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Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI gets new judge

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A federal district judge will oversee Apple’s lawsuit accusing OpenAI of using stolen intellectual property to advance its hardware efforts.

In early July, Apple sued OpenAI after alleging that two ex-employees successfully stole intellectual property to enrich OpenAI’s development efforts. Now, on Thursday, a judge has been assigned to the case.

Initially, when the suit was first filed, it was randomly assigned to Magistrate Judge Virginia K. DeMarchi. Now, it seems as though U.S. District Judge Edward Davila will oversee the case.

As 9to5Mac notes, each party was given the choice whether to allow the magistrate judge to sit the case. Apple appears to be the party that declined, instead opting to reassign the case to a district judge.

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The case’s previous initial case management conference had been scheduled for October 13. However, it will now need to be rescheduled before Judge Davila.

Maintained intellectual property theft

Apple’s argument against OpenAI hinges on its argument that two previous employees had been stealing intellectual property for quite some time. The two employees are Chang Liu and Tang Yew Tan, the former Vice President of Product Design for iPhone and Apple Watch.

Reportedly, Liu failed to return Apple-issued hardware that was still authenticated to access Apple’s networks. He allegedly told a colleague, Yu-Ting “Alyssa” Peng, still at Apple, that he was planning to access Apple information.

Tan, however, allegedly began emailing himself information about Apple suppliers months before he left to serve as OpenAI’s Chief Hardware Officer. He also allegedly directed candidates to bring unreleased hardware components from Apple to their interviews with OpenAI.

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Apple believes this was part of a concerted effort to take and use confidential information. Apple is seeking judgment, an injunction against use and possession of Apple’s intellectual property, a return of Apple’s property, damages, and royalties for use of Apple’s intellectual property.

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Kagi Brings Back Old-School Search, One Human-Made Website at a Time

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If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember the way the web used to be: sites made and developed by humans.

You could load up a directory like AltaVista or Yahoo and click through categories including Home & Family, Science, and Computers. In those listings you’d find pages put together by hobbyists, academics, and tech nerds.

People gathered around forums and bulletin boards, and web developers tended to avoid putting images on their sites because it would slow down page loading. The idea of watching a video over the internet seemed almost impossible.

In the decades since those formative years, the web has transformed almost beyond recognition. Almost everything is now monetized to the nth degree, from search results and forums to social media and news outlets. Powerful apps and tools now run inside browsers, while AI is hard at work removing the need for the open web altogether.

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There are now a good number of companies that are keen to see the spirit of the old web return, and that includes Kagi. For several years Kagi has been running a search engine based on privacy and security. Now Kagi has expanded its efforts beyond its Google-alternative search tool to curate a “small web” of sites driven and written by humans.

The Kagi Search Engine

As Kagi’s main business is its search engine, it makes sense to start here. Searching with Kagi will cost you a small fee (starting at $5 a month, plus sales tax) for 300 searches. The standard-level AI assistant is included in that price; it’ll help you make sense of what you’re seeing. You get unlimited searches and more AI assistant tokens for $10 a month. If you want to see what Kagi is like first before committing, there’s a free trial available that allows you 100 searches.

The argument that Kagi puts forward for why you should pay for search is pretty persuasive. As Kagi explains it, searching the web is always going to cost you—it’s just a question of whether you pay directly with dollars, by giving up data about your online activity, or by sifting through an increasing number of ads and sponsored links.

Besides making search more private, Kagi also wants to make it better by serving up results that aren’t influenced by paid promotions or whatever Google’s favored business practices happen to be from month to month. Kagi has its own indexes for web and news, and is built to promote “relevant, high quality results” and noncommercial sites.

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To get started with Kagi search, all you need is an email address and password to manage your account. You can then get started with your 100 free searches. Open the search options panel to limit results to images, videos, podcasts, maps or news, or to filter by time or language.

For me, it feels a little bit like stepping back in time. Searching for a band, for example, brings up its official website, Wikipedia page, social media accounts, and YouTube channel—all free of promoted results, related searches, and sponsored content (such as concert tickets). It’s more the way search results used to appear.

Kagi’s Small Web Project

There’s now more to Kagi than search. The company offers access to a multitude of AI models (of course), and is busy building out its Small Web project, which aims to highlight the best of the human-made and human-curated internet. The company recently launched apps for Android and iOS too.

The idea is to avoid a web “dominated by algorithms, ads, and AI-generated noise,” in Kagi’s words. It’s a little like the old StumbleUpon, if you remember that far back. There’s a Next Post button for jumping to something else at random, allowing you to favorite what you see or to search for something specific. There’s a Share button too, of course.

