Tech

This Deep Sea Submersible Let Humans Explore the Abyss

Published

4 days ago

1 April 2026

As a kid, I loved the 1980s aquatic adventure show Danger Bay. True to the TV show’s name, danger was always lurking at the Vancouver Aquarium, where the show was set. In one memorable episode, young Jonah and a friend get trapped in a sabotaged mini-submarine, and Jonah’s dad, a marine-mammal veterinarian, comes to the rescue in a bubble-shaped underwater vehicle. Good stuff! Only recently—as in when I started working on this column—did I learn that the rescue vehicle was not a stage prop but rather a real-world research submersible named Deep Rover.

What Was Deep Rover and What Did It Do?

Built in 1984 and launched the following year, Deep Rover was a departure from standard underwater vehicles, which typically required divers to lie in a prone position and look through tiny portholes while tethered to a support ship.

Deep Rover was designed to satisfy human curiosity about the underwater world. As the rover moved freely through the water down to depths of 1,000 meters, the operator sat up in relative comfort in the cab, inside a clear 13-centimeter-thick acrylic bubble with panoramic views—an inverted fishbowl, with the human immersed in breathable air while the sea creatures looked in. Used for scientific research and deepwater exploration, it set a number of dive records along the way.

Photo of a man and a woman in a wood-paneled room with a scale model of an underwater vehicle in front of them. Submarine designer Graham Hawkes [left] and marine biologist Sylvia Earle [right] came up with the idea for Deep Rover.Alain Le Garsmeur/Alamy

The team behind Deep Rover included U.S. marine biologist Sylvia Earle and British marine engineer and submarine designer Graham Hawkes. Earle and Hawkes’s collaboration had begun in May 1980, when Earle complained to Hawkes about the “stupid” arms on Jim, an atmospheric diving suit; she didn’t realize she was complaining to one of Jim’s designers. Hawkes explained the difficulty of designing flexible joints that could withstand dueling pressures of 101 kilopascals on the inside—that is, the normal atmospheric pressure at sea level—and up to about 4,100 kPa on the outside. But he listened carefully to Earle’s wish list for a useful manipulator. Several months later, he came back with a design for a superbly dexterous arm that could hold a pencil and write normal-size letters.

Earle and Hawkes next turned to designing a one-person bubble sub, which they considered so practical that it would be an easy sell. But after failing to attract funding, they decided to build it themselves. In the summer of 1981, they pooled their resources and cofounded Deep Ocean Technology, setting up shop in Earle’s garage in Oakland, Calif.

$Photo of a man sitting in an underwater vehicle with the words \u201cNewtsub DeepWorker 2000\u201d across the front and the logos of NASA and the National Geographic Society.$ Phil Nuytten, a Canadian designer of submersibles and dive systems, engineered Deep Rover.Stuart Westmorland/RGB Ventures/Alamy

They still found that customers weren’t interested in their crewed submersible, though, so they turned to unmanned systems. Their first contract was for a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) for use in oil-rig inspection, maintenance, and repair. Other customers followed, and they ended up building 10 of these ROVs. In 1983, they returned to their original idea and contracted with the Canadian inventor and entrepreneur Phil Nuytten to engineer Deep Rover.

Nuytten didn’t have to be convinced of the value of the submersible. He had grown up on the water and shared their dream. As a teenager, he opened Vancouver’s first dive shop. He then worked as a commercial diver. He founded the ocean- and research-tech companies Can-Dive Services (in 1965) and Nuytco Research (in 1982), and he developed advanced submersibles as well as diving systems. These included the Newtsuit, an aluminum atmospheric diving suit for use on drilling rigs and salvage operations.

Deep Rover’s first assignment was to boost offshore oil exploration and drilling in eastern Canada. Funding came from the provincial government of Newfoundland and Labrador and the oil companies Petro-Canada and Husky Oil. But the collapse of oil prices in the mid-1980s made it uneconomical to operate the submersible. So the rover’s mission broadened to scientific research.

Deep Rover’s Technical Specs

The pilot could operate Deep Rover safely for 4 to 6 hours at a depth of 1,000 meters and speeds of up to 1.5 knots (46 meters per minute). The submersible could be tethered to a support ship or move freely on its own. Two deep-cycle, lead-acid battery pods weighing about 170 kilograms apiece provided power. It had a VHF radio and two frequencies of through-water communications, plus tracking beacons.

