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• With up to 600W power draw, the ROG XG Mobile is fast, but power-hungry
• Creative professionals are catered for —unless they’re on Mac
• Asus trims 18.2% off the size of this desktop-class powerhouse

Asus has introduced its latest external GPU, the ROG XG Mobile, which comes equipped with either an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti or the high-end RTX 5090.

Per Videocardz, the RTX 5090 model features 10,492 CUDA cores and 24GB of GDDR7 memory, making it one of the most powerful eGPU solutions available.

This device also features an updated design with a new hinge mechanism and a built-in stand, reducing its size by 18.2% while maintaining a compact, portable appearance — somewhat resembling a high-performance heater — at under 1kg.

A creative powerhouse — unless you use a Mac

The ROG XG Mobile comes with Thunderbolt 5 connectivity supporting transfer speeds of up to 80Gbps. However, it remains backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 4 and USB4.

Additionally, it serves as an expansion laptop docking station, offering multiple connectivity options, including USB Type-A ports, an SD card reader, HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 2.1, and a 5G Ethernet port capable of speeds up to 5000Mbps.

Cooling is a major focus of the new ROG XG Mobile; Asus has integrated a vapor chamber and dust filter, increasing the cooling surface by 54% compared to previous models.

Its redesigned rear-side vents contribute to quieter operation, reducing noise levels by 3dB. The device also includes an integrated 350W power supply, but with the RTX 5090’s high power demands, total system consumption can reach up to 600W under load.

Asus has priced the RTX 5070 Ti version at $1,999, with the device set to launch on February 25, coinciding with NVIDIA’s official preorders for the RTX 50-series laptop GPUs. While the price for the RTX 5090 model has not been confirmed, it's expected to be significantly higher.

This eGPU is a compelling option for professionals using business laptops who need high-end GPU power in a portable setup. However, for Mac users, the news isn’t as promising. Apple Silicon chips, from the M1 to the latest M4, do not support eGPUs, leaving many creatives without an external GPU option.

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Approximately 500 NIST staffers, including at least three lab directors, are expected to lose their jobs at the standards agency as part of the ongoing DOGE purge, sources tell WIRED.

Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos says the money will go toward projects like Alfonso Cuarón’s film Roma, which was made in Mexico and went on to international acclaim.

Republicans welcomed Kash Patel's confirmation, seeing him as someone who can fix the FBI's alleged targeting of conservatives in recent years.

(Image credit: Anna Moneymaker)

This spring, MLB players can challenge ball and strike calls. The camera-based system is only an experiment for now — but it has the baseball world wondering where to draw the line with technology.

(Image credit: Phil Long)

President Trump's effort to "rein in" independent agencies is raising particular concern among those who follow the work of the Federal Election Commission, which enforces campaign finance laws.

(Image credit: Roberto Schmidt)

The IRS is cutting more than 6,000 jobs this week, as part of the Trump administration's downsizing of the overall federal workforce. The job cuts at the IRS come in the middle of the tax-filing season.

(Image credit: Tasos Katopodis)

As the US officially designates six Mexican cartels as terrorist groups, Mexico's president warns the United States against any violation of its territory.

(Image credit: Marco Ugarte)

A spokesperson for the Kennedy Center says the threat targeted Shen Yun, a touring dance troupe that is banned in China, because it is associated with the religious group Falun Gong.

(Image credit: Jacquelyn Martin)

• Google researchers are warning of an ongoing phishing campaign
• It distributes QR codes which grant the attackers access to people's Signal accounts
• The targets are mostly military personnel, experts warn

Russian state-sponsored threat actors have been increasingly targeting Signal Messenger users, with QR code-powered phishing attacks, malware, and more, experts have warned

A report from Google’s Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) notes Signal’s use among military personnel, politicians, journalists, activists, and other high-risk groups has lately become widespread, triggering Russian state-sponsored threat actors’ increasing interest, particularly since the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war.

