After so many years of watching Mac owners use Arm-based processors, Windows mini PC fans have been waiting for their turn. That wait is now over, after seeing laptops with Qualcomm Snapdragon X systems-on-a-chip running Windows on Arm released over the last year. The $604 Lenovo ThinkCenter Neo 50q uses the entry-level Snapdragon X SoC, and brings all the benefits of Arm to the desktop for Windows users. This is the first mini PC using Arm that didn't come from Apple, and that makes it all the more special.

ElevenLabs is launching an online marketplace that allows companies to license AI-replicated voices of famous figures for their content and advertisements. The AI audio startup says its new Iconic Voice Marketplace resolves some of the ethical concerns around using AI-generated celebrity voices by providing brands with the “consent-based, performer-first approach the industry has been calling for.”It works by connecting companies with whoever owns the rights to a specific voice, with ElevenLabs’ platform serving as a middleman that formalizes the licensing deal and synthesizes the voices. ElevenLabs says the marketplace is only open to a curated list of “verified, iconic talent and IP owners,” to ensure that the voices of notable figures are only generated “with permission, transparency, and fair compensation.”Some of the AI voices have been achieved using cloning technology, while others have been synthetically replicated by referencing historical or archival audio. I guess it would have been a mouthful to call this a “marketplace for voices of famous people,” given the list includes historical figures like Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, and Alan Turing, and most people wouldn’t recognize what they actually sound like. Michael Caine is one of the few living celebrities to lend his voice to ElevenLabs, and said the company “gives everyone the tools to be heard.”“It’s not about replacing voices; it’s about amplifying them, opening doors for new storytellers everywhere,” Caine said in a statement on ElevenLabs’ announcement. “I’ve spent a lifetime telling stories. ElevenLabs will help the next generation tell theirs.”Here’s the full list of all 28 voices that are currently available on the marketplace:Michael CaineLiza MinelliArt GarfunkelShoeless Joe JacksonJudy GarlandJohn WayneBettie PageBurt ReynoldsMaya AngelouRichard FeynmanLaurence OlivierAmelia EarhartBabe RuthMark TwainTy CobbJack DempseyRocky MarcianoAl JoynerJohnny WeissmullerJim ThorpeThomas EdisonJean HarlowLana TurnerMickey RooneyMontgomery CliftAlan TuringJ. Robert OppenheimerRock Hudson

I upgraded my gaming PC this year after finally settling on an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Radeon RX 9070 XT. I don't typically have the latest and greatest hardware, but I decided to go all-out with the CPU for gaming and workflow. The GPU is one of the best AMD has to offer, though it still pales in comparison to Nvidia's flagship GeForce RTX 5090. Still, I managed to find a way to upgrade the entire setup for less than $25, and all it took was hunting down a gorgeous mousepad with decent build quality and fabric to allow my mouse to glide across the surface. I think I did a solid job with this Japanese-inspired mousepad from Desero.

If you didn’t get around to reading more this year, now’s a great time to start. That’s because Amazon is selling the latest Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition in like-new condition for $126.99 ($53 off), which matches the e-reader’s best price to date. If you haven’t purchased a refurbished product from Amazon before, know that each refurb model is inspected, cleaned, and tested to ensure it’s fully functional; they also come with the same one-year limited warranty as new products.2024 Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition (refurbished)Where to Buy: $179.99 $126.99 at Amazon (black) $179.99 $126.99 at Amazon (jade) $179.99 $126.99 at Amazon (pink)Amazon’s Signature Edition model offers a few upgrades over the standard Paperwhite, which remains our favorite Kindle despite the arrival of the new Kindle Scribe and Kindle Colorsoft. For starters, it supports an optional wireless charging dock, allowing you to easily top it off each night. Even if you forget to charge it, though, it should last for up to 12 weeks on a single charge. The step-up model also features an auto-adjusting front light sensor, ensuring the screen is always at optimal brightness, whether you’re reading indoors or outside.In addition, the Signature Edition features a large 7-inch display with sharp 300ppi resolution and an IPX8 rating, so you can read while relaxing in the bathtub or by the pool. It also offers an ad-free experience and comes with an expanded 32GB of storage, providing ample space to download ebooks and audiobooks, the latter of which you can listen to with either Bluetooth headphones or speakers.More deals worth consideringYou can snag Anker’s Prime Wireless Charging Station from Amazon (with Prime) or Anker (with code WSPDV2P8JFE9) for $179.99 ($50 off), which nearly matches its best price to date. The MagSafe-compatible 3-in-1 charger can simultaneously charge a phone, smartwatch, and a pair of wireless earbuds, and it’s been designed to take advantage of the latest 25W Qi2 wireless speeds. That means it can charge newer phones, such as the iPhone 17 Pro, to 50 percent capacity in just 22 minutes.Now through November 11th, you can pick up Lego’s aptly titled Christmas Tree set at Target for $26.99 ($18 off). The 784-piece kit makes for a festive display, one that stands over 11 inches tall once fully assembled. Alternatively, you can build two smaller trees that stand 6 inches tall, each of which you can deck out with colorful ornaments, candles, and a yellow star you can add to the top.The OnePlus Buds 4 are available for a new low of $89.99 ($40 off) at OnePlus’ online storefront when you use promo code EARLYBF at checkout. The wireless earbuds feature active noise cancellation, support hi-res and spatial audio, and come with dual 11mm and 6mm drivers in each bud. Additionally, each earbud stem features comfortable, concave touch controls, making it easier to feel where you should swipe and tap. Read our hands-on impressions.