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Tiny Vinyl Launches a $49.99 Player for 4 Inch Records Because Apparently They Needed One

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Tiny Vinyl now has a dedicated belt drive record player with Bluetooth, built in stereo speakers, and accessories for storing and displaying its growing collection of miniature records.

Last year, we covered Tiny Vinyl, the 4-inch record format that puts one song on each side and turns physical music into something closer to a collectible sonic snack. Apparently the snack now requires its own table setting.

The new Tiny Vinyl Player is a $49.99 record player designed exclusively for the company’s miniature vinyl format. It is available through Target in a black leatherette clamshell cabinet with built in stereo speakers, Bluetooth output, and a wired audio connection for external speakers or headphones.

Why Does Tiny Vinyl Need Its Own Player?

Strictly speaking, it does not.

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Tiny Vinyl records spin at 33â…“ RPM and can play on many conventional manual turntables. The problem is that their grooves sit very close to the spindle. Automatic stop and return mechanisms can engage before the song is finished, while some tonearms simply cannot travel far enough toward the center of the platter.

tiny-vinyl-player-angle
Tiny Vinyl Player

The dedicated player removes that uncertainty and gives collectors a simple way to use the format without checking tonearm geometry or disabling automatic functions. It also makes Tiny Vinyl more approachable for younger listeners and casual collectors who do not already own a turntable.

Tiny Vinyl says customers began requesting a player almost as soon as the records reached the market. Target also encouraged the company to develop one after the retailer began carrying the format across its stores. According to the company’s founders, more than one million Tiny Vinyl records have now been pressed.

Perhaps the tiny ecosystem is becoming less tiny.

What Does the Tiny Vinyl Player Actually Play?

One format. No plot twist.

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The Tiny Vinyl Player supports the company’s 4-inch records at 33⅓ RPM. It does not play conventional 7 inch singles, 10 inch records, 12 inch LPs, or standard 45 RPM releases.

Each Tiny Vinyl record holds up to four minutes of music per side and is issued as a sequentially numbered limited edition. The records use 15 grams of 100 percent bio attributed vinyl, compared with approximately 140 grams for a conventional LP.

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That limited playing time means this is not a format for albums, live recordings, or the 17 minute version of anything. It is designed for two songs, collectible artwork, and fans who enjoy owning a physical object connected to a particular artist.

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Tiny Vinyl’s official catalog now includes more than 90 released or identified records, most of which sell for $14.99 at Target. The lineup spans artists such as Rihanna, Ariana Grande, Bruno Mars, Chappell Roan, Britney Spears, The Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, Blink 182, Jimi Hendrix, BTS, and John Williams.

Tiny Vinyl Info

Tiny Vinyl Player Features

The Tiny Vinyl Player is a compact belt drive design measuring approximately 10 inches wide, 5.5 inches tall, and 6.5 inches deep. It weighs 3.88 pounds and requires AC power because there is no internal battery.

Key features include:

  • 33â…“ RPM playback
  • Support for 4 inch Tiny Vinyl records
  • Belt drive mechanism
  • Built in stereo speakers
  • Bluetooth output for compatible speakers and headphones
  • Wired audio output
  • Black leatherette clamshell cabinet
  • Included power cord
  • Compact 10.04 by 5.51 by 6.46 inch dimensions

The player is designed to work immediately out of the box, although records are sold separately.

Please Connect Better Powered Speakers

Nobody should expect room filling bass, meaningful stereo separation, or much dynamic impact from speakers squeezed into a $49.99 record player that is only slightly larger than a shoebox.

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Tiny Vinyl acknowledges that the built in speakers are intended for convenient, casual listening rather than high quality playback. Two colleagues who have already purchased it described the sonic playback as “thin” and “lacking bass impact.”

Color me surprised. Not really.

We have not tested the Tiny Vinyl Player, so this is not a sonic verdict. It is, however, a very strong recommendation to connect the player to a better pair of powered speakers.

Use the wired audio output when possible, or connect through Bluetooth if convenience matters more. Even an affordable pair of powered bookshelf speakers should provide greater output, stronger bass, and a more convincing sense of scale than the internal speakers.

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Will that transform a 4-inch record into an audiophile pressing? Of course not. But it should make the experience considerably more enjoyable, which is presumably why you bought a record that can hide behind a drink coaster in the first place.

Tiny Vinyl Crate

tiny-vinyl-crate
Tiny Vinyl Crate

The $19.99 Tiny Vinyl Crate provides storage for up to 32 records. It uses a wood frame with black leatherette covering and a velveteen interior, and it is sized so the Tiny Vinyl Player can sit directly on top.

