Monday, March 09, 2026
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No commentsMonday, March 09, 2026System EngineerTech CENTRALNo commentsMonday, March 09, 2026System EngineerregisterNo commentsInfosec In Brief The FBI is investigating a breach of its systems which reportedly affected systems related to wiretapping and surveillance.…
Monday, March 09, 2026System EngineertechnpinaNo comments
| Category | Xiaomi 17 | Xiaomi 17 Ultra |
|---|---|---|
| Regular Price (SRP) | 256GB: PHP 53,599 512GB: PHP 55,999 |
512GB: PHP 99,999 |
| Pre-Order Price |
256GB: PHP 49,999 512GB: PHP 53,999 |
512GB: PHP 84,999 |
| Pre-Order Bonuses | Chance to win a Leica Q3 camera worth PHP 417,000 Free 3-month Google AI Pro + 2TB storage Free 4-month Spotify Premium 24-month quality assurance Free screen replacement within first 6 months Free labor for out-of-warranty repairs during warranty |
Free Xiaomi Watch 5 Free Xiaomi 17 Ultra Photography Kit Chance to win a Leica Q3 camera worth PHP 417,000 Free 3-month Google AI Pro + 2TB storage Free 4-month Spotify Premium 24-month quality assurance Free screen replacement within first 6 months Free labor for out-of-warranty repairs during warranty |
| Design | Dimensions: 151.1 × 71.8 × 8.06 mm Weight: 191 g Colors: Black, Venture Green, Alpine Pink, Ice Blue |
Dimensions: 162.9 × 77.6 × 8.29 mm Weight: 218.4 g (Black, White) / 219 g (Starlit Green) Colors: Black, White, Starlit Green |
| Main Camera | 50MP Leica Main Camera, f/1.67, OIS Light Fusion 950 Sensor |
50MP Leica Main Camera, f/1.67, OIS Light Fusion 1050L Sensor |
| Telephoto | 50MP Leica 60mm Floating Telephoto 10cm Macro Support |
200MP Leica 75–100mm Telephoto 30cm Macro Support |
| Ultra-Wide Camera | 50MP Ultra-Wide (102° FOV) | 50MP Ultra-Wide (115° FOV) |
| Front Camera | 50MP Selfie Camera | 50MP Selfie Camera |
| Video Recording | 8K 30fps 4K Dolby Vision 30fps / 60fps Log Video up to 4K 60fps |
8K 30fps 4K Dolby Vision 30fps / 60fps / 120fps Log Video up to 4K 120fps ACES Color Support |
| Display | 6.3-inch CrystalRes OLED 2656 × 1220 1-120Hz LTPO 3500 nits peak brightness |
6.9-inch HyperRGB OLED 2608 × 1200 1-120Hz LTPO 3500 nits peak brightness |
| Processor | Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (3nm) | Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (3nm) |
| Memory & Storage | 12GB + 256GB 12GB + 512GB LPDDR5X + UFS 4.1 |
16GB + 512GB 16GB + 1TB LPDDR5X + UFS 4.1 |
| Battery | 6330mAh Xiaomi Surge Battery | 6000mAh Xiaomi Surge Battery |
| Charging | 100W HyperCharge wired 50W wireless charging |
90W HyperCharge wired 50W wireless charging |
| Miscellaneous | Ultrasonic fingerprint Stereo speakers Dolby Atmos Wi-Fi 7 IP68 Xiaomi HyperOS 3 |
Ultrasonic fingerprint Stereo speakers Dolby Atmos Wi-Fi 7 IP68 Xiaomi HyperOS 3 |
Sunday, March 08, 2026LiveStreamTechnical storiesNo commentsAlvarezsaurids were mostly small-bodied theropods that paleontologists originally misinterpreted as early flightless birds, only to later recognize them as an ant-eating lineage of non-avian dinosaurs. For years, we suspected that Alvarezsaurids underwent a rare process of evolutionary miniaturization directly coupled to a diet of social insects like ants and termites. It was a tidy hypothesis: They got smaller to become more efficient at catching ants.
Now, a recently discovered fossil of one of the smallest alvarezsaurids ever found suggests that the evolution of miniature dinosaurs likely wasn’t as neat and linear as we thought. This new species, called Alnashetri cerropoliciensis, probably did not feed on ants at all. “It was a pursuit predator actively hunting insects and small mammals,” said Peter Makovicky, a paleontologist at the University of Minnesota.
