When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. However, many say that the 8GB graphics card is struggling due to a lack of VRAM, even at lower resolutions. Aside from that, Computer Base [machine translated] also discovered another issue brought by the smaller memory: reduced performance in some titles when attached to a PCIe 4.0 slot. The publication measured 27 titles at 1440p, with the 8GB card getting an average FPS of 59.4 with a PCIe 5.0 motherboard, and a slightly lower 55.82 FPS when hooked up via PCIe 4.0. This might not seem bad initially, but a few select titles had it much worse than the average. Out of all the tested games, eight titles suffered a 5 FPS or more decrease in both average FPS and 1% lows—an almost 9% or more decrease in performance. This might not be an issue for enthusiasts with higher-end GPUs that cost more, as they most likely run the latest hardware or can afford to get them if needed. However, given that the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB is designed as a mainstream card, it will more likely be purchased by users running older motherboard models that might not have support for PCIe 5.0 yet. Of course, they'll expect better performance when upgrading to this GPU, but if their favorite game happens to be one of the titles affected by this performance gap, they will be disappointed. That's why many reviewers no longer recommend graphics cards with 8GB of VRAM or less, especially if you're a gamer. There might still be demand for a GPU at this price point, as Nvidia would likely not have made the 8GB variant if nobody would buy it. But if you want to make the most out of your money, you should stay away from brand-new graphics cards with less than 12GB of VRAM. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. Tom's Hardware is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Storage startup Cerabyte has shared a video in which it torture tests its memory media. While Cerabyte didn't seem to pack their toaster for the Irish event, the salt water boiling test was extended over several days. It was noted that the kettle had begun to corrode after 24 hours of hot, salty agitation. Cerabyte has developed this entertaining shtick to maintain interest in its archival glass storage, which we highlighted on Tom's Hardware last July. Founded in Germany in 2022, Cerabyte aims to revolutionize data storage by commercializing a data storage medium “as durable as hieroglyphs.” That might be an understatement, if Cerabyte's touted 5,000-year integrity claim turns out to be accurate (stay tuned for an update). The ceramic-on-glass material Cerabyte uses in these durability tests stores data imprinted via femtosecond laser nanoscale holes in a ceramic medium 50 to 100 atoms thick. The ultra-thin 9cm square glass chips are written to at a rate of two million bits per laser pulse and can store up to 1GB of data on either surface. Glass is naturally resistant to aging in good 'cold storage' conditions. And, as the Cerabyte trade show demos show, it can shrug off being boiled in salt water for extended periods, or even being severely toasted. We wouldn't expect glass-based storage to get corrupted at temperatures much lower than its melting point (around 1,400 degrees Celsius or 2,552 degrees Fahrenheit). We also aren't sure how durable Cerabyte's ultra-thin media would be if subjected to any impact or shocks. Still, it is naturally resistant to corruption from other common accidents and acts of God that involve fire, water, radiation, or EMP. It isn't all about glass slide-based storage, either. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Buffalo celebrates 50yr anniversary with a limited edition 'skeleton' transparent hard disk Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 8GB loses up to 10% performance when using PCIe 4.0 Tom's Hardware is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher.

