2025-06-23 21:00:00
Google announced a handful of new Gemini AI features for Chromebook Plus laptops, including a sleek, new 14-inch flagship device from Lenovo that I got to handle recently.
The new AI functions include select to search, which allows you to long press the launcher icon or take a screenshot and do a Google search based on on-screen images or text. (It’s like circle to search on phones, but for Chromebooks.) Text captured this way can be imported into a calendar or Google Workspace apps like a spreadsheet or document. On-screen text that’s a bit technical or jargon-y can also be simplified. And now, the Quick Insert key — the “Gemini button” that replaces the Caps Lock key on Chromebooks — gets a shortcut to AI image generation.
There are two more new Gemini features: a smart grouping tool that automatically organizes your current tabs and documents based on what you’re working on, and some image editing built into the Gallery app for automated tasks like background removal and making stickers. These new functions use on-device AI and are exclusive to Lenovo’s new Chromebook Plus 14 laptop, which launches today alongside Google’s new tools.
The Lenovo Chromebook Plus (14-inch, 10th-gen) starts at $649 and uses a MediaTek Kompanio Ultra chip capable of 50 TOPS. It’s an eight-core Arm-based processor with Wi-Fi 7 and support for up to two external 4K monitors. Lenovo’s new flagship Chromebook also has a 14-inch OLED display capable of 1920 x 1200 resolution and 400 nits of brightness, with the option for a touchscreen version starting at $749. Its other key specs include up to 256GB of storage, up to 16GB of RAM, a fingerprint sensor, Bluetooth 5.4 support, and a four-speaker Dolby Atmos audio setup. For ports, it has just two 5Gbps USB-C, one 5Gbps USB-A, and a 3.5mm combo audio jack.
I got to briefly hold and see the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 at a recent Google preview event, and it was certainly a svelte and sleek machine. It weighs just 2.58 pounds, making it easy to lift up from a corner with just one hand. And, as usual for OLEDs, its screen had a deep and colorful contrast that was pleasant to look at. In addition to this being the first Arm-based model for Google’s Chromebook Plus range of laptops, the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14’s 60Wh cell is claimed to have the best battery life among its peers.
Buying the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 or any Chromebook Plus device in 2025 gets you free access to Google’s AI Pro Plan for one year, which includes Gemini 2.5 Pro, the Veo 3 AI video generator, and 2TB of cloud storage.
2025-06-23 20:30:00
In the online world of fanfiction writers, who pen stories inspired by their favorite movies, books, and games, and share them for free, there are unspoken codes of conduct. Among the most important: never charge money for your fanfic, and never steal other people's work.
It makes sense then that fanfic writers were among the first creators to raise the alarm about their work being fed into learning language models powering generative AI without their knowledge or permission. But their efforts to stop the encroachment of AI into fan spaces is an uphill battle.
The latest salvo came in early April, when user nyuuzyou scraped 12.6 million fanfics from the online repository Archive of Our Own (AO3) and uploaded the dataset to Hugging Face, a company that hosts open-source AI models and software.
Nyuuzyou's upload was quickly discovered by the Reddit community r/AO3, where hundreds of users posted furious reactions. A Tumblr account, ao3scrapesearch, built a search engine that allowed authors to search their usernames and see if their work had been scraped by Nyuuzyou.
"This is something that takes time and effort and your heart and your soul, and you do this in a community."
…
2025-06-23 20:00:00
It took me a long time to appreciate Death Stranding. I'm not even sure I fully got it after my initial playthrough, which was equal parts mesmerizing and dull. The game, in which you play as a postapocalyptic delivery man in a world ravaged by a breach with the afterlife, demands a lot from players. The gameplay is fiddly and frustrating, and the storyline is often inscrutable, at times seeming to make no sense. While it borrows elements from walking sims and stealth games, there's nothing like Death Stranding, and so it's hard to calibrate your expectations accordingly.
