A new Android Authority survey suggests users are ready to move on from ChromeOS and embrace "Aluminium OS."

• Android Authority
• 4 gün, 17 saat, 45 dakika

Defense tech startup Anduril Industries has faced numerous setbacks during testing of its autonomous weapons systems, according to new reporting by the WSJ. The problems cited include more than a dozen drone boats that failed during a Navy exercise off California in May, with sailors warning of safety violations and potential loss of life; a […]

• TechCrunch
• 4 gün, 17 saat, 47 dakika

Bloomberg : China's top economic planning agency warns about the risk of a bubble forming in the booming humanoid robotics industry; 150+ manufacturers operate in China —  China's powerful economic-planning agency warned of the risks of a bubble forming in the country's humanoid robotics industry …

• Techmeme
• 4 gün, 17 saat, 54 dakika

Your Black Friday deals guide on tech products has arrived - shop our expert picks on TVs, Apple devices, smart home gadgets, laptops, headphones, and more.

• TechRadar
• 4 gün, 17 saat, 54 dakika

iBuyPower's incredible Black Friday sales on gaming PCs is here, with extra savings of up to $300.

• Tom's Hardware
• 4 gün, 17 saat, 55 dakika

Black Friday is the best time of the year to shop for AirPods, and in 2025 we're tracking massive discounts across nearly every model, including AirPods 4, AirPods Pro 3, and AirPods Max. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running. AirPods 4 Starting with the overall best Black Friday AirPods deal: you can get the AirPods 4 for $69.00 today on Amazon, down from $129.00. This is a new all-time low price for Black Friday 2025. Similarly, the model with Active Noise Cancellation is seeing a discount to a new best-ever price of $99.99 on Amazon. $60 OFF AirPods 4 for $69.00 $79 OFF AirPods 4 (ANC) for $99.99 AirPods Pro 3 The AirPods Pro 3 are available for $219.99, down from $249.00, which is another new all-time low price. $29 OFF AirPods Pro 3 for $219.99 AirPods Max If you're looking for the AirPods Max, Amazon has the USB-C model for $399.00, down from $549.00, another record low price. $150 OFF AirPods Max for $399.00 You can find all the Apple Black Friday Deals currently available in our dedicated post. For everything else, we're keeping track of all of the season's best Apple-related deals in our Black Friday roundup , so be sure to check back throughout the month for an updated list of all the most notable discounts you'll find for Black Friday 2025. Deals Newsletter Interested in hearing more about the best deals you can find this holiday season? Sign up for our Deals Newsletter and we'll keep you updated so you don't miss the biggest deals of the season! Related Roundups: Apple Black Friday , Apple Deals Related Forum: Community Discussion This article, " The Best Black Friday AirPods Deals " first appeared on MacRumors.com Discuss this article in our forums

• MacRumors.com
• 4 gün, 17 saat, 55 dakika

Black Friday is the best time of the year to shop for AirPods, and in 2025 we're tracking massive discounts across nearly every model, including AirPods 4, AirPods Pro 3, and AirPods Max. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running. AirPods 4 Starting with the overall best Black Friday AirPods deal: you can get the AirPods 4 for $69.00 today on Amazon, down from $129.00. This is a new all-time low price for Black Friday 2025. Similarly, the model with Active Noise Cancellation is seeing a discount to a new best-ever price of $99.99 on Amazon. $60 OFF AirPods 4 for $69.00 $79 OFF AirPods 4 (ANC) for $99.99 AirPods Pro 3 The AirPods Pro 3 are available for $219.99, down from $249.00, which is another new all-time low price. $29 OFF AirPods Pro 3 for $219.99 AirPods Max If you're looking for the AirPods Max, Amazon has the USB-C model for $399.00, down from $549.00, another record low price. $150 OFF AirPods Max for $399.00 You can find all the Apple Black Friday Deals currently available in our dedicated post. For everything else, we're keeping track of all of the season's best Apple-related deals in our Black Friday roundup , so be sure to check back throughout the month for an updated list of all the most notable discounts you'll find for Black Friday 2025. Deals Newsletter Interested in hearing more about the best deals you can find this holiday season? Sign up for our Deals Newsletter and we'll keep you updated so you don't miss the biggest deals of the season! Related Roundups: Apple Black Friday , Apple Deals Related Forum: Community Discussion This article, " The Best Black Friday AirPods Deals " first appeared on MacRumors.com Discuss this article in our forums

