Roku is raising the prices for its streaming sticks and boxes by up to 60 percent.

Roku has updated its website with the new prices. Currently, it is still selling its streaming players at their old MSRPs but lists those prices as sale prices. The new prices are:

• Roku Streaming Stick: $40 (formerly $30)
• Roku Streaming Stick Plus: $60 (formerly $40)
• Roku Streaming Stick 4K: $80 (formerly $50)
• Roku Ultra: $150 (formerly $100)
• Roku Streambar SE: $150 (formerly $100)

Roku is even upping the price for a bundle that includes a Streaming Stick Plus and a one-month subscription to Fox One. As recently as July 20, Roku listed the bundle at $60 with a sale price of $25, according to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Now, the bundle carries an $80 MSRP and $45 sale price.

Read full article

Comments

© Roku

Robots slithered like snakes into the rubble of collapsed buildings to search for trapped survivors in the aftermath of Venezuela’s double earthquake disaster.

The so-called snake robots represented a unique technological aid for international search and rescue efforts following two earthquakes that struck Venezuela on June 24, killing more than 5,000 people and leaving behind 16,740 injured. Rescuers from around the world used trained dogs, seismic and acoustic listening devices, video cameras on sticks, or thermal imaging cameras to search for signs of survivors—but the snakebots equipped with a video camera could squeeze through tight spaces to search deep within fallen building debris.

“The reason why snake robots are useful is they can get into tightly packed volumes that machinery and people otherwise cannot, and that's important in search and rescue because we were able to extend the visual reach of the rescue workers in a safe way,” Howie Choset, head of the Biorobotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, told Ars. “In a sense, you're doing minimally invasive surgery on a structure with a snake robot.”

Read full article

Comments

© Carnegie Mellon University

LG is reportedly pulling a McAfee pop-up ad from a controversial app that some of its monitors have stealthily installed on connected computers.

An example of the pop-up ad is seen in a still from Gamers Nexus' video. Credit: Gamers Nexus/Windows/YouTube

The app, LG Monitor App Installer, installs itself through a Windows Update alongside monitor driver updates. LG Monitor App Installer then pushes ads for a 30-day free trial for McAfee, as well as other software, via a pop-up on affected systems, multiple users have reported.

This has drawn negative attention recently, with complaints surfacing on Reddit and a subsequent video from YouTube channel Gamers Nexus. In the video, editor-in-chief Steve Burke said that the publication paid $1,200 for an LG UltraGear 3GX900A-B gaming monitor (the monitor’s price dropped to $600 two days later, Burke said) for testing and replicated the behavior “several times” across “multiple” Windows 11 systems.

Read full article

Comments

© LG

Getting locked out of an account is no fun. Google has a few ways to help you regain access if you happen to forget your password or lose an authenticator, including recovery contacts and backup codes. Now, Google has a completely new option: your face. You can now give Google a video record of your face and sign into your account with a selfie, which sounds like something people are going to just love.

You will have to set this feature up ahead of time if you want the option of regaining account access with a selfie later on. To get started, verify your account type is supported. You won't be able to configure selfie sign-ins for Workspace accounts, child accounts, or any account enrolled in Google's Advanced Protection Program.

Configuring selfie sign-in requires you to record a video, which Google will store on its servers. Google's selfie sign-in landing page includes the typical disclaimers about privacy and data access, promising that the company will keep the video encrypted and won't use it for any other purposes unless you opt in.

Read full article

Comments

© Google

I wanted a clock that, annoyingly, didn't seem to exist.

Since childhood, my bedside clocks have been a series of red, seven-segment LED clock-radio specials from Walmart or Target. They are invariably cheap, simple, and long-lived—but they require manual intervention at the start and end of Daylight Saving Time and whenever the power flickers. After a recent power flicker, as I found myself standing by the sideboard holding down "TIME" and mashing the "HOUR" button, frustration boiled over, and I thought to myself, "We're a quarter of the way through the 21st century. There has to be a better way!"

