Category: Technologies

For years, the notion of Tesla and SpaceX merging has hovered between bold business speculation and Elon Musk fan fiction. The two firms already share DNA, leadership influence, engineering talent, and long‑term ambitions. Yet each time the subject surfaced, it seemed more like an intriguing thought experiment than a feasible scenario. Now, a top SpaceX executive has added fresh fuel to the debate.

During a recent CNBC interview, SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell was asked about the prospect of tighter ties between Tesla and SpaceX. Her answer wasn’t a blunt denial; she actually suggested that uniting the two companies could make life a bit easier for Musk. That may sound like a casual remark, but coming from Shotwell—who has been with SpaceX since its early days and remains one of its most influential leaders—it carries weight.

The concept isn’t as far‑fetched as it once seemed

A decade ago, the idea of merging an electric‑car maker with a rocket company would have seemed utterly absurd. Today, the connections are far easier to spot. Tesla is no longer just a car manufacturer; it is heavily involved in artificial intelligence, robotics, manufacturing, energy storage, and autonomous systems. SpaceX, meanwhile, is constructing a global internet network via Starlink, launching satellites at unprecedented rates, and increasingly embracing AI‑driven technologies.

The overlap is becoming harder to ignore. The companies already cooperate in various ways, share engineering expertise, and operate under Musk’s overarching vision of scaling technology. While they stay separate entities, they have never been completely disconnected.

Musk’s recent moves hint at larger combinations

If there’s one thing Musk has demonstrated recently, it’s a willingness to experiment with unconventional corporate structures. Earlier this year, he bundled several of his ventures into larger entities designed to work more closely together, aiming to fuse technologies that could accelerate massive projects, especially those involving AI and future infrastructure.

That’s why Shotwell’s comments matter. She also noted that acquisitions and mergers are becoming increasingly important across the AI sector. As artificial intelligence grows central to corporate operations, firms are looking to consolidate talent, computing power, and technology stacks under one roof. Seen through that lens, a Tesla‑SpaceX combination no longer seems as impossible as it once did.

Don’t expect an announcement tomorrow

Before Tesla shareholders start picturing Starship launches on quarterly earnings calls, it’s worth noting that Shotwell was careful to stress her current priorities. SpaceX has a full agenda—expanding Starlink, supporting International Space Station missions, and pushing an ambitious launch schedule. So, immediate concerns outweigh any corporate reshuffling. Still, the fact that the idea wasn’t dismissed outright makes it noteworthy.

A merger between Tesla and SpaceX remains purely speculative. Enormous financial, regulatory, and operational hurdles would have to be cleared before such a move could materialize. Yet for the first time in a while, the concept feels less like science fiction and more like something that could eventually land on a boardroom agenda. And when it comes to Elon Musk, “eventually” often arrives sooner than anyone expects.

Brazil holds the most World Cup crowns – five in total – but after five consecutive tournaments without adding another, the squad is now heavily relying on analytics. Every player dons a sensor‑filled “smart vest” that records position via GPS, heart rate and a metric known as “player load,” similar to the stats shown on a Whoop band or Apple Watch, but calibrated for football.

So what do these smart vests actually monitor? The vests are worn beneath the jersey and are used across Brazil’s men’s, women’s and youth teams. Each club transmits match or training data to the national setup each day. This allows sports‑science director Guilherme Passos to track a range of indicators such as sprint speed, fatigue levels and hamstring rehabilitation, not only for the senior side but also for players scattered around the globe.

The vests remain on during World Cup games, helping decide which athletes need rest between matches. Here’s the twist: Passos once flagged a player who covered just about 3.7 miles in a match – roughly half the distance of his teammates. By the numbers, he appeared to be a low‑effort player.

Why did the data nearly get the Brazilian out of the lineup? When coaches reviewed the footage, they discovered that the player, as Passos put it, was always in the right spot, occupying the perfect tactical position (via BBC). The player’s identity remains confidential for obvious reasons, but the lesson is clear: higher running totals don’t automatically translate to better performance, and the most effective player can generate the dullest smart‑vest statistics.

