Lenovo’s Project Crystal laptop looks like a Star Trek prop

It's Tuesday, February 27, 2024.

Lenovo’s Project Crystal is definitely sci-fi tech come to life. Currently, there are no plans to turn the concept laptop into a retail product. Yet. Instead, its ThinkPad division commissioned an exploration into the potential of transparent microLED panels and, sigh, AI integration.

The most obvious use for the transparent laptop display would be sharing info at a doctor’s office or hotel desk. Instead of needing to flip a screen around, you could simply reverse the device’s output via software. According to Sam Rutherford, the transparency effect is bewildering. When closed or turned off, Project Crystal’s screen almost looks like an ordinary piece of glass with a brownish tint. But at a moment’s notice, the whole thing lights up like a battleship. It’s definitely the most intriguing thing so far at MWC 2024. Catch all the announcements right here. No tricorders, though.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

The best Bluetooth trackers

Our favorite budget wireless earbuds are down to $53 right now

Google finally brings Wallet passes to Wear OS watches along with transit directions

You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!

Netflix removes grandfathered accounts’ access to Apple iTunes billing

If you’ve been paying through Apple, you will now have to pay directly.

If you’ve been paying Netflix through iTunes, you’ll soon have to say goodbye to your discounted rates. The company has confirmed to The Verge that it’s started removing users’ access to their iTunes billing plan for the streaming service. Members on the basic plan paying through iTunes will now have to pay the company directly using a credit or a debit card. Netflix stopped letting new customers sign up for in-app subscriptions on Apple devices way back in 2018 to avoid giving the latter a commission.

Continue reading.

NVIDIA’s RTX 500 and 1000 Ada GPUs bring more AI smarts to thin and light laptops

They will debut in laptops this spring.

NVIDIA unveiled its latest laptop GPUs and, what a surprise, they’re largely to assist AI processing. The RTX 500 and 1000 Ada Generation graphics cards are primarily for thin and light laptops. While they won’t offer as much TOPS AI performance as current higher-end mobile GPUs, they could be handy for on-the-go AI processing for researchers, content creators and video editors. These are workstation GPUs, so they’re not for your gaming demands. The company says the GPUs, based on the Ada Lovelace architecture, offer up to twice the ray-tracing performance of previous-gen GPUs (they employ third-gen ray-tracing cores). Fourth-gen Tensor Cores, meanwhile, deliver up to twice the throughput of previous GPUs.

Continue reading.

This robot lawnmower runs Doom

We’re not sure why.

Landscaping technology company Husqvarna just announced the game will run on some of its robot lawnmowers. So you can mow down hellspawn and… grass. You play the game using the lawnmower’s onboard display. Rotating the control knob turns your character left and right and pressing the knob makes you shoot. Holding down the start button initiates forward movement.

Continue reading.