Google’s Pixel 10a arrives on March 5 for $499 with specs and design of yesteryear

It’s that time of year—a new budget Pixel phone is about to hit virtual shelves. The Pixel 10a will be available on March 5, and pre-orders go live today. The 9a will still be on sale for a while, but the 10a will be headlining Google’s store. However, you might not notice unless you keep up with the Pixel numbering scheme. This year’s A-series Pixel is virtually identical to last…

February 18, 2026
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Password managers’ promise that they can’t see your vaults isn’t always true

Over the past 15 years, password managers have grown from a niche security tool used by the technology savvy into an indispensable security tool for the masses, with an estimated 94 million US adults—or roughly 36 percent of them—having adopted them. They store not only passwords for pension, financial, and email accounts, but also cryptocurrency credentials, payment card numbers, and other sensitive data. All eight of the top password managers…

February 17, 2026
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Most VMware users still “actively reducing their VMware footprint,” survey finds

More than two years after Broadcom took over VMware, the virtualization company’s customers are still grappling with higher prices, uncertainty, and the challenges of reducing vendor lock-in. Today, CloudBolt Software released a report, “The Mass Exodus That Never Was: The Squeeze Is Just Beginning,” that provides insight into those struggles. CloudBolt is a hybrid cloud management platform provider that aims to identify VMware customers’ pain points so it can sell…

February 17, 2026
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RAM shortage hits Valve’s four-year-old Steam Deck, now available “intermittently”

Earlier this month, Valve announced it was delaying the release of its new Steam Machine desktop and Steam Frame VR headset due to memory and storage shortages that have been cascading across the PC industry since late 2025. But those shortages are also coming for products that have already launched. Valve had added a note to its Steam Deck page noting that the device would be “out-of-stock intermittently in some…

February 17, 2026
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The first Android 17 beta is now available on Pixel devices

You might have noticed some reporting a few days ago that Android 17 was rolling out in beta form, but that didn’t happen. For reasons Google still has not explained, the release was canceled. Two days later, Android 17 is here for real. If you’ve got a recent Pixel device, you can try the latest version today, but don’t expect big changes just yet—there’s still a long way to go…

February 13, 2026
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OpenAI sidesteps Nvidia with unusually fast coding model on plate-sized chips

On Thursday, OpenAI released its first production AI model to run on non-Nvidia hardware, deploying the new GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark coding model on chips from Cerebras. The model delivers code at more than 1,000 tokens (chunks of data) per second, which is reported to be roughly 15 times faster than its predecessor. To compare, Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 in its new premium-priced fast mode reaches about 2.5 times its standard speed of…

February 12, 2026
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DIY PC maker Framework has needed monthly price hikes to navigate the RAM shortage

AI-driven memory and storage price hikes have been the defining feature of the PC industry in 2026, and hobbyists have been hit the hardest—companies like Apple with lots of buying power have been able to limit the price increases for their PCs, phones, and other gadgets so far, but smaller outfits like Valve and Raspberry Pi haven’t been so lucky. Framework, the company behind repairable and upgradeable computer designs like…

February 12, 2026
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It took two years, but Google released a YouTube app on Vision Pro

When Apple’s Vision Pro mixed reality headset launched in February 2024, users were frustrated at the lack of a proper YouTube app—a significant disappointment given the device’s focus on video content consumption, and YouTube’s strong library of immersive VR and 360 videos. That complaint continued through the release of the second-generation Vision Pro last year, including in our review. Now, two years later, an official YouTube app from Google has…

February 12, 2026
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Attackers prompted Gemini over 100,000 times while trying to clone it, Google says

On Thursday, Google announced that “commercially motivated” actors have attempted to clone knowledge from its Gemini AI chatbot by simply prompting it. One adversarial session reportedly prompted the model more than 100,000 times across various non-English languages, collecting responses ostensibly to train a cheaper copycat. Google published the findings in what amounts to a quarterly self-assessment of threats to its own products that frames the company as the victim and…

February 12, 2026
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Once-hobbled Lumma Stealer is back with lures that are hard to resist

Last May, law enforcement authorities around the world scored a key win when they hobbled the infrastructure of Lumma, an infostealer that infected nearly 395,000 Windows computers over just a two-month span leading up to the international operation. Researchers said Wednesday that Lumma is once again “back at scale” in hard-to-detect attacks that pilfer credentials and sensitive files. Lumma, also known as Lumma Stealer, first appeared in Russian-speaking cybercrime forums…

February 11, 2026
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