Tech Boys

Did you know Apple's CarPlay will let you make anything — and I mean truly anything — the sound that plays when you start up your car? Well, TikTok found out, and now it's a quickly spreading trend. It has almost become competitive at this point: How weird, funny, or esoteric can you make your start-up sound? It's become a trend to start your car and begin filming as it slowly loads, then plays the sound. (The custom sound is played only when your phone connects to CarPlay, so that builds a natural bit of tension as the audience waits for the reveal.) Here are just a few we've spotted on TikTok. This person used the race sound from Nintendo's Mario Kart . This person gets greeted by Taylor Swift . This driver gets a little motivation from the internet's new favorite character, Chit . This person has a sound from the classic film Billy Madison . This driver recycles an old meme sound. It's a funny, silly trend that brings a little bit of whimsy...

Peacock, NBCUniversal's streaming home for The Office and Love Island USA , is going to cost a good bit more starting on July 23, Variety reports . The streaming service's two existing tiers will cost an additional $3 per month, and Peacock will also start testing a cheaper $7.99 "Select" tier that includes access to NBC and Bravo shows and a limited number of titles from the NBCUniversal back catalog. With the new price hike, Peacock's ad-supported "Premium" plan will go from costing $8 per month to $11 per month, and the "Premium Plus" plan, which features fewer ads, will go from costing $14 per month to $17 per month. The discounted annual subscription for the Premium plan is now $110 per year, while the Premium Plus plan is $170 per year. The updated subscription fees will go into affect for new and returning customers on July 23, and on August 22 for current customers. While these fees are still on the low end of the $25-per-month tha...

The Trump administration has struck an agreement to hand over the personal data of 79 million Medicaid users, part of the President's effort to "crack down" on undocumented communities across the country. In documents obtained exclusively by the Associated Press , the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) agreed to provide demographic and location data to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, including names, addresses, and ethnicities, in order to more efficiently track down undocumented individuals living in the U.S. SEE ALSO: 988's crisis services for LGBTQ youth are now silent "ICE will use the CMS data to allow ICE to receive identity and location information on aliens identified by ICE," the agreement reads. In response to the Associated Press, Health and Human Services assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, said the two agencies "are exploring an initiative to ensure...

As young adults become more jaded by online dating, dating apps are trying to save themselves with AI features . Over the last few years, all the big players like Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble have added AI-powered tools. Users can now pick profile photos, break the ice, and get prompt help with AI. But has it paid off? No, according to a new survey from Bloomberg Intelligence. Gen Z reported higher levels of discomfort than millennials when it came to using AI for tasks like modifying photos, messaging matches, and crafting profile prompts. Nearly half of the respondents said they didn't have trouble creating their profiles independently or messaging matches. SEE ALSO: Comparing AI features for Bumble, Hinge, and Tinder The survey of around 1,000 U.S. respondents was collected by Attest on behalf of Bloomberg Intelligence between May 15 and 29. The survey didn't mention apps by name, Bloomberg reported, only the types of features added. Bloomberg Intelligence technology ...

Google is continuing to double down on its AI Mode, bringing more features to its dedicated Search chatbot. Today, the company is adding the Gemini 2.5 Pro model and the Deep Search capability to AI Mode. These features will be available to Google AI Pro and Google AI Ultra subscribers. Although both of these tools can still be accessed through other means, Google's move to incorporate them into the chatbot points to an end goal of AI Mode being the primary form of engagement with the company's signature search service. These developments are follow-ups to announcements made during Google's I/O conference this spring. AI Mode began rolling out to all Google users in May, and Deep Think was also announced as an option for the Gemini 2.5 Pro model at that time. Another AI tool teased at I/O was the ability for Gemini to place phone calls with Project Astra . This agentic option is also coming in a limited form to AI Mode. For starters, it will only be able to contact lo...

Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday or Tuesday, broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who's covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from the past week that you need to know about, including some headlines from outside of Engadget. Please enjoy — and I'll see you next week. If I end up reading one more story about how fantastic Death Stranding 2 is so long as you skip the cutscenes , I’m gonna hurl. At what point during 10 hours of cinematic interstitials do we collectively put the controller down and say, actually, this isn’t a great game? Not because the game parts aren’t any good — they’re pretty fabulous, in fact — but because a significant portion of the experience isn’t actually interactive at all. When does it become more accurate to describe a Hideo Kojima project as a...

Razer is back with a new addition to its Core line of external graphics enclosures. The Razer Core X V2 external graphics enclosure can house recent GPUs from brands including NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon. It uses a single Thunderbolt 5 cable to the host device; in its press materials, Razer claims this tech delivers up to twice the bandwidth of Thunderbolt 4. This is true, but Thunderbolt 5 still isn't on the level of a modern desktop GPU connection, being roughly equivalent to 8 lanes of PCIe Gen 3. The Core X V2 s not available yet, but will retail for $350 when it does go on sale some time "soon." An eGPU can beef up the visual power of a gaming laptop or handheld. Razer has had several available over the years, starting with the Core alongside its Blade Stealth model in 2016. It followed up with the Core X in 2018 and the colorful Core X Chroma in 2019. The availability of Thunderbolt 5 ports has renewed interest in this product category since it increases the ...

Xbox's "Stream your own game" feature continues to expand. You can now use your PC to play supported games you own on Xbox. (The games stream from the cloud, not your console.) You'll need to be an Xbox Insider and Game Pass Ultimate subscriber to use it. The PC launch follows the feature's arrival earlier this year on other devices. Already supported were Xbox consoles, TVs, browser-based devices (including mobile) and Meta Quest headsets . The idea is the latest chapter in Microsoft's mission to make Xbox software more device-agnostic. Hop on whatever device is available, and start playing without waiting for installations. That makes sense from a business perspective, given Sony's commanding lead in their two-way console race. It's increasingly more about selling Game Pass subscriptions than fighting a losing hardware battle . CD Projekt Red Microsoft lists over 250 supported games . Standouts include Baldur's Gate 3 , Star Wars Outlaw...

The difference between Prime Day and Black Friday — their roots, anyway — probably isn't a mystery to anyone who has dabbled in online shopping before. Most of us know that Black Friday is the big sale frenzy that happens around Thanksgiving as a precursor to the holidays, and that almost every store you can think of participates. Alternatively, the name "Prime Day" suggests that the event is indeed an Amazon -specific event made up by Amazon for members of its Prime subscription service . The lines between these two shopping holidays also aren't quite as blurred as they are between Black Friday and Cyber Monday , which have become pretty indistinguishable from each other due to 1. being just a few days apart on the calendar, and 2. Black Friday relying just as heavily on online shopping as Cyber Monday does. But back to the question at hand. Most people aren't concerned with these shopping holiday semantics. The people just want to know: Does Prime Day or B...

ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is reportedly working on mixed reality goggles, The Information reports . The in-development device is designed to layer digital objects over your view of the real world, and is supposed to compete directly with Meta's upcoming mixed reality products. The goggles are being built by ByteDance's virtual reality startup Pico, the creators of the Pico 4 VR headset . Pico's past products have attempted to match Meta's Quest headsets in terms of features, but these new goggles apparently represent a different approach (albeit one still positioned as an alternative to Meta). Rather than a bulky headset, the goggles are supposed to be small and light, about the size of the Bigscreen Beyond VR headset , which weighs 0.28 pounds. Pico is keeping the device lightweight by offloading most of the computing work to a puck that's connected to the goggles over a wire. Meta's prototype Orion AR glasses used a wireless puck for a similar...