It was only back in 2022 that Meta launched a high-end variant of its Quest VR headset line in the form of the Meta Quest Pro, though the devices life has reached an early end. The company announced in September last year that it would be stopping the sale of Quest Pro headsets once it had sold through its existing stock, and it seems weve come to hat point.On the official webpage for the Quest Pro, Meta now confirms that the device is no longer for sale, with a message on the page redirecting users to purchasing the Quest 3 for the ultimate mixed reality experience and premium comfort.The Quest Pro launched worldwide in October 2022, retailing for a price of $1,499.99. Criticism was directed not only at its high launch price, but also other factors such as the implementation of its mixed reality features and its lack of strong early software support. The devices quick death doesnt come as a huge shock, then, especially with the majority of the VR market continuing to shrink by the day.

The golden-fronted woodpecker (Melanerpes aurifrons) is a species of bird in the woodpecker family, Picidae. It is found in the southern United States, Mexico and parts of Central America. It inhabits mesic and xeric landscapes, including mesquite brushlands and riparian woodlands. It can also be found in urban parks and suburban areas. Males and females have the same plumage except for the pattern on their heads. Adult males have a red crown and a golden orange to yellow nape with a gap between them; females have a grayish crown and a paler yellow nape. The golden-fronted woodpecker has a diet of adult and larval arthropods, some aerial insects, fruit, nuts and corn, as well as occasionally eating other birds' eggs. The bird has a loud call and a short, slow drumming pattern. This male golden-fronted woodpecker was photographed perching on a branch in Copn, Honduras.Photograph credit: Charles J. SharpRecently featured: Cathedral of La LagunaHolger DrachmannMediterranean morayArchiveMore featured pictures

January 7: Christmas (Eastern Christianity; Julian calendar); Victory over Genocide Day in Cambodia; Laba Festival in China (2025)CQD in Morse code1797 The Italian tricolour was first adopted as an official flag by the government of the Cispadane Republic.1904 The Marconi International Marine Communication Company specified CQD (audio featured) as the distress signal to be used by its operators.1939 French physicist Marguerite Perey identified francium, the last element to be discovered in nature rather than by synthesis.1979 The People's Army of Vietnam captured Phnom Penh, marking the end of large-scale fighting in the CambodianVietnamese War.2020 After 253 days without an operational government, a second round of investiture votes produced Spain's first coalition government since the Second Republic.Francis Poulenc (b.1899)Melly Goeslaw (b.1974)Richard Hamming (d.1998)Run Run Shaw (d.2014)More anniversaries: January 6January 7January 8ArchiveBy emailList of days of the yearAbout

Google's groundbreaking white paper reveals how AI agents leverage advanced reasoning, real-time data access, and autonomous decision-making to revolutionize enterprise operations and competitive advantage.Read More

