Beta participants will get a discount when the service goes live in July.T-Mobile’s Starlink-powered direct-to-cell satellite messaging service is now open for anyone in the US to try for free — including people who aren’t T-Mobile customers. The service will be limited to text messaging at first but the company hopes to have some apps and even limited multimedia support ready by the time it goes live this summer. It will cost T-Mobile users $15 per month once the free testing period ends in July, or $10 for customers who participated in the beta trial. Verizon and AT&T customers can also try the service for free according to T-Mobile’s press release, and will pay $20 a month per line. T-Mobile customers paying for the carrier’s priciest Go5G Next plan (which starts at $105 per month) will have the Starlink feature baked in at no additional cost. If you watched last night’s Super Bowl, then you might have been misled by T-Mobile’s ad. While it showcased satellite-supported voice and multimedia messaging capabilities, the public beta test only includes texting in dead zones for now. Support for picture messages, data, and voice calls is “coming later.” Mike Katz, T-Mobile’s president of marketing, strategy, and products told The Washington Post that messages with photos or video clips will be added by the end of the beta period in July. Katz also expects the satellite service to work with apps that “don’t require super-fast data connections,” such as certain trail/mapping services and WhatsApp.“We’ll be working with a bunch of app manufacturers to create features in their apps that can optimize to the available bandwidth of the satellite network,” Katz said.Registrations for the free beta opened in December, after T-Mobile and Starlink tested direct-to-cell emergency alerts and texts in disaster zones last year. T-Mobile says it’s accepting users who register on a “rolling first-come, first-served basis,” but quietly discloses that there are “limited spots available” in the fine print. The Starlink-enabled service works on “most smartphones from the last four years” according to T-Mobile, which lists currently compatible devices from Apple, Google, Motorola, Samsung, and REVVL on its website.SpaceX is partnering with carriers around the world for direct-to-cell Starlink services. In December it launched nationwide in New Zealand. AST SpaceMobile, which is partnering with Verizon and AT&T on their rival satellite-to-cell services, recently received regulatory approval to begin testing.

If you've been looking for a new laptop and wanted something with tons of power, then this MSI Vector 16 HX is going to be right up your alley. This laptop is built for gaming, featuring an Intel Core i9 processor, along with Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card. While it's normally priced at $2099, it can now be had for far less, with a sweet discount that knocks $300 off for a limited time.

Love them or hate them, Large Language Models are increasingly woven into the fabric of technology across the internet, smartphones, and personal computers. Your office suite now comes integrated with CoPilot, and Adobe's creative suite has its own AI assistant built in. But working with cloud-hosted LLMs comes with some tradeoffs -- privacy.

Despite their similar sizes and affordable prices, microcontrollers and single-board computers have vastly different specifications and use cases. After all, MCUs are designed for circuitry, automation, and embedded system projects, while SBCs are all-purpose devices better suited for tasks that require more computational prowess.

We've seen people do some pretty crazy things when trying to get their hardware down to as cool as possible. For instance, how about that time someone added liquid nitrogen cooling to their Raspberry Pi? Well, it turns out that people aren't done doing wild things with their cooling systems, as someone strapped an air conditioning unit to their GPU.

Microsoft introduced the new Outlook app on Windows 11, which is impressive and has outstanding functionality. Even if you prefer the old version and want to use this trick to keep your PC free of the new Outlook, the new email app is worth a second look, since that won’t last forever, as Microsoft will inevitably patch the loophole. Plus, the latest version can help you stay productive throughout your day.

Nvidia's RTX 50 series GPUs were announced over a month ago. The dust has now settled, the cards have been out for a while, and the disappointment is universal. The Blackwell lineup has delivered middling gains over the previous generation, with the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 being little more than "Ti" versions of their predecessors.

Watches, like their phone counterparts, have come in leaps and bounds over the last decade alone. If you want to check out the latest in smartwatch technology, then OnePlus has just the announcement for you. The company has announced its brand new OnePlus Watch 3, and the release date is very soon.