It really wasn't until the end of the game that I felt I finally understood what director Hideo Kojima and his team were going for. And with all of that out of the way, playing the sequel was a more rewarding experience.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is a direct follow-up. You once again control Sam (played by Norman Reedus), who now is living in hiding with his adopted child, Lou, after previously connecting all of America to an internet-like network by walking across the entire country. But it's not long before his life of domestic bliss is interrupted. At the request of Fragile (Léa Seydoux), Sam agrees to …
2025-06-23 19:23:26
While Nothing is gearing up to officially unveil its first over-ear headphones next week, leaked images and videos have given us a good idea of what they look like. The Nothing Headphone 1 sports an unusual design that appears consistently across leaks from multiple sources, featuring a squircle earcup with the company’s signature transparent elements and support for what looks like a 3.5mm audio cable.
Nothing announced in a video last month that it would be launching over-ear headphones in “summer 2025,” but remained largely tight-lipped about what to expect. What little was teased — including Nothing’s Tom Ridley saying the company was making “a more interesting looking pair of headphones that say something about you,” and Adam Bates suggesting its buttons would feature distinct designs for each control function — appears to have been realized in these design leaks.
Images shared by Nothing_fan_blog on Instagram show that the earcups for the Nothing Headphone 1 resemble a couple of quirky cassette tapes, and true to Bates’ word, there appear to be multiple buttons to control the music. The images show the headphones in black or silver colorways, and branding for “Nothing Headphone 1” and “Sound by KEF” on either earcup.
Videos shared on X by Arsène Lupin also show two people at a private brand event trying out the headphones with what looks like a 3.5mm wired connection. That cable could introduce improved audio performance (compared with Bluetooth) that doesn’t require a battery when connected to compatible sources.
It won’t be long before we get official confirmation about the Headphone 1 design, specs, and price. According to comments made by Nothing CEO Carl Pei at the London SXSW conference, it’s set to be announced on July 1st alongside the brand’s incoming flagship phone, the Phone 3.
2025-06-23 07:58:26
Tesla finally did the damn thing. The company launched its hotly anticipated robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, June 22nd — and we’re now starting to see some of the first reactions roll in.
But first, we have to get a few important caveats out of the way. Tellingly, the service is not open to the general public, nor is it completely “unsupervised,” as Elon Musk once promised. The vehicles will include Tesla-employed “safety monitors” in the front passenger seat who can react to a dangerous situation by hitting a kill switch. Other autonomous vehicle operators would place safety monitors in the driver or passenger seats, but typically only during the testing phase. Tesla is unique in its use of safety monitors during commercial service.
The rides are limited to a geofenced area of the city that has been thoroughly mapped by the company. And in some cases, Tesla is using chase cars and remote drivers as additional backup. (Some vehicles have been spotted without chase vehicles.)
The service is invite only at launch, according to Tesla’s website. A number of pro-Tesla influencers have received invites, which should raise questions about how unbiased these first critical reactions will be. Tesla hasn’t said when the service will be available to the general public.
The limited trial includes 10-20 Model Y vehicles with “Robotaxi” branding on the side. The fully autonomous Cybercab that was first revealed last year won’t be available until 2026 at the earliest. The service operates in a small, relatively safe area of Austin from 6AM to 12AM, avoiding bad weather, highways, airports, and complex intersections.
Despite those hours, the robotaxi service seems to have gotten off to a slow start. Several invitees had yet to receive the robotaxi app by 1PM ET on Sunday. Sawyer Merritt, who posts pro-Tesla content on X, said he saw 30 Waymo vehicles go by while waiting for Tesla’s robotaxi service to start. Musk posted at 1:12PM that the service would be available later that afternoon, adding that initial customers would pay a “flat fee” of $4.20 for rides — a weed joke with which Musk has a troubled history.
While riders waited, the company published a new robotaxi page to its website detailing a lot of the rules and guidelines of the service. Visitors are invited to sign up for updates about when Tesla’s robotaxi service may come to their area. (Musk has said there could be up to a thousand robotaxis on the road “in a few months.”)