This isn’t a Brazil‑only phenomenon. FIFA approved GPS‑vest systems for official matches back in 2015, and most of the 48 teams at this World Cup are employing similar technology from firms like Catapult and STATSports – the same brands that power many consumer fitness devices. FIFA has also deepened its data push this year with Football AI Pro, a Lenovo‑built assistant that uses machine learning to dissect match data and deliver real‑time insights to coaches and players.

Every video editor has a set of chores they’d gladly hand off to someone else. Exporting is no longer one of them, thanks to today’s fast laptops. The real‑time drudgery lies in the monotonous tasks: manually masking subjects, hunting for scene cuts in lengthy footage, frame‑by‑frame rotoscoping, or wrestling with edits that demand more patience than imagination.

That’s precisely why Nvidia’s RTX Spark demo at Computex 2026 caught me off guard. I entered the booth expecting another AI‑laden sales pitch and a wall of benchmark charts. Instead, I left convinced that, for the first time in years, hardware could actually reshape the editing workflow itself, not just shave a few minutes off render times.

RTX Spark doesn’t reinvent editing—it removes the tedium

The first demonstration wasn’t even in Premiere Pro; it was inside Adobe Photoshop, and it completely turned my expectations of AI image editing upside down. Rather than typing a lengthy, precise prompt, the presenter simply loaded a picture, drew a couple of arrows to show where new elements should appear, added a brief command, and let the RTX Spark‑powered laptop handle the rest. Within seconds, Photoshop produced the requested composition locally. The resulting image could be panned, rotated in 3D, expanded with Generative Fill, and even animated frame‑by‑frame with astonishing ease.

The magic lay not only in speed but also in simplicity. Instead of forcing creators to learn a new “AI language,” Nvidia and Adobe seemed to be teaching the AI to understand the way creators naturally work. The prompt was plain English, yet it was executed flawlessly. More importantly, because everything ran locally on the RTX Spark platform, there was no waiting for cloud servers to process the request and send back results.

Under the hood, RTX Spark pairs a 20‑core Grace CPU with a Blackwell‑based RTX GPU and up to 128 GB of unified memory, delivering enough on‑device AI horsepower to tackle demanding creative workloads. After watching the demo, however, the specs felt secondary—the hands‑on experience was the real star.

Premiere Pro finally tackles the boring stuff

The Photoshop demo was clever, but the Premiere Pro showcase made me genuinely smile. Nvidia displayed two nearly identical RTX‑powered laptops side by side: one running the publicly available Premiere Pro, the other running a new beta built with Adobe to leverage RTX Spark’s AI features.

Both machines were asked to perform scene‑edit detection on the same video. While the public{​} version processed the timeline at its usual pace, the RTX Spark‑powered beta identified cuts almost instantly. Watching a task that editors normally start and then walk away from become practically instantaneous was truly impressive.

Next came rotoscoping, arguably the least glamorous job in post‑production. Anyone who has spent hours isolating a moving subject frame by frame knows how quickly patience wears thin. In the demo, the presenter simply clicked on an object once, and the AI instantly generated a mask and tracked it across the entire clip with minimal manual input. It felt less like a software gimmick and more like a silent assistant erasing hours of repetitive work.

RTX Spark is more than a creator chip

Of course, Nvidia isn’t marketing RTX Spark solely as a creator platform. The company also showed off striking gaming demos featuring DLSS 4.5 and advanced path‑tracing, proving the Blackwell GPU still packs serious gaming muscle. I even saw games run smoothly on the ARM‑based platform, confirming Nvidia’s focus isn’t limited to AI workloads. Additional technical demos highlighted AI‑assisted development and debugging, where local models help developers analyze code and troubleshoot without relying on the cloud.