As a result, different threat actors (most notably APT44 and UNC5792) have been trying to abuse the “linked devices” feature in the attack. Linked devices allows users to connect multiple devices, such as laptops, tablets, and mobile devices, to the same account. To simplify the login process, users can scan a QR code from a device that’s already logged in, instead of typing in a password, or registering a new service.

QR codes

That being said, cybercriminals have started sending out phishing emails with invites to fake groups, different security alerts, and similar, which also carry a QR code. If the victim scans it, the attacker’s device gets logged into their account, getting access to contacts, messages, and more.

Since the phishing email doesn’t carry a malicious link, or attachment, that can be scanned by email security solutions, these emails often make it past filters and into people’s inboxes.

Beyond phishing, Russian and Belarusian threat groups are also using malware and specialized tools to exfiltrate Signal messages directly from compromised Android and Windows devices.

These efforts include scripts like WAVESIGN, which periodically extracts messages from Signal’s database, and Infamous Chisel, a known Android malware variant. Other actors, such as Turla and UNC1151, have leveraged PowerShell and command-line utilities to steal stored Signal messages from compromised computers, as well.

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• OnePlus is looking for FDA approval for its Sleep Apnea detection feature
• The OnePlus Watch 3 launched without FDA certification for its ECG feature
• Without FDA approval, these features are unusable in the US

OnePlus is hoping the OnePlus Watch 3 could get FDA approval for its new sleep apnea detection feature, bringing it one step closer to rivaling the best Apple Watches.

We’ve been testing the OnePlus Watch 3 all this week, and it’s a powerhouse of a watch. With five days (120 hours) of battery life, sophisticated health tracking, and all Wear OS 5’s smarts and third-party apps at its metaphorical fingertips, it’s looking likely to end up on our best Android watches list.

However, one area where it cannot compete with Apple’s watches is its features’ approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). With FDA certification seen as the gold standard for health-based features, the OnePlus Watch 3’s ECG feature failed to receive this certification in time for launch, leaving ithe feature unusable for potential US users.

Not to be deterred, OnePlus is seeking FDA regulatory approval for a different feature, sleep apnea detection, first identified by Wareable during an interview with OnePlus' Dr. Leo Zhang, Head of Research & Development. Sleep apnea is one of the features scanned for as part of the OnePlus Watch 3’s 60-second Health Check-In feature, alongside snoring detection, oxygen saturation, and other night-time metrics.

During the Apple Watch Series 10 launch in September 2024, Apple made much out of its new Breathing Disturbances feature, which notifies users that they may be experiencing signs of sleep apnea and recommends they check in with a medical professional. The feature was FDA-approved days after the device’s launch.

OnePlus has a significant advantage over Apple regarding sleep tracking, and that’s battery life. Compared to the Apple Watch’s meager 18 hours, the OnePlus’ 120-hour behemoth can go from day to night with no charge in between. Apple gets fast charging, but if you forget to charge it, you’re still likely left with a dead watch in the morning.

Adding an FDA-approved sleep apnea detection feature could be a major kudos for OnePlus – although given the gulf between Android and the best watches for iPhone, it’s unlikely this will be the deciding factor for users looking to switch operating systems.

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• 1More's new ANC headphones cost just $50 / £60
• Hi-Res USB-C Audio, LDAC, and spatial audio
• A 90 hour battery life (60 hours with ANC on)

Audio brand 1More has now released a new entry in its budget ANC headphone line, and you’re getting a lot for the price of just $59 / £59 (about AU$119) – they're only $50 in the US for the launch (via DigitalTrends).

The new SonoFlow SE HQ31 over-ear headphones are a new iteration on last year’s SonoFlow SE model, keeping the latter’s low price tag while packing in plenty of more premium capabilities.

This time, 1More has borrowed some features from its higher-end SonoFlow Pro model, adding support for Hi-Res and spatial audio, making these headphones a great choice for those who want high tech on a low budget.