Park ranger operates aircraft cockpit controls surrounded by cameras and instruments

Two photos, one showing a smiling man in the cab of a heavily instrumented vehicle, the other showing the underwater view out the front of the vehicle. From 1987 to 1989, Deep Rover did a series of dives in Oregon’s Crater Lake, the deepest lake in the United States. During one dive, National Park Service biologist Mark Buktenica [top] collected rock samples.NPS

The rover’s four thrusters—two horizontal fixed aft thrusters and two rotating wing thrusters—could be activated in any combination through microswitches built into the armrest. The pilot navigated using a gyro compass, sonar, and depth gauges (both digital and analog).

Much to Earle’s delight, Deep Rover had two excellent manipulators, each with four degrees of freedom, thus solving the problem that had started her down this path of invention. The pilot controlled the manipulators with a joystick at the end of each armrest. Sensory feedback systems helped the pilot “feel” the force, motion, and touch. The two arms had wraparound jaws and could lift about 90 kg.

If something went wrong, Deep Rover carried five days’ worth of life support stores and had a variety of redundant safety features: oxygen and carbon dioxide monitoring equipment; a halon (breathable) fire extinguisher; a full-face BIBS (built-in breathing system) that tapped into the starboard air bank; and a ground fault-detection system.

If needed, the rover could surface quickly by jettisoning equipment, including the battery pods and a 90-kg drop weight in the forward bay. In dire circumstances, the pressure hull (the acrylic bubble, that is) could separate from the frame, taking with it only its oxygen tanks, strobe, through-water communications, and wing thrusters.

Deep Rover’s achievements

From 1984 to 1992, Deep Rover conducted about 280 dives. It inspected two of the tunnels near Niagara Falls that divert water to the Sir Adam Beck II hydroelectric plant. In California’s Monterey Bay, the rover let researchers film previously unknown deep-sea marine life, which helped establish the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. At Crater Lake National Park, in Oregon, Deep Rover proved the existence of geothermal vents and bacteria mats, leading to the protection of the site from extractive drilling.

Deep Rover was featured in a short film shown at Vancouver’s Expo ’86, the first of several TV and movie appearances. There was Danger Bay. Director James Cameron used an early prototype of the submersible in his 1989 film The Abyss. Deep Rover also made an appearance in Cameron’s 2005 documentary Aliens of the Deep.

In 1992, Deep Rover came to the end of its working life. It now resides at Ingenium, Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation, in Ottawa. For a time, Deep Ocean Engineering continued to develop later generations of the submersible. Eventually, though, uncrewed remotely operated and autonomous underwater vehicles became the norm for deep-sea missions, replacing human pilots with sensors and equipment. New ROVs can dive significantly deeper than human-piloted ones, and new cameras are so good that it feels like you’re there…almost. And yet, humans still long to have the personal experience of exploring the depths of the oceans.

Part of a continuing series looking at historical artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of technology.

An abridged version of this article appears in the April 2026 print issue as “All Alone in the Abyss.”

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Mary Jo Foley: What the heck is going on with Microsoft lately?

Published

32 minutes ago

5 April 2026

NewsAdmin

Satya Nadella in November 2016, in his honeymoon period as Microsoft CEO. (GeekWire File Photo)

[Editor’s Note: We’re excited to welcome Mary Jo Foley as a GeekWire contributor. Mary Jo has been one of the sharpest watchers of Microsoft for many years, currently as Editor in Chief at Directions on Microsoft, an IT planning and advisory service. She’ll be offering her take for GeekWire periodically on the latest developments in Redmond, starting with this piece.]

Reorgs are a way of life at Microsoft. But the pace of them over the last couple of months has led many to wonder what the heck is happening in Redmond — especially when coupled with the company’s stock price having its worst quarter in years.

During the past couple of months, Microsoft has made a noticeable number of organizational changes:

In February, Microsoft announced plans for Xbox chief Phil Spencer to hand the gaming reins to Asha Sharma.
The company reorganized its U.S. sales team the same month.
In March, Experiences and Devices chief Rajesh Jha announced plans to retire, replaced by a handful of hand-picked execs.
Microsoft is said to have just implemented a sweeping reorganization of its HR organization.
And its cloud and sales teams allegedly are under spending and hiring freezes.

Is this just the usual Microsoft fiscal-year-end housekeeping, or is something different? A blip that will pass, or a new AI-centric reality for the Satya Nadella era?