Whether these use cases become mainstream remains to be seen. I’m not entirely convinced developers will overhaul their workflows around RTX Spark overnight, and gamers willing to pay a premium may still prioritize raw graphics performance over AI features. Those are markets where Nvidia still has a lot to prove.

Where RTX Spark hit home for me, however, was creative work. If one‑click rotoscoping, near‑instant scene detection, and intuitive AI‑assisted image editing become everyday tools, I can easily imagine video editors and content creators flocking to these machines. RTX Spark isn’t trying to replace human creativity—it’s simply eliminating the repetitive, mind‑numbing chores, giving creators more time to focus on what they do best: telling better stories.

Portable monitors have become the Swiss Army knives of modern tech. They travel with remote workers, expand cramped laptop screens, and occasionally double as gaming displays in hotel rooms. Most of them also follow a familiar formula: a basic Full HD panel, a foldable cover, and a price that stays comfortably under $250. Ugreen clearly looked at that formula and decided to ignore it.

The company’s new AP16 portable monitor has officially landed in the U.S., bringing a feature list that feels more like a premium desktop display than something designed to slip into a backpack. The catch is that it costs $350, placing it well above many rivals.

For people who notice every Pixel

The first thing that separates the AP16 from the crowd is its display. While many portable monitors continue to settle for a 1080p panel, Ugreen opted for a sharper 2560 × 1600 resolution on a 16‑inch screen. This makes a noticeable difference in everyday use — text appears cleaner, spreadsheets fit more information onscreen, and photos look noticeably crisper. The choice of a 16:10 aspect ratio helps, too. Anyone who spends their day bouncing between documents, browser tabs, and spreadsheets knows that extra vertical space is surprisingly valuable.

The display also reaches up to 500 nits of brightness, making it easier to use in bright environments where many portable monitors begin to struggle. Add full sRGB coverage and HDR certification, and the AP16 starts looking like a serious secondary display.

A luxury portable monitor, for better or worse

The AP16’s premium ambitions extend beyond the screen. Instead of relying on plastic construction and flimsy folio stands, Ugreen has given the monitor an all‑metal chassis and bundled it with a magnetic metal stand that offers far more flexibility than the typical folding cover. At just 6.5 mm thick and under a kilogram, it’s still easy enough to toss into a laptop bag.

Gamers also get a pleasant surprise — the 165 Hz refresh rate is unusually high for this category, making fast‑moving games feel smoother than they would on most portable displays. Of course, all of those upgrades come at a cost. At $349.99, the AP16 enters territory where buyers will naturally compare it against larger desktop monitors or even budget tablets.

Still, for users who value portability but don’t want to sacrifice image quality, build quality, or refresh rate, Ugreen’s latest display makes a compelling argument. It’s expensive, yes, but unlike many premium gadgets, you can actually see where the money went.

If you’ve been postponing the purchase of a new handset in hopes of catching a discount on a model released early this year, Carl Pei, co‑founder of Nothing, has a straightforward warning: stop waiting.

In a recent X post, Pei outlined how 2026 is reshaping phone pricing like never before. The main driver, unsurprisingly, is a component that now accounts for over half of a device’s total hardware cost.

Why is RAM now inflating phone prices?

Pei points out that memory – specifically RAM – has become the priciest hardware element in a smartphone.

A few years back, the most expensive parts were typically OLED screens, chipsets, or camera modules. Budget phones were often priced up by high‑refresh‑rate AMOLED displays, while flagship devices saw the chipset or camera module take the top spot.

Fast forward to 2026, and memory has surged to the top of the cost hierarchy. Pei explains that RAM now out‑prices both the chipset and the display, a shift driven by the worldwide AI boom.

AI‑focused data centers are gobbling up memory chips at a pace that strains supply for everyone else, including the planet’s leading smartphone manufacturers.

What impact has the RAM price hike had on Nothing?

Pei uses his own company as a vivid illustration.

