Nothing, the smartphone venture from OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, is on its third generation of Android smartphones. The Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Pro will be officially announced on March 4, but there won’t be much left to reveal. Not only has Nothing teased the phones a few times, there’s also a new video highlighting the Nothing Phone 3a Pro’s design. In it, Nothing’s design team speaks at length about…

Later this week, Amazon is closing a small loophole that allowed purchasers of Kindle books to download those files to a computer and transfer them via USB. Originally intended to extend e-book access to owners of very old Kindles without Wi-Fi connectivity, the feature has also made it easier for people to download and store copies of the e-books they’ve bought, reducing the risk that Amazon might make changes to…

More than a year’s worth of internal communications from one of the world’s most active ransomware syndicates have been published online in a leak that exposes tactics, trade secrets, and internal rifts of its members. The communications come in the form of logs of more than 200,000 messages members of Black Basta sent to each other over the Matrix chat platform from September 2023 to September 2024, researchers said. The…

On Wednesday, Clone Robotics released video footage of its Protoclone humanoid robot, a full-body machine that uses synthetic muscles to create unsettlingly human-like movements. In the video, the robot hangs suspended from the ceiling as its limbs twitch and kick, marking what the company claims is a step toward its goal of creating household-helper robots. Atherton, California-based Clone Robotics designed the Protoclone with a polymer skeleton that replicates 206 human…

PC- and accessory-maker Asus has never been one to shy away from a strange idea, whether it’s a tablet that you need to slide your smartphone into before you can use it, a laptop touchpad that’s also a screen, or going with “Rock Solid, Heart Touching” as a corporate slogan. But an announcement the company made today stands out: Asus is launching something called the Asus Fragrance Mouse, a fairly…

Rust, a modern and notably more memory-safe language than C, once seemed like it was on a steady, calm, and gradual approach into the Linux kernel. In 2021, Linux kernel leaders, like founder and leader Linus Torvalds himself, were impressed with the language but had a “wait and see” approach. Rust for Linux gained supporters and momentum, and in October 2022, Torvalds approved a pull request adding support for Rust…

Nvidia’s RTX 50-series makes its first foray below the $1,000 mark starting this week, with the $749 RTX 5070 Ti—at least in theory. The third-fastest card in the Blackwell GPU lineup, the 5070 Ti is still far from “reasonably priced” by historical standards (the 3070 Ti was $599 at launch). But it’s also $50 cheaper and a fair bit faster than the outgoing 4070 Ti Super and the older 4070…

If you know how OLED displays work, you know about one of their greatest strengths: Individual pixels can be shut off, offering deeper blacks and power savings. Dark modes, now available on most operating systems, aim to save power by making most backgrounds very dark or black, while also gratifying those who just prefer the look. But what about on the older but still dominant screen technology, LCDs? The BBC…

Signal, as an encrypted messaging app and protocol, remains relatively secure. But Signal’s growing popularity as a tool to circumvent surveillance has led agents affiliated with Russia to try to manipulate the app’s users into surreptitiously linking their devices, according to Google’s Threat Intelligence Group. While Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine is likely driving the country’s desire to work around Signal’s encryption, “We anticipate the tactics and methods used to…

After launching its AI Pin in April 2024 and reportedly seeking a buyout by May 2024, Humane is shutting down. Most of the people who bought an AI Pin will not get refunds for the devices, which debuted at $700, dropped to $500, and will be bricked on February 28 at noon PT. At that time, AI Pins, which are lapel pins with an integrated AI voice assistant, camera, speaker,…