• See the 1More SonoFlow SE HQ31 at Amazon US
• See the 1More SonoFlow SE HQ31 at Amazon UK

The main improvement seems to be the addition of a wired connection over USB-C – USB-C to 3.5mm cable included – for higher-quality sound, compared to the wireless-only predecessor. But the new SonoFlow SE headphones also appear to almost double the former model’s battery life, from 50 hours to a claimed 90 hours without ANC. That’s four days of continuous use!

Even with ANC turned on, you're promised 60 hours, matching the highest number you get from premium options in our list of the best noise cancelling headphones.

Softer edges, but no more travel case for carrying these headphones around... (Image credit: 1More) Fir Green, or Wine Red?

Other specifications include fast charging, Bluetooth 5.4 support, 40mm drivers, and AI-boosted ANC for reducing 42 decibels’ worth of ambient noise.

The company has good form for ANC specifically, even in affordable headphones: in our 1More SonoFlow review last year, we said they would “should suit most office environments and commutes, cutting back most of the lows and mids you’ll hear throughout the day”, and we’ll report back from our own tests when we get our hands on the new model.

There are some changes to the design, opting for softer, more rounded edges; and while these headphones are still foldable for travel, there’s no longer a hard carry case included in the purchase, so you’ll either have to source your own travel solution or be content with these cans rattling around in your backpack.

The SonoFlow SE HQ31 headphones are available now in four different colorways including Black, Blue, Pink and White.

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The PowerShot V1 is a video-centric compact camera featuring an all-new, and surprisingly large, image sensor.

While satisfaction numbers are up 4% from 2023, internet service providers are still near the bottom of all industries covered by the ACSI.

We’ve reviewed Norway’s internet providers and found the fastest, most affordable options for you.

• SambaNova runs DeepSeek-R1 at 198 tokens/sec using 16 custom chips
• The SN40L RDU chip is reportedly 3X faster, 5X more efficient than GPUs
• 5X speed boost is promised soon, with 100X capacity by year-end on cloud

Chinese AI upstart DeepSeek has very quickly made a name for itself in 2025, with its R1 large-scale open source language model, built for advanced reasoning tasks, showing performance on par with the industry’s top models, while being more cost-efficient.

SambaNova Systems, an AI startup founded in 2017 by experts from Sun/Oracle and Stanford University, has now announced what it claims is the world’s fastest deployment of the DeepSeek-R1 671B LLM to date.

The company says it has achieved 198 tokens per second, per user, using just 16 custom-built chips, replacing the 40 racks of 320 Nvidia GPUs that would typically be required.

Independently verified

“Powered by the SN40L RDU chip, SambaNova is the fastest platform running DeepSeek,” said Rodrigo Liang, CEO and co-founder of SambaNova. “This will increase to 5X faster than the latest GPU speed on a single rack - and by year-end, we will offer 100X capacity for DeepSeek-R1.”

While Nvidia’s GPUs have traditionally powered large AI workloads, SambaNova argues that its reconfigurable dataflow architecture offers a more efficient solution. The company claims its hardware delivers three times the speed and five times the efficiency of leading GPUs while maintaining the full reasoning power of DeepSeek-R1.

“DeepSeek-R1 is one of the most advanced frontier AI models available, but its full potential has been limited by the inefficiency of GPUs,” said Liang. “That changes today. We’re bringing the next major breakthrough - collapsing inference costs and reducing hardware requirements from 40 racks to just one - to offer DeepSeek-R1 at the fastest speeds, efficiently.”

George Cameron, co-founder of AI evaluating firm Artificial Analysis, said his company had “independently benchmarked SambaNova’s cloud deployment of the full 671 billion parameter DeepSeek-R1 Mixture of Experts model at over 195 output tokens/s, the fastest output speed we have ever measured for DeepSeek-R1. High output speeds are particularly important for reasoning models, as these models use reasoning output tokens to improve the quality of their responses. SambaNova’s high output speeds will support the use of reasoning models in latency-sensitive use cases.”

DeepSeek-R1 671B is now available on SambaNova Cloud, with API access offered to select users. The company is scaling capacity rapidly, and says it hopes to reach 20,000 tokens per second of total rack throughput "in the near future".

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