Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed sales figures for the company’s Ray-Ban smart glasses for the first time, telling employees that over 1 million units were sold in 2024. In remarks during an all-hands meeting seen by The Verge, Zuckerberg posed a question to staff about whether sales would go from 1 million to as much as 5 million units in 2025.“I think one of the questions for us is, are we going to go from 1 million this year to 2 million? Are we going to go from 1 million to 5 million?” Zuckerberg said. Since the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses first launched in 2023, they have gradually added new features, such as multimodal AI to process what you’re seeing, hearing, and reading, along with live AI and translations.“We basically invented the category and our competitors haven’t really shown up yet,” Zuckerberg said during the meeting. “I think we’ll probably start seeing some of that maybe a little later this year, maybe next year, but we just have this wide open field right now to run and basically introduce as many people as possible to Meta AI glasses and we should take that opportunity.”Meta declined to comment for this story.Meta is expected to take an …Read the full story at The Verge.

Anyone who's used Windows in recent years has likely heard of Windows PowerShell at some point. This CLI-based scripting tool and terminal has been around for nearly 19 years at this point, and it's a pretty important tool for IT admins and enthusiasts. Scripting helps you automate tasks and get certain things done faster. Plus, for tasks you'd usually do with the Command Prompt, PowerShell can have more human-friendly language.

Creative image editors have long been attempting to find alternatives to using Photoshop for everything. Photoshop is expensive and locked behind annual subscriptions that tie you down, but the power and development of Photoshop still give reasons that it’s often the best tool to use. There are great alternatives to Photoshopwhether you pay or use open-source creative alternatives, but even when GIMP makes the top spot in most lists, Photoshop still has plenty of features GIMP can’t replace.

Whether you're still pretty new to the gaming scene or have been holding a controller since the Atari days, there's always something cool about video game preservation. For the veterans, they're a trip down memory lane; for those who are relatively new to the scene, they're a cool insight into how games played and felt and can give background on how some of the most powerful IPs in the gaming world got their footing as a fledgling title.

Here’s what the certification logo looks like, which may be used on book covers, spines, and promotional materials.The Authors Guild — one of the largest associations of writers in the US — has launched a new project that allows authors to certify that their book was written by a human, and not generated by artificial intelligence.The Guild says its “Human Authored” certification aims to make it easier for writers to “distinguish their work in increasingly AI-saturated markets,” and that readers have a right to know who (or what) created the books they read. Human Authored certifications will be listed in a public database that anyone can access. The project was first announced back in October in response to a deluge of AI-generated books flooding online marketplaces like Amazon and its Kindle ebook platform.Certification is currently restricted to Authors Guild members and books penned by a single writer, but will expand “in the future” to include books by non-Guild members and multiple authors. Books and other works must be almost entirely written by humans to qualify for a Human Authored mark, with minor exceptions to accommodate things like AI-powered grammar and spell-check applications.“The Human Authored initiative isn’t about rejecting technology — it’s about creating transparency, acknowledging the reader’s desire for human connection, and celebrating the uniquely human elements of storytelling,” guild CEO Mary Rasenberger said in a statement on Wednesday. “Authors can still qualify if they use AI as a tool for spell-checking or research, but the certification connotes that the literary expression itself, with the unique human voice that every author brings to their writing, emanated from the human intellect.”

Ever since I graduated from school, I've stopped taking notes in physical notebooks. I now take notes on my smartphone, tablet, or laptop like most people online. My default note-taker has been Google Keep for years now -- primarily because it came pre-installed on my smartphone a long time back, and I didn't bother looking for third-party options. But, more recently, I learned that there are several apps that offer extra functionality and help you take notes in a better way. This opened up a rabbit hole for me to decipher the best note-taking app out there.

Vodafone has made what it calls “the world’s first” satellite video call using a standard smartphone, in a test of a system it says will provide mobile broadband service to 4G and 5G phones without dedicated satellite hardware. The service, using satellites from SpaceX rival AST SpaceMobile, is expected to launch in Europe before the end of 2025.AT&T and Verizon have also cut deals with Texas-based AST SpaceMobile to provide satellite-to-smartphone services across the US. The company has received FCC approval to begin testing its US-based coverage for AT&T this spring, meaning a full rollout is likely to lag behind Europe.Last year SpaceX demonstrated its own Starlink satellite-based video call between two US-based employees using “unmodified mobile phones.” That means Vodafone’s effort may not quite be a world-first, though unlike SpaceX it made the call from a remote area that apparently has no existing cell service.For Vodafone’s demonstration, an engineer (and, charmingly, his dog) made the call to Vodafone CEO Margherita Della Valle from an unnamed “remote mountain region” of Wales which the company says has never had mobile coverage before. The quality isn’t pristine — the video is choppy, with noticeable lag — but the call, which lasts about 45 seconds, does seem stable.Vodafone partnered with AST SpaceMobile for the satellite service, using the five low Earth orbit BlueBird satellites the company has launched so far. The signal is routed through a space-to-land gateway which connects the satellites to Vodafone’s terrestrial network. Vodafone sees it as a “complementary” technology that can plug the gaps in its existing mobile network, covering remote areas including mountains and out at sea. The direct-to-smartphone satellite service is expected to “close the last remaining coverage gaps” in Europe in 2026.AST SpaceMobile’s satellite system connects using standard 4G and 5G signals, so there’s no requirement to use a phone with dedicated satellite components. Beyond video calling, Vodafone says it offers a “full mobile broadband experience,” with peak speeds of up to 120 megabits per second, that “goes beyond other low Earth orbit satellite constellations which have so far only facilitated text messaging.”Satellite connectivity is already available on certain iPhones and Google Pixel phones that include specific modem components, but is mostly limited to emergency alerts, location-sharing, and SMS messages. T-Mobile is beta testing its own US network in partnership with the Starlink Direct-to-Cell service that will also work with standard smartphones, though this will be limited to text messages at first, with calls and data to be added in the future.“Vodafone’s job is to get everyone connected, no matter where they are,” says Della Valle. “We are bringing customers the best network and connecting people who have never had access to mobile communications before. This will help to close the digital divide, supporting people from all corners of Europe to keep in touch with family and friends, or work, as well as ensuring reliable rural connectivity in an emergency.”There’s been no announcement yet about pricing for the service.

When you have a trail of photos, messages, memories, videos, and online creations scattered across devices and platforms, it is important to document everything in one location. While there are countless apps designed to archive and showcase our digital lives, they often come with limitations or hefty subscription fees. Here is where OneNote jumps in.

As has become an annual tradition, Apple just reported blockbuster earnings for the company’s most recent holiday quarter. “Today Apple is reporting our best quarter ever, with revenue of $124.3 billion, up four percent from a year ago,” CEO Tim Cook said in a press release. Revenue was up nearly across the board for the company’s Mac, iPad, and services divisions.But the numbers show a slight dip in year-over-year iPhone revenue, seemingly confirming that Apple Intelligence isn’t doing much to drive iPhone sales. The same goes for that new Camera Control button, I suppose. Cook tried to dismiss the notion that Apple Intelligence isn’t compelling people to upgrade in an interview with CNBC. “During the December quarter, we saw that in markets where we had rolled out Apple intelligence, that the year-over-year performance on the iPhone 16 family was stronger than those markets where we had not rolled out Apple intelligence,” he said.The standard iPhone 16 models are a particularly excellent value this year, which isn’t always the case. So that could also factor into the slightly lower revenue if fewer people are opting for the Pro variants.Apple has taken a cautious approach in rolling out its AI-powered features, having only just turned them on by default with this week’s release of iOS 18.3. Cook again confirmed that Apple Intelligence will become available in more languages in April. So far, the tools are convenient and helpful, but not game changing. And those promised improvements to Siri can’t come soon enough.This tends to be Apple’s most crucial quarter of the year for two reasons. It includes the all-important holiday shopping season, and since the iPhone 16 lineup was on sale for the entire three-month duration, this is our best indication yet of demand for Apple’s latest phones. The company also released several new Macs near the end of last year including a redesigned, much smaller Mac Mini and refreshed MacBook Pros. Revenue for Apple’s wearables business, which includes the Apple Watch and AirPods, was also slightly down compared to the year-ago quarter.

