Author: News Room
Meta is trying to fix one of the biggest problems hanging over its smart glasses: the uncomfortable possibility that the person wearing them could be recording you without your knowledge. The company is rolling out a privacy update designed to close a loophole that allowed wearers to keep recording even after covering the glasses’ front-facing capture LED. The change comes as Meta’s AI-powered glasses face growing scrutiny over privacy, harassment and the increasingly blurry line between wearable technology and covert surveillance. Meta closes a loophole that let users keep recording Meta’s smart glasses already use a built-in capture LED that…
Apple TV has emerged as the quiet winner of the streaming wars over the past few years, but it seems the growing slate of its critically-acclaimed films and TV shows is going to cost you more going forward. Apple has just raised the subscription price of its streaming platform. The monthly plan now costs $14.99, up from the previous $12.99 fee. Apple TV now costs three times what it did at launch The annual plan, on the other hand, has climbed from $99 to $199 for users in the US. This is the fourth price hike for Apple TV in…
Meta’s smart glasses have a nickname now, and it’s not a compliment. People are calling them “pervert glasses,” a label earned through months of secret filming, harassment, and creeps using the camera to record strangers without consent. Now Meta appears to have a fix in the works. Buried in a newly granted patent is Meta’s possible answer, and it’s about time. What Meta’s new patent promises The patent describes a “hardware privacy mute circuit,” filed earlier this year and granted just last week. It never names Meta’s glasses directly, but the illustrations look unmistakably like the Ray-Ban partnership currently on…
If you are stuck with the same five prestige dramas everyone’s already talking about, here are three that got criminally overlooked. For this weekend, we have a yakuza thriller, a finance drama, and a televangelist saga that still delivers after four seasons. All three underrated shows are streaming right now on HBO Max, and deserve a spot on your watchlist. If you don’t have the time or the appetite to commit to multiple seasons, I have created a list of the best limited series on Netflix that’s worth checking out. We also have guides to the best new movies to…
Solid-state batteries have long been promised as the holy grail of energy storage. They promise to double energy density compared to traditional options, slash charging times, and eliminate the risk of thermal fires. Despite that, the technology has yet to achieve widespread commercial adoption, and the main culprit is dendrites. These microscopic, needle-like structures form inside solid-state batteries during charging, bore through the solid ceramic electrolyte, and bridge the electrodes, causing a short circuit. Now, researchers from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have discovered a surprisingly simple fix for this persistent problem. According to a paper published in…
We have entered the age of biohacking now. And no, I am not talking about the extreme cases like Bryan Johnson, who is spending millions of dollars on ambitious health and de-aging goals. The average audience for wearables is now asking for more. They are feeding the sensing data collected by smartwatches, bands, and rings to AI agents, and pulling in more insights about their bodies. I created one such dashboard for myself using Claude in less than 10 minutes to make sense of the data collected by my smart ring. But there is only so much you can do…
Meta’s smart glasses have already started facing restrictions in pubs, restaurants, theaters, and courtrooms across the UK. Now, one of New York City’s better-known nightclubs is bringing the same privacy fight to the US. Basement has announced that smart glasses are not allowed inside the venue because of its existing no-photo and no-video policy (via Futurism). Anyone who brings them in, whether they are wearing the glasses or simply carrying them in a bag, will be asked to leave and could even be permanently banned. People generally do not like being filmed by strangers. Being recorded without realizing it is…
Apple takes its sweet time adopting a new trend or technology, but when it does, it delivers one of the best implementations ever. That’s exactly what everyone is expecting from the company’s first foldable. Call it the iPhone Fold or the iPhone Ultra, the Cupertino giant has more riding on this launch than perhaps any product launched in the last few years, and it could break cover later this year. Apple has since confirmed its September 9, 2026 event date, with the tagline “Surprise and shine,” and sent invitations on August 26. The ‘surprise’ in the tagline could be a…
Smartphone cameras have become remarkably good at squeezing detail out of difficult scenes, but there is still one familiar enemy: darkness. When the light disappears, even expensive phones can produce grainy images, muddy shadows and smeared fine details. A new AI-based image enhancement technique could offer a different way forward. Researchers from Wuhan University in China have developed LL-Refiner, a two-stage machine-learning system designed to improve ultra-high-definition low-light images without sacrificing the small details that make photographs look natural. The work was reported by Tech Xplore and published in the IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica on July 3, 2026. Instead…
There’s a specific kind of dread that comes with posting something small and watching it explode to a million strangers who missed all the context. Thankfully, Bluesky just built an escape hatch to avoid this horror. The platform now lets you opt out of its algorithmic Discover feed, meaning your posts stop getting pushed to people who don’t already follow you. How Bluesky’s algorithmic opt-out feature works Even Bluesky’s announcement states not everyone wants to go viral; sometimes you’re just posting for your people. To be clear, this option doesn’t make your account private. Anyone can still visit your profile…