It’s a mix of both, I’d argue.

The current wave of churn, at least in part, can be attributed to Microsoft’s corporate calendar. Its fourth quarter ends June 30 and new fiscal year kicks off on July 1. Microsoft often reorgs and does layoffs in the months leading up to this as a way to reset for the coming year.

The company also is taking actions to reduce hierarchy and make the corporate structure flatter, as are a number of tech companies, in the hopes of becoming nimbler.

A year ago, Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood proclaimed that Microsoft was “increasing our agility by reducing layers with fewer managers.” With moves like replacing 35-year veteran Executive Vice President Jha with a new gang of four, rather than just another single uber-boss, Microsoft is following through on those promises.

It’s not all mundane matters at play, however.

Thanks to AI, the way companies are prioritizing and following through on their strategies is different. Microsoft isn’t immune to the market’s jitters around capex overspending on AI when ROI still remains questionable. Its no-longer-exclusive partnership with OpenAI has people inside and outside the company worried, too, as does the fact that a whopping 45 percent of its unfulfilled Azure backlog last quarter was attributable to OpenAI.

Investor pressure on the company to keep its Azure business growing during a time of admitted capacity challenges also can’t be dismissed as contributing to the current churn. As a result, Microsoft travel budgets, new-hire spending, and investments in unproven areas are all on the chopping block.

Almost nothing (except towels, maybe) is immune from scrutiny with the goal of freeing up more dollars to pay for AI and cloud build-out.

But those reasons alone may not be enough to explain why Microsoft is looking like the least magnificent of the so-called Magnificent Seven tech leaders right now.

Microsoft continues to struggle in the consumer space, and not just with Xbox. Most of the company’s revenues have been and continue to be from sales to commercial customers. That consumer weakness is especially apparent when it comes to AI.

Microsoft recently disclosed only 3 percent of its Microsoft 365 customers are paying for Microsoft 365 Copilot. But its adoption rate for its consumer Copilot is even worse, and far lower than the rates for OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Gemini.

The decision earlier this month to remove AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman from his consumer AI product responsibilities and into more of a research role is Microsoft’s latest attempt to adjust its consumer bets.

Suleyman’s reassignment came later than some expected (and hoped), given the starts and stops with Microsoft’s consumer AI efforts. Mico, a ghost-like Clippy wannabe, seems to be in limbo. Microsoft’s push to make voice one of the main ways users interact with AI on their PCs, when people don’t talk to PCs like they do phones, seems to be falling flat.

Meanwhile, the Windows organization is trying to right the ship by backing out of some of its over-zealous AI plans. Instead of trying to force AI into Notepad and Photos, execs said they instead will focus on some top consumer requests, ranging from taskbar customization, to adding the ability to pause updates at will.

Microsoft shows no signs of giving up on the consumer space. Maybe new blood will find new ways to harness the company’s enterprise tactics to boost its consumer share? If not, there’s always the next reorg. …

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Crime blotter: A $2 million iPhone heist in Florida

Published

45 minutes ago

5 April 2026

NewsAdmin

A British political adviser’s stolen iPhone leads to a scandal, pro athletes fall for an iCloud scam, and iCloud evidence is used against a man accused of stalking the FBI director’s girlfriend, all in this week’s Apple Crime Blotter.

The Alderwood Apple Store in Washington. Image Credit: Apple

Welcome to an occasional AppleInsider feature, looking at the world of Apple-related crime.
Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

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New Rowhammer attack can grant kernel-level control on Nvidia workstation GPUs

Published

58 minutes ago

5 April 2026

NewsAdmin

A study from researchers at UNC Chapel Hill and Georgia Tech shows that GDDR6-based Rowhammer attacks can grant kernel-level access to Linux systems equipped with GPUs based on Nvidia’s Ampere and Ada Lovelace architectures. The vulnerability appears significantly more severe than what was outlined in a paper last year.
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This WW1 Navy Diver Earned The Medal Of Honor Nearly 300 Feet Below The Sea

Published

1 hour ago

5 April 2026

NewsAdmin

A Congressional Medal of Honor on display in wooden triangular box

Dennis MacDonald/Shutterstock

The Congressional Medal of Honor is the United States’ highest award for military valor. In its more than 150-year history, only 3,552 individuals have received it. Originally conceived as a way to honor enlisted seamen and marines who performed distinguished acts of service during the Civil War, the medal now honors service members who distinguish themselves “conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty.”

