Technology

I’m typically reluctant to recommend budget-friendly laptops, particularly ones that run Windows, because they suck, more often than not. That’s beginning to change, thanks in part to last year’s introduction of the Snapdragon X-series processors that offer solid performance and good x86 and x64 app compatibility. If you’re in need of a compact 14-inch laptop with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, the Asus Vivobook 14 in the “quiet blue” color scheme packed with the eight-core Snapdragon X CPU is $379.99 for the rest of the day at Best Buy (originally $749.99).The Snapdragon X sits below the X Plus and X Elite found in pricier laptops in terms of performance. So, it’s probably not the ideal pick if you run system-intensive apps, but it should be fine for web browsing and casual content creat...

On Wednesday, Spotify announced a few new lyrics features aiming to make it easier to understand and access song lyrics, including translations, previews, and offline lyrics.Lyric translations were originally introduced in 2022, but have only been available in specific markets so far. Now, they’re rolling out worldwide to both free and premium Spotify users, who will soon start seeing a translation icon in the lyrics section on the app. When you tap this, “translations will appear based on your device’s language,” if a translation is available.Spotify is also rolling out lyric previews worldwide for free and premium users. This feature adds a condensed lyrics box between the song title and the album art, so you can see a song’s lyrics without switching to the full-screen lyrics view.Las...

It only took a brief drive in a Zeekr 7X to convince me: Chinese cars are now competitive and could be sold in the US tomorrow. The compact battery-electric crossover, a bestseller in Europe, is aimed directly at the Tesla Model Y with its five seats, two rows, impressive road grip, energetic performance, and smooth ride. Its price in China is around $32,000 — about $7,000 cheaper than Elon Musk’s crossover.If you’ve followed automotive news recently, you might come away thinking Chinese cars are destined for the US, with Geely among the best positioned to break through first. That’s certainly a possibility — especially after President Donald Trump seemingly threw open the doors to Chinese automakers in a recent speech. The quid pro quo: They must be built in the US. Geely recently conf...

Amazon has announced that its generative AI-powered digital assistant Alexa Plus is now available to all Prime members in the US via any Alexa-enabled device, Alexa.com, and the Alexa mobile app. If you don’t have Prime, you can access the assistant on a new free tier on the web and app, or pay $20 a month for unlimited access to Alexa Plus, without Prime.Alexa Plus initially launched in March 2025 in an Early Access program and, over the last year, has slowly expanded to tens of millions of users, Daniel Rausch, vice president of Alexa and Echo, told The Verge in an interview.Now, the smarter, more conversational assistant is moving out of Early Access and is officially available to anyone in the US. Early Access recently launched in Canada and Mexico, and according to Rausch, a closed...

Walk the rows of the farmers market in a small, nondescript Texas town about an hour away from Austin, and you might stumble across something unexpected: In between booths selling fresh, local pickles and pies, there’s a table piled high with generic-looking streaming boxes, promising free access to NFL games, UFC fights, and any cable TV network you can think of.It’s called the SuperBox, and it’s being demoed by Jason, who also has homemade banana bread, okra, and canned goods for sale. “People are sick and tired of giving Dish Network $200 a month for trash service,” Jason says. His pitch to rural would-be cord-cutters: Buy a SuperBox for $300 to $400 instead, and you’ll never have to shell out money for cable or streaming subscriptions again.I met Jason through one of the many Facebo...

Anthropic has announced that it won’t be bringing ads to its AI chatbot Claude, in sharp contrast to confirmed plans from OpenAI to allow advertising in ChatGPT. To hammer the point home further, the company is releasing a Super Bowl commercial that makes fun of unnamed rivals adding adverts to their AI.“We want Claude to act unambiguously in our users’ interests,” the company says in a new blog post. “So we’ve made a choice: Claude will remain ad-free. Our users won’t see ‘sponsored’ links adjacent to their conversations with Claude; nor will Claude’s responses be influenced by advertisers or include third-party product placements our users did not ask for.”The announcement goes on to highlight exactly why including ads “would be incompatible with what we want Claude to be.” It suggest...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is pressing Google for more information about its plans to build a checkout feature into its Gemini AI chatbot. In a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Warren expresses concerns that the integration could allow Google and retailers “to exploit sensitive user data” or “manipulate consumers into spending more and paying higher prices.”Last month, Google announced that it will soon allow users to buy products directly within Gemini through the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a standard it developed in partnership with Shopify, Target, Walmart, Wayfair, and Etsy. The UCP is supposed to make it easier for AI agents to communicate with retailers, but Warren wants to know just how much user information — and what kinds — Google plans on providing to retailers t...

Début janvier, j’ai participé à un colloque de mathématiques à Washington. Ces Joint Mathematics Meetings se présentent comme le plus grand rassemblement de mathématiciens au monde. Environ 6 000 participants, des centaines de conférences, une multitude de salles fonctionnant en parallèle. Une véritable fourmilière, aux allures parfois de foire commerciale. Presque tous les participants travaillaient aux Etats-Unis. Je m’attendais à ce que de nombreuses interventions, ou au moins des discussions informelles, abordent une question qui me semblait inévitable : l’influence de la politique actuelle des Etats-Unis sur la science. Les coupes budgétaires engagées dans plusieurs domaines, la remise en cause de certains programmes de recherche et la restriction de thèmes ju...

Emmanuel Macron devant le palais de l’Elysée, le 30 janvier 2026. LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP Emmanuel Macron a annoncé, mercredi 4 février, que le budget d’un vaste plan contre le cancer, qui court de 2021 à 2030 en couvrant un champ allant de la prévention à l’amélioration des soins, serait maintenu à un niveau semblable à celui de ces dernières années. Ce second volet disposera jusqu’en 2030 de « plus de 1,7 milliard d’euros investis sur cinq ans », soit un budget équivalent à la période 2021-2025, a annoncé le chef de l’Etat dans une vidéo diffusée au début d’une journée organisée par l’Institut national du cancer (INCa), chargé de coordonner ce plan. Celui-ci, qualifié de « stratégie décennale », est l’héritie...

Cellules de levure. Image au microscope à balayage électronique, colorée, de cellules de levure de bière ou de boulangerie (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), le 1ᵉʳ octobre 2019. STEVE GSCHMEISSNER/SCIENCE PHOTO VIA AFP Vin, bière, pain, produits laitiers… Ces alcools et denrées alimentaires ont pour point commun d’être fabriqués grâce à l’action de levures et notamment de différentes souches de Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Elles sont sélectionnées et inconsciemment « domestiquées » par l’humain, comme le révèle une équipe française en collaboration avec des chercheurs canadiens dans une étude parue dans la revue PNAS, le 8 janvier. S. cerevisiae a été identifiée et étudiée au XIXe siècle, d’abord par le Français Louis Pasteur. Il faut e...