The show floor of the biggest tech event of the year hasnt even opened yet, but CES 2025 has already delivered a long list of new gadgets, tech, concepts, and AI-powered devices tempting you to upgrade. Its a lot to keep up with, so well help you catch up. Below are some of the standout gadgets of the show so far. Of course, theres still a lot more out there and a lot more to go. You can catch up on all of The Verges coverage of the show here.Roborock Saros Z70 Photo by Owen Grove / The VergeThe ability for most robovacs to thoroughly clean a floor can be stymied by random objects left lying on the ground. Roborocks new Saros Z70s solution to that problem is an articulated five-axis robot arm called the OmniGrip that can pick up after its owners and move obstacles out of its way. Its limited to smaller items like socks, tissues, or anything weighing less than 300 grams, but the company plans to eventually expand what it can grasp. Pricing isnt known, but Roborock says the Saros Z70 will be available by June 2025.Samsung The Frame Pro TV Photo by Chris Welch / The VergeSamsungs The Frame TV appealed to many consumers with an aesthetically pleasing design and the ability to camouflage itself as a piece of art in a homes decor. The Frame Pro further expands the TVs appeal to more discerning TV viewers with a variation on Mini LED display technology, the matte finish introduced in 2022, and a wireless connection to its breakout box so all you need to hide is a power cord.Halliday smart glasses Image: HallidayWith the success of the Meta Ray-Bans, its no surprise that several companies are debuting smart glasses at CES 2025. Hallidays new enhanced specs, which are expected to ship by the end of Q1 2025 and cost between $399 and $499, are differentiated with the addition of a small screen on the frame. The DigiWindow appears as a 3.5-inch private display in the upper-right corner of your vision and is controlled using voice commands, an interface on the frame, or a smart ring with an integrated trackpad.Dell 32 Plus 4K QD-OLED monitor Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The VergeDells new 32-inch 4K OLED display uses an infrared sensor and five speakers located below the screen to track your head and beam sound directly to your ears. The feature eliminates the need to keep your head positioned in a sweet spot for optimal sound, and could be ideal for gamers who are constantly moving around in the heat of battle. The monitor also features a 120Hz refresh rate, a 0.03ms response time, and will launch in the US on May 22nd, 2025 for $799.99.Wonder plant and insect cameraBird Buddy is moving on to smaller flying creatures of the outdoors. The company behind the stylish smart bird feeders is introducing a playfully designed camera for tracking your plants and the insect visitors that stop by them. Youll be able to view a livestream from your phone, while an optional solar panel can keep the 4K camera running. Its supposed to launch on Kickstarter this spring.Mirumi Image: Yukai EngineeringMirumi is a robot that you might actually want to own. Its a furry, bashful companion bot that clings to a bag and looks adorable. It doesnt have AI tricks and doesnt even make noise. Like my colleague Owen Grove said in a video: Its just a cute fuzzy thing. What more do you want? It will be available through a crowdfunding campaign thats set to launch in mid-2025.Acer Nitro Blaze 11 Image: AcerHow big is too big for a handheld gaming machine? The answer might be Acers new Nitro Blaze 11 featuring a beefy 10.95-inch 144 Hz WQXGA touch display that makes it look like youre holding a small monitor instead of a portable console. Its powered by anAMD Ryzen 8040HS processor, 16GB of RAM, and has detachable controllers with Hall effect joysticks. Its also got a built-in kickstand so you dont have to strain your arms by always playing it handheld. It will be available starting in Q2 2025 and start at $1,099.99.Belkin Stage PowerGrip Image: BelkinYour smartphone may take great pictures, but it lacks the refined ergonomics of a traditional camera. Belkins new Stage PowerGrip addresses that issue, and battery anxiety. Its a MagSafe power bank with a 10,000mAh battery, a retractable USB-C cable, and a design that adds a camera-like grip to the iPhone. Its even got a phsyical shutter button that works with the iOS camera app over Bluetooth, and a small LCD screen on the front showing the batterys remaining charge. Pricing and availability havent been announced, but the PowerGrip will come in several color options.

The BBC reports Apple will change how iPhones and other devices display Apple Intelligence-summarized notifications to make it clearer to users when its AI tech has adjusted the words. Not long after the still-in-beta feature launched in the UK in December, the news organization complained about how it rewrote a headline about the UnitedHealthcare shooting suspect, incorrectly suggesting that the BBC reported Luigi Mangione shot himself. Since then, according to the BBC, Apples summaries had incorrectly rewritten notifications from its app to name a PDC World Darts Championship winner before the event even started and falsely claiming that Rafael Nadal revealed himself as gay. These AI summarisations by Apple do not reflect and in some cases completely contradict the original BBC content, writes the outlet.The BBC reports that Apple said in a statement, A software update in the coming weeks will further clarify when the text being displayed is summarization provided by Apple Intelligence.Apple Intelligence has had its funny moments, but there have also been some shocking failures, like summarizing a text message saying that hike almost killed me as attempted suicide.Apple told the BBC that receiving summaries is optional. If you want to exercise that option, you can disable the feature or alter what apps use it by going to Settings > Notifications > Summarize Notifications.

