Lead Hacker

Despite being acquired by Google five years ago, Fitbit remains one of the most recognizable names in the industry. While its products aren’t designed with hardcore athletes, Fitbit makes excellent devices for tracking overall activity as well as monitoring certain health and wellness metrics, like EKGs and blood oxygen levels. That said, we’re still in the transitional period from the Fitbit of old to whatever Fitbit will be in the future. We’re further away from 2023, which was a particularly messy year. There were multiple Fitbit server outages, and I’m still frustrated by the decision to sunset legacy community features — including challenges — or the fact that all Fitbit accounts will require you to log in via Google beginning in February 2026 . Speaking of which, the Fitbit-to-Google account migration started in 2023 and is required if you buy the Fitbit Charge 6 or the Google Pixel Watch 4. The Fitbit app also got a more Google-like makeover , which didn’t go over well wi...

Subway Surfers City , a follow-up to the popular endless runner mobile game / sludge content star Subway Surfers , will be launching on February 26th on iOS and Android, with preregistration open now. "Building upon the original title, Subway Surfers City brings players home from the franchise's World Tour and into the heart of the Subway Surfers universe: Subway City," according to a press release. "The modern multicultural metropolis features four distinct districts for players to unlock and race through, including The Docks, Southline, Sunrise Blvd, and Delorean Park. The game will also introduce fresh content each Season, including addit … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/news/861594/subway-surfers-city-release-date-ios-android

The United Kingdom has walked back plans to make its upcoming digital ID scheme a mandatory requirement for working adults. While the UK government remains "committed to mandatory digital right-to-work checks," an unspecified government spokesperson told The Times , digital ID will now be optional when the initiative is introduced sometime in 2029. The national digital ID plans were announced by Prime Minister Keir Starmer in September with the aim of cracking down on illegal migrant workers, specifying that digital ID "will be mandatory for right to work checks by the end of the Parliament." The digital ID will include a person's name, date … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/news/861890/uk-backpeddles-mandatory-digital-id-requirements

Google's Gemini AI is getting what could prove to be a very big upgrade: To help answers from Gemini be more personalized, the company is going to let you connect the chatbot to Gmail, Google Photos, Search, and your YouTube history to provide what Google is calling "Personal Intelligence." This isn't the first time Google has introduced some form of personalization with its AI chatbot; in September 2023, when Gemini was still called Bard, Google announced a way for it to connect to Google's apps and services to be able to retrieve information based on what's stored in your account. Gemini can also already recall past conversations . But the … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/news/861576/google-gemini-ai-personal-intelligence-gmail-search-youtube-photos

Around 10 percent of Meta's Reality Labs division, which develops its XR products and services, will be laid off beginning on Tuesday, as reported by Bloomberg . Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton confirmed the layoffs in a statement to The Verge : "We said last month that we were shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward Wearables. This is part of that effort, and we plan to reinvest the savings to support the growth of wearables this year." Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses have stolen the spotlight from its VR headsets in recent years, especially with last year's launch of the Meta Ray-Ban Display . As Bloomberg also reported on Tuesd … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/news/861295/meta-reality-labs-layoffs-shift-to-wearables

Former NYC Mayor Eric Adams has come under fire after his new cryptocurrency token crashed just hours following its launch on Monday. As reported by CoinDesk , Adams' "NYC Token" hit a $580 million market capitalization at its peak before plummeting to around $130 million at this time of writing. Data from the blockchain analysis platform, Bubblemaps , flagged "suspicious" activity surrounding the coin. A wallet linked to the NYC Token's deployer withdrew around $2.5 million in liquidity when the token reached its peak. It later added around $1.5 million back after the coin dropped by 60 percent, but, as noted by CoinDesk , around $900,000 was … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/news/861269/former-nyc-mayor-eric-adams-accused-of-2-5-million-crypto-rug-pull-as-his-nyc-token-crashes