Samsung and Apple are both preparing to launch new, thinner smartphones in 2025, but it sounds like Samsung’s Galaxy S25 “Slim” won’t match what’s rumored for the “iPhone 17 Air” per a new leak that reveals how thin the device is.
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Samsung, like Apple, is rumored to be working on a super-thin smartphone, and on Wednesday, OnLeaks and Smartprix published renders of a phone they call the Galaxy S25 Slim.
The renders show a phone with a flat front, flat back, flat sides, and three cameras on the back — it seems to resemble last year’s Galaxy S24 and the Galaxy S25 renders that leaked last week. However, it will apparently have a depth of 6.4mm, making it 1.2mm thinner than the Galaxy S24. OnLeaks and Smartprix also claim that the Galaxy S25 Ultra will have a depth of 8.2mm, meaning the S25 Slim could be nearly 2mm thinner than that flagship.
Image: OnLeaks and Smartprix
OnLeaks and Smartprix say that the S25 Slim’s camera system will include a 200MP main camera, a 50MP ultrawide camera, and a 50MP telephoto lens with 3.5X optical zoom. The telephoto lens will apparently have a special design:
Samsung is also expected to use its new ALoP (All Lenses on Prism) design for the 3.5X telephoto lens, which arranges the lenses in front of the prism rather than behind it. This design should help the S25 Slim remain “slim” while offering long-range optical zoom.
The S25 Slim will also have a Snapdragon 8 Elite chip and 12GB of RAM, according to OnLeaks and Smartprix. The phone will apparently launch in May 2025, though OnLeaks and Smartprix say that the phone “may be showcased” at the January 22nd Galaxy Unpacked event.
Apple’s rumored slim phone, which may be called the “iPhone 17 Air,” could launch later this year.
DJI will no longer stop drones from flying over airports, wildfires, and the White House, passing the buck to US law enforcement to prevent some of the worst forms of drone misuse. Some are suggesting the curious timing of that decision is political, coming just days before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, weeks after the New Jersey drone hysteria, and days after a plane fighting the LA wildfires got taken down by a DJI drone. Some even suggest this is China firing back at the United States for orchestrating the TikTok ban, which feels like a stretch to me.
Either way, DJI is now reacting to the whole vibe with an official blog post that claims the timing is coincidental.
“We had planned to roll this update in the US months ago but delayed the implementation to ensure the update would work properly,” the company’s unsigned blog post reads.
It also claims, in bold letters, that “Politics does not drive safety decisions at DJI.”
“To suggest that this update is linked to the current political environment in the US is not only false but also dangerous,” DJI’s unnamed author writes.
While the post does contain a variety of additional details about what is and isn’t happening to the company’s geofencing system, it does not dispute that DJI has eliminated the feature that prevents the vast majority of US drone pilots, by default, from flying over airports, power plants, active wildfires, military bases, and government buildings like the White House, apparently without exception.
If politics didn’t drive that decision, what did? The blog post doesn’t quite say. While it promises to offer “the true reasons behind this update,” it continues to generically suggest that DJI has aligned itself with aviation regulators around “the principle of operator responsibility” and, on a lesser note, points out that its No Fly Zones created “missed opportunities, delayed operations, or unnecessary waiting times” for pilots.
“This was especially challenging for commercial operators, drone businesses — and most critically — public safety agencies performing lifesaving work, where delays are simply unacceptable,” DJI writes.
It’s true that DJI’s geofencing system was created voluntarily by DJI and isn’t mandated by US regulators. “The FAA does not require geofencing from drone manufacturers,” FAA spokesperson Ian Gregor told The Verge.
But does removing hard geofencing make us safer, and did it cost DJI anything to keep it in place? We’ve asked DJI the following questions:
We’ll let you know how DJI responds.
Even if this decision has nothing to do with China, the company has very strong reasons to get on the radar of US regulators right now — it’s currently facing a total import ban of its drones and cameras in the United States, until or unless “an appropriate national security agency” publicly declares that its products are not an unacceptable national security risk.
Perhaps this move helps highlight how DJI voluntarily made its drones less of a national security risk by keeping them away from important facilities. Perhaps DJI leaders believe the US will only understand that once it takes the feature away.
