After launching for iPhone in 2024, the Clicks keyboard case is coming to Android, with support for Pixel 9, the Galaxy S25, and the Motorola Razr+.
more…AI is becoming an integral part of how we interact with our devices, and it only truly becomes useful if the vast majority of phones can take advantage of those models. The Dimensity 7400 series from MediaTek offers a better dedicated NPU and heavy improvements to gaming at its level.
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Deals on the M4 Mac mini continue as well as Apple Pencil Pro and M4 iPad Pro models, but there’s more to come today. Starting off with the M4 Pro MacBook Pro, we now have configs with 48GB of RAM at $300 off the going rate joining the entry-level model at $200 off. From there we move to Amazon Renewed Premium iPhone 15 Pro units at over $500 off the original price as well as rare deals on Nomad iPhone 16 cases and Apple Watch bands. Everything else awaits down below.
more…Clicks is bringing its BlackBerry-style physical keyboard case to Android. The company on Tuesday announced the launch of three new products aimed at Android users, including Clicks keyboards for the Google Pixel, Motorola Razr+, and Samsung Galaxy. The cases are available for pre-order starting today and will initially be offered at lower price points than […]
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YouTube announced it’s making changes to mid-roll ads to improve the viewing experience for users while also helping creators potentially earn more revenue. Starting May 12, the Google-owned platform is going to show fewer ads during moments that feel interruptive or may cause viewers to abandon the video — like in the middle of a […]
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Apple AirTags can help you find your lost items, but what if you need to keep track of more than one or two items, or you want to equip the whole family? The occasional deal on a four-pack can help a ton, especially when it’s down to $67.99 (about $31 off) Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart. That’s less expensive than it was on Black Friday, and at $17 per unit, you’re saving a lot compared to buying them individually. However, if you only need one, a single AirTag is on sale for $22.99 (about $6 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart right now.
AirTags are our favorite Bluetooth trackers and remain the first option iPhone owners should consider. That’s because they work with the ultra wideband radios insider newer iPhones, enabling pinpoint precision finding when you’re within Bluetooth range. They also work on the wide and secure Find My network, which uses nearby iPhones to quietly report your item’s last known approximate location so you can easily find it on a map from virtually anywhere.
AirTags can’t be recharged, but they’re some of the only trackers with user-replaceable batteries. They’re also water-resistant and surprisingly sturdy against the occasional drop. Apple continues to enhance their capabilities over time, too, most recently allowing you to share AirTag locations with family and friends, or even with business entities like airlines to help you more easily find lost luggage.
Major newspapers across the UK today are all on the same page for once. Specifically, their front covers, which feature the same campaign imagery protesting government proposals that could eviscerate copyright protections against artificial intelligence. Brits popping into their local store or newsagents will be greeted by a spread of bright blue pages demanding the same thing: MAKE IT FAIR.
Creative and media industries have teamed up on this “Make It Fair” initiative, calling for readers to help protect British creative industries. The campaign was created to fight government proposals that would allow artificial intelligence companies to train their models on copyright-protected work without permission.
The stunt appears to be carefully timed. A public consultation period — in which anyone can submit their opinions to the UK government — closed today following its launch on December 17th, proposing that exceptions be made to copyright law regarding AI training “for any purpose,” including commercial. Creatives would be able to opt out of the new “text and data mining” process via a so-called “rights reservation” process, but that places greater responsibility and labor requirements on individuals to ensure their works are protected.
“Tech companies use creative content, such as news articles, books, music, film, photography, visual art, and all kinds of creative work, to train their generative AI models,” reads the campaign website hosted by the News Media Association (NMA). “Publishers and creators say that doing this without proper controls, transparency or fair payment is unfair and threatens their livelihoods.”
Members of the NMA trade body include The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, and the Guardian, alongside regional print and digital outlets across the UK. The Make It Right campaign is also backed by the Creative Rights in AI Coalition, described as a “broad group of rights holders, AI businesses, and organizations” seeking to ensure that creatives are protected and fairly compensated under generative AI regulations.
