Apple announced the brand-new M4 iPad Pro yesterday alongside the new M2 iPad Air and the Apple Pencil Pro, not to mention the revamped Apple Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro. There was plenty announced during the event, but it's the M4 iPad Pro that's particularly notable. It's a hugely powerful tablet and one that comes with plenty of RAM and storage. But it turns out that if you pick two particular storage options you'll also get some other things thrown in for good measure, too.

Apple didn't make a big deal out of the news when it announced the M4 iPad Pro, but it's since been discovered that anyone who spends the extra $600 to upgrade from 256GB of storage to the 1TB model (or higher) will also get an additional CPU core and twice as much RAM.

Apple has historically not chosen to give details about what cores the iPad has and how much RAM is offered, but in the case of the M4 it turns out that the base model with 256GB of storage comes with an M4 chip that has a 9-core CPU. But if you then choose to buy a 1TB or 2TB storage option you'll actually get an M4 chip that has a 10-core CPU instead. You'll still get the same number of GPU cores so there is nothing of note there, but it's interesting that Apple is putting two versions of the same M4 chip into the same tablet here.

It's impossible to miss the fact that Apple announced the new M4 iPad and M2 iPad Air yesterday alongside a new Apple Pencil Pro and a refreshed Magic Keyboard, but did you know that Google also announced a new product? You probably didn't, because it chose to announce it on the same day that Apple sucked all the air out of the room. Which is a shame, because the phone is actually pretty good.

The Pixel 8a was a phone that we'd seen leaked here and there in recent weeks, a phone that offers people the chance to get their hands on a new phone with high-end features at a price that doesn't cost high-end figures. The Pixel 8a is sure to be a popular device, as well as it should because it has a ton of features that make for a great experience. And at $499, it's going to be hard to beat.

Google's Pixel 8a features a new Actua display that measures 6.1 inches. It has a high-speed 120Hz refresh rate and is 40% brighter than the display that was already a solid option in last year's Pixel 7a. The good news doesn't end there, either, with a new 256GB storage option available for those who want it.

Windows 11 users running an inactivated copy of the operating system may find that in the future, there's a further penalty exacted on them for failing to activate - and it involves Microsoft's Edge browser.

Windows Latest noticed that in a fresh test build of Edge, there are several flags that hint at the potentially incoming move. These are:

Just by looking at those flags you can guess the functionality being leveraged: a check for activation, then a trigger if Windows 11 isn't activated that means Edge Settings are locked.

The Senate officially banned TikTok in the United States, giving the popular app owner the choice of selling it to a US government-approved buyer or having it banned from app marketplaces.

The US government has deemed TikTok a national security risk due to its owner being China-based company ByteDance, which officials believe have ties to the Chinese government. More specifically, the US government believes TikTok is capable of scraping the personal data of 170 million Americans, and that data could then be shared with the Chinese government. Furthermore, the US government believe TikTok could be used to spread misinformation throughout the US.

The banning of the app gave its owner 270 days to sell TikTok, with an additional 90-day presidential extension. TikTok and ByteDance have since responded to the new legislature by filing a lawsuit that directly challenges the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which President Biden signed into law last month.

Sabrent has just launched its newer, faster M.2 2242 SSD with the release of its new Sabrent Rocket NANO 2242 SSD.

The new Sabrent Rocket NANO SSD has been designed for specialized devices like the Lenovo Legion Go, Lenovo ThinkPad laptops, and other portables, but the company is clear that the Rocket NANO SSD will work anywhere. The new Rocket NANO SSD can be extended to M.2 2280 form factor, or you can adjust your motherboard standoffs while most enclosures, add-in cards, and devices such as cloners will work "as-is," says Sabrent.

This is a new DRAM-less SSD, so the Sabrent Rocket NANO SSD is single-sided, so there's no need to worry about whether it'll fit in your machine or device. Now, let's talk about those important read and write speeds, shall we?

Sabrent has the true one-stop storage management solution for SATA and IDE HDDs, SSDs, and optical drives like CD/DVD-RW. It easily connects to Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems and other host d evices over an integrated 5Gbps USB-C port (USB Gen 3.2 1x1).

The maximum speed of the Sabrent USB-DS12 will depend on the drive's interface at speeds of up to SATA 3Gbps (SATA II, or SATA-300). The USB-DS12 adapter is plug and play, making it super-easy to work with virtually any device as it requires no drivers, and is hot swappable at all times.

If you've got a new HDD or SSD, or an old HDD or SSD, both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drives require additional 12V power to operate reliably, so Sabrent -- the good guys they are -- have included an external power supply.

The US government is reportedly preparing to make another move against China to prevent the nation from gaining access to the US's best artificial intelligence capabilities.

The Biden administration has already taken measures to prevent China from gaining AI supremacy by banning the exportation of specific high-end NVIDIA graphics cards, which are used to train the AI models, and proposing a rule that requires all US cloud companies to inform the government when foreign customers are using their cloud systems to train AI models.

According to reports, more guardrails are being considered by the Commerce Department, which plans on targeting the exportation of proprietary or closed-source AI models. The idea behind these new purported regulations is to prevent US-based AI giants such as the Microsoft-funded OpenAI, the company behind popular AI tool ChatGPT, or Google DeepMind, creators of Gemini, from taking their world leading AI models to global market and selling them to the highest bidder.

Reports indicate that Tesla is being investigated by US prosecutors for any possible evidence of committing securities and wire fraud.

The examination of the company by US prosecutors is to find evidence of Tesla committing securities and wire fraud by misleading consumers and investors with Tesla's self driving capabilities found within its electric car line-up.

The two technologies, Tesla's Full Self-Driving system, and the Autopilot system, have been a point of conjecture for quite some time, as some regulatory bodies have argued the naming of the technologies is misleading due to the features not providing full autonomy, as Tesla still requires drivers to periodically place their hands on the wheel and be ready to take back over when necessary.

Defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which was headed by the now-convicted Sam Bankman-Fried, has said that it will have more than enough money to pay back all of its customers.

In March 2024, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the co-founder of FTX, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for defrauding customers and investors with the investment firm. FTX entered into a Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan after the firm collapsed in November 2022. The result was SBF being arrested and John J. Ray III, an attorney who specializes in recovering funds from failed corporations, being brought on as chief executive of FTX.

Ray has since said that he is pleased the company is now in a position to "propose a Chapter 11 plan that contemplates the return of 100% of bankruptcy claim amounts plus interest for non-governmental creditors". Notably, the plan will still have to be approved by a US bankruptcy court, and FTX is currently still in the process of recovering all lost funds with no date on completion being mentioned in reports.

Researchers have penned a new study called the "Contextual and Combinatorial Structure in Sperm Whale Vocalizations" and it details a new "alphabet" that has been discovered.

Scientists from MIT CSAIL and Project CETI state they have developed a breakthrough in understanding cetacean communication. Notably, cetaceans include the following species: whales, dolphins, and porpoises. So, what did they do? The team took what is called codas, which are a series of different linguistic vocalizations that have been studied for decades, and applied machine learning technologies to decipher what is being "said."

According to reports, the research took 8,719 sperm whale codas there was collected by researcher Shane Gero from time spent off the coast of Dominica, a small Caribbean Island, and applied them to a machine learning algorithm while also factoring in contextual details through implementing music terminology.