Netflix says it’s on track to “double” its advertising revenue this year as the company continues ot build out its ad tech platform. The streaming giant shared the news as part of its second-quarter earnings results released on Thursday, which revealed that Netflix raked in $11.08 billion in revenue over the past few months, marking a 16 percent year-over-year increase.

In addition to its earnings report, Netflix also released viewership data for the first half of 2025. Netflix says users watched 95 billion hours on Netflix during this time, with Adolescence topping the chart as the most-watched series with 145 million views, followed by Squid Game seasons 2 and 3. Ms. Rachel, the popular show for toddlers that originated on YouTube, has also made the list, coming in at number seven.

Meanwhile, Back in Action was the service’s most-watched movie in the first half of the year, racking up 165 million views, with Straw and The Life List taking the next spots. The animated hit film K-Pop Demon Hunters also hit 37 million views in the weeks since its June release. The streaming service says nearly half of all the viewing for Netflix originals on the list came from titles that debuted in 2023 or before, like Ozark and Orange is the New Black.

In its letter to investors, Netflix says its in-house ad tech platform “is foundational” to its advertising strategy, and will allow the service to offer better measurement, improved ad targeting, and new formats. The company first started testing its ad tech platform last year, and it has since rolled out to all markets where Netflix’s ad-supported plan is available.

Netflix doesn’t say how it plans to keep its advertising revenue growing, but one way that competitors have chosen is to show people more ads. After forcing ad-supported streaming onto its existing members last year, Amazon Prime Video has since doubled the number of ads it shows during streams, according to a report from Adweek. An HBO Max support page spotted by PCWorld also revealed that it increased ads on the service’s Basic tier.

In May, Netflix revealed that its ad-supported tier reaches more than 94 million users. It also teased new ad formats, including ones that appear when you pause what you’re watching. During an earnings call on Thursday, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters confirmed that the company will roll out interactive ads in the “second half” of 2025.

Netflix raised its prices in January, with its ad-supported plan going from $6.99 to $7.99 per month, and its cheapest commercial-free plan increasing from $15.49 to $17.99 per month. The service also started rolling out its big homepage redesign on TV in May, which it says has reached around 50 percent of customers. “Over time, we expect this redesigned experience — along with our new responsive recommendations that update rows of titles  in real time — will help our members more easily find shows, movies, live events and games they want to watch and play,” Netflix writes in its letter to investors.

As of its April earnings report, Netflix has stopped reporting how many subscribers it adds each quarter. The streamer is instead highlighting other revenue drivers for the business, like advertising.

A company called iStore has issued a recall for its 5,000mAh Magnetic Wireless Power Bank (model IST-09991/W05) because its lithium ion battery can “overheat and ignite while charging,” posing a fire and burn risk. iStore has received three reports of the power banks exploding during charging resulting in a minor burn for one user and around $15,000 of property damage, according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

Approximately 8,520 of the power banks were sold in the US, plus an additional 6,400 in Canada, through the company’s online store and airport vending machines between February 2023 and May 2025. Pricing varied between $46 and $65.

The recalled units can be identified by the iStore logo engraved on the front and the model number printed on the back. Some units may also have the iStore printed above the model number. The magnetic power banks also feature a USB-C port for charging them back up.

iStore warns consumers with a recalled unit to stop using the power bank immediately and properly dispose of it after submitting a claim for a refund by emailing two photos to [email protected]. One photo should feature the front of the power bank with “recalled” written on it with a permanent marker, and the second should show the model number on the back. A copy of the purchase receipt is also being requested, but is not mandatory to receive a refund.

As we’ve recommended before, sticking to reputable and known brands can help reduce the risk of power bank overheating issues. However, brands like Anker or Ugreen aren’t yet household names, and most consumers will probably assume that a power bank sold in an airport vending machine will be from a reputable company. Thousands of these power banks were purchased and potentially used on flights. Although the number of passengers who charged them while in the air was potentially low, there’s good reason to be especially alarmed by this recall given the history with battery fires on planes.