Zara Dar’s six-minute explainer video “So what are Integrals?” has a little over half a million views with 450 likes and an 87 percent positive “thumbs up” review rate. Commenters have said the video, which is a short introduction to one of the fundamental operations of calculus, is “educational,” “great,” and “just incredible.”
“I have to say, as an aerospace engineering student, that you have explained the usefulness of integrals better than my university professor,” one commenter said.
Only a few commenters complained or demanded that Dar take her clothes off, which is impressive because the video and comments were posted to her Pornhub channel, where Dar has been posting educational videos like “What is a neural network?” and “Intuitive Approach to Understanding Probability” for the last year.
When I asked her why she thinks her videos are gaining traction on a porn site, Dar said “I’m not entirely sure, but it could be because my SFW videos stand out against the typical NSFW content on the platform. That contrast might make them more intriguing or refreshing to viewers. But that’s just my speculation.”
Dar, who dropped out of grad school to be a content creator full-time (she also has a Pornhub video about that choice), also posts the same videos to YouTube and has an OnlyFans where she posts adult content, where she says she’s made over a million dollars.
On Wednesday, while the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case challenging a law in Texas that requires age verification for people to view porn sites, Justice Samuel Alito asked if Pornhub was “like the old Playboy magazines,” meaning does the site just offer pornography or content that is not pornographic as well. The answer is that it doesn’t have much in terms of written articles, b there’s a long history of posting non pornographic content to Pornhub. As I wrote almost a decade ago, some people do it as a goof, but it’s also not the worst place to monetize one’s videos, even if they’re not porn. In fact, I learned about Dar’s channel via a post she made on Linkedin, in which she explained that the same educational videos she shares on YouTube make more money per million views on Pornhub because Pornhub offers better rates—$1,000 per million views on Pornhub versus YouTube’s $340 per million views.
For reasons she doesn’t understand, Dar’s Linkedin account was banned after that Linkedin post started going viral.
“My account was banned, seemingly because of this post,” Dar told me. “I received an email stating, ‘We recently removed your profile photo because it does not appear to be a photo of you,’ which was confusing since LinkedIn has never requested ID verification from me. When I tried to log in to update my photo, I discovered my account was banned.”
Dar tried contacting Linkedin support but did not receive a response and she’s still unable to access her account. Linkedin also did not respond to my request for comment.
“I have no issue providing LinkedIn with my ID for verification (as I have done so for many other platforms), but I was under the impression that it’s optional,” Dar told me. “It’s frustrating that verification isn’t required for other users, yet my account was banned for sharing a straightforward fact about my content creation career. I was engaging professionally, but LinkedIn’s strict handling of this situation feels counterproductive to its purpose.”
In the message sent to her by Linkedin asking her to change her profile photo, Linkedin said that profile photos can get flagged for a variety of reasons, including for “being considered offensive.” There was no nudity in Dar’s profile photo.
Ironically, being removed from social media with little explanation or recourse is another good reason for people to share their content on Pornhub. We don’t know exactly why Dar’s Linkedin account was removed because Linkedin won’t explain, but it’s possible it was reported because it was reported by users after going viral on the LinkedinLunatics subreddit, where people share Linkedin posts they feel don’t belong on the professional networking platform. As we’ve reported over the years, this is something that happens to sex workers and adult content creators on other social media sites all the time.
Dar said she makes more money on YouTube overall because that’s where she gets more views, but in addition to higher rates, an added benefit of posting to Pornhub is that Pornhub is not likely to ban her for sharing adult content elsewhere on the web.
“I can't believe this website is banned in Texas!” one commenter said on Dar’s Pornhub video on pi. “They're trying to hinder our education.”
Apple One launched over five years ago, and while it did recently gain new features, there’s never yet been a brand new service added. But it sounds like that might change later this year.
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Google is set to launch its Android Automotive app conversion program this February that helps developers convert their Android apps to in-vehicle screens.
As reported by Android Authority, the “Car ready mobile apps program” guides Android developers to make slight changes to apps so they can be available in vehicles with Google Play Store in the dash.
To start, Google is specifically looking for streaming entertainment, gaming, and browser apps, and they need compatibility with x86 processors since many cars aren’t using Arm chips.
