Author: News Room

There is a rather optimistic argument doing the rounds about Sony’s decision to kill physical PlayStation game discs: maybe digital games will finally become cheaper. Former Square Enix business development director Jacob Navok argues that removing manufacturing and distribution costs, combined with greater competition between publishers, could push digital prices down and create a Steam-like environment on the PlayStation Store. Competition between publishers is what drives pricing pressure, not competition between digital stores. This is because publishers set pricing on digital stores.Competition between stores like EGS and Steam improves the take rates for developers, not necessarily the price for… https://t.co/6ZZw8EUJ5v…

I always use my free time to hunt for interesting Mac apps on Reddit, and somehow I keep finding new ones worth trying. Some make parts of macOS a little easier, while others quickly become apps I wonder how I ever lived without. But recently, I came across one that fits into my workday almost perfectly. Whenever I’m working on something that needs my full attention, I put on my work playlist and let it run in the background. Music has basically become part of my focus routine. And that’s exactly why Gramola caught my attention. It’s a simple Mac…

Smart glasses can be genuinely useful, whether you’re taking a hands-free photo, listening to music, or asking an AI assistant about whatever is in front of you. Unfortunately, putting a camera on someone’s face also opens the door to some much less pleasant uses. That’s becoming a problem for Meta. Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in July that the platform was working to remove videos in which people use Meta glasses to film and harass others secretly. However, a new Business Insider investigation suggests the cleanup isn’t going quite as smoothly as Meta might have hoped. The publication found dozens of pickup…

Google has a new foldable ready to hit the shelves, and it’s quite a compelling package with some alarms going off. I spent some time with the phone earlier today, and after collecting my thoughts, I can’t quite figure out whether I should be excited about it or disregard it in favor of rivals like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 pair.  The conundrum is warranted. It’s a $1,899 phone after all, and that’s the base price. But based on my limited time with the phone, it comes out as an overwhelmingly more practical device, especially for buyers based in…

Samsung appears to be preparing a major visual overhaul for One UI, with early leaks suggesting One UI 9.5 could adopt a more glass-like design with shinier edges, transparency, and greater visual depth. The reported changes surfaced shortly after Samsung began rolling out One UI 9 Beta 5 for the Galaxy S26 series. According to Android Central, tipster Fahad Ali shared leaked screenshots of the upcoming interface on X, offering an early look at Samsung’s apparent design direction. Samsung could be giving One UI a glassier makeover The leaked screenshots suggest Samsung is experimenting with a glass-inspired interface across parts…

Apple appears to be preparing a much broader push into smart-home hardware, with several new products in development as the company looks to expand beyond the HomePod mini and Apple TV, according to a 9To5Mac report. The roadmap includes refreshed versions of both existing products, a new smart-home hub with a display, a larger HomePod update, and eventually Apple’s first dedicated smart-home security devices. The information comes from recent reporting summarized by 9to5Mac, which notes that Siri’s long-awaited AI upgrades could remove one of the obstacles that has held back new Home products. Apple is finally giving the smart home…

Google may have accidentally revealed a fitness tracker that it has not announced yet. New Pixel 11 advertisements appearing on YouTube show a small, screen-equipped wearable that does not appear to be the Pixel Watch 5 or the Fitbit Air, raising questions about whether Google is preparing another fitness device. The ads were spotted by Reddit users over the past day and appear to promote the refreshed Pixel lineup. One advertisement shows Pixel 11 phones alongside a Pixel Watch 5, while another features several Google devices in matching green colors. Both ads also include the mystery tracker. Multiple advertisements showing…

Secondhand booksellers have noticed a curious pattern over the past few months. Large orders are coming in for old books that often share no obvious subject, author, or genre, leaving sellers wondering who wants them and why. According to The Guardian, booksellers in the U.K. and Ireland have received bulk orders covering everything from agricultural texts to racing biographies. Some buyers reportedly use opaque aliases, send orders to the same freight warehouses, and pay full price without negotiating bulk discounts. Similar activity has also surfaced in the U.S., Australia, and Europe. There is no proof that AI companies are behind…

Anthropic wants to make AI-generated text easier to identify, and on paper, I have very little reason to complain. The company is experimenting with an invisible watermark that can be baked directly into text generated by Claude. It sounds like a sensible idea. AI-generated text is everywhere, and knowing where something came from could certainly help. Moreover, Anthropic isn’t simply hiding a marker somewhere inside a document. Its approach changes how Claude selects words to create a statistical pattern that can later be detected. But there is one detail that bothers me. Anthropic is testing just how persistent that watermark…

Exoprimal was built using Capcom’s proprietary RE Engine, which is surprising considering the other Capcom games that have used the engine are quite different. The first game to publicly use it was Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, which caused many to dub the engine the Resident Evil engine, which is not what the ‘RE’ stands for. Instead, the acronym is confusingly shorthand for Reach for the Moon. In Japan, the Resident Evil series is called Biohazard, which is why Exoprimal technical director Kazuki Abe is surprised that anyone ever thought the engine was named after the survivor horror series . “It’s…