My perfect clock would be self-setting. It would offer auto-DST adjustment (or not, depending on how this bill fares!). It would manage drift and always show the exact sub-second time. It would show that time on a red seven-segment display—not blue, not green, not yellow, and absolutely not white. And I shouldn't have to install any privacy-destroying garbage apps to make it work.

Read full article

Comments

© Lee Hutchinson

The rumors haven't left much to the imagination, but Samsung has unfurled its 2026 foldable lineup today. There are three models for the first time in Samsung's eight-gen foldable family, including the top-of-the-line Z Fold 8 Ultra. That phone is the successor to last year's Galaxy Z Fold 7, but the Z Fold 8 is new—the company's first wide-body foldable designed for media over multitasking. And then there's a new, thinner flip phone, plus a pair of smartwatches.

You can preorder Samsung's new hardware today, but the component shortage has made these already spendy product lines more expensive this year. Even the Z Flip 8 is now well over a grand, and the Ultra costs almost twice as much.

The Z Fold 8 Ultra has the same basic form factor as the last few Samsung tablet-style foldables. A 6.5-inch OLED on the outside is about the same ratio as a standard smartphone screen. Open it up, and you get an 8-inch display that's roughly twice as wide. That makes the main display close to square.

Read full article

Comments

© Samsung

In the latest twist on battlefield innovations, Ukraine has used both flying drone carriers and drone boats to send ground robots armed with weapons or explosives into battle.

The drone-assisted deployments have enabled slower wheeled robots to bypass tough terrain and Russian defenses, and to carry out an unusual robotic amphibious assault on a contested position. Such tactics also showcase the Ukrainian military’s ongoing experimentation with using drones and robots to offset a Russian military advantage in manpower while also sparing Ukrainian soldiers from making dangerous assaults.

On July 19, a Russian military Telegram channel posted a video showing a Ukrainian hexacopter drone carrying a ground robot suspended below by a cable, according to the Ukrainian government-run news platform United24. The Russian Telegram channel described the Ukrainian heavy bomber drone as deploying a four-wheeled ARK-1 robot armed with explosive anti-tank mines on the ground where it continued toward Russian military positions—and apparently generated plenty of outraged comments from pro-Kremlin social media users.

Read full article

Comments

© Dmytro Smolienko/ Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images

The company behind the disk space analyzer TreeSize has irked some users by no longer offering support or updates for perpetual licenses beyond their maintenance period unless customers subscribe. Further frustration has come from JAM Software's long-standing policy of not providing license keys or installers to TreeSize perpetual license holders after that support period ends.

Since 2025, JAM Software has been transitioning most TreeSize editions to subscription models. Today, it sells perpetual licenses only for personal use, which include 12 months of updates, support, and “downloads of older versions, and your license,” plus the option to extend the support period. TreeSize currently has "no plans to discontinue the sale of perpetual licenses for TreeSize Personal," product manager Hendrik Christ told Ars Technica.

As perpetual-license maintenance periods expire, customers are discovering that extending support now generally requires subscribing to software they already own the right to use.

Read full article

Comments

© TreeSize

Drones capable of spraying water and fire retardants have been practicing how to snuff out wildfires early in California and Alaska this summer—demonstrating a possible rapid-response tool for firefighting as climate change transforms wildfire season into a nearly year-round risk for much of the United States.

Most drones are significantly smaller than crewed aircraft and have shorter flight ranges, meaning they cannot replace large airtankers in delivering massive payloads of water or other fire-suppressing payloads to remote wildfires. But companies and fire agencies—along with organizers of the $11 million XPRIZE competition—are testing whether drones can help firefighting crews respond more quickly to small fires and put them out before they become more destructive.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as CAL FIRE, ran its own field test involving five autonomous drones that worked together to deploy between 500 and 1,000 gallons of foam combined for suppressing fires on July 15, according to the TV station KPMH. The demonstration was organized with the help of the nonprofit FireWERX and the California-based company Seneca, which is making the drones commercially available starting in 2026.

Read full article

Comments

© Seneca

As smoke from hundreds of burning wildfires spread across Canada and the United States, the first three operational satellites in the Google-backed FireSat program successfully launched into orbit. The satellites will begin providing wildfire detection capable of spotting even small fires in the United States, Australia, and Europe before the end of the year.

The launch of the microsatellites aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on July 7, 2026 marks a transition to “initial operational capability” for the FireSat constellation managed by the nonprofit Earth Fire Alliance. After a three-month testing period, the three satellites will begin actively providing data to fire agencies while covering every fire-prone region on Earth at least twice per day.

FireSat represents the first satellite constellation purpose-built for detecting wildfires, including spotting smaller fires that other satellites may miss. The satellites were designed by California-based satellite manufacturer Muon Space and have received over $15 million from Google to support initial deployment. Other notable financial supporters include the Bezos Earth Fund that committed $26 million.

Read full article

Comments

© Muon Space

Fubo prices are going up by $15 per month because it will have some NBCUniversal channels again.

For years, Fubo, a sports-centric vMVPD (virtual multichannel video programming distributor, which lets subscribers watch traditional TV channels live over the Internet), offered NBCUniversal channels. That stopped in November 2025 due to a contract dispute.

With the loss of local NBC affiliates, Telemundo, nine regional sports channels, and 32 national channels, Fubo made the sensible but rare decision to lower subscription prices in December. The Essential plan went from $85 per month to $74 per month. The Pro plan dropped from $85 to $75 per month, and the Elite plan dropped from $95 to $84 per month.

Read full article

Comments

© Gabby Jones/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Indian government has fined HP India and its partners a total of 1.4 billion rupees (about $14.4 million) for working with reseller partners in the “cartelization” of computers, ink cartridges, and toner.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) said this week that it found HP India had colluded with some channel partners to drive up the cost of bids for government contracts for computers, as well as for selling ink cartridges, toner, and other printing supplies, including graphic and digital manufacturing supplies.

It said that HP was aiming to outcompete other OEMs and discourage resellers from selling “counterfeit” ink and toner.

Read full article

Comments

© Getty

Europe wasted no time using its landmark Digital Markets Act (DMA) to try to rein in Big Tech. Companies like Apple, Meta, and Google have faced steep fines and orders to modify their business practices since the law came into force in 2024. And the hits keep on coming for Big Tech in Europe. After several months of consideration, the European Commission has announced new DMA measures that will force Google to support interoperability and competition in the European Union, and Google is not happy about it.

The new "specification measures" cover two elements of Google's business: Android phones and search. Both changes could theoretically increase competition and give users more choices, but Google claims they will undermine privacy and security. But as a "gatekeeper" under the DMA, Google has no choice but to comply. As the European Commission points out in its announcement, these decisions are legally binding.

On Android, Google will have to open up access to competing AI platforms. Currently, Google's Gemini gets preferential access to the system. Gemini is preloaded on all Google-certified Android phones and can wake up in response to the "Hey Google" hot word. Google's AI also includes system and app automation features, screen content access, and more.

Read full article

Comments

© Getty Images | BeeBright

OnePlus arrived on the scene in 2014 with brash marketing and a compelling pitch: What if your phone was cheaper and faster? More than a decade later, the market is much different, and so is OnePlus. Confirming months of rumors and speculation, OnePlus has confirmed it's ending phone releases in North America and Europe.

This development has been expected for a while. After a brief period of expansion in the US through deals with T-Mobile and Verizon, OnePlus began visibly shifting its focus to India after the pandemic. OnePlus has also increasingly come under the control of its parent company, Oppo, aligning its device releases and software experience with the larger brand. Still, OnePlus has continued to launch flagship devices in the US and Europe, with the OnePlus 15 going on sale in late 2025. That will be the last OnePlus phone many people see, though.

OnePlus denied rumors of a shutdown earlier this year, but its language was vague and never promised future phone releases. The new statement is also worded gingerly, but the outcome is clear. "As part of the proactive global strategy adjustment, OnePlus has decided to conclude new product rollouts in Europe and North America," the official post reads.

Read full article

Comments

© Ryan Whitwam