There are some premium apps for MacOS that offer more of an iTunes-like experience, but nothing that I vouch for.

Backing Up to Your Chromebook

Here is how to back up files from your Android phone on a Chromebook:

1. Plug your phone into a USB port on your Chromebook.
2. Drag down the notification shade and look for a notification from Android System that says something like Charging this device via USB, Tap for more options and tap it.
3. Look for an option that says File transfer and select it.
4. The Files app will open on your Chromebook, and you can drag any files you want to copy over.

Backing Up to Another Cloud Service

Maybe you have run out of Google storage, or you prefer another cloud service. There are Android apps for Dropbox, Microsoft’s OneDrive, MEGA, Box, and others. Most of them offer some cloud storage for free, but what you can back up and how you do it differs from app to app.

We looked at how to back up mobile photos on a few of these before, and you can usually set up the process to be automatic, though other files often have to be backed up manually. If you want to automatically sync photos and other files across devices using one of these services, then check out the Autosync app. There are specific versions for Dropbox, OneDrive, MEGA, and Box.

Whatever service you choose, make sure to keep your cloud storage safe and secure.

Backing Up Locally

Maybe you’d prefer not to use the cloud or Google’s services for your backup. You can always use the methods listed above for Windows or Mac to download files, then manually move them onto a portable hard drive or USB flash drive, but that’s quite a lot of work.

If you have network-attached storage (NAS), there’s likely an app that can automatically back up some of your files when you are connected to home Wi-Fi. You might also consider Syncthing (though it’s best for syncing rather than backing up) or something like Swift Backup, though you may need to pay and/or root your phone to get the best from them.

Backing Up Within Apps

Messaging apps, and a handful of other apps, have their own backup systems built in. I’ll give you a couple of examples here, but check up on your favorites.

WhatsApp via Simon Hill

Elon Musk recently outlined ambitious plans for a chip-building collaboration between his companies Tesla and SpaceX.

Bloomberg reports that Musk shared his plans on Saturday night at an event in downtown Austin, Texas, with a photo suggesting that what Musk is calling the “Terafab” facility will be built near Tesla’s Austin headquarters and “gigafactory.”

Musk said he’s pursuing this project because semiconductor manufacturers aren’t making chips quickly enough for his companies’ artificial intelligence and robotics needs: “We either build the Terafab or we don’t have the chips, and we need the chips, so we build the Terafab.”

The goal is to manufacture chips that can support 100 to 200 gigawatts of computing power per year on Earth, along with a terawatt in space, Musk said. He did not offer a timeline for these plans.

As Bloomberg noted, Musk does not have a background in semiconductor manufacturing, but he does have a history of overpromising on goals and timelines. 

Overly autonomous cooking tools and kitchen appliances have largely whiffed in the US market. While culinary robots like the Thermomix have made inroads in Europe and elsewhere, adoption in the US has been slow. Super smart ovens, including the June, Suvie and Brava, have likewise struggled to connect with consumers here.

Nosh Robotics, a smart home robotics company based in Bengaluru, India, is giving it a go with the launch of Nosh One It’s a $1,499 AI-powered cooking robot seven years in the making and the company says “it can handle the entire cooking process autonomously: ingredient selection, sautéing, plating and self-cleaning.” 

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Read more: I Tried a Scan-to-Cook Meal Delivery Service. I’m Completely Obsessed

The Nosh does a few things that a slow cooker or Instant Pot doesn’t, namely, add the right amount of ingredients, cooking oils and spices from small chambers. But you still have to load the right ingredients for a given recipe into cartridges every time you cook. 

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The cooking functionality is also limited. While the Nosh can portion, chop (roughly — no mincing or dicing), cook and stir food in its built-in pot using highly programmed recipes so you can walk away while the recipe completes, it can’t bake, roast, boil, sear or steam, making it limited in what it can effectively make. 

I saw it in a non-demo preview at CES earlier this year and spoke with reps about the Nosh One. CEO Mira Patel calls it “the first consumer robot that truly cooks for you,” though I was less certain of its potential and remain skeptical. Up close, and even with a deep explanation from the on-site reps, the pricey machine doesn’t seem worth the cost or the space it takes up on your counter, at least for most home cooks. 

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If your dinner menu consists mostly of stews, soups, stir-fries and curries, the Nosh should be able to shoulder a good deal of cooking. Most other foods will have to be cooked the old-fashioned way. 

It’s also big and bulky. Weighing 57 pounds with a 21-by-17-inch frame, it’ll command a good deal of counter space, much more than an Instant Pot or a slow cooker, both of which execute the same basic cooking tasks, albeit with far fewer automated functions.

How it works

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At the core of the device is NoshOS, a proprietary culinary AI trained on thousands of cooking techniques and cuisines from around the world. Multiple sensors monitor texture, moisture, aroma compounds and browning levels in real time, dynamically adjusting heat, timing and seasoning as a dish cooks. Built-in machine vision identifies produce, proteins and pantry items, allowing the system to suggest meals based on ingredients already on hand.

