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Nvidia says its Blackwell AI chip is ‘full steam’ ahead

The Blackwell B200 GPU. | Image: Nvidia

Nvidia has become the world’s most valuable company on the back of AI chips, passing Microsoft and Apple along the way, and in today’s Q3 2025 earnings, the company suggested its record AI revenue and profits are only the beginning.

While The Information recently reported that its new flagship Blackwell AI servers might have cooling issues, the company didn’t address that on today’s call — instead, Nvidia assured investors that Blackwell is in “full production,” is “full steam” ahead, and that the company would continue to deliver more of the chips each quarter from here on out.

Nvidia has already shipped 13,000 Blackwell samples to its customers this quarter, said CFO Colette Kress, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang claimed Blackwell’s…

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Apple fights to keep DOJ antitrust suit from reaching trial

Photo illustration of Tim Cook in front of gavels.
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo by Bloomberg, Getty Images

Apple urged a federal judge to dismiss the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against it, saying the government’s complaint includes speculative arguments and the government doesn’t plausibly argue it has monopoly power.

“The court is allowed to use common sense,” countered DOJ counsel Jonathan Lasken at a hearing in New Jersey on Wednesday. “We’re here today based on the idea that it’s not plausible that [Apple] has monopoly power, but instead is at the mercy of supposed global behemoths who are a fraction of its size.”

The government and more than a dozen states sued Apple earlier this year for maintaining an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market, ultimately driving up prices and locking consumers into its ecosystem. It pointed…

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The NBA will air a Christmas Day game with Disney characters

If you can’t get your kids to sit through one of the five NBA games airing on Christmas Day, tune into Disney+, ESPN+ or ESPN2 for a special Disney-fied version. ESPN announced that it will air a “Dunk the Halls” broadcast of the San Antonio Spurs versus the New York Knicks featuring animated Disney characters.

The broadcast starts at 12PM eastern. If you just want to watch the game played by regular, boring humans, that will also air on Disney+ and ESPN+ as well as ABC and ESPN.

“Dunk the Halls” will use Sony’s Beyond Sports technology to turn Madison Square Garden into Main Street USA from the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. The game will also feature appearances from classic Disney characters like Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Goofy and Donald and Daisy Duck as well as Santa and his elves from the animated Disney short Prep & Landing.

This is the first time the NBA has arranged to air a game with animated characters and graphic overlays. It’s also the latest game in a new trend of mixing live sports events with a network’s signature cartoon characters. ESPN+, Disney+ …read more

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AI landlord screening tool will stop scoring low-income tenants after discrimination suit

Illustration of location plackets dropped on a map.
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

SafeRent, an AI screening tool used by landlords, will no longer use AI-powered “scores” to evaluate whether someone using housing vouchers would make a good tenant. On Wednesday, US District Judge Angel Kelley issued final approval for a roughly $2.3 million settlement to prevent SafeRent from discriminating against tenants based on income and race.

The settlement stems from a 2022 class action lawsuit filed in Massachusetts. The suit alleged that SafeRent’s scoring system disproportionately harmed people using housing vouchers — specifically Black and Hispanic applicants. In addition to violating Massachusetts law, the complaint also accused SafeRent of breaking the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits housing discrimination.

As outlined…

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NASA wants SpaceX and Blue Origin to deliver cargo to the moon

A conceptual rendering of Blue Origin’s cargo lander
A conceptual rendering of Blue Origin’s cargo lander. | Image: Blue Origin / NASA

After asking both SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop cargo landers for its Artemis missions, NASA has announced plans to use those landers to deliver heavy equipment to the Moon.

The agency wants Elon Musk’s SpaceX to use its Starship cargo lander to deliver a pressurized rover to the Moon “no earlier” than 2032, while Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will be tasked with delivering a lunar surface habitat no sooner than 2033. Both launches will support NASA’s Artemis missions, which aim to bring humans back to the Moon for the first time in over 50 years.

