India has finally put a price on larger transactions on its ubiquitous digital payments network, ending years of free processing for merchants as authorities seek to make a system used for billions of payments each month financially self-sustaining. The country’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) will impose a 0.4% merchant fee on certain payments above ₹2,000 … Read more
Apple’s AirPods are so ubiquitous, they’ve become the Kleenex of Bluetooth earbuds. But whether you own an iPhone or an Android, AirPods are hardly the only compelling option. As long as you stay clear of the cheapest budget options you see in checkout lines, Bluetooth earbuds, in general, are all pretty awesome. Most earbuds sound … Read more
TL;DR Spotify is rolling out a new setting that lets parents stop kids’ and family music from influencing their recommendations. Turning it off keeps children’s music out of features like Discover Weekly, Daily Mix, and even 2026 Wrapped. The change works retroactively and is available globally on mobile for both Free and Premium users. After … Read more
The company is adopting the tech ahead of its main rival, Qualcomm. Xavi Torrent/Getty Images You may not hear much about MediaTek these days, but it’s still going strong. The Taiwanese chip manufacturer just announced that it’s latest smartphone processor, the flagship Dimensity 9600 Pro, is its first to be built using TSMC’s … Read more
I still value my Google Chromecast with Google TV dongle because I don’t mind when it slows down a little, since I only use it on an older TV to stream movies and shows. So when I ran into a visual problem and thought my dongle was dead, I found it just needed a quick … Read more
A new AI model called Koa is one of the biggest announcements from Salesforce this week at its giant Dreamforce tech conference. Koa is the company’s first reasoning model, built on Nvidia’s open-weight Nemotron model. The two companies worked together to post-train Koa to excel at sales, marketing, and customer-support-related tasks. Koa is a shining … Read more
I’ll admit it: I use AI for all sorts of daily tasks. My favorite use cases include reviewing property listings and assessing value and asking prices, explaining the factors at play in the global economy, and using it as a devil’s advocate to balance my own biases. I’ve never thought of using it to create … Read more
Europe has a new unicorn: Italian startup Exein has just raised a $270 million funding round led by Headline at a $1.7 billion valuation on the promise of providing a cybersecurity layer for physical AI — an evolution of its initial focus on IoT. “The concept of Exein is that every device should be able … Read more
HTC’s Vive Eagle is a pair of smart glasses aping the template laid down by Ray-Ban back in 2021. It’s a Wayfarer-style frame with either Panto (round) or Square lens options hewn in either black or tinted translucent plastic. On either side of the two glasses lenses, embedded in the hinges, are two round cut-outs: … Read more
I’m no stranger to using different keyboard layouts. I’m a big mechanical keyboard fan, and I still use typewriters, even in 2026. The IBM Selectric I grew up with had a QWERTY layout, and the vintage (well, more like dilapidated and in bad need of some oil) Smith Corona I’m using now also uses the … Read more