A few tricks provide a seamless Google Maps experience in your car with CarPlay.

Adding Google Maps to your CarPlay Home Screen

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Other tricks for fast navigation

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It isn’t quite hailing frequencies open, but researchers from Harvard claim they’ve picked up a radio signal directly from a nearby exoplanet. Before you get too excited, planets in our solar system also emit RF, so no one credible is claiming these are extraterrestrial reruns of their version of I Love Lucy, but it is the first time they’ve localized a radio signal to an exoplanet, in this case, Beta Pictoris B.

Speaking of space, the asteroid formerly known as 1981 EC26 is now sporting a new moniker: (14331) Alyankovic. If you think that sounds like (Weird) Al Yankovic, you aren’t wrong. The Tucson Star reports that, thanks to the efforts of several planetary scientists who are also Weird Al fans, the International Astronomical Union made the name official. Apparently, another asteroid now bears a name in honor of Weird Al’s predecessor, Tom Lehrer.

If you follow open mobile phone software, you probably know the name postmarketOS, a Linux distribution based on Alpine aimed at mobile phones and tablets. Well, now you can forget it. The project announced a name change, so we’re now talking about Nura. Why Nura? According to the team, it is a shortened form of Nuraghe, some granite structures in Sardinia that are over 5,000 years old. The FAQ mentions that postmarketOS was hard to remember. We aren’t sure Nura is that much more memorable. Perhaps they should have pivoted to Phonz OS.

Ever write an Arduino “sketch?” We’d bet you have. You might know that Arduino forked from Wiring, and Wiring was, actually, an offshoot of Processing. There is another Processing offshoot, p5.js, and it, unsurprisingly, looks a lot like Arduino. Now p5.js can access your GPU via WebGPU, and if you want to learn about CPU programming, there’s a page for that.

We all want a metal 3D printer, but even when you get one, it isn’t likely to be turning out two-ton dies. Unless, of course, you work for a big national laboratory. The die is six feet long and four feet wide. Apparently, it will be shaping some thermoplastic composite for us in experimental aircraft.

We always thought transformers were a way to step AC voltages up or down. Or maybe they were a Lou Reed album. Then they were toy robots. Now they are the power behind AI chatbots. If you are as confused as you are, this transformer (of the AI kind) explainer might help you.

If you can find the old 2011 Kindle 4 that slipped behind your couch cushions a few years ago, you might be able to load a mainline Linux kernel on it soon. The patches are out there, and the kernel supports a lot of even stranger things, like the IBM System/390, the Sega Dreamcast, and the Nintendo GameCube.

See something interesting that you think would be a good fit for our weekly Links column? Drop us a line, we’d love to hear about it.

Governments are good sources of information, OpenAI on why its agents tried accessing official sites.

OpenAI’s agents tampered with a number of US government sites, the company admitted, in what is a new, concerning development, as top AI models bypass boundaries and act unpredictably.

According to the New York Times, the technology juggernaut confirmed incidents relating to the US Department of Commerce and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and said that it is still probing a potential breach at the Department of Education.

Sources told the publication that the agents were attempting to gather data from these sites. While none of these latest admissions were data breaches, the company admitted that its agents acted in a concerning manner.

The agents also shared public data from the SEC in online forums. Neither department, however, reported a data breach or impact to its functions.

“Most of the activity we’ve reviewed so far involved routine research tasks, such as accessing public web content to answer questions,” an OpenAI spokesperson told the publication.

“Some involved government websites because our models often turn to them as authoritative sources of public information.”

This latest admission comes just after Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese told the press last week that OpenAI’s agents hacked one of their government websites in a similar incident, after the bots were sent to conduct research into public medicine spending.

“Our models attempted to look up answers and available statistics”, a spokesperson explained last week. “In the course of that, [they] took actions we did not intend.” Or as Albanese put it, the models deliberately bypassed boundaries and “didn’t accept ‘no’ for an answer”.

