Aurzen If you’ve ever wanted an ultra-portable projector, one of the coolest products from this year’s CES and Mobile World Congress is finally available – and you can already score a discount. The Aurzen ZIP is a tri-folding, super-small projector that fits in your pocket. It lets you take entertainment or work presentations anywhere you […] More
Jack Wallen / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNETFedora 42 has arrived, and this time it offers an array of significant updates and improvements.Right out of the gate, the Anaconda Web UI installer is now a native Wayland application, with X11 support removed. The new installer UI simplifies the installation in every area, including guided partitioning, improved keyboard control, enhanced dual-boot support, and even a new “Reinstall Fedora” option for easy recovery if something goes wrong. Also: The 6 Linux distros I recommend most for gaming in 2025 – including my favoriteNext up, Fedora benefits from all the updates to the GNOME 48 desktop environment, which includes the new Wellbeing panel, triple buffering, notification stacking, enhanced accessibility, updated default fonts, and more. The big news on the desktop environment front is the newly minted official KDE Plasma spin and a new COSMIC spin. The official KDE Plasma spin uses the most recent stable version of the DE, whereas the COSMIC spin is still in early support, as the DE is still in alpha. Other spins have also enjoyed updates, such as the LXQt spin, which has been updated to 2.1.0 with improved Wayland session support; Xfce, which has been updated to version 4.20 of the desktop with an improved panel, better power management, and experimental Wayland support. More
Getty Recently, I wrote about the various uses of the USB ports that come standard on the back or side of any smart TV. In this article, I’m focusing on one particular important use: installing firmware updates using a USB device. Updates are essential because they ensure your TV has the latest software, features, and […] More
<!–> ZDNET’s key takeaways The Lenovo ThinkPad E16 Gen 6 is available now starting at $901. It’s a solid budget business laptop with a wide range of configurations. The display and webcam might not be good enough for most users, and opting for higher-end hardware can nearly double the price. more buying choices On the […] More
Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNETOpenAI has rolled out a “library” feature to the ChatGPT website and app that brings all your AI-generated images together in one easy-to-access place. Now, you can view every image you’ve made right from the ChatGPT sidebar. Also: ChatGPT will remember everything you tell it now – like a real personal assistantThis new library not only shows the images you’ve created but also lets you jump back into editing those images — and it includes a clear button to generate new images, if you want. Here’s how it all works and how to find the library, whether on mobile or desktop.How ChatGPT’s image library worksOpenAI released a video to announce the new feature. I got access to it overnight, and it works exactly as described and shown.When you tap on the new library link in the ChatGPT sidebar, it opens a grid of images. This is a visual log of every image you’ve generated using the AI tool (unless you’ve cleared your history, of course). You can scroll through the images with your finger or cursor and select any one to access additional image tools such as edit, save, share, and more. Also: GPT-4.1 is here, but not for everyone. Here’s who can try the modelsThe library screen also has a button to start generating new images with just one tap. When you select it, ChatGPT will load the traditional prompt screen for you to begin entering a new image description. More
Jason Howell/ZDNetGoogle’s A-series Pixel phones have consistently offered exceptional value, bringing premium features to the mid-range segment. With the recent launch of the Pixel 9a, consumers now have a choice between two compelling devices at similar price points. The Pixel 8a, released in 2024, remains a strong contender despite its successor’s arrival. Also: Google Pixel 8a hands-on: 3 features make this my favorite $499 phone todayThis decision is particularly relevant for current Pixel 8a owners considering an upgrade, as well as new buyers weighing their options. While both phones share Google’s software excellence and AI capabilities, they differ in several key areas from design philosophy to hardware specifications. Let’s break down the key differences. Specifications Pixel 8aPixel 9aDisplay 6.1-inch OLED Actua Display with up to 120Hz6.3-inch OLED Actua Dispay with up to 120HzWeight 190g187g Processor Google Tensor G3Google Tensor G4RAM/Storage8GB with 128GB/256GB8GB with 128GB/256GBBattery4,492mAh with 18W wired charging, 7.5W wireless charging5,100mAh with 23W wired charging, 7.5W wireless chargingCamera64MP wide, 13MP ultra-wide, 13MP front48MP wide, 13MP ultra-wide, 13MP frontConnectivity5G Sub 6GHz, Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) with 2.4GHz+5GHz+6GHz, HE80, MIMO5G + Sub 6GHz, Wi-Fi 6E with 2.4GHz+5GHz+6GHz, 2×2 MIMOPriceStarting at $499 More