We saw a ton of great Apple deals during Prime Day, most of which have disappeared. It’s okay if you missed out, though, as some of our favorite deals like the M2 MacBook Air have either stuck around or have returned, like the low price on Apple’s entry-level AirPods 4. Right now, you can pick up a pair for just $89.99 ($40 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart, which is $1 shy of their all-time best price. Alternatively, you can buy the model with active noise cancellation for $119.99 ($60 off) at Amazon and Walmart, which is also $1 shy of matching the Prime Day price.

Regardless of which version of the AirPods 4 you purchase, these earbuds deliver more bass-rich sound than their respective predecessors. They also boast the new Voice Isolation feature, which improves voice calls by noticeably reducing background noise while making your voice sound clearer. With an upgraded IP54 water and dust resistance rating, the AirPods 4 are also now as suitable for outdoor adventures as they are for sweaty gym sessions. And, as you’d expect, both pair well with the rest of Apple’s ecosystem, so you can automatically switch between your Apple devices, make hands-free Siri voice commands, and more.

The active noise cancellation on the pricier AirPods 4 doesn’t drown out noise as effectively as the AirPods Pro, but still works well given the open design of the earbuds.  Plus, the higher-end line offers a few other extra features not available for the entry-level pair. For instance, the more expensive AirPods 4 supports wireless charging and offers a transparency mode. And should you misplace them, they’re easier to locate thanks to support for Apple’s Find My app and the fact the case can emit sounds.

Read our AirPods 4 review.

AirPods 4

Apple’s AirPods 4 are the latest update to its base-model wireless earbuds. The hard plastic buds should have improved audio quality and spatial audio with head tracking for the first time. Read our review.

Where to Buy:

• $129 $89.99 at Amazon
• $129 $89.99 at Walmart
• $179 $119.99 at Amazon (with ANC)

The current trend in USB chargers isn’t adding more power or ports, it’s integrating charging cables that disappear when not in use. Anker was one of the first companies to release a charger with a built-in retractable USB-C cable last October, but its latest charger brings the same convenience to the desktop alongside three AC outlets you won’t need to climb under your desk to access.

Nearly a year ago Anker released a desktop charger with a dial on the side that could be used to adjust the power output of its six USB ports, but at $169.99 it was expensive and required you to supply all your own cables. Anker’s new 7-in-1 Nano Charging Station can only charge four devices over USB, but at $89.99 it’s cheaper and potentially more versatile as you can add additional USB ports by plugging other power adapters into the back of it.

The Nano Charging Station’s biggest selling point is its pair of 2.3-foot long USB-C cables that retract with a quick pull and keep their connectors securely stored using magnets. They’re joined by an additional USB-C and USB-A port on one side. 

Another reason this charging station is almost half the price of Anker’s $169.99 option is that it offers less power output. The more expensive option can deliver up to 140W of power to a device, but the Nano maxes out at just 100W when nothing else is plugged in. If you’re charging two devices, the maximum power output drops to between 50W and 88W, depending on which ports are in use.

With devices connected to all four USB ports, the maximum power output is just 30W, which isn’t enough for a laptop. To help ensure you don’t find out the hard way your laptop isn’t adequately charging when it suddenly dies, the charging station includes a 1.3-inch LCD display that shows how much power is being delivered to each connected device.

Although the promises of a completely wireless world through technologies like Wi-Fi and Qi haven’t quite materialized yet, the recent proliferation of chargers and power banks with retractable cables is a suitable consolation prize while we wait for our truly cordless future to arrive.

A subscription to Peacock is about to cost more. NBCUniversal announced on Thursday that it’s raising the price of its ad-supported Peacock Premium from $7.99 to $10.99 per month, while its ad-free Premium Plus plan will go from $13.99 per month to $16.99 per month. News of the price hike was first reported by Vulture.

For new customers, the price increase will go into effect on July 23rd. Existing subscribers will see the hike on or after August 22nd, depending on when their next bill is. Peacock’s yearly plans will see similar increases, with Peacock Premium now priced at $109.99 per year (up from $79.99) and Premium Plus costing $169.99 (up from $139.99).

Peacock raised its prices by $2 in the lead-up to the 2024 Summer Olympics, an event it will continue to stream for at least another decade. NBCUniversal has filled out Peacock with a growing slate of original content, which includes shows like Poker Face, Love Island, and Dr. Death. It will also air NBA games later this year.

