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The awards, which come with a $50K purse, have helped launch the writing careers of many now well-known authors, including Colson Whitehead, Ocean Vuong, Alice McDermott and Jia Tolentino.

These tech accessories and devices will make getting to their final destination a breeze.

• Alphabet and Google CEO pledges major spending spree
• Sundar Pichai reaffirms plans for $75 billion investment
• "We are excited about the possibilities, and we can't wait to see what you'll build," Pichai says

Google's parent company Alphabet has reaffirmed its plans to spend billions on infrastructure capacity to boost the capabilities of AI and cloud computing.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, took to the stage at Google Cloud Next 25 in Las Vegas to praise the company's work in the space, and double down on its plans to spend big in the future.

The company is set to spend around $75 billion in 2025 alone to keep pushing the boundaries of what is possible with AI, despite worldwide concerns over the global economy.

Alphabet AI investment

"The chance to improve lives and reimagine things is why Google has been investing in AI for more than a decade," Pichai declared.

"We see it as the most important way we can advance our mission to organize the world's information, make it universally accessible and useful with Google Cloud...the opportunity with AI is as big as it gets," he notes.

"That's why we are investing in the full stack of AI innovation."

This includes the infrastructure powering AI, Pichai added, unveiling plans to spend $75 billion, covering servers and data centers, including powering its AI computer cloud business.

"We need our infrastructure to move at Google speed," he added, "with near zero latency, supporting services like search, Gmail and (Google) Photos) for billions of users worldwide."

Pichai revealed Google's network now spans more than 200 countries and territories, powered by over two million miles of fiber - and to boost that even further, he revealed Google is making its Cloud Wide Area Network open to businesses which are Google Cloud customers across the globe.

"We are excited about the possibilities, and we can't wait to see what you'll build," Pichai concluded.

"Our goal is to always bring out latest AI advances into the full layer of our stack, across products and platforms...getting advances into the hands of both consumers and enterprises is something we are really focused on - this is why we are able to innovate at the cutting edge and push the boundaries of what's possible for us and for you - the result: better, faster, and more innovation for everyone."

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• Google unveils Ironwood, its 7th-generation TPU
• Ironwood is designed for inference, the new big challenge for AI
• It offers huge advances in power and efficiency, and even outperforms El Capitain supercomputer

Google has revealed its most powerful AI training hardware to date as it looks to take another major step forward in inference.

Ironwood is the company's 7th-generation Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) - the hardware powering both Google Cloud and its customers AI training and workload handling.

The hardware was revealed at the company's Google Cloud Next 25 event in Las Vegas, where it was keen to highlight the great strides forward in efficiency which should also mean workloads can run more cost-effectively.

Google Ironwood TPU

The company says Ironwood marks "a significant shift" in the development of AI, making part of the move from responsive AI models which simply present real-time information for the users to process, towards proactive models which can interpret and infer by themselves.

This is essentially the next generation of AI computing, Google Cloud believes, allowing its most demanding customers to set up and establish ever greater workloads.

At its top-end Ironwood can scale up to 9,216 chips per pod, for a total of 42.5 exaflops - more than 24x the compute power of El Capitan, the world's current largest supercomputer.

Each individual chip offers peak compute of 4,614 TFLOPs, what the company says is a huge leap forward in capacity and capability - even at its slightly less grand configuration of "only" 256 chips.

However the scale can get even greater, as Ironwood allows developers to utilize the company's DeepMind-designed Pathways software stack to harness the combined computing power of tens of thousands of Ironwood TPUs.

Ironwood also offers a major increase in high bandwidth memory capacity (192GB per chip, up to 6x greater than the previous Trillium sixth-generation TPU) and bandwidth - able to reach 7.2TBps, 4.5x greater than Trillium.

"For more than a decade, TPUs have powered Google’s most demanding AI training and serving workloads, and have enabled our Cloud customers to do the same," noted Amin Vahdat, VP/GM, ML, Systems & Cloud AI.

"Ironwood is our most powerful, capable and energy efficient TPU yet. And it's purpose-built to power thinking, inferential AI models at scale."

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• Google is testing a new “Power Up” button in its Gemini app that upgrades your typed prompt
• The button will produce a clearer, more detailed prompt without multiple attempts
• The aim is to get better responses from Gemini immediately without needing to write perfect prompts

If you've ever used an AI chatbot, you know that figuring out how to phrase your prompts can make all the difference in getting a useful answer or gibberish. You can spend a long time fiddling with phrasing, word order, and detail level before stumbling upon the right way to ask the AI a question. Google is testing a new button for its Gemini AI assistant to help you get to that ideal prompt immediately. The upcoming “Power Up” button, found by Android Authority, gives your first attempt at a prompt a glow-up before you submit it to Gemini.

The idea is that instead of sweating over how to phrase your prompt to Gemini perfectly, you tap this button and let Gemini polish or 'power up' your initial attempt into something more detailed, more specific, and more likely to convey what you want to the AI model.

Gemini power

This matters a lot when you think about how much of the AI experience hinges on you and your ability to craft a prompt. You have to be specific but not too detailed, thorough but not so much as to distract from your main point. Sometimes, you even have to psychoanalyze the AI, figuring out weird quirks that may affect the result, like being polite or telling the AI not to be lazy.

