Technology

At IFA today, Acer announced it’s expanding its Swift AI laptop line with models featuring Intel’s new Lunar Lake chips, Qualcomm’s just-announced eight-core Snapdragon X Plus and AMD’s Ryzen AI 300. And, it claims, each of them can theoretically last over 24 hours playing back video, or over 17 hours in productivity tests. If you buy them with their IPS panels and 65 watt-hour batteries, Acer claims the new $1,199 Swift 14 AI and $999 Swift 14 Go AI can last:Intel: 23 hours of web browsing, 29 hours of video playbackAMD: 19 hours of web browsing, 27 hours of video playbackQualcomm: 19.5 hours of web browsing, 28 hours of video playbackThose sorts of quotes aren’t unusual in late 2024! Dell just boasted its XPS 13 can get 26 to 27 hours of Netflix streaming with a new Intel or Qualcomm ...

Have you ever felt the frustration of losing internet access while camping, hiking or living in a remote area? Whether you’re trying to connect with family, access important information or simply enjoy your favorite streaming service, losing internet access can be a real bummer. For many, this is a daily struggle. However, new technology from a company called Sceye could be the answer to these connectivity woes, offering a solution to the digital divide that leaves so many people in the dark.GET SECURITY ALERTS, EXPERT TIPS - SIGN UP FOR KURT’S NEWSLETTER - THE CYBERGUY REPORT HERE Sceye HAPS (Sceye) (Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson)Enter the Sceye HAPS: A blimp-like aircraft with a missionThe Sceye HAPS is not your average aircraft. This 213-foot-long uncrewed helium-filled behemoth is desi...

Instagram is adding the ability to leave comments on Instagram Stories, the ephemeral posts that many people use even more than traditional posts these days.Previously, replying to an Instagram Story sent a private message visible only to the person who posted the content. The addition of comments adds a more public way to respond to Stories. The ability to comment in the first place is more limited, though: only people who follow the poster and who the poster follows back will be able to leave a comment. Instagram explains how most of it works in this video. Just like Stories, the comments are temporary and will last for up to 24 hours; Instagram spokesperson Emily Norfolk says users will have the option to turn comments on or off for any Story they share. It’s not clear whether commen...

Last month, it was discovered that an inactive piece of software that ships on all Google Pixel smartphones presented a potential security vulnerability for device owners. The company quickly said it would remove “Showcase.apk,” which was created years ago “for Verizon in-store demo devices and is no longer being used.” But on the off chance it were ever exploited, cybersecurity firm iVerify found that the software could make phones “accessible to hackers and ripe for man-in-the-middle attacks, code injection, and spyware.” The flare-up was enough for Palantir to implement a companywide ban on Android devices.At the time, Google told us that it had “seen no evidence of any active exploitation,” and with today’s release of the monthly Pixel software update, it’s getting rid of Showcase.a...

People are losing a lot more money to Bitcoin ATM scams. In a report released on Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission said it found the amount of money lost to Bitcoin ATM scams increased nearly 10 times from 2020 to 2023 — going from $12 million to a whopping $114 million. Consumers have already lost $65 million to the ruse in the first half of 2024 alone.Bitcoin ATMs are the physical machines that you can use to purchase or sell cryptocurrency at places like gas stations and grocery stores. To carry out their scheme, scammers contact a victim by phone, text, or through online pop-ups. They’ll then impersonate a bank or government official while attempting to convince their victim that their bank account has been compromised and that they need to take action.Scammers will then instruc...

The highest compliment I can pay the Pixel 9 Pro F — oh forget it, let’s just call it the Pixel Fold — is that I forgot I was using a folding phone while I was using it. Sounds like a weird compliment, right? Isn’t the whole point of the thing that it opens up so you can use the big inner screen? Well, kind of. The whole promise of the foldable phone is that it’s basically a small tablet when you need more screen real estate and a regular phone when you fold it back up. Every foldable I’ve used delivered on the first part of that promise. Big screen? We did it, Joe. It’s the small-screen experience that hasn’t been great. I was using the phone’s outer screen before bed, drowsily answering the minimum amount of Duolingo questions required to keep my streak intact, and it dawned on me: it...

Bernard Andrieu est philosophe du corps et du sport, professeur en sciences et techniques des activités physiques et sportives à l’université Paris Cité et directeur de l’Institut des sciences du sport-santé de Paris. Il a publié, en juin, avec les chercheurs en sociologie de la performance sportive Hélène Joncheray (Institut national du sport, de l’expertise et de la performance, Insep) et Rémi Richard (université de Montpellier et Insep), Philosophie du sport : Olympisme et paralympisme (éditions Vrin, 2024, 440 pages, 15 euros), une anthologie qui montre notamment la nécessité de prendre en compte l’existence d’autres corps que les corps athlétiques et socialement normés. Avant les Jeux paralympiques, les athlètes handisports ont parfois été qualifiés de « supe...

The Pixel 9 is the kind of device you get after a few generations of incremental progress. One minor update after another doesn’t look like much year-over-year. A faster fingerprint sensor? Uniform bezels? Not the stuff of headlines. But eventually, the little stuff adds up to something significant. That’s the feeling I get holding the Pixel 9, and I like it a lot.The Pixel 9 is the only non-Pro phone in the 9 series at this point, which, as best I can tell, means it has 12GB of RAM instead of 16GB and doesn’t have a telephoto lens. It’s smaller than the aptly named Pixel 9 Pro XL, the same size and shape as the regular Pixel 9 Pro, and it doesn’t fold in half like the other 9 Pro does.But mainly, the Pixel 9 just works. The screen is bright and the battery goes all day. The fingerprint...

Apple’s next Mac Mini won’t have USB-A ports, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who writes in today’s Power On newsletter that the new desktops will start to hit Apple’s warehouses in September. The higher-end variant with an Apple M4 Pro chip will ship in October, he writes.The version with an M4 Pro will still cram a lot of ports, including five USB-C ports (two in the front and three in the back), an ethernet port, an HDMI port, and a headphone jack, according to Gurman’s sources. And the new Mac Mini will apparently have an internal power supply. That’s not too shabby for a computer that’s expected to be about the size of an Apple TV.Is it time to say goodbye to USB-A? Maybe. Probably. But no matter how you feel about that, it’s absolutely time something new happened with the Ma...

A la veille des Jeux olympiques, nous clôturions la première saison des énigmes mathématiques sur le problème ouvert de la quadrature du cube. Il s’agissait de découper un cube creux en plusieurs pièces de façon à pouvoir reconstituer un carré. Je proposais en particulier de chercher à réaliser ce découpage avec le moins de pièces possibles. Vous avez été vingt-deux à participer et vous m’avez proposé un total de trente-quatre découpages différents. Deux d’entre vous ont découvert des découpages à quatre pièces ! Celui de la figure A a été découvert par Jérôme Petitjean et celui présenté sur la figure B par Jérôme Roche. Ces deux figures partent du même patron de cube avant de le découper en quatre pièces. En lisant toutes vos solutions, il m’est tou...