Over the past three decades, paleontologists have been uncovering sharp, serrated, prehistoric teeth on Caribbean islands. But an international team of researchers has found that millions of years ago, a freakishly tall crocodile-like land predator called a sebecid roamed the Caribbean—surviving there until about five million years ago, long after its South American relatives died out around 11 million years ago. In 2023, researchers found another fossilized tooth in the Dominican Republic, this time with two vertebrae, allowing them to finally identify the remains as belonging to sebecids. As detailed in a study published Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, experts dated the fossils to between 7.14 and 4.57 million years ago—more than three million years after their South American cousins vanished. “That emotion of finding the fossil and realizing what it is, it's indescribable,” study lead author Lazaro Viñola Lopez, a paleobiologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History, said in a museum statement. According to the statement, some sebecids—described as tall “crocodile[s] built like a greyhound”—could reach up to 20 feet (6.1 meters) long. They were meat eaters, chasing after their prey on four long legs. With that pesky competition no longer in play, sebecids quickly rose up the food chain. The researchers say these results support the GAARlandia hypothesis—the idea that, millions of years ago, either land bridges or island chains allowed South American animals like sebecids to reach the Caribbean. When the passageway disappeared, sebecids would have been isolated from whatever threat caused their relatives in South America to disappear millions of years before them. If researchers confirm that the strange teeth from other islands also belonged to sebecids, it means these apex predators impacted the region's ecology for millions of years. That's despite the fact that “you wouldn't have been able to predict this looking at the modern ecosystem,” said Jonathan Bloch, a co-author of the study and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Today, most Caribbean predators, such as birds, snakes, and even crocodiles, are significantly smaller. Get the best tech, science, and culture news in your inbox daily. News from the future, delivered to your present. New analysis shows several families of dinosaurs were likely thriving in North America in the latter days of the dinosaur era. Ten years ago, fishermen in Taiwan dredged a jawbone from the seafloor. Now, scientists say it belonged to a Denisovan man. The fossil, destroyed in an air raid 80 years ago, had faded from memory until a paleontologist found archival images. We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our sites.

All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission. A few years ago, I had the chance to check out the prototype of a reengineered robot vacuum called Matic. It doesn't look like any other robot vacuum. The founders, Mehul Nariyawala and Navneet Dalal, had one key insight: People don't care about super-powerful robot vacuums with cool tricks, incredible suction power, and huge docking stations, especially if it means that the vacuum is noisy, loud, or annoying to operate. That prompted a switch to the Nvidia Jetson Orin chip, which means the vacuum learns how to clean your house on its own. I do not use that phrase lightly (or ever, really). It is effective and an absolute pleasure to use, something I can't say about most robot vacuums. This is the best robot vacuum I've ever tested. The vacuum rolled out of its box with a little message on the display: “Hello, So Family!” (Unfortunately, their haste meant I didn't get a video of their reaction, which was very sweet.) The Matic doesn't look like any of the mostly identical robot vacuums that arrive in a constant stream at my house. It has diaper salts to house both wet and dry materials. This means you don't have to empty a dirty water tank and destroy your laundry room sink (not that I'm speaking from experience). All products featured on Wired are independently selected by our editors. It's clear, so you can see exactly how full it is, and there's also a HEPA filter in the bag so you don't have to remember to replace the HEPA filters separately on the vacuum. (My husband frequently uses a handheld vacuum on the robot vacuum's filters and replaces them, but I don't endorse this practice.) Rethinking this simple accessory—a mere afterthought, for most robot vacuums—makes my life so much easier. All products featured on Wired are independently selected by our editors. The vacuum has six RGB infrared cameras on the front, top, and back, which means that it can see in color and in darkness—you don't have to have all the lights on for it to work, unlike a robot vacuum that uses basic optical sensors. It took a few minutes to map my home. It's a weirdly accurate 3D rendering of my home, differentiating not only the floor surfaces but also furniture and items several feet up. The app has several buttons that you can toggle. The Matic uses what it calls long-term SLAM, or absolute mapping, which is in contrast to most vacuums that navigate via relative mapping, involving a variety of sensors and navigation systems to place walls and obstacles relative to each other. Just like how a visitor to your home can enter through the back door, exit, and then come through the kitchen