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Research and basic information on subjects ranging from tuberculosis surveillance to adolescent health disappeared from federal health agency websites.

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• Infineon's OC1230 is less than 4mm^2, smaller than a grain of rice
• You can fit nearly 40 of them in one nano SIM, the smallest physical SIM card on the market
• Infineon says it could fit in wearables like smart glasses or rings

Infineon Technologies has unveiled the world’s smallest GSMA-compliant eSIM solution - with dimensions of just 1.8 x 1.6 x 0.4 mm, the OPTIGA Connect Consumer OC1230 is smaller than a grain of rice and reduces printed circuit board (PCB) space requirements.

For scale, it's also 37 times smaller than the industry standard Nano SIM and 130 times smaller than a standard SIM.

The OC1230 supports remote SIM provisioning (RSP) and multiple-enabled profiles (MEP), allowing users to store and manage multiple network operator profiles remotely.

Ultra-compact eSIM technology

The company claims its eSIM is built on Infineon’s Integrity Guard 32 architecture and Arm v8 technology, delivering a 25% gain in power/performance ratio compared to existing eSIMs.

In addition to 5G connectivity, this ultra-compact chip could fit in wearables like smart watches, glasses or even rings, reduce energy consumption by up to 50%, and sustain the health of a device's lithium battery over time.

If you're yet to get in on the eSIM craze as a business smartphone user, I'd recommend it if you need to switch providers seamlessly on the move.

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• Apple's reportedly shelved plans for a pair of smart glasses that connected to the Mac
• According to Bloomberg, the glasses would have had "advanced projectors" for layering AR elements
• The smart glasses would have required a tether to the Mac

If there’s one thing for sure about 2025, it’s that the smart glasses sector is heating up with plenty of rumors about future Meta glasses that stretch beyond the readily available Ray-Ban ones, Samsung and Google working on a pair, and countless other competitors.

However, it seems that Apple’s reported work on a pair of AR smart glasses that would have connected to a Mac for power has been canceled or shelved this week, according to new reporting from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

The glasses themselves would have taken the design of regular glasses – much like Ray-Ban’s Meta smart glasses – with built-in displays and the ability to connect to a Mac to unlock fresh experiences. The product itself has been rumored for quite some time, and like the Apple Watch, it wouldn't have been an entirely standalone device.

The project, reportedly dubbed N107, would have had “advanced projectors that could display information, images and video in the field of view for each eye,” as described by Gurman. There can be comparisons made to Project Orion, which TechRadar got to demo and was impressed by, and like the Vision Pro – Apple’s $3,499 spatial computing headset – it can layer elements over the real world.

According to Gurman, the idea was to create smart AR glasses products for the masses, and the purported smart glasses would have fit that bill quite nicely, even if they required a connection to another device. It could have given Apple an offering at a lower price point than the Vision Pro and more in line with Ray-Ban Meta’s smart glasses or even the X-Real’s, which can also take a screen and broadcast it much larger with a pair of glasses.

Gurman writes, “The company shuttered the program this week, according to people with knowledge of the move.” Additionally, he shares that the internal testing wasn’t hitting the right mark with testers and that before Apple opted for the route of these connecting to a Mac, the original goal was an iPhone.

While this pair of Apple smart glasses is reportedly shelved – though, in classic Apple fashion, the company did not ever confirm its existence or development – the tech giant is reportedly still working on a more affordable Vision Pro, likely without ‘Pro’ in the name. At some point in the future, the goal is still to create “a set of standalone AR glasses.”

It’s clear that the eventual goal is glasses, as they are the most familiar design to consumers. Heck, I wear glasses every day, as do countless others, and this would likely lead to larger adoption. We’ve gotten a taste of these with Ray-Ban Metas, and while those lack a screen, the built-in cameras, speakers, and microphones do add some affordances, like snapping a photo without having to pull out your phone or listening to music while in a full, completely unobtrusive transparency mode.

This news comes right after Gurman shared more information on reportedly in the works AirPods with cameras, which could be seen as a way to go after the market currently filled by Meta's Ray-Ban. Potentially, even helping Apple Intelligence and Siri be more helpful through sight.

(Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)

We also know that Samsung and Google are working together on a pair of smart glasses running Android XR, but a headset dubbed ‘Project Moohan’ or whatever the actual product name might be will have to arrive first. Snapchat has a new pair of glasses that TechRadar’s editor-at-large Lance Ulanoff has tried, and Meta has Project Orion, which will likely arrive as a consumer product as early as 2027.