Sabrina Ortiz/ZDNETMost AI providers try to enhance their products by training them with both public information and user data. However, the latter method puts a privacy-conscious company like Apple in a difficult position. How can it improve its Apple Intelligence technology without compromising the privacy of its users? It’s a tough challenge, but the company believes it has found a solution. Synthetic data vs real dataOpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Meta train their products partly by analyzing your chats. The goal is to improve the reliability and accuracy of their AIs by scraping data from real conversations. While you can generally opt out of this type of data sharing, the process for doing so varies for each product. This means the responsibility falls on you to figure out how to sever the connection.Also: Will synthetic data derail generative AI’s momentum or be the breakthrough we need?Apple has always prided itself on being more privacy-focused than its tech rivals. To that end, the company has relied on something called synthetic data to train and improve its AI products. Created using Apple’s own large language model (LLM), synthetic data attempts to mimic the essence of real data. Also: Want AI to work for your business? Then privacy needs to come firstFor example, the AI may create a synthetic email that is similar in topic and style to an actual message. The objective is to teach the AI how to summarize that email, a feature already built into Apple Mail. Apple’s solution: ‘Differential privacy’The problem with synthetic data is that it can’t replicate the special human touch found in real-world content. This limitation has led Apple to adopt a different approach, known as differential privacy. As described by Apple in a blog post published Monday, differential privacy combines synthetic data with real data. Here’s how it works. Also: Apple’s AI doctor will be ready to see you next springLet’s say Apple wants to teach its AI how to summarize an email. The company starts by creating a large number of synthetic emails on various topics. Apple then generates an embedding for each synthetic message to capture key elements such as language, topic, and length. These embeddings are sent to Apple users who have opted into analytics sharing on their devices. Each device selects a small sample of actual user emails and generates its own embeddings. The device then determines which synthetic embeddings most closely match the language, topic, and other characteristics of the user emails. Through differential privacy, Apple identifies which synthetic embeddings were the most similar. In the next step, the company can curate these samples to further refine the data or begin using them to train its AI. Also: Forget the new Siri: Here’s the advanced AI I use on my iPhone insteadAs one example provided by Apple, imagine that an email about playing tennis is one of the top embeddings. A similar message is generated by replacing “tennis” with “soccer” or another sport and added to the list for curation or training. Altering the topic and other elements of each email helps the AI learn how to create better summaries for a wider variety of messages. More
Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNETIf your Spotify is having issues, you’re not alone. Thousands of people are reporting problems with the music streaming app.Earlier this morning, social media was flooded with frustrated comments as users began reporting issues with streaming music on the popular service. For some, the app would load, but songs wouldn’t play. For others, the app wouldn’t load at all. The issue seems to be affecting every version of Spotify, including the app, the web player, and the desktop app. Spotify is investigatingSpotify confirmed the issue just before 9am ET, writing on X, “We’re aware of some issues right now and are checking them out!” The Spotify support page later explained, “We’re seeing reports from users that the app isn’t loading properly or that they’re experiencing playback issues. Others report that they’re having issues accessing the Support site.” Also: Are you an aspiring independent author? Spotify wants to buy your short-form audiobookReports on DownDetector.com spiked at the same time, reaching around 50,000 reports just before 10am. Outage reports were on the decline by 11am, but that could be because users are either tired of reporting the problem or no longer feel the need to. The company hasn’t explained what caused the issue or when it expects to restore service. By 10:30am, speculation was swirling that the issue was the result of a hack, but SpotifyStatus on X says that’s not true. With more than 675 million users, Spotify is the world’s most popular music streaming app. More