Ingredient cartridges, which are reusable and dishwasher-safe, store fresh items and dispense them with “millimeter-level precision.” After each meal, a closed-loop wash cycle automatically cleans the cooking chamber, utensils and internal surfaces.

Pricing and availability

The Nosh One is available to preorder on Kickstarter until March 25, starting at $1,499, with shipments expected in early summer 2026. Early backers receive a complimentary set of ingredient cartridges and access to the Nosh Founders Recipe Library, featuring dishes from award-winning chefs. According to the company, additional attachments, specialty cooking modules and premium recipe packs are planned for later in 2026.

As always, before contributing to any campaign, read the crowdfunding site’s policies — in this case, Kickstarter — to find out your rights (and refund policies, or the lack thereof) before and after a campaign ends.

from the no-service,-no-protection dept

Black Lives Matter. All Cops Are Bastards.

These are not temporary catchphrases. These are universal and forever.

And leave it to a cop to ensure we never forget either of these concepts. A foot pursuit that ended in the shooting of Connecticut resident Dyshan Best would otherwise just be a footnote in cop history if some cops hadn’t decided to be the bastards they wanted to see in the world and make it extremely clear they felt a Black life didn’t matter.

The internal investigation of the shooting of a Black man by Bridgeport PD officers delivered unsurprising results:

Dyshan Best, 39, was shot in the back last year as he fled from officers in Bridgeport, Connecticut. A report released Tuesday by the state’s inspector general found that the shooting was justified because Best had a gun in his hand and the officer pursuing him had reasons to fear for his own safety.

All the stuff we expect to see in these reports is here, beginning with the assumption that a gun is a threat even if it’s not pointed at officers to the de rigueur “fear for my safety” justification for shooting a fleeing person.

What’s somewhat expected — but still somehow surprising — is what happened after the apparently justified shooting:

The first ambulance called to take Best to the hospital arrived at the scene at 6:02 p.m., about 14 minutes after the shooting. However, at the urging of other officers, that ambulance was used to take away a white police officer, Erin Perrotta, who had been involved in the foot chase, the report said.

Paramedics reported that Perrotta declined treatment in the ambulance.

“I am fine, I just needed to get out of here,” she said, according to the report. Another officer described Perrotta at the time as “visibly hysterical (crying and breathing rapidly) and had blood all over her uniform,” the report said.

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That’s right. The ambulance sent to pick up the person police officers had just shot was instead handed over to Officer Erin Perrotta, who — as the Inspector General’s report notes — was enduring the relative hardship of a “mild anxiety attack.”

The second ambulance didn’t show up for another ten minutes. The person with actual bullet holes in him didn’t hit the ER until 14 minutes after Officer “Anxiety Attack” Perrotta arrived at the hospital. The officer who was never in any danger of dying got nearly a 15-minute head start on her medical treatment.

The person they’d shot didn’t make it.

Best died at 7:41 p.m. as he was undergoing treatment for the gunshot wound, which damaged his liver and right kidney.

Meanwhile, Officer Perrotta’s employer only seems interested in outlasting this news cycle:

A spokesperson for Bridgeport police, Shawnna White, declined to comment Wednesday when asked about Perrotta taking the first ambulance. She said in an email that the police department’s Internal Affairs Division would conduct its own investigation.

Sometimes the lack of direct response says more than a direct response would. Perrotta is apparently currently on administrative leave “due to an unrelated matter.” That either means Perrotta does bad stuff often enough she’s already given the department another reason to sideline her or that the department has found other stuff to add to this headline-generating “#mefirst” effort by the officer to grease the wheels for the inevitable firing.

Whatever happens now won’t budge the needle for US law enforcement agencies. But for the rest of us not standing on the inside of the Thin Blue Line, this incident says the quiet part loud: Black lives don’t matter… not when it’s a cop claiming they can’t breathe.

Filed Under: black lives matter, bridgeport police, connecticut, dyshan best, police oversight, police shooting

Strands is the NYT’s latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it’s great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc’s Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

It doesn’t sound like Crimson Desert, the recently released prequel to Black Desert Online, will support Intel Arc GPUs anytime soon, if at all. On the game’s FAQ page, its developer Pearl Abyss advised players expecting Arc support to apply for a refund. “If you purchased the game expecting Intel Arc support, please refer to the refund policy of the platform where the game was purchased for available options,” the company wrote. Apparently, though, it’s not from lack of guidance from Intel. The chipmaker told Wccftech that it reached out to Pearl Abyss “many times” over the past several years.

The Intel spokesperson said that the company has tried to help the developer “test, validate, and optimize support for Intel graphics” for years. Intel also tried to provide the developer “early hardware, drivers, and engineering resources” across several generations of GPUs, “including Alchemist, Battlemage, Meteor Lake, and Lunar Lake.” The chipmaker said it’s “hugely disappointed that players using Intel graphics hardware” can’t play the game, but that it remains “ready to assist Pearl Abyss” however it can. It also advised players to reach out directly to the developer for “details on the choice not to enable Intel support at launch.”

Pearl Abyss, of course, doesn’t have the obligation to tweak the game so that it runs on PCs with Intel Arc GPUs. The good news is that since the title came out just a few days ago, it will still be easy to get a refund. Steam, where Crimson Desert is now one of the top-selling games, issues refunds within two weeks of purchase.

Samsung’s decision to quietly pull the plug on its most futuristic foldable might sound like a step backwards, but I don’t think it is. 

The Galaxy Z TriFold has always been less a mainstream gadget and more a very expensive proof of concept – a flashy way for Samsung to show off what its foldable tech can do. That’s why the news that Samsung is reportedly winding down production, just months after launch, shouldn’t be seen purely as a loss. 

Yes, it’s frustrating for fans who’ve no doubt been refreshing product pages only to watch restocks vanish within minutes, but with skyrocketing component prices, supply chain chaos and a mobile division under pressure to justify every penny it spends, the TriFold was always going to be first on the chopping block.

In reality, shelving the TriFold now could be exactly what Samsung needs: a chance to refocus on devices that more people can actually buy, that developers will actually support, and that move foldables forward in ways that matter – like the rumoured ‘Wide Fold’ and the next-gen Z Fold. 

Losing the snazzy TriFold might sting right now, but it could make Samsung’s foldable future all the stronger for it.

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Samsung is reportedly winding down production of the Galaxy Z TriFold

A new report from South Korean publication Donga claimed this week that Samsung is preparing to wind down sales of the Galaxy Z TriFold, just months after its initial launch – a surprising move considering how quickly it sells out whenever stock does drop.

Per the report, Samsung is expected to release a final batch of TriFolds in its home region of South Korea this week, after which, sales could come to an end. Now it’s worth noting that the report is explicitly about sales in South Korea, with no word on whether the same pattern will play out in regions like the US – but it seems increasingly likely.

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After all, Samsung has always been transparent about the TriFold and how it wasn’t a mass-market product, rather a showcase of what the company’s foldable tech is truly capable of. 

That explains not only the incredibly high $2,899 price tag in the States, but also comments from those who have used it on build quality not quite matching that of the comparatively cheaper, mass-produced Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7. 

While that news will be disappointing for those still waiting to get their hands on the tri-folding 10-inch smartphone, the decision to stop sales isn’t all that surprising if you’ve been keeping an eye on Samsung more broadly recently. 

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Not a surprise given soaring costs

A separate report that also surfaced this week, this time from the South Korean outlet FNNews, claims that despite a record number of Galaxy S26 range pre-orders, the Device eXperience (DX) division is essentially in crisis mode. That includes not only Samsung’s smartphones, but also wearables, smart TVs and home appliances. 

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Of course, just like every other tech issue surfacing in 2026, it all seems to be down to the rapidly rising costs of components. The all-important RAM needed to power most tech has surged in the past nine months or so, with some estimates putting the rise as high as 850%, as AI data centres hoover up as much RAM as possible. 

There’s also the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, which has reportedly increased logistics costs. 

A Samsung spokesperson who spoke to FNNews explained that “with raw material costs under extreme pressure from rising semiconductor prices, and logistics costs increasing on top of that, we ultimately had no choice but to put the MX division under emergency management.”

With the DX division under such tight constraints, it makes sense for Samsung to stop production of the TriFold – it’s expensive and, no doubt, more difficult to manufacture than the flip- and book-style foldables the company has cranked out over the past few years – and double down on smartphones that it knows will sell well.

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Samsung can now focus on more consumer-ready foldable tech – like the ‘Wide Fold’

It might sound like it’s all doom and gloom over at Samsung, but honestly, it’s probably for the best. Tighter purse strings should force Samsung to double down on its core products – both foldable and non-foldable – rather than putting increasingly limited resources into niche, hyper-expensive products like the TriFold that aren’t ready for prime time just yet. 

That’s more important than usual right now, with Samsung rumoured to be working on not one but two book-style foldables for mass consumer release later this year. 

The most recent reports claim that, in addition to a successor to the Galaxy Z Fold 7 that’s expected to offer a similarly slimline design and a boxy inner aspect ratio, the company is working on a second foldable, unofficially dubbed the ‘Z Wide Fold’. 

The key difference, as the unofficial moniker suggests, is the shape of the foldable. While Samsung’s regular Z Fold offers a thin and narrow aspect ratio, even with big improvements on this front with the Fold 7, and an almost perfectly 1:1 inner display, the ‘Wide’ Fold is said to be more passport-shaped.

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That’s not a new idea – it was used by the original Oppo Find N, as well as Google’s first-gen Pixel Fold – but it has fallen out of trend in recent times. 

Samsung looks to revive it, and the foldable experience will be all the better for it; I’ve long been a fan of the passport-shaped foldable, not only because of the shorter, wider outer panel, but also because the inner screen more closely resembles a regular 4:3 tablet-sized screen. 

That should hopefully put an end to apps that, even after all this time, still can’t quite handle the boxy aspect ratio of foldables. With an aspect ratio closer to a tablet or even a smartphone in horizontal orientation, it becomes almost trivial to support, with no major rejigging of the UI required.  

If there were a choice between Samsung putting effort into its extremely expensive, not-quite-polished TriFold or the Wide Fold, especially under the new budget constraints, I know which I’d go for. 

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