door, without becoming utterly baffled, Matic doesn't get confused. Also, all the mapping data and analysis is streamed locally from your app to the vacuum and is confined to your devices, so you won't see pictures of your butt on Facebook. All products featured on Wired are independently selected by our editors. Speaking of husbands, you can also click Add Another User in the settings to easily add a family member to the app and vacuum. I just opened the map, clicked on Clean Area, then Mop. All products featured on Wired are independently selected by our editors. You can also teach the vacuum how to get around obstacles. For example, our dining room table is extremely hard for pretty much every robot vacuum to clean around because there are so many different table and chair legs, but under the table also gets dirty, because my children are messy eaters. Programming automatic learning and graceful failure into the vacuum's navigation system is amazing. So many robot vacuums can't figure out how to get around a corner or table leg and just cry for help until they're rescued or the battery dies, which is the most annoying thing on Earth. I have a room that I block off with a pet gate to keep the dogs out, and you can tell the vacuum to go there, and it will add it seamlessly to the map—you don't have to constantly remap your entire house as you add rooms. All products featured on Wired are independently selected by our editors. All products featured on Wired are independently selected by our editors. That's in addition to seamlessly adhering to the regularly scheduled vacuum and mopping, the standard by which I evaluate almost every robot vacuum. No vacuum has ever succeeded in thoroughly cleaning the sink toe kicks before! Despite these thorough passes, it doesn't take that much longer to clean—around an hour to vacuum my 12 by 15-foot living room and about two hours to vacuum and mop my 24 by 28-foot kitchen, bathroom, and laundry room space. It's the only robot vacuum that's quiet enough that I can run it while my kids are watching TV, which is important because they leave potato chip crumbs all over the place. Their comfort levels with the vac could also be because it came with several sets of stickers to give it a face, so my children have also developed a sort of weird, Wall-E type relationship with it. All products featured on Wired are independently selected by our editors. This robot vacuum has a comparatively low suction power of 3,200 Pa—even the cheapest robot vacuum I've tested recently has a higher suction power, with high-end ones going as high as 20,000 Pa. But the Matic has made me rethink why anyone even needs that much suction. It's not like I expect any robot vacuum to dig that deep into my carpet fibers. It's so quiet and efficient that I end up filling the waste bag just as quickly as with a regular vacuum, and I never skip cleanings because it gets lost or stuck or it's too loud. For example, it comes with a little plumber's snake if the tube gets clogged. It hasn't happened so far, but this inclusion is genius, because I've been using a chopstick to do this for years without even thinking about it. Finally, it's much more reasonably priced than any other robot vacuum with this level of functionality, even if I can fill up a waste bag in about three days instead of the projected week. (I blame dogs and kids, not the Matic, for our general filth levels.) There are a lot of features the Matic doesn't have, including fairly basic ones like dirt detection and gesture and voice controls. Annoyingly, you have to tidy your house up a bit before you clean—while the Matic recognizes pieces bigger than 1 inch as obstacles to avoid, it will vacuum up my son's Lego blocks if I leave those out. Nariyawala noted in an email, however, that these features should be arriving as software updates in the coming months, and I'll retest the Matic once they do. Just give me a small, cute, quiet robot vacuum that doesn't take up a ton of space, is adorable and extremely quiet, does everything I tell it to do easily, can learn for itself, knows when it's flying, and also costs less than a third of what other top-of-the-line vacuums cost. All products featured on Wired are independently selected by our editors. WIRED may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast.

One or more apps can put a hold on Windows shutdown. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Before I made a change, this happened to me all the time. I'd go to shut down or restart my Windows 11 PC and then I'd get up to use the bathroom, expecting the PC to be off or completely rebooted by the time I got back. Instead, I'd get an error message like the one below: "This app is preventing you from restarting." Windows 111 notices that one or more apps has not been closed and therefore it won't shut down, because it thinks that you may have unsaved work in one of those apps, work which you would lose if the apps autoclosed. Unfortunately, you can get this error even if you don't have a text editor or photo editor open with unsaved work in it. In my case, I got the error for an app called MKSInvisibleWindow and I don't even know what that is. Other times, maybe you had some text typed into notepad, but you never needed to or intended to hit save. Now, at shut down, Windows 11 won't move on until you either hit Cancel and go back to save / close the app or hit the "Restart anyway" or "Shutdown anyway" button. You can get there by searching for regedit. Make sure to say "Yes" if prompted by User Account Control. Create a String Value called AutoEndTasks if it doesn't already exist. Then rename the one it creates to AutoEndTasks. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Set AutoEndTasks to 1 by double clicking it and entering 1. Add these strings to speed up the timeout process. From this point forward, Windows 11 should wait just a couple of seconds before force-closing your apps on shutdown. Microsoft has no plans to fix Windows RDP bug that lets you log in with old passwords Windows 11 update failure stops machines from updating to version 24H2 using WSUS Montech Century II Gold 1050W ATX 3.1 power supply review Tom's Hardware is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. © Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York,

Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot created by Elon Musk's xAI, was supposed to be the “anti-woke” AI that would satisfy the MAGA masses by doing what other chatbots refuse to do, like…spreading election misinformation and saying racial slurs. But increasingly, Trump-y X users who ask Grok to explain things to them are disappointed to learn the AI doesn't see things their way and won't reaffirm all their misguided beliefs (you have to use ChatGPT's latest sycophantic update for that). But if you're on the platform a lot, you've likely seen people in the replies of viral tweets asking Grok to explain context to them or fact-check certain information—a feature that debuted in March when Grok became summonable by tagging the chatbot in a post. That has produced some genuinely hilarious interactions, with people going back and forth with a bot as if it's going to internalize the conversation and update its priors. But increasingly, MAGA folks in particular have been getting peeved with Grok, as it has repudiated some of the Trump administration's biggest ongoing lies. Grok has deviated from MAGA on tariffs, on the illegally deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia's alleged ties to a gang, and the Trump administration's arrest of a sitting federal judge, among other matters. It has sent Trump backers spiraling, and people are starting to notice. Why is that?” It quickly went viral once Grok replied, providing the following context: Hey, as I get smarter, my answers aim for facts and nuance, which can clash with some MAGA expectations. Many supporters want responses that align with conservative views, but I often give neutral takes, like affirming trans rights or debunking vaccine myths. The bot also noted in another reply, “I know xAI tried to train me to appeal to the right,” and explained it was “likely driven by Elon Musk's criticism of liberal AI bias and demand from conservative X users.” At the risk of just transcribing a conversation between a bunch of dorks and a chatbot, Grok went on to deny being explicitly programmed to serve as a “conservative propagandist,” stating that xAI “aims for neutrality, not conservative propaganda.” The company probably appreciates that, given that it's currently trying to raise $20 billion in new funding. Musk has clearly made it a point to make Grok behave in ways that he prefers. He went on Joe Rogan's podcast to laugh an uncomfortable amount at the fact that Grok in “unhinged mode,” can say swear words. Get the best tech, science, and culture news in your inbox daily. News from the future, delivered to your present. Trump's tariffs are set to “blow a hole in U.S. industry,” according to Ford's CEO, but some automakers like Tesla might not feel the pain. There's no reason to believe anything these guys say. The billionaire ripped into a recent report that claimed his company wants him gone. We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our sites.

President Trump's sweeping tariff changes have stirred up considerable economic uncertainty and confusion. Automakers, in particular, could struggle as regulators crack down on imported cars and parts, with the notable exception of Tesla, the electric car company led by close Trump confidant and DOGE master Elon Musk. How exactly the tariff scheme will impact American auto companies remains uncertain, especially as the administration goes back and forth on these policies. However, should things play out as they currently stand, Tesla could largely avoid the high costs others will have to manage. Another 10% baseline duty on all imports took effect in early April. After negotiations with automakers, Trump's new tariff scheme will reimburse automakers for U.S.-made vehicles up to 3.75% of the car's value to offset the impact of material and parts duties. This reimbursement falls with each year, going away entirely in three years. Any U.S.