Thinking Machines, the AI company founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, announced Monday that it's working on something called "interaction models." The idea behind interaction models, according to Thinking Machines, is that they will let people "collaborate with AI the way we naturally collaborate with each other - they continuously take in audio, video, and text, and think, respond, and act in real time."As explained by Thinking Machines:Today's models experience reality in a single thread. Until the user finishes typing or speaking, the model waits with no perception of what the user is doing or how the user is doing it. Until th …Read the full story at The Verge.

OpenAI is launching Daybreak, an AI initiative focused on detecting and patching vulnerabilities before attackers find them. Daybreak uses the Codex Security AI agent that launched in March to create a threat model based on an organization's code and focus on possible attack paths, validate likely vulnerabilities, and then automate the detection of the higher risk ones.Its launch comes just over a month after rival Anthropic announced Claude Mythos, a security-focused AI model it claimed was too dangerous to publicly release and only shared privately as a part of its own initiative, dubbed Project Glasswing. Still, that didn't stop at leas …Read the full story at The Verge.

The Reon Pocket Pro Plus delivers a 20 percent improvement in cooling performance over last year’s model. | Image: Sony Sony has announced a new version of the wearable personal air conditioner the company first revealed in 2019 ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The latest version is an upgrade to last year's Pro model, and while the new Reon Pocket Pro Plus isn't a complete overhaul of the hardware, it comes with performance upgrades and design updates making it easier to wear discreetly under many kinds of shirts. It's launching in Europe and other markets today for €229/£199, or around $270. As with all the previous versions, Sony hasn't mentioned plans to bring it to the US.Instead of simply blasting you with air like the Dyson HushJet Mini Cool, the Re …Read the full story at The Verge.

I spent countless hours researching the absolute best components for my dream 1440p gaming setup, meticulously cross-referencing CPU architecture, optimal VRAM capacities, and high-end motherboard power delivery systems before making my purchases. When the final package arrived and the system successfully booted on the very first try, I genuinely believed the hard work was complete, and I could finally enjoy the fruit of my labor. However, the reality of my initial gaming sessions was far less spectacular than the benchmark charts had promised. I was left deeply frustrated and questioning my expensive hardware investments.

I ran Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 4 for over a year. Though the Pi booted from an NVMe SSD, the Pi's 4GB memory limit became difficult to ignore as I built ESPHome devices. Recently, I moved Home Assistant to a mini PC and almost shelved the Pi, since it was just sitting in the corner doing nothing.

Server dashboards are rarely one-size-fits-all. Requirements, styling, and use cases vary widely from user to user. They are either lightweight but limited, or feature-packed but heavier than the containers they monitor. In my case, I run my homelab server on a repurposed desktop, and I'm already running more than 17 Docker containers across seven services. In other words, the server was already near its limits, so a heavy, feature-packed dashboard wasn't a viable option in my case.

The idea of having everything running locally has always appealed to me. I swap in a self-hosted alternative for any service that'll take one. It allows me to avoid a lot of monthly fees, it keeps my data off of third-party servers, and I don't need to rely on someone else's service being available. I tried applying this same philosophy to AI by pulling a few different models through Ollama, with the hope that it would eventually eliminate the need for cloud models like ChatGPT and Claude.

The company behind the robot lawn mower that ran me over has changed its tune. Yarbo now plans to completely remove the remote backdoor access that could have let bad actors reprogram the robot over the internet. Yarbo customers will be able to decide whether that feature even gets installed in the first place, co-founder Kenneth Kohlmann pledges to The Verge.Yarbo had already promised on Friday that it would tackle many security issues head-on, closing the holes that let security researcher Andreas Makris easily hijack any of the bladed robots from the other side of the globe, while also exposing email addresses and GPS locations. But whe …Read the full story at The Verge.

iRobot upgrades its lidar-based robot vacuum line with eight new models. | Image: iRobot iRobot has announced a new line of Roombas, a year after it debuted its first lidar-based robot vacuums. This week, it introduced eight robot vacuums that improve on its current lineup and feature lower prices, some up to £200 (about $270) cheaper. Key changes include higher suction power, a smaller overall size to better navigate your home, more models with roller mops, and the introduction of "hot spot mopping." iRobot filed for bankruptcy late last year, underwent a reboot, and is now owned by Shenzhen Picea Robotics, a Chinese original design manufacturer of robotic vacuums. The company says its new lineup is up to 25 percent smaller f …Read the full story at The Verge.

As great as Linux can be, it's easy to look at the sheer number of desktops and distros you can use and be overwhelmed by all the differences between them. The truth is we often talk about Linux in contrast to Windows, but the latest Windows version only has one desktop paradigm, and even across versions, it doesn't tend to change that dramatically; so, having different Linux platforms be so radically different on the surface can be confusing.

Cooling is essential for any PC, because proper airflow can keep your system running longer and harder, while also potentially increasing performance. So, it's something worth taking a look at whether you're building a new PC or looking to upgrade something you've been using for years.

It’s no secret that AI-powered development has moved from simple autocomplete to full-scale autonomous agents. But the real question is, which popular tool survives a week of deadlines and complex refactoring?