Nothing couldn’t wait to show off the Phone 4A
After teasing the upcoming launch of its midrange Phone 4A last week, Nothing has now revealed what the rear of the device looks like. An official render of the Phone 4A shared on X shows off the brand's familiar transparent-industrial stylings, alongside a new "Glyph Bar" lighting feature located to the right of the triple camera island.
This Glyph Bar features nine individually controllable mini-LEDs that appear as a line of seven square lights - six white, and one red - replacing the three LED light strips that surround the camera on Nothing's 3A devices. Nothing says that the Glyph Bar is 40 percent brighter than the previous A-series' …
Uber launches robotaxi support project to aid AV partners
Uber is moving aggressively into robotaxis, striking deals with new partners and promising big investments to support future fleets - basically everything it can do except design and build the vehicles itself. (It tried that once, unsuccessfully.) Now, the ridehail giant is launching a new initiative to support its third-party robotaxi partners called Uber Autonomous Solutions.
Basically, Uber is taking many of the things it does for its drivers and couriers - vehicle financing, fleet management tools, regulatory assistance - and making them available for its third-party AV partners, companies like Wayve, WeRide, Nuro, Waabi, and others. I …
Taara Beam provides 25Gbps connectivity over invisible beams of light
Light-based internet provider Taara, which spun out of Alphabet's "moonshot" incubator last year, just launched Taara Beam to provide 25Gbps connectivity within cities over invisible beams of light - line of sight permitting.
Unlike last year's Taara Lightbridge, which connects communities separated by water and mountains at distances up to 20km (over 12 miles), the shoebox-sized Beam can be mounted to street poles and roof tops for city-wide connectivity at distances up to 10km. The 8kg (less than 20 pounds) device typically consumes about 90W.
Taara's big advantage is speed. It rivals fiber in terms of throughput and can also be deploye …
How many AIs does it take to read a PDF?
Last November, the House Oversight Committee had just released 20,000 pages of documents from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein, and Luke Igel and some friends were clicking around, trying to follow the threads of conversation through garbled email threads and a PDF viewer that was, frankly, "gross." In the coming months, the Department of Justice would release its own batches of files, more than three million of them - again, all PDFs.
This was a problem. While the Department of Justice had run optical character recognition over the text, it was not very good, Igel said, rendering the files more or less unsearchable.
"There was no interface …
Samsung is adding Perplexity to Galaxy AI
In addition to summoning Bixby or Gemini, Galaxy S26 users will be able to call on Perplexity by saying "hey, Plex." The integration of Perplexity into Galaxy AI is just one element of the company's embrace of a "multi-agent ecosystem."
Often, people will use different AI agents for different tasks, depending on where their strengths lie. So Samsung is opening up the ability to integrate different agents into the OS. Hey, Plex isn't just some transparent version of the app baked into a Galaxy phone to quickly get answers to questions. Perplexity will have access to Samsung Notes, Clock, Gallery, Reminder, and Calendar, as well as select thi …
You need to listen to Laurie Spiegel’s masterpiece of early ambient music
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Laurie Spiegel for the site. As preparation for the interview, I spent a lot of time over the last couple of weeks revisiting Spiegel's records, most notably The Expanding Universe, her 1980 masterpiece that blends synth experimentalism with early examples of what would eventually be called ambient music, and algorithmic composition techniques. It's a marvel that sounds both nostalgic and cutting-edge at the same time.
Tracks like "Patchwork" and "A Folk Study" dabble in the sort of bouncy arpeggios that beg comparisons to The Who's "Baba O'Riley," while "Old Wave" and "East River Dawn" conjure ea …
Trump says Netflix will ‘pay the consequences’ if it doesn’t fire Susan Rice
Donald Trump threatened that there would be "consequences" for Netflix if it didn't fire board member Susan Rice. Rice served in both the Obama and Biden administrations, and recently appeared on Preet Bharara's podcast, where she said corporations that "take a knee to Trump" are going to be "caught with more than their pants down. They are going to be held accountable."
Right-wing influencer and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer was quick to jump on the appearance and accused Rice of "threatening half the country with weaponized government and political retribution." She also pointed out that Netflix, whose board Rice is on, is trying to me …
This magazine plays Tetris — here’s how
Tetris has been immortalized in a playable McDonald's plastic chicken nugget, a playable fake 7-Eleven Slurpee cup, and a playable wristwatch. But the most intriguing way to play Tetris yet is encased in paper.
Last year the Tetris Company partnered with Red Bull for a gaming tournament that culminated in the 150-meter-tall Dubai Frame landmark being turned into the world's largest playable Tetris installation using over 2,000 drones that functioned as pixels. Although the timing was a coincidence, Red Bull also published a 180-page gaming edition of its The Red Bulletin lifestyle magazine around the same time as the event, with a limite …
America desperately needs new privacy laws
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the dire state of tech regulation, follow Adi Robertson. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.
How it started
In 1973, long before the modern digital era, the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) published a report called "Records, Computers, and the Rights of Citizens." Networked computers seemed "destined to become the principal medium for making, storing, and using records about people," the report's foreword began. These systems could be a "powerful management …
Retro camera shootout: Camp Snap Pro vs. Flashback One35 V2
There's been a surge of interest over the last few years in inexpensive digital cameras. Younger folks are snapping up old point-and-shoots because they view the aesthetic as more authentic and more appealing than smartphone images. Companies are even rereleasing old tech at new prices. And there are cameras like the original Camp Snap: a $70 single-button point-and-shoot with no screen, designed as a modern take on a disposable film camera. It's cheap enough to send off with a kid to summer camp and accessible enough for just about anyone to enjoy its lo-fi aesthetic.
I've been testing two charming examples of this formula: the $99 Camp S …