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The crate can also accommodate compact discs and cassettes, should your miniature record collection fail to consume every available inch of storage.

Tiny Vinyl 2Ă—2 Frame

tiny-vinyl-frame
Tiny Vinyl 2Ă—2 Frame

For collectors more interested in displaying the artwork, the $14.99 Tiny Vinyl 2Ă—2 Frame holds four record jackets behind a clear shatter resistant window.

The black wood frame measures approximately 11 by 11 inches, uses magnetic closures for easier access, and can be mounted on a wall or placed on a flat surface. The records themselves are not included.

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The Bottom Line

The Tiny Vinyl Player is not pretending to replace a conventional turntable, and anyone expecting it to compete with a proper analog system has wandered into the wrong aisle at Target.

This is a compact, affordable player for collectors who already own Tiny Vinyl records, younger listeners discovering physical music, or anyone whose automatic turntable cannot reach the format’s unusually close inner grooves. It also makes a fun desk system or gift without requiring the space and expense of a full size turntable setup.

Owners of a compatible manual turntable do not need it. Listeners expecting full size LP performance should avoid it entirely.

For everyone else, the Tiny Vinyl Player completes an amusing and increasingly popular collectible ecosystem. Just connect it to better powered speakers. Tiny records are one thing. Tiny sound does not have to be part of the deal.

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Price & Availability

The Tiny Vinyl Player and accessories are available exclusively through Target at the time of publication.

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Radar Signals from US-India NISAR Satellite Turns an Antarctic Peak Into a Hummingbird

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Radar Signal NISAR Satellite Antarctic Peak Hummingbird
Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Radar signals from the joint US-India NISAR satellite have mapped a mountaintop in East Antarctica that forms a clear hummingbird shape once the data is processed into color. Scientists at the mission nicknamed the result “the hummingbird” almost as soon as the image appeared.


Radar Signal NISAR Satellite Antarctic Peak Hummingbird
Nunatak Zaterjavshijsja is a granite mountain in East Antarctica’s Prince Charles Mountains that rises from the surrounding ice sheet approximately 40 kilometers southwest of Mount Newton. A glacier lumbers past this impediment on its journey northeast to the ocean. The force of the mountain causes the ice to strain and bend, eventually forming deep cracks in the surface known as crevasses.

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NISAR’s L-band radar collected observations in August 2025, when the satellite was still being tested. It operates by transmitting microwaves towards the surface, which have horizontal polarization, and recording what comes back. Surfaces that bounce the signal back with the same direction as it was sent appear in magenta, which is the smoothest type of ice. Anything that returns with a changed polarization of the signal or scatters after entering the ice registers as green. These greens distinguish the faces of crevasses and other irregular structures. Where both types of signals come back strongly, you get white.

Radar Signal NISAR Satellite Antarctic Peak Hummingbird
When the finished image is viewed, the peak forms a bright, oval center with a darker section smack in the middle, similar to an eye. Fine green lines radiate from the top and bottom of the core in patterns resembling feathers or wings. A long thin green chunk extends away from the oval, giving it a pointed beak appearance. The ice stream that continues to go northeast becomes the tail of the whole thing. Magenta fields surround the smoother areas of the fractured zone, while the deepest cracks light the brightest green.

Seongsu Jeong, a signal analysis engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab who produced the image, explained that the radar can look past the snow and into the ice, revealing features that optical sensors cannot detect. A Landsat 9 image of the same region obtained in November 2025 is almost entirely white, with just weak traces of a mountain existing.

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NISAR is equipped with both L-band and S-band radars, as well as a 12 meter mesh reflector, the largest radar antenna ever flown by the US. Every 12 days, the satellite covers nearly the entire surface of the Earth, including land and ice. The mission’s processed L-band data was made available to the public on July 20, 2026, only a few days before the first anniversary of its launch from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Center on July 30, 2025.

The beak shape was a complete coincidence, but the detail behind it is extremely valuable. The green fracture lines indicate exactly where the glacier is under stress and how the ice moves around the nunatak. Scientists may use this knowledge to investigate how glaciers move, the dynamics of ice sheets, and how Antarctic ice responds to impediments well inland from the shore. The same radar approach that transformed a single peak into a bird shape is already demonstrating the ability to provide repeated, all-weather data required to track these changes over time.
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How to watch Stage 19 & 20 of Tour de France 2026: FREE live streams

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Tour de France 2026 continues today with Stage 19, the first of two successive summit finishes at the iconic Alpe d’Huez. Just the name conjors images of legendary Tour moments of years gone by, from Fausto Coppi’s incredible climb to victory back in 1952, to Tom Pidcock’s seat-of-your-pants descent 70 years later. So good that they included it twice in this year’s route, the riders will have to do it all again tomorrow (Via a different route) on the day before the finish.

