Enlarge / Emojipedia sample images of the new Unicode 16.0 emoji. (credit: Emojipedia) The Unicode Consortium has finalized and released version 16.0 of the Unicode standard, the elaborate character set that ensures that our phones, tablets, PCs, and other devices can all communicate and interoperate with each other. The update adds 5,185 new characters to the standard, bringing the total up to a whopping 154,998. Of those 5,185 characters, the…

Enlarge / Hard drives, unfortunately, tend to die not with a spectacular and sparkly bang, but with a head-is-stuck whimper. (credit: Getty Images) One of the things enterprise storage and destruction company Iron Mountain does is handle the archiving of the media industry’s vaults. What it has been seeing lately should be a wake-up call: roughly one-fifth of the hard disk drives dating to the 1990s it was sent are…

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Microsoft has updated a key cryptographic library with two new encryption algorithms designed to withstand attacks from quantum computers. The updates were made last week to SymCrypt, a core cryptographic code library for handing cryptographic functions in Windows and Linux. The library, started in 2006, provides operations and algorithms developers can use to safely implement secure encryption, decryption, signing, verification, hashing, and key exchange in the…

Enlarge / It’s never explained what this collection of app icons quite represents. A disorganized app you tossed together by sideloading? A face that’s frowning because it’s rolling down a bar held up by app icons? It’s weird, but not quite evocative. (credit: linuxct/hydra) You might sideload an Android app, or manually install its APK package, if you’re using a custom version of Android that doesn’t include Google’s Play Store….

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…