Tech Boys

Looking for a ride in a robotaxi? If you live in Chicago, Illinois and Charlotte, North Carolina, you may be able to ride around your city in an autonomous vehicle in the not so distant future. According to a report in TechCrunch , apparently confirmed by locals who spotted the vehicles in their area, Waymo is currently conducting test drives in both cities. Waymo's testing phase deploys Waymo vehicles with human drivers to cities where the Google-owned company is looking to roll out its ride-hailing service. During this phase, Waymo effectively gleans knowledge from the human drivers to best understand the lay of the land. Local road conditions, traffic patterns, and edge cases are all analyzed and mapped out so that the autonomous vehicles are prepared for the location. After months of testing, Waymo will start testing the driverless version of the service. If all goes well, this will be followed by launching the full Waymo experience — where you hail a driverless car on the...

A quick look at the best Samsung Galaxy S25 deals Best new Galaxy S25 phone deal Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge (512GB, Titanium Jet Black) $899.99 (save $320 at Best Buy) Get Deal Best refurbished Galaxy S25 phone deal Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra (256GB, Titanium Black) $796.82 (save $502.18 at Back Market) Get Deal As expected, the Samsung Unpacked event on Feb. 25 confirmed the release of the Samsung Galaxy S26 family : The regular S26, the S26 Plus, and the S26 Ultra. Some big Samsung fans are pumped because they can officially preorder the Galaxy S26 — other Samsung fans are pumped because the existence of the Galaxy S26 probably means deals on the Galaxy S25. SEE ALSO: Samsung announces Galaxy Buds4 and Buds4 Pro at Galaxy Unpacked: Everything to know Galaxy S25 deals aren't going super hard yet, especially considering many S25 configurations are sold out at multiple retailers (even Samsung itself). But there are a few worthwhile unlocked Samsung...

Ubisoft's shakeups continue unabated. The creative director of the next Assassin's Creed game, codenamed Hexe , has left the company. The departure of Clint Hocking, a 20-year veteran of the company over two stints, was reportedly announced in a staff meeting this week. Hocking's resume at Ubisoft included serving as creative director on Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory , Far Cry 2 and Watch Dogs: Legion . The details of why he's leaving the company haven't been reported. Ubisoft told VGC , which first reported on Hocking's exit, that development on Hexe will continue. Jean Guedson, one of three new leaders of the Assassin's Creed franchise, will take over as the upcoming title's new creative director. Guedson had the same role for Assassin's Creed Origins and Black Flag , two of the franchise's most well-received entries. To say sailing hasn't been smooth of late at Ubisoft would be an understatement. Last year, the company reorganized its...

Microsoft has announced that its rolling out support for streaming games at 1440p on Xbox consoles. Game streaming is a key benefit of paying for a Game Pass subscription, and as of 2025 , now also includes games players own that aren't part of the larger Game Pass library. The higher bitrate streaming option will let subscribers with an Xbox Series X or S, Xbox One X or Xbox One play their games at a higher resolution, provided the game and their display supports it. Microsoft previously only offered 1440p streams on select Fire TVs, LG TVs, Samsung TVs, web browsers and the Xbox PC app. At least for now, 1440p is only available to Game Pass Ultimate subscribers. Beyond the new streaming option, Microsoft is also making improvements to the Xbox PC app and the Xbox experience on ROG Xbox Ally handhelds. On PC, the Xbox PC app now includes "navigation sounds" that play when you use the app's interface with a controller. These new sounds are supposed to make controll...

