Author: Shivendra Singh

The White House’s favorite source of pro-Trump news is … the White House’s YouTube channel

The most frequently curated content on the White House Wire, the Trump administration’s attempt to aggregate pro-Trump “real news” from across the right-wing media, doesn’t come from Truth Social, Breitbart, or even Fox News. It comes from YouTube – notably, from the White House’s own channel.

The White House Wire was launched at the end of April on the official WH.gov page, around the time that the Trump comms team began ramping up its war on the mainstream journalists and outlets who covered them critically. At that time, they’d revoked the Associated Press’ credentials after the outlet refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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We confirmed Nintendo’s Switch 2 TV dock supports VRR — so why doesn’t it work with Switch 2?

You want your games to play the smoothest they possibly can – but sometimes, screen technology gets in the way. That’s why some of the latest TVs and handhelds feature variable refresh rate (VRR) screens that can compensate when your graphics can’t deliver a consistent 60 or 120 frames per second.

The Nintendo Switch 2 has a VRR screen – and originally, Nintendo advertised that the Switch 2 would also work with your VRR-capable TV. But Nintendo soon scrubbed mentions of docked VRR from its website, and on May 16th, it apologized. “Nintendo Switch 2 supports VRR in handheld mode only,” the company told Nintendo Life, apologizing for “the in …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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Here are the letters that let Apple and Google ignore the TikTok ban

Here are the letters that let Apple and Google ignore the TikTok ban

More than six months after TikTok was briefly banned, we still don’t know exactly what its fate in the US will be. But we do have new insight into the legal wrangling that has allowed Apple, Google and other platforms to continue to support the app.

If you remember, TikTok was only “banned” for a matter of hours shortly before President Donald Trump took office in January and delayed enforcement of the law. The app’s service was promptly restored January 19, 2025, but the app didn’t return to Apple and Google’s app stores until February 13. Reporting at the time suggested the companies had lingering concerns about potential liability for running afoul of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.

Back in February, Axios and others reported that the Justice Department had given “assurances” to tech platforms that they wouldn’t be penalized for violating the law. Now, we know exactly what Attorney General Pam Bondi told the companied as letters sent to Apple, Google, Amazon, Oracle and other firms have been made public. The letters were disclosed in a Freedom of Information Act Request made by Tony Tan, a software engineer …read more

Here are the letters that convinced Google and Apple to keep TikTok online

Attorney General Pam Bondi at a lectern alongside President Donald Trump

A Freedom of Information Act request has produced letters that the US Department of Justice sent to Google, Apple, Amazon, and several other companies in order to assuage their concerns about breaking a law that banned US web services from working with TikTok.

The documents — obtained by Zhaocheng Anthony Tan, a Google shareholder who sued for their release earlier this year — show Attorney General Pam Bondi and her predecessor Acting Attorney General James McHenry III promising to release companies from responsibility for violating the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which required US companies to ban TikTok from app stores and other platforms or face hundreds of billions of dollars in fines. The law was intended to force a sale of TikTok from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, due to national security concerns.

Additionally, the letters say the Justice Department will step in to prevent anyone else from attempting to enforce penalties, a promise that includes filing amicus briefs or “intervening in litigation.” McHenry apparently sent the first round of letters on January 30th, ten days after Trump signed an executive order delaying enforcement of the law, which took effect the day before his …read more

Meet Soham Parekh, the engineer burning through tech by working at three to four startups simultaneously

A photo of someone coding at a keyboard.

One name is popping up a lot across tech startup social media right now, and you might’ve heard it: Soham Parekh. On X, people are joking that Parekh is single-handedly holding up all modern digital infrastructure, while others are posting memes about him working in front of a dozen different monitors or filling in for the thousands of people that Microsoft just laid off.

From what social media posts suggest, Parekh is actually a software engineer who seems to have interviewed at dozens of tech startups over the years, while also juggling multiple jobs at the same time. Several startups had this revelation on July 2nd, when Suhail Doshi, fo …

Read the full story at The Verge.

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Neither AI nor E Ink can make touchscreen trackpads a good idea

E Ink, the company behind the highly readable displays you’ll find in ereaders the world over, has created a new touchscreen trackpad for some reason. And rather than act as an extension of your laptop’s screen, E Ink thinks it should be a dedicated home for AI interactions.

The new touchscreen trackpad appears to use a color E Ink display, not unlike what you’ll find on the Kobo Libra Colour or the Kindle Colorsoft, and is supposed to offer the normal swiping, tapping, dragging and clicking functionality of a normal trackpad. When you’re not using it like that, E Ink imagines the trackpad offering “second-screen capabilities,” like quick access to “frequently used shortcuts and system notifications and GenAI contents like text/image summaries, gaming tactics, or custom AI tasks.”

E Ink says it leveraged several different Intel technologies to prototype its AI tools, and it specifically designed the trackpad so it’s useable even if your laptop is off. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make the idea of cramming a touchscreen into a laptop trackpad any less whack.

E Ink

Using an E Ink display is novel, sure, but plenty of attempts have been made to turn the …read more

Get two Blink Mini 2 security cameras for only $35 in this Prime Day deal

Get two Blink Mini 2 security cameras for only $35 in this Prime Day deal

The best value in security cameras is back. This early Prime Day deal has two Blink Mini 2 cameras for only $35. That’s half off — and $5 less than you’d usually pay for only one of them. This matches a Black Friday record low for the pair.

The Blink Mini 2 is a recent offering, arriving in 2024. The compact camera has a built-in LED spotlight, a low-light sensor and color night vision capabilities. It supports 1080p live view, which should be plenty sharp enough for regular use. Its field of view is wider than that of the original model. (It’s 143 degrees diagonally vs. 110 in its predecessor.)

Being an Amazon product, it’s no surprise that it works with Alexa. The camera has two-way audio, so you can chat with your pooch while you’re out. It also supports person detection, but you’ll need a subscription for that. (They start at $3 per month or $30 per year for one device.)

Although it’s primarily an indoor camera, you can also use the Blink Mini 2 outdoors. However, that requires a $10 …read more

Crunchyroll blames third-party vendor for AI subtitle mess

At the start of last year, Crunchyroll President Rahul Purini told The Verge the company was “very focused on testing” generative AI tools for subtitling and captioning speech to text. The comment came just months after the streamer temporarily took down the debut episode of one of its newest shows, The Yuzuki Family’s Four Sons, after people complained about poor subtitles. 

Much of the translation was nonsensical, with missing punctuation in many sentences. At the time, some fans speculated the company had used AI to translate the episode. Earlier this week, fresh accusations of AI use came up when an episode of new anime showed evidence ChatGPT was used to write the subtitles.

Igor Bonifacic for Engadget

On July 1, Bluesky user Pixel spotted an issue with the German subtitles for Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show, one of the new series Crunchyroll is streaming this anime season. Beyond a general sloppiness, one line began with the words “ChatGPT said…” during a pivotal scene in the show’s debut episode. Engadget was able to independently verify the episode contains the AI-generated translation. If you’re curious, the English subtitles aren’t much better, as seen in the screenshots above …read more