram adds real-time Spotify song sharing to Notes, teases grid reordering

Instagram is introducing a new way to share your music taste through Notes, the temporary status updates that appear above inboxes in DMs. Starting today, users can display the Spotify tracks they’re currently listening to in real time. Unlike the existing music sharing features, this update continuously reflects the current song, showing both the title and artist. It builds on Instagram’s integration with Spotify, which began last November with the introduction of an “add to Spotify” button.