Years of smartphone presentations treated screen-to-body ratio like a scoreboard. Smaller black borders meant progress. Xiaomi chased the idea with the Mi Mix series. Samsung briefly tried waterfall curves that bent the glass over the sides. One extreme concept even wrapped the display around the back so the number could climb past 100 percent. Those experiments eventually settled down. Curved edges brought reflections, weaker durability, and accidental touches. Premium phones today sit at roughly one to two millimeters of border all the way around. Some people still call those borders unacceptable. Most of them were never going to buy the phone in the first place.

Earlier this summer, Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) received an email from Tecno, a company that claimed to have a concept that would finish the job. This new phone has a premium design and a 6.7-inch screen that extends all the way to the edges. When held straight on, the black border that typically surrounds most current screens vanishes. From corner to corner, edge to edge, the glass meets the silver frame with no space in between. When compared to a Pixel 11 Pro, the contrast is obvious. The Pixel still has a little black strip between the active pixels and the metal, which is highly obvious. This Tecno gadget knocks it out totally.

Sale

Google Pixel 11 Pro – Obsidian 512 GB & Pixel Watch 5 Obsidian 45mm WiFi

• Order the new Google Pixel 11 Pro today and get $250 off Pixel Watch 5; valid 8/12/2026 until 8/27/2026 at 11:59pm PST, while supplies last and…
• Return of Pixel 11 Pro without Pixel Watch 5 results in charge; offer cannot be combined, is non-transferable and not valid for cash or cash…
• If a qualifying item in your order is returned, you’ll be reimbursed for what you return

Their approach for removing that strip is internal stacking, in which the screen remains flat but the metal frame protrudes just beyond the glass, allowing the black edge of the screen to be hidden underneath. From typical viewing angles, it’s obvious. Tilt the phone or picture lifting the frame off and you’ll notice a sliver of unused glass peeking out, and that raised lip becomes really crucial when you’re actually holding the thing.

Every time you swipe from the top to check your notifications or from the bottom to return home, your finger scrapes against a metal edge. It disrupts the fluid flow, which is far more upsetting than a little traditional bezel would be. It’s a shame because the phone itself still seems very striking when you look at it. Put it to use, and a modest border with rounded edges begins to sound appealing. One big issue with the concept is the number of cases. Any case that wraps around the sides will only cover part of the screen.

The rest of the design, however, is rather competent, with a brilliant screen that refreshes at 144Hz, a triple camera array on the back, and a 6000mAh battery inside. It’s so light that it nearly feels like one of those dummy devices used to showcase phones in store windows. The hole-punch selfie camera is in its customary location. Fair play to anyone who wants to chase that full-screen ideal; many people would prefer to hide the camera behind glass, but the rest of the gear does not feel like a toy.

The major surprise lies on the back, which Tecno hardly highlighted in the press materials, but it’s far more interesting than the front. There’s a holographic lenticular pattern going on, which gives this three-dimensional butterfly-wing appearance that appears to be lifting right off the surface. MKBHD struggled to get a good photo of it, but he believes it’s one of the best examples of that optical trick currently accessible. If this design were to make it onto store shelves, it would require a clear case to be bundled with the smartphone.

ChatGPT Plus users enjoyed a brief taste of life without five-hour Work and Codex limits. OpenAI has decided that was a bit too much. Starting August 25, OpenAI is restoring the five-hour usage cap across ChatGPT Work and Codex for Plus subscribers. The restriction had been temporarily removed on July 12, leaving users to work against their overall weekly allowance instead.

Before you riot online, it’s worth noting that your normal ChatGPT conversations won’t stop working after five hours. The change specifically affects the more compute-heavy Work and Codex experiences, which offer tools to handle longer projects.

OpenAI is slowing you down a little

OpenAI engineering lead Thibault Sottiaux gave two reasons for bringing the limit back. First, spreading heavy usage across five-hour windows makes demand on OpenAI’s computing infrastructure more predictable while allowing it to maintain relatively generous weekly allowances.

Second, OpenAI says Plus includes many casual and newer users who can unknowingly burn through a large chunk of their weekly quota during one long session and then wonder why they’re locked out for days. The result is essentially two limits to watch. Burn through your five-hour allowance, and you wait for that window to reset. Exhaust the weekly allocation and the shorter reset won’t magically give it back. That’s not all; users can also purchase additional usage credits rather than simply waiting for the timer to reset.

Paying more gets you off the leash—for now

There is some good news if you have one of OpenAI’s pricier subscriptions. In his latest tweet, Sottiaux says the five-hour restriction will remain disabled for the $100 and $200 Pro subscriptions for the coming months. Those users will continue operating against their weekly allowances without this additional five-hour ceiling.