Today’s stage is a 127.9km ride from Gap which includes 3,500m of elevation gain, starting with the Category Two Col Bayard, a 4.8km long climb with an average gradient of 7.2%. The riders get some respite with a short descent and a brief flat section, before taking on the Category One Col du Noyer (7.2km at 8.5%) which takes them to the summit. They will be far from finished, though, with 100km still to go which includes the Category Three Col d’Ornon (5.4km at 6.4%) before they tackle Alpe d’Huez with its familiar 21 hairpin bends.

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World’s First Wave Power Generator Receives Certification For Regular Use

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“The Norwegian certification agency DNV has certified the commercial wave-driven power generator Corpower C4 for regular use,” writes Longtime Slashdot reader Qbertino. “German news site heise.de has a detailed write-up. See a CGI video of the power station and its internals, as well as the company’s website [at their respective links].” From the report (translated to English): According to the manufacturer Corpower Ocean, it is the first DNV prototype certificate for a wave energy converter. The certificate confirms that Corpower’s technology meets DNV’s requirements for structural strength, reliability, and safety, Corpower Ocean announced. The certification process began in the design phase and lasted seven years. DNV oversaw the process from concept development through design, manufacturing, and assembly, to dry-running tests and subsequent operation.

This is an important step, said Patrik Moller, CEO and one of the founders of Corpower Ocean. With the certification, wave energy is no longer just a promising technology, but a proven and financially viable one. This opens up new opportunities for project financing, insurance, and investments in commercial applications. The Corpower C4 wave power plant looks like a normal buoy: It consists of a 19-meter-long floating body with a diameter of 9 meters and a weight of approximately 11 tons. The system is anchored to the seabed. A mechanism inside the buoy converts its up-and-down movements in the waves into a rotary motion. This, in turn, drives a generator that produces electricity. The report notes that the company is “planning the first two industrial-scale wave energy farms off the coasts of Portugal and Scotland,” which are scheduled to begin operating sometime between 2027 and 2029.

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Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra vs. Z Fold 7: Improved Battery, Screen and a Higher Price

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At Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event, the phone-maker announced three new folding phones, including its first-ever Ultra foldable phone. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is the true successor of last year’s Fold 7, while the Fold 8 enters with an all-new wide-fold design.

These devices are still priced high enough to put them out of reach for many, but they pack subtle design improvements that might make a big impact in daily life. I love the new anti-reflective coating, easier-to-unfold design and battery upgrades, but the Galaxy Z Fold 7 remains a powerful and capable device – especially if you can get it at a rare discount.

The two book-style foldables differ mainly in experiential upgrades rather than spec bumps. It might be hard to get an idea of what’s exactly new. That’s why I put them side by side during my hands-on to find out.

Holding the Z Fold 8 Ultra and the Z Fold 7.
The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra succeeds the Galaxy Z Fold 7 with a thinner design when folded.Prakhar Khanna/CNET

Design and display

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is roughly the same size as the already thin-and-light Fold 7. It weighs the same but is a millimeter slimmer when unfolded. Both phones are comfortable to hold, but the new model is easier to open.

Samsung has made the Ultra’s sides slightly slimmer so its bezels don’t run all the way to the corners. This gives you a slight gap between the sides to make it easier to unfold. In comparison, the Fold 7 has flat sides with zero gap when the phone is folded shut, making it more difficult to unfold.

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Both phones have a 6.5-inch AMOLED cover screen and an 8-inch AMOLED folding display with a 120Hz variable refresh rate. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra’s inner screen is brighter at 3,000 nits (versus 2,600 nits on the Fold 7). It also has a matte finish, along with my long-requested feature: an anti-reflective coating for better legibility in harsh lighting conditions and outdoors.

Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Galaxy Z Fold 7
Side by side of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 (left) and the Z Fold 7.Prakhar Khanna/CNET

I held both phones indoors in direct light, and the difference was noticeable. My Fold 7 was more susceptible to glare and harder to see under direct light when compared to the new model. 

Samsung has also improved the crease situation. It is minimal and can’t be seen unless you’re specifically looking for it. The phone-maker has added a new display structure that combines titanium-alloy film with an enhanced titanium plate to strengthen the display and balance the “hinge mechanics, display tension and magnetic force to make unfolding feel smoother, lighter and more natural,” says Samsung.

