Tech Boys

Nintendo has eyed adding a Playdate-style crank to the Switch 2 , according to a recently spotted patent from Nintendo Patents Watch . The hypothetical accessory would add tracking rotational movement to an existing bag of Joy-Con 2 controller tricks that includes motion and mouse controls.   Based on the patent application, the crank accessory attaches to the side of a Joy-Con 2 magnetically, not unlike the controllers' wrist straps. Whichever game supports the accessory can use the Joy-Con 2's mouse sensor to track the rotations of the crank as an input. Fishing games or games with dedicated fishing mini-games, like Animal Crossing: New Horizons , seem like the obvious contenders for an accessory like this, but knowing Nintendo there are weirder possibilities, too.  Nintendo Another patent imagines a similar setup being used for a clickable wheel. The patent illustrations looks like a lighter, but the accessory could just as easily be used while dragging a Joy-C...

Knowing the big internal changes coming to our phones with iOS 26 , we're getting excited to see how Apple has revamped its newest smartphones: the iPhone 17 lineup. We still have to wait over a month to find out — assuming Apple sticks to its usual release schedule — but for now, we can speculate what the new phones will look like. As with most unreleased iPhone models, rumors and leaks have trickled in about the hardware side ahead of the official introduction. Here's what we're expecting and what we can reasonably assume we'll get from Cupertino in September. What are the latest iPhone 17 rumors and reports? Surprisingly, the latest rumor isn't about the actual iPhone 17 details themselves, but rather when they'll finally be showcased. MacRumors highlighted a story originally reported by iphone-ticker.de that the Apple iPhone 17 event could be Tuesday, September 9, according to information gleaned from German mobile phone providers.  While the iPhone ...

ChatGPT is about to get a whole lot better. OpenAI has finally taken the wraps off of GPT-5 , its latest and greatest large language model. GPT-5 has been rumored and speculated about for as long as GPT-4 has been around, and for good reason. The new foundational OpenAI model packs a ton of improvements that will make ChatGPT more accurate, more customizable, and more helpful. For starters, GPT-5 is smarter, faster, and more accurate — which, yes, means fewer “hallucinations,” which occur when ChatGPT makes up information. As one OpenAI leader described it during the announcement livestream, it's like having a subject matter expert on anything in your pocket. GPT-5 is also being positioned as a model that can do everything . It can write, code, create interactive apps, check your email, and conduct deep research. Curious about what's on offer in GPT-5 and whether or not it will actually improve the ChatGPT experience? Like the rest of the world, we're still investigati...

Nightdive Studios and id Software have announced a surprise remaster of fantasy shooters Heretic and Hexen . The games are now available for modern consoles in a new release, dubbed Heretic + Hexen, that includes support for co-op, cross-platform multiplayer and community-published mods. Heretic + Hexen combines Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders , Hexen: Beyond Heretic and Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel into a single bundle. On top of making the updates necessary to get the games running on Xbox, PlayStation and Switch, Nightdive also created "two brand new episodes" to play through called Heretic: Faith Renewed and Hexen: Vestiges of Grandeur that include new levels inspired by the original games. When they were first released in 1994 and 1995, respectively, Heretic and Hexen featured the novel pairing of Doom -inspired first-person action, with rudimentary RPG elements like character classes and an inventory. The games helped put developer Raven S...

The Game Devs of Color Expo is returning for its 10th year from September 16 to 19. The online conference both celebrates the games industry's developers of color, and acts as a showcase for new upcoming game through its companion GDoCExpo Direct showcase. This year's GDoCExpo Direct kicks off the conference on September 16 at 4PM ET / 1PM ET on the Game Devs of Color Expo YouTube channel . The direct is supposed to feature "more than 30 games" and it'll be paired with a Game Devs of Color Expo Steam Sale with discounts and demos to try for some of the games featured in the showcase. Watching the Direct is free, but to view the Expo's developer interviews and live panels, you'll have to pay for a ticket. A regular ticket costs $50, but the Game Devs of Color nonprofit organization also offers cheaper ways to attend for anyone who can't afford the ticket price. This year's conference includes talks on budgeting, design leadership and "Decol...