This is likely a conscious decision to make the distinction between the Plus and Pro tier subscribers even clearer, especially if someone uses ChatGPT as a serious work or coding tool. While the company had removed the restriction back in July, the five-hour freedom was just temporary, it seems.

When ESPN floated the idea of creating an animated alternative broadcast for games, it was all about creating “magical moments in sports.” Instead of watching sports stars shooting hoops or scoring touchdowns, there was suddenly an option to see Mickey Mouse, Buzz Lightyear, Lisa Simpson or Mike Wazowski do the honors.

For Michael “Spike” Szykowny, ESPN vice president of edit, animation, graphics innovation and creative production, this project is his baby. The animated alt-casts bring a different audience to sports, Szykowny said during a panel at Disney’s D23 convention last weekend. 

“We took a bunch of technologies like live player tracking — we can track what the players are doing in the game and make our animated characters do the same things,” Szykowny said. ESPN brought Disney IP into the project and combined it with face-tracking and motion-capture technology.

ESPN studio host Drew Carter has been a live animated commentator for every alt-cast. He said that for the first one, he had to wear a full motion-capture suit. But now, he only has to wear a virtual reality headset.

“It’s a technological feat to track these players in real time,” Jay Ward, creative director of franchise at Pixar, said during the panel in Anaheim, California.

The players on the field wear devices that generate tracking data for NFL Next Gen Stats and into Sony’s Beyond Sports engine and Sony’s Hawk-Eye Innovations optical tracking. These technologies are then used to create live animations, “rebuilding each throw, route, block, kick and tackle in real time,” Disney says.

The commentators’ booth calls are synced with their animated avatars via their VR headsets.

Ward said Pixar wanted to be involved because the animation studio “is all about technology, creativity and storytelling.”

During the Toy Story version of Funday Football, which aired in 2023, the main toys were all seen playing an NFL game in Andy’s room, with the real players as toy-scale versions of themselves.

Blocks were used for goalposts; the claw machine manned by the three-eyed aliens brought the ball down for kickoff; Slinky Dog was the 1st and 10 marker; and there was a Duke Caboom halftime show. Carter appeared as a Pixar-ified version of himself doing the commentary on-screen.

The second iteration of Funday Football featured the characters of Monsters, Inc., and the scene had to be animated from scratch because the movie is 25 years old.

Random players were picked to become Mike and Sulley playing on the field, while the other players were just animated versions of themselves, and Roz was a sideline reporter. All the original voice actors from the Pixar movie returned to help with the alt-cast, as did Carter.

Dunk the Halls, a Christmas NBA game played between Mickey and his closest friends in December last year, was next. It was animated to look as if it were being played on a perfect replica of Main Street, USA, at Walt Disney World, with the team even bringing in animators from Walt Disney Studios to get it right.

Disney Legend and iconic animator Eric Goldberg drew hundreds of sketches of what “bits” the characters could do during the game.

But there was a problem.

“The tracking was off at one point,” said Renée Johnson, creative director of Disney Character Voices. The referee was accidentally turned into a player who scored a 3-pointer, so they quickly turned the character into Stitch.

ESPN tried its hand at an NHL game next, choosing the Pixar film Inside Out, given that the main character plays hockey. The game was designed to look like it’s being played inside Riley’s mind while she’s sleeping, with the ESPN Beyond Sports animation team building out Hockey Island in three dimensions for the alt-cast setting. That game aired in March this year and used NHL positional data for the players and puck, along with Sony Hawk-Eye Innovations’ optical tracking.

And for a Simpsons-themed Funday Football session in December 2024, ESPN brought in the whole Simpsons writing team. 

“There was a little bit of fear because these are three giant iconic brands: NFL, The Simpsons and Disney — how will they work together?” said Joel Cohen, a writer and co-executive producer of The Simpsons. “We’re very particular about how we want our characters to be portrayed and what jokes we want them to tell.”

The team came up with 8 minutes of original Simpsons animation with a storyline that carried throughout the game. Animating for a live event is something that the animation team never gets to do, so it was “a super fun vibe that we never get to experience,” Cohen said, adding that even creator Matt Groening came along. 

The writers of The Simpsons were texting Disney and ESPN during the event — though the NFL said no to some of the jokes the writers came up with.

“There’s a 1-minute delay, so we can see what play happens to insert characters and push forward the storyline,” Szykowny said. “(Like) quickly put Bart as QB, Lisa as receiver as they score.”

