Acer’s 16-inch Air weighs even less than a 13-inch MacBook Air
Acer is announcing a new Swift Air 16 at IFA 2025, and it’s an absolute featherweight of a 16-inch laptop. Weighing in at 2.18 pounds / 0.99kg with an IPS display or 2.43 pounds / 1.1kg with its optional OLED, the Swift Air is lighter than even a 13-inch MacBook Air. It also packs more […]
My brief hands-on with Acer’s new convertible Chromebook has me cautiously optimistic
Acer's new Chromebook Plus Spin 514, announced at IFA 2025 in Berlin, is the company's first laptop to use the Arm-based MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 processor. That chip was used in the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 that launched earlier this summer, and it was key to delivering excellent performance and marathon battery life in that […]
Google will reveal its Gemini smart home plans (and hardware) next month
Google is overdue an update to its smart home setup, and now we know when it’ll come: October 1st. The company has teased some sort of launch or announcement for that day, promising that “Gemini is coming to Google Home.” The company announced Gemini for Home at last month’s Made by Google event, promising early […]
Ooni’s newest pizza oven adds AI to your slice
Have you ever looked at your pizza oven and wished it was just a little bit smarter? Ooni has, and so its new Volt 2 comes loaded with “Pizza Intelligence,” an adaptive heating system designed to deliver a more even and consistent cooking temperature. The Volt 2 is an indoor oven, able to cook pizzas […]
Disney will pay $10 million to settle FTC claim it used cartoons to collect YouTube data on kids
Disney has agreed to pay $10 million to settle allegations from the Federal Trade Commission that it violated federal law by misleadingly labeling cartoons on YouTube so it could illegally collect children’s personal data. The FTC alleges that Disney failed to label some videos of its popular kids cartoons it uploaded to YouTube as “Made […]
Google critics think the search remedies ruling is a total whiff
The remedies ruling in the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google finally landed on Tuesday. Last year, Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google was a monopolist in the search and advertising markets, but while today’s ruling says that Google will have to share some search data with competitors, Google doesn’t have to spin off […]
Ousted Democratic FTC commissioner can return (again) for now
Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, the Democratic Federal Trade Commissioner fired by President Donald Trump without cause, can at least temporarily return to work while her legal case plays out. This happened once before when Slaughter briefly returned to her office months after Trump claimed to fire her, when US District Court Judge Loren AliKhan found her dismissal […]
US v. Google: all the news from the search antitrust showdown
On August 5th, 2024, Judge Amit Mehta ruled in the case of United States of America v. Google, saying, “…the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.” Nearly a year later, the judge has […]
Google and Apple’s $20 billion search deal survives
Google will be able to keep making search deals like its $20 billion agreement to be the default option in Apple’s Safari browser, a federal district court judge ruled in the US v. Google antitrust case on Tuesday. Executives from both Apple and Firefox-made Mozilla have defended their search deals with Google, with Mozilla’s CFO […]
Amazon’s Lens Live AI shops for anything you can see
Amazon will now let you shop for products by pointing your camera at them. On Thursday, the company announced Lens Live, a new feature that uses your camera to scan things in the environment around you, while surfacing matching product listings. This feature, which is only rolling out to the Amazon Shopping app on iOS […]