Both companies are developing human landing systems for Artemis missions — SpaceX for Artemis III and Blue Origin for Artemis V. NASA later asked both companies to develop cargo-hauling variants…

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Reddit is having some issues

An illustration of the Reddit logo.
Image: The Verge

Reddit appears to be having some issues, as many users can’t get the platform to load reliably. “There was a bug in a recent update we made, but a fix is in place and we’re ramping back up,” Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt said in a statement to The Verge.

Its status page says Reddit is experiencing “degraded performance” across the web and mobile apps, and that it’s “currently investigating the issue.” For many Reddit users, myself included, the site doesn’t load at all and simply displays the error message: “upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers. reset reason: connection failure.”

On Reddit’s mobile app, users are…

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Technology

The best laptop power banks for 2024

Smaller battery packs are great for refiling phones and tablets, but if you need to keep a laptop juiced up while you’re far from an outlet, you’ll need something larger. For this guide, we tested portable chargers with at least a 20,000mAh (74Wh) capacity, but kept the upper limit below 27,000mAh (99Wh), since that’s about the maximum size allowed by the TSA in carry-on luggage. Some laptop power banks sport extra features like wireless charging or an AC plug so you can power small devices such as a travel printer or an LED lamp. But what all of them have in common is a larger size and higher price tag than standard battery packs. So if you don’t want to play a guessing game, these are the best laptop power banks we tested.

Table of contents

Best laptop power banks for 2024

What to look for in a …read more

Technology

The 15 best gifts for dads

The holidays are approaching, and you may be scrambling to figure out what you should get dad for the occasion. If you’re shopping for a father who’s into consumer tech, though, we can help. Below, we’ve consulted our many hours of gadget testing and put together a list of standout gift ideas, from VR headsets to pizza ovens to meat thermometers.

Best gifts for dads in 2024

Check out the rest of our gift ideas here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/best-gifts-for-dads-170014057.html?src=rss …read more

Technology

Meta’s latest features for Messenger Calling include AI backgrounds

If you’re one of the people out there making calls with Meta’s Messenger app, its latest update adds a bunch of new features for making video and audio calls, according to the official Meta blog.

When you make a video call, you can add an AI-generated background to your screen by tapping on the effects icon in the sidebar and selecting “Backgrounds.” So instead of showing your friends and family your grungy apartment or your car that you haven’t cleaned out since you bought it, you can replace the background with a field of sunflowers or an alien landscape as one of its suns is setting. That’s something we’ve seen from basically every other video calling platform, so it’s not a big surprise to see Meta add it here.

Meta also added some new features for video calls including high definition video, background noise suppression and voice isolation “to help you make clearer, higher-quality calls directly from Messenger,” according to the blog.

The HD video feature will be the default mode for Messenger calls made over W-iFi connections. HD calls can also be made on cellular data in settings by turning on “Mobile data for HD video.” Background noise suppression and …read more

Technology

Threads rolls out its custom feeds tool after a quick testing phase

The battle over who will get all of X’s users now that it’s an utter cesspool continues. Threads just began rolling out its own custom feeds feature to compete with rival Bluesky. Custom feeds have long been a hallmark of Bluesky and now Threads users can get in on the action. Meta announced it was testing custom feeds just last week, so those tests must have been successful. It’s either that or they want to stall Bluesky’s continuing momentum.

Simply put, the feature allows users to pin topic-based feeds to the home screen of the app. This gives people the option to scroll through additional feeds beyond the algorithmic “for you” feed. This is a very good thing, as Thread’s current “for you” algorithm can be easily manipulated by just posting stuff like “who likes cats?” I have seen quite literally 400 posts like that in my feed, all looking for engagement. I like cats but, come on.

In any event, users can create a custom feed by searching for keywords and taping the “…” menu to get started. A feed will be created based on the keyword, though the toolset allows for more …read more

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