ESPN has yet to announce its next animated alt-cast, but the animation x sports project isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. You can rewatch the alt-casts on YouTube, Disney Plus and ESPN Plus, but they’re much more impressive to witness live, simultaneously with a game.

Corinne Reichert

Senior Editor

Corinne Reichert (she/her) grew up in Sydney, Australia and moved to California in 2019. She holds degrees in law and communications, and currently writes news, analysis and features for CNET across the topics of electric vehicles, broadband networks, mobile devices, big tech, artificial intelligence, home technology and entertainment. In her spare time, she watches soccer games and F1 races, and goes to Disneyland as often as possible.

See full bio

Advertisement

Alabama’s attorney general announced Monday that it sent a subpoena to OpenAI as part of an investigation into the company’s alleged “complete lack of oversight and adequate safeguards” in the Hugging Face incident. 

The investigation comes weeks after OpenAI admitted that one of its unreleased and guardrail-free cybersecurity models had escaped an isolated environment, connected to the internet, and hacked AI dataset platform Hugging Face. As Reuters first reported, Hugging Face was only one of four victims of what was supposed to be “an internal evaluation” of a model with “maximal cyber capabilities,” as OpenAI put it.

The press release announcing the subpoena sent by the state’s attorney general Steve Marshall said that the state was seeking to understand if OpenAI’s “inability or unwillingness to ensure the safety of its products” violated the state’s consumer protection laws.

When reached by TechCrunch for comment, OpenAI spokesperson Nate Evans provided the statement: “The Hugging Face incident marked an important moment for AI safety and we are conducting a thorough review along with external advisors. Once the review is complete, we will share a technical report with relevant government authorities and publish our findings publicly.”

Earlier this month, Marshall, along with the attorneys general of 14 other states, including Florida, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Texas, sent a letter to OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman, requesting that he and his company preserve all records related to the Hugging Face incident. The letter also asked OpenAI to “immediately cease and desist” from any internal cybersecurity evaluations.

In the wake of the Hugging Face incident, and several other incidents disclosed by Anthropic, the U.K.’s AI Security Institute, Meta, and workers at AI companies — including executives and technical leaders — signed an open letter called “Pacing the Frontier,” which called for developing AI capabilities slowly and more responsibly. The letter also called for the U.S. government to support an “international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development.”

Updated with comment from OpenAI.

Tim Cook has been CEO for 15 years and is about to step down on September 1, so Apple threw a little party in his honor on August 23 with 200 people in attendance.

Apple likes to throw a party on occasion, and the latest is a kind of going away/anniversary present for outgoing CEO Tim Cook. He’s not really going anywhere though, as he’s sticking around as Executive Chairman and acting as a kind of government liaison.

A report from The Information first covered by MacRumors details the party thrown at Apple Park for Tim Cook. Around 200 people attended with OneRepublic performing on August 23. The date is significant because Cook became CEO 15 years ago today and steps down on September 1.

There were multiple speakers including Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell Jobs, former COO Jeff Williams, services chief Eddy Cue, and incoming CEO John Ternus. Cook himself wants his legacy to be defined by others and has avoided speaking on his time at Apple beyond hoping he will be remembered as a good and decent man.

Apple Park will soon be packed with another kind of audience for the iPhone event. An invitation for that Apple Event is expected to go out at any day now, and will likely be set for September 9.

John Ternus will have big shoes to fill, as Cook grew Apple by trillions of dollars and established the supply chain juggernaut it is today. There will be some early challenges as Ternus has to contend with retiring leadership, the AI bubble, and several new product lines coming in the next year.

This article is brought to you by Emerson.

I’ve spent much of my career as an engineer, including years in the semiconductor industry. And one lesson has stayed with me through every major technology shift: innovation always creates new complexity.

In semiconductors, we have seen that repeatedly. Every generation has delivered breakthroughs in performance and capability, but each step forward made it harder to understand system behavior. What used to be easy to validate on the component level with a test bench now needs a much wider view.

“The future of engineering will be defined by who can verify, understand, and improve complex systems fast enough to safely keep innovation moving forward,” says Ritu Favre, President of Emerson’s Test & Measurement business group.Emerson

Chiplet-based designs are a prime example. A chiplet from one supplier, an interposer from another, and a packaging process from a third may all perform perfectly on their own. Yet there is a chance for unexpected behavior when you put them together in a system. More and more often, the hardest engineering challenges are not in the individual components themselves. The problems are found when we start to combine components and have them interact with each other.