Sonos is having overheating issues with a "very low" number of its Roam speakers. Bloomberg reports that some users' portable Bluetooth speakers are overheating around the device's USB-C port. The company has not recalled any products as a result but it aware of the issue happening. "We’ve closely tracked a limited number of reports involving the USB-C charging connection on some first-generation Sonos Roam speakers," Sonos said in a statement shared with Engadget. "While the overall incidence rate is very low, and environmental conditions appear to play a role, we’ve taken several proactive steps to even further reduce the likelihood of this issue, including software updates and accessory improvements." The issue appears to be centered on the original model of the Sonos Roam that debuted in 2021; the Sonos Roam 2 offered some upgrades over that version when it rolled out last spring. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://i...

For the first time since GPT-2 dropped over five years ago , OpenAI is releasing not one, but two open-weight AI reasoning models — and they’re available to download for free right now on Hugging Face. Billed as “state-of-the-art,” the new OpenAI open-weight models were announced Tuesday in a company blog post . OpenAI says they "outperform similarly sized open models on reasoning, excel at tool use, and are optimized for efficient deployment on consumer hardware." This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. There are two versions: gpt-oss-120b , the larger and more powerful model, which can run on a single Nvidia GPU. gpt-oss-20b , a lightweight alternative designed to run on consumer laptops with just 16GB of RAM. To try out the new OpenAI models for yourself, head to the OpenAI gpt-oss page . What does open-weight mean? This release is a nod to OpenAI’s early roots, when the company was more publicly committed to open-sourci...

ChatGPT is getting a health upgrade, this time for users themselves. In a new blog post ahead of the company's reported GPT-5 announcement, OpenAI unveiled it would be refreshing its generative AI chatbot with new features designed to foster healthier, more stable relationships between user and bot. Users who have spent prolonged periods of time in a single conversation, for example, will now be prompted to log off with a gentle nudge. The company is also doubling down on fixes to the bot's sycophancy problem , and building out its models to recognize mental and emotional distress. SEE ALSO: An Illinois bill banning AI therapy has been signed into law ChatGPT will respond differently to more "high stakes" personal questions, the company explains, guiding users through careful decision-making, weighing pros and cons, and responding to feedback rather than providing answers to potentially life-changing queries. This mirror's OpenAI's recently announce...

Web crawlers deployed by Perplexity to scrape websites are allegedly skirting restrictions, according to a new report from Cloudflare . Specifically, the report claims that the company's bots appear to be "stealth crawling" sites by disguising their identity to get around robots.txt files and firewalls. Robots.txt is a simple file websites host that lets web crawlers know if they can scrape a websites' content or not. Perplexity's official web crawling bots are "PerplexityBot" and "Perplexity-User." In Cloudflare's tests, Perplexity was still able to display the content of a new, unindexed website, even when those specific bots were blocked by robots.txt. The behavior extended to websites with specific Web Application Firewall (WAF) rules that restricted web crawlers, as well. Cloudflare Cloudflare believes that Perplexity is getting around those obstacles by using "a generic browser intended to impersonate Google Chrome on macO...

Verizon customers reportedly got double bad news this week: the phone carrier is raising fees and removing loyalty discounts. According to users on the Verizon subreddit, several customers reported receiving an email from Verizon informing them their account discounts are ending. "We are writing to let you know that a discount on your account will soon end," the email said, according a redditor. "This discount will be removed no sooner than September 1, 2025." Several other redditors chimed in on the thread, saying they had a received the same email about losing loyalty perks offered to longstanding customers. Mashable has reached out to Verizon for comment and will update this story with a response. Reddit A few days earlier, Verizon confirmed to Tom's Guide that the company is increasing fees for activations, phone lines, and tablet plans by Sept. 1. SEE ALSO: The fastest mobile services have been ranked, and there’s a clear winner Verizon cust...