As part of Samsung’s Galaxy S25 launch, Google announced the latest Android, Circle to Search, and Gemini app features.
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As the go-to digital keyboard for Android, Gboard often sees a big change. The latest such update is more expressive hand gesture emoji on Gboard.
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We’re expecting the Galaxy S25, S25 Plus and S25 Ultra, and new AI features.
Samsung is announcing its new Galaxy S25 phones. We’ll have all of the updates as they come in. You can also tune in to watch the event in the video below once everything gets started at 1PM ET / 10AM PT.
Expect Samsung to talk about AI. It’s the thing tech companies love to talk about as much as possible. Probably because they’re all spending a lot of money on it. Google, Apple, Microsoft, and others have used similar events to chat about how they’re implementing AI into their software, for example.
Whatever comes up, we’ll have it all here.
Korg is a name that typically brings to mind synths, keyboards and production tools, but ahead of NAMM 2025, the company announced new turntables. These aren't just your typical shelf-bound, plugged-into-speakers vinyl spinners though. Under the Handytraxx brand, Korg will soon offer portable turntables for listening, archiving and DJing, and some are equipped with the company's Nutube vacuum tubes.
The series of turntables gets its name from the original Handy Trax from Vestax. Korg says former Vestax president and co-developer of that OG model, Toshihide Nakama, was working with the company on "an all-new kind of record player." Nakama passed away in 2023 during the development of the Handytraxx Play, but Korg continued to merge its digital processing and audio tech with "the spirit" of the Handy Trax.
The Handytraxx Play ($400) is the DJ-focused member of the group and appears to be ready for the masses after a cameo at NAMM last year. Designed for scratching, the turntable is equipped with a Nakama-designed fader as well as three types of filters, delay, playback control and a built-in audio looper. The tonearm was made to minimize needle skipping and the belt-driven motor has digital rotation correction to keep things in check. The Play supports both ceramic and MM cartridges (some soldering required to swap them) and Korg allows you to flip the control panel for right- or left-handed configurations.
If your vinyl habit is more listening than scratching, the Handytraxx Tube ($800) "bridges the gap between modern convenience and analogue fascination," according to Korg. This model gets its name from the tiny Nutube vacuum tube that lends its power to the phono amplifier and its warmth to the overall sound. A die-cast aluminum platter, balanced tone arm and MM cartridge serve as the main components. Bass and treble controls are right on the deck and there's a dedicated knob for fine-tuning the Nutube's output. And if you want to convert your records to digital files, the Tube connects to a computer via USB for that purpose.
There's also a special edition of the Handytraxx Tube that Korg calls the Handytraxx Tube J ($1,200). This model looks very similar to the Tube, but it's equipped with a JICO Clipper MM Cartridge. "The cartridge’s unique design balances the center of gravity between the left and right channels, while its Tapered-S Cantilever ensures accurate vibration reproduction, creating a truly immersive Hi-Fi soundstage," Korg explains. In other words, this is an option for audiophiles in of the group.
Lastly, the Handytraxx 1bit ($1,00) is what Korg calls the flagship model in the new series. The company explains that this unit blends high-quality playback with 5.6 MHz/1-bit recording for archivists. The 1bit works with Korg's AudioGate 4 high-res audio conversion software after you connect the turntable to your computer via USB. That complete setup supports both recording and playback in 5.6 MHz and 2.8 MHz DSD in addition to PCM formats up to 192 kHz/24-bit. The Handytraxx 1bit has a JICO J44A 7 MM cartridge and, like the Handytraxx Tube, there's a built-in Nutube. As is the case on that more affordable model, there are bass, treble and tube controls right up top on the 1bit version.
Like I mentioned, the entire Handytraxx series is portable thanks to built-in 2.5-watt speakers. You can power them with included AC adapters or employ six AA batteries for a true on-the-go kit. There are appropriate inputs and outputs on each model if you want a stationary setup, including an on/off switch for the speakers.
The Handytraxx Play, Tube and 1bit are scheduled to arrive in May with the Tube J following in June. All four are currently available for preorder from B&H Photo.
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Billionaire Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are fighting on X about Stargate, the enormous infrastructure project to build data centers for OpenAI across the U.S. Stargate, announced Tuesday during a press conference at the White House, would funnel as much as $500 billion from investors including SoftBank and Middle East AI fund MGX […]
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Managing internal knowledge has always been a headache for enterprises. Siloed data, outdated tools, and endless security concerns make it harder for teams to get the answers they need when they need them. That’s where Doti AI comes in, an […]
The post Israeli AI startup Doti AI raises $7M to empower enterprises to access internal knowledge and unlock their data silos first appeared on Tech Startups.
The NFL told the New England Patriots to shut down the team’s Bluesky account. Patriots VP of content Fred Kirsch said the team was told that Bluesky is “not an approved social media platform for the NFL yet,” addressing a fan question on a January 16th episode of the Patriots Unfiltered podcast, as spotted by Awful Announcing.
Kirsch said the team “briefly” had a Bluesky account before the league asked it to take the account down. The NFL told Front Office Sports in November it was aware of Bluesky but had no presence there, Awful Announcing notes. The league did not immediately respond to our request for comment.
Football teams are allowed to post on other platforms, including X, which the NFL has a content partnership with that includes the “NFL Portal” that X CEO Linda Yaccarino revealed in October. The league also has a content deal with Reddit and a heavy presence on Threads and other Meta-owned platforms.
Bluesky has been growing steadily, with some occasional recent spikes in signups. The platform is closing in on 29 million users as of this writing, nearly doubling where it was two months ago. Whether that’s enough for the NFL is an open question, but Front Office also reported Bluesky was working to get leagues on board with the platform. The Patriots are “ready to go” whenever it does, Kirsch said on Patriots Unfiltered.
