Author: News Room
The AI race usually revolves around familiar names like OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic. But when it comes to models developers can actually download and build upon, another company has raced to the front — and by quite some distance. Alibaba says its Qwen family of open-weight AI models has crossed 3 billion downloads globally over the past six months. That puts Qwen ahead of some of the biggest names in AI, including models from Meta and Google. The difference is especially striking in Hugging Face data for 2026. Google’s open models have recorded around 418 million downloads, while Meta…
Apple has improved its dictation feature a lot on the Mac, but it’s still nowhere near as good as some of the AI-powered dictation apps that have taken the App Store by storm. My only issue with these apps is that most of the good ones are subscription-based, and I don’t want to add yet another subscription to my already long list. That’s why I was happily surprised when I discovered TypeWhisper. It uses local AI models to transcribe text and is one of the best dictation apps I have tried. It has become my go-to app for jabbering and…
If you have ever installed a new app on a Mac, you already know the slightly tedious dance that comes with it. You download a DMG file, double-click it, wait for the virtual disk to mount, drag the app icon into your Applications folder, and delete the leftover file. This installation method has barely changed since it debuted alongside Mac OS X back in 2001, and developer Jeff Schumann finally got fed up enough to fix it himself. How EasyDMG simplifies the process of installing apps on Mac Schumann built EasyDMG, a free, open source utility with a fittingly self…
Jared Cooney Horvath has spent over 15 years studying how people learn, and he says the picture for today’s kids isn’t good. The neuroscientist and former teacher argues that classroom technology is quietly eroding how children think and retain knowledge, according to a report from The Guardian. Horvath’s new book, The Digital Delusion, lays out the case that generational progress in health and education has stalled since around 2000, right around the time kids started to get access to screens. Concerns about early exposure run even deeper, with some researchers now warning that screen habits formed before age two carry…
Adiaro Balance Chain Bracelet MSRP $79.00 “A stylish take on journaling” Pros Polished design and build No subscription hassles Plenty of customization Science backs the approach Journals are synced to cloud drive Cons A lot of accidental triggers Character limit on journal entries No real health tracking Priced similar to fitness bands Quick summary? Do you believe in the power of positive journaling, but for some reason, you can’t take out the time or the effort to put pen to paper? If the answer is yes, and the above question describes your predicament, Adiaro may have a neat solution for…
Intel may be preparing a more affordable alternative to its powerful Arc G3 Extreme handheld processor. According to leaker Jaykihn, the company is working on a Panther Lake-based chip with eight CPU cores and four Xe3 GPU cores, potentially giving handheld manufacturers a way to build cheaper devices without abandoning Intel’s latest architecture. A smaller Panther Lake could mean cheaper handhelds The rumored configuration isn’t exactly mysterious. Intel already has Panther Lake chips with eight CPU cores and four Xe3 GPU cores, built around four performance cores and four low-power efficiency cores. What makes this interesting is the suggestion that…
We’ve already covered how ChatGPT’s Computer History feature lets the Mac app remember what users have been doing across apps and websites, using interaction events such as clicks, typing, and app switching rather than screenshots or recordings. However, a rather uncomfortable detail in OpenAI’s official documentation is that the files containing that history aren’t encrypted. Your Mac history is stored as plain text OpenAI says Computer History temporarily stores interaction events on the Mac and deletes those event files after 48 hours. It then creates local memories as plain-text Markdown files. More importantly, OpenAI explicitly warns that these files aren’t…
The PS6 has been surrounded by rumors pointing toward 2027, but Sony itself still isn’t ready to put a date on the calendar. Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki has confirmed that the company still hasn’t fixed a launch date for the PlayStation 6, according to the Wall Street Journal. That’s particularly interesting because analysts had increasingly expected the next PlayStation to arrive in 2027. Those expectations are now becoming less certain as AI demand drives shortages of key components and pushes up memory costs across the wider gaming and entertainment industry. Sony doesn’t live and die by consoles anymore The obvious…
During the recent Pixel 11 announcement, Google showcased its new HiLight feature. We had our initial skepticism about it, but what caught my eye more was the temperature sensor being replaced. This was a feature barely anyone remembers (or uses), though it was something unique to the Pixels at the time. The hardware eventually became capable of measuring body temperature, and I can appreciate the engineering behind squeezing something like this into a smartphone’s body. Even then, I rarely had a reason to reach for it in day-to-day use. While I wasn’t immediately drawn to the concept behind its replacement,…
That innocent holiday snap might be doing more than showing everyone how good the weather is. A new scam highlighted by The Guardian shows how criminals can use AI to analyse photos posted on Instagram and Facebook, work out where they were taken, and then use that information to make phishing messages look frighteningly legitimate. The trick is surprisingly simple. Imagine posting a few family photos from Porto without mentioning the city anywhere. A few days later, a text arrives claiming that your bank detected unusual card activity while you were travelling in Porto and asking you to verify your…