ANPR cameras would charge fees for using busy roads during peak times. Read...

Sometimes AI just feels overwhelming, like it’s another thing to manage. Google, however, is announcing a couple of features within Gmail that will use AI to actually simplify your life. At PCWorld, we’ve written numerous articles on ways to clean out your Gmail inbox. There’s nothing worse than seeing a notification that your cloud storage is out of space, and trying to decide whether to take the time to clean it out (and risk losing something!) or pay more for additional space. And cleaning it out is no fun at all, either. What email should stay? What should go? Trying to decide what’s important or not is a headache, but then trying to navigate through the Gmail interface is a pain. That’s why I’m honestly excited that Google plans to apply Gemini to the job. In a blog post by Yulie Kwon Kim, vice-president of product at Google Workspace, Google said at its Google I/O conference that Gemini is being added to Gmail to help clean up your inbox. “Simply tell Gemini what you want to do (e.g., ‘Delete all of my unread emails from the Groomed Paw from last year’) and watch as it helps you manage and declutter your inbox with a single click.” I don’t think it will be as easy as all that; you’ll still have to decide what stays and what goes. But Google uses a good example here, and you can simply apply tips from our previous stories about looking for and deleting emails with large attachments, and so on. Gemini should work on your Android phone (you do have an Android phone, right?) and Gmail, so that you can probably clean up your inbox while chilling out on the couch. Gmail’s also expanding its predictive capabilities, adding personalized smart replies that use your tone, phrasing, and knowledge of your inbox. Google’s demonstration of the technology offered responses of several sentences, which is always a bit risky. You’ll want to monitor these. On the other hand, Google is also trying to make it easier to coordinate your schedule, offering suggestions for open times and sharing a booking page, if you have one. (Honestly, that’s a lot of why we exchange emails these days, it seems.) All of these features will be available next quarter — sometime in the fall, in other words. It’s one of the few times I can say that I honestly can’t wait. Read...

Let’s say you end the month with an extra $250 in your pocket. What do you do with it? You might spend it on a nice dinner out, perhaps with friends. A day trip. A spa treatment. Or maybe… AI? Google’s AI Ultra subscription—a recurring charge, mind you—is the newest way to flaunt your wealth. Announced at Google I/O today, Google says you can have all the best of what Google has on offer, from AI to storage, for “only” $249.99 per month. Google is also renaming its current $19.99-per-month AI Premium plan to “AI Pro” and adding additional features, like access to Flow. “[The AI Ultra plan is] for people who want to be on the absolute cutting edge of AI, from Google,” said Josh Woodward, the vice president of Google Labs and Gemini. Although it’s only available to customers in the United States as of today, Google promises that it will be available to a total of 70 countries soon. Here’s what the AI subscription buys you: Gemini: The AI Ultra subscription will deliver the best of the Gemini app, with the “highest” usage limits for Deep Research, Veo 2 text-to-video access, and early access to Veo 3, which adds audio generation that’s synced with the video. You’ll also get access to the “Deep Think” option within Gemini 2.5 Pro. Gemini is also integrated into Gmail, Docs, Vids, and more. Flow: Google is launching a new AI filmmaking tool that combines Veo, Imagen image generation, and Gemini. It’s designed for creating AI films, with editing capabilities built right in. Whisk: Another experimental technology, Whisk allows for quick image generation but also remixing. NotebookLM: Google is promising that you’ll again receive the highest usage limits and the most advanced models to use in your projects. Gemini in Chrome: Chrome is integrating Gemini and allowing it to use the context of the current page for queries. Project Mariner: Google’s agentic AI, which can be used to manage up to 10 tasks from a common dashboard. Google Drive: A massive 30TB of cloud storage. YouTube Premium Unfortunately, the sky-high price doesn’t come with a new Pixel phone. Read...

Wouldn’t you want to know how a dress or shirt will look on you before you buy it? (Yes, we do have stores for that.) But in the age of online shopping, Google is suggesting an AI-powered alternative. In 2023, Google launched a feature that would let you see how an outfit looks on a series of pre-selected models. Now, Google is rolling out the same technique at its Google I/O developer conference… just on you. It’s like an AI-powered fitting room to try on clothes. All you’ll need to do is have someone take a full-body photo (clothed, of course) against a neutral background, then upload it to Google. Google’s AI will then analyze the clothing, compare it to you, and voila! You’ve tried it on. If you’re anything like my wife, that description sparked a twenty-minute monologue describing how women’s bodies vary and how women of an “identical” size vary in hips, bust, and so on. Google claims that this has been thoroughly considered; however, according to Vidya Srinivasan, who leads ads and commerce at Google. Google “We spent a lot of time working with a custom image generation model that is particularly tailored for fashion, and it has a very deep understanding of 3D shapes,” Srinivasan told reporters in a Google I/O briefing. “It also has a very deep understanding of fabrics, just how fabrics will fold and stretch and drape on a wide range of bodies. So now, once you have an image of this, you probably want to try this on multiple different dresses. So you have a save feature right there, and then you can also share it with friends, because a lot of times you want another opinion about what actually looks good.” Google is combining this new “try it on” feature with some of its existing search magic, like trying to find a rug using Google’s AI Mode that will work in a particular room. Google is also sending out its search agents, via agentic search, to find the cheapest price over time. These agents will do everything but buy it for you; you’ll need to click “buy” to make it yours. Google is rolling out the virtual try-on technology as part of its Search Labs, beginning today. Google Read...

Whether you embrace it or not, AI is shaping the future of Google Search. Google is bringing AI Mode to Google Search for every U.S. user, beginning today. Google launched AI Overviews a year ago, which aims to answer your question before showing the traditional list of links. AI Mode is the next step: from what Google has shown, the list of links will disappear entirely, replaced by tiny link icons that link back to the information Google is slurping up. Google’s Liz Reid, a Google vice president and head of Google Search, said that AI Overviews totals 1.5 billion users and will be expanded to over 200 countries. At the beginning of May, Google migrated AI Mode out of its Labs environment into a small subset of users in the real world and has apparently replaced the “I’m feeling lucky” button with an AI search button as well. It’s not clear whether AI Mode will be the default search for all U.S. users, or whether Google will allow users to express a preference or preserve the choices they’ve made before. Traditional search doesn’t look like it will go away, but it will be relegated to a different tab, in much the same way a search for “Images” requires you to shift to another search tab within Google. Reid said that it’s bringing AI Mode to AI overviews, too. “We use what we call a query fan-out technique,” Reid said, in describing how AI Mode works. “And this basically takes your question and it breaks it up into different subtopics, and then we search on each of those different search topics that allows us to go way deeper in the web and find that really hyper-relevant, incredibly specific content that might be great with you.” This what Google’s AI Mode has looked like within Google Labs.Foundry Google said that it’s upgrading the version of Gemini that powers its AI Mode to a more advanced version and bringing the technology to mobile, too. “Deep Search” will be more like the “Deep Research” mode in Gemini, where, behind the scenes, Gemini will issue dozens of separate searches and then aggregate the results. Google’s AI Mode may even generate custom graphs to present information from search and finance questions, Reid said. Agentic search is coming to AI Mode, too. What Google has previously known as “Project Mariner” can be used to research the cheapest seats for a specific game. AI Mode will then start digging through various shopping sites and point you to the cheapest seats. Finally, the Project Astra technology Google showed off last year is being added to Gemini Live so that it can “see” through your smartphone’s camera and then talk through any problems you might have. You can also add data from Gmail, Google Drive, etc. to affect your searches. “We’re going to be pulling all of that in,” Reid said. “You’re going to always be in control. So it’s your choice to opt in to doing this in the first place, but you can connect and disconnect it at any time going forward.” Bad news for tech publishers It’s impossible to entirely disconnect what Google is doing or how it will affect major media — meaning that it’s difficult to remain entirely objective. Put simply, Google’s AI overviews and AI Mode pass off third-party news, opinions, roundups, and data as (almost) Google’s own, links or not. Major publishers are beginning to sound alarm bells, and even Google itself is worried about losing money from Google Search ads. Will users click through to the sites where an AI Mode summary originates? Search data says no, though Google disagrees. Google’s AI Overviews in action. Links are either presented as tiny icons or buried at the very bottom of the summary.Google “What we’ve seen with AI overviews is that pages with AI overviews get higher quality clicks to websites,” Reid said. “And you might ask, what does that really mean? And what it means is people spend more time on those websites. They’re not going to those sites and immediately figuring out it’s not what they want and bouncing back. They’re really digging in to the content there, and that’s our goal with AI Mode as well.” Google seems like it’s being pressured by Wall Street, who seem to be wondering if Google will fall behind Anthropic and OpenAI, both of which use AI to replace traditional search results. Microsoft, too, has an AI-powered replacement for Bing Search waiting in the wings called Copilot Search. But Google remains the Web’s top search engine, and it apparently aims to stay that way. “The way you can think about that is AI mode is not just this AI-powered experience end to end, but it also is a glimpse of what’s to come in search overall,” Reid said. Great. Read...

A congestion charging scheme could let police and spy agencies access the footage recorded by automated number plate recognition, critics warn. Read...

Yesterday, Microsoft released an important out-of-band update for Windows 10, identified as update KB5061768. An out-of-band update is one that’s released outside the usual update schedule, which is typically done to address urgent security issues that can’t wait. This critical repair update is only available for download via the Microsoft Update Catalog, and it’s intended for PCs running Windows 10 (versions 1903 and later) and Windows 10 LTSB, for both x86 and x64 systems. The download size varies between 415 MB and 711 MB. Who needs the KB5061768 update? Only Windows 10 users who are affected by the known BitLocker issue and/or blue screen crashes (which started with May’s big Windows 10 patch) should download and install update KB5061768. To recap, affected Windows 10 PCs fail to start because they erroneously require your BitLocker recovery key to be entered. Furthermore, affected PCs that can log in encounter blue screen crashes. According to Microsoft, only Windows 10 PCs with activated Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) on 10th-generation Intel vPro processors or higher should be affected. Microsoft writes the following about this update: “Fixed: A known issue on devices with Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) enabled on 10th-generation or later Intel vPro processors. On these systems, installing the May 13, 2025, Windows security update (KB5058379) might cause the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) process to terminate unexpectedly, triggering an Automatic Repair prompting for the BitLocker recovery key to continue.” How to apply the update if your PC is affected and can’t log in If you can’t install update KB5061768 on your affected Windows 10 PC because it no longer starts properly, Microsoft advises that you switch off Intel VT for Direct I/O (VTD or VTX) and Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) in the BIOS/UEFI. After doing that, Windows 10 should start again and you can apply the patch after entering your BitLocker recovery key. After restarting your computer, you can re-enable Intel VT for Direct I/O (VTD or VTX) and TXT in the BIOS/UEFI. Further reading: How to save your Windows 10 PC after end-of-support Read...

Ventiva’s fanless PC cooling technology is evolving from a curiosity to what appears to be a genuine game-changer: not only is it demonstrating 45W cooling capabilities with two partners, but Ventiva is also claiming that its ICE9 system can cool up to 100 watts of thermal energy as well. Dell — the partner with which Ventiva originally worked with — is one of the companies interested in the 45W cooling solution. The other is Compal, a “white box” contract manufacturer that builds PCs for any number of vendors who then claim them as their own. Ventiva surfaced late last year, and we sat down with company executives at CES 2025. Rivals like Frore or xMEMS use a vibrating membrane to replicate the actions of a fan, moving cool air over heated elements within a PC and then outside the system. Ventiva essentially ionizes the air, which is pushed away from a charged wire and creates airflow. The amount of air moved, and how much cooling is applied, depends on a few factors: the size of the cooling component (which Ventiva calls an ICE), how much charge is applied, and how many ICE devices are working together. At CES 2025, however, Ventiva was talking about moving just 25 watts’ worth of thermal energy, enough for the 15W of an Intel Core Ultra “Meteor Lake”-U chip, for example., but not quite enough for the 28W “Arrow Lake” chips or the rival Ryzen AI 300 processors, whose TDPs are also about 28W. By pushing up to 40W, Ventiva’s partnerships with Compal and Dell would allow both companies to design laptop reference designs that could accommodate a wider variety of PC processors, including while they were running in excess of their rated TDP in turbo mode. The ICE technology is less than 12mm high, allowing thinner laptops to be made. Ventiva is also looking at the future. The company is demonstrating a 100W test laptop at Computex 2025 this week, which it will presumably use to strike even more partnerships. “AI-driven laptops are transforming the way we work, create, and play, but their increasing thermal output requires a new level of device heat management,” said Carl Schlachte, chairman, president and chief executive of Ventiva, in a statement. “This is our highest-performing thermal management system to date, enabling laptop OEMs and ODMs to push power to the limit, and stay totally cool, under any workload, from 3D design to AI development to immersive game playing.”  While 100 watts of cooling is well below what gaming laptops can consume under full load, there’s certainly a chance that a midrange laptop might be able to use Ventiva’s solution for some sort of gaming application. And boy, wouldn’t a silent gaming laptop — without the need to dunk it in a vat of coolant — be a thing of beauty? Read...

You likely already know EZVIZ for its innovative smart home security solutions. It has become one of the leading brands in the space, offering quality solutions to suit every home. However, you might not have heard about its sustainability efforts. The brand is committed to making its products as green as possible, both in the immediate term and in the future. What is EZVIZ doing to improve sustainability? EZVIZ has a long-term initiative dedicated to sustainability called EZVIZ Green. It’s a two-pronged approach that includes both product design and collaborative campaigns to further offset emissions. Starting with the products themselves, EZVIZ incorporates a number of eco-friendly measures that are both convenient for users and help to reduce the impact on the environment. For instance, EZVIZ has reduced plastic usage throughout the entire product cycle, from the packaging materials to the products themselves. Many EZVIZ cameras are compatible with solar panels to reduce the reliance on conventional power sources, and you can even take things a step further, opting to power your entire smart home with solar energy. The products also use highly efficient components to reduce power consumption, and are designed to be durable and updatable. EZVIZ pushes over-the-air updates to all of its products. So even if they’ve been on the market for a while, products continue to receive the latest features and security updates. Effectively, it means customers can keep using the same cameras for longer, both saving them money and reducing e-waste. EZVIZ In addition, EZVIZ has a partnership with an organisation called Treedom. Funded by the sales of EZVIZ Green products, they grow an average of two trees per day as part of a global forest plan. The trees are carefully selected by working with local experts and farmers to bring as many benefits as possible to the local ecosystem, and the progress is tracked online, so you can watch the impact of the campaign in real time. EZVIZ encourages customers to participate in its sustainability efforts by promoting its #GreenerWithEZVIZ campaign. When choosing an EZVIZ green-labelled product, customers are invited to join the tree-planting efforts to make a real impact across the globe. How can battery-powered cameras be better for the environment? The EZVIZ Green initiative starts with product design, and battery-powered EZVIZ cameras are a key part of this plan. EZVIZ battery cameras incorporate a technology called AOV (Always-On Video) which uses battery power more intelligently. It allows the camera to record 24/7 while reducing energy waste and extending battery life. It’s both better for the environment and also makes the products more convenient for the user. EZVIZ incorporates plenty of other eco-friendly technologies to further its sustainable goals, too. For instance, ColorFULL tech allows for high-quality color night vision, without disturbing the local environment with additional light pollution. In addition, the energy-efficient components used in EZVIZ products help to cut down on power usage. The batteries are designed to last as long as possible. Not only in terms of endurance, wherein they don’t need to be charged as frequently, but also in terms of lifecycle. When buying an EZVIZ product, you can rest assured that it’s designed to keep working in the long term. Frequent OTA updates also keep EZVIZ battery cameras feeling fresh, with all the latest features, so users can go for longer without needing to upgrade to a newer model. It’s easier on the wallet, it’s less hassle, and it’s better for the environment. As mentioned earlier, many EZVIZ cameras are compatible with solar panels, which means they can be charged using the power of the sun, rather than charging from the mains, which can contribute to carbon emissions. If you’re interested in picking up an eco-friendly EZVIZ smart camera, here are a few that we’d recommend checking out: EZVIZ CB8 Lite Outdoor PT Battery Camera EZVIZ The CB8 Lite is the perfect solution for users who want a budget-friendly camera that doesn’t sacrifice features. It has pan and tilt functionality, all-day AOV recording and color night vision. Of course, it’s also compatible with solar panels, so you can achieve your security goals and your sustainability goals in one go. Learn more about the EZVIZ CB8 Lite. EZVIZ CB5 Battery Camera EZVIZ The EZVIZ CB5 has a built-in solar panel, so it’s one of the easiest ways to get started with a green approach to home security. It also has an incredibly clear 4K resolution, making it one of the highest-resolution security cameras on the market. Combine that with AOV technology, which can record all day without sacrificing so much battery life, and you’ve got a very tempting camera. Learn more about the EZVIZ CB5. EZVIZ CB90x Dual 4G Battery Camera with Solar Panel Kit EZVIZ The CB90x Dual is an ingenious solution that incorporates dual pan-and-tilt cameras to cover a massive area using a single product. It also boasts 4G wireless connectivity, so you can install it anywhere, and you won’t need to worry about wires or Wi-Fi range. It’s the first camera of its kind to offer seamless switching between Wi-Fi and 4G connectivity, ensuring reliable video capture in all conditions. What’s more, ColorFULL tech means that it can see in the dark without creating any light pollution. The EZVIZ CB90x Dual 4G Kit will debut in June 2025. Stay tuned for more details on this amazing all-rounder. Read...

TL;DR: Take some things off your plate for good with a lifetime subscription to the Swatle All-in-One AI Assistant, now just $59.99 (reg. $240). Looking for a way AI can make your life easier? Swatle is an AI-powered productivity partner that serves as your own project assistant, helping you get more things done with fewer resources. And right now, you can secure a premium lifetime subscription for just $59.99 (reg. $240). Could you use an extra pair of hands at work? Swatle helps manage projects, automate repetitive tasks, or organize your team’s workflow. It adapts to your individual needs, helping you streamline your operations and eliminate your inefficiencies so you can work smarter and faster. Swatle’s AI project assistant provides step-by-step guidance, actionable updates, and even gives you time estimates on tasks so you can plan your day efficiently. It also helps you work with your team, streamlining communication and file sharing through a Swatle chat. There’s also a Swatle Taskdesk that can assist with non-technical projects like content creation and event planning, while the Swatle Devboard handles technical ones. Though Swatle employs cutting-edge AI technology, the interface is easy to use and requires no technical expertise. Get some help at work and beyond with a lifetime subscription to the Swatle All-in-One AI Assistant, now just $59.99 (reg. $240). StackSocial prices subject to change. Swatle All-in-One AI Assistant for Projects, Tasks & Teams: Premium Lifetime SubscriptionSee Deal Read...