Samsungs next Unpacked event sets a date to reveal the Galaxy S25Samsungs next Unpacked event sets a date to reveal the Galaxy S25 / We expect to find out more about Samsungs new flagship phones and features starting at 1PM ET on January 22nd.By Wes Davis, a weekend editor who covers the latest in tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and more as a tech journalist since 2020. Jan 6, 2025, 11:00 PM UTCShare this story Image: SamsungSamsung has announced that it will hold its next Galaxy Unpacked event at 10AM PT / 1PM ET on January 22nd in San Jose, California. Samsung will stream the event on YouTube, its website, and its newsroom page. According to its invitation, the company is preparing to introduce its next Galaxy S devices, along with new Galaxy AI features.Rumors have suggested Samsungs next phones will include a redesigned Galaxy S25 Ultra with more rounded corners, bringing it visually more in line with its lower-tier phones while still keeping marquee features like the Galaxy S Pen. There are also rumors that a Galaxy Slim phone is in the works, though thats not expected until later in the year.Finally, the rumor mill suggests that Samsung is adding Qi2 wireless charging to the Galaxy S25 line but wouldnt put magnets in the phones, relying on magnetic cases instead. Earlier Monday, the Wireless Power Consortium quoted Samsung saying its supporting Qi 2 with new Galaxy devices this year while introducing Qi2 Ready, a special certification for phonesneeding a magnetic caseto fully support the standard. If you know youre going to upgrade to some flavor of Galaxy S25 phone, the company is offering $50 credits if you reserve a spot in line to preorder it.Most PopularMost Popular

When it comes to AI tools, chatbots are often the first thing that comes to mind conversation-based interfaces for users to write queries and receive responses. These dialogue interfaces are certainly useful, but they arent always the best fit for handling our everyday work. Often tacked on to the side of our workflows, chatbots supplement our processes, but often add quite a bit of friction as well.The next wave of AI tools is now immersing autonomous actions into our daily work. Today, were excited to introduce you to Height.app, an autonomous project management tool that takes work off your plate instead of adding to it. Height uses real-time context from your teams interactions and workspace data to handle tedious tasks on your behalf, like triaging bugs, updating specs, cleaning up your backlog, and more.Height has a suite of LLM-based features for all the time consuming project management scripts we handle on day-to-day basis. Lets walk through a few below:1. Real-time edits to product documentationAs youre building a feature, product documentation rarely ever stays the same. New ideas emerge, blockers arise, and scope is inevitably redefined. Accounting for each of those spec changes is remarkably tedious, especially in fast-moving projects. Height looks at these situations granularly, treating each message, whether an idea or blocker, as an event, and those events as contextual information for how an LLM should take action.By analyzing your teams project conversations as they unfold inside the app, Height is able to discern when your team raises questions and decisions are made. Then, it maps those identified outcomes back to your product documentation, adding necessary context and updates without you having to lift a finger.2. Autonomous backlog groomingStaying on top of a backlog feels like a never-ending chore. Tickets are often created without anyone else knowing, and rarely are the appropriate tags applied with consistency. But inside of every filed ticket is contextual data, like name, description, and chat messages, all of which an LLM can use to infer the feature being referenced inside the ticket and what completing it may entail.Height recognizes when tickets are added to the backlog, and then uses the contextual data of each ticket to apply appropriate tags on your behalf. From feature tags to time estimates, and even impact type, Height proactively keeps your backlog organized so its easy for you to find the improvements and requests worth pursuing next.3. Live project updatesWhether youre building a new feature or updating your website, tracking completed tasks and open questions requires overwhelming mental effort. But for large and collaborative initiatives, its especially important to keep everyone aligned on whats progressing and whats blocked. Conveniently, most of the project information you need to track status changes, discussions between teammates, and blocked tasks is contextual data that LLMs can parse through and make sense of in an instant.Height processes all of this project data to create a cadenced regular report of how the project is progressing and whats left to work on. Instead of manually sifting through activity to write your own updates, Height provides a detailed summary of whats happened, the tasks in progress, and whats left to accomplish (as well as any flagged blockers).Heights core philosophy is that AI should reduce friction, rather than add layers of complexity. With an intentional approach to making project data accessible to LLMs, Height is moving beyond traditional chatbot implementations, focusing instead on realtime context processing to drive intelligent automation. The result is a tool that handles all of the frustrating pain points of managing projects, so you can focus on building.How to get started with Height 2.0Getting started with Height is easy.Go to Height.app.Tap the sign-up button and create a workspace for your team.Follow along with the interactive onboarding to get started easily.Thanks toHeight Teamfor the thought leadership/ Educational article. Asif RazzaqAsif Razzaq is the CEO of Marktechpost Media Inc.. As a visionary entrepreneur and engineer, Asif is committed to harnessing the potential of Artificial Intelligence for social good. His most recent endeavor is the launch of an Artificial Intelligence Media Platform, Marktechpost, which stands out for its in-depth coverage of machine learning and deep learning news that is both technically sound and easily understandable by a wide audience. The platform boasts of over 2 million monthly views, illustrating its popularity among audiences. [ FREE AI Webinar] Join this webinar to gain actionable insights into boosting LLM model performance and accuracy while safeguarding data privacy. (Promoted)