Along with the price increase, NBCUniversal also announced that it’s going to test a new ad-supported Peacock “Select” tier for $7.99 per month ($79.99 / year). The plan will offer access to content from NBC and Bravo, as well as some other titles.

Razer's new Pokémon collaboration is a missed opportunity. The four PC gaming peripherals in this lineup are simply reskinned versions of products that already exist, and which cost $20 to $40 more than their all-black counterparts. You really should be getting more for your money here.

For example, the themed BlackWidow V4 X keyboard should include at least one highly detailed custom keycap (switching out Alt for pokéball designs doesn't cut it). Maybe the Kraken V4 X headset could have included themed pop filters of pokémon silhouettes. I'm just spitballing, which I guess is something that neither Razer nor The Pokémon Company did enough …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Today is Donkey Kong Bananza launch day, and what better way to celebrate than with a discount? The Nintendo Switch 2-exclusive game is currently $62.99 ($7 off) at Costco for members. Nintendo games rarely go on sale, even after several months on shelves, so any amount off the retail price is a big win on launch day.

If you were on the fence about whether to get the game, let our review assuage any concerns. It rules. The Verge’s Ash Parrish describes it as a “fantastic feast.” The game offers satisfying punching mechanics, creative level design, and the unmistakable polish that most Nintendo games possess. Whereas Mario Kart World was a pretty good launch title, Donkey Kong Bananza is the Switch 2’s first must-have game.

Donkey Kong Bananza

Where to Buy:

• $69.99 $62.99 at Costco
• $69.99 at Best Buy
• $69 at Walmart

More deals to check out

• The Anker Charging Station (7-in-1, 100W) is a great desk accessory for charging multiple devices, and it’s currently down to $35.99 ($14 off) at Amazon, which is an all-time low price. The charging station offers a maximum output of 100W, allowing you to charge power-hungry devices quickly. There are seven ports in total — three AC outlets on the back, and four USB ports (two USB-C and two USB-A) on the front. In addition, the charging station offers surge protection and a 5-foot built-in cable, giving you flexibility to position it where you want.
• The CMF Buds Pro with active noise cancellation are down to just $29 ($20 off) at Amazon, the lowest price we’ve seen. The wireless earbuds feature a stem design similar to AirPods, and offer premium features like transparency mode, an adjustable EQ, and up to 6.5 hours of battery life. With microphones inside and outside the earbuds, the ANC feature can suppress noise of up to 45dB, giving you peace and quiet at the coffee shop.
• Epic Games is hosting a summer sale through July 31st, offering modest discounts on games like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 for $47.99 ($12 off), Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for $44.99 ($5 off), and Assassin’s Creed Shadows for $52.49 ($17 off). One of the most notable perks of the sale is that each purchase lands you an extra 20 percent back in Epic Rewards using Epic’s payment system through August 31st. You can redeem Epic Rewards on future game purchases or add-ons, though Epic says you can’t use the rewards on subscriptions like Fortnite Crew.

For nearly two years, students at Columbia University have warned that they're being targeted - and put in serious danger - by right-wing Zionist organizations like Canary Mission and Betar US. Canary Mission's goal was initially to "expose" students it deemed antisemitic, ideally in the hopes that they'd be denied jobs and other opportunities. In the aftermath of October 7th, students who were targeted by Canary Mission and similar groups said they experienced a surge of online harassment that increasingly spilled over into real life. The stakes were raised further upon Donald Trump's reelection. Under Trump's brutal immigration enforcement …

Read the full story at The Verge.

I've been using the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 for the past week, and I think I can finally say it: I get folding phones. The Z Fold 7 so slim and so nice to use, that I'm looking at the whole category in a whole new light. It's great timing, because it looks like phones with two sets of hinges might be on the way. Huawei did it first, of course, but Samsung seems serious about launching its trifold in the near future, and Chinese brand Tecno just teased an enticing-looking concept. And you know what? Bring them on.