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and Z Fold 7 while closed.
While closed, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and the Galaxy Z Fold 7 use their 6.5-inch displays. Prakhar Khanna/CNET

Both foldables are IP48 rated for dust and water resistance. So, they aren’t truly dust-tight like the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold and Honor Magic V6, but they can survive being dunked in water for at least 30 minutes (the “8” in IP48). But they won’t protect against dust particles smaller than 1mm (the “4” in that rating).

Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra while open
The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra uses an 8-inch screen when unfolded.Prakhar Khanna/CNET

Performance and battery

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chip, as compared with the Fold 7’s Snapdragon 8 Elite processor. Both phones come in three storage variants: 256GB, 512GB and 1TB, with the top-end model getting 16GB of RAM (the 256GB and 512GB models are again paired with 12GB of RAM).

Samsung says it has created more space in the internals for better heat dissipation, so you can theoretically expect better thermal management.

As for the battery, this is the first time Samsung is using the silicon-carbon anode technology. It has allowed the phone-maker to upgrade the cell capacity from 4,400 mAh to 5,000 mAh on the new model. The Ultra also supports faster wired charging at 45 watts (the Fold 7 offered 25 watts).

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On paper, it is still behind Chinese rivals like Oppo and Honor, which include over 6,000-mAh batteries in their respective folding phones, but I’m hoping this spec bump will help me get through a day with ease.

Both phones have Qi wireless charging, but no inbuilt magnets. You’ll have to buy a separate magnetic case to add compatibility with Qi2 wireless chargers and other magnetic accessories.

The back of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and Z Fold 7.
The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and Z Fold 7 both include a 200-megapixel wide camera.Prakhar Khanna/CNET

Camera, software and AI

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra’s camera array is mostly unchanged from last year’s model, with one exception: the ultrawide sensor. You get a 200-megapixel main camera and a 10-megapixel telephoto sensor with 3x optical zoom on both phones. However, the 12-megapixel ultrawide camera has been upgraded to a 50-megapixel sensor. You can expect higher-quality images, but I’ll wait for CNET’s tests to identify the real differences.

Both foldables shoot video in 8K at 30 frames per second, but the Fold might appeal to more creatives. The new model adds support for the APV codec and adds a Cine LUT to give cinematic color and tone control directly from your phone. This adds greater flexibility for editing and production workflows for professional creators.

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 launched with Android 16 onboard last year, and the Fold 8 Ultra is coming with Android 17 (with One UI 9 on top). You get a similar software experience on both phones, and the Z Fold 7 will get the update to Android 17 with One UI 9.

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The Z Fold 8 Ultra with split screen apps
Now Nudge opens the Calendar in split screen after you tap on its pop-up button.Prakhar Khanna/CNET

The two devices support the full suite of Samsung’s Galaxy AI features alongside Gemini access. There’s AI Select for on-screen search support, an object eraser tool in the Gallery app and contextual AI features like Now Nudge for first-party apps. The latter displays contextual actions based on on-screen information. Like, if you’re having a chat in the Messages app, and they send you an invite with the date, time and address, Samsung’s Now Nudge feature will show a pop-up to add it to Calendar.

The phone-maker also demoed a new agentic AI feature at my demo, which wasn’t very impressive. Ideally, the new Gemini feature would help book a hotel just by looking at an on-screen photo of the Eiffel Tower, but in its current state, it was unreliable. But since the Z Fold 8 Ultra gets seven years of software updates and the Z Fold 7 has six more years to go, there’s plenty of time for both phones to continue to improve on these features.

To see more differences between the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and the Z Fold 7, check out the specs chart below.

Hands-On With Samsung's Z Fold 8 Ultra and Z Flip 8: What Your Extra $100 Buys

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra vs. Z Fold 7: Specs and prices