(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)

The experience that Apple created with Vision Pro is a compelling one, and definitely among the best mixtures of hardware, software, and features that I’ve tried. One of the biggest issues, though, is price – at $3,499, it’s not a product that you might just buy on a whirl, and Apple needs to work to get the price down. It’s clear that is a goal as well as giving future iterations a more comfortable, everyday form factor.

Gurman reaffirms that a more affordable Vision Pro headset is in the works and promises to share more soon in this latest report. Additionally, smart glasses that don’t require a tether from another device and other wearables, including AirPods with cameras, are still an eventual goal.

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• Unsupervised Full Self-Driving will launch in Austin, Texas in June
• Musk says more affordable models will see Tesla return to growth
• Sound familiar? Tesla's CEO has promised all of this before

Tesla’s quarterly earnings calls are always entertaining affairs, with the company’s CEO seemingly using them as a platform to wildly promise things that, more often than not, fail to materialize.

The most recent Q4, 2024 results revealed that the company missed its revenue expectations, which caused the Tesla share price to fall 4% following the news – although it did bounce back, according to Forbes.

Part of this can be blamed on the fact that Musk went full bluster mode with the assurance of several major milestones in 2025 – without the detail investors and the general public crave.

First up, Musk says the company will launch Unsupervised Full Sell-Driving as early as June this year, with the project due to be rolled out in Austin, Texas. However, rather than offer the service to the vast number of customers that have already paid to unlock the software, Musk says it will instead be a "paid service".

Details are, quite predictably, scarce, but the fact that it is being touted as a separate entity to customer-facing Full Self-Driving software likely means it will be appear in the form of a geofenced autonomous ride-hailing service. You know, similar to what Waymo is successfully doing. Waymo, a company that now operates in four major US cities.

In another move to bolster investor confidence, Musk also revealed that Tesla is intent on producing more "affordable" vehicles, which are tipped to be based on (and look eerily similar to) the Model 3 and Model Y, but cost in the region of $30,000 to $40,000 (roughly £28,000 / AU$55,000). Not the $25,000 car that was rumored last year.

Production of this more affordable model is slated to begin in the first half of 2025, according to Electrek, despite the company not revealing any details about design, specification or what the customer can expect.

Much of Elon Musk’s predicted growth for the business hinges on increasing levels of autonomous driving making its way to public roads, with the CEO reiterating that he thinks we will see unsupervised self-driving in California and Texas in the second quarter of 2025.

But this has been promised many times (as early as 2016) and the sentiment completely ignores the fact that the legal framework for allowing such technology on public roads still doesn’t exist.

Analysis: The bluster is getting boring

(Image credit: Tesla)

Elon Musk is a divisive character, and it’s easy to either get caught up in his wild clairvoyance or become frustrated by the amount of fantasy that is promised and rarely delivered.

It's part of the reason why the company has garnered such a loyal, and a times aggressive, fanbase. No other automaker splits opinion like Tesla.

It’s a shame, because this division takes so much away from what the company has achieved – chiefly creating one of the most reliable charging networks on the planet and producing not only the best-selling EVs but the best-selling car in the world (that’s the Model Y).

The focus on unsupervised self-driving seems counterintuitive, as rival companies, such as Waymo, are leagues ahead in the the geofenced, autonomous ride-hailing game, clocking up hundreds of thousands of miles without disengagement (where a human has to intervene) or incident.

Personally, I’d like to see Tesla get back to doing what it does best – chiefly producing EVs and technology that people want to buy, rather than this endless stream of memes, hype and wildly optimistic promises.

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A WIRED investigation shows that the popular Chinese AI model is censored on both the application and training level.

On the heels of DeepSeek R1, the latest model from OpenAI promises more advanced capabilities at a cheaper price.

The Chinese chatbot took the world by storm and rattled stock markets. But lost in all the attention was a focus on how the company is collecting and storing data.

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• Amazon is hiking prices for its Music Unlimited plans.
• The Music Unlimited individual plan without Prime is now the same price as Spotify.
• There's a bigger case to be made for another streaming service.

If you currently get your music fix courtesy of Amazon Music Unlimited, we have some bad news: whether you’re a Prime member or not, it’s about to get more expensive to listen to your favorite songs, albums, and playlists this way.

Amazon has announced a price hike for all tiers of its Amazon Music Unlimited streaming service and published an FAQ detailing the changes.

For Prime Members, an individual plan jumps to $10.99 a month from $9.99, and an annual subscription is now $109 from $99. Without Prime – though I’m not sure how many subscribers this might be – a Music Unlimited individual plan is going from $10.99 to $11.99.

If you’re subscribed as a family, that Music Unlimited Plan is getting the biggest increase at $19.99 monthly from $16.99 and $199.99 from $169.99 for a yearly plan.

For individuals, though, the increase now puts Music Unlimited without Prime at the same price as Spotify, $11.99 for an individual plan. Even with a Prime membership, Amazon Music Unlimited isn't as much of a bargain as it once was.

(Image credit: Amazon Music)

The new prices are in effect right now, as of January 29, 2025, for new customers, and folks already subscribed to Music Unlimited with or without the Prime member discount will see the new prices on or after March 5, 2025. It depends on when your billing cycle date falls.

Given the price hikes, opting for Amazon over Spotify or another streaming service becomes a bit harder to answer. I personally use both Apple Music and Spotify, and many of my colleagues favor one of these, especially for the Wrapped experience on the latter.

Sure, Amazon Music Unlimited offers the essentials, including ad-free streaming, playlists, and some curation. Further, it even offers HD audio and lossless, something that we’re still waiting for Spotify to match .. speaking of which, have we heard about Spotify Hi-Fi yet in 2025?

And what Amazon Music Unlimited lacks, let's say, in curation, Apple Music and Spotify more than make up for, not to mention with larger purported user bases, there’s a better chance some of your friends might be using one or two of them. Apple Music still offers radio stations and various playlists curated by artists, and Spotify has pushed with its AI DJ and ever-popular 'Daylist' offering.

Like Netflix’s reasoning for its price hikes earlier this month, Amazon is also touting more features in the future. In the FAQ, Amazon writes, “In order to bring you even more content and new features, we’re updating the price of select Amazon Music Unlimited plans.”

One benefit of Music Unlimited is that it easily integrates with Amazon Echo smart speakers and displays, but you can also switch to your preferred platform just as easily.

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• A new highjacking attack targets Chrome browsers
• It could steal all your browser data and even from your OS
• There are several ways for users to fight back

Whether you believe it to be the best web browser, Google Chrome is undoubtedly the most popular search engine by a landslide. For that reason, it remains a popular target for hackers as well. And now, a massive new threat is on the horizon, which could threaten billions of users.

A new attack called ‘Browser Syncjacking’ has been discovered by security researchers at the cybersecurity firm SquareX (reported on by BleepingComputer). Though it requires several steps, it’s shockingly easy for the average Chrome user to fall victim, as it needs minimal permissions.

First, a malicious Google Workspace domain is created with multiple user profiles, and security features like multi-factor authentication are disabled. This is used to create managed profiles in the background of the victim’s devices. Then, hackers will then create a malicious Chrome extension to launch on the official Chrome Store, appearing as a useful tool to attract potential victims.

Once any potential victims install the extension, it hides a browser window that runs in the background to log the victim into one of the Workspace profiles previously made. The final step involves tricking the victim into activating Chrome sync by opening a very real Chrome support page that’s been tampered with, then guiding them through turning on sync. If this happens, that person’s full Chrome account and stored data — including browsing history and passwords — are now available on the hacker’s profile.

From here, as SquareX explains, a victim’s entire browser can be taken over, often through a seemingly innocent Zoom invite that, if accepted, gets malicious content from that Chrome extension injected into it. If the victim falls for a prompt that asks to update Zoom, the update (actually an executable file that contains an enrollment token) will allow the hacker to control the browser completely.

Not only does this give hackers free reign over any data stored in your browser and allow them to spy on any websites you browse (and see any sensitive information you input), but it also allows them to access your OS to “install malware, capture keystrokes, extract sensitive data and even activate a device’s webcam and microphone,” as Tom’s Guide details.

How do you stay safe?

This all sounds overwhelming and even impossible to avoid since the attacks require so little input from users to get the ball rolling. But there are ways to keep your browser safe from harm.

The first is to avoid installing new Google Chrome extensions while limiting the ones you already have. If you really need to install anything new, make sure to research it and its developers for signs of suspicious activity.

It’s also essential to have the best antivirus software, which will automatically scan your PC or Mac regularly and immediately alert you to suspicious activity. It’s best to store passwords in the best password managers instead of in the browser, protecting them from hackers’ prying eyes.

There are always new attacks on the horizon, but it’s vital to stay vigilant in your online activity and be careful of extensions and software you download. This will always serve to protect your browser and computer.

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Kash Patel helped keep the QAnon movement alive on Truth Social, interacting with Q accounts, appearing on QAnon podcasts, and signing his children’s books with a QAnon catchphrase.