If the lack of background play or downloadable offline content was one of the reasons you were holding off on subscribing to YouTube's most affordable paid subscription plan, then YouTube has some good news for you today. In an announcement on its website, YouTube shared that both the ability to play content in the background and the ability to download content for offline viewing are coming to its $7.99 per month YouTube Premium Lite subscription plan. YouTube's ad-free paid subscription plan, YouTube Premium, has been massively successful for the company.  For $13.99 per month, viewers can have a completely ad-free YouTube experience with YouTube Premium. They also receive subscriber-only features such as background play and content that can be downloaded for offline viewing. YouTube's streaming music service, YouTube Music, is also provided at no additional cost, also completely ad-free. SEE ALSO: YouTube TV will soon offer cheaper bundles, including a new sports ...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will reportedly give Anthropic until Friday to drop certain guardrails for military use, as reported by Axios . The outlet also reported that CEO Dario Amodei met with Hegseth yesterday as the Pentagon ratcheted up pressure on the AI company to give in to its demands. The makers of Claude have reportedly been offered an ultimatum: Either yield to the government's demands to remove limits for certain military applications, or potentially be forced to tailor its AI model to the government's needs under the Defense Production Act. Anthropic, for its part, has said that while it was willing to adopt certain policies for the Pentagon, it would not allow its model to be used for mass surveillance of Americans or for the development of autonomous weapons. Claude is currently the only AI model employed in some of the government's most sensitive work. "The only reason we're still talking to these people is we need them and we need them...

The year’s BAFTAS , the British equivalent of the Oscars, will not be remembered for which movies won, but rather how the BBC handled a shocking moment. During the broadcast, an attendee with Tourette syndrome yelled a racial slur, which could be heard on the tape-delayed broadcast . The first time the N-word was shouted by John Davidson, whose life was the basis for the BAFTA-nominated film I Swear , was at the beginning of the BBC’s broadcast, as Sinners stars Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo presented the first award. Both Jordan and Lindo are Black. Update, Feb. 23, 3 p.m. ET: Davidson released a statement about the events at the BAFTAs, thanking the organizers for inviting him and explaining his tics to the audience. He also stated, "In addition to the announcement by Alan Cumming, the BBC and BAFTA, I can only add that I am, and always have been deeply mortified if anyone considers my involuntary tics to be intentional or to carry any meaning." For his part, Lin...

Anthropic is issuing a call to action against AI "distillation attacks," after accusing three AI companies of misusing its Claude chatbot . On its website, Anthropic claimed that DeepSeek , Moonshot and MiniMax have been conducting "industrial-scale campaigns…to illicitly extract Claude’s capabilities to improve their own models." Distillation in the AI world refers to when less capable models lean on the responses of more powerful ones to train themselves. While distillation isn't a bad thing across the board, Anthropic said that these types of attacks can be used in a more nefarious way. According to Anthropic, these three Chinese AI firms were responsible for more than "16 million exchanges with Claude through approximately 24,000 fraudulent accounts." From Anthropic's perspective, these competing companies were using Claude as a shortcut to develop more advanced AI models, which could also lead to circumventing certain safeguards . Anthropi...

It looks like a March launch is no longer in the cards for Artemis II, NASA's first crewed trip to the moon's vicinity since the final Apollo mission over 50 years ago. While preparations were underway at the Kennedy Space Center for a launch as soon as March 6 , the space agency says it ran into an issue with the flow of helium to its SLS rocket's upper stage this weekend and it now has to roll the rocket from the launch pad back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) to figure out what's wrong and fix it. A media briefing is planned for sometime this week to discuss the problem and what's next.  But in a post on X, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman confirmed the rollback will "take the March launch window out of consideration." NASA noted on its blog that the current effort "potentially preserves the April launch window, pending the outcome of data findings, repair efforts, and how the schedule comes to fruition in the coming days and weeks....

Samsung's next flagship devices will offer Perplexity as part of an expansion to support multiple AI agents in Galaxy AI. Perplexity's AI agent will work with apps including Samsung Notes, Clock, Gallery, Reminder and Calendar, according to the announcement . And, some third-party apps will support it, though Samsung hasn't yet said which. The news comes just a few days before Samsung's Galaxy Unpacked event , so we can expect to find out more about that integration and how it fits in with Samsung's revamped Bixby very soon.  What we know so far is that the Perplexity agent will respond to the wake phrase, "Hey Plex" (not to be confused with the streaming service Plex). It can also be initiated by quick-access physical controls. In a statement, Samsung's Won-Joon Choi, President, COO and Head of the R&D Office for Samsung's Mobile eXperience Business, said the expansion of Galaxy AI is aimed at giving users more choice and flexibility in gett...