The United States is preparing Misawa Air Base in northern Japan to support the future deployment of F-35A stealth fighter aircraft, as part of a broader effort to modernize U.S. air power in the western Pacific. According to the report by Newsweek journalist Ryan Chan, the Pentagon plans to deploy 48 F-35A Lightning II jets […]The United States Navy’s Independence-variant littoral combat ship USS Cincinnati (LCS 20) arrived at Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base for a temporary port visit on January 24, 2026, marking the first visit by a U.S. warship since the base was expanded with Chinese support. According to the U.S. Navy, USS Cincinnati docked at the base in […]Attributed to Picasso was the notion that when art critics get together they talk about content, style, trend, and meaning; but that when painters get together they talk about where to get the best turpentine. We can extend that sentiment into the digital age by saying that when philosophers get together they talk about ideas, theory, and meaning; but when hackers get together they talk about where to get the best tweezers.
In this video [nanofix] runs us through his collection of tweezers talking about what he likes and doesn’t like for each. If you’re just getting into microsoldering this video will have some tips about where you should start, and if you’ve been soldering tiny stuff for a while you might find some ideas for a helpful new bit of kit, or two.
If you’re interested in tweezers and novel applications you might want to check out “smart” tweezers, which can read capacitance and resistance values on the fly. Or read about a suction based SMD tool, which can securely hold SMD components with less risk of them flying across the bench and disappearing forever into the carpet on the floor.
Nexus Mods has confirmed that its popular mod manager, Vortex, is officially coming to SteamOS in 2026. This brings streamlined mod support directly to the Steam Deck and Steam Machine hardware. This is massive news for the modding community and will be big for anyone who owns a Deck.
High fidelity is almost never the default setting in the digital streaming world today. Most platforms, including YouTube Music, prioritize keeping your playback smooth and saving your data over giving you pure audio quality. This trade-off is silently ruining your listening experience.
Imagine yourself lost in the wilderness, miles from civilization, with no cell signal or Wi-Fi. Your phone is pretty much a useless brick. But what if you could still send a text? While it's not always possible to text without any connection, your Google Pixel has a few tricks up its sleeve for when you're truly off the grid.
I don’t have to tell you that phones are really good now, and you can probably point to the areas where that’s obvious. Cameras, displays, processors, build materials, and so much more. However, phones have improved in sneaky ways, too.
A private-sector tech leader tapped by the Trump administration to improve the federal government’s online presence is setting an ambitious goal — overhauling about 27,000 dot-gov websites.
Joe Gebbia, chief design officer of the United States and co-founder of Airbnb, said in a podcast interview Tuesday that the White House set out this goal when President Donald Trump signed an executive order last summer creating the National Design Studio.
“We’re fixing all of them,” Gebbia said Tuesday on the American Optimist show. Many of the federal government’s websites, he added, “look like they’re from the mid-90s.”
Gebbia began working with the Department of Government Efficiency in the early days of the Trump administration. At the Office of Personnel Management, he oversaw a long-anticipated modernization of the federal employee retirement system.
The National Design Studio so far has launched several new websites that serve as landing pages for some of the Trump administration’s policies on immigration, law enforcement and prescription drug prices.
As for next steps, Gebbia said his office will deliver “major updates,” including a refresh of existing federal websites, by July 4.
“It’s working, because we are really pulling in veterans of Silicon Valley from a talent perspective, I think it’s working because this president really deeply cares about how things look, because he knows that esthetics matter,” he said.
The White House estimates that only 6% of federal websites are rated “good” for use on mobile devices. About 45% of federal websites are not mobile-friendly.
As part of the President’s Management Agenda, the Trump administration is looking to leverage technology to “deliver faster, more secure services” and “reduce the number of confusing government websites. “
The administration has already taken steps to eliminate websites that it deems unnecessary. Federal News Network first reported that the 24 largest federal agencies are preparing to eliminate more than 330 websites — about 5% of an inventory of 7,200 websites reviewed.
The National Design Studio is still recruiting new hires. Gebbia estimated that his office will eventually have a team of about 15 engineers and 15 designers.
“We’re still ramping up the team,” he said, adding that the National Design Studio has been able to “recruit some of the best and brightest minds of our era.”
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment where we have a shot on goal to actually upgrade the U.S. government the way we present ourselves to the nation and to the world,” Gebbia said.
The idea for the National Design Studio began when Interior Secretary Doug Burgum asked Gebbia to improve Recreation.gov, a website for booking campsites, scheduling tours and obtaining hunting and fishing permits on federal lands. The site serves as an outdoor recreation system for 14 federal agencies.
“There’s a lot to be desired for when you have this incredible feature of the American experience, our national parks. They were being undersold in a way that they were showcased,” Gebbia said.
After working on Recreation.gov, Gebbia said he was getting similar requests from other Cabinet secretaries.
“I started to see there’s demand here for better design. There’s demand here for modernizing the digital surfaces of the government,” he said.
At that point, Gebbia said he made his pitch for the National Design Studio to Trump during a meeting at the Oval Office.
“What would it look like to have a national initiative to actually go in and up level and upgrade, not just one agency, not just one website, all the websites, all the agencies, all of the digital touch points between us, government and the American people?” he recalled.
According to the America by Design website, the White House is drawing inspiration from the Nixon administration’s beautification project in the 1970s. That project led to the creation of NASA’s iconic logo, branding for national parks and signage for the national highway system.
“My vision is that, at some point, somebody’s working at a startup and they go look at a dot-gov website to see how they did it. And we can actually create references for good design in the government, rather than be the butt of a joke,” Gebbia said.
So far, the National Design Studio has launched SafeDC.gov, a website meant to facilitate the Trump administration’s surge of federal law enforcement agents to Washington, D.C. It’s also launched TrumpCard.gov, a program meant to fast-track the green-card process for noncitizens seeking permanent residency in the United States — and who are able to pay a $15,000 processing fee and a $1 million or $5 million “gift” to the Commerce Department.
Its most recent website, https://trumprx.gov/, is still in the works. The website supports an administration goal of connecting consumers with lower-priced prescription drugs.
Gebbia said private-sector tech experts are interested in working with National Design Studio and overcoming institutional barriers to change.
“Of course, you bump into things and all the processes and people saying, ‘Well, it’s always been done this way. Why would we change it?’ I think, though, there’s an incredible amount of momentum behind this — the excitement around America by Design, the excitement around the National Design Studio, and the excitement on the demand side of secretaries and people and agencies — ‘Yes, please fix this for us. We’re so happy you’re here to make us make this look good,'” he said.
The post National Design Studio looks to overhaul 27,000 federal websites — and is hiring a team to do it first appeared on Federal News Network.
© AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Although they entered the mainstream about 20 years ago, electric vehicles (EVs) have been around for a long time.
Kindle eReaders are obviously great for reading books, but that’s not all they can do. One of the coolest lesser-known features is the ability to send web articles to your Kindle. Instapaper is a great way to do this, but starting next month, the app’s "Send to Kindle" feature will no longer be free.
If you have been seeing the infuriating "This content isn't available, try again later" error on YouTube recently, you are certainly not alone. It looks like this widespread issue may be the platform's newest, more aggressive attempt to break ad-blocking extensions.
The Trump White House yesterday posted a manipulated photo of Nekima Levy Armstrong, a Minnesota civil rights attorney who was arrested after protesting in a church where a pastor is allegedly also an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem posted what seems to be the original photo of Armstrong being led away by an officer yesterday morning. A half hour later, the official White House X account posted an altered version in which Armstrong's face was manipulated to make it appear that she was crying.
"The White House shared an AI-edited photo of Nekima, depicting her in tears and scared when, in actuality, she was poised, determined, and unafraid," NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said yesterday.
96 GB of pure credential data were exposed. But who was collecting them in the first place?
CISOs must prepare for "a really different world" where cybercriminals can reliably automate cyberattacks at scale, according to a senior Googler.…
Google is making a significant change to how you manage your email accounts. The company announced it will be ending support for two long-standing features, Gmailify and the traditional POP fetching method, starting this month.
Love it or hate it, Tesla has been responsible for helping to shape the tastes of automotive consumers over the past decade-plus. Over-the-air updates that add more features, an all-touchscreen human-machine interface, large castings, and hands-free driver assists were all introduced or popularized by Tesla's electric vehicles, prompting other automakers to copy them, mostly in the hopes of seeing the same stratospheric gains in their stock prices. But starting on Valentine's Day, if you want your new Tesla to steer itself, you'll have to pay a $99 monthly subscription fee.
Tesla currently offers a pair of so-called "level 2" partially automated driver assist systems. Autopilot is the older of these, combining Tesla's adaptive cruise control (Tesla calls this TACC) and lane-keeping assist (Tesla calls this Autosteer). FSD is the newer system, meant to be more capable and for use on surface streets and divided-lane highways. Although the company and Tesla CEO Elon Musk regularly tout these systems' capabilities, both still require the human driver to provide situational awareness.
But Autopilot has been under fire from regulators and the courts. Multiple wrongful death lawsuits are in the works, and after a high-profile loss resulting in a $329 million judgment against Tesla, expect many of these suits to be settled. Both the federal government and California have investigated whether Tesla misled customers, and in December, an administrative law judge ruled that Tesla indeed engaged in deceptive marketing by implying that its cars could drive themselves. The judge suspended Tesla's license to sell cars in California, a decision that the California Department of Motor Vehicles stayed for 60 days.
© Getty Images
Samsung appears to have leaked a built-in privacy display for the Galaxy S26 Ultra, hinting at a hardware-based feature designed to block side-angle viewing.
The post Galaxy S26 Ultra Leak Reveals Samsung’s Built-In Privacy Screen Feature appeared first on TechRepublic.
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