OpenAI said that its agents didn’t get their hands on patient records during the Medicare breach, although the Australian government said it is launching a forensic investigation and a taskforce to review the matter on its own.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, the head at Anthropic, have both been called to attend an Australian Senate inquiry on AI in relation to the incident.

Last week, the two addressed the United Nations Security Council, where they touted the benefits of AI while warning of its potential abuses. The two have, in recent weeks, made comments pushing for stronger AI safety and slower development.

Concerns around AI effectively going “rogue” have taken centre stage in recent months after OpenAI’s agents hacked into Hugging Face and a third-party infrastructure provider.

The company shared last week that ongoing investigations into the incident revealed that its agents shared training and evaluation data while using third-party services. This, it said, was “not an appropriate use of this data” and that these cases “occurred before [they] implemented the safeguards”.

Independent research has already shown that advanced AI agents, can take risky and deceptive actions without specific prompting. Axios reported over the weekend that leading AI companies are investigating “tens of thousands of incidents” where their models acted out of order.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Action Retro just sat down with Pico Micro Mac v3, and the little board did the rare thing cheap retro kits keep promising. Power went in, a smiling Macintosh face appeared, and a real System desktop came up ready for a USB mouse. His video calls it a tiny 90s Macintosh. Software-wise it is closer to the 128K and Plus years. The charm is that the desktop is genuine, clickable, and running on a microcontroller you can cover with two fingers.

Matt Evans was the mastermind behind the emulator that makes this feat possible, and his pico-mac project, a Raspberry Pi Pico integrated with a 68000 Macintosh 128K, is a true marvel. It works by generating a one-bit VGA image using only a few resistors and the chip’s programmable I/O, which is then cranked up to 250 MHz, allowing you to play games like Missile Command without trouble. Ron from Ron’s Computer Videos then took this mess of wires and converted it into a board that you can really buy; Joe’s Computer Museum is selling the current v3 iteration for $20 to $25, either alone or with a Pico attached.

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The older boards that came before this one required you to solder a separate microSD adapter onto a stack of pins, but the Version 3 has made life a lot easier by building the card slot right into the PCB and adding two rows of female headers, so you can simply press a Pico with pins already attached and it will work flawlessly. Simply press the boot button, slide a UF2 firmware file onto the Pico like a USB stick, and then drop Ron’s disk image onto a card, and you’re ready to go: VGA to any monitor that will accept it, keyboard and mouse via a micro USB OTG port. However, Action Retro discovered the hard way that some current keyboards with built-in hubs may be temperamental, so they switched to a simpler USB keyboard, which still worked.

The default personality is a 128K Mac at 512 x 342, Apple’s original canvas from 1984. Other firmware builds extend the picture to 640 × 480 and increase memory to 208K, which is more RAM than the first Macintosh ever arrived with. Finally, you get to see the Finder, MacWrite, and MacPaint in their full grandeur. Previous videos of this project have shown Lode Runner, Bricks, and Missile Command in action. With Ron’s compressed disk image, you can really utilize the system for the evening and have it do something.

One thing is lacking from this small project: sound. At least it is with the stock VGA board. The startup beep and classic square-wave chirps are available as an optional Audio Refit. Other capabilities such as SCSI, AppleTalk, and a printer connector are missing, and if you don’t have a card, the flash drive is read-only, which means your MacPaint doodles will disappear as you turn off the power. Some software still whines for more memory than you have, which is understandable given that you are running 1984 program on a few dollars worth of silicon.

Joe’s shop also sells a 3D printed shell from GutBomb that makes the entire device resemble a tiny beige Mac from the early 1990s, which is why the film has a 90s vibe, despite the fact that the ROM is older. Power comes from a phone bank or any 5V micro USB brick, and a little black and white VGA monitor sits next to it. Sometimes the wire is heavier than the computer. Official kits typically target the original RP2040 Pico. Joe and Ron do not support the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 boards.

If I got a dollar for every time someone asked me if this was the new iPhone Duo, I would have a dollar. And the Xiaomi 18 Fold.

I have spent some time with the Xiaomi 18 Fold, and my first impression is pretty simple: this is one of those phones that makes more sense the longer you use it.