OpenAI just made its Super Bowl debut with a 60-second spot that positions AI alongside humanity’s greatest innovations.The commercial traces humanity’s technological evolution through a distinctive pointillism-inspired animation style, transforming abstract dots into iconic images of progress – from early tools like fire and the wheel to modern breakthroughs like DNA sequencing and space exploration. It culminates with modern AI applications, showing ChatGPT handling everyday tasks like drafting business plans and language tutoring. The ad cost roughly $14 million for the first-half placement.The commercial, developed under new CMO Kate Rouch, deliberately avoids mentioning AGI or superintelligence, which are at the core of OpenAI’s mission. Instead, it focuses on practical applications. “We want the message to feel relevant to the audience that is watching the Super Bowl, which includes tens of millions of people who have no familiarity with AI,” Rouch tells The Verge, noting there should be about 130 million people watching.While OpenAI’s text-to-video AI Sora was used during conception to rapidly prototype ideas and explore different camera treatments, the final …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you’ve ever tried searching “How to uninstall Microsoft Edge” on Bing, one of the top results would be a how-to article by none other than Microsoft itself. Well, instead of answering the question in its headline, the page did the complete opposite. Not only did it dodge the uninstallation process entirely, but it also took the opportunity to throw some major shade at Google Chrome.

Rivian’s electric commercial van. | Image: RivianRivian’s electric van is now available to be purchased by anyone with a commercial fleet, the automaker said today. For several years, Rivian’s van was exclusive to Amazon. Now, the platform on which the e-commerce giant based its delivery van is open to anyone with a fleet of commercial vehicles and some money to burn.Amazon agreed to buy 1000,000 Rivian vans in 2019 as part of a blockbuster deal that would also include a $1 billion investment into the startup. Under the terms of the agreement, Rivian would sell its vans exclusively to Amazon. But that partnership ended prematurely in November 2023, with Amazon only acquiring around 20,000 vans from Rivian — or about 20 percent of the original commitment. Amazon remains Rivian’s largest shareholder, with an estimated 17 percent stake in the company. Rivian says it will sell anywhere from a single van to thousands to individual buyers, depending on their needs. However, the vans can’t be for personal use (sorry #vanlifers) and must be registered as part of a business. The vans come in two sizes and two prices: the RCV 500 starts at $79,900, while the RCV 700 starts at $83,900.Rivian says it has spent the time since the end of its exclusivity deal with Amazon trialing the van in some larger fleets (like AT&T’s), while also building out a service and software business for its future van customers.“Over the last year we have been focusing our efforts on testing with some larger fleets, and we’re really pleased with how those trials have gone,” said Tom Solomon, senior director of business development at Rivian, in a statement. “As a result, we’re excited to now be able to open sales to fleets of all sizes in the US, whether they want 1 van or thousands.”The electric van market has been volatile. General Motors spun off and then reabsorbed BrightDrop, its electric commercial vehicle business, after deciding the market was too fragile for BrightDrop to stand on its own. Ford has seen some success with its E-Transit vans, selling 12,610 of them in 2024, which was a 64 percent increase from 2023. And Mercedes-Benz revealed its eSprinter van in 2023, with deliveries expected to begin later this year.Being able to sell its electric vans to a wider pool of customers could be good for Rivian’s financial situation, which has been relatively shaky over the past few years. The vans have better profit margins than the company’s R1T and R1S vehicles. And Rivian can also sell subscriptions to the various software features within the van, boosting its long-term value overall.

When it comes to taking quick notes, most Windows users prefer Notepad. It's simple, pre-installed, and gets the job done — but is it the best option? While it serves its purpose for basic text editing, Notepad lacks many features that modern users need for efficiency and productivity. Enter Sublime Text, a lightweight yet powerful text editor that goes far beyond basic note-taking.