AMD is saying the quiet part out loud: it’s now prioritizing AI chips ahead of flagship GPUs for gamers. The company’s just laid out a new business strategy, where it will merge its RDNA gaming graphics and CNDA data center efforts into a single universal “UDNA” that’s aimed at AI first. In two interviews with Tom’s Hardware (you’ll definitely want to read both), AMD computing and graphics boss Jack Huynh doesn’t beat around the bush. With gaming graphics, he explains, the goal is now building scale and market share at lower price points — not the “King of the Hill” flagship GPUs that haven’t convinced enough buyers to leave Nvidia behind. Here’s the key passage from the first interview: Tom’s Hardware: Price point-wise, you have...

The legendary actor beloved for his turn as Star Wars' tragic villain Darth Vader, among countless other roles, was 93.

Beats, Apple’s other headphone brand, just announced its first collection of smartphone cases designed for the Apple 16 lineup, with full compatibility with the new Camera Control button. The $49 hardshell polycarbonate cases feature “flexible sidewalls” to help absorb some of the impact when dropped and a microfiber lining to protect an iPhone’s finish. According to Beats, the outer surface of each case has been treated with a “glossy scratch-resistant coating,” a feature that potentially comes in response to Apple’s problematic — and now discontinued — microtwill FineWoven cases, which were prone to scratches. Available to order today through Apple’s website in midnight black, summit stone, riptide blue, and sunset purple colorways,...

HBO’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, is no stranger to building doomed cinematic universes, but the network seems game to poke fun at the messy business of it all with Armando Iannucci, Sam Mendes, and Jon Brown’s new series, The Franchise. Set in a world where the fictional superhero movie Tecto: Eye of the Storm is deep into production, The Franchise follows as the film’s crew tries to survive the experience of working on a project that seems destined to fail. Between dealing with temperamental actors and fire scares, things are difficult enough for production workers Daniel (Himesh Patel) and Dag (Lolly Adefope). But as studio executives drop in to give notes with clash with the director’s vision, the vibe on set becomes...

Apple released a new, more powerful version of the MagSafe charger during its September iPhone 16 event today. The puck will be compatible with all iPhones and any Qi2 device, but only the new iPhone 16 models are listed as supporting the fastest 25W wireless charging rate. That’s a higher maximum rate than the phones offered by Samsung and Google right now — the Galaxy S24 series maxes out at 15W, while Google’s Pixel 9 phones range from 15W–23W when using the second-generation Google Pixel Stand. (Pixel 9 models can only manage 12W charging on standard Qi chargers.) For faster wireless charging up to 25W — up to 50 percent battery in around 30 minutes for iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro when paired with the 30W USB‑C Power Adapter (sold...

Elon Musk helped amplify the far-right lies on his social media platform X.

The iPhone 16 and 16 Plus are official, with Action Buttons inherited from the 15 Pro and a new look for the camera bump. We’ve just gotten some hands-on time with them in Cupertino, California, following the announcement, and the great news is that color is back, baby: they look great. The rear cameras are now stacked vertically on a smaller pill-shaped camera bump. This arrangement is better suited for capturing spatial video, lest we all forget about the Vision Pro. It’s also just a fresh look for the regular iPhone, and Apple likes to throw one in every few years to shake things up. They come with the same size screens as their predecessors: a...

The high-end AirPods 4 retail for $180 and the base model for $130. Both releases are open to pre-order today and will launch on September 20.

All the new hardware was unveiled at a splashy media event at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. The new iPhone was the star of the show.

Enlarge This story was originally published by ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. Most of the products in the typical kitchen use plastics that are virtually impossible to recycle. The film that acts as a lid on Dole Sunshine fruit bowls, the rings securing jars of McCormick dried herbs, the straws attached to Juicy Juice boxes, the bags that hold Cheez-Its and Cheerios—they’re all destined for the dumpster.

Despite having the biggest new country album of the year, Beyoncé received a complete shut-out from the 2024 Country Music Awards. Her Cowboy Carter topped the country chart — a historic first for a Black woman singing country — and spent 22 weeks on the Billboard top 200 album ranking. Yet despite the CMAs giving nominations to other pop crossover artists, including Post Malone and Shaboozey, the voting body denied Cowboy Carter nominations in any category. The rejection marks the second time the CMAs and its audience have clashed with Beyoncé. But while the 2016 backlash over her CMA performance with the Chicks arguably stemmed from tension over the artists’ political identities, it’s hard to chalk this snub up to anything but misogynoir at its most blatant — especially in a year that saw both Malone (in a chart-topping collab with Morgan Wallen) and Shaboozey nominated for Single of the Year.   There are several complicating factors that may have contributed to the CMA’s diss of Cowboy Carter. But it’s also clear that sometimes the simplest explanation may be the truest. The lead single off Cowboy Carter, “Texas Hold ’Em,” had just about the biggest release boost ever — a drop during the Super Bowl on February 11, 2024. That date is important, because while the song immediately lit up the charts and saw significant radio play, it took two days, per Billboard, before country radio stations actually received copies of the song from Beyoncé’s label, Parkwood, via Sony Nashville. As detailed in the industry blog Saving Country Music, the media narrative that swiftly coalesced of country radio refusing to play the song wasn’t actually accurate. Rather, due to the way the song was positioned initially — it was first cataloged as a pop song rather than a country song, and serviced first to pop stations — it took a week before most country stations added the song to their playlists. When that finally happened, on February 20, the song received radio play on 79 country music stations across the country, and debuted atop Billboard’s Hot Country Songs charts. Beyoncé’s label even took out an industry ad to thank them: As Billboard noted, “Country radio has traditionally been reluctant to play songs that aren’t serviced to them or then actively promoted by the label.” Billboard further pointed out that Beyoncé didn’t heavily promote her 2016 crossover single “Daddy Lessons” either, which may have contributed to its lackluster performance on the country charts at the time. That lack of promotional energy may have hurt Cowboy Carter in the long run. Although the album was a hit, it slid rapidly down the Billboard ranks and faced tough competition from artists like Wallen and Taylor Swift — particularly in a male-dominated year that saw men sweeping charts and receiving tons of radio play despite a bumper crop of new releases from female artists.  Beyoncé’s label seemed disinclined to promote the album or its songs beyond the initial drops: “Texas Hold ’Em” received no follow-up music video, and Beyoncé did no regional promotion or in-person radio drop-ins to boost the song’s recognition to radio listeners. Much of this is understandable as falling within Beyoncé’s brand; her superstardom is powered as much by mystique and glamor as her artistry itself. That mystique lends itself to abrupt album drops with little promotion, but not to over-exposure through traditional industry channels like radio.  However, there also seemed to be a deliberate choice on Beyoncé’s part to actively disengage from promoting Cowboy Carter as a country album — quite literally, in that she initially announced it by saying, “This ain’t a country album, it’s a Beyoncé album.” If she intended for her fans to make the argument that, in fact, it was a country album, that tactic worked; fans swiftly got Apple Music to change its initial designation of the songs from “pop” to “country,” and pushed a petition to get the album more radio play to over 27,000 signatures. If industry insiders didn’t feel sufficiently catered to, though, that sense of being overlooked could easily have translated to a lackluster response when the CMA voting rolled around. There’s another explanation for all of this, though — and it’s the one you’re thinking of. It’s no secret that the country music industry has a longstanding problem with excluding artists of color. The CMAs specifically famously snubbed first Beyoncé for “Daddy Lessons” (which was itself a musical lesson in the erasure of Black artists from country history) in 2016 and then Lil Nas X in 2019. The CMAs rejected Lil Nas from every musical category while giving him a nod for his collaboration on the song with Billy Ray Cyrus — effectively suggesting that he owed the song’s massive success to a white man and not his own merit.  That this happened several months after Lil Nas came out as gay might also have factored into the equation, given that other straight Black male artists like Darius Rucker have found success and a warm country welcome in Nashville. Artists like Charley Pride and Ray Charles have also broken boundaries in the genre, though the fact they were already huge stars prior to turning their talents to country might have been a factor as well.  The Lil Nas snub also puts this year’s CMAs — in which Beyoncé’s own Black male collaborator, Shaboozey, got multiple top award noms — into sharp perspective. Shaboozey, a Nigerian American multi-genre artist, got a huge boost into the mainstream from collaborating with Beyoncé on two songs on Cowboy Carter, and then saw his single “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” go viral; it was hailed as one of the (many) songs of the 2024 summer and received a record-breaking amount of radio play across country radio.  By first boosting and promoting, and then nominating, Shaboozey’s work on the back of his collaboration with Beyoncé, the industry seems to be sending a message, however inadvertent it might be, that the artistry of Black women lags behind that of their straight male counterparts. That’s quite a statement to make about Cowboy Carter, an album that features country legends like Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson.  That goes without saying. Thank you @Beyonce for opening a door for us, starting a conversation, and giving us one of the most innovative country albums of all time! But it’s also undeniable that the industry is more hospitable to male pop crossover artists. Post Malone has come under fire for collaborations that appropriate styles from Black artists, a problem that stands uncomfortably next to his collaboration with Wallen, whose incredible career boost following his n-word scandal is arguably an interlinked issue. Yet country fans had little trouble embracing Malone and Wallen’s “I Had Some Help,” and the CMAs rewarded the song with four total nominations. Meanwhile, while Beyoncé has undoubtedly opened doors for artists including Shaboozey, the progress of Black women in country remains fraught. While the industry has upheld Black artists like Valerie June, Mickey Guyton, and Yasmin Williams, it has yet to bestow CMA awards on any of them. Last year, legend Tracy Chapman and her iconic song “Fast Car” became the first Black woman in history to win a CMA award for Song of the Year — but she did so only because of a white man, Luke Combs, and his viral cover of the song. In other words, while there may be some logistical arguments behind the industry’s snub of Beyoncé that have nothing to do with identity, the CMA has a noticeable pattern of erasing and sidelining Black women, even in their own art. Beyoncé is actively aware of this gatekeeping; Cowboy Carter is built on the marginalized contributions of centuries of Black artists that came before her. It’s hardly any wonder she distanced herself and her album from the country establishment from the start; she likely knew well before the rest of us that the CMAs were never going to let her in the door — even with the entire world clamoring for her to be let in.

HBO has released a trailer for its new series sticking it to the likes of the MCU and DC's Batman Epic Crime Saga.