Tech

“I P 6 8! I P 6 8!,” shouted late-night host Jimmy Fallon, trying and failing to fake excitement about the new Pixel smartphones. Fallon, who likely had never heard the technical term before, didn’t seem to realize that IP68 — a rating that indicates phones can survive being submerged …

Battery materials startup Group14 announced Wednesday it has closed a $463 million funding round to expand its manufacturing footprint, a sign that investors remain confident in the future of electric vehicles. The startup manufactures silicon anode materials, which significantly boost the storage capacity of lithium-ion batteries. Group14 currently operates three …

Sony will raise the price of PlayStation 5 consoles, the company announced on Wednesday. These changes will be effective as of Thursday, August 21. Citing “a challenging economic environment” — which appears to reference President Trump’s tariffs on imported products — Sony is increasing console prices by about $50. In …

As regulators weigh SpaceX’s plans to launch its massive Starship rocket from Kennedy Space Center, federal documents warn those flights could ripple through Florida airspace, forcing ground stops at multiple airports, reroutes, and delays of up to two hours.   Even after launch, reentry of Starship’s two stages could require ground …

India’s lower house of parliament on Wednesday passed a sweeping online gaming bill that, while promoting esports and casual gaming without monetary stakes, imposes a blanket ban on real-money games — threatening to disrupt billions of dollars in investment and significantly impact the real-money gaming industry, which could see widespread …

U.S. border agents searched more electronic devices during a three-month period than ever before, according to new government statistics.  The data shows that U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency tasked with immigration screening at the U.S. border, searched 14,899 devices of international travelers between April through June, a 17% …

Labubu is a plush monster toy, but it’s also on track to be a billion-dollar business. This week, Labubu-maker Pop Mart released its financial results for the first half of 2025, giving the public more insight into just how rabid the world is for this plush monster toy. Pop Mart’s …

The Made by Google 2025 event is finally happening, notably before Apple’s hardware event is expected to take place in September.  On Wednesday, the tech giant debuted its Pixel 10 series, a new foldable, the Pixel Watch 4, the second generation of the cost-friendly A-Series earbuds, generative AI capabilities with …

Google announced its own version of “MagSafe” called PixelSnap, which allows magnetic accessories to work with the newly launched Pixel 10 series of devices. The company’s announcement comes nearly five years after Apple announced its own slew of magnetic accessories with the iPhone 12 in 2020. The company said that …

Igor Babuschkin, a co-founder of Elon Musk’s xAI startup, announced his departure from the company on Wednesday in a post on X. Babuschkin led engineering teams at xAI and helped build the startup into one of Silicon Valley’s leading AI model developers just a few years after it was founded. …