• MacRumors.com
• 4 gün, 17 saat, 55 dakika

Expercom is hosting a ton of deals for Black Friday, including $300 off an M4 14-inch MacBook Pro and up to $515 off the 16-inch MacBook Pro with Nano-texture display. 14-inch MacBook Pro The Black Friday deals are active at Expercom, with discounts available on a variety of Apple hardware. AppleInsider's highlighted deals fall into four categories, with offers on the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M4 , the 16-inch MacBook Pro with Nano-texture Display , the 15-inch MacBook Air with M3, and the 11-inch iPad Air with M2. All Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals run until Monday, December 2, 2025, or while supplies last. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

• AppleInsider
• 4 gün, 18 saat, 50 dakika

Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China have developed a new reinforcement learning (RL) framework that helps train large language models (LLMs) for complex agentic tasks beyond well-defined problems such as math and coding. Their framework, Agent-R1 , is compatible with popular RL algorithms and shows considerable improvement on reasoning tasks that require multiple retrieval stages and multi-turn interactions with tools. The framework is built on a redefinition of the RL paradigm that takes into account the dynamic nature of agentic applications that require interacting with evolving environments and imperfect information. This framing is much more similar to real-world applications and can have important uses for agentic tasks in enterprise settings. Rethinking reinforcement learning for agents RL has become a cornerstone of training LLMs for well-defined reasoning tasks. In areas like mathematics and coding, the model receives a clear signal: The answer is either right or wrong. This makes it relatively straightforward to reward or penalize its behavior. But this approach struggles with agentic tasks that require models to work in interactive environments, develop dynamic memories across conversations, perform multi-step reasoning and respond to unpredictable feedback. Training agents with RL for these scenarios presents unique challenges, especially in multi-turn interactions where designing effective rewards is complex and the trained agent often fails to generalize to the messy, unpredictable nature of real-world environments. To address these challenges, the University of Science and Technology researchers revisited the fundamental framework of RL, known as the Markov Decision Process (MDP). An MDP models decision-making using four key components: a state space (the set of possible states an agent can be in); an action space (what the agent can do); a state transition probability (the state to which an action will likely lead); and a reward function (whether the outcome is good or bad). The paper proposes extending this framework to better suit LLM agents. In the new formulation, the state space is expanded to include not just the current state (the current sequence of tokens generated by the model) but the entire history of interactions and environmental feedback. Actions are still fundamentally about generating text, but specific sequences of text can now trigger external tools, like an API call. State transitions become unpredictable, or "stochastic," because the outcome depends not just on the tokens the model predicts but also on the environment's response, which depends on external factors. Finally, the reward system becomes more granular, incorporating intermediate "process rewards" for successfully completing steps along the way, rather than just a single reward at the very end. This provides more frequent and precise guidance to the agent during training. This last bit is especially important and addresses the “sparse reward” problem that most RL frameworks face. When the agent receives a single reward signal based on the final outcome, it does not learn from the right and wrong intermediate steps it has taken along the way. Process rewards solve this problem by providing feedback signals on these intermediate steps, making the learning process much more efficient. “These extensions are crucial for enabling reinforcement learning algorithms to train sophisticated Agents capable of complex, multi-step reasoning and interaction within dynamic environments,” the researchers write in their paper. The Agent-R1 framework Based on the extended MDP definition, the researchers developed Agent-R1 , a flexible and user-friendly training platform for RL-based LLM agents. It extends traditional single-turn RL frameworks to handle the multi-turn, interactive nature of agentic tasks, allowing for seamless integration with diverse environments. The most significant difference lies in the "rollout phase," where the agent generates responses. In single-turn RL, the model generates a response once. In multi-turn RL, the process involves a series of complex back-and-forth interactions. Agent-R1 achieves this flexible multi-turn rollout with two core modules: Tool and ToolEnv. The Tool module acts as an executor for specific actions such as calling an API or accessing a database. When invoked, a Tool performs its action and returns the direct, raw outcome. In contrast, the ToolEnv module is the orchestrator and interpreter. It takes the output from the Tool and determines how that outcome affects the agent's state and the overall task progress. ToolEnv manages state transitions, calculates reward signals based on tool outcomes and packages the new state information for the agent. In short, when an action is complete, the Tool reports "what happened," while ToolEnv dictates "what this outcome means for the agent and the task." Agent-R1 in action The researchers tested Agent-R1 on the challenging task of multi-hop question answering, which requires complex reasoning, information retrieval across multiple documents and multi-step decision-making. They trained Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct on QA datasets and evaluated its performance on the HotpotQA and 2WikiMultihopQA datasets. They also tested it on the Musique dataset, which was out of the domain of tasks the agent was trained on. They compared various RL algorithms trained with Agent-R1 against two baselines: Naive RAG, a single-pass retrieval method where an LLM answers based on one set of retrieved documents, and Base Tool Call, which uses the model's native function-calling ability without specialized RL training. The results demonstrated that all RL-trained agents substantially outperformed the baselines. GRPO, an RL algorithm used in advanced reasoning models like DeepSeek-R1 , delivered the best overall performance. “These results robustly validate Agent-R1’s efficacy in training powerful LLM agents via end-to-end RL, showing consistent, substantial gains over baselines across diverse datasets and RL algorithms,” the researchers write. These findings can be significant for the enterprise, where there is a strong push to apply RL and reasoning beyond well-defined domains. A framework designed to handle messy, multi-turn interactions with users and dynamic environments can pave the way for new agents capable of solving complex problems in real-world settings. “We hope Agent-R1 provides a foundation for future work on scalable and unified RL training for agentic LLMs,” the researchers conclude.