For the Nothing Phone (4a), the mid‑range model the firm recently launched, the cost of memory doubled between the project’s green‑light stage and its market debut, and it has doubled again since then. Such a steep increase can cripple a product’s financial outlook midway through its lifecycle.

He cautions that phone prices will keep climbing into 2027. “If you’ve been waiting to upgrade, the best time was yesterday,” Pei said, emphasizing the daily upward drift in smartphone costs.

The RAM price surge is unlikely to normalize this year, which also means the year‑end sales period won’t bring the discounts consumers have grown accustomed to.

We’re already seeing flagships and mid‑range devices launch at higher price points, entry‑level phones gaining $100‑plus price bumps, and some brands dropping entry‑level phone lines or compact PCs (like the Mac mini). The pricing pressure appears set to stay.

If Computex 2026 taught me one thing, it’s that monitor makers are no longer interested in building one-trick ponies. They want displays that can wear multiple hats, seamlessly switching between work and play without making users choose. Acer’s new Nitro XV345CKR P is perhaps the best example of that philosophy, and after spending time with it on the show floor, I walked away impressed by its ambition while also questioning whether MiniLED is really the future for gaming monitors.

I’ve always had a slightly complicated relationship with MiniLED. On a massive living room TV, it works wonders because you’re sitting several feet away, and the local dimming zones blend beautifully. Put the same technology on a monitor that’s sitting barely two feet from your face, however, and suddenly you’re no longer admiring the display, you’re inspecting the physics behind it.

Acer is trying to build one monitor that does it all

On paper, the Nitro XV345CKR P sounds almost too good to be true. It’s a 34-inch 1500R curved ultrawide with a 5K WUHD (5120 x 2160) resolution, making it considerably sharper than the UWQHD OLED ultrawides that currently dominate the market. That extra resolution doesn’t just make games look cleaner, but also results in noticeably sharper text and far more workspace for coding, writing, spreadsheets, or video editing.

Then comes Acer’s biggest trick: Dynamic Frequency and Resolution (DFR). At the press of a button, the monitor can run at 5K and 180Hz for immersive single-player gaming or productivity, before switching to 2560 x 1080 at 360Hz for competitive titles where every frame counts. It’s an incredibly clever concept that feels like Acer trying to replace both your creator monitor and your gaming monitor with a single display.

The MiniLED implementation itself is equally ambitious. Backed by 1,344 local dimming zones and certified for DisplayHDR 1000, the monitor gets incredibly bright and remained perfectly legible even under the harsh lighting of the Computex show floor. More importantly, this isn’t just another edge-lit VA panel with a fancy sticker slapped on the box. The dense local dimming array delivers significantly better HDR highlights and local contrast, making explosions, reflections, and bright scenes look far more impactful than they would on a conventional LCD monitor.

The technology impressed me, but OLED still lives rent-free in my head

As good as the hardware is, using the Nitro XV345CKR P also reminded me why MiniLED and desktop monitors remain an interesting combination. Because you’re sitting so close to the display, the limitations of local dimming become much easier to spot. During my demo, I could still notice blooming around bright objects against dark backgrounds, and while black levels were certainly improved over a standard VA panel, they never reached the pixel-perfect darkness that OLED panels have conditioned many enthusiasts to expect. That’s less a criticism of Acer and more a limitation of the technology itself.

At the same time, it’s important to give MiniLED the credit it deserves. Compared to a traditional edge-lit VA monitor, this implementation is in another league altogether, delivering excellent brightness, stronger HDR performance, and much better local contrast. It also avoids one concern that continues to make some buyers nervous about OLED: burn-in. For users who spend all day staring at static toolbars, spreadsheets, or editing timelines before gaming at night, that’s a genuine advantage.