The medal was awarded much more frequently before World War I, with that time period accounting for almost 3,000 of the total awards. World War I, during which almost 5 million Americans served in uniform, resulted in only 121 Medal of Honor recipients. Some were awarded posthumously, but one recipient, Frank Crilley, was honored in 1929.

Crilley joined the United States Navy in 1900, when he was only 16 years old. By 1915, he was a Chief Gunner’s Mate in the experimental diving team, a renowned but dangerous position. A WWI U.S. Navy submarine, the USS F-4, sank in March of that year with all 21 crewmen aboard. This was the first American submarine lost at sea, and the Navy wanted to raise F-4 from its final resting place just off the coast of Honolulu, Hawaii to find out what went wrong. It turned to Frank Crilley for help. To complete the mission, Crilley dove more than 300 feet down to the sub — which is 170 feet deeper than a recreational diver can get today.

Frank Crilley was honored for his bravery in a diving mission

A diver wearing an old-fashioned brass diver's helmet

Majordesigns/Getty Images

Frank Crilley made his first dive to the USS F-4 in mid-April 1915 along with four other divers. They brought a recompression chamber and a physician, along with the standard diving gear, with them. Crilley hit 304 feet on that dive, a depth record that stood for a quarter of a century. The sub was found upright on the ocean floor, and cables would be required to raise the sub. This process was a challenge because it took three hours to descend and ascend from that depth.

During a subsequent dive, one of Crilley’s fellow teammates, William K. Loughman, became tangled when a ground swell caused the sub to turn over. He was stuck at about 275 feet, and Crilley volunteered for a rescue mission. After more than two hours in the depths, Crilley emerged with his teammate alive. Eventually, the Navy managed to raise F-4 and found that it sank due to corrosion of the lead lining of the battery tank, which eventually led to a loss of depth control.

Crilley had a long career with the Navy and was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1929, 14 years after his heroic rescue. Several other service members have received the Medal of Honor for deep diving, including Owen Hammerberg, who engaged in rescue operations after an incident in Pearl Harbor in 1945, almost four years after the Japanese attack on the naval base. Hammerberg, who rescued two fellow divers that were trapped during a salvage operation, received the award posthumously after he died.

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Device code phishing attacks surge 37x as new kits spread online

Published

1 hour ago

5 April 2026

NewsAdmin

Researchers warn of 37 times rise in device Code phishing attacks

Device code phishing attacks that abuse the OAuth 2.0 Device Authorization Grant flow to hijack accounts have surged more than 37 times this year.

In this type of attack, the threat actor sends a device authorization request to a service provider and receives a code, which is sent to the victim under various pretexts.

Next, the victim is tricked into entering the code on the legitimate login page, thus authorizing the attacker’s device to access the account through valid access and refresh tokens.

This flow was designed to simplify connecting devices that do not have accessible input options (e.g., IoT devices, printers, streaming devices, and smart TVs).

**Device code phishing flow**
*Source: Push Security*

The device code phishing technique was first documented in 2020, but malicious exploitation was recorded a few years later, and has been used by both state-hackers and financially-motivated ones [1, 2, 3, 4].

Researchers at Push Security observed a massive increase in the use of these attacks, warning that they have been widely adopted by cybercriminals.

“At the start of March (2026), we’d observed a 15x increase in device code phishing pages detected by our research team this year, with multiple kits and campaigns being tracked — with the kit now identified as EvilTokens the most prominent. That figure has now risen to 37.5x.” – Push Security

Earlier this week, threat detection and response company Sekoia published research on the EvilTokens phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) operation. The researchers underline that it is a prominent example of a phishing kit that “democratizes” device code phishing, making it available to low-skilled cybercriminals.

Push agrees that EvilTokens has been a major driver of the technique’s mainstream adoption, but notes that there are several other platforms competing on the same market, which could become more prominent in the event of law enforcement disrupting EvilTokens:

VENOM – A closed-source PhaaS kit offering both device code phishing and AiTM capabilities. Its device code component appears to be an EvilTokens clone.

SHAREFILE – A kit themed around Citrix ShareFile document transfers, using node-based backend endpoints to simulate file sharing and trigger device code flows.