Alverezsaurids, found mostly in the Late Cretaceous rocks of Asia and South America, had short forelimbs tipped with a single oversized thumb claw built for digging. They also had minute teeth and sensory adaptations akin to those in modern nocturnal birds—everything necessary to work on termite mounds. “The explanation of their small body size has been tied to this specialization,” Makovicky explained.
Sunday, March 08, 2026System EngineerregisterNo commentsinterview AI agents allow cybercriminals and nation-state hackers to outsource the "janitorial-type work" needed to plan and carry out cyberattacks, according to Sherrod DeGrippo, Microsoft's GM of global threat intelligence. North Korea is taking advantage.…
Sunday, March 08, 2026System EngineerregisterNo commentsA clump of living human brain cells wired into a silicon chip has answered the internet's most important computing question: yes, it can run Doom.…
Sunday, March 08, 2026LiveStreamTechnical storiesNo commentsDeep in the Angolan Highlands lurks a rumored new species of elephant. Conservationist and ornithologist Steve Boyes has been searching for this elusive herd for years and the story of his journey is the focus of Ghost Elephants, a haunting, evocative documentary directed by Werner Herzog. The film debuted at the Venice International Film Festival last summer and is now coming to National Geographic and Disney+.
It might seem unusual for an ornithologist to embark on a quest to find remote pachyderms, but for Boyes the connection is perfectly natural. He grew up in South Africa and wanted nothing more than to be an explorer, just like the people he read about every month in National Geographic magazine. "I grew up waiting for the magazine to arrive; I wanted the maps," Boyes told Ars. "Those would become my garden, or the field beyond, or the river—wild places imagined and real."
Boyes' parents frequently took him and his brother out into the wild, including visits to Botswana and Tanzania. "We used to embed ourselves in baboon troops and walk with impalas," said Boyes, and while his brother feared elephants, Boyes was walking with them from a young age. Ghost Elephants contains some gorgeous underwater footage of elephant feet plodding through the water, and elephants swimming on their sides, behavior that matches Boyes' own experiences with the animals. Under the right circumstances, if they don't feel threatened, elephants "will come and swim around you and with you and interact with you," he said. "So elephants have always fascinated me."
Saturday, March 07, 2026LiveStream These Bose Ultra Open Earbuds Are $100 Off Right Now, LifehackerNo commentsWe may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.
Open-ear design earbuds have been gaining in popularity, likely because active noise-cancelling tech has gotten so good that people have forgotten what the world around them sounds like and don't want to shut it out anymore. The Ultra Open Earbuds are Bose's attempt at riding the trending tech wave, and they're a pretty good option at that, earning an 8/10 from our colleagues at CNET. And at their current price of $199.99 (originally $299.99), they are also something of a steal. This is the lowest price they've yet reached, according to price-tracking tools, and they are available in seven different colors.
Open-ear designs are not for everyone—especially audiophiles. They have the same downside as bone conduction headphones: They let noise pollution in, and the bass and some mids can sound weak. But the tradeoff may be worth it if you want to remain aware of your surroundings, and certainly with these buds you'll be able to hear if a cyclist is about to pass you as you're running on the bike path.
The Bose Ultra Open buds are not waterproof, but they are water-resistant; they carry an IPX4 rating, meaning they can take some splashes, but can't be submerged in water. The charging case uses a USB-C cable, but you can buy a wireless charging case (sold separately) for an additional $50 if you don't want to rely on a cable. Either way, you'll get about 7.5 hours of juice from the buds if you have the Immersive Audio feature off, and about two full charges from the case, for a total of around 27 hours.
While these earbuds don't have multipoint connection, they do have a feature to pair two devices simultaneously and switch between them by pressing a button on the earbud—a controlled multipoint connection of sorts. They are compatible with Bluetooth 5.3 and work with the AAC, AptX Adaptive, and SBC codecs, so Android devices will get better audio than Apple users. Both users will be able to customize the EQ on the app and use features, which you can read more about in CNET's 8/10 review.
Saturday, March 07, 2026LiveStreamTechNo commentsSaturday, March 07, 2026System EngineerregisterNo commentsHamas-linked attackers are dropping spyware disguised as an emergency-alert app on Israelis' smartphones via SMS messages, according to security researchers.…
Saturday, March 07, 2026LiveStreamTechnical storiesNo commentsAnti-vaccine activist and current Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has worked hard to villainize infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, even writing a conspiracy-laden book lambasting the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
But a year into the job as the country's top health official, Kennedy—who has no background in medicine, science, or public health—still holds less sway with Americans than the esteemed physician-scientist.