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7
Cover display size, tech, resolution, refresh rate 6.5-inch AMOLED; 2,520Ă—1,080 pixels; up to 120Hz variable refresh rate 4.1-inch AMOLED; 1,048Ă—948 pixels; 120Hz refresh rate
Internal display size, tech, resolution, refresh rate 8.0-inch AMOLED; 2,256Ă—2,504 pixels; up to 120Hz variable refresh rate 6.9-inch AMOLED; 2,520Ă—1,080 pixels; 1 to 120Hz refresh rate
Pixel density Cover: 422 ppi; Internal: 422 ppi Cover: 342ppi; Internal: 397ppi
Dimensions (inches) Open: 6.23 x 5.6 x 0.16 in; Closed: 6.23 x 2.87 x 0.35 in Open: 2.96 x 6.56 x 0.26 in; Closed: 2.96 x 3.37 x 0.52 in
Dimensions (millimeters) Open: 158.4 x 143.2 x 4.1mm; Closed: 158.4 x 72.8 x 8.9mm Open: 75.2 x 166.7 x 6.5mm; Closed: 75.2 x 85.5 x 13.7mm
Weight (grams, ounces) 215g (7.58 oz) 188g (6.63 oz.)
Mobile software Android 17 with One UI 9 Android 16
Cameras 200-megapixel (wide), 50-megapixel (ultrawide), 10-megapixel (telephoto), 10-megapixel (cover screen selfie) 50-megapixel (wide), 12-megapixel (ultrawide)
Internal screen camera 10-megapixel 10-megapixel
Video capture 8K at 30 fps 4K
Processor Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy Samsung Exynos 2500
RAM/storage 12GB + 256GB; 12GB + 512GB; 16GB + 1TB 12GB + 256GB, 12GB + 512GB
Expandable storage None None
Battery 5,000 mAh 4,300 mAh
Fingerprint sensor Side Yes
Connector USB-C USB-C
Headphone jack None None
Special features IP48 rating, Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3 (cover screen), Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 (Rear), Advanced Armor Aluminum, 5G (sub6, mmW), Wi-Fi 7, 3,000-nit peak brightness, anti-reflective display, 45-watt wired charging, 20-watt wireless charging One UI 8, IP48 water resistance, 25W wired charging, Qi wireless charging, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, Galaxy AI
US price starts at $2,100 (256GB); $2,300 (512GB); $2,700 (1TB) $1,100 (256GB)
UK price starts at ÂŁ1,899 (256GB); ÂŁ2,069 (512GB); ÂŁ 2,409 (1TB) ÂŁ1,049
Australia price starts at AU$2,999 (256GB); AU$3,299 (512GB); AU$3,899 (1TB) AU$1,799

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This Searchable Tool Is Helping Track Flock Surveillance Cameras in Your City

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Recent coverage of Flock Safety, the fast‑growing US surveillance technology company, reveals how opposition to automated license plate readers is playing out at the local level.

In South Carolina, officials have been sparring over whether to install 25 new cameras, a dispute that reflects broader questions about cost, oversight, and how much surveillance communities are willing to accept. The city of Los Angeles recently broke its contract with Flock Safety, though Flock’s CEO argues that the suspension should be temporary while the police department revises its rules.

These cancellations are in large part driven by public concern around a system designed to enable mass surveillance, which is susceptible to serious abuses, including biased policing and privacy violations.

To track such surveillance, journalists and researchers are increasingly turning to a free tool called the Atlas of Surveillance, a collaboration between the renowned digital privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation and the University of Nevada, Reno. The site has become a go‑to source for mapping police technology — which also includes drones, facial-recognition cameras and body cameras — with a searchable database that’s often more dependable than alternatives.

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With the Atlas of Surveillance tool, you enter a city, county, state, law enforcement agency or vendor in the US and select which technology you’re interested in tracking. You’ll get a list of details based on your search, including links to public records or news articles.

“We frequently run into situations where local councilpeople don’t even know that a certain tool is in use,” said Beryl Lipton, Electronic Frontier Foundation senior investigative researcher. “Learning about a technology we have logged in the Atlas of Surveillance is meant to help people have conversations [about] whether that tool is appropriate for local use, start asking questions, and advocate for standards around how their police can or can’t use this equipment.”

Surveilling surveillance

While other tools for tracking Flock cameras and similar surveillance systems exist, I prefer the EFF’s approach, which uses reliable crowdsourced data from specific volunteers, including University of Nevada students and staff, as well as experienced researchers. These volunteers use a variety of information, including government documents, press releases, news stories and confirmed social media posts, to create lists of exactly which surveillance technologies local police or sheriff departments are using, as well as when they were adopted.

Deflock, another popular crowdsourced app for reporting Flock camera locations, has an open-source design that leaves it vulnerable to false reports from people who only think they’re seeing a surveillance device. Self-reports are also becoming less reliable as surveillance cameras are being hidden in speed signs and cacti.

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Results for an Atlas of Surveillance search.
The Atlas provides sources for its information and includes records dating back years.EFF

I tried the Atlas tool with several location searches, including Albany, Georgia, where five police officers were fired and arrested in July on charges of misusing the city’s Flock system. Sure enough, I could see exactly when Albany began its Flock program, among other details about the technology it uses.

“While we may know that a police department has a tool, we may not know that they don’t have a governing policy or what is in the policy they have, like how long the data is retained,” Lipton told me.

Lipton recommends that users pair the Atlas tool with the EFF’s Street-Level Surveillance hub, which offers deeper documentation, including details on third‑party vendors that collaborate with law enforcement.

