Samsung delays Galaxy Buds3 Pro release over quality concerns

July 19, 2024

Enlarge / A marketing image for the Galaxy Buds3 Pro. (credit: Samsung) Samsung is delaying the release of the $250 Galaxy Buds3 Pro in the US from July 24 to August 28, per its website. The third-generation earbuds have Samsung moving from a bean-like shape to an Apple AirPods Pro-like design, including silicone ear tips. But some users have claimed that the new tips rip too easily. Samsung confirmed to Android…

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CrowdStrike fixes start at “reboot up to 15 times” and get more complex from there

July 19, 2024

Enlarge (credit: hdaniel) Airlines, payment processors, 911 call centers, TV networks, and other businesses have been scrambling this morning after a buggy update to CrowdStrike’s Falcon security software caused Windows-based systems to crash with a dreaded blue screen of death (BSOD) error message. We’re updating our story about the outage with new details as we have them. Microsoft and CrowdStrike both say that “the affected update has been pulled,” so…

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Major outages at CrowdStrike, Microsoft leave the world with BSODs and confusion

July 19, 2024

Enlarge / A passenger sits on the floor as long queues form at the check-in counters at Ninoy Aquino International Airport, on July 19, 2024 in Manila, Philippines. (credit: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images) Millions of people outside the IT industry are learning what CrowdStrike is today, and that’s a real bad thing. Meanwhile, Microsoft is also catching blame for global network outages, and between the two, it’s unclear as of Friday…

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Apple Vision Pro’s content drought improves with new 3D videos

July 18, 2024

Boundless premieres tonight, taking Vision Pro users on a hot air balloon ride in Turkey. [credit: Apple ] Today, Apple announced a slate of more than a dozen upcoming Immersive Videos for its Vision Pro spatial reality headset. The first, titled Boundless, launches tonight at 9 pm ET. More will follow in the coming weeks and months. The announcement follows a long, slow period for new Vision Pro-specific video content…

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Netflix is kicking US subscribers off its cheapest ad-free plan soon

July 18, 2024

Enlarge / Ad-free Basic subscribers will be crane kicked off the plan soon. (credit: Netflix/YouTube) Netflix today confirmed suspicions that it will stop letting people pay $12 per month to stream without commercials. The ad-free Basic plan was the cheapest way to watch Netflix without commercials. The plan limits users to 720p resolution and one device and lets people download content. Netflix stopped offering the Basic plan to new subscribers…

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The next Nvidia driver makes even more GPUs “open,” in a specific, quirky way

July 18, 2024

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) You have to read the headline on Nvidia’s latest GPU announcement slowly, parsing each clause as it arrives. “Nvidia transitions fully” sounds like real commitment, a burn-the-boats call. “Towards open-source GPU,” yes, evoking the company’s “first step” announcement a little over two years ago, so this must be progress, right? But, back up a word here, then finish: “GPU kernel modules.” So, Nvidia has “achieved equivalent…

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OpenAI launches GPT-4o mini, which will replace GPT-3.5 in ChatGPT

July 18, 2024

Enlarge (credit: Benj Edwards) On Thursday, OpenAI announced the launch of GPT-4o mini, a new, smaller version of its latest GPT-4o AI language model that will replace GPT-3.5 Turbo in ChatGPT, reports CNBC and Bloomberg. It will be available today for free users and those with ChatGPT Plus or Team subscriptions and will come to ChatGPT Enterprise next week. GPT-4o mini will reportedly be multimodal like its big brother (which…

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“Extraordinarily disappointed” users reckon with the Google-fication of Fitbit

July 17, 2024

Enlarge / The Charge 5 (pictured) has been a source of contention for Fitbit customers. (credit: Getty) Since the acquisition closed in 2021, the Google-fication of Fitbit has largely meant a reduction in features and a focus from Google on getting people onto the Fitbit app. Long-time users have flocked to Fitbit—sometimes upon Fitbit’s request—to share hundreds of complaints about recent changes. However, Google has been mostly unresponsive to customer…

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Vulnerability in Cisco Smart Software Manager lets attackers change any user password

July 17, 2024

Enlarge Cisco on Wednesday disclosed a maximum-security vulnerability that allows remote threat actors with no authentication to change the password of any user, including those of administrators with accounts, on Cisco Smart Software Manager On-Prem devices. The Cisco Smart Software Manager On-Prem resides inside the customer premises and provides a dashboard for managing licenses for all Cisco gear in use. It’s used by customers who can’t or don’t want to…

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Real, actual Markdown support is arriving in Google Docs, not a moment too soon

July 17, 2024

Enlarge / In goes the sensible characters, out goes a document for which you almost always have to adjust the sharing permissions. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images) The best time to truly implement the Markdown markup language into Google Docs was in the early 2010s, but yesterday was a pretty good time, too. Google Docs was born from the conjoined features of a series of software company acquisitions (Writely,…

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