In a nationally representative survey conducted in February by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, 54 percent of respondents said they had confidence in Fauci, while only 38 percent had confidence in Kennedy. Breaking those supporters down further, 25 percent of respondents said they were "very confident" in Fauci, while only 9 percent said the same for Kennedy.
Friday, March 06, 2026System EngineerbleepingcomputerNo commentsFriday, March 06, 2026LiveStream A Four-Pack of These Samsung Tracking Tags Is $45 Right Now, LifehackerNo commentsWe may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.
If you lose something important, invariably it will happen at the worst possible time—say, your keys disappearing right before you need to leave the house, or you can't find the remote and the big game is starting. Bluetooth trackers exist to help solve this exact problem, and now is a good time to pick up a bunch of them at a discount: A four-pack Samsung Galaxy SmartTag 2 is currently $44.99 on Woot, compared with $55.99 on Amazon.
The bundle includes four trackers. Prime members get free standard shipping, while everyone else pays $6, though the item does not ship to Alaska, Hawaii, or PO box addresses. Woot lists the deal as running for a little over three weeks or until it sells out, whichever happens first. Price trackers also suggest this deal is about as low as these trackers have dropped.
Each tag weighs less than half an ounce, and Samsung has redesigned the casing to include a larger metal-reinforced loop to make it easier to attach the tracker to bags, bikes, or a pet collar without needing a separate holder, notes this PCMag review. The SmartTag 2 uses Bluetooth Low Energy to connect to your phone when you are nearby, so you can trigger a ring to help track something down around the house. If the item is farther away, the tag can still show its location through Samsung’s SmartThings Find network, which uses nearby Galaxy devices to anonymously update the tag’s location. Some newer Galaxy phones also support ultra-wideband (UWB), which adds directional guidance on the screen, so you can walk toward the tracker once you are close.
The tag itself is IP67-rated, so it can handle rain, dust, or being tossed into a gym bag without much concern. Samsung also uses a replaceable battery that can last around a year, so you won't need to replace the tracker every time it runs out of power. That said, the biggest catch is that this tracker is built for the Samsung ecosystem, given that it only works with Samsung Galaxy phones or tablets running Android 9 or newer, and it relies on Samsung’s SmartThings Find network. If you use an iPhone or another Android brand, this is not the right tracker for you (Apple’s AirTag works better for iPhones, while Tile Pro is a more flexible option for mixed-device households). For Galaxy users, though, the experience is simple, and the tracking network works well in busy areas.
Thursday, March 05, 2026LiveStream I Ditched Duolingo for Babbel and I'm Actually Learning Instead of Chasing a Streak, LifehackerNo commentsWe may earn a commission from links on this page.
The greatest regret of my life is choosing to take French in high school. Don't get me wrong, I find French beautiful, and I was a dedicated A+ student. But as an adult, I’m constantly embarrassed by how little Spanish I know.
But even in adulthood, I knew it wasn't too late for me to learn Spanish, so I did what literally everyone does: I downloaded Duolingo. It's free, popular, and has a mascot with deeply threatening energy. What's not to love?
Eventually, I reached a 300-day streak—nearly a full year of daily practice!—but when I tried to have an actual conversation in Spanish, I could not hold my own, to put it gently. I realized that Duolingo had gamified me into feeling like I was making progress, rewarding streaks and unlocking owl animations while carefully avoiding the part where I learned, you know, to speak and understand Spanish.
With a trip to Mexico City approaching, I signed up for Babbel. I didn't expect to be fluent, but I wanted to avoid being the most helpless monolingual American on the trip. And now that I'm on the other side of that vacation, I can say with confidence that every basic phrase I successfully attempted to speak was thanks to two things: 1) Babbel's grammar lessons, and 2) the generous patience of every local willing to communicate with me.
A few months of daily Babbel lessons genuinely helped me navigate asking how much something costs, whether I could pay by card, and ordering at a restaurant. Crucially, I felt I was doing all of this not from a place of pure regurgitation, but from a place of actual language understanding. That's a different feeling entirely.
Duolingo's genius is its dopamine loop, but that's its limitation too—a sustained streak, and not language acquisition, is the real product. Where Duolingo's scenarios include sentences like "My fathers are young and pretty," (a real example!), Babbel teaches you "Could I please have the check?"
Babbel is more structured. The grammar explanations are woven directly into lessons rather than siloed in a separate section you'll never visit. The scenarios are grounded in reality. The whole thing feels less like Candy Crush and more like...a class. Which, it turns out, might be why classrooms were never designed to feel like Candy Crush.
Here’s my breakdown of how the most important ways these apps compare.
