Many gadgets marketed as being “smart” make me wonder if they would be better off dumb. Some examples are smart TVs that insist on sending your activities to businesses to track you, smart fridges that use the Internet to cycle through ads, smart gym equipment that won’t work offline, smart toothbrushes whose batteries drain too quickly, or virtually any gadget that forces you to use a minimally effective or otherwise…

When Windows 11 launched in 2021, we mostly liked its refreshed look—the rounded corners and menus with just a hint of translucency were a nice change from the flat colors and hard corners of the Windows 8/10 era. But its reformulated taskbar and Start menu came with a number of functional regressions from the versions in Windows 10. Some of these were addressed quickly; others continue to linger. A new…

Russian universities are promising free tuition and up to $70,000 to students who are willing to serve as drone pilots in the Russian military for a year—all while claiming students can avoid the risk of frontline combat duty in Ukraine. But there has already been one confirmed battlefield death and possibly more among the new cadre of student drone pilots. That specific recruitment offer appeared on pamphlets distributed at Bauman…

Weather-monitoring company AcuRite is forcing device owners to use a new companion app on May 30, frustrating some long-time customers. AcuRite, which sells devices such as weather stations, indoor thermometers, and rain gauges, began emailing customers last month that they’d soon have to control their devices with the AcuRite Now iOS and Android app. AcuRite first launched the app in June 2025 to control a new weather station, the AcuRite…

When AMD announced version 4 of its FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) graphics upscaling technology early last year, it came with strings attached: The improved hardware-backed image quality would be available only on Radeon RX 9000-series GPUs based on the RDNA4 architecture, not on any older Radeon GPUs. To date, AMD has released only a handful of 90-series graphics cards, including the RX 9070 XT, the RX 9070, the 8GB and…

A zero-day exploit circulating online allows people with physical access to a Windows 11 system to bypass default BitLocker protections and gain complete access to an encrypted drive within seconds. The exploit, named YellowKey, was published earlier this week by a researcher who goes by the alias Nightmare-Eclipse. It reliably bypasses default Windows 11 deployments of BitLocker, the full-volume encryption protection Microsoft provides to make disk contents off-limits to anyone…

Following a quarter in which his company delivered record revenue, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins announced that the company’s latest round of layoffs begins today. In a blog post yesterday, Robbins was quick to boast that Cisco’s fiscal Q3 2026 earnings saw revenue increase 12 percent year-over-year to $15.8 billion. He told employees that he and the rest of Cisco’s executive leadership team “could not be prouder of the growth you…

Motorola was early to foldable phones, announcing its first Razr-branded foldable in 2019. Since then, the company has churned out a series of foldable flip phones, but the new Razr Fold is its first attempt at a tablet-style foldable. Samsung, Google, and others have been making devices like this for a while, so we know the formula, and the Razr Fold doesn’t change the game. Like the competition, the Razr…

A solar-powered drone has been lost at sea after a record-breaking flight lasting eight days between late April and early May. The crash also marks the untimely demise of the pioneering aircraft Solar Impulse 2, which previously performed the world’s first solar-powered crossings of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans before becoming an uncrewed test platform for US military missions. The carbon-fiber aircraft could perform such feats of aeronautical endurance while…

Four Australian men have given new meaning to the term “bricked printers.” According to a press release from the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Australian Border Force (ABF) today, three men have been sentenced for trying to use five printers to smuggle 22.4 kg (49.4 pounds) of cocaine into Australia. In 2019, Australian news outlets reported that the printers were Xerox brand and that the drugs had a street value…