Local LLMs have turned into useful tools now and can easily handle tasks that you wouldn't have thought of even a year ago. The latest from Google is Gemma 4, and while there are four models in the family, each is tweaked for different tasks.

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but PC and laptop prices have been pretty terrible the past few months. With the great AI rush causing people to vacuum up RAM sticks and storage by the dozen, there isn't much left for folks who want to build or purchase a new computer.

On Monday, Pope Leo XIV unveiled an encyclical letter addressing the societal implications of artificial intelligence. The letter, titled Magnifica Humanitas, warned that the "use of AI is never a purely technical matter: when it enters processes that affect people's lives, it touches on rights, opportunities, status and freedom." Alongside him was Anthropic cofounder and interpretability team lead Christopher Olah, representing a partnership between the Catholic Church and one of the biggest players in AI.The letter elicited a wide range of reactions from in and around the tech industry. Nearly everyone believed the document would be infl …Read the full story at The Verge.

Jellyfin for video, Navidrome for music, and Calibre-Web for ebooks — my home server felt like a nearly complete puzzle. It was clean, complete, and entirely mine. What was missing was an unorganized partition full of CBZ files that I had collected over the years, but never quite dealt with.

There is no shortage of apps you can put on an ESP32. In fact, it feels like someone creates a new app every week that pushes the microcontroller to its limits and achieves something really cool. There's just one problem: actually finding these apps can be a mess. They each have their own GitHub page, with wildly different names, and it can be difficult to find the one app you're looking for.

Tailscale is an awesome software-defined network (SDN) that uses peer-to-peer VPN tunnels for keeping your data safe. But it's not a full replacement for the underlying networks, security stances, and equipment. Yes, you can use it to connect to services you want when outside your home network, but it won't magically fix any issues with that connection.

Xreal says that a01 wearers can also 3D print their own custom front frame designs. | Image by Xreal Augmented reality wearables provider Xreal has launched a new "X By Xreal" (XBX) subbrand, with its first customizable, lightweight smart glasses coming to the US in July. The new a01 AR glasses will be available starting at $299, featuring a "highly stable anti-shake mode" and interchangeable front frames.While the a01 lacks the degrees-of-freedom (DoF) support we typically see on more premium AR glasses to track the wearer's movements and head rotations, it does include what Xreal is calling the "industry-first spatial anti-shake algorithm." This preserves image clarity by reducing shake during turbulent motions, like when you're riding …Read the full story at The Verge.

Liquid cooling returns and is now visible on every version of the phone. Nubia has announced the international launch of the Redmagic 11S Pro, its new flagship Android gaming phone. It's not a significant change from the 11 Pro, which launched internationally last November, but has been upgraded to the overclocked Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Leading Version.Otherwise things look similar. There's a large 7,500mAh battery, fast 80W charging, and a 144Hz screen with an under-display camera. The company's AquaCore cooling returns, combining a 24,000 RPM fan with a true liquid cooling system - not the simple vapor chamber found on other phones. The big downside to the 11S Pro is that the RAM caps at 16GB and the storag …Read the full story at The Verge.

I didn’t start using Claude Code for 3D printing because I wanted it to slice models, tune profiles, or replace the judgment that comes from failed prints. I started using it because my 3D printing folders were slowly turning into a junk drawer with export files, old revisions, screenshots, slicer profiles, and half-finished project notes scattered everywhere. The printer was doing its job, but everything around the printer had become harder to manage than it needed to be. That made Claude Code feel less like a magic wand and more like a decent way to finally clean the workbench.

A fine-looking phone. I had one ask for friends, colleagues, the lady checking me in for a meeting at a large software company's headquarters, and everyone else who stopped to admire the phone I've been carrying around."Pet it."The Razr Ultra is not your average phone. I got the orient blue color option to test, which has a soft, woven back panel made of Alcantara fabric - which you're more likely to find on the seats of a fancy car. I can't stop petting it. I'm worried about how it'll look after spending years in and out of dusty tote bags and my kid's grubby hands, but after a couple of weeks of testing it hasn't picked up any gunk or dirt that I haven't be …Read the full story at The Verge.

It's possible that AI was used to write parts of Pope Leo XIV's latest encyclical about AI's impact on humanity. An analysis by Linch Zhang posted on the forum LessWrong found certain paragraphs of Magnifica Humanitas to be between 40 percent and 100 percent written by AI, according to the popular AI detector Pangram.The document includes known traits that appear in AI-generated writing, such as a higher use of the word "genuinely" - which crops up in writing by Anthropic's Claude - than previous encyclicals, Zhang says. Another person ran the text of the document section by section through Pangram, finding that 62 percent of its first cha …Read the full story at The Verge.

Yellow taxis pass in front of The New York Times newspaper building. | Alexandra Schuler/dpa (Photo by Alexandra Schuler/picture alliance via Getty Images) How newsrooms should use AI - or if they should at all - has been a recurrent debate within the media industry over the last several years. Increasingly, these rules are being hammered out at the bargaining table between unions and publishers. Right now, employees at The New York Times are gearing up for a fight.Unionized staff with the Tech Guild say Times management has refused to provide the union with information related to how the company has used AI, its plans for AI use in the future, and how it will affect employees' jobs and workflow. (The union filed an unfair labor practice charge earlier this month.) The Tech Guild, a NewsGuild …Read the full story at The Verge.