The Atlas database isn’t perfect, and the volunteers can do only so much. In my own searches, I found that my home city offered accurate listings for traffic cameras, but didn’t mention the period when it adopted Flock automated license plate readers last year, before removing them after public complaint. I’ve seen similar patterns in other cities with comparable histories, suggesting the database may emphasize active programs or exclude portions of older records.

Resources like the Atlas of Surveillance give residents a clearer view of the technologies their police departments use, information that can otherwise be difficult to obtain. As I’ve covered before, some cities will carefully omit the name “Flock” when announcing new surveillance or monitoring programs, even if they are using the brand’s drones or ALPR cameras.

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If you’d like to volunteer for the Atlas of Surveillance, you can select the Collaborate option to submit a datapoint for consideration.

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New Markdown rival: Open-source DGML format aims to turn docs into data that AI (and humans) can trust

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L-R: Mantra CEO John Patrick Mullin, Docugami CEO Jean Paoli, and Inveniam CEO Patrick O’Meara. The companies are partnering to make DGML a standard for AI, with Docugami turning documents into data, Inveniam verifying it on a blockchain, and Mantra providing the chain.

Jean Paoli has spent his career making documents readable by machines — first as a co-creator of XML, then helping build the file formats behind Microsoft Office. Now his Kirkland, Wash.-based startup, Docugami, is open-sourcing the technology at the heart of its business, betting it can become a standard way to turn documents into data that people and AI agents can trust. 

The company is releasing its technology, called DGML (short for Document Graph Markup Language), under Apache 2.0, a widely used open-source license, so other developers and companies can adopt it.

The idea is to turn it into a shared standard that no single company owns, much as XML became a common foundation across the tech industry. 

The move reflects a shift in where the value is created in AI. Docugami until now has made its money selling software that turns unstructured documents into usable data. It’s betting now that there’s more value in proving that data is trustworthy instead. 

How it works: Docugami is teaming up with Inveniam, a Detroit company whose software helps big investors keep tabs on the mountains of paperwork behind real estate and other hard-to-value assets. Inveniam will record a kind of digital fingerprint of each piece of DGML data on NVNM Chain, its blockchain built with Mantra, a crypto firm that Inveniam is acquiring.

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That means, for example, that a single fact buried in a 200-page lease — such as the rental rate, a renewal option, or a default clause — can be verified on its own, without exposing the whole document. An investor, auditor, or AI agent can trace it to the page it came from. 

To work with documents, AI systems usually convert them into a simpler format first. DGML enters a growing field of contenders in that regard, competing with the popular Markdown format and DocLang, a new open standard for AI-ready documents backed by IBM, Nvidia and Red Hat.

The business model: This is a big move for a company of Docugami’s size, taking the 30-person startup in a new direction. Paoli is handing the industry the technology his team spent years building, and pinning the company’s future on a larger idea.

The plan is to make money not from the format itself but from the value of the trusted data. Once a company converts its leases or loans into DGML and anchors the key numbers on the blockchain, investors, lenders and auditors can pay to draw on that verified data.

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Docugami will share in the revenue through its partnership with Inveniam. The company also stands to collect a small fee each time a piece of data is recorded on the chain. 

The company is giving away the DGML format and a working version of the software, but not everything. Paoli said the company is keeping some of its own technology private, including AI models it has fine-tuned to read documents, and could sell those or other tools to enterprises. 

“The business model of everybody is changing. And if you know any company where it’s not true, you need to tell me, because I haven’t met them yet,” Paoli said in an interview. 

Docugami has raised about $13 million to date, including a $10 million seed round in 2020 that drew the first investment in Grammarly’s history.

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The partnership: Paoli met Patrick O’Meara, Inveniam’s CEO, a few months ago, through a former Microsoft colleague who had become one of O’Meara’s advisers. They quickly realized they had been working toward the same idea from different directions.

Inveniam, founded in 2017, helps big investors keep track of assets that are hard to value, like office towers, private loans and infrastructure. It monitors the documents behind those assets and flags changes as they happen, and its clients include some of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, according to O’Meara.

What it lacked was a consistent way to break those documents into verifiable pieces. That is what Docugami provides.

“We’re not putting the data itself on-chain, just a fingerprint of the document. Change one bit, one byte, one pixel, and the hash won’t match,” O’Meara said.

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The blockchain comes from Mantra, a crypto company run by John Patrick Mullin. Inveniam invested $20 million in Mantra last year and has since agreed to acquire it outright. Mantra’s OM token collapsed in April 2025, erasing several billion dollars in value. 

Paoli said the project uses the underlying blockchain, not the token.