Last quarter, amid turmoil and restructuring, chipmaker Intel announced one of the largest corporate quarterly losses of all time — $16.6 billion, ten times worse than its $1.6B loss the quarter before. But in today’s Q4 2024 and full-year earnings release, Intel’s not hurting as badly: the company just announced a mere $126 million quarterly loss on $14.3 billion in revenue, and its executives are talking about simplifying the company so it can win in the future.The company isn’t in great shape despite the staunched bleeding, as its primary businesses were all down this quarter and barely up over the full year (see table below). And if you thought its chipmaking foundries were spending too much back when they lost $7 billion in 2023, well, Intel just revealed the foundries lost nearly double that — $13.4 billion — across 2024.Some people would argue that foundry money is just the price Intel’s paying to invest in its future, catch up to rivals, and stay the only major chipmaker that designs and fabricates its chips from scratch. And by “some people,” I mean it was ousted Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger’s goal. But now he’s gone, there have been more whispers about Intel spinning off its chipmaking businesses, something Gelsinger somewhat seeded himself. Today on the earnings call, Intel co-CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus didn’t commit to either keeping or spinning out the foundries, but hinted that “Intel Foundry will need to earn my business every day, just as I need to earn the business of my customers.” Either way, she seems to see them as a pair: “A stronger Intel Products combined with a more competitive Intel Foundry is a recipe for success overall.” Interim co-CEO David Zinsner says building that competitive foundry is still the goal.Intel says its foundry business is doing better anyhow, with reduced losses of $2.3 billion last quarter, expected “financial improvements” coming next year as it ramps production of its extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) chips, and a plan to hit “op inc break-even” by the end of 2027. Intel was also the largest recipient of the CHIPS Act, though that amounted to single-digit billions worth of government funding for its foundries: $7.68 billion, of which it’s received $2.2 billion so far. Intel says its all-important 18A process, which uses EUV, will produce chips in volume in the second half of next year. (That’s when Panther Lake, the successor to its Lunar Lake laptop chips, will arrive.) But a follow-on chip, Nova Lake, sounds like it’ll be a mix of Intel and non-Intel manufacturing. “You’ll actually see compute tiles inside and outside again, it’s about optimizing to what allows us to win in the market,” says Holthaus on the call.Intel is also hurting in the great race for AI chips, with its Gaudi far behind Gelsinger’s goals, and Holthaus admits the company’s not doing well in the AI data center. “I am not happy with where we are today,” she said on the call, admitted that “we’re not yet participating in the cloud-based AI data center market in a meaningful way.”To help speed things up, she says Intel is canceling its next big AI chip, codename Falcon Shores, and keeping it “as an internal test chip only without bringing it to market.” She says the plan is to “simplify our roadmap and concentrate our resources.” The company will focus on Jaguar Shores, a “system-level solution at rack scale,” instead, with the goal of building that entire solution rather than just the chips. She also hinted that Intel might aim to be less pricy than the Nvidia AI competition, with the “most compelling total cost of ownership,” similar to what we’d heard from AMD.Overall, Holthaus says she thinks about Intel’s future products in “three buckets”: client and edge, traditional data center, and AI data center, and she plans to simplify Intel’s business as a result. “We cannot be all things to all people,” she says. “We are prioritizing areas where we can drive differentiated value.” Within its core businesses, though, Holthaus says the company will “fight for every socket” where an Intel chip can go. “We need to be aggressive, we need to win share, and we need to show our customers they can win with us,” says Holthaus.Over the full year, Intel lost $18.76 billion on $53.1 billion in revenue. Intel says it has nothing new to share about the search for a permanent CEO, save that the search is progressing. Meanwhile, the company seems to be laying off just as many employees as promised: by the end of 2024, it had 15,000 fewer employees than it did the previous quarter, the company confirmed today.This was the first Intel earnings call from Intel’s new interim co-CEOs, one of whom promised at CES 2025 that the company’s actually still committed to graphics, though we didn’t hear much else about graphics on today’s call.

After Nvidia showed off the new RTX 50 series, the world has been abuzz with talk about DLSS. Some people have been discussing how the new frame-generation technology can help give the world of graphics technology a boost in the frames department, while others are a little more critical. Now, the company has released DLSS 4 to the app, which the company claims is the biggest upgrade since DLSS 2.0's release in 2020.

If you’ve just begun learning about 3D printing, you might not realize how much the device is capable of. You might think it’s only useful for making fidgets, toys, and prototypes. Consumer printers can do so much more than that. In fact, you can create things that range from the incredibly useful to the gorgeous and fantastic, even with the most budget-friendly 3D printer. From everyday things that make your life easier to super cool designs that will wow your friends and family, 3D printing is a versatile tool that can help you bring your ideas to life.