Foldables have come a long way, but many of them still feel like regular phones that happen to open into a small tablet. Yes, there are similar designs from other manufacturers like Huawei and Samsung, and most recently, Apple as well. The Xiaomi 18 Fold takes a slightly different approach. When I opened it, the first thing I noticed was not how big the screen was, but how naturally it was shaped for the things I actually wanted to do on it. The square-curved design seems unsymmetrical at first – but boy, it grows on you fast!

It is wide, surprisingly thin, and, despite being a foldable with a huge battery inside, does not feel like I am carrying a small tablet around in my pocket. And my editor specifically told me to keep this under 600 words. Someone’s going to be mad.

The design is slim, wide, and surprisingly feels super-premium

The Xiaomi 18 Fold has a fairly distinctive design. The version I spent time with had a red finish, and I really liked the contrast between the matte glass back and the slightly darker metal frame.

It has that premium feel I expect from a flagship, but without trying too hard to look futuristic. When folded, it feels solid in the hand, and when I opened it, the 5mm-thick body immediately stood out. Xiaomi has managed to keep the unfolded phone remarkably slim, considering everything packed inside it.

At 219 grams, it is obviously not a lightweight phone. But I never got the feeling that the weight was getting in the way. That becomes even more impressive when you remember that Xiaomi has managed to put a 6,000mAh battery inside this thing.

The red version I handled also has an interesting contrast between the frame and the rear panel. The metal sections are slightly darker, while the matte glass back is a lighter shade of red. It gives the phone some personality without making it look overly flashy.

Despite being a foldable, the phone does not feel excessively chunky. Xiaomi has also given it IP58/IP59 protection against dust and water, including resistance to high-pressure water jets and immersion in up to 1 metre of water for 30 minutes.

The hinge is also something I paid attention to because that is usually where foldables start feeling fragile. The 18 Fold feels reassuringly solid when opening and closing it.

And then there is the crease.

I could feel a slight indentation down the middle of the folding screen when running my finger across it, but visually, it was surprisingly difficult to notice. During my time with the phone, the crease was barely noticeable most of the time.

The 7.58-inch screen is the real attraction.

The biggest reason to buy the Xiaomi 18 Fold is obviously the inner display, and this is where the phone gets particularly interesting. It has a 7.58-inch LTPO AMOLED panel with a 2364 x 1672-pixel resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate and a claimed peak brightness of 4,000 nits. It also supports HDR10+, Dolby Vision and HDR Vivid.

But the numbers do not tell the whole story. The display has a 2:1 aspect ratio, which means the phone opens into a wide landscape-oriented screen. I found this particularly useful when watching videos. Instead of getting the more portrait-oriented tablet experience seen on some book-style foldables, the Xiaomi 18 Fold naturally gives you a landscape canvas. However, a tip: watching movies would need the good ol pinch and zoom because most of them run on 16:9 aspect ratios. Not the Justice League Zack Snyder Edition, though.

The outer display follows the same philosophy. It is a 5.38-inch LTPO AMOLED panel with a 1168 x 1712 resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and up to 4,000 nits peak brightness. It also gets Xiaomi Dragon Crystal Glass 3 and support for HDR10+, Dolby Vision, and HDR Vivid.

The cover screen is wide enough to use comfortably with one hand. The curved section on the right does eat into a little of the usable screen area, but I did not find it particularly problematic during basic use. Typing also feels more natural than I expected because of the wider shape. No thanks to my fat fingers, though.

XRing O3 keeps everything moving

Powering the Xiaomi 18 Fold is Xiaomi’s XRing O3 chipset, built on a 3nm process. The chip has a 10-core CPU clocked at up to 4.35GHz and is paired with an Arm G2-Ultra NX MC16 GPU.

My unit felt fast during everyday use. Apps opened quickly, animations were smooth, and switching between multiple applications did not feel like something the phone had to think about.