Don't get me wrong, I love a small phone. I plan to keep my iPhone 13 Mini until it becomes a security hazard. But big phones hav …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The massive budget bill signed into law by President Donald Trump on Independence Day didn't include everything on Big Tech's wishlist, but the industry's largest players stand to gain significantly from several provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The Republican-backed legislation is best known for its tax cuts on tips, deduction caps that could primarily benefit wealthy taxpayers, restriction on healthcare coverage for low-income and disabled Americans, cuts to renewable energy incentives, and tens of billions of dollars in funding to immigration enforcement. But it also includes restored tax deductions for research and developm …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The News/Media Alliance, a trade association behind major news publishers, announced that it has “successfully secured” the removal of 12ft.io, a website that helped users bypass paywalls online. The trade association says 12ft.io’s webhost took down the site on July 14th “following the News/Media Alliance’s efforts.”

12ft.io — or 12 Foot Ladder — also allowed users to view webpages without ads, trackers, or pop-ups by disguising a user’s browser as a web crawler, giving them unfettered access to a webpage’s contents. Software engineer Thomas Millar says he created the site when he realized “8 of the top 10 links on Google were paywalled” when doing research during the pandemic.

Over the past decade, the online publishing business model has become increasingly unstable. For many years, websites gave readers free access because they were supported by advertising revenue, which is dependent on pageviews. But as traffic has fluctuated, in large part due to changes to Google’s Search algorithm and an increasing shift toward AI search, many magazines, including The Verge, have diversified their business to become more dependent on subscriptions and paywalls to support themselves. The attempts for publishers to become more sustainable have also led to an internet that is less open and accessible — a complaint that Millar’s project is responding to.

Still, in an ironic twist, Millar began asking users to pay for a subscription to 12ft.io to help cover the cost of the tool in 2022. “I’m making it my mission to clean the web,” Millar said at the time.

In its announcement, News/Media Alliance says 12ft.io “offered illegal circumvention technology” that allowed users to access copyrighted content without paying for it. The organization adds that it will take “similar actions” against other sites that let users get around paywalls. The News Media Alliance recently called Google’s AI Mode “theft.” (Like many chatbots, Google’s AI Mode eliminates the need to visit a website, starving publishers of the pageviews they need to be compensated for their work.)

“Publishers commit significant resources to creating the best and most informative content for consumers, and illegal tools like 12ft.io undermine their ability to financially support that work through subscriptions and ad revenue,” News/Media Alliance president and CEO Danielle Coffey said in the press release. “Taking down paywall bypassers is an essential part of ensuring we have a healthy and sustainable information ecosystem.”

Disclosure: The Verge’s parent company, Vox Media, is a member of the News/Media Alliance.

OpenAI is going all-in on the most-hyped trend in AI right now: AI agents, or tools that go a step beyond chatbots to complete complex, multi-step tasks on a user’s behalf. The company on Thursday debuted ChatGPT Agent, which it bills as a tool that can complete work on your behalf using its own “virtual computer.” 

In a briefing and demo with The Verge, Yash Kumar and Isa Fulford — product lead and research lead on ChatGPT Agent, respectively — said it’s powered by a new model that OpenAI developed specifically for the product. The company said the new tool can perform tasks like looking at a user’s calendar to brief them on upcoming client meetings, planning and purchasing ingredients to make a family breakfast, and creating a slide deck based on its analysis of competing companies. 

The model behind ChatGPT Agent, which has no specific name, was trained on complex tasks that require multiple tools — like a text browser, visual browser, and terminal where users can import their own data — via reinforcement learning, the same technique used for all of OpenAI’s reasoning models. OpenAI said that ChatGPT Agent combines the capabilities of both Operator and Deep Research, two of its existing AI tools. 

To develop the new tool, the company combined the teams behind both Operator and Deep Research into one unified team. Kumar and Fulford told The Verge that the new team is made up of between 20 and 35 people across product and research.

In the demo, Kumar and Fulford demonstrated potential use cases for ChatGPT Agent, like asking it to plan a date night by connecting to Google Calendar to see when the user has a free evening, and then cross-referencing OpenTable to find openings at certain types of restaurants. They also showed how a user could interrupt the process by adding, say, another restaurant category to search for. Another demonstration showed how ChatGPT Agent could generate a research report on the rise of Labubus versus Beanie Babies. 