Duolingo:
Free (with ads for unhinged mobile games)
Great for building daily habits
Solid vocabulary exposure
Gamified streaks and rewards
Grammar depth is limited
Designed to feel like progress, no matter what
Babbel:
Paid subscription (around $15 per month, give or take)
Structured, grammar-forward lessons
Real-world conversational scenarios
Cultural context built in
Purposeful over playful
Designed to build actual skills
Before you start using Babbel (or flirting with the Duolingo Owl), it's important to consider your actual goals. Whether you're prepping for a trip, want to keep your brain sharp, or actually become fluent, no app comparison means anything without first understanding what you're trying to achieve.
If your goal is casual learning or building a daily habit, Duolingo is genuinely a fine place to start. It's perfectly good for vocabulary exposure and using the psychology of habit formation to keep you coming back. There's real value in that! Just don't confuse a 300-day streak with 300 days of progress.
If your goal is to actually speak another language—to survive a vacation, hold a conversation, order food with confidence—Babbel is the more honest tool. And hey, both apps use streak mechanics to use habit formation psychology, but Babbel also integrates grammar explanations into lessons, offers far more practical and applicable conversation scenarios, and wraps everything in cultural context that makes the language feel alive rather than abstract.
A major caveat here is that no app will make you fluent. Native speakers don't speak with the crisp, patient enunciation of a language app. Real people speak quickly, use slang, have regional accents, and might not be willing to wait patiently while you search for the right vocabulary. You'll eventually hit a wall with any app.
Duolingo's perpetual free tier is likely the decision-maker for most people. You'll never be locked out of educational content for lack of a credit card. The cost of "free," though, is a parade of deeply unhinged ads for other addictive phone games. A fair trade, perhaps, depending on your tolerance for chaos.
But if you're self-motivated and serious (or even just serious enough to want to survive a vacation!), then Babbel is the structured, purposeful, real-world-ready choice. It might feel less like a game, but I suppose that's the point. When I signed up, I caught a 50% deal: $8.95/month for 12 months. Babbel also offers a one-time lifetime access payment of $299.99, though at that investment level, you might as well hire a tutor? All in all, standard month-to-month pricing hovers around $15/month.
Thursday, March 05, 2026LiveStreamTechnical storiesNo commentsGoogle's budget Pixels have long been a top recommendation for anyone who needs a phone with a good camera and doesn't want to pay flagship prices. This year, Google's A-series Pixel doesn't see many changes, and the formula certainly isn't different. The Pixel 10a isn't so much a downgraded version of the Pixel 10 as it is a refresh of the Pixel 9a. In fact, it's hardly deserving of a new name. The new Pixel gets a couple of minor screen upgrades, a flat camera bump, and boosted charging. But the hardware hasn't evolved beyond that—there's no PixelSnap and no camera upgrade, and it runs last year's Tensor processor.
Even so, it's still a pretty good phone. Anything with storage and RAM is getting more expensive in 2026, but Google has managed to keep the Pixel 10a at $500, the same price as the last few phones. It's probably still the best $500 you can spend on an Android phone, but if you can pick up a Pixel 9a for even a few bucks cheaper, you should do that instead.
The phone's silhouette doesn't shake things up. It's a glass slab with a flat metal frame. The display and the plastic back both sit inside the aluminum surround to give the phone good rigidity. The buttons, which are positioned on the right edge of the frame, are large, flat, and sturdy. On the opposite side is the SIM card slot—Google has thankfully kept this feature after dropping it on the flagship Pixel 10 family, but it has moved from the bottom edge. The bottom looks a bit cleaner now, with matching cut-outs housing the speaker and microphone.
Wednesday, March 04, 2026System EngineerTech CENTRALNo commentsWednesday, March 04, 2026System EngineerregisterNo commentsIn what may be the most public acknowledgment of its cyber operations capabilities to date, the Pentagon has admitted that cyber soldiers are playing a key role in its attacks on Iran. …
Wednesday, March 04, 2026LiveStream You Can Now Import Your ChatGPT Data to Claude for Free, LifehackerNo commentsAnthropic is taking steps to make it easier to switch to Claude. While the AI chatbot app is popular among developers and vibecoders, it's also been infamous for keeping its more advanced features behind a paywall (and for rate-limiting free users). But now, Claude is finally catching up to ChatGPT and bringing its memory feature to free users.
The move follows Claude overtaking ChatGPT in the App Store to become the #1 most downloaded free app in the U.S., so the timing makes sense. As for what could have caused the sudden interest in the app, OpenAI recently announced that it will be working with the U.S. Department of Defense (unofficially titled the Department of War), a day after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei expressed concern about unrestricted AI use by governments.
