The Verge Mar 3, 02:39 PM
The 6G, modular, robot phones of the future Year after year, we mostly know what to expect from our smartphone upgrades. Galaxy, iPhone, Pixel, or whatever else, everything seems to get slightly better (and occasionally more expensive) without many surprises in store. That's not to say there are no new ideas left in smartphones, though. You just have to know where to look.
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On this episode of The Vergecast, The Verge's Allison Johnson reports back from Mobile World Congress, which is positively overflowing with ideas abou …
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The Verge Mar 3, 04:02 PM
Apple’s website leaks MacBook ‘Neo,’ which could be its new cheaper laptop On Tuesday, during Apple's weeklong product launch event, a listing for the "MacBook Neo (Model A3404)" appeared on a regulatory compliance page on Apple's website under its lineup of 2026 MacBooks. First spotted by MacRumors, the listing appears to be an accident and has since been removed, but may have been a leaked reference to a rumored entry-level MacBook. Unfortunately, it didn't include any additional details beyond the device's name and model number.
Cool name https://t.co/OR4xRV6WGi
- Mark Gurman (@markgurman) March 3, 2026
Apple has reportedly been working on a budget-friendly MacBook priced under $1,000 and powered by an iPhone …
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The Verge Mar 3, 02:30 PM
Why is SpaceX going public? I am excited about the SpaceX IPO for all the reasons investors shouldn't be. Maybe it'll be a real marquee moment for Silicon Valley, but I see the potential for a shitshow. After all, more than a decade ago, Musk said that SpaceX going public before going to Mars would be bad for the company.
Are private markets tapped out on cash to fund SpaceX ambitions? Elon Musk has been very clear about his feelings on publicly traded companies. Specifically: He doesn't like them!
"I am hesitant to foist being public on SpaceX, especially given the long term nature of our mission."
In 2013, Musk sent an email to SpaceX, which his biographer Ashlee …
Read the full story at The Verge.
TechCrunch Mar 4, 06:32 PM
Decagon completes first tender offer at $4.5B valuation The AI-powered customer support startup is the latest example of a fast-growing, young company that's providing employee liquidity.
TechCrunch Mar 4, 06:50 PM
Google’s Gemini rolls out Canvas in AI Mode to all US users Canvas in AI Mode is available to U.S. users in English for creating plans, projects, apps, and more.
TechCrunch Mar 3, 05:00 PM
Amid new competition, Chrome speeds up its release schedule Google Chrome will begin shipping new releases every two weeks in September, instead of monthly.
Wired Mar 4, 10:13 PM
Big Tech Signs White House Data Center Pledge With Good Optics and Little Substance “Data centers … they need some PR help,”President Donald Trump said at the event.
Wired Mar 4, 07:00 PM
How Vulnerable Are Computers to an 80-Year-Old Spy Technique? Congress Wants Answers A pair of US lawmakers are calling for an investigation into how easily spies can steal information based on devices’ electromagnetic and acoustic leaks—a spying trick the NSA once codenamed TEMPEST.
Wired Mar 4, 07:08 PM
Trump’s War on Iran Could Screw Over US Farmers The Middle East supplies a huge amount of the world’s fertilizer. Conflict in the region has sent prices soaring ahead of the critical spring planting season.
TechCrunch Mar 4, 07:00 PM
MacBook Neo, iPhone 17e, and everything else Apple announced this week From a new iPhone to a budget-friendly MacBook, Apple announced a series of new products this week.
TechCrunch Mar 3, 05:22 PM
Apple’s rumored MacBook Neo, a lower-cost, colorful laptop, could launch this week This would mark the first time Apple competes with cheaper hardware like the Chromebook.
Ars Technica Mar 3, 03:58 PM
New MacBook Airs come with M5, double the storage, and higher starting prices New Airs leave more room underneath for the rumored low-cost MacBook.
TechCrunch Mar 3, 08:20 PM
ChatGPT’s new GPT-5.3 Instant model will stop telling you to calm down The company says the new model will reduce the "cringe" that's been annoying its users for months.