Fulford said she enjoyed using it for online shopping because the combination of tech behind Deep Research and Operator worked better and was more thorough than trying the process solely using Operator. And Kumar said he had begun using ChatGPT Agent to automate small parts of his life, like requesting new office parking at OpenAI every Thursday instead of showing up Monday having forgotten to request it with nowhere to park. 

Kumar said that since ChatGPT Agent has access to “an entire computer” instead of just a browser, they’ve “enhanced the toolset quite a bit.”

According to the demo, though, the tool can be a bit slow. When asked about latency, Kumar said their team is more focused on “optimizing for hard tasks” and that users aren’t meant to sit and watch ChatGPT Agent work.

“Even if it takes 15 minutes, half an hour, it’s quite a big speed-up compared to how long it would take you to do it,” Fulford said, adding that OpenAI’s search team is more focused on low-latency use cases. “It’s one of those things where you can kick something off in the background and then come back to it.”

Before ChatGPT Agent does anything “irreversible,” like sending an email or making a booking, it asks for permission first, Fulford said.

Since the model behind the tool has increased capabilities, OpenAI said it has activated the safeguards it created for “high biological and chemical capabilities,” even though the company said it does not have “direct evidence that the model could meaningfully help a novice create severe biological or chemical harm” in the form of weapons. Anthropic in May activated similar safeguards for its launch of one of its Claude models, Opus 4. 

When asked about whether the tool is permitted to perform financial transactions, Kumar said those actions have been restricted “for now,” and that there’s an additional protection called Watch Mode, wherein if a user navigates to a certain category of webpages, like financial sites, they must not navigate away from the tab ChatGPT Agent is operating in or the tool will stop working. 

OpenAI will start rolling out the tool today to Pro, Plus, and Team users — pick “agent mode” in the tools menu or type “/agent” to access it — and the company said it will make it available to ChatGPT Enterprise and Education users later this summer. There’s no rollout timeline yet for the European Economic Area and Switzerland.

The concept of AI agents has been a buzzworthy trend in the industry for years. The ideal developers are working toward is something like Iron Man’s J.A.R.V.I.S., a tool that can perform specific job functions, check people’s calendars for the best time to schedule an event, purchase a gift based on a friend’s preferences, and more, but at the moment, they’re somewhat limited to assisting with coding and compiling research reports. 

The term “AI agent” became more common to investors and tech executives in 2023 and quickly picked up speed, especially after fintech company Klarna announced in February 2024 that in just one month of operation, its own AI agent had handled two-thirds of its customer service chats — the equivalent of 700 full-time human workers. From there, executives at Amazon, Meta, Google, and more started mentioning their AI agent goals on earnings call after earnings call. And since then, AI companies have been strategically hiring to reach those goals: Google, for instance, last week hired Windsurf’s CEO, co-founder and some R&D team members to help further its agentic AI projects.

OpenAI’s debut of ChatGPT Agent follows its January release of Operator, which the company billed as “an agent that can go to the web to perform tasks for you” since it was trained to be able to handle the internet’s buttons, text fields and more. It’s also part of a larger trend in AI, as companies large and small chase AI agents that will capture the attention of consumers and ideally become habits. Last October, Anthropic, the Amazon-backed AI startup behind Claude, released a similar tool called “Computer Use,” which it billed as a tool that could use a computer the same way a human can in order to complete tasks on a user’s behalf. Multiple AI companies, including OpenAI, Google and Perplexity, also offer an AI tool that all three have dubbed Deep Research, denoting an AI agent that can write sizable analyses and research reports on anything a user wants.

A California federal judge ruled Thursday that three authors suing Anthropic over copyright infringement can bring a class action lawsuit representing all U.S. writers whose work was allegedly downloaded from libraries of pirated works. 

The filing alleges that Anthropic, the Amazon-backed OpenAI competitor behind the chatbot Claude, “violated the Copyright Act by doing Napster-style downloading of millions of works.” It alleges that the company downloaded as many as seven million copies of books from libraries of pirated works. 

