Browsing: Tech Reviews

The wait for an inexpensive MacBook for day-to-day work and entertainment is over. On Wednesday, Apple announced the lower-cost MacBook Neo, which is sure to be a hit with those who wanted a MacBook but for whom spending $1,000 or more for a MacBook Air was out of reach. The new MacBook Neo starts at $599 (£599, AU$899), and you can get it for $499 with Apple’s educational discount.Taking on Chromebooks and cheap Windows laptops, the MacBook Neo isn’t based on an Apple M-series processor, which powers Apple’s newly announced MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models. Instead, it uses the A18 Pro chip…

Meta contractors claim your smart glasses can see more than you thinkMeta’s privacy policy does warn that your glasses share images and videos with the companyThis follows a growing trend of privacy concerns over smart glasses in public and in courtsWhen Meta warned us that it could see footage captured by its AI smart glasses, it turns out it wasn’t kidding. As part of a new investigation, Meta insiders claim to have seen intimate details of our lives, from bank cards to filmed sex scenes.In a joint investigation published by Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten (behind a paywall), Meta…

“What we found is that these AI agents can do something that was previously very difficult: starting from free text (like an anonymized interview transcript) they can work their way to the full identity of a person,” Simon Lermen, a co-author of the paper, told Ars. “This is a pretty new capability; previous approaches on re-identification generally required structured data, and two datasets with a similar schema that could be linked together.” Unlike those older pseudonymity-stripping methods, Lermen said, AI agents can browse the web and interact with it in many of the same ways humans do. They can use…

Today the White House announced that several major players in tech and AI have agreed to steps that will keep electricity costs from rising due to data centers. Under this Ratepayer Protection Pledge, companies are agreeing to practices that are intended to protect residents from seeing higher electricity costs as more and more businesses create power-hungry data centers. Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI have all apparently signed on. A few of the participants — Amazon, Google and Meta — had conveniently timed press releases patting themselves on the back for their participation and touting whatever other policies…

Highguard found itself in the spotlight of the online video game discourse back in December during The Game Awards show, when host Geoff Keighley made a special introduction for the game’s trailer, which came very late in the show, a time reserved for some of the night’s biggest reveals. The next day, there were questions as to what this free-to-play multiplayer shooter from a new studio was. Now, less than two months after its release, Highguard is being shut down. Developer Wildlight Entertainment posted on X about Highguard’s shutdown on Tuesday. The developer says it was unable to gain the player base…

Apple MacBook Neo is probably the most important new consumer electronics product of this still-new year. It’s not the most powerful laptop Apple has ever produced, but few products have thrown open the door to a new market and buying possibilities in quite the same way.The MacBook Neo arrives as a budget-laptop-busting portable that starts at just $599 / £599 / AU$899 ($499 / £499 / AU$749 for the education market) and rewrites the rules for a budget laptop.With a 256GB hard drive and 8GB RAM, it may not sound like it’s packed with possibilities, but Apple also equipped the…

Access points are excellent options to deliver the best Wi-Fi coverage. This post includes the top five best Wi-Fi access points and their alternatives among those I’ve reviewed. Depending on your situation, you may need just one or a couple of units, and any of the ones mentioned below will work well. Still, you’re encouraged to read their in-depth reviews for the inner details. For more on access points and how to pick one, check out the post below: Wi-Fi access points: What they are and how to pick the right one for your needs Dong’s note: I first published…

In a statement, Accenture CEO and chair Julie Sweet said: By acquiring Ookla, we will help our clients across business and government scale AI safely and build the trusted data foundations they need to deliver the reliable, seamless connectivity that creates value. Current Accenture public sector clients include the US Air Force, the US Social Security Administration, and, recently, the US Department of State. Speedtest and Downdetector are popular among people seeking something to help quickly test their current internet speed and the status of online services, respectively. Downdetector is often cited by media reports discussing the availability of websites,…

Highguard, the live-service multiplayer shooter that was announced at the Game Awards 2025, is shutting down on March 12. Developer Wildlight Studios shared that the game would be winding down alongside details of its final update, which include a new character, weapon and skill trees.”Today we’re sharing difficult news. We have made the decision to permanently shut down Highguard on March 12,” Wildlight Studios shared via a statement on the Highguard X account. “Since launch, more than two million players stepped into Highguard’s world. You shared feedback, created content, and many believed in what we were building. For that, we…

Alongside my almost 15 years as a CNET tech journalist, I’ve spent many years taking photographs around the UK and Europe, and documenting much of the work behind the scenes for my photography YouTube channel. I write, record and edit everything myself. It’s great fun, but sometimes it’s extremely challenging to be out and about, not just with the camera I’m using to take my photos, but with the additional equipment to properly film that process for my videos. At Mobile World Congress 2026, Honor gave us a much closer look at its Robot Phone concept, which could be an elegant solution for capturing my…