“Crypto as an industry has gone through a lot of changes in the last 18 to 24 months, and it’s growing up in a lot of ways. This is a real use case with fundamental value, not just pure speculation,” Mantra’s Mullin said in an interview. 

The result is a division of labor: Docugami turns documents into data, Inveniam verifies it and brings the customers, and Mantra provides the chain where the proof is recorded.

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The DGML specification, sample documents and reference code are at dgml.io and on GitHub

Editor’s note: This story was updated after publication to correct the name of a competing document format, DocLang, and to note that Inveniam’s blockchain is called NVNM Chain.

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Scientists made robots curious like toddlers, and it helped them learn language twice as fast

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Scientists have been trying to figure out how kids pick up language so fast for decades, and a new study out of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) might have cracked part of the puzzle: curiosity.

Researchers built a virtual robot with a brain-inspired neural network and set it loose in a simulated 3D world full of shapes, colors, and simple commands like “push left magenta dumbbell.” 

Some robots were rewarded only for completing tasks correctly. Others got an extra reward for curiosity, essentially getting a little internal high whenever they encountered something that challenged their existing understanding of the world.

How does curiosity help a robot learn language?

The curious robots didn’t just edge out their indifferent counterparts; they blew past them. According to the study, published in Science Advances, curious robots reached a genuine understanding of language in about half the time. 

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Study author Theodore Tinker compared it to trying white chocolate for the first time even though you already love dark chocolate. You take the risk anyway, and you walk away knowing more about chocolate in general.

Things got even more interesting halfway through training. The curious robots started knocking things over and experimenting with actions nobody asked for, basically playing. Nobody programmed that behavior in. It just showed up on its own.

Do robots really make the same mistakes as toddlers?

The robots also mimicked a well-known quirk in how children learn language. Kids often get certain verb forms right at first, then start applying grammar rules too broadly and make mistakes on verbs they’d previously used correctly, before eventually sorting out the exceptions and correcting themselves. The robots followed the same U-shaped dip in performance.

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It’s also a nice contrast to how today’s chatbots learn. Large language models like ChatGPT train on massive datasets and spit out the statistically likely next word. This robot’s brain works more like ours, prioritizing accuracy while trying to keep its beliefs intact, only updating them when something surprises it enough to be worth the trouble.

None of this means robots understand language the way we do. But it does suggest that curiosity paired with a wide variety of experiences might be a big part of how toddlers crack the language code with so little to go on.

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AMD is investing $5 billion in Anthropic and deploying 2 gigawatts of Helios GPUs to run Claude

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AMD will invest up to $5B in Anthropic and deploy 2GW of MI450 GPUs. Claude will accelerate ROCm development. First GW ships H1 2027. Anthropic already uses MI355X GPUs.

AMD and Anthropic announced a strategic partnership on Tuesday that commits AMD to invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic and deploy up to 2 gigawatts of AMD Instinct MI450 Series GPUs in Helios rackscale solutions to run Claude. Deployment of the first gigawatt begins in the first half of 2027. Anthropic is already using AMD’s MI355X GPUs and will now scale to MI455X accelerators paired with EPYC “Venice” CPUs and Pensando networking.

The engineering collaboration may matter more than the hardware. AMD and Anthropic will use Claude to optimise workloads for AMD Instinct GPUs and accelerate ROCm software development. AMD will also adopt Claude broadly across its engineering and product development teams. ROCm is AMD’s answer to Nvidia’s CUDA, and its software gap has been the primary reason AI developers default to Nvidia hardware even when AMD’s specs are competitive. If Claude can materially improve ROCm’s developer experience, AMD addresses the problem that has held it back for years, using its customer’s AI to fix its own software.

Anthropic’s compute strategy is now genuinely multi-vendor. Anthropic signed its biggest compute deal with Google and Broadcom, and has separate arrangements with Amazon (Trainium chips, 5GW), CoreWeave (Nvidia GPUs), and SpaceX (Colossus data centres). Adding 2GW of AMD Helios gives Anthropic what Tom Brown, its chief compute officer, called the ability to “map the right workloads to the right hardware.” Diversifying away from any single chip vendor reduces dependency risk at a time when compute is the binding constraint on frontier model development.

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For AMD, the $5 billion equity investment mirrors Nvidia’s playbook. Nvidia invested $2 billion in Nebius and has taken stakes in multiple AI infrastructure companies to lock in hardware demand. AMD is doing the same: investing in a customer to guarantee that its chips, not Nvidia’s, run a meaningful share of the world’s most capable AI models. Lisa Su called it “a major platform for the next generation of AI infrastructure.” Whether Helios can compete with Nvidia’s NVL72 at production scale is the question the first gigawatt will answer.

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