The new ruling impacts a lawsuit filed last August by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, who alleged that Anthropic had “built a multibillion-dollar business by stealing hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books.” Late last month, a federal judge sided with Anthropic to rule that training its AI models on legally-purchased books was fair use but noted the company would need to face a separate trial for using allegedly pirated books.

It also follows the lawsuit Reddit filed against Anthropic last month, claiming that the AI company’s bots had accessed Reddit more than 100,000 times since last July, after Anthropic had said it blocked them from doing so. 

The authors’ lawsuit is part of a growing trend of media outlets, platforms, companies, and creatives either suing AI companies over copyright infringement — for instance, Universal Music’s 2023 lawsuit against Anthropic over “systematic and widespread infringement of their copyrighted song lyrics” — or partnering up with them to willingly provide AI training data in order to get a slice of the profits.

Today is World Emoji Day, and the Unicode Consortium is sharing a preview of some of the new emoji that should hit your devices early next year as part of Unicode 17.0. If you ask me, it’s a promising batch, especially the Bigfoot emoji — sorry, “hairy creature.”

The list includes these emoji, according to the Consortium:

• Apple core
• Ballet dancers
• Distorted Face
• Fight cloud
• Hairy creature
• Orca
• Treasure chest
• Trombone

I can think of some great uses of all of them – I feel like this is going to be a popular set. They’ll “likely” show up on devices in the spring of 2026, Unicode’s Erik Thompson says in an email. Yes, that’s a long ways away, but the process of making an emoji is actually pretty involved, as I’ve written about.

As part of World Emoji Day, Apple has also launched a new emoji word game that’s available with an Apple News Plus subscription. And Emojipedia has relaunched the EmojiTracker.com website to track real-time emoji use.

It has been five years since Netflix first announced that it was working with Ubisoft to develop a live-action Assassin’s Creed show inspired by the hit games series. For a long time, it seemed like the project might be dead in the water given how little news there was about it. But now it looks like the streamer is ready to lock in and get down to business.

Netflix announced today that it has officially greenlit a new Assassin’s Creed series that will be showrun and executive produced by Roberto Patino (Westworld, Sons of Anarchy) and David Wiener (Halo, Brave New World.) Along with Wiener and Patino, Ubisoft’s Gerard Guillemot, Margaret Boykin, and Austin Dill, and Matt O’Toole are attached to executive produce.

Per Netflix, the new series will focus on “the secret war between two shadowy factions — one set on determining mankind’s future through control and manipulation, while the other fights to preserve free will.” The show will tell stories about multiple characters living through and influencing pivotal moments in human history. That doesn’t exactly say much about what the series will look and feel like, but it does sound like pretty standard Assassin’s Creed fare.

In a statement about the show, Wiener and Patino said that they’re both excited about and humbled by all the possibilities the Assassin’s Creed IP holds. They also expressed their desire to use the series to tell a story about what humanity loses as a species as our emotional connections break.

“Beneath the scope, the spectacle, the parkour and the thrills is a baseline for the most essential kind of human story — about people searching for purpose, struggling with questions of identity and destiny and faith,” the duo said. “It is about power and violence and sex and greed and vengeance. But more than anything, this is a show about the value of human connection, across cultures, across time.”

Netflix has had a fair amount of success with its animated video game adaptations like the Castlevania series, Arcane, and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. But the streamer has had a much more inconsistent track record on the live-action side of things between its soon-to-be finished Witcher series and its short-lived Resident Evil riff. A five year gap between a project being announced and its subsequent greenlight isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and Wiener and Patino could absolutely be cooking up something fantastic. But we’re going to need to see and hear a bit more about what this Assassin’s Creed is going to be before people can get excited.

AMD’s latest Zen 5-based Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9000 WX-Series of CPUs go on sale later this month, and the top option will be priced at $11,699. The 9000 WX-Series chips are designed for workstations, with the $11,699 Threadripper Pro 9995WX shipping on July 23rd with 96 cores and 192 threads.

Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Supermicro will all start selling high-end workstations with the latest Threadripper 9000 series of chips on July 23rd, and DIY builders will be able to purchase the processors through AMD’s channel partners.