Alongside the new free memory feature, Claude is also introducing a free import tool to help you bring your AI context along with you when moving from other chatbots. Technically, it's more of a guided prompt to feed into other bots, but the idea is that it can help new users avoid blank-slate syndrome. Within 24 hours of using the tool, Claude will theoretically know all the personal details you've previously shared with the chatbots you're importing from, including special instructions, your career, and your ongoing projects, making it easier to converse with Claude.
While Claude's memory feature is available for free for all users, it's not enabled by default. Let's fix that. Open the Claude website or the app, click the Profile icon, and go to Settings. Here, in the Capabilities section, you'll see a new Memory section up top. Enable the Generate memory from chat history feature. Now, Claude will automatically start remembering key details about your life as you share them. According to Anthropic, Claude "will automatically summarize your conversations and create a synthesis of key insights across your chat history (not including chats in projects). This synthesis is updated every 24 hours and provides context for every new standalone conversation."
Say you're a dentist and you ask Claude for dental implants research; it will know that you're learning about implants the next time you ask a related question.
Of course, this does mean that Claude will start remembering your personal data, too, or at least your personal context. Claude does offer a couple of ways to get around this. If you try to disable memory (from the same menu where you enabled it), you'll see two other options. For a less severe workaround, you can use the Pause memory option to stop the chatbot from creating new memories while keeping its current memories intact. Or, you can choose the Reset memory option to permanently delete all memories, including project-specific memories. That way, you can manually dump what Claude knows about you every once in a while.
While you're in the Memory settings, you can also use the new Import feature. Click the Start Import button to bring up the new menu. Up top, you'll see a prompt that you'll have to copy. After that, paste it into ChatGPT or Gemini to snag your memories from these bots. You'll get your results in a Markdown file. Back in Claude, paste the Markdown file into the textbox below the prompt you copied and click Add to memory. Claude will synthesize it, and it will add its data to its memory file.
Tuesday, March 03, 2026System EngineerregisterNo commentsIt seems like just yesterday that the 5G rollout started. Now, at Mobile World Congress, major companies are already talking about commercializing 6G. Never mind that binding 6G standards haven't been nailed down yet.…
Tuesday, March 03, 2026LiveStream You Can Get This Highly Rated Smartphone Gimbal for $99 Right Now, LifehackerNo commentsWe may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.
Smartphone cameras have reached a point where the weak link in most videos is no longer image quality—it’s shaky hands. The DJI Osmo Mobile 7P is built to fix that, and it’s currently down to $99 from $129.99, its lowest price so far, according to price-trackers. It’s a foldable three-axis gimbal that supports larger phones like the iPhone 16 Pro Max and Galaxy S25 Ultra without feeling strained. Once your phone is mounted and balanced, the motors keep footage level and smooth in a way that built-in stabilization still can’t fully match.
Getting started does not require much setup. You unfold it, snap your phone into the clamp, and it balances itself in seconds. The controls are straightforward and placed where your fingers naturally rest. The joystick lets you nudge the frame left or right, and the record button is easy to hit without shifting your grip. A rear trigger switches between portrait and landscape instantly, so you can move from TikTok to YouTube framing without taking the phone off. There’s also a built-in extension rod for higher or wider angles, and a small tripod in the base for hands-free filming. The magnetic multifunction module is where it becomes more than just a stabilizer. It enables gesture control and subject tracking even inside third-party apps, so you are not locked into DJI’s app ecosystem.
In actual use, the tracking is what changes the experience most. The gimbal locks onto your face and follows you as you move across a room, which makes solo filming feel far less awkward. You do not have to keep checking whether you are still centered in the frame; that alone can save time during retakes. It’s one reason why PCMag gave the Osmo Mobile 7P an “outstanding” rating, and Lifehacker's Associate Tech Editor Michelle Ehrhardt said it feels like having “your own dedicated camera person” once you learn the basics. Battery life will depend on how many of those features you keep running. DJI estimates up to 10 hours if you are just using the gimbal. Turn on the tracking module, and you are closer to 4.5 hours. Add the fill light, and it drops to around three. For short sessions or content captured in bursts, that is workable. For long events or full-day shoots, you may need a power bank.
If you mostly film static videos at a desk, a simple tripod is probably enough. But if your content involves movement, walking shots, or filming yourself without help, the Osmo Mobile 7P can make your footage look more controlled without making your setup complicated.