Ultimately, I don’t think the Acer Nitro XV345CKR P is trying to dethrone OLED, and that’s perfectly okay. Instead, it’s carving out its own space with a unique blend of razor-sharp 5K clarity, impressive HDR brightness, and the flexibility to switch between productivity and high-refresh gaming in a single display. Most enthusiasts may still gravitate towards OLED, but if priced right, this ambitious MiniLED monitor proves there’s still plenty of room for innovation beyond self-lit pixels.

Wikipedia has long been the internet’s favorite rabbit‑hole. You pop in to verify a single fact and somehow end up reading about ancient empires, obscure inventors, or a centuries‑old battle you never knew existed. Now the online encyclopedia is channeling that curiosity into a new iPhone game – perhaps its smartest move yet.

The feature, called Which came first?, arrived in the latest Wikipedia iOS app after an Android debut. The idea is simple: each day you’re presented with a series of historical events and must decide which occurred earlier. There are five questions per day, each tied to something that happened on that specific date in history. In a mobile‑gaming world full of endless grinding, battle passes, and pushy notifications, a game that merely asks you to pause and think feels refreshing.

A daily history lesson disguised as a game
The charm of Which came first? lies in its minimalism. You don’t need to know every king, war, invention, or scientific breakthrough to enjoy it. In fact, the fun often comes from discovering how badly your sense of history can betray you.

For example, can you tell whether the first email was sent before the first mobile‑phone call? Or whether a famous archaeological find predates a landmark political event? History is packed with moments that seem to belong to different centuries until you compare them side by side. That uncertainty creates a surprisingly satisfying challenge, and even a wrong guess usually leaves you with a memorable fact that sticks longer than a typical trivia question.

This screen time definitely feels productive
Perhaps the most appealing aspect of Wikipedia’s new game is how well it aligns with the platform’s mission. Instead of trapping users in an endless engagement loop, it encourages genuine curiosity. After finishing a round, you’ll likely tap a related article to learn more about the events you just encountered.

Wikipedia also provides an archive of past rounds, letting history buffs revisit older challenges whenever they wish. Gameplay stats track things like your average score and streaks, offering just enough motivation to return without turning the experience into a competitive obsession. You can find Which came first? in the Explore feed of the Wikipedia iPhone app starting today. It may not be the flashiest game on your phone, but it could easily become one of the most rewarding few minutes of your day.

That suspicious text about an unpaid toll, a delayed delivery package, or expiring rewards points may no longer be the work of a lone scammer. These scam texts have been flooding American phones for years, but something has changed.

Google says artificial intelligence is helping fraudsters run larger and more convincing operations than ever before. The company has now filed a lawsuit against a cybercrime network that used Gemini AI to create phishing websites and power a massive scam campaign targeting millions of users.

AI scams are getting harder to spot

Google’s lawsuit targets a Chinese cybercrime network called the Outsider Enterprise. The group coordinated through Telegram and distributed phishing kits to criminals around the world.

Using Google’s Gemini AI, they built fake websites impersonating trusted brands like Google, YouTube, and even the US Postal Service. They used AI to create hundreds of imposter websites at a scale that simply was not possible before.

The group created over 9,000 fake websites and more than one million fraudulent URLs. In just two weeks ending June 1, Android users flagged 55,000 suspicious texts, and the Outsider Enterprise sent 2.5 million messages containing links to fake websites.

The FBI estimates the operation has stolen 3.87 million credit card numbers from victims across dozens of countries, with total losses reaching $1.9 billion since July 2023 (via WSJ).

What is Google doing about it?

Google is asking a New York federal court to shut down the operation entirely. The company is working alongside the FBI and carriers AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon to block these texts before they reach your phone.

Google’s built-in messaging defenses already intercept over 10 billion malicious messages every month, and Android’s scam detection tool flags suspicious calls and contacts in real time.

Google is also pushing for seven bipartisan bills in Congress to make these protections permanent, arguing that legal action alone will not be enough to stop a threat that AI has made effectively limitless.