AMD will also offer the 64-core Threadripper Pro 9985WX for $7,999, the 32-core Threadripper Pro 9975WX for $4,099, the 24-core Threadripper Pro 9965WX for $2,899, and the Threadripper Pro 9955WX for $1,649. All five processors are designed to be faster in professional rendering tools like Chaos V-Ray, or tools like Adobe After Effects.

The Pro 9000 WX-Series processors are also designed for local AI deployments, including fine-tuning models, inference, and AI application development. “When running a context-based prompting inference test using DeepSeek R1 32B, we are seeing a 49 percent better performance of Threadripper Pro 9000 over Intel,” claims AMD.

AMD hasn’t yet revealed pricing for its non-Pro Threadripper 9980X and 9970X processors, but expect those prices to be a lot less for DIY builders.

Elgato has released four new color options for its Stream Deck and other streaming accessories as part of a new Dreamscape collection designed to better match the aesthetic of a studio or gaming room. The devices and accessories have previously typically only been available in white or black, but are now available in forest green, pink petal, wild lavender, and glacier ice (a very light blue).

The Dreamscape collection is now available for the same price as the standard version of these products. The collection includes the $149.99 Stream Deck, the $169.99 Wave XLR microphone interface, the $99.99 Wave DX mic, the $149.99 Wave:3 mic, and the $99.99 Wave Mic Arm LP.

If you already have the Stream Deck or the Wave XLR and are feeling envious about the new color options, Elgato also sells a $14.99 faceplate for the Stream Deck in all four new shades, and a $19.99 one for the Wave XLR so you can update your existing gear.

Elgato is also selling its new Dreamscape collection in discounted bundles. The discounts range from two percent off if you buy two of them to 20 percent off if you bundle all five (not including the faceplates). You also don’t have to stick to just one color option when building a bundle. You can mix and match the new shades if you want to give your streaming setup a punch of color but aren’t worried about maintaining a uniform theme.

To complete the look, the company offers Dreamscape icons and button labels for the Stream Deck, available for download through the Elgato Marketplace, that complement the four new color options.

Valve's Steam Deck has dominated the handheld gaming PC space since its 2022 debut. But even as more powerful Windows handhelds arrived to keep up with more demanding games, none have beaten the Steam Deck's combination of ease-of-use, ergonomics, power, and battery life at an affordable price.

That still hasn't changed. The Lenovo Legion Go S with SteamOS is not the Steam Deck killer that some headlines would have you believe.

This was supposed to be a moment for handhelds. When the Legion Go S was revealed as the first authorized third-party handheld to run SteamOS, with a $499 starting price, it looked like a true Steam Deck competitor …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Earlier this week, Elon Musk posted an image of Tesla’s robotaxi service area in Austin, Texas, that was in the shape of a penis. Hilarious, I know, but more importantly: it appeared that Tesla’s map was slightly larger than Waymo’s service area, which covers just 37 square miles in Austin.

Today, Waymo announced its own expansion — minus the puerile humor. It’s just a bigger map with more customers for the Alphabet-owned company’s budding robotaxi business. And more pressure on Tesla to drop the dick jokes and get serious about autonomous driving.

Waymo’s new map covers 90 square miles in Austin, which is an increase from the current 37-square-mile service area. New neighborhoods include Crestview, Windsor Park, Sunset Valley, Franklin Park, and more, as well as popular destinations like The Domain and McKinney Falls State Park. Waymo provided a map, with the old service area in dark blue and the new one in light blue.

In its announcement, Waymo stressed that it’s “the only fully autonomous, 24/7 experience for anyone in Austin,” a clear reference to Tesla’s limitations. Waymo’s vehicles are unsupervised and available at any time, while Tesla’s vehicles include a safety monitor in the passenger seat, only operate between 6AM and midnight, and are invite-only.

Still, this is one of the first times that Waymo is experiencing competition in one of its robotaxi cities, and the company clearly relishes the fight. Waymo also stressed “no waitlists or caveats” as part of its service, which is available exclusively on the Uber app.

Service area is a key metric in operating a robotaxi service. Companies tend to target denser areas with more customers and more desirable locations, while also keeping in mind that expanding too rapidly could compromise safety.