CLURE – A kit using rotating API endpoints and an anti-bot gate, with SharePoint-themed lures and backend infrastructure on DigitalOcean.

LINKID – A kit leveraging Cloudflare challenge pages and self-hosted APIs, using Microsoft Teams and Adobe-themed lures.

AUTHOV – A workers.dev-hosted kit using popup-based device code entry and Adobe document-sharing lures.

DOCUPOLL – A kit hosted on GitHub Pages and workers.dev that mimics DocuSign workflows, including injected replicas of real pages.

FLOW_TOKEN – A workers.dev-hosted kit using Tencent Cloud backend infrastructure, with HR and DocuSign-themed lures and popup-based flows.

PAPRIKA – An AWS S3–hosted kit using Microsoft login clone pages with Office 365 branding and a fake Okta footer.

DCSTATUS – A minimal kit with generic Microsoft 365 “Secure Access” lures and limited visible infrastructure markers.

DOLCE – A Microsoft PowerApps-hosted kit with Dolce & Gabbana–themed lures, likely a one-off or red-team-style implementation rather than widely used.

It should be noted that other than Venom and EvilTokens, the names of the other phishing kits were given by Push researchers to track the malicious activity.

Push Security also published a video showing how the DOCUPOLL kit works. The threat actor uses DocuSign branding and a lure for an alleged contract, asking the victim to sign into the Microsoft Office application.

In total, there are at least 11 phishing kits offering cybercriminals this type of attack, all using realistic SaaS-themed lures, anti-bot protections, and abusing cloud platforms for hosting.

To block device-code phishing attacks, Push Security suggests that users disable the flow when not needed by setting conditional access policies on their accounts.

It is also recommended to monitor logs for unexpected device code authentication events, unusual IP addresses, and sessions.

Automated pentesting proves the path exists. BAS proves whether your controls stop it. Most teams run one without the other.

This whitepaper maps six validation surfaces, shows where coverage ends, and provides practitioners with three diagnostic questions for any tool evaluation.

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Chasing Starlink, Amazon Leo strikes satellite Wi-Fi deal for future Delta flights

Published

2 hours ago

5 April 2026

NewsAdmin

Amazon Leo and Delta Air Lines announced a deal Tuesday for satellite-powered in-flight Wi-Fi starting in 2028. (Amazon Photo)

Amazon Leo has landed its highest-profile customer yet, reaching a deal with Delta Air Lines to provide satellite-powered Wi-Fi on 500 aircraft starting in 2028.

The agreement, announced Tuesday, gives Amazon’s fledgling satellite internet venture a big new partner as it races to catch up with SpaceX’s Starlink, the rival service that has deals in place with United, Southwest and Alaska Airlines.

Amazon has about 200 satellites in space, vs. more than 10,000 for Starlink, which began commercial service in late 2020, and now has more than 10 million subscribers.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy called Leo a “very important long-term investment” for the company and said he’s confident Amazon will have the capacity to serve Delta and other customers.

Leo is expected to deliver internet speeds three to five times faster than what Delta currently offers. Each aircraft will be equipped with an antenna capable of download speeds up to 1 Gbps, according to Amazon. The service will be free for Delta SkyMiles members.

Delta reportedly looked into Starlink but chose Amazon in part because of its existing relationship with Amazon Web Services. Delta uses AWS to power a variety of its current internal systems.

Originally known as Project Kuiper, Amazon’s satellite initiative was rebranded as Leo in November, a reference to low Earth orbit.

The company has spent more than $10 billion on the effort and asked the FCC in January for a two-year extension to deploy half of its planned 3,232 satellites. The FCC in February approved more than 4,500 additional second-generation satellites, expanding Leo’s planned coverage.

Delta is Leo’s biggest airline customer but not its first. JetBlue last year became the first carrier to sign on for in-flight Wi-Fi through Amazon’s satellite network. Other early customers and partners include L3Harris, DIRECTV Latin America, Sky Brasil, and Australia’s NBN Co.

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Amazfit Helio Strap vs Polar Loop vs Whoop 5.0: Which should you buy?

Published

2 hours ago

5 April 2026

NewsAdmin

Have you noticed? We are entering a new era of wearables, as the screen-free tracker trend picks up the pace.

Everyone from Fitbit (an official tracker teased by Steph Curry) to Garmin (leaked information on the in-development Garmin Cirqa) has one cooking. These lifestyle wearables won’t pull your attention away with flashing notifications. And they will record your daily stats and exercise sessions while demanding no intervention at all.