However, a compatibility mode option can also get many apps working in Android Automotive even without following all the guidelines. Google had said it would create an easier path for in-car app approval last May during its I/O 2024 developer conference.
There’s already a growing number of Google Play Store apps in some Android Automotive vehicles such as the Lincoln Nautilus that we reviewed in September. It has games such as Angry Birds, streaming apps like Max and Crunchy Roll, and meeting apps like WebEx that ran similarly to their Android tablet version counterparts.
However, the selection is still slim overall, with primarily car-relevant apps like Waze and A Better Route Planner making the list. Come February, expect a lot more apps to trickle into the dash.
Lots of startups use Google's productivity suite, known as Workspace, to handle email, documents, and other back-office matters. Relatedly, lots of business-minded webapps use Google's OAuth, i.e. "Sign in with Google." It's a low-friction feedback loop—up until the startup fails, the domain goes up for sale, and somebody forgot to close down all the Google stuff.
Dylan Ayrey, of Truffle Security Co., suggests in a report that this problem is more serious than anyone, especially Google, is acknowledging. Many startups make the critical mistake of not properly closing their accounts—on both Google and other web-based apps—before letting their domains expire.
Given the number of people working for tech startups (6 million), the failure rate of said startups (90 percent), their usage of Google Workspaces (50 percent, all by Ayrey's numbers), and the speed at which startups tend to fall apart, there are a lot of Google-auth-connected domains up for sale at any time. That would not be an inherent problem, except that, as Ayrey shows, buying a domain allows you to re-activate the Google accounts for former employees if the site's Google account still exists.
© Aurich Lawson | Getty Images
Numerous tech companies have pledged millions in donations to help LA recover from wildfires that caused widespread devastation and forced thousands to evacuate the region. Those offering aid include YouTube/Google, Meta, Snap, Amazon, Netflix, and Sony. Here’s an overview of what each company is doing to aid relief efforts in the region: YouTube and Google: […]
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Loft Orbital has raised $170 million in Series C funding to grow its satellite and space missions as a service.
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The AI embedded in a popular e-reader was spouting Chinese propaganda.
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Following a scrubbed launch attempt and weather-related delays, Blue Origin will once again try to send its New Glenn rocket into space for the first time. During the attempt, the Jeff Bezos-owned space company aims to reach orbit, helping to further its goals of shuttling Project Kuiper satellites, equipment, and eventually humans into space.
Here’s what you need to know about when and how to watch New Glenn’s long-awaited inaugural launch.
New Glenn is the 320-foot-tall rocket that Blue Origin initially announced in 2016. Though Blue Origin planned to launch New Glenn by 2020, the project was beset by delays due to issues with engine development and other technical setbacks.
The rocket has a reusable first stage powered by the company’s BE-4 engines, which run on liquified natural gas and liquid oxygen. Shortly after launch, the first stage is supposed to detach and autonomously land upright on a sea-based platform, where Blue Origin can then retrieve it and reuse it for future missions.
Following separation, New Glenn’s upper stage should fire up its BE-3U engines — a less powerful engine that uses liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen — as it attempts to propel itself into space with its payload. The upper stage is capable of delivering 45 metric tons of cargo into low Earth orbit.
For this uncrewed launch, New Glenn will house the Blue Ring Pathfinder, a payload consisting of a communications array, a power system, and a flight computer. This will let Blue Origin test its Blue Ring spacecraft, which will eventually support missions with refueling, hosting, data relay, and cloud computing capabilities.
Image: Blue Origin
Earlier this week, Blue Origin scrubbed New Glenn’s launch due to a “vehicle subsystem issue.” A successful first launch could make Blue Origin a serious rival to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Along with competing for government contracts, both commercial space companies are also working to build out internet satellite constellations, with SpaceX regularly sending Starlink satellites into space and Blue Origin on tap to support Amazon’s Project Kuiper initiative.
Blue Origin’s next launch attempt will take place at Launch Complex 36 in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Thursday, January 16th. The three-hour launch window opens at 1AM ET (10PM PT).
You can watch a livestream of New Glenn’s launch from Blue Origin’s website, its X account, and its YouTube channel. We’ll embed a livestream here when it becomes available.