After finally being granted access to the app, Merritt posted an image of the service area map, which appeared to cover a small area bordered by the Colorado River to the north, Highway 183 to the east, Highways 290 and 71 to the south, and Zilker Part to the west.
And then the rides began — and they appeared to be mostly uneventful. Several invitees livestreamed themselves summoning their first cars, interacting with the UI, and then arriving at their destination. Several videos lasted hours, as the invitees would conclude a trip and then hail another car immediately after. One tester, Bearded Tesla Guy, described the app’s interface as “basically Uber.” Many had some difficulty finding the pickup location of their waiting Tesla robotaxi.
“This is like Pokemon hunting,” one person on Herbert Ong’s livestream said, “but its robotaxi hunting.”
Once inside, the Tesla-employed safety monitor would ask the riders to show their robotaxi apps to prove their identities. Otherwise the safety monitors kept silent throughout the ride, despite riders trying to get them to talk. I’m assuming that Tesla will need to come up with some other way to identify their riders if they plan on removing the safety monitors from the passenger seat. Waymo, for example, asks customers to unlock their vehicle through the ridehail app.
The rear screen instructs the riders to fasten their seatbelts, and after pressing an animated “start ride” button, the vehicle gets underway. Riders can also start the ride from a similar button in the app. Since riders are registering for the robotaxi app using their preexisting Tesla profiles, they’re greeted with their preferred music apps on the rear screen with all their playlists and saved tracks.
The front display shows a visualization similar to consumer vehicles using Tesla’s Full Self-Driving feature — even though Musk had said the robotaxis are running on a special version of FSD that’s not available to the average Tesla owner. There are “pull over,” “stop in lane,” or “support” buttons on the center display. Another tester, Chuck Cook, said the visualization lacked some of the controls that a normal Tesla might have.
Pressing the support button places the rider in a queue as they wait for the remote operator to connect. On Cook’s livestream, it took approximately two minutes before an operator finally connected. “We appreciate you calling in,” the operator said (though the cellular connection was poor). “We’re here for any issues to support your ride.”
Throughout the various trips, the robotaxis encountered a bevy of normal situations, like U-turns, speed bumps, pedestrians, construction, and more. The vehicles maintained speeds of about 40 mph or slower. Common words to describe the ride was “smooth,” “great,” and “normal.” One tester said on X that they got the robotaxi to “mess up” in a way that required the remote operator to help out — though they declined to describe it as a disengagement.
Ashok Elluswamy, the head of the company’s self-driving team, posted a photo of several dozen people in a room with 10 large monitors on the wall showing live camera feeds from several vehicles. “Robotaxi launch party,” Elluswamy wrote.
Where Tesla goes from here is the real challenge. Musk has said he also wants to launch a robotaxi service in California, where the regulatory process is a lot more complex than Texas. And even though he has said he wants to take things slow, he also claims that Tesla will have over a thousand driverless vehicles on the road “within a few months.”
Meanwhile, Waymo is operating more than 1,500 driverless vehicles in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin — with plans to expand to Atlanta, Miami, and Washington, DC in the near future. The Alphabet-owned company has said it will grow its fleet to 2,000 vehicles by next year.
2025-06-23 05:44:27
OpenAI has scrubbed mentions of io, the hardware startup co-founded by famous Apple designer Jony Ive, from its website and social media channels. The sudden change closely follows their recent announcement of OpenAI’s nearly $6.5 billion acquisition and plans to create dedicated AI hardware.
OpenAI tells The Verge the deal is still happening, but it scrubbed mentions due to a trademark lawsuit from Iyo, the hearing device startup spun out of Google’s moonshot factory.
The announcement blog post and a nine-minute video featuring Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are no longer available. The blog post from Ive and Altman announcing the deal said, “The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco.”
OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood:
This page is temporarily down due to a court order following a trademark complaint from iyO about our use of the name ‘io.’ We don’t agree with the complaint and are reviewing our options.
