Repair costs are often unknown until you visit a service center. ASUS aims to address that with its new Part Price Checker, which lets customers check the prices of genuine spare parts online before booking a repair. The user just needs to provide the device’s serial number to view the prices of ASUS spare parts. This will give them an idea of the cost of repairs before going to a service center.

Part of the ASUS Assurance Program

The Part Price Checker is part of the ASUS Assurance program, which aims to make after-sales support more convenient for customers. The program is built around four key pillars: Assured Quality, Always-on Support, All-around Coverage, and Added-value Services. The new tool lets customers check the prices of genuine spare parts online before visiting a service center. This makes it easier to estimate repair costs before taking the device for service.

ASUS recently expanded the availability of genuine laptop batteries through its Exclusive Stores and authorized partners across India. The Part Price Checker builds on that effort by giving customers another way to plan repairs before booking a service.

Instead of guessing replacement costs, customers can determine the true cost before visiting their authorized ASUS repair facility. This enables customers to budget for the repair and schedule visits to the repair facility at a convenient time.

Earlier this week, TensorX raised €8m in a seed funding round, which its founder Shane Morton described as an ‘opening move’ ahead of a much larger build-out.

Irish AI infrastructure company TensorX is to collaborate with finance provider Solstice in a partnership to deliver up to $1bn-worth of sovereign European AI infrastructure.

The companies said they “will work together to create a facility … to finance AI hardware and data centre build-out to meet rising demand for sovereign compute across the EU”.

Dublin-based TensorX buys and runs AI hardware and data centre capacity across the EU, with the aim of connecting its start-up and enterprise clients to private compute and keeping “prompts and data on European infrastructure with full data residency and zero retention”.

Solstice is described as “an on-chain settlement and yield protocol and part of the Deus X Capital ecosystem”.

“Europe wants AI that can run on its own terms, on its own soil, without handing its data to someone else’s cloud on the world stage,” said Tim Grant, the chair of TensorX.

“Meeting that accelerating demand takes hardware, and a lot of it. The billion dollars going into GPUs and data centre capacity is the first step, and we expect to keep buying as demand grows. Solstice gives us a financing partner that can keep pace with this incredibly fast-moving market.”

Relatedly, Solstice will launch a yield asset named ‘aiUSX’ to help companies finance AI build-outs using capital they already hold.

“Every company is turning into an AI company, and every one of them watches its inference bill climb,” said Ben Nadareski, CEO of Solstice.

“aiUSX puts the money they set aside for AI to work in the meantime. They get access to the kind of AI-infrastructure lending that used to sit with large institutions, the capital stays liquid, and what it earns goes toward inference later.”

Earlier this week, TensorX raised €8m in a seed funding round with the goal of further contributing to European plans for sovereign AI infrastructure, which its founder Shane Morton described as an “opening move” ahead of a much larger build-out.

The EU is concerned about the control US technology companies wield over the bloc’s technology infrastructure and data.

“European companies don’t want to make a political statement about their AI stack. They want to make a practical one,” said Grant earlier this week. “Their data has to stay in Europe, on infrastructure they can trust, under laws they are required to comply with.”

Data from Accenture suggests that 62pc of European organisations seek sovereign AI, while 75pc of European enterprises plan to move AI workloads to local providers by 2030, according to Gartner.

“Sovereign AI is one of the biggest infrastructure build-outs of this decade, and it runs on capital as much as it runs on chips,” said Stuart Connolly of Deus X Capital.

“TensorX builds the compute, Solstice brings the financing and aiUSX lets more companies take part in funding it.”

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Recent estimates approximate that there are 16.4 billion Google searches per day globally. A huge portion of those searches is for people’s names. Of those names, many are likely public figures, like Lionel Messi, Sabrina Carpenter, or any number of politicians doing something nefarious. But a great many of the name searches are ostensibly for normies. Maybe even you. Definitely me, based on the deluge of spam calls I get.

DeleteMe was founded in 2010 and claims to be one of the oldest companies in data removal. Services like DeleteMe and its competitor Incogni work by contacting data brokers on your behalf and getting them to remove your personal information, including your current and past mailing addresses, your phone numbers, and your email address. Theoretically, this process removes you from annoying marketing lists and makes it harder for randos to find you. I’ve used DeleteMe since January, and while it’s not a silver bullet for ensuring the complete absence of unwanted communication from strangers and scammers, it seems to have helped with the number of unsolicited marketing calls I get. It also helped clean up personal info from my Google results, so you’re more likely to read an old article I wrote than see where I live.

DeleteMe via Martin Cizmar

I have also used Incogni, where I managed an account for my elderly mother. She got similar results, which is to be expected, says DeleteMe executive Jason Dalrymple. Services like DeleteMe and others “all basically do the same thing,” he says. “We’re bound by the same laws and constraints in compliance. It’s a cat-and-mouse game.”

That’s because the degree to which data brokers need to cooperate with the requests of deletion companies is legally murky, given that there’s no comprehensive federal law in the US that regulates the way private companies can use personal data. Rather, most regulations are at the state level, where protections are varied (I live in Missouri, where I feel lucky to have running water). Some states, like California, have more protections, while many states have none. Regardless of where you live, data brokers aren’t necessarily just going to delete your information upon request. They may request further verification of your identity before complying and confirming the request was granted, they may deny the request, and they may ignore the request completely—all actions that require follow-up correspondence with the deletion service.

With DeleteMe and Incogni, you can track progress via a dashboard that provides an at-a-glance update on how many removal requests have been made and fulfilled. A few more clicks will show you specifics on each broker, though most of these will be unfamiliar to typical users. The main difference I noticed between DeleteMe and Incogni is that the former’s dashboard doesn’t update as often as the latter’s and also doesn’t show as many brokers being contacted.

I prefer the Incogni dashboard because it’s satisfying and reassuring to log in every few days and see that the company is crawling the web and busting brokers, each of which it rates based on their speed and general compliance. There are constant status updates for thousands of websites. DeleteMe, on the other hand, creates a report every few months showing progress on a smaller number of sites. Dalrymple argues that his company’s surgical approach is a feature, not a bug.

Apple said it couldn’t shield customers from rising component costs anymore.

An exacerbating chip shortage has led Apple to hike up prices for several of its products. Price jumps go from as little as €40 for the HomePod Mini, to nearly €1,000 for the Mac Studio M3 Ultra, though iPhones are unaffected for now.

Apple share prices dropped more than 6pc yesterday, before making marginal gains in pre-market trading today (26 June). Prices, however, have dropped more than 10pc in a month.

“The rapid expansion of AI data centres has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage”, a company spokesperson told news publications, adding that Apple has “never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly”.

Apple said that the worsening situation meant that it couldn’t shield customers from the rising component costs any longer.

The company previously raised prices for the iPhone 17 Pro, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, but this is the first time it is hiking rates on products across several categories at once.

iPads will now cost EU customers €100 more at €529; the iPad mini will jump by €120 to €719. The new MacBook Neo, launched in March, is also seeing a price hike of €140, now costing customers €839 to purchase in the EU.

Outgoing CEO Tim Cook told investors in April that AI-led component shortages would constrain supply for Mac, Mac Mini, Mac Studio and MacBook Neo for the June quarter.

“Realistically, on the Mac Mini and the Mac Studio, I believe it will take several months to reach supply-demand balance,” he said at the time. “We are not at the point where we are saying this is going to end anytime soon.”

Chief financial officer Kevan Parekh, meanwhile, said that iPhones faced supply constraints in the March quarter. Bloomberg Intelligence expects iPhone prices to also rise, likely targeting the Pro models.

Apple isn’t alone in suffering from a shortage in memory chips. According to Counterpoint Research, global smartphone shipments are poised to drop nearly 14pc in 2026, with the squeeze particularly affecting entry-level and mid-range smartphones. Prices are expected to jump by as much as 13pc this year.

Meanwhile, rising prices allow for second-hand and refurbished sellers to fill in gaps with cheaper and environmentally better alternatives, according to Refurbed co-founder Kilian Kaminski.

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Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition features a tricky purple category. You’ll need to look inside of words for four words that have a certain connection. If you’re struggling with the puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Wow, you’re terrific!

Green group hint: Hoops winners.

Blue group hint: Hoops stars who’ve been honored.

Purple group hint: A name is hidden in each word.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: A revered star.

Green group: Last four NBA champions.

