If you’ve read my previous thoughts on iPhones here at TechRadar and its sibling site Tom’s Guide, you’ll know I have fairly firm opinions on Apple’s smartphones.

Since moving from Android to iPhone at the end of 2021, I’ve not gone back to the platform Google built, despite trying some of the best Android phones. The ease of iOS has taken in me; I love the titanium construction, I’ve found Ceramic Shield glass to be a minor game changer, I enjoy the Action button, and the cameras almost never let me down on iPhones.

A team of 10 students from Amity International School at Pushp Vihar in New Delhi has won the International Space Settlement Design Competition held at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The competition was held at the Kennedy Space Centre of the US space agency in Florida from July 26-29.

The Balderol space settlement designed by the winning team aims to establish a large-scale, sustainable community on the moon, providing a residential and working environment for 12,000 full-time residents, the Amity school said in a release.

Designed to support data centres and associated industries, the settlement will also accommodate up to 1,500 transient visitors and 4,500 annual rotational workers, including engineers and technicians, it said.

The team comprises Samaya Chauhan, Akshita Bhandari, Dhruv Bhandari, Aaditya Raj Verma, Namya Jain, Yash Wadhwa, Avneet Kaur Virdi, Taarush Goswami, Daksh Dhull and Arsh Arora.

They participated in the international event after winning national and Asian rounds.

Arsh Arora, a class 12 student, was also awarded the ‘Dick Edwards Leadership Award’ for his leadership skills in the company of over 60 students from different parts of the world.

“We, at Amity, are committed to the holistic development of the students and nurture their skills and talent so that they are ready for all championships, at national as well as international level,” said Dr Amita Chauhan, Chairperson, Amity International Schools.

Dr Ameeta Mohan, Principal, Amity International School Pushp Vihar, stated, “Our students are prepared to showcase their talent at various platforms and proper guidance and training is provided to every student, and enable them to develop their skill sets.” 

The New York Times has introduced the next title coming to its Games catalog following Wordle’s continued success — and it’s all about math. Digits has players adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing numbers. You can play its beta for free online right now. 
In Digits, players are presented with a target number that they need to match. Players are given six numbers and have the ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide them to get as close to the target as they can. Not every number needs to be used, though, so this game should put your math skills to the test as you combine numbers and try to make the right equations to get as close to the target number as possible.

Players will get a five-star rating if they match the target number exactly, a three-star rating if they get within 10 of the target, and a one-star rating if they can get within 25 of the target number. Currently, players are also able to access five different puzzles with increasingly larger numbers as well.  I solved today’s puzzle and found it to be an enjoyable number-based game that should appeal to inquisitive minds that like puzzle games such as Threes or other The New York Times titles like Wordle and Spelling Bee.
In an article unveiling Digits and detailing The New York Time Games team’s process to game development, The Times says the team will use this free beta to fix bugs and assess if it’s worth moving into a more active development phase “where the game is coded and the designs are finalized.” So play Digits while you can, as The New York Times may move on from the project if it doesn’t get the response it is hoping for. 
Digits’ beta is available to play for free now on The New York Times Games’ website

YouTube is expanding hyperlinked comments. The Google-owned video-sharing platform is now increasingly adding hyperlinks to words in comments.

What are hyperlinked comments on YouTube?

As the name implies, hyperlinked comments involve certain words that have web links. Tapping on these words leads users to websites, which may be e-commerce platforms.

Last year, in a YouTube Creator Insider announcement, the company mentioned it would start running a limited experiment. Users would be able to initiate a search on certain topics straight from the comments section.

However, what YouTube actually meant was it would append a hyperlink to words if, “related information or topics are available”. These hyperlinked words would appear blue and have a miniature magnifying glass next to them.

Clicking on these hyperlinked words would take the YouTube user to a results page. The video they were watching would continue to play in a mini-player in the app.

YouTube is now expanding this ‘feature’ to mobile users

According to 9to5Google, there are several hyperlinked comments under YouTube videos for mobile users. Some users are seeing multiple words or phrases within a YouTube comment have become hyperlinked.

What is concerning is that there appear to be no specific or defined criteria for a word to get hyperlinked. In other words, the implementation of the feature seems random and excessive.

Back when YouTube announced this feature, it stated that hyperlinked comments were a way to “reduce friction” when attempting to learn about a subject or content. However, commenters cannot add or edit a link. The hyperlinked comments reportedly resemble some spammy blogs for suspicious products and services.

YouTube had originally assured that if they desired, creators could remove links from their video comments. However, the YouTube Studio platform, which offers all the controls for a video, does not show any toggle to disable hyperlinked comments. It is possible that YouTube could add the option in the future. Perhaps YouTube might offer to remove hyperlinked comments for paying subscribers.

There are days where it feels like nothing will ever change and the best thing you can do is just learn to tolerate mediocrity. Today is not one of those days.  announced that the US Copyright Office granted an exemption request from the non-profit public interest group and the DIY repair site iFixit to allow McDonald’s franchise owners to hire a third-party to repair their McFlurry and soft service ice cream machines.

Franchise owners legally couldn’t hire any outside business to work on the machine because of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). McDonald’s soft serve ice cream machines have a digital lock and makes it illegal for anyone to bypass the lock on a copyrighted work even if no copyright infringement occurs. Only the original manufacturer of the machine can repair a copyrighted device with a digital lock. The recent exemption overrules the digital lock law.

If you’ve ever pulled up to a McDonald’s drive-thru window and couldn’t get an ice cream treat like a McFlurry, it probably wasn’t an anomaly. Franchises had to wait on the McDonald’s corporation to send an approved repair person to fix the machines. The problem caught the attention of the in 2021 under to draft new regulations to allow consumers to legally repair their own devices and hire third-parties to fix them. The FTC contacted McDonald’s franchise owners to learn more about the ice cream machines and the difficulties in repairing them.

did a teardown of a McDonald’s ice cream dispenser last year and found it had “lots of easily replaceable parts” but they couldn’t be fixed without earning the wrath of federal copyright laws. The teardown prompted the companyto work with Public Knowledge to obtain a copyright exemption to repair them. The repair website also compiled a video explaining the machine’s innerworkings in more detail.