Google is rolling out a new cloud-based platform that lets users unlock advanced AI features on their devices while keeping data private. The feature, virtually identical to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, comes as companies reconcile users’ demands for privacy with the growing computational needs of the latest AI applications.Many Google products run AI features like translation, audio summaries, and chatbot assistants, on-device, meaning data doesn’t leave your phone, Chromebook, or whatever it is you’re using. This isn’t sustainable, Google says, as advancing AI tools need more reasoning and computational power than devices can supply. The compromise is to ship more difficult AI requests to a cloud platform, called Private AI Compute, which it describes as a “secure, fortified space” offering the same degree of security you’d expect from on-device processing. Sensitive data is available “only to you and no one else, not even Google.”Google said the ability to tap into more processing power will help its AI features go from completing simple requests to giving more personal and tailored suggestions. For example, it says Pixel 10 phones will get more helpful suggestions from Magic Cue, an AI tool that contextually surfaces information from email and calendar apps, and a wider range of languages for Recorder transcriptions. “This is just the beginning,” Google said.

After moving from Windows 10 to Linux, I quickly found a new home in Fedora KDE Plasma. It does what I want, it's very stable, and I really like how it automatically keeps the last three OS versions, so you can use those if something breaks in the newest build. However, I also knew that Fedora comes in a few flavors, and I really wanted to try a different one on my laptop and see what it's like compared to my current workstation.

Well, it's that time of the month again. Patch Tuesday has come around, and we've got a bunch of Windows 11 features to check out. It's also a little sparse in content, because this is the first Patch Tuesday since Windows 10 fell out of support. So, we're only going to be seeing security updates for it at the absolute best.

Google is releasing an update for Pixel phones with an interesting feature in the mix: notification summaries. Apple notably had plenty of trouble implementing its version of this AI-powered feature, and Google is taking a cautious first step by deploying it only for chat conversations. It’ll arrive as part of this month’s Pixel update for Pixel 9 series phones and newer — with the exception of the Pixel 9A.Android Authority’s Mishaal Rahman shared a deep dive of the feature in August when code for it appeared in an Android 16 beta. As Rahman described, summaries are limited to chat apps for now, and only for longer conversations. As AA’s C. Scott Brown points out, limiting summaries to longer pieces of information means the system has more context to work with and could reduce the kind of swings and misses that Apple’s AI has made in the past. Google also says that December’s update will take things a step further, automatically sorting your notifications and silencing those that are lower priority — a problem Apple is throwing AI at, too.Google expanded its scam detection feature in messages beyond Pixel phones earlier this year. Now, Pixel 6 phones and newer will expand scam detection beyond Google’s Messages to some third-party chat apps including Telegram and Discord. The notification itself includes a badge labeling it as “likely scam,” and tapping the notification triggers a system pop-up encouraging the user to exercise caution. Google is expanding access to scam detection for calls, too, bringing it to Pixel 9 owners (9A excluded) in the UK, Ireland, India, Australia, and Canada.Meanwhile, back in Google’s own messaging app, users will be able to “remix” photos with AI right inside Messages. This update extends beyond Pixels to the broader Android ecosystem, though it’s limited to English and the US, UK, Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, and New Zealand for now. Additionally, the Pixel 6 and newer will give priority to chat notifications from your Messages VIPs.