• VentureBeat
• 4 gün, 18 saat, 55 dakika

Airflow is critical in a PC tower, so you need the right tower to provide it. This Black Friday you can get that in the Hyte Y40 S-tier Aesthetic PC case which has had its price slashed from $130 to $99.97 on Amazon. That’s a big price reduction of 23 percent. The Y40 is a big ATX case designed to wow its owner. Its design is something else. Every edge is adorned in tightly controlled beveling for S-tier aesthetics with 2-piece glass to allow you to grab a glimpse at your PC’s performance. The Y40 expands GPU support to 4 full slots with additional airflow space between the edge of the card and the glass. This awesome case comes with 2 x 120mm fans pre-installed to cool down your precious PC components and keep your PC performing in tip top shape. One is located beneath the floor and one at the rear. The side mount can fit up to a 280mm radiator with a combined thickness of up to 120mm allowing for large 60mm radiators to be used for custom loop configurations, and the top mount can fit up to a 360mm radiator for dual radiator setups. The Y40 has a high level of compatibility. It brings support for large air coolers over 180mm in height, allowing for almost every CPU cooler on the market. If that sounds a lot better than your current case, then what are you waiting for? Jump into Amazon to snag this bargain while the going is good .

• PCWorld
• 4 gün, 19 saat, 15 dakika

Black Friday deals are live at retailers across the internet (and brick-and-mortar stores). These are the best sales to shop for Black Friday 2025.

• Mashable
• 4 gün, 19 saat, 16 dakika

Black Friday deals are everywhere, but I think the hottest category is streaming. Right now you can get Apple TV, Binge and Disney+ for a monthly cost that's cheaper than Netflix's standard tier.

• TechRadar
• 4 gün, 19 saat, 25 dakika

Kang Yoon-seung / Yonhap News Agency : Sources: South Korean authorities suspect North Korean hacking group Lazarus of the $30M+ Upbit hack, which used methods resembling those of a 2019 Upbit theft —  North Korean hacking group Lazarus is suspected to be behind a recent breach of around 45 billion won (US$30.6 million) …

