A mysterious app just showed up on your Android phone, and it’s watching your battery
A mysterious app just showed up on your Android phone, and it’s watching your battery

An app called Android Pulse surfaced in Play Store update queues at the weekend, though Google has been distributing it since March and it now sits on more than 10 million devices. It is a diagnostic tool with no user interface that flags software cons…

His headphones kept cutting out, so he read the AliExpress code
His headphones kept cutting out, so he read the AliExpress code

A developer worked out why his Bluetooth headphones kept dropping his music, and the answer was on the AliExpress homepage. The Register reported the story on Monday, drawing on the developer’s own account and a follow-up from a Firefox engineer. Conno…

De-Googled GrapheneOS is coming to Motorola’s foldables next year
De-Googled GrapheneOS is coming to Motorola’s foldables next year

GrapheneOS, an open source version of Android that prioritizes security and privacy, has detailed its plans for supporting Motorola smartphones. Official support is set to arrive next year, starting with traditional flagships, before rolling out to Motorola’s foldable phones and perhaps cheaper models, eventually. In a Mastodon thread, the GrapheneOS Foundation announced that it will […]

Frontier AI labs still won’t say how they’d contain a rogue model

A new study finds leading AI labs have few publicly documented plans for containing rogue models, raising questions about preparedness as AI systems increasingly demonstrate unexpected and potentially dangerous behavior.

Pixel 11 Pro XL review: Snappier cameras can’t hide an iterative upgrade

Google’s Pixel 11 Pro XL brings snappier cameras and genuinely useful AI features like Rambler, but its iterative upgrades may not be enough to tempt recent Pixel owners.

Google says Gemma has passed a billion downloads
Google says Gemma has passed a billion downloads

Google says its Gemma family of open models has passed a billion downloads. Developers have published more than 100,000 Gemma variants over the past two years, the company said in a blog post on Thursday. Clement Farabet, a vice president at Google Dee…

Walmart is finally adding Apple Pay and Google Pay
Walmart is finally adding Apple Pay and Google Pay

Walmart will soon allow you to pay for your items with Google Pay or Apple Pay. In an announcement on Friday, Walmart says it’s going to bring tap-to-pay capabilities to “select” Walmart and Sam’s Club locations starting August 24th, before rolling out support to all US stores by the end of 2026 and gas stations […]

Walmart is accepting tap to pay after eleven years of refusing
Walmart is accepting tap to pay after eleven years of refusing

Walmart is adding tap to pay at its checkouts from Monday, ending more than a decade of refusing the technology. The retailer will not say so in those terms. Its announcement does not use the word Apple once. The rollout starts at selected Walmart stor…

Google wants publishers to install a button that makes readers pick them
Google wants publishers to install a button that makes readers pick them

Google is giving publishers a button to put on their own websites. Clicking it adds that publisher to a reader’s preferred sources on Google. It is one of three personalisation changes the company announced on Thursday. The other two are a chatbot for …

YouTube raises Premium prices across Europe with an opt-in deadline
YouTube raises Premium prices across Europe with an opt-in deadline

YouTube Premium is getting more expensive across Europe. This time the company is asking subscribers to agree, rather than simply imposing the increase. A price-change notice seen by TNW went to a Romanian subscriber on Friday. It puts the individual p…