The government’s proposals have been widely criticized over concerns that weakening copyright protections and letting AI companies gobble up whatever data they please could have a devastating impact on the UK’s $152 billion creative industry. The Make It Fair campaign is one of several pushbacks that have rolled out today in protest, including a silent album called “Is This What We Want?” released by more than 1,000 musicians, including Kate Bush and Damon Albarn.
“The ‘Make It Fair’ campaign opposes the government’s proposal in its consultation to weaken copyright law and allow tech firms to run rampant over creative content,” NMA CEO Owen Meredith told The Verge. “This extraordinary show of unity from the news media industry shows the time has come for the government to wake up and recognise the existential threat posed by unchecked exploitation of our creative industries.”
During its consultation period, the UK government invited “anyone with an interest in these issues” to share views and evidence regarding the potential economic impact the copyright protection changes may have. There’s no clear timeline for what will happen next, but the UK government said it will use the consultation responses to “help design the best possible policy” to achieve its objectives around expanding AI — suggesting that at least some changes will be on the horizon.
“We see AI as a powerful tool and a partner to creativity, but a partnership should be on fair and equal terms,” Meredith said. “Tech firms need creative content, and up-to-date professional journalism, to power AI — if they want to use our content, they must also be willing to compensate creators fairly, just as any responsible business would.”
The BBC, Britain’s publicly funded media service, also issued its own statement today saying that the proposal “is currently unworkable.”
“To be clear, we support the Government’s ambition to grow the creative and AI sectors,” said Rhodri Talfan Davies, Director of Nations at the BBC. “But we do not believe securing these goals requires changes that weaken how content is protected under the UK’s Intellectual Property regime.”
Microsoft has decided to delay the release window of its upcoming Fable game to 2026. The Xbox maker originally said last year that Fable would arrive at some point in 2025, but now Xbox Game Studios chief Craig Duncan has provided an update on the game during an appearance on the official Xbox podcast.
“We previously announced the date for Fable as 2025, we are actually going to give Fable more time and it’s going to ship in 2026 now,” says Duncan. “While I know that’s not maybe the news people want to hear, what I want to assure people of is that it’s definitely worth the wait. I have unequivocable confidence in the Playground team.”
We got to see some early gameplay footage of Fable at last year’s Xbox summer showcase, which was largely focused on the characters and story of the fantasy game. Fable will be centered on a hero named Humphry, who “will be forced out of retirement when a mysterious figure from his past threatens Albion’s very existence.” Microsoft provided a little more gameplay footage today, too.
Playground Games is the developer behind this latest Fable installment, best-known for their work on the Forza Horizon series. “What they’re bringing to the Fable franchise, just think of the visuals of what you expect from Playground Games, plus amazing gameplay, British humor, and Playground’s take… in quite frankly the most beautifully realized version of Albion that you’ve ever seen,” says Duncan.
Microsoft still has a busy year of Xbox games ahead, including South of Midnight, id Software’s Doom: The Dark Ages, The Outer Worlds 2, and potentially even Gears of War: E-Day.
A venture capital-backed “AI performance monitoring system for factory workers” is proposing what appears to be dehumanizing surveillance of factories, where machine vision tracks workers’ hand movements and output so a boss can look at graphs and yell at them about efficiency.
In a launch video demoing the product, Baid and Mohta put on a skit showing how Optifye.ai would be used by factory bosses.
The YC deleted video for sweatshop startup Optifye pic.twitter.com/vCJvm2HTce
— Adam Lerman (@AdamLerman5) February 25, 2025
“Ugh, it’s workspace 17. Workspace 17 is the bottleneck. The worst performing workspace here,” one of the bosses says, while watching a video of a man making clothing in a factory. “Hey number 17, what’s going on man? You are in red,” he says. “I have been working all day,” the person playing the worker says. “Working all day?” the line boss replies. “You haven’t hit your hourly output even once today. And you have 11.4% efficiency, this is really bad!”
“It’s just been a rough day,” the “worker” replies. “Rough day?” the boss says, looking at a calendar full of red days. “More like a rough month.”
Optifye.ai, launched by Duke University computer science students Vivaan Baid and Kushal Mohta, is backed by Y Combinator, according to the company’s site. On their Y Combinator company profile, they write that both of their families run manufacturing plants, where they’ve been exposed to factory working conditions since they were children. “I've been around assembly lines for as long as I can remember,” Baid wrote.
Mohta wrote, “My family also runs several manufacturing plants in various industries, which has given me unrestricted access to assembly lines since I was 15.”
They hope to sell cameras to factory owners to use on assembly lines, their website says, and “use computer vision to tell supervisors who's working and who's not in real-time.”
Y Combinator deleted its recent Linkedin and X posts congratulating the company on launching.
On their Y Combinator profile, Baid and Mohta outline who gets what out of installing micromanaging AI surveillance on assembly lines. Owners gets “accurate real-time factory, line, and worker productivity metrics,” production heads get “line-wise and worker-wise metrics,” shopfloor supervisors get to “identify who/what is causing inefficiency in the line and fix the problem on the go.” For the workers? They get the tantalizing benefit of being “held accountable for good or bad performance.”
Worker surveillance is already happening across industries. After the rise of remote work, companies started tracking workers’ productivity based on mouse movements, so workers started using “mouse jigglers” so they could walk away from their computers and use the bathroom in peace. In Amazon warehouses, workers are tracked and punished for not meeting grueling expectations and bathroom breaks are timed, resulting in more injuries and less safe working conditions. Optifye.ai’s approach and pitch, however, stands out because of the way its founders seem to embrace cruelty to workers in the name of productivity.
Optifye.ai and Y Combinator did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Recruitment is a mess—too many inefficiencies, skill gaps, and outdated processes bog down hiring teams. It’s no surprise that 88% of HR leaders say they’re struggling to find the right candidates. A new AI startup thinks it has the fix. […]
The post AI startup Perfect lands $23M to solve hiring bottlenecks and cut recruitment time by 75% with AI first appeared on Tech Startups.
Ahead of a fast-approaching launch, Google’s Pixel 9a keeps on leaking, with the latest report including prices for the mid-range device in Europe and the UK.
more…Apple’s newest iPhone comes with a key component many years in the making: the C1 modem. The idea of a new modem may not sound very exciting on the surface, but already with this first version it’s become clear why Apple spent so long developing it. There are cost benefits to ditching Qualcomm, but also user-facing improvements. Here are two killer features Apple’s new C1 enables.
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Is your Mac running low on local storage? Try this new app before you start sacrificing files.
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The Philips Hue Sync app is now available for many LG televisions, allowing synchronization between smart lights and TV screens. This eliminates the need for one of those dedicated sync boxes, as everything gets handled through the app.
For the uninitiated, Philips Hue smart lights dynamically adjust color and brightness to match the content playing on-screen. The app, along with an associated Hue lighting system, works with content from set-top boxes, streaming sticks, platforms like Netflix and, of course, gaming consoles. You haven’t really played Balatro until you’ve played it with matching lighting effects.
The Philips Hue Sync TV app supports multiple image formats, including 8K, 4K, HDR 10 and Dolby Vision. It uses a “proprietary syncing algorithm” to create “the ultimate surround lighting experience.” It’s available worldwide for compatible LG smart TVs right now. Just make sure the TV is running webOS 24 or later.
There’s a major caveat here. This is one expensive app. It costs around $130 (depending on where you live) and that only covers a single TV. However, folks can opt for a monthly subscription of $3 that can handle up to three televisions. That’s a bit more palatable.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/philips-hue-sync-now-available-on-lg-smart-tvs-eliminating-the-need-for-a-control-box-162004241.html?src=rss
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