• Techmeme
• 4 gün, 19 saat, 35 dakika

Apple's annual four-day Black Friday through Cyber Monday shopping event is now live in many countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, and others. Now through Monday, December 1, customers can get an Apple gift card with the purchase of an eligible product at an Apple Store, in the Apple Store app, and on Apple.com. However, the gift card can only be used towards future purchases, and higher immediate discounts are frequently available at Amazon and other resellers. In the United States, Apple is offering gift cards worth up to $250 with the purchase of an eligible iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, HomePod, AirPods, Beats headphones and speakers, Apple Pencil Pro, and select Magic Keyboards for iPads. As usual, many of Apple's newer products are excluded from the offer, including the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPhone Air, Apple Watch Ultra 3, iPad Pro with M5 chip, MacBook Pro with M5 chip, and Vision Pro with M5 chip. Refurbished products are ineligible too, and the offer cannot be combined with educational pricing. We have listed the gift card values in the United States below. $25 Apple Gift Card: AirPods 4 AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation Apple TV 4K Beats Pill Magic Keyboard Folio for iPad (A16 chip) Magic Keyboard for 11-inch iPad Air Magic Keyboard for 13-inch iPad Air Apple Pencil Pro $50 Apple Gift Card: iPhone 16e iPad (A16 chip) iPad mini Apple Watch SE 3 Apple Watch Series 11 AirPods Pro 3 Full-size HomePod Beats Studio Pro Beats Solo 4 Beats Studio Buds + Powerbeats Pro 2 $75 Apple Gift Card: iPhone 16 iPhone 16 Plus AirPods Max $100 Apple Gift Card: Mac mini 11-inch iPad Air 13-inch iPad Air $150 Apple Gift Card: iMac $175 Apple Gift Card: 13-inch MacBook Air (M4 chip) $200 Apple Gift Card: 15-inch MacBook Air (M4 chip) $250 Apple Gift Card: 14-inch MacBook Pro (M4 Pro chip) 14-inch MacBook Pro (M4 Max chip) 16-inch MacBook Pro (M4 Pro chip) 16-inch MacBook Pro (M4 Max chip) Black Friday is one of the few occasions per year when Apple directly offers deals on its products. As we mentioned, though, better deals are often available through resellers like Amazon, so make sure to check out our Black Friday deals tracker . Apple's all-in-one gift card can be used towards the purchase of products and accessories, subscription-based services like Apple Music and Apple TV, App Store apps, TV show and movie purchases and rentals, iCloud+ storage, and more. Apple's terms and conditions for the event outline more details. Related Roundup: Apple Black Friday Related Forum: Community Discussion This article, " Apple's Black Friday Event is Now Live, Here's What You Can Get " first appeared on MacRumors.com Discuss this article in our forums

• MacRumors.com
• 4 gün, 19 saat, 55 dakika

Security researchers have identified suspicious activity in Apple's Podcasts app that could be used to deliver malicious content to users, based on a report by 404Media 's Joseph Cox . Cox's report describes some odd experiences with the Podcasts app that certainly suggest something untoward is going on across both iOS and macOS versions. He says that over recent months, the app has automatically launched and displayed unusual podcasts without his input. On Mac and iPhone, the app has opened religion, spirituality, and education podcasts for no apparent reason, in some cases even launching themselves the moment Cox unlocked his device. The podcasts in question often feature strange titles containing code fragments, URLs, and in some cases, attempts at cross-site scripting attacks. Objective-See security expert Patrick Wardle told Cox he was able to replicate similar behavior, but in his case via a website. "Simply visiting a website is enough to trigger Podcasts to open (and load a podcast of the attacker's choosing), and unlike other external app launches on macOS, no prompt or user approval is required," Wardle told 404 Media . One particularly concerning podcast apparently includes a link that redirects to a site attempting an XSS attack – a technique in which attackers inject malicious code into otherwise legitimate-looking websites. When visited, the site displays a pop-up acknowledging the XSS attempt. Wardle notes that while this behavior isn't immediately dangerous on its own, it creates an effective delivery mechanism if vulnerabilities do exist within the Podcasts app. "The level of probing shows that adversaries are actively evaluating the Podcasts app as a potential target," he said. The situation bears similarities to reports of Google Calendar spam from several years ago, where bad actors would add unsolicited events containing links or promotional content to users' calendars. Apple did not respond to Cox's multiple requests for comment about the issue. Has the Podcasts app exhibited similar unusual behaviour in your experience? Let us know in the comments. Tags: Apple Podcasts , Security This article, " PSA: Apple's Podcasts App May Be Enabling Malicious Content Delivery " first appeared on MacRumors.com Discuss this article in our forums

• MacRumors.com
• 4 gün, 20 saat, 2 dakika

Francesco Guarascio / Reuters : Sources: Vietnam's recent Huawei and ZTE 5G equipment deals bolster its ties with China following US tariffs, but could undermine US trust in Vietnam's networks —  China's leading telecommunication firms Huawei and ZTE (000063.SZ) have won a string of contracts this year to supply 5G equipment in Vietnam …

• Techmeme
• 4 gün, 20 saat, 5 dakika