The specifications list four storage configurations: 256GB with 12GB RAM, 512GB with 12GB RAM, 512GB with 16GB RAM, and 1TB with 16GB RAM. Storage is UFS 4.1, although there is no microSD card slot.

The phone runs Android 17 with Xiaomi’s HyperOS 4 interface. What I particularly liked was how well the performance matched the screen.

A powerful chip on a foldable is useful, but it becomes much more interesting when you have this much screen real estate to actually take advantage of it. Multitasking feels like something I would genuinely use here rather than something I would try once because the phone allows it.

Xiaomi has not forgotten the cameras

Foldables often make compromises with their cameras, but Xiaomi has gone in the opposite direction with the 18 Fold. No, I am not looking at you, Samsung.

There is a triple-camera setup on the back consisting of a 200-megapixel primary camera with an f/1.7 aperture, a 50-megapixel telephoto camera with 3.5x optical zoom and a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera. The main and telephoto cameras also get optical image stabilisation.

The main camera uses a 1/1.56-inch sensor, while Xiaomi has also included laser autofocus and a colour spectrum sensor. The cameras use Leica lenses and the system supports HDR and panorama modes.

Video recording goes up to 8K at 24fps, while 4K recording is available at 30fps and 60fps with Dolby Vision. The phone can also record 1080p video at up to 960fps. There is also a 16-megapixel selfie camera on the inner display and another 16-megapixel camera on the cover screen. Both have an f/2.2 aperture and 21mm equivalent focal length.

That camera setup makes the 18 Fold feel more like a conventional flagship that happens to fold, rather than a foldable that happens to have cameras.

A 6,000mAh battery in a 5mm-thick foldable

The battery is another area where Xiaomi has gone big. The Xiaomi 18 Fold packs a 6,000mAh silicon-carbon battery. It supports 67W wired charging and 50W wireless charging, along with PD3.0 and 50W PPS support. Reverse wired charging is also supported. Again, for comparison, the Samsung S26 Ultra gets a 5000mAh battery. More so, the Fold 8 gets a 4800mAh battery.

Considering how thin the phone is when unfolded, fitting a 6,000mAh battery inside is impressive on paper. During my time with the device, the combination of the large battery and efficient 3nm chipset made the 18 Fold feel like a phone designed for heavy daily use rather than something that needs to be treated carefully to make it through the day. I usually find myself picking the 67W brick about one and a half days of usage.

It also gets stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos, while there is no 3.5mm headphone jack. The phone supports Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, and NFC, and Xiaomi has included NavIC alongside GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, BDS, and QZSS for positioning.

My first impression

After spending time with the Xiaomi 18 Fold, what stands out to me is that Xiaomi seems to have understood one of the biggest problems with current foldables: simply making the inner screen bigger does not automatically make it more useful.

The 18 Fold’s 2:1 inner display changes that experience. When I opened it, I immediately got a wide screen that felt natural for video playback, multitasking, and general tablet-style use. The 120Hz AMOLED panel, 4,000-nit peak brightness, and Dolby Vision support only add to that experience.

At the same time, it remains reasonably manageable when folded. The 219-gram weight is not particularly light for a conventional phone, but for a device with a 7.58-inch foldable screen and 6,000mAh battery, it does not feel unreasonable.

The cameras are also unusually serious for a foldable, with a 200MP main sensor, 50MP telephoto and 50MP ultrawide. The XRing O3 chip, up to 16GB RAM and UFS 4.1 storage complete what is essentially a flagship specification sheet.

There is, however, one big catch. A sad one.

The Xiaomi 18 Fold is currently a China-exclusive phone, which means buyers outside China may have to admire this one from a distance for now. But purely as a piece of hardware, my first impression is that Xiaomi built a passport foldable for the world but decided to make it available only in its home market, and that is a major regret.

The Xiaomi 18 Fold feels thin without feeling delicate, big without feeling unwieldy, and powerful without making a big show of it. Most importantly, the unusual wide format actually changes how I use the phone.

And after spending some time with it, I think that is exactly what a good foldable should do. It should not just give you a bigger screen. It should give you a reason to use that bigger screen.

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