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If Your Baby’s Not Sleeping, Try Your iPhone’s Hidden White Noise Feature

Published

2 hours ago

5 April 2026

NewsAdmin

Babies can be difficult. They eat all the time, pee and poop wherever they want and they may not sleep at night, especially during sleep regressions. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, playing sounds from a white noise machine can help soothe your baby and get them to settle down, giving you a moment of respite. And if you have an iPhone, you don’t need to spend money on a white noise machine.

When Apple released iOS 15 in 2021, the operating system brought a hidden feature called Background Sounds. It allows you to turn your iPhone into a white noise machine, and you can play these sounds by themselves or under a podcast, music or video streaming app.

When Apple introduced Background Sounds, there were six ambient sounds to play on a loop: rain, stream and ocean waves, which are natural sounds, and bright, balanced and dark noise, which are different pitches of white noise. When the tech giant released iOS 18 in 2024, it added two sounds: night and fire. And iOS 26 brought even more background sounds to devices, including rain on roof and babble, which sounds like a busy cafe.

If you want to use these sounds to lull a baby back to sleep, or for any other reason, here’s how to enable Background Sounds on your iPhone.

How to access Background Sounds from your Control Center

Instead of searching through Settings each time you want to turn Background Sounds on, here’s how you can set up a toggle in the Control Center to turn the feature on to use on your iPhone.

1. Open Control Center.
2. Tap the plus (+) sign in the top left of your screen.
3. Tap Add a Control near the bottom of your screen.
4. Tap Hearing control (ear icon) under Hearing Accessibility to add to Control Center.

The Hearing control in your iPhone's Control Center. — You can find the Hearing control under Hearing Accessibility in your Control Center.
Apple/Screenshot by CNET

Once the Hearing control icon is in Control Center, tap it to see three options: Speaker, Background Sounds and Live Listen. Then tap the musical notes next to Background Sounds to turn the feature on. You can also tap on the words Background Sounds to open a menu to choose a different background sound as well as adjust the volume.

The Background Sounds menu in Control Center. — These are a few of the sounds you can access in Background Sounds.
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Apple/Screenshot by CNET

Use Accessibility Shortcuts for Background Sounds

You can also set up an accessibility shortcut to turn Background Sounds on or off from your home screen or within an app. Here’s how to set it up.

1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Accessibility.
3. Tap Accessibility Shortcut.
4. Tap Background Sounds.

Now, when you press the side button on your iPhone three times, Background Sounds will turn on. You can tap the button three times again to turn it back off.

The Accessibility Shortcut menu with Background Sounds outlined in red. — Apple/Screenshot by CNET

Discover These Hidden AirPods Features and Boost Your Listening Experience

See all photos

More Background Sound options

If you want more control over Background Sounds, here’s where to go.

1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Accessibility.
3. Tap Audio & Visual.
4. Tap Background Sounds.

Near the top of this menu you can turn Background Sounds on by tapping the Background Sounds toggle, and you can change the Background Sound by tapping Sound and choosing a new sound.

More ways to control Background Sounds feature on your iPhone, like the option to Use When Media is Playing. — You can play your background sounds while other media is playing if you’d like.
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Apple/Screenshot by CNET

There are two toggles in this menu: Use When Media Is Playing and Stop Sounds When Locked. Tapping the toggle next to Use When Media Is Playing allows Background Sounds to keep playing while you watch a video or listen to music. And tapping the toggle next to Stop Sounds When Locked ensures Background Sounds will turn off when your device locks. If you don’t have this enabled, the sounds will continue to play when your device locks.

There are also two new menus in iOS 26: Equalizer and Stop Sounds with a Timer. Equalizer lets you adjust the tone and contour of Background Sounds, as well as balance more toward the right or left speaker or headphone. Stop Sounds with a Timer allows you to turn Background Sounds off at a specific time that you can choose or after a certain amount of time has passed.

New options in Background Sounds menu in iOS 26. — The Stop Sounds with a Timer (left) and Equalizer menus in iOS 26.
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Apple/Screenshot by CNET

For more iOS news, here’s what you should know about iOS 26.4 and iOS 26.3. You can also check out our iOS 26 cheat sheet.

Watch this: Apple at 50: What Made Apple Different

08:03

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Can AI Find Your Next Obsession? I Tested Its Hobby Suggestions

Published

2 hours ago

5 April 2026

NewsAdmin

When you’re finished with work and you need something to do, where do you turn your attention? Some folks build models, others do some coloring. Some relax and watch TV. But if you’re looking for something to pour your free time and attention into, it can be difficult to settle on one thing, or even multiple.

Model trains, running clubs, robotics and coding classes all sound fun — until you realize you’d rather fly, running shoes cost far more than they should and you’re less of a front-end/back-end person and more of a “no end in sight for how boring Java can be” person.

I asked three different AI systems — Claude AI, Google Gemini and ChatGPT — about what my spouse’s next hobby should be using the exact same prompt, and the results were surprising.

Claude: Getting a clue

Here’s the prompt I wrote: “I am a 39-year-old man in the United States of British origin. I live in Los Angeles, California, and am married with a dog and a cat. I live in a house with some backyard space. I enjoy travel, reading, playing video games and am looking to add a new hobby to my list of activities. I also enjoy getting deals, as that’s what my career deals with. Can you suggest three hobbies that I should look into for my review? Please give me information on the financial and time commitments needed, as well as what you would consider to be the plusses and minuses of each one. I work a regular 9-5 job so would need to be done around that constraint as well.”

Gardening is a hobby many people only come to appreciate in their golden years, but all three AI systems recommended it as an easy way to pass the time with minimal effort and expense.

The second suggestion was reselling and thrifting vintage finds, followed by homebrewing beer, cider or mead. It gave a lot of detail into the time and financial commitments, pros and cons as well as why it assumed those hobbies would suit my husband based on that short prompt.

A screenshot of an AI-generated hobby suggestion with pros, cons, time commitment and financial commitment — Claude/Screenshot by CNET

Claude AI was particularly thoughtful in appealing to the prompter’s needs and personality, pointing out that gardening could be a great way to save money — perhaps recognizing that finding a good deal is a deeply entrenched personality trait of my little cheapskate husband.

Gemini: Combining interests

Gemini suggested hunting for and reselling vintage video games, books and other old media as a pastime that could pair well with traveling on points. It also recommended brewing beer as a way to spend time in a backyard already full of plants (in addition to “high-yield urban orchard gardening”).

Gemini was adept at using my spouse’s prompt details to guide its suggestions, creating a nicely packaged, holistic approach to how he might spend his off-hours between a demanding 9-to-5 job.

ChatGPT: Making a night of it

Along with backyard gardening (again), ChatGPT was the only AI system to suggest an evening hobby: amateur astronomy. Most of the other systems focused on ways to pass the weekend hours at estate sales or at home.

Stargazing could be a fun way to spend a Friday night, but we live in Los Angeles. Many of the “stars” overhead might actually be satellites, and finding a decent vantage point would likely mean braving traffic and crowds taking selfies over the city skyline.

ChatGPT’s other suggestion was using our backyard for beekeeping:

Beekeeping seemed pretty out of left field, considering the original prompt mentioned nothing about an interest in food, insects or anything remotely related to the complex caretaking involved with bees — or bee law. According to ChatGPT, the time commitment is only two to four hours per month (though local beekeepers might dispute that).

Overall, ChatGPT’s recommendations were the least relevant to the prompter’s real interests, and the logic the tool used to explain why it had made the recommendations was very thin.

I just can’t buy that “many full-time professionals” who enjoy playing video games also do a little beekeeping on the side.

Here’s hoping AI can offer some creative ideas for spending your time that don’t involve buying a full-body suit.

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Apple at 50, Siri, Apple Vision Pro, and vibe coding, on the AppleInsider Podcast

Published

2 hours ago

5 April 2026

NewsAdmin

Apple has marked its 50th anniversary, although arguably a year too soon but we’ll get into that, plus there’s good news for users of the Apple Vision Pro, hopeful news about Siri, and bad news for certain vibe coders, all on the AppleInsider Podcast.

Minimal green line drawing of an open laptop and mouse on white background, with a small black circle in the upper right corner containing the lowercase letters ai

Looking back at Apple’s history — image credit: Apple

The fiftieth anniversary celebrations are, quite reasonably, marking the half century since the partnership of Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, was founded on April 1, 1976. But the Apple we know today, the corporation, was created in 1977.
It seems unlikely that Apple will do another round of parties and events, but we’d be up for it if they did.
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