Samsung confirmed today that it is showing advertisements on some US customers’ smart fridges. Samsung said the ads showing on some Family Hub-series fridges are part of a pilot program, but we suspect that they may become more permanent additions to Samsung fridges and/or other types of screen-equipped smart home appliances.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/09/samsung-forces-ads-onto-fridges-is-a-bad-sign-for-other-appliances/
Lenovo has proven again that it isn’t content with PC designs. The latest era of laptops has been focused on ultralight computers that are easy to transport, but they're hard to differentiate. However, Lenovo’s continual experimentation has brought us some unique laptop releases and concepts in recent years, including a laptop with a screen that expands by rolling, a laptop with an outward folding screen, laptops with foldable screens, and laptops with dual 14-inch displays.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/09/lenovo-demos-laptop-with-a-screen-you-can-swivel-into-portrait-mode/
In the olden days, publishing a site on the Internet required that you figure out hosting and have at least some experience with HTML, CSS, and the other languages that make the Internet work. But the emergence of blogging and "Web 2.0" sites in the late '90s and early 2000s gave rise to a constellation of services that would offer to host all of your thoughts without requiring you to build the website part of your website. The TypePad shutdown is rough news for the site's remaining user base—and it's yet another tranche of old Internet content that will only be available via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, when it's available at all.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/one-time-wordpress-competitor-typepad-ends-its-slide-into-obscurity-by-shutting-down/
Google says the new interface will begin with Android OS, but it will eventually expand across the full Google app ecosystem, bringing a more lively vibe to Gmail, Google Photos, and more. Material 3 Expressive won't be entirely unfamiliar—it shares some basic design elements with the Material You system Google launched four years ago. Material 3 Expressive is a bolder take on the same aesthetic, featuring "springy" animations, brighter colors, and new shapes.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/05/google-reveals-vibrant-material-3-expressive-coming-soon-to-a-pixel-near-you/
Apple’s AirPlay feature enables iPhones and MacBooks to seamlessly play music or show photos and videos on other Apple devices or third-party speakers and TVs that integrate the protocol. Now newly uncovered security flaws in AirPlay mean that those same wireless connections could allow hackers to move within a network just as easily, spreading malicious code from one infected device to another. Apple products are known for regularly receiving fixes, but given how rarely some smart-home devices are patched, it’s likely that these wirelessly enabled footholds for malware, across many of the hundreds of models of AirPlay-enabled devices, will persist for years to come.
https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/04/millions-of-apple-airplay-enabled-devices-can-be-hacked-via-wi-fi/
The US Federal Trade Commission has sued ride-hailing app Uber, saying it made “false or misleading” claims about its subscription service, in the latest sign that Donald Trump’s administration is embracing an aggressive stance against Big Tech groups. “Americans are tired of getting signed up for unwanted subscriptions that seem impossible to cancel,” said FTC chair Andrew Ferguson. “Uber not only deceived consumers about their subscriptions, but also made it unreasonably difficult for customers to cancel.”
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/04/ftc-sues-uber-over-difficulty-of-canceling-subscriptions-false-claims/
On Tuesday, OpenAI announced new multimodal image-generation capabilities that are directly integrated into its GPT-4o AI language model, making it the default image generator within the ChatGPT interface. The integration, called "4o Image Generation" (which we'll call "4o IG" for short), allows the model to follow prompts more accurately (with better text rendering than DALL-E 3) and respond to chat context for image modification instructions. Some users on social media initially reported confusion since there's no UI indication of which image generator is active, but you'll know it's the new model if the generation is ultra slow and proceeds from top to bottom. The previous DALL-E model remains available through a dedicated "DALL-E GPT" interface, while API access to GPT-4o image generation is expected within weeks.
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/03/openais-new-ai-image-generator-is-potent-and-bound-to-provoke/