This month, drama unfolded across mainstream social media platforms like TikTok, which briefly went dark in the U.S. before a rapid return. Instagram recently faced backlash after ending its third-party fact-checking program. At the same time, startups like Favorited are attracting attention from investors, creators, and viewers. On Wednesday, the livestream app announced its $1.3 […]
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Mike Mignola, the creator of Hellboy, has been cooking up a whole new fantasy universe, and the first book set in it is out now. Bowling with Corpses and Other Strange Tales From Lands Unknown, is an anthology that reads like a collection of myths and folklore. The stories are macabre with a touch of whimsy (as in, occasional animal narrators), ranging from a boy’s bizarre adventure after he becomes the unexpected wielder of a powerful dead hand, to the creation of the world and gods in the eponymous Lands Unknown.
Mignola said when the project was announced last year that “it all started with an Italian folktale about a boy who goes bowling with corpses,” which he wanted to adapt, but also to “play fast and loose” in doing so. “So I created a whole new world,” he said. Bowling with Corpses hits comic stores today, and you can read a snippet from “Una and the Devil” (one of my favorite stories in the book) below.
Unsurprisingly, Mignola’s style lends itself well to the concept of creepy folk tales, and there are some really stunning visuals that bring it all to life: a woman rising from a blood-filled casket; a man following a floating dagger through a forest bathed in red; a newly transformed creature of the night spreading her wings for the first time. The book contains eight stories across its 112 pages (and a promise for more to come!), so there’s plenty of good stuff to sink your teeth into.
Mignola collaborated once again with Ben Stenbeck (Our Bones Dust) to create the Lands Unknown universe, and the book is the first to be published under Mignola’s new imprint, Curious Objects, from Dark Horse Comics. Bowling with Corpses and Other Strange Tales From Lands Unknown was written and illustrated by Mignola, colored by Dave Stewart and lettered by Clem Robins.
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Hundreds of subreddits are considering banning all links to X.com in response to Elon Musk’s salute at a Donald Trump inauguration rally that was celebrated by Nazis as being a Nazi salute. The moderators of dozens of those subreddits have said that they have decided they will ban all links to X.
Here is a video scroll of just some of the hundreds of subreddits that have considered the move over the last 24 hours, with many moderators putting the idea up for a vote among a subreddit’s subscribers:
The bans have run the political gamut, with the subreddits for many cities and states (such as r/NewJersey, r/londonOntario, and sports teams banning all Twitter links. r/christianity banned Twitter links with a gif in which Musk’s salute was put side-by-side with a neo-Nazi’s.
Some subreddits are allowing screenshots from Twitter but not direct linking. Big sports subreddits such as r/NFL, r/hockey, r/baseball, and r/nba are all considering a ban, with moderators saying they will announce decisions shortly. A poll in r/baseball shows that users are overwhelmingly in favor of having links banned in the subreddit.
On r/formula1, moderators decided to ban links from Twitter except in cases where the information can not be found elsewhere, and specifically from Formula 1 drivers and some others who haven’t yet moved to other platforms. “For a trial period we will ban all content from Twitter with the only exception of screenshots of relevant posts by teams, drivers & F1 that are not available on any other platform. Even in case of major breaking news, we ask you to post links to the press releases or a screenshot of the post from Instagram, with a link in the comments.” The ban is a trial, with the hope that it will encourage Formula 1 journalists and creators to move to other platforms, it says.
Moderators of r/ComicBookMovies posted “With recent events, we (mods) have decided we will no longer use our sub to promote x in any way, shape or form. Following in the footsteps of other subs, we will ban any links or post coming from x, including in the comment sections. While many of our post come from x, moving forward all post will need to come from another source, such as bluesky, approved websites, your own creation, etc.”
The moderators of r/MadeMeSmile, which has more than 10 million subscribers, posted “Would it make you smile if we banned all links to Twitter?” The moderators of r/DnD are similarly considering the move. Posts about banning or potentially banning Twitter links are some of the most popular posts on all of Reddit over the last day.
Some of the subreddits are also banning material from Meta platforms after Mark Zuckerberg explicitly decided to allow hate to proliferate across his apps, and TikTok and Rednote because of their companies being based in China. “Hello, everyone! Following recent events in social media, we are updating our content policy,” a message on r/antiwork reads. It then says that the following sites may no longer be linked to, or have screenshots from them uploaded: “X, including content from its predecessor Twitter, because Elon Musk promotes white supremacist ideology and gave a Nazi salute during Donald Trump's inauguration,” “Any platform owned by Meta, such as Facebook and Instagram, because Mark Zuckerberg openly encourages bigotry with Meta's new content policy,” and “Platforms affiliated with the CCP, such as TikTok and Rednote, because China is a hostile foreign government and these platforms constitute information warfare.”
The concerted mass action to ban Twitter links is notable because it highlights the difference between moderation on a platform like Reddit and the moderation on platforms like X, Facebook, and Instagram. Reddit’s distributed, volunteer moderation system in which users become the moderators of specific subreddits means they are also in charge of the rules and norms of that subreddit. This means that moderators are, to some extent, beholden to the wishes of subscribers of a subreddit. They are also able to create rules that fit the needs and wants of a specific community. Reddit’s system has many problems: moderators are constantly fighting with Reddit administrators, who are paid Reddit employees; moderators are not paid for their labor; moderators often say they feel burnt out. But the system also fosters a more humane version of the internet where users have more control and the needs of a specific community can be more easily met.