CES 2025 is an event that's always filled to the brim with exciting new products that'll be coming out for the next year, but Samsung is upping the ante by announcing a 3D gaming monitor. The Samsung Odyssey 3D G90XF is a 27" gaming monitor that uses a lens built into the chassis, along with an AI algorithm to deliver a 3D gaming experience without the need for 3D glasses. The best part? You don't need 3D content to experience it, as the algorithm can convert some 2D content into 3D. Only time will tell if Samsung is able to pull it off. I haven't had the time to make it over to the Samsung booth, but I'll be sure to update this story if I'm able to scope it out. Samsung Odyssey 3D This 3D monitor is just a part of a wide variety of gaming monitors Samsung is launching at the Las Vegas tech show. The tech giant also launched a new version of the Samsung M9 Smart Monitor, which will also use AI. This time, the AI is being used to scan the content you're watching and adjust the picture settings to make whatever content you're consuming look as good as it can be. Of course, there are a couple of more traditional gaming monitors, too. Both the Samsung Odyssey G8 and G6 are getting a refresh, both of which are fairly standard 27" gaming monitors. Both of these monitors are way faster than before, with the Odyssey G8 sporting a 240Hz refresh rate with a 4K resolution, and the G6 clocking that all the way up to 500Hz at 1440p. Both of these resolution and refresh rate combos will require a behemoth of a graphics card, likely an RTX 4090 or something even more powerful.Samsung hasn't announced the release dates or prices for any of these gaming monitors. However, with how advanced the Odyssey 3DG90XF seems, you can expect it to be expensive. Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

AMD has revealed the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D at CES 2025, two top-end gaming processors featuring Team Red's 3D V-Cache technology. These processors follow the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D that launched back in November 2024, but with more cores, more cache, and a higher clock rate. The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D is a 16-core, 32-thread monster of a processor with 144MB of cache, which should make it one hell of a gaming chip. AMD claims that these new processors boast up to 64% better gaming performance than the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, and up to 54% faster than the last-generation AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D. This is likely due to 3D V-Cache tech, which allows AMD to print its cache in a layer below the actual CPU cores, lowering latency dramatically, and giving it room for more cache than would otherwise be possible. I'll have to wait to get these processors in the lab to see how well they actually perform, but given how fast the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is, it's safe to say that these are going to be a perfect fit for a high-end gaming PC. The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D will be available sometime in the next few months, though AMD has not shared pricing information quite yet. AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D SpecsCPU Cores16Threads32Max Boost5.7GHzCache144MBTDP170WAMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D SpecsCPU Cores12Threads24Max Boost5.5GHzCache140MBTDP120W3D V-Cache?Cache is incredibly important for gaming performance. Your CPU stores the data it needs to access most quickly in the cache, and with how big modern PC games are, you can never have too much fast memory. The only problem is, because it's located on the CPU itself, there isn't room for gigabytes of capacity. Instead, you'll typically see modern CPUs with a few megabytes of cache available. The 3D V-Cache on these X3D processors allows AMD to offer nearly double the cache of the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K. This extra cache capacity can directly lead to better gaming performance, as there is less data that needs to be offloaded to system memory, or RAM which is significantly slower. Just like the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the 9950X3D and 9900X3D also offer improvements over their previous-generation counterparts. This is mostly due to where the cache is located on the processor. With this generation, AMD moved the cache to a layer beneath the CPU cores, rather than above them. This means the CPU cores, which typically get much hotter under load, are directly under the metal lid of the processor, which means more direct contact with your CPU cooler. This leads to lower CPU temperatures, which ends up meaning better performance through Boost. Keep in mind that I need to test these processors before I can actually recommend them, but they do look like they're going to be some of the best gaming chips on the market, especially if they're priced appropriately. Of course, AMD hasn't shared pricing information, so we have no idea if these processors are actually going to be a good value for the money yet. Only time will tell.Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra