Big Tech declaring AV1 royalty-free “doesn’t mean that it is.” AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) was invented by a group of technology companies to be an open, royalty-free alternative to other video codecs, like HEVC/H.265. But a lawsuit that Dolby Laboratories Inc. filed this week against Snap Inc. calls all…
Memory, storage shortages have made all kinds of consumer tech more expensive. Memory and storage shortages and price hikes that started hitting PC components late last year have steadily rippled outward across all kinds of consumer tech—some products have disappeared, gone out of stock, or been delayed, and others have undergone multiple rounds…
M2 Ultra Mac Pro is no longer for sale, and Apple says no replacement is planned. After more than a decade of flirting with the idea, Apple has finally discontinued the Mac Pro tower. The company confirmed to 9to5Mac that the latest Mac Pro iteration—an M2 Ultra model first…
Both of the chip’s CPU dies will include 64MB of extra cache stacked beneath. For about four years now, AMD has offered special “X3D” variants of its high-end desktop processors with an extra 64MB of L3 cache attached, an addition that disproportionately benefits games. AMD calls this “3D V-Cache”…
Netflix last raised prices in January 2025. Netflix isn’t preparing for a multibillion acquisition anymore, but it’s still raising prices. As first spotted by Android Authority today, Netflix now lists its ad-supported plan as costing $9 per month, up from $8/month. The Standard, ad-free plan went up from $18/month…
Great performance for the price, if you ignore the price of RAM, SSDs, and GPUs. Many of our graphics card reviews early last year and in the early 2020s focused on the difficulties of reviewing and recommending graphics cards when the manufacturer-suggested price points effectively didn’t exist. Now, reviews…
Company calls Guardian the “most capable 911 response drone ever.” Drone startup BRINC announced Tuesday a significant upgrade for its law enforcement drones. BRINC’s newest model, Guardian, will have Starlink connectivity on every unit—a first for commercially available drones. This new model, which will enter production later this year,…
AI-generated content is still acceptable for now. Reddit will require accounts that exhibit “automated or otherwise fishy behavior” to verify that a human runs them, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in a Reddit post today. The verification process aims to combat unwanted bots from flooding Reddit at a time…
Walmart wants to connect what people stream “directly with retail interaction.” Prospective Vizio TV buyers should know there’s a good chance the set won’t work properly without a Walmart account. In an attempt to better serve advertisers, Walmart, which bought Vizio in December 2024, announced this week that select…
The 26.4 updates are more significant than the last few updates have been. Apple has released the 26.4 updates to all of its major software platforms today, including iOS, iPadOS, macOS Tahoe, watchOS, tvOS, visionOS, and the HomePod. The most important reason to install each update is the big…
