Enlarge / A screenshot of Taylor Swift’s Kamala Harris Instagram post, captured on September 11, 2024. (credit: Taylor Swift / Instagram) On Tuesday night, Taylor Swift endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for US President on Instagram, citing concerns over AI-generated deepfakes as a key motivator. The artist’s warning aligns with current trends in technology, especially in an era where AI synthesis models can easily create convincing fake images and videos….

Enlarge / In the U.S., a folding phone has you carrying around nearly $2,000 of fragile, folding OLED phone. In China and export-friendly countries, the Mate XT adds $1,000 and yet another hinge. (credit: Huawei) Huawei’s Mate XT Ultimate is a phone that does not flip or fold, at least in the way of its Samsung or Google contemporaries. You could say it collapses, really, across two hinges, from a…

Enlarge / More streamlined (but still user-replaceable) battery packs are responsible for some of the Reform Next’s space savings. (credit: MNT Research) The current booting prototype of the MNT Reform Next. [credit: MNT Research ] The original MNT Reform laptop was an interesting experiment, an earnest stab at the idea of a laptop that used entirely open source, moddable hardware as well as open source software. But as a modern…

Enlarge / The Computer History Museum, where we’ll be meeting for our Bay Area adventure on September 18! (credit: SpVVK / Getty Images) Howdy, Arsians! Last year, we partnered with IBM to host an in-person event in the Houston area where we all gathered together, had some cocktails, and talked about resiliency and the future of IT. Location always matters for things like this, and so we hosted it at…

Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images via Getty Images) On Friday, Roblox announced plans to introduce an open source generative AI tool that will allow game creators to build 3D environments and objects using text prompts, reports MIT Tech Review. The feature, which is still under development, may streamline the process of creating game worlds on the popular online platform, potentially opening up more aspects of game creation to those without extensive…

Enlarge (credit: Apple) Apple plans to release the next versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS to the general public on September 16, the company announced via its website following its iPhone-centric product event earlier today. We should also see updates for tvOS and the HomePod operating system on the same date. The new releases bring a number of new features and refinements to Apple’s platforms: better texting with Android…

Enlarge (credit: Apple) For the last couple years, Apple has reserved its most significant silicon updates for its iPhone Pro models, while the less expensive non-Pro iPhones have made do with year-old chips. This year, Apple is introducing new A18-series chips for both Pro and non-Pro iPhones, chips which it says are “designed for Apple Intelligence from the ground up.” The Apple A18 (no Pro, no Bionic, just A18) will…

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Researchers have discovered more than 280 malicious apps for Android that use optical character recognition to steal cryptocurrency wallet credentials from infected devices. The apps masquerade as official ones from banks, government services, TV streaming services, and utilities. In fact, they scour infected phones for text messages, contacts, and all stored images and surreptitiously send them to remote servers controlled by the app developers. The apps…

Enlarge / A shot from Agatha All Along, an upcoming Disney+ exclusive. (credit: Marvel Studios/Disney+) A leak of data from Disney points to the Disney+ streaming service making about $2.4 billion in revenue in its fiscal quarter ending on March 30. Disney doesn’t normally share how much revenue its individual streaming services generate, making this figure particularly interesting. Leaked data In August, Disney confirmed that it was investigating the leak…

Enlarge (credit: VGG | Getty Images) The cost of renting cloud services using Nvidia’s leading artificial intelligence chips is lower in China than in the US, a sign that the advanced processors are easily reaching the Chinese market despite Washington’s export restrictions. Four small-scale Chinese cloud providers charge local tech groups roughly $6 an hour to use a server with eight Nvidia A100 processors in a base configuration, companies and…