TechCrunch Mar 4, 08:05 PM
Google settles with Epic Games, drops its Play Store commissions to 20% Google has dropped its commission, charging a 20% service fee and an optional 5% to use its billing services. It will also offer a new process for third-party app stores.
Wired Mar 4, 08:00 PM
Which iPhone 17 Model Should You Buy? The iPhone 17e is here to fill out Apple’s smartphone lineup. Our primer on the differences and similarities of these iPhones can help you shop.
The Verge Mar 4, 08:23 PM
The new MacBook Air debuts with a $50 gift card as the M4 model hits its best price Powered by the new M5 chip, Apple’s latest MacBook Airs are more powerful than ever with double the base storage (512GB), but they also cost $100 more than their predecessor. Fortunately, though, we’ve found a few ways to save. Best Buy is offering the new 13-inch M5-powered MacBook Air for $1,099 with a $50 gift card and the 15-inch for $1,299 with the same perk ahead of their March 11th release date. That said, if you’d rather spend less and don’t mind buying last year’s model, Amazon’s also selling the 15-inch M4 MacBook Air with 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM for an all-time low of $1,099, matching the price of the new 13-inch Air.
13-inch M5 MacBook Air (512GB, 16GB RAM) with $50 gift card
Where to Buy:
$1099 at Best Buy (13-inch)
15-inch M5 MacBook Air (512GB, 16GB RAM) with $50 gift card
Where to Buy:
$1299 at Best Buy
Before Apple announced the new MacBook Air on Tuesday, the M4-powered MacBook Air was the model we recommended for most people. Even with the introduction of the cheaper MacBook Neo, the Air is still the better choice if you want more power. We haven’t tested the new M5 version yet, but the changes between the two Air models appear relatively minor on paper, so the overall experience is likely to feel very similar. No matter which MacBook Air you choose, you’ll get a thin, lightweight laptop that’s more than powerful enough to handle everyday work and play, and even some light gaming or video editing. Both also offer excellent battery life that should easily last well over a full workday, along with a 12-megapixel Center Stage webcam.
15-inch MacBook Air (M4)
Where to Buy:
$1399 $1099 at Amazon (16GB RAM, 512GB SSD)
Aside from the newer chip, the biggest differences between the M4 and M5 models largely come down to connectivity. The newer models support faster wireless standards like Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. Both M4 and M5-powered 15-inch models also feature a larger display and a six-speaker sound system instead of the four-speaker setup on the 13-inch Air.
Read our Apple MacBook Air M4 review.
The Verge Mar 4, 08:32 PM
NotebookLM can now summarize research in ‘cinematic’ video overviews Google's NotebookLM can now turn users' research and notes into fully animated "cinematic" videos, going a step further than the original video overview feature Google introduced last year.
Previously, video overviews could only generate narrated slideshows, but the upgraded video overview feature uses a combination of Google's AI models, "including Gemini 3, Nano Banana Pro and Veo 3," to generate animated visuals based on the content of users' notes. Google says Gemini "determines the best narrative, visual style and format, and even refines its own work to ensure consistency" when generating the videos.
This is the latest in a string o …
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VentureBeat Mar 3, 08:06 PM
Google releases Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite at 1/8th the cost of Pro Google's newest AI model is here: Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite, and the biggest improvements this time around come in cost and speed, especially for enterprises and developers seeking to leverage powerful reasoning and multimodal capabilities from the U.S. search and cloud giant.
Positioning it as the most cost-efficient and responsive model in the Gemini 3 series, Google is offering a solution built specifically for intelligence at scale.
This launch arrives just weeks after the February debut of its heavy-lifting sibling, Gemini 3.1 Pro, completing a tiered strategy that allows enterprises to scale intelligence across every layer of their infrastructure.
Technology: optimized for the "time to first token"
In the world of high-throughput AI, the metric that often dictates user experience isn't just accuracy—it’s latency. For real-time customer support, live content moderation, or instant user interface generation, the "time to first answer token" is the primary indicator of whether an application feels like a tool or a teammate. If a model takes even two seconds to begin its response, the illusion of fluid interaction is broken.
Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite is engineered specifically for this instant feel. According to internal benchmarks and third-party evaluations, Flash-Lite outperforms its predecessor, Gemini 2.5 Flash, with a 2.5X faster time to first token. Furthermore, it boasts a 45 percent increase in overall output speed — 363 tokens per second compared to 249.
This speed is achieved through what Koray Kavukcuoglu, VP of Research at Google DeepMind, describes in an X post as an unbelievable amount of complex engineering to make AI feel instantaneous.
Perhaps the most innovative technical addition is the introduction of thinking levels.
Standardized across both the Flash-Lite and Pro variants, this feature allows developers to modulate the model's reasoning intensity dynamically. For a simple classification task or a high-volume sentiment analysis, the model can be dialed down for maximum speed and minimum cost.
Conversely, for complex code exploration, generating dashboards, or creating simulations, the thinking can be dialed up, allowing the model to perform deeper reasoning and logic before emitting its first response.
Product: benchmarking the lite-weight heavy hitter
While the "Lite" suffix often implies a significant sacrifice in capability, the performance data suggests a model that punches well into the territory of much larger systems. Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite achieved an Elo score of 1432 on the Arena.ai Leaderboard, placing it in a competitive tier with models much larger in parameter count.
Key benchmark results highlight its specialized strengths across diverse cognitive domains:
Scientific knowledge: 86.9 percent on GPQA Diamond.
Multimodal understanding: 76.8 percent on MMMU-Pro.
Multilingual Q&A: 88.9 percent on MMMLU.
Parametric knowledge: 43.3 percent on SimpleQA Verified.
Abstract reasoning: 16.0 percent on Humanity’s Last Ex
The Verge Mar 4, 10:31 PM
Here’s how Google describes its fee-reducing Apps Experience and Games Level Up programs Today, Google killed its 30 percent app store fee, partially uncoupled Google Play from Google Play Billing after they were declared an illegal monopoly in the US, and much more.
From July, depending on where you live, Google will now generally charge developers 20 percent for in-app purchases, or 10 percent for subscriptions - but it's also carving out several new categories of app which might pay differently. One of them is the mysterious new "metaverse browsers" category, whose details have been redacted.
But Google is public that two other programs, Apps Experience and Games Level Up will let developers save up to 5 percent more of th …
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The Verge Mar 5, 01:09 AM
A new video from the White House mixes Call of Duty footage with actual video of Iran strikes A screenshot of the Call of Duty footage in the White House’s video.
On Wednesday, the White House posted a video of actual military strikes on Iran in the style usually seen in Call of Duty highlight videos, and started the video with a clip from Call of Duty. The real-life footage of missiles and other munitions hitting targets in Iran shows clips seen in other Trump administration videos, like this one posted to the U.S. Central Command X account.
Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue. pic.twitter.com/kTO0DZ56IJ
- The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 4, 2026
As noted by The Washington Post's Drew Harwell, the animation at the start appears to be from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III when a player activates a …
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The Verge Mar 3, 09:55 AM
Big Google Home update lets Gemini describe live camera feeds ‘Live Search’ can describe what your cameras see, not just what they’ve seen. | Image: Google
Google Home chief Anish Kattukaran announced several updates to the smart home platform that fix a long list of annoyances and idiosyncrasies. There's also one noteworthy new addition: the introduction of "Live Search" for your cameras.
So, instead of Gemini only knowing about things that have already happened, it now understands what it sees in your live camera feeds. That means you can ask things like, "Hey Google, is there a car in the driveway?" Live Search requires a subscription to the Advanced plan of Google Home Premium, which costs $20/month or $200/year.
Gemini for Home is now also using updated models, a change that should impro …
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Wired Mar 3, 11:30 AM
How Palantir, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google Power Trump’s Immigration Crackdown A WIRED analysis shows that ICE and CBP have collectively spent at least $515 million on products from Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Palantir in the last few years alone.
Ars Technica Mar 3, 12:30 PM
LLMs can unmask pseudonymous users at scale with surprising accuracy Pseudonymity has never been perfect for preserving privacy. Soon it may be pointless.
Ars Technica Mar 3, 01:24 PM
Medical journal The Lancet blasts RFK Jr.’s health work as a failure Kennedy's destruction "might take generations to repair," The Lancet said.