Indie App Spotlight: ‘Auvio’ lets you create endless soundscapes on your iPhone

Indie App Spotlight: ‘Auvio’ lets you create endless soundscapes on your iPhone

Welcome to Indie App Spotlight . This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact . Auvio is a neat audio engine for your iPhone. It offers everything you’d need to create your own immersive and personal soundscapes, whether you want them to fall asleep to, for focusing, or for studying. more…

NVIDIA shows off its first Blackwell wafer manufactured in the US

NVIDIA shows off its first Blackwell wafer manufactured in the US

NVIDIA has taken a big step towards strengthening its domestic chip manufacturing, revealing the first Blackwell wafer made in the US. The hardware company assembled the wafer, which is the base material for NVIDIA's AI chips, in TSMC's semiconductor manufacturing facility in Phoenix, Arizona. NVIDIA revealed its Blackwell platform last year, boasting a goal of revolutionizing the AI industry through tech giants like Amazon, Google, OpenAI and others who already committed to adopting the next-gen architecture. NVIDIA said the latest platform was more powerful and translated to 25x less cost and energy consumption compared to its predecessor. Now that Blackwell wafers can be made at the TSMC plant, NVIDIA can better insulate itself from the ever-evolving tariff situation and geopolitical tensions. "It’s the very first time in recent American history that the single most important chip is being manufactured here in the United States by the most advanced fab, by TSMC, here in the United States,” Jensen Huang, NVIDIA's founder and CEO, said at the celebration event. With NVIDIA's Blackwell architecture ready for the volume production stage, the company is still working on expanding its manufacturing footprint across the US. Earlier this year, NVIDIA said it had plans to funnel half a trillion dollars towards building AI infrastructure in the US through partnerships with TSMC, Foxconn and other companies. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/nvidia-shows-off-its-first-blackwell-wafer-manufactured-in-the-us-192836249.html?src=rss

Shares of bitcoin mining companies pivoting to AI and HPC infrastructure have soared in 2025, with a fund tracking mining firms up 150% year-to-date (Sidhartha Shukla/Bloomberg)

Shares of bitcoin mining companies pivoting to AI and HPC infrastructure have soared in 2025, with a fund tracking mining firms up 150% year-to-date (Sidhartha Shukla/Bloomberg)

Sidhartha Shukla / Bloomberg : Shares of bitcoin mining companies pivoting to AI and HPC infrastructure have soared in 2025, with a fund tracking mining firms up 150% year-to-date —  Shares of the large-scale computing outfits that make Bitcoin work are once again outperforming the original cryptocurrency …

PSA: If you don’t like the new Preview app on iOS 26, there’s an easy fix for it

PSA: If you don’t like the new Preview app on iOS 26, there’s an easy fix for it

With iOS 26, Apple introduced a new app on iPhone and iPad: Preview. This app has been on the Mac for a long time, and as the name suggests, it serves as a system-wide file preview of sorts, that way you don’t need an app to view every file. While this app may be intuitive on the iPad, I’ve found it rather cumbersome on the iPhone. Luckily, there’s a rather simple fix for it. more…

My favorite MagSafe battery banks for iPhone Air, iPhone 17, and more

My favorite MagSafe battery banks for iPhone Air, iPhone 17, and more

With iPhone Air, Apple reintroduced the MagSafe battery pack. It’s $99, and optimized specifically for iPhone Air. It’s rather slim, though it’s rather weak in capacity – making Qi2 alternatives all the more interesting. We’ll be delving into the top options on the market, just in case you want a MagSafe battery for your iPhone without spending $99, or aren’t buying the iPhone Air. more…

WhatsApp updates its Business API terms to ban general-purpose chatbots starting January 15, 2026, affecting WhatsApp assistants of OpenAI, Perplexity, others (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)

WhatsApp updates its Business API terms to ban general-purpose chatbots starting January 15, 2026, affecting WhatsApp assistants of OpenAI, Perplexity, others (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch : WhatsApp updates its Business API terms to ban general-purpose chatbots starting January 15, 2026, affecting WhatsApp assistants of OpenAI, Perplexity, others —  Meta-owned chat app WhatsApp changed its business API policy this week to ban general-purpose chatbots from its platform.

Texas hit with a pair of lawsuits for its app store age verification requirements

Texas hit with a pair of lawsuits for its app store age verification requirements

Texas could have a serious legal battle on its hands thanks to an age verification law for app stores that it recently enacted. In response to the Texas App Store Accountability Act, the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) filed a lawsuit that argues the new order goes against First Amendment rights. The not-for-profit trade association has Amazon, Apple and Google amongst its members. The law goes into effect on New Year's Day and requires app store users to verify their age before downloading apps or making in-app purchases. If underage, users have to get parental consent each time they want to download an app or make another in-app purchase. Along with those stipulations, the suit claims that there's an additional burden on developers, who have to "age-rate" their apps for different age groups. "This Texas law violates the First Amendment by restricting app stores from offering lawful content, preventing users from seeing that content, and compelling app developers to speak of their offerings in a way pleasing to the state," Stephanie Joyce, senior vice president and chief of staff for the CCIA, said in a press release . Along with CCIA, a student advocacy group called Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT) filed a similar lawsuit objecting to Texas' upcoming app store requirements. Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, the firm representing SEAT and the two high school students named in the lawsuit, said the law "violates the First Amendment by imposing sweeping restrictions on access to protected speech and information." The law firm also noted the potential dangers associated with collecting personal information , like government IDs, when it comes to verifying identity. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/texas-hit-with-a-pair-of-lawsuits-for-its-app-store-age-verification-requirements-164940290.html?src=rss