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Today β€” 23 May 2025Tech News

Fujifilm X Half hands-on: whimsical, refreshing, and simply fun

23 May 2025 at 10:00

The first thing I noticed about the Fujifilm X Half is just how small and light it is. The camera is designed to give you no excuses - you should be able to bring it with you everywhere. And after spending a few hours walking around LA with the camera, I'm starting to understand why you'd want to.

Fujifilm's latest doesn't necessarily impress on paper. The X Half is an $850 camera with a vertically oriented 1-inch sensor capable of taking 18MP photos. There's no electric or hybrid viewfinder, no stabilization, no hot shoe, and it can't even take RAW photos. It's very easy to look at that list of missing features and disregard the camera altogether.

But the X Half's simplicity is very much the point. This is a camera for taking scrappy, quick photos and capturing memories. A lot of its flaws are masked with film simulations, filters, and superimposed grain. Its limitations are a feature, not a bug.

The camera comes with a fixed 32mm equivalent f/2.8 lens. Even with all the added grain and filters turned off, I found it to perform very well. The dynamic range is acceptable with natural highlight falloff, edges are sharp, and there's even some bokeh if you plan accor …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Canalys: Xiaomi overtakes Apple as the world’s top wearable vendor

23 May 2025 at 10:19

Xiaomi has retaken the digital crown in the global wearable band market, surpassing Apple to become the top vendor in Q1 2025, according to new data from Canalys.

The research firm says Xiaomi pulled it with a more mature ecosystem strategy than the one it had back in mid-2021 (the last time it led the pack), while Apple’s wearable strategy has grown stale.

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Microsoft says its Aurora AI can accurately predict air quality, typhoons, and more

23 May 2025 at 10:00
One of Microsoft’s latest AI models can accurately predict air quality, hurricanes, typhoons, and other weather-related phenomena, the company claims. In a paper published in the journal Nature and an accompanying blog post this week, Microsoft detailed Aurora, which the tech giant says can forecast atmospheric events with greater precision and speed than traditional meteorological […]

If you skipped The Studio, do yourself a favor and give it a shot

23 May 2025 at 09:36

I don’t usually watch trailers, but Apple TV+ makes it nearly impossible to avoid them with how aggressively it peddles its own content.

After the umpteenth time that sharp trumpet note from The Studio’s trailer blared through my TV while I was just trying to watch something else, I gave in. My first thought? Yeah, no. Looks way too over the top. Eleven episodes later, I can confirm: it absolutely is. And it’s glorious. Give it a shot and you’ll thank Sal Saperstein later

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Desktop Survivors 98 is more than just a retro Windows nostalgia trip

Is it weird to have nostalgia for an operating system? I don't mean missing a particular feature that's been removed from modern versions or a specific productivity setting that's no longer supported. I mean a sense of longing for the vibes of the computer interface you grew up with, an ache for the aesthetics of user interfaces past.

I would have thought I was immune to this particular brand of nostalgia. Then I happened upon Desktop Survivors 98, a new Vampire Survivors-style "bullet heaven" autoshooter that leans hard into the aesthetics of the late '90s Windows machines I grew up with. And while that low-res, 256-color presentation is what drew me in, it was the intriguing mouse-controlled gameplay underneath that has kept me coming back for more retro-styled action all week.

Start me up

When it comes to capturing the feel of the '90s computer environment, Desktop Survivors 98 gets everything just right. This is in large part due to rampant theft of familiar old-school icons; items like My Computer, Calculator, Minesweeper, Search, and more look like they were taken directly from a classic Microsoft tile set. The game's low-res desktop backgrounds and Windows also look like they came out of a years-old Microsoft style book.

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Microsoft employee bypasses β€˜Palestine’ block to email thousands of staff in protest

23 May 2025 at 09:09

A Microsoft employee has managed to circumvent a block instituted earlier this week that limited mentions of "Palestine," "Gaza," and "Genocide" in email subject lines or in the body of a message. Nisreen Jaradat, a senior tech support engineer at Microsoft, emailed thousands of employees on May 23rd with the subject line: "You can't get rid of us."

"As a Palestinian worker, I am fed up with the way our people have been treated by this company," the note, a copy of which was obtained by The Verge, reads. "I am sending this email as a message to Microsoft leaders: the cost of trying to silence all voices that dare to humanize Palestinians is far higher than simply listening to the concerns of your employees."

It's not immediately clear how Jaradat got around the block. The email calls on Microsoft employees to sign a petition by the No Azure for Apartheid (NOAA) group, which urges Microsoft to end its contracts with the Israeli government. NOAA is behind several high-profile protest actions in recent weeks, and Jaradat, a member, also encourages colleagues to join the group in different capacities. Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw directed The Verge to a previous statement it s …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Is the Pixel 8 Google’s first casualty in an AI-first approach to Android? [Video]

23 May 2025 at 09:15

Last years base model is in a strange place. Yes, the Pixel 8 is still a great buy, but it might not be easy to recommend as Android and, in particular AI, plays a more integral role in the OS over the coming years – here’s why.

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ChatGPT and Mac app integrations point to an exciting future

23 May 2025 at 09:00

The long-term promise of Apple Intelligence and next-gen Siri is that it will be able to access all our apps, and the data stored in those apps, to become massively more helpful.

ChatGPT has effectively given us a preview of this type of capability through its integration with a handful of Mac apps, and I’ve been putting it to the test …

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