Latest Tech News

Stay updated with the latest in technology, AI, cybersecurity, and more

Filtered by: flash Clear Filter

Two People Die After Flash Floods Slam Northeast U.S.

At least two people died in New Jersey Monday amid flash floods sparked by extreme rain. The torrential downpour lashed vast swaths of the Northeast U.S. Monday, inundating New York City, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Washington, D.C. metro area. Fast-rising waters stranded vehicles, shut down transit lines, and prompted water rescues across the region, just a week after flash floods killed more than 100 people in Texas; as of Monday evening, there were at least 185 reports of flooding acro

Conspiracy theorists are blaming flash floods on cloud seeding — it has to stop

is a senior science reporter covering energy and the environment with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hell or High Water: When Disaster Hits Home , a podcast from Vox Media and Audible Originals. As The Verge’s resident disaster writer, I’m tired of this nonsense. So let’s just get into it. What is cloud seeding? Cloud seeding is basically an attempt to make precipitation fall from clouds. It targets clouds that have water droplets that are essentially too light to f

Is Gemini 2.5 good at bounding boxes?

Is Gemini 2.5 good at bounding boxes? Sort of... July 10, 2025 TL;DR Gemini 2.5 Pro is a decent object detector, matching Yolo V3 from 2018 on MS-COCO val. Multimodal Large Language Models keep getting better, but are they ready to dethrone CNNs in computer vision tasks like object detection? The allure of skipping dataset collection, annotation, and training is too enticing not to waste a few evenings testing. I decided to write a small benchmark and check Gemini 2.5 on MS-COCO, focusing on

This HP 14-Inch Chromebook Is $199, Amazon Clears Out Stock with a Flash Sale and Only 20% Left

Laptops have not been Amazon’s Prime Day priority this year, so it’s some searching to uncover a true gem. If you’re on a tight budget, Chromebooks remain your best value for quality and as it turns out, there is one model that you should not miss. The HP Chromebook 14-inch (Intel Processor N100, 8 GB RAM, 128 GB UFS) is at a record low price thanks to a flash sale with only 20% of the stock left. Once it’s gone, it’s gone for good. At $199, you’re getting a massive 50% discount off the usual $

Why it’s so hard to warn people about flash floods

is a senior science reporter covering energy and the environment with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hell or High Water: When Disaster Hits Home , a podcast from Vox Media and Audible Originals. By definition, flash floods are notoriously difficult to warn people about well in advance. They form rapidly, giving forecasters hours of lead time at best to figure out where they might hit with specificity. We’ve seen this with devastating effect in Texas, where flash flood

The End of Moore's Law for AI? Gemini Flash Offers a Warning

For the past few years, the AI industry has operated under its own version of Moore's Law: an unwavering belief that the cost of intelligence would perpetually decrease by orders of magnitude each year. Like clockwork, each new model generation promised to be not only more capable but also cheaper to run. Last week, Google quietly broke that trend. In a move that at first went unnoticed, Google significantly increased the price of its popular Gemini 2.5 Flash model. The input token price double

Everything you need to know about Flashes, the Bluesky-based Instagram alternative

Flashes this year launched an Instagram alternative built on top of the Bluesky social network. Now available on the App Store, the app offers a different way to browse the visual posts on Bluesky. Instead of viewing them in a timeline-like feed, similar to X, the app draws inspiration from photo-based social networks, like Instagram. What you can post The app, built by Berlin-based developer Sebastian Vogelsang, runs on the same underlying protocol that powers Bluesky, the AT Protocol (or atp

Google’s updated Gemini 2.5 Flash pricing is good news and bad news

TL;DR Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite is rolling out in preview. The stable versions of Gemini 2.5 Flash and Pro are also rolling out. The cost of input for Flash has gone up by $0.15, but the output has been reduced by $1.00. Google introduced Gemini 2.5 earlier this year, with Pro (experimental) being the first model in the series. A couple of months later, the company rolled out a faster model in early access, known as Gemini 2.5 Flash. Now the firm has an update on these two models and is launching

Making 2.5 Flash and 2.5 Pro GA, and introducing Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite

We designed Gemini 2.5 to be a family of hybrid reasoning models that provide amazing performance, while also being at the Pareto Frontier of cost and speed. Today, we’re taking the next step with our 2.5 Pro and Flash models by releasing them as stable and generally available. And we’re bringing you 2.5 Flash-Lite in preview — our most cost-efficient and fastest 2.5 model yet. Making 2.5 Flash and 2.5 Pro generally available Thanks to all of your feedback, today we’re releasing stable version

We're expanding our Gemini 2.5 family of models

We designed Gemini 2.5 to be a family of hybrid reasoning models that provide amazing performance, while also being at the Pareto Frontier of cost and speed. Today, we’re taking the next step with our 2.5 Pro and Flash models by releasing them as stable and generally available. And we’re bringing you 2.5 Flash-Lite in preview — our most cost-efficient and fastest 2.5 model yet. Making 2.5 Flash and 2.5 Pro generally available Thanks to all of your feedback, today we’re releasing stable version

Switch 2 users report online console bans after running personal game “backups”

Earlier this week, the makers of the popular Mig Flash cartridge, which allows users to play Switch games loaded via an SD card without modifying the console itself, issued a firmware update enabling the cards to run original Switch games on the Switch 2. Since then, though, multiple Mig Flash users are reporting that they've seen their Switch 2 consoles banned from Nintendo's online servers, even in cases where the devices were only used to run backups of legitimate games the users purchased th

What was the storage size of the first USB flash drive?

Choose wisely! The correct answer, the explanation, and an intriguing story await. Correct Answer: 8 MB The subject of who first invented the USB flash drive is contested. Pua Khein-Seng, CEO of Phison Electronics, claims credit for the title and is reportedly recognized locally as the "father of the pendrive." However, similar claims have emerged from companies in Singapore, China, and elsewhere, reflecting how innovation often arises simultaneously in different parts of the world. Phison is

Pixel phones may finally get native flashlight brightness controls, years after Samsung and Apple

Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority TL;DR Google may add native flashlight brightness controls to Pixel phones in the next quarterly release of Android 16. While the hardware has long supported it, Pixel users currently need to use an app to adjust the flashlight’s intensity. The new feature, discovered in the latest beta, will likely make the Quick Settings flashlight tile expandable. Nearly every smartphone has an LED flash on the rear that you can use as a flashlight in a pinch, but most d

9to5Rewards: Win Apple’s latest MacBook Pro from Chargeasap [Giveaway]

This month we’ve partnered with our friends at Chargeasap to give away Apple’s latest MacBook Pro to one lucky reader to celebrate the launch of the company’s new Flash Pro Ultra, the world’s first dual OLED 275W powerbank. You can head below now to enter the giveaway and check out the new Flash Pro Ultra by Chargeasap. ChargeASAP: Flash Pro Ultra, the world’s first dual OLED 275W powerbank Chargeasap is launching a Kickstarter campaign for a brand new kind of powerbank. Flash Pro Ultra is the