Google Chrome's next update could be the final nail in the coffin for some of the best ad blockers like uBlock Origin. As per a Cybernews report, Chrome is set to finally drop support for Manifest V2 extensions, which would mean the end of support for Chrome's ad blockers. Google began the shift over to Manifest V3 last year, but the report notes the next iterations of the browser — either version 150 or 151 — will remove the older framework completely. “MV2 extensions are no longer allowed in any supported version of Chrome, and we are removing support for them and the associated functionality," Google engineer Devlin Cronin wrote in a Chromium commit confirming the change.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have shown how retired smartphones can be wired together into low-cost computing clusters. These small data centers built from devices that would otherwise become waste are taking new shape into something the team calls "phone cluster computing." The process starts with stripping down the phone to its motherboard, removing the display, battery, and cameras — partly because some components, like batteries, aren't rated for a data-center environment. What's left gets networked into clusters that run real workloads. The reason it works is that a phone most people call obsolete still has roughly half the compute of a modern server. Because of this, the UC San Diego team hopes to scale this up to a data center built from about 2,000 retired Pixel phones, giving hundreds of students and researchers low-cost, low-carbon cloud computing, with the full system expected to launch in Fall 2026.

Last week, our sister site Tom’s Hardware carried a report with comments from Lexar’s Regional Manager for Australia & New Zealand, Chris Xia. Xia was discussing the current RAM crisis and how he expects prices to double by the end of the year. It’s a terrifying prospect to say the least! But I’ve been in China visiting Lexar’s production and R&D facilities these last few days. So I thought I’d put the question directly to the CTO, Daniel Guo, and Van Baer, General Manager of North America, to see if it's a claim they agree with. The first thing Lexar was quick to do was talk about how this is a “personal view” from the company’s regional manager, rather than a business position on the situation. “Instead of reactive pricing, we’re ensuring that our products remain competitive. We have our in-house R&D, and we’re relying heavily on that to diversify our products,” Baer commented.

I currently have a seven-month-old who is remarkably clingy. There are times when I’m the only one around to watch (and hold) him, which makes typing a very awkward and clumsy affair. While I generally try to avoid using speech-to-text if I can help it, the tool is just about the only way I can stay slightly productive during certain periods of dad time. The big problem is that the words often come out in such a jumbled mess that the extended editing process needed to make it legible defeats the point. Apple hopes to fix a lot of those problems with the release of iOS 27 and the upgraded version of Apple Intelligence. The most advanced AI models Apple has feature a new and improved dictation feature that is exclusive to iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone Air. Apple claims that this new system will let you “speak naturally and trust the words will appear clearly, accurately and as intended.“ So to test this claim, I’m writing this entire article with dictation software. Part of it will be dictated on an iPhone 17 Pro Max running the first iOS 27 developer beta, but I will be comparing to a couple of alternatives. Specifically, an iPhone 17 Pro running iOS 26 and a Google Pixel 10 Pro running Android 16 with Google's speech-to-text feature.

The idea of being able to keep your personal data private feels rather laughable at the moment. It feels as though it's all being collected and monitored to try and sell you more stuff. Throwing AI into the mix, and letting it scour your devices for information, feels like ramping this process up to 11. It feels like the digital equivalent of opening up all your doors and windows when you know there are looters in your neighbourhood. Apple says that its take on AI is different, promising privacy is baked into Apple Intelligence by default. Considering how much Apple has been pushing the privacy angle for almost a decade, and the time it's taken to actually develop Siri AI, I'm inclined to believe that everything has been built with the goal of preserving user privacy. But I still don't think I'm ready to let AI have unfettered access to my phone. Is that crazy? Perhaps, but it still feels like a very intimate step that I'm not 100% comfortable actually taking.