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Google and Lenovo Created the ‘Most Advanced Chromebook Plus Yet’

by admin June 24, 2025

Hot on the heels of Google I/O, the company’s annual developer conference, Google is rolling out updates to ChromeOS and a new flagship laptop to showcase them: the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14. Designed to help take advantage of AI software like Gemini and NotebookLM, the new Chromebook Plus has some impressive specs for a $650 laptop.

Not just dirt-cheap and simple devices for the absolute basics, there are Chromebooks among some of the best laptops currently available. I don’t doubt that when I get done testing this new Lenovo, it’ll join them.

About the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14

Lenovo’s latest Chromebook Plus looks and feels like a premium laptop, but it’ll start at only $650 when it arrives in late June. Spending an extra $100 gets you more RAM, twice the storage and a touchscreen. Google says it’s the first Chromebook Plus to run on an Arm chip and the first ever to use the MediaTek Kompanio Ultra chip. That should not only give it good AI performance but extraordinary battery life — up to 17 hours.

MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 chip (50 TOPS)
12GB ($650) or 16GB ($750) of RAM
128GB or 256GB UFS 4.0 storage
14-inch, 1,920×1,200-pixel OLED (touchscreen available)
Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
2x USB-C (5Gbps, DisplayPort 1.4 support), USB-A (5Gbps), 3.5mm combo jack
Starts at 2.6 pounds (1.2 kilograms)
5-megapixel webcam with dual mics and privacy shutter
Quad speakers with Dolby Atmos support
Fingerprint reader option

The Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 will also have two exclusive on-device AI features. Smart grouping will scan your current open tabs and documents and use AI to recommend organizing them into logical groups. For example, if you’re planning a trip or organizing an event, it’ll be able to suggest a grouping of all the relevant information you have open.

The other exclusive feature is image editing straight from the Gallery app. It’ll add advanced AI options like removing backgrounds or creating stickers.

AI updates for ChromeOS

Google also announced new features that will roll out to Chromebook Plus models starting today. The most helpful for me is the addition of select to search and text capture. Just like Circle to Search, you’ll be able to highlight a picture or text and get instant Google search results. Text capture can be used similarly to pull data into Google Workspace apps or calendars.

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The Quick Insert key, which first appeared last year on the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus, lets you easily get contextual writing help. Now, you’ll be able to highlight text and generate AI images based on that text. For example, I wrote an email about a Fourth of July barbecue, highlighted the text, and it produced a flyer for the event (packed with typos, but still).

The other big addition is that NotebookLM will come installed on every Chromebook Plus. It’s an AI tool can ingest complex materials like research papers and help simplify them. You can then ask it questions like a chatbot, but the answers only come from the information you’ve given it. It can even generate a podcast from it.

Every Chromebook Plus includes one year of Google’s AI Pro plan, which really lets you sink into Google Gemini AI, including its Veo 3 AI video generator. Just don’t get too attached, unless you’re willing to pay $240 once the first year ends.

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June 24, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Tony Gilroy Created His Own ‘Star Wars’ Endings and Aimed for ‘Legit Hope’

by admin June 17, 2025

When Tony Gilroy and his Andor star Diego Luna decided to cram half a decade’s worth of new Star Wars lore into three episodes per year leading up to the events of Rogue One, they knew the task was unbelievably ambitious. In a chat with the Wrap, Gilroy expressed the excitement everyone involved felt over their great big heist of an entry into Lucasfilm’s Star Wars lore.

“We kept waiting for it to fail, going, ‘There must be something that’s going to bite us here.’ We kept waiting for a bugaboo that never appeared,” he said. “I wrote the top and the tail of each block to set the frame for each year. And I took that into the writers’ room so nobody could tell me that it wouldn’t work. And then we filled in from there.”

Now with the Disney+ series at an end and awards season kicking in, Andor’s mission is one fans would say really paid off for the critically acclaimed show. No one really cared that it didn’t tie into shows like The Mandalorian or Ahsoka and Gilroy wasn’t forced to embed any sort of direct lines to get more viewers to those shows.

“I paid rigorous attention to the canon that I’m supposed to pay attention to. I’ve ignored the canon that I’m allowed to ignore,” he stated, but that doesn’t mean his canon if off the table for other projects: “I don’t own the IP, so they can do what they want.”

Instead Gilroy was able to say goodbye to his characters on his own terms. He told the trade that key final moments such as Dedra’s face-off with Luthen, and when Andor meets a Force healer in probably the only time the energy which courses through Star Wars was directly mentioned, didn’t all come together that meticulously. “You spend so much time constructing and tearing down in your imagination. It’s just such a constant process,” he said about how the series still surprised him as they finished the last scene.

“I wanted to be able to not feel like a sadist with what I was doing with these characters and have some hope,” he said of the moment we see Bix in the field with her and Andor’s child facing out into the future; to Gilroy, that’s the close to his time with Star Wars. “Legit hope. Not cheesy T-shirt hope, but real hope.”

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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June 17, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

How Apple Created a Custom iPhone Camera for ‘F1’

by admin June 16, 2025

You can’t mount a cinema camera on a Formula One race car. These nimble vehicles are built to precise specs, and capturing racing footage from the driver’s point of view isn’t as simple as slapping a GoPro on and calling it a day. That’s the challenge Apple faced after Joseph Kosinski and Claudio Miranda, the director and cinematographer of the upcoming F1 Apple Original, wanted to use real POV racing footage in the film.

If you’ve watched a Formula One race lately, you’ve probably seen clips that show an angle from just behind the cockpit, with the top or side of the driver’s helmet in the frame. Captured by onboard cameras embedded in the car, the resulting footage is designed for broadcast, using specific color spaces and codecs. Converting it to match the look of the rest of the F1 film would be too challenging to be feasible. Instead, Apple’s engineering team replaced the broadcast module with a camera composed of iPhone parts.

Custom Camera

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

The module looks nothing like an iPhone. It intentionally resembles the broadcast camera module, and Apple even had to match the weight so that its version wouldn’t alter a car’s specs. The inside, however, is completely different. (Apple gave us a peek during WWDC last week alongside an F1 car.)

At the heart is an iPhone camera sensor powered by an A-series chip. Apple didn’t specify the exact sensor or chipset, but these were used for a few cars in real F1 races throughout the 2023 and 2024 seasons, so there’s a chance it was the same A17 Pro and 48-megapixel primary camera in the iPhone 15 Pro. It also contained an iPhone battery and a neutral density filter over the camera to reduce the light entering the lens, giving film editors more control over exposure.

No one expects an iPhone camera to perform flawlessly at incredible speeds or extreme conditions, so the engineering team had to consider this factor. They tested the camera module to ensure it could endure extreme shock, vibrations, and heat—it supposedly surpassed the specs provided by Formula One.

Julian Chokkattu

The module ran iOS but had a custom firmware for the camera. The videos were captured in log format with Apple’s ProRes lossless video codec, delivering footage that looks flat but gives the editors much more granular control to color grade and match the visuals with the rest of the film. This custom firmware inevitably led to two new features in the iPhone 15 Pro: log encoding and support for the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) color workflow.

Since there are no radios in the module, a custom iPad app was the only way the filmmakers could make on-the-fly changes to the camera. Once connected via USB-C, they could adjust things like frame rate, exposure gain, shutter angle, and white balance. This is also where they’d hit record to start or stop recording. The footage captured with the module is sprinkled throughout the F1 film.

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June 16, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Elden Ring Nightreign players have created the ultimate cheat sheet for the weaknesses and resistances of every Nightlord

by admin June 12, 2025

Elden Ring Nightreign has been out for just under two weeks now. Usually, that’s enough time for some prevailing strategies – and clever discoveries – to emerge. Because of the way the game is structured, however, it’s not always easy to replicate your experience, which makes it a lot more difficult to pin down those things.

Case in point, the Nightlords – the game’s ultimate bosses, which the entire experience builds towards. Most players can’t fight them as often as they want to; it’s not like you can just re-enter the boss room after dying, so it’s taken everyone a while to learn a few basic things about them.

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The FromSoftware community always delivers, though, and their latest accomplishment is one most players will benefit from. About a week after the game came out, one Japanese player posted a full chart of the weaknesses and resistances of each of Nightreign’s bosses.

The same chart was later translated to English by a different Reddit user, and it’s really something to behold. The chart lists all Nightlords, the type of physical damage each boss is weak against/resistant to (Standard, Slash, Strike, Pierce), as well as the same for elemental damage (Magic, Fire, Lightning, Holy, Poison, Rot, Bleed, Frostbite, Sleep, Madness).

It’s also colour-coded, which makes it much easier to see everything at a glance. Nightreign actually lists the weaknesses of each Nightlord in game, but it only shows one element they’re weak against, and is nowhere near as detailed as that chart.

No more guessing (or arguing). | Image credit: FromSoftware, Bandai Namco Entertainment, CestLaDonut.

Looking at the chart, you can see how Rot is effective against all Nightlords. The only other broadly effective element is Sleep, though not against Augur or Equilibrious Beast. You can also see that each boss has two to four weaknesses, except for Darkrift Knight Fulghor, who only has one.

On the subject of exposing data Nightreign just doesn’t show by default, a dataminer and modder recently dug deeper into the letter grades the game assigns attributes on each character’s stats page and found that they’re mostly misleading. In the background, character stats work pretty much the same way they do in Elden Ring proper.

If you’re looking for similarly useful advice to help you tackle every challenge in FromSoftware’s latest, our Elden Ring Nightreign guide is definitely one you should keep bookmarked. We continue to update it with new discoveries each week, so check back from time to time.

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June 12, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

“Cannot wait for what is yet to come” As The Witcher 3 turns 10, CD Projekt devs share the defining memories it created and look to the future

by admin May 21, 2025

The Witcher 3 has just turned 10 years old. Yep, time flies when you’re running around The Continent slaying beasties and also saving the world from becoming a bit chilly. Naturally, a bunch of devs at CD Projekt have chosen to commemorate the anniversary be sharing their defining memories of the game’s development, as well as do a bit of looking forward.

Most of their thoughts were shared on Twitter, as a response to the studio putting out a post in recognition of it being ten years since TW3 debuted all the way back on May 18, 2015. God, I can’t even process how many hours of my life the game’s nicked since that point, and I was relatively late to the party with it – bouncing off a couple of times before things finally clicked.

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Starting off, Pawe&lstrok; Sasko – current associate game director on Cyberpunk 2077’s sequel and a quest designer on TW3, wrote as part of a thread: “I was there from the very first day, saw it develop from the first pitch, have been so lucky to impact it’s shape to some small degree, and never thought you will love it this much. Art does not exist without the audience and you all are an important part of this story.

“I want to make you proud of us and excited again,” he added, “Capture the lightning in the bottle, give you lifetime of memories, make you laugh and break down crying. So we can have another anniversary like this, one day again.”

Decade ago we have shipped The Witcher 3 — game that now only changed the course of my life, but impacted the future of the whole studio. I had such a high hopes regarding this game, but never really thought any of it is really possible. Feeling really blessed and thankful 🥺 pic.twitter.com/EE98kQNGDi

— Pawe&lstrok; Sasko (@PaweSasko) May 18, 2025

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Meanwhile, CD Projekt joint-CEO Micha&lstrok; Nowakowski recalled: “10 years ago, I remember being exhausted, anxious (to see the scores and players’ reactions), buzzing with excitement I think no one on the team had a decent sleep that night and we were all refreshing websites of media sites.

“In the year prior to that launch I spent more time on the road preaching W3 to our partners than I did at home with my family. If there ever was game changer in my professional life, I think that was it more than anything else before. Cheers to the fantastic CDPR Team and to all the fans that have been with us through all the good and bad. Cannot wait for what is yet to come.”

Those two were far from alone, with a number of devs currently working on The Witcher 4 and/or Cyberpunk 2 – including narrative director Philipp Weber, cinematic director Kajetan Kapu&sacute;ci&nacute;ski, and senior cinematic designer/coordinator Micha&lstrok; Zbrze&zacute;niak – joining in. “I still remember just watching the wind in the trees on an early version of Skellige,” Weber wrote.

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CD Projekt comms staffers Marcin Momot and Pawel Burza both wrote about firing the game up for the first time, and we even got a post from the voice of Geralt. “What a time it’s been friends…” wrote actor Doug Cockle, clearly keen to provide a line that’d sound cool in a gravelly voice ahead of featuring in a CD Projekt stream celebrating the anniversary that’s set for later today (May 19) – you can catch that stream here at 4PM BST/11AM ET.

What are your favorite Witcher 3 memories and how tough a task do you think the series’ currently under construction next entry will have following in its award-winning footsteps? Let us know below!

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May 21, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Fortnite’s AI Darth Vader hasn’t just created problems for Epic by being Jedi mind-tricked into saying bad words, it’s led SAG-AFTRA to file an unfair labour practice charge

by admin May 20, 2025

Late last week, Fortnite got a Darth Vader chatbot you can squad up with and have stilted AI-powered conversations that use James Earl Jones’ actual voice. It’s not just said a bunch of stuff it wasn’t supposed to – it’s now led the SAG-AFTRA union to file unfair labour practice charge.

If you weren’t around last week, Epic quickly had to issue a patch to the bot – which has been made with the approval of deceased Vader VA Jones’ family – not long after it was released into the wild, because players had managed to get it to say stuff it shouldn’t. You know, swears, slurs, and chatter about breasts.

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Fast forward to last night, when voice acting union SAG-AFTRA issued a statement on the AI Vader bot, challenging Epic on it being a thing and revealing that it’s filed an unfair labour practice charge with the US National Labour Relations Board.

“We celebrate the right of our members and their estates to control the use of their digital replicas and welcome the use of new technologies to allow new generations to share in the enjoyment of those legacies and renowned roles,” the union wrote, acknowledging Jones’ estate having approved the bot, “However, we must protect our right to bargain terms and conditions around uses of voice that replace the work of our members, including those who previously did the work of matching Darth Vader’s iconic rhythm and tone in video games.

“Fortnite’s signatory company, Llama Productions, chose to replace the work of human performers with A.I. technology. Unfortunately, they did so without providing any notice of their intent to do this and without bargaining with us over appropriate terms. As such, we have filed an unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB against Llama Productions.”

VG247 has reached out to Epic for comment.

So, we’ll have to see what, if anything comes of the union challenging Llama Productions over allegedly not providing it notice of its plans to use AI to create AI Vader. It’s yet another chapter in the union and many voice actors’ efforts to secure protections against the use of AI to mimic voices, which it’s been argued presents an existential threat to their profession.

After all, as the union argues here, getting another actor to deliver voice lines for Fortnite Vader that sound like Jones would have been an alternative option to using AI her. Though as I’ve said, Epic and Llama did secure the right permission from those representing the AI-emulated actor’s interests.

How do you feel about AI Vader? Let us know below.

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May 20, 2025 0 comments