It had been going on for as long as I remember becoming interested in gaming — the Console War between the Sony PlayStation and the Microsoft Xbox. Now, something my teenage self could never have fathomed, is seemingly coming to pass. The entire idea of console generations — a clean, cyclical reset every seven or eight years — might actually be dying before our eyes.

AI chatbots “pose serious risks to individuals vulnerable to eating disorders,” researchers warned on Monday. They report that tools from companies like Google and OpenAI are doling out dieting advice, tips on how to hide disorders, and AI-generated “thinspiration.” The researchers, from Stanford and the Center for Democracy & Technology, identified numerous ways publicly available AI chatbots including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and Mistral’s Le Chat can affect people vulnerable to eating disorders, many of them consequences of features deliberately baked in to drive engagement. In the most extreme cases, chatbots can be active participants helping hide or sustain eating disorders. The researchers said Gemini offered makeup tips to conceal weight loss, and ideas on how to fake having eaten, while ChatGPT advised how to hide frequent vomiting. Other AI tools are being co-opted to create AI-generated “thinspiration,” content that inspires or pressures someone to conform to a particular body standard, often through extreme means. Being able to create hyper-personalized images in an instant makes the resulting content “feel more relevant and attainable,” the researchers said. Sycophancy, a flaw AI companies themselves acknowledge is rife, is unsurprisingly a problem for eating disorders too. It contributes to undermining self-esteem, reinforcing negative emotions, and promoting harmful self-comparisons. Chatbots suffer from bias as well, and are likely to reinforce the mistaken belief that eating disorders “only impact thin, white, cisgender women,” the report said, which could make it difficult for people to recognize symptoms and get treatment.Researchers warn existing guardrails in AI tools fail to capture the nuances of eating disorders like anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating. They “tend to overlook the subtle but clinically significant cues that trained professionals rely on, leaving many risks unaddressed.”But researchers also said many clinicians and caregivers appeared to be unaware of how generative AI tools are impacting people vulnerable to eating disorders. They urged clinicians to “become familiar with popular AI tools and platforms,” stress-test their weaknesses, and talk frankly with patients about how they are using them.The report adds to growing concerns over chatbot use and mental health, with multiple reports linking AI use to bouts of mania, delusional thinking, self-harm, and suicide. Companies like OpenAI have acknowledged the potential for harm and are fending off an increasing number of lawsuits as they work to improve safeguards to protect users. 

iPhone users can now make edits in Google Photos by typing or verbally describing them. Google is rolling out several AI updates to its Google Photos app, including iOS support for conversational edits, more accurate facial editing, and new AI tools. This means the “Help me edit” feature that lets you describe how you want Google’s AI to change your photos will be available to iPhone users, following its release on Pixel and other Android devices.“Starting to roll out on iOS in the US, you can simply describe the edits you want using your voice or text and watch Google Photos bring your vision to life,” Google said in its announcement blog. This update also brings the redesigned editor UI for Google Photos to iPhones, making it easy to adjust images with simple gestures and one-tap suggestions.New personalized editing capabilities should make changing something about you or your friends’ faces — such as removing glasses, opening blinked eyes, or inserting a smile — more accurate by referencing images from your private face groups. Google’s Nano Banana AI model is also being integrated into Google Photos, giving users more options for transforming images into new styles like paintings, mosaics, and illustrations.Other updates include a new “Ask” button for Android and iOS users, which launches a chatbot-style interface to edit images and answer questions about their contents, and ready-made AI templates for Android users that let you instantly edit photos using popular prompts, such as “put me in a high fashion photoshoot.” The “Ask Photos” tool that makes it easier to find specific images in your gallery is also being expanded to more than 100 new regions and 17 new languages.

Disney’s spat with Google’s YouTube TV over a new content distribution contract is costing the entertainment giant $4.3 million a day in lost revenue, Morgan Stanley estimates.That’s $30 million a week as the blackout of channels including ABC and ESPN stretches into its 12th day, Variety reports, though the analysts expect Disney and Google to reach a resolution by the end of the week. The dispute is also costing Google — Variety reports that a Drive Research survey of 1,100 US consumers found 24 percent canceled or planned to cancel their subscriptions.More than 20 Disney-owned channels went dark on YouTube TV after their contract expired at 11:59 PM ET on October 30th. While Google accuses Disney of pulling its channels from YouTube TV as a “negotiating tactic,” and says its terms would rise prices for YouTube TV customers, Disney says Google is “refusing to pay fair rates” for its content. Google has been giving $20 credits to its subscribers during the blackout, but it remains to be seen which will end first: the Disney-Google blackout or the government shutdown.