Blue group: WNBA players in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Purple group: Starts with an NFL starting QB.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is a revered star. The four answers are great, icon, legend and superstar.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is last four NBA champions. The four answers are Boston, Denver, New York and Oklahoma City.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is WNBA players in the Basketball Hall of Fame. The four answers are Cash, Catchings, Leslie and Whalen.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is starts with an NFL starting QB. The four answers are Jacksonville, Mayer, Williamsport and Youngster.

Toughest Connections: Sports Edition categories

The Connections: Sports Edition puzzle can be tough, but it really depends on which sports you know the most about. My husband aces anything having to do with Formula 1, my best friend is a hockey buff, and I can answer any question about Minnesota teams.

That said, it’s hard to pick the toughest Connections categories, but here are some I found exceptionally mind-blowing.

#1: Serie A Clubs. Answers: Atalanta, Juventus, Lazio, Roma.

#2: WNBA MVPs. Answers: Catchings, Delle Donne, Fowles and Stewart.

#3: Premier League team nicknames. Answers: Bees, Cherries, Foxes and Hammers.

#4: Homophones of NBA player names. Answers: Barns, Connect, Heart and Hero.

Verónica Cañas barely had time to grab her 6-year-old son and put on her shoes before running out of her apartment in Caracas. As she ran down the stairs, the walls began to crack and part of the facade started to crumble. A few kilometers away in Altamira, 50-year-old Eduardo Burger watched as one building swayed while another fell apart.

Neither of them knew that this was not just a single terrible earthquake but instead a rare phenomenon. On June 24, Venezuela experienced a seismic doublet that saw earthquakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 occur just 39 seconds apart. The first tremor occurred with its epicenter in Yaracuy. Just a few seconds later, an even more intense earthquake shook the same region again.

Both occurred at a shallow depth of between 10 and 20 kilometers (6 and 12 miles), which caused the energy to reach the surface with greater intensity and allowed the seismic waves to be felt as far away as Colombia, northern Brazil, and several Caribbean islands such as Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao. While one alone would’ve caused damaged, it was the one-two punch that created the conditions that brought down so many buildings and have made it hard to rescue survivors as the death toll mounts.

The Technical Explanation: Tectonic Plates, Damage, and Resonance

“The dining room table started to shake … We thought it was a tremor; then it started shaking much more violently. The walls were cracking, and pieces of the ceiling were falling. We thought it was going to collapse on top of us,” Cañas says.

She and her family managed to make it to a sports field across from the building, where other neighbors were beginning to gather. There, they were hit by another tremor.

“We all hugged each other, terrified, because we’re not used to this. In Mexico and Chile, there’s an earthquake-preparedness culture, and people are already prepared when an alarm goes off or they feel certain movements, but we aren’t,” she says.

Cañas’ experience highlights one of the main differences between Venezuela and other countries with higher seismic activity. Although the country lies at the boundary between the Caribbean Plate and the South American Plate, earthquakes of this magnitude are relatively rare.

Alan Damián Sánchez Pulido, a civil engineer from Mexico’s Ibero-American University and a specialist in structural damage assessment, explains that the plates’ positions and movements are why earthquakes aren’t as common as they are in other regions—and why they’re so powerful when they do occur.

“In Venezuela, the interaction between the Caribbean and South American plates involves parallel movement; that is what may have caused two earthquakes of considerable magnitude to occur in such quick succession,” he notes.

Unlike Mexico, where the Cocos Plate subducts beneath the North American Plate, in Venezuela, lateral movement leads to different outcomes. “It’s a very rare phenomenon, but the probability isn’t zero. It can occur anywhere in the world where there is interaction between tectonic plates,” Sánchez Pulido says.

What was surprising was not only that two major earthquakes occurred but that the second struck just 39 seconds after the first. To Sánchez Pulido, that short interval is what made this set of quakes so destructive.

“Many structures sustained some kind of damage from the first earthquake. That doesn’t mean the damage was extensive, but any damage alters the original behavior for which they were designed. When another earthquake of similar magnitude strikes immediately afterward, there is no longer any opportunity to reinforce, inspect, or repair the structure. As a result, it no longer performs as intended,” he says.

Robot mowers have come a long way from the boundary-wire era, and Segway’s Navimow range sits at the sharper end of where that technology has landed.

The Segway Navimow i205 AWD is down from £899 to £699 in this Prime Day deal, saving you £200 on a wire-free robot mower that maps your entire lawn from a single tap in the app, with the Garage S charging station included at no extra cost.