I've often found it helpful to straight-up ask an AI chatbot for help crafting a prompt if I'm not sure what the best phrasing is to coax the information I want from the model. There are also some cases where the AI will automatically, but invisibly, reshape your prompt before answering. That can be helpful, but it might also be the culprit behind some of the more erratic responses you have seen.

The Power Up button would make it faster to get the right prompt and more transparent than just doing a behind-the-scenes polish. You write your prompt as usual, even if it's only half-formed, then hit Power Up and let Gemini heat up your scattered thoughts into a sharp inquiry worth submitting to the AI. The improved prompt then gets sent, and voilà, your AI assistant has a much better idea of how to help.

In some ways, this just expands on the suggestions for prompts you see from Gemini when you first open the chatbot. Those are much more generic than what the Power Up button might produce. It would also fit well into the other features providing variations on Gemini's output, like Deep Research, Canvas, and image creation with Imagen 3.

The Power Up button would be a relatively quiet kind of upgrade, but one that might serve Google's interests in preventing frustration among Google Gemini users who feel like they can't get the AI to fulfill their requests properly. It might also encourage those using other AI chatbots facing similar annoyances to come check out Gemini and its powered-up prompts.

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• Pico just debuted waist trackers that work just like its feet trackers
• It's out now for £39.99 (around $50 / AU$85)
• When we reviewed the Pico 4 Ultra, its motion trackers were the headset's best feature

Pico has just announced an upgrade to its best VR headset feature: a new motion tracker for your waist, and yet again, I’m left wishing my Meta Quest 3 could get this upgrade, too.

When I tested the Pico 4 Ultra last year, its best feature was the pair of motion trackers you could buy as an add-on. These often came included for free as part of a bundle during sales of the VR headset.

You’d attach them to your feet, and you could bring surprisingly accurate foot tracking to supported games. Combined with hand tracking, this led to supremely immersive experiences, as you could interact with your whole body as if you were really in virtual space.

(Image credit: Pico)

Now, that simple yet effective solution is coming to a brand new Pico Motion Tracker for your waist. In fact, the device is launching today (April 9, 2025) for £39.99 (around $50 / AU$85).

We haven’t been able to test the tracker for ourselves, but given how impressive the foot trackers are, we expect Pico’s new waist trackers will be solid, too, when used in supported titles such as VRChat and compatible PCVR titles through the Pico Connect feature.

I can see this waist tracker being perfect for VR exercising, dancing games, and allowing players to use new VR props like a hula hoop, but we’ll have to wait and see how it’s implemented.

(Image credit: Pico) Meta needs better body tracking

Meta does offer its own basic body tracking via your headset’s downward-facing cameras but it’s not the most robust solution. The AI it relies on is fairly good at predicting where your legs and body should be, but it isn’t always perfect. Further, it hasn’t been implemented into many VR apps in the way that Pico’s sophisticated solution has been.

While Pico’s motion tracking is superb, I’m still not convinced it’s the best headset option for most people.

It doesn’t have the same impressive software catalog you’ll find on Meta’s Quests, and it’s pricier than the Meta Quest 3S and Meta Quest 3 without offering a significant performance bump.

That coupled with it not being available to buy in every region the Meta Quest 3 is including the United States, and that it's a device that has struggled to build a name for itself except amongst VR enthusiasts who are staunchly anti-Meta.

Meta has yet to announce physical motion trackers for Quest – with its CTO shooting the idea down last year (via UplaodVR) – but I seriously hope that changes. They’re easily the best Pico feature, and the Meta Quest 3 would be much more versatile if it had access to the same tools.

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• Framework Laptop 12’s upgradable storage and modular design make it perfect for tech enthusiasts
• Offers a fully upgradeable device, a practical option for long-term use
• Originally designed for students, but every adult wants one

Framework Laptop 12 pre-orders are now live, and while originally designed for students, the company claims every adult who tried the device has shown interest in owning one.

This business laptop features a 12-inch touchscreen with a 1920x1200 resolution, over 400 nits of brightness, and both touch and stylus input capabilities.

Unlike most budget-friendly notebooks, the Framework Laptop 12 is powered by a 13th Gen Intel Core i5 CPU, coupled with up to 48GB of DDR5-5200 RAM and 2TB of NVMe storage. It exceeds expectations given its size, making it a good laptop for programming.

A practical solution for long-term use

The device is easily repairable and upgradeable. Its metal structure is wrapped with an overmolded, shock-absorbing TPU over rigid PC/ABS plastic.

You don’t have to worry about breaking it, as every component, from the battery to the display, is easily replaceable, with QR codes linking to repair guides.

Framework’s founder and CEO, Nirav Patel, said that the Framework Laptop 12 is, “the purest manifestation of our vision and product philosophy at Framework, and is in many ways the product I started the company to create.”

The Laptop 12 comes in five pastel color options with a color-matched stylus, supports Wi-Fi 6E, and includes four modular expansion slots, including USB, DisplayPort, and HDMI, all of which are user-upgradeable.

Taking cues from modular concepts like Lego, the Laptop 12 replaces internal cables with POGO pin connectors, simplifying repairs. The 360-degree hinge prioritizes laptop mode for everyday use, while enabling tablet