Author: News Room

If a blackout has ever cost you a fridge full of groceries, Jackery has a fix for that now. The company is introducing FridgeGuard alongside three new HomePower Series batteries, giving you power backup options for different appliances. FridgeGuard brings a sleek new look to fridge backup power Jackery says FridgeGuard is the world’s slimmest refrigerator backup battery. It measures just 2.6 inches thick and weighs 23 pounds, allowing it to sit beside a refrigerator, lie flat, or be mounted on a wall. Inside, a 1024Wh battery delivers up to 15 hours of runtime, stretching to 30 hours with an…

In 2001, Halo: Combat Evolved hit store shelves and completely revolutionized the console first-person shooting market. In the latest issue of Game Informer, I traced the origins of the Halo franchise with early members of Bungie, the original studio behind the Halo franchise. As part of that conversation, Master Chief voice actor Steve Downes repeated a claim he made on his personal YouTube channel: Bungie and Microsoft originally planned to recast Master Chief and Cortana with Hollywood talent to broaden the mainstream appeal. While that didn’t end up coming to pass – Downes and Jen Taylor still depict Chief and…

If you’ve wanted to turn presentations into videos without recording yourself, Google has some good news. Starting today, anyone with a personal Google account in the US can use AI avatars in Vids for free, with the rollout expanding to more regions later this summer. Free users get 10 monthly video generations that can be split between avatar creations and Veo-powered clips. Your presentations just got an AI presenter, for free You can pick a default avatar from Google’s curated gallery, or build your own custom one using Nano Banana 2. Either way, scripts and voiceovers now support 24 languages,…

The big developing news this week is Xbox’s reported plans to cut several studios from its game division, with Compulsion Games (South of Midnight), Double Fine (Psychonauts), and Ninja Theory (Hellblade) specifically cited as being at risk of closure. Ninja Theory was especially surprising given it had revealed a third Hellblade title called Senua during the Xbox Games Showcase less than two weeks ago. However, a new report alleges that this had always been the plan.Game File, a newsletter written by veteran reporter Stephen Totilo, reports that Xbox had already planned to either sunset or split with Ninja Theory before…

After six years of waiting, Google has finally released a new smart speaker. The $99 Google Home Speaker is available for pre-order starting today and hits shelves on June 25, 2026. At the core of the speaker is Google’s conversational AI assistant: Gemini. With Gemini, you can now hold natural, multi-step conversations with the speaker rather than issuing individual commands. It understands natural phrasing and logic, so you can speak more naturally without phrasing everything like a voice command. What does the Google Home Speaker actually sound like? Beyond the Gemini AI layer, the smart speaker produces 360-degree output from…

As the entire gaming world waits with bated breath for the release of Grand Theft Auto VI, Rockstar Games has announced a surprise treat for those still playing the last-gen versions of the previous entry, Grand Theft Auto V. Starting tomorrow, June 18, owners of any PlayStation 4 version of Grand Theft Auto V or the digital Xbox One version will be able to upgrade to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions for free. The news was announced via a Rockstar Newswire blog, and it coincides with an upcoming update for GTA Online called The Kortz Center Heist, a…

While electric performance cars have gotten quite fast, especially when it comes to driving in a straight line, they still struggle to replicate the engaging feel of a regular sports car. Missing are the gear changes, the rev build, and the physical feedback that make a sports car feel alive. Porsche thinks it can fix this with software, and the 2027 Taycan update is its most serious attempt yet. The car comes with something called E-Shift, a system that adds eight virtual gears operated using the paddle shifters behind the steering wheel. How does Taycan’s E-Shift system work? Each virtual…

If you have ever felt like your TikTok feed is mostly fake content, you are not imagining it. A new report from Kapwing found that 59% of videos served to a brand-new TikTok account are AI slop. That is roughly three times the rate Kapwing found when it ran the same test on YouTube. How bad is TikTok’s AI slop problem compared to YouTube? Kapwing built a fresh account on both platforms and manually checked the first 500 videos served to each one. On TikTok, 294 of those videos were AI-generated. On YouTube, only 104 of the first 500 Shorts…

SKG PS700 Neck Massager MSRP $199.99 “Deep relief for desk workers who’ve already tried everything else.” Pros Biomimetic kneading reaches deep neck muscles that vibration can’t Near-infrared heat for deeper-feeling warmth Quiet enough to use at a desk or on a call 120-minute battery life with full app control Light enough to toss in any bag Cons Only one mechanical intensity setting Built-in audio can be distracting This post is brought to you in paid partnership with SKG We’ve reviewed enough neck massagers to know that most of them are solving the wrong problem. They vibrate, apply surface heat, or…

Xreal Aura is now one step closer to landing on your face. The company has opened reservations for Xreal Aura, its Android XR-powered smart glasses built with Google. The device was previously known as Project Aura, and it is shaping up to be one of the most important early tests for Android XR beyond full headset hardware. Xreal is marketing Aura as a portable spatial computing device in a glasses-style form factor. So it’s more than just a simple pair of glasses that records or keeps track of your notifications. Aura combines lightweight glasses with a dedicated compute puck, letting…