Tesla’s robotaxis have already racked up a list of mistakes, and the presence of the safety monitor is a clear sign that the company isn’t confident enough in its technology to deploy its vehicles without supervision. Meanwhile, Austin residents have filed numerous complaints with the city about Waymo’s slow-moving, overly cautious vehicles. One customer got stuck inside a Waymo on a busy street. Still, there have been no serious safety incidents involving either company in Austin yet.

Embarrassing incidents are a certainty as more robotaxis hit the road and their service areas expand. But when it comes to scale, Waymo is the clear winner right now. The company has more than 1,500 vehicles in five major cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Atlanta. Tesla has said that it wants to expand to Arizona and California, though it has yet to apply for several required permits in the latter.

Waymo announced another major milestone earlier this week: 100 million miles of fully autonomous driving. Tesla said earlier this year that its customers have driven more than 3.5 billion miles while using the company’s Full Self-Driving feature — which requires human supervision at all times.

Wacom has announced the MovinkPad 11, an all-in-one Android-powered tablet for digital illustrators who want to draw on the go. Unlike other display drawing tablets in Wacom’s lineup, the $449 MovinkPad doesn’t need to be connected to a laptop or PC, placing it in direct competition with the Apple Pencil and iPad combo that’s proved incredibly popular with digital artists.

Unlike Apple’s iPad lineup, however, the 11.45-inch MovinkPad prioritizes digital drawing capabilities over typical activities you would use a tablet for. The MovinkPad features a 2200 x 1440p resolution display with touchscreen support and anti-glare etched glass to reduce reflections and fingerprints. While the Movink drawing tablet that Wacom launched last year features an OLED display, the MovinkPad uses an IPS screen. The display has a color performance of 16.7 million colors and a 99 percent sRGB color gamut coverage ratio.

At 10.5 x 7.2 x 0.3 inches, it’s slightly larger than the 11-inch iPad Air and weighs 1.3 pounds (588 grams) compared to Apple’s one-pound (460 grams) offering. The rest of the MovinkPad features would be fairly forgettable on a regular tablet: it runs on Android 14, features a 5 megapixel front camera, a 4.7 megapixel rear camera, dual microphones, stereo speakers, and support for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.2 It also includes a USB-C port for charging and 7700mAh lithium-ion battery, but Wacom doesn’t mention what battery life you can expect from a single charge.

Under the hood, the MovinkPad 11 is powered by a MediaTek Helio G99 processor, the same mid-ranged chip used in the Lenovo Tab Plus that launched last year. The MovinkPad only comes with 8GB of memory and 128GB of storage, which can’t be expanded. That limitation isn’t ideal for a tablet that users will want to save a lot of image files without relying on cloud storage.

The MovinkPad supports the same 8,192 pressure levels and 60-degree pen tilt angles as Wacom’s main drawing display tablet lineup. It comes with the customizable Wacom Pro Pen 3, which includes a nib holder and customizable side switches, and supports a range of third-party digital pens from brands such as Dr. Grip, Lamy, and Staedtler.

That Android 14 support means that the MovinkPad can support a range of popular digital illustration apps that are available on the Google Play store, including Clip Studio Paint, Ibis Paint, and Krita, and comes with the Wacom Canvas sketching app pre-installed. iPads still have an edge here because Procreate — often ranked as the top creative app on Apple’s App Store — is an iOS exclusive for now, though Procreate developer James Cuda has mused on plans to bring it to other platforms eventually.

The MovinkPad 11 is a far cry from Wacom’s previous attempts to launch an all-in-one drawing tablet: the MobileStudio Pro series came with built-in PC hardware, which made it too heavy to lug around easily and cost up to $3,500, which also made it too expensive for hobbyist illustrators to consider. 

At $449, the MovinkPad undercuts Wacom’s MobileStudio Pro line, but the cheapest A16 chip iPad ($349) is still a more affordable choice, even with the additional requirement to purchase a first-gen Apple Pencil ($99). Still, the Wacom Pro Pen 3 support and other illustration-focused goodies may give Wacom the opportunity to poach customers who were looking at Apple’s more expensive iPad models.