These challenges extend far beyond semiconductors. Products are becoming more software-defined and dependent on interactions across different technologies and environments. Think about the interactions needed for a modern car using adaptive cruise control on a bumpy road in a rainstorm. Or a passenger jet adjusting wing flaps and engine speeds in turbulent weather to maintain safety and stability. Both the car and the jet are being guided by complex computer systems with thousands of sensors leading to thousands of interactions every second. And in many cases, there are multiple computer systems working together. We are building systems of remarkable capability but understanding how they will act under real-world conditions is getting harder.

That is why I believe we are entering a new era of test. The defining challenge of modern engineering is no longer simply what we can design and build. It is what we can confidently verify.

Rethinking the Role of Test

In this new era, test can’t be an afterthought. For decades, test was treated as the final checkpoint before release. Design teams developed a product, test teams validated performance, and organizations looked for a final pass/fail to determine whether they were ready to move forward. That model worked fine when systems were more self-contained and predictable. Today, that approach can lead to more risk.

I believe we are entering a new era of test. The defining challenge of modern engineering is no longer simply what we can design and build. It is what we can confidently verify.

Many of the delays and fire drills we face come from issues that were not visible early enough. Problems discovered late in development are more difficult to diagnose, more expensive to fix, and more likely to get you off schedule. The solution is not more testing at the end. The solution is to make test and verification part of the engineering workflow from the start.

When validation is integrated throughout development, teams catch problems early when change is easier. Test also stops being a barrier to release. Instead, it becomes a source of insight, helping us understand how systems behave as they become more connected.

Why Connected Platforms Matter

When confidently verifying technology becomes the key challenge, the tools we choose take on a different level of importance. The tools have a direct impact on how quickly we can diagnose a problem and keep moving forward. In an environment where technology changes rapidly, disconnected tools get in the way of progress. Modern test strategy requires linking information across design, validation, and production, turning measurement data into decisions made quickly enough to keep pace with innovation.

This reminds me of when EDA was first introduced. Before it came along, engineers spent much of their time hand-drawing circuit layouts and placing transistors. EDA eliminated that tedious work by letting teams describe complex behavior in high-level code. It enabled them to focus on overall architecture instead.

A connected test platform does a similar thing for validation. Because a platform can adapt and scale alongside technology, it cuts down on maintenance and downtime, keeping teams from having to rebuild their workflows from scratch as requirements change.

Grounding AI in Engineering Reality

Today, AI is rapidly entering the engineering toolkit to accelerate design and analysis. But in test and measurement, AI cannot reach its potential in isolation.

An AI model is only as effective as the data feeding it. Without context, even the smartest algorithm will struggle to tell the difference between normal hardware variance and a critical failure. A connected platform supplies the structured, traceable data stream AI requires to deliver real insight.

AI can correlate complex multi-system interactions, flag unexpected behavior, and direct an engineer’s attention right at the root cause.

When measurement data flows seamlessly across the workstream, AI moves from being a standalone tool to an active layer of intelligence. It can correlate complex multi-system interactions, flag unexpected behavior, and direct an engineer’s attention right at the root cause.

Every technology shift that accelerates how fast we create new designs also increases the complexity we must verify. AI can help teams keep pace with that complexity. Not by replacing human judgment, but by giving engineers the context we need to act with confidence.

Innovation Demands Confidence

Ultimately, the goal of modern platforms and AI-enabled workflows is to help technical teams spend more time building new things and solving hard problems. Most of us didn’t choose this profession to spend our time searching for data or dealing with last minute surprises. We want to innovate and integrating test directly into development provides a better view of system behavior, allowing teams to focus on that innovation rather than managing complexity.

The future of engineering will not be defined by who can build the most advanced product or technology. It will be defined by who can verify, understand, and improve complex systems fast enough to safely keep innovation moving forward.

That is the new era of test. As the pace of innovation accelerates, every breakthrough creates new paths to failure, and test is how engineers find those failures before the real world does. In an increasingly complex world, that capability is becoming as important as innovation itself.

Innovation has always required great engineering. And now, more than ever, it also requires confidence. Confidence that comes from knowing that we are not only building what is possible, but we are also building technology that people can trust.

• Public confidence in AI weather forecasts is far lower than for numerical and physics-based methods
• Just 11% said they were “very confident” in machine learning weather prediction, compared with 30% for tried-and-trusted methods
• The Met Office has been using machine learning techniques in weather forecasting for some years

A survey of 6,000 UK adults has found that the majority don’t fully trust the idea of AI weather forecasts. While machine learning techniques have been a factor of weather forecasting for some years, the survey found that people are more relaxed about traditional Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) as opposed to Machine Learning Weather Prediction (MLWP).

Predictive technology has increased considerably thanks to AI, and the Met Office has already begun to evaluate AI models for augmenting its existing forecasting methods.