For months, conversation about Meta’s Ray‑Ban smart glasses has vacillated between awe and wariness. Are they heralding the next wave of wearable computing, or simply another device that raises uncomfortable privacy concerns? This week, the glasses took center stage in a completely different narrative.

The most significant upgrade yet for Meta’s smart glasses

Meta is joining forces with the Blinded Veterans Association (BVA) and the nonprofit tech group TechSoup to provide Ray‑Ban Meta smart glasses to more than 130,000 legally blind veterans across the United States. The devices are being framed as an accessibility solution that could give users greater independence in everyday life.

Veterans who qualify can apply through the BVA to obtain a pair, while veteran organizations can collaborate with TechSoup to broaden distribution. The program goes beyond handing out hardware; recipients will also receive training resources tailored for blind and low‑vision users. These include monthly webinars, in‑person support events, and a dedicated guide that teaches how to trigger voice commands, recognize objects, read documents, answer calls, and manage daily tasks with the glasses. At a time when AI products often seem eager to justify their existence, this approach feels refreshingly practical.

A timely reminder of AI’s brighter side

We recently examined how Meta’s smart glasses are beginning to find meaningful uses beyond social media and content creation. For individuals with vision impairments, the built‑in camera and AI assistant can act as a digital companion, describing surroundings, reading text aloud, and assisting with routine tasks many take for granted. The timing is notable, too.

Just days earlier, Meta’s smart‑glasses ambitions made headlines for a very different reason. A WIRED investigation uncovered that Meta had embedded dormant facial‑recognition code—internally dubbed “NameTag”—into its smart‑glasses ecosystem, later removing it after public scrutiny. The revelation reignited concerns about surveillance and privacy in wearables.

That controversy isn’t fading quickly. Yet stories like this one serve as a reminder that the same technology that sparks privacy fears can also deliver concrete benefits when applied to real‑world challenges. For thousands of blind veterans, the most valuable function of these AI glasses isn’t capturing the world around them; it’s helping them navigate that world with greater autonomy.

Apple introduced the Clean Up tool with iOS 18.1, primarily to erase unwanted objects from photos. The same feature could also be used to conceal faces – you simply draw a circle around a face and the system automatically blurs it, a function Apple markets as “Identity protection.”

With the iOS 27 update, Apple refined Clean Up so it can handle far more intricate scenes. Unfortunately, the first developer beta disables the face‑hiding capability. Instead, it produces an outcome that is both amusing and concerning.

What happens when you try to blur a face in iOS 27?

I discovered this by accident while cleaning up a picture before sharing it. I opened a photo, selected the Clean Up tool, and circled a face just as I always have. On the initial attempts the tool outright lied to me.

It reported that Identity protection had been applied, yet the screenshot shows the face clearly visible. I decided to push further. Rather than circling the face, I painted over it with my finger. That’s when things got strange.

Instead of blurring or removing the face, the system generated an entirely new one. The AI‑crafted face was so convincing that anyone viewing the image would assume it was the original subject, not a replacement.

To rule out a one‑off glitch, I repeated the test with several photos of different people. Every time, circling a face resulted in a false “blurred” message, and painting over it produced a completely new face.

Sure, this is the first developer beta, so bugs are expected, but this feels less like a typical bug and more like an AI hallucination. Apple relies on Gemini models for its Apple Foundation Models, and it appears to be inheriting some of Gemini’s notorious hallucination issues.

What should you do for now?

The upside is that we’re still in the developer beta, giving Apple a chance to fix the problem before the public beta arrives in July. If you depend on this feature for face‑blurring, stick with iOS 26 for the time being, where the blur works as intended.

If you’re already on iOS 27 and need to conceal a face today, your safest bet is the classic emoji‑cover trick. I’ve submitted feedback through Apple’s Feedback app and encourage you to do the same if you encounter the issue.

Early reports increase the likelihood that Apple will address this before release. A privacy‑focused tool shouldn’t be inventing new people, and I hope this hallucination is ironed out quickly.