Tech

Astropad’s new Bookcase is a smartphone accessory designed to make reading on a smartphone feel more like reading on an e-reader. No, it doesn’t give your phone an easy-on-the-eyes screen, longer battery life, or any other features that have made devices like the Kindle popular. Instead, for $50 the Bookcase is really just designed to make a smartphone easier to …

A lawsuit has been filed against Character.AI, its founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, and Google in the wake of a teenager’s death, alleging wrongful death, negligence, deceptive trade practices, and product liability. Filed by the teen’s mother, Megan Garcia, it claims the platform for custom AI chatbots was “unreasonably dangerous” and lacked safety guardrails while being marketed to …

New parental controls and insights are coming soon Dear parent, We’ve been working on a series of important changes that we’ll be making to your child’s account, ____________, next month. About Roblox accounts with parent privileges Next month, we’re changing the way parents manage their child’s experience on Roblox by introducing Roblox accounts with parent privileges. After linking your account …

Three industry groups are suing to prevent the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from enforcing its new “Click to Cancel” rule that requires companies to make it easy to cancel subscriptions, according to Reuters. And yes, it’s exactly who you’d expect. Click to cancel expands the Negative Option Rule to forbid businesses from making customers cancel services using a method that …

Tesla has been testing a robotaxi service in the Bay Area for the past few months, Elon Musk said during the company’s earnings call Wednesday. The company’s employees have been able to summon an autonomously operated Tesla vehicle for trips using the company’s prototype ride-hailing app, Musk said. The vehicles arrive with safety drivers behind the wheel, ready to intervene …

Stellantis says it will put a “demonstration fleet” of Dodge Charger Daytonas on the road by 2026, equipped with solid-state battery technology that’s lighter, more energy-dense, and could eventually make for cheaper EVs. The company calls the demo fleet a “key next step” toward making solid-state EVs that you can actually buy. The cars will be built on its STLA …

Apple plans to release MacBook Airs with M4 chips in early 2025, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports. The company just refreshed the lineup with M3 chips this spring, but the M4 update will “likely” launch between January and March 2025, Gurman says. Both the 13-inch and 15-inch models will apparently get the M4 update, and they’ll have a similar design to …

Microsoft has made Windows Update significantly faster in its latest big update to Windows 11. Version 24H2 started rolling out earlier this month with lots of useful improvements, but now Microsoft is revealing this big update also reduces install time, restart time, and even CPU usage for monthly Windows updates. Microsoft typically distributes monthly cumulative security and non-security updates, which …

An investigation conducted by a data privacy group has revealed a vast tracking network that can follow the movements of a person’s phone, according to reports from 404 Media and Krebs on Security. The people-tracking service, called Locate X, reportedly lets users follow a device using its mobile advertising identifier, a unique number assigned to phones. The New Jersey-based Atlas …

Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 7 is a good Android smartwatch, especially if you’re already embedded in Samsung’s ecosystem, but it’s best suited for casual fitness tracking. If you’re the outdoorsy type or simply want the most full-featured Samsung smartwatch on the market, Samsung’s Galaxy Watch Ultra is the better choice — one that’s currently on sale at Amazon starting at a …