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Companies mining high-purity quartz in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, have paused operations in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. The quartz is a critical component of the chip-making process — and it’s only found in Spruce Pine. The two mining companies in the area, Sibelco and The Quartz Corp, confirmed that flooding, power outages, and employee … Read more

E-commerce giant eBay, facing stiff competition from newer rivals, has removed final-value sales fees for all items excluding cars sold domestically in the U.K. This mirrors a similar move the company made in Germany last year and notably puts eBay in line with the likes of Vinted and Depop, two newer arrivals winning business among … Read more

Although we’ve seen a few Chromebooks released over the course of the year, there haven’t been any major announcements since the spring. That’s no longer the case, as we’re getting not one but two new and exciting Chromebooks.  These devices were announced alongside a slew of new changes slated to arrive on ChromeOS in the … Read more

Yesterday, Epic sued Samsung for One UI 6.1.1’s Auto Blocker feature. In its lawsuit, the company alleged that Auto Blocker was “intentionally crafted” in coordination with Google to pre-emptively undermine the ruling in Epic’s court cases against Google for app sideloading. Epic thus made Google a party to the suit. While Samsung is staying mum … Read more

Vertical Bridge has acquired the rights to lease and operate over 6,000 wireless towers from Verizon for $3.3 billion as part of a 10-year agreement, with potential extensions of up to 50 years. Capacity Media reports: “Upon the completion of this transaction, these assets, together with our existing portfolio which includes thousands of young, purpose-built … Read more

The model release train continues, with Mistral’s multimodal Pixtral 12B, OpenAI’s o1 models, and Roblox’s model for building 3D scenes. We also have another important AI-enabled programming tool: Cursor is an alternative to GitHub Copilot that’s getting rave reviews. Security will never cease to be a problem, but this month seems particularly problematic. The Mirai … Read more

On Thursday, AI hosting platform Hugging Face surpassed 1 million AI model listings for the first time, marking a milestone in the rapidly expanding field of machine learning. An AI model is a computer program (often using a neural network) trained on data to perform specific tasks or make predictions. The platform, which started as … Read more

AirPods 4 With ANC vs. AirPods Pro 2 Apple last week released the AirPods 4, and one version of the new earbuds has Active Noise Cancellation included. ANC means the AirPods 4 have a feature set that rivals the AirPods Pro 2, so we thought we’d compare the two for those undecided on which to … Read more

EA When it comes to big-budget AAA games, October looks like it will be one of the most densely packed months of the year. We’re getting new entries in beloved series like Dragon Age, Super Mario Party, Call of Duty, and more as well as remakes of games like Silent Hill 2. In between those … Read more

Exploring streaming services beyond what you already use can be difficult, especially when you don’t know where to start. There are options for everyone, and regardless of what you are looking for, you might be able to find a new go-to service once you try out these underrated gems. 1 Kanopy When I stumbled upon … Read more