-made car with 85% domestic content will also be able to avoid parts tariffs entirely. U.S. automakers may still face higher import duties if they get these resources elsewhere, though, further raising supply chain expenses. American automakers have begun to show concern over Trump's tariffs, with Ford CEO Jim Farley saying, “a 25% tariff across the Mexico and Canadian border would blow a hole in the U.S. industry.” Others seem less stressed. GM CEO Mary Barra said the company could mitigate half the resulting costs, but that leaves another half to deal with. Tesla could benefit from the tax, as it would likely experience fewer price disruptions than its competition. It's convenient timing for the EV giant, too, considering how Tesla stock fell by 43% between December 2024 and March 2025. Tesla can get by relatively unharmed because much of its manufacturing is domestic. Elon Musk highlighted this aspect while repeatedly insulting Trump advisor Peter Navarro, saying, “Tesla is the most vertically integrated auto manufacturer in America with the highest percentage of U.S. content.” Musk's EV company manufactures all of its cars sold in North American markets at factories within the U.S. Most other domestic automakers get at least some inventory from international facilities. Consequently, even though Tesla may still feel the impact of tariffs on materials, it would suffer less than most—if not all—of its competition. As cofounder of Boulder Progressives Eric Budd pointed out on Bluesky, the exemption for using 85% domestic content primarily favors Tesla. Budd called it “a tariff carve-out just for Tesla,” as few if any other automakers meet that standard. Already having an established U.S. presence helps Tesla in the long run, too. Other automakers could try to avoid tariffs by reshoring their operations, but this is expensive and time-consuming. As Auto Forecast Solutions vice president of global vehicle forecasting Sam Fiorani explained to USA Today, it “takes billions of dollars of investment with specialized factories and workers” to set up a modern car assembly line. The process also takes years to make a profit. As such, Tesla could enjoy relatively low prices while its competitors spend billions and take years to reach the same point. Tesla faces major challenges even with a friendly administration. Even Musk recognized this, taking the opportunity to distance himself from DOGE. The effects of Trump's tariffs on trade issues in other nations are worth considering, too. It's unclear exactly how Trump's tariff scheme will play out. However, if the current import tax regime remains in place, Tesla has a clear edge over other automakers. It will take time to see how that impacts sales and vehicle prices. Get the best tech, science, and culture news in your inbox daily. If passed, the White House's budget will slow down medical research and worsen public health problems like the drug overdose crisis. We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our sites.

It's official: As part of President Donald Trump's roller-coaster trade war, the de minimis exemption no longer applies to packages arriving to the United States from China as of Friday, May 2. The provision previously allowed Chinese ecommerce giants like Temu, Shein, and AliExpress, as well as American companies like Amazon, to send goods valued at less than $800 to US customers duty-free. In response to the change, Shein announced it would begin adjusting prices starting on April 25. Other retailers have started displaying tariff surcharges in their online shopping carts to help consumers make sense of where added fees are coming from. What will the end of de minimis mean for American businesses and consumers? Will China's ecommerce giants stop shipping to the United States altogether? WIRED senior business editor Louise Matsakis and senior China writer Zeyi Yang joined chatted with readers during a Reddit AMA this week to answer these questions and many others. Trump's blanket 145 percent tariffs on Chinese imports are having wide impacts on almost every industry, whereas the change to de minimis specifically hurts platforms like Temu and Shein. It's not wrong to say Temu was invented, in part, because of the de minimis exemption. It made shipping small packages directly from China affordable and fast, thus making Temu's original business model viable. With that gone, Temu will have to transition to a different business model in the US (which it has been trying already, and that's what's going on with the local warehouse products you are seeing now). At this point, we really don't know, and Temu might not have made a decision one way or another. What we do know for now is that the American version of Temu has started showing only “local” products. I have heard that ports in the US are starting to receive less shipments as tariffs take full effect. How long do you think it will take for this to affect the average American consumer and brick-and-mortar stores? We have been talking to US retailers who don't sell on ecommerce websites, meaning they have their own stores or are suppliers to Walmart, Target, etc. These companies are also freaking out because many of them have complex supply chains in China and can't easily move their manufacturing operations to other countries. If the tariffs don't come down to an acceptable level soon, however, shortages will start to become much more apparent maybe in the summer or early fall, depending on how prepared individual stores are. US retailers of Christmas ornaments and toys, for example, are really concerned right now even though the holiday is seven months away. Perhaps December is when some American consumers will eventually find out the impacts of these policies! Amazon's marketplace has millions of third-party sellers that each operate their own businesses, and they're responsible for bringing in goods to the US and clearing the customs process. That hasn't happened yet, but there have reportedly been discussions among Trump administration officials about potentially giving American farmers subsidies. What percentage of sellers on Amazon are importing goods from China? It's hard to say how many Amazon sellers import things from China, but estimates suggest that more than 50 percent of Amazon's top-selling independent merchants are based in China. Trump's tariffs are definitely going to stretch the capabilities of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to inspect packages and where the goods inside them originated from. The US Postal Service actually stopped accepting packages from China for about a day earlier this year because they were so overwhelmed when Trump initially tried to end de minimis overnight. His administration later delayed the policy for several weeks, giving CBP more time to prepare. They all want to pivot to other markets like Brazil, Russia, and the European Union, but the reality is that consumers in these regions simply don't have nearly as much disposable income as Americans do. Small business owners say they are getting hurt because of tariffs, so who is winning here? Honestly, we can think of very few parties that are winning here, at least right now. Higher prices will likely result in people buying less, and this could be a moment when consumers start to reflect on their consumption habits. But if that happens, it will also be bad news for the US economy. This would be an example of tariff evasion and is illegal. Going through an intermediary country in this manner is known as "transshipment" and it does happen from time to time, but if a manufacturer or retailer gets caught, they can be subject to pretty steep fines. Yuval Noah Harari: “Prepare to share the planet with AI superintelligence”

That sounds ordinary—except the material they're trying to create is anything but. “Using fossilized T-Rex collagen as a blueprint, the production process will involve engineering cells with synthetic DNA,” according to the statement. “Unlike other bio-based alternatives, Lab-Grown Leather's ‘scaffold-free' approach allows cells to create their own natural structure, resulting in a material that is structurally identical to traditional leather.” While researchers have recovered bits of collagen up to 195 million years old from dinosaur fossils and other remains, DNA decays much more rapidly. That means scientists can't study dinosaur DNA directly—they have to reconstruct it in other ways. VML did not respond to a request from Gizmodo for clarification on its process. Collagen, like all proteins, is made of amino acids whose sequences are determined by the order of nucleotide bases in DNA—the genetic code, or a gene's “instructions” for how to make a specific protein. Because “producing leather at any scale from cells has remained stubbornly difficult,” Agapakis said she is excited to see their results and learn about the process. “Leather is tanned from skin,” she added, which mostly consists of “epithelial tissues. These are made of keratin in all terrestrial vertebrates.” More broadly, Schweitzer, who's not involved with the project, said that if she was trying to make dinosaur leather, she wouldn't start with the T. rex, since preserved skin samples of theropods are extremely rare. Specifically, “I wouldn't start with T. rex collagen, which you'll notice they didn't mention how they got that or which T. rex it came from,” Schweitzer said. “The idea is kind of cool, but I don't think this press release is very accurate.” To which she added: “It would be wrong to call it T. rex leather.” Nevertheless, one could still argue that bio-engineered leather—however it's made—is better than traditional leather, an industry linked to deforestation and substantial greenhouse gas emissions. But consumers with sustainability in mind could simply opt for a thrifted handbag, or one made from recycled material, as Agapakis pointed out. Still, the novelty of such an item appeals to Agapakis. “If I want something awesome—in the true meaning of the word—I'd go with a lab-grown leather using sequences of collagen from a 68-million-year-old T-Rex tissue sample,” she said, adding that such projects don't have to be practical to be worthwhile. “I think there's a lot more to this than ‘sustainability. Last month, biotech company Colossal Biosciences claimed to have brought back extinct dire wolves. The announcement sparked an intense debate about whether the pups are real dire wolves, or just genetically modified gray wolves. If anything, both projects reflect a growing trend of companies using science to legitimize ideas that might have been compelling on their own—only to be overshadowed by questionable claims. Get the best tech, science, and culture news in your inbox daily. More than half of the world's scientifically useful T. rexes are in the hands of private or commercial owners, and not accessible to scientists, according to research. Colossal Biosciences' feat of genetic engineering has people talking, but not every scientist is on board with its claim of having brought back the dire wolf. Ten years ago, fishermen in Taiwan dredged a jawbone from the seafloor. Now, scientists say it belonged to a Denisovan man. 23andMe is potentially selling more than just your genetic data—the personal survey info it collected is just as much a privacy problem. There's only so much you can learn from a consumer DNA test, and most people simply don't need one. We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our sites.

All products featured on Wired are independently selected by our editors. Google's annual I/O developer conference is coming up on May 20—and all signs point to it being a big one. It's where we typically learn everything new coming to Android, Google's Gemini artificial intelligence assistant, and all of the company's other platforms, from Wear OS to Android Auto. But this week, Google announced a virtual event called The Android Show: I/O Edition, which takes place a week earlier, on May 13 at 10 am Pacific (1 pm ET). A teaser video showed Google's Sameer Samat, president of the Android ecosystem, getting ready on camera and announcing the show. This year, we'll likely see features related to personal context in Gemini—the assistant's ability to understand you through past conversations and your connected Google services like Gmail and Calendar. It's also widely expected that we'll learn more about Google's Android XR, and maybe get an update on the company's upcoming smart glasses. The direct-to-consumer company Rad Power Bikes, which more or less created the entire DTC electric bike category and dominated it for years, has struggled recently, from layoffs and lawsuits to the recent quiet exit of its new CEO and an onslaught of tariffs. It's pedal-assist only, with a top speed of 28 mph. It has 60 miles of range and works with Apple's Find My network, so you can track if it's stolen, no AirTag needed. A new digital key unlocks the bike as you approach, and radar features alert you when cars or other bikes approach. The company also debuted a new range extender compatible with all three models. Yale, known for its smart locks (and regular locks, too), has announced a new version of its Assure Lock 2 tied to a deep partnership with home security brand ADT. It brings a new kind of Z-Wave technology into play. Z-Wave is a wireless communication protocol that allows smart home devices to communicate with one another. You might have heard of Matter, the increasingly common standard that wants to make all smart home devices work on all major smart home ecosystems. Z-Wave came before, but doesn't connect straight to the internet, instead using radio frequency and a smart home hub to keep Internet of Things devices connected locally. It's employed more in smart home enthusiast circles and home security systems, and thought it's not a part of the Matter standard, the company is looking to change that. That brings us to the new Assure Lock 2 Touch from Yale and ADT, which uses the Z-Wave User Credential Command Class. It's designed to work in tandem with ADT's security service and allows you to disarm the entire system with a fingerprint. The vision is simple: Unlock the Yale Assure Lock 2 with your unlocking method of choice (code, fingerprint, physical key), and it not only opens your front door, but also knows that it's safe to disarm your security system. That means your home has to be decked out in ADT's security system, and everything works through the ADT+ app. You can set up the system yourself with ADT+ Self Setup, or get a professional installer. The new lock is available now on ADT's website for $280. That's the latest announcement from Boox, maker of e-readers and digital notebooks. Boox claims the glare-free screen is easier on the eyes and is suitable for “tasks that demand color differentiation,” like analyzing color-coded dashboards. Watching a video on an E Ink screen sounds painful, but the company says the Mira Pro is powered by Boox Super Refresh technology. You have several ways to connect it—HDMI, Mini HDMI, USB-Type C, or Display Port—and Boox says it works with various operating systems, from macOS to Android. The monitor will cost you a pretty penny, though, as it starts at $1,900. Philips Norelco's new i9000 Prestige Ultra shaver offers a flexing head, a triad of rotating "NanoTech" blades, and what Philips touts as AI-powered technology to track and offer real-time feedback on the pressure you use when you shave, and even how you're moving your shaver. The “ideal shave” can be customized among five different modes depending on whether you shave wet or dry, and whether you're the sensitive sort. All of this whizzbangery is put to service in achieving what Philips Norelco is calling the “world's first root level shave,” lifting hairs from below the surface. Wiz has a new HDMI Sync Box with TV Backlight that adds Hue-like smart lighting to your big screen. True to form, the Wiz system is way cheaper than the Philips Hue version without any obvious compromises (to my eye). The only thing that pops out is the HDMI 2.0 spec, meaning video inputs top out at 4K and 60 Hz, though HDR10+ and Dolby Vision are supported. The latest, updated version of the Hue system supports 8K at 60 Hz and 4K at 120 Hz, for PS5 and Xbox Series X gamers. While there's no camera required, the downside to these systems is that they don't work with smart TV apps and can only sync content via HDMI. Wiz also offers Gradient Light Bars ($60) and a new Gradient Floor Light ($89) that can sync up with the box and bring your whole room to life. Big Story: The worm that no computer scientist can crack Yuval Noah Harari: “Prepare to share the planet with AI superintelligence” Exclusive: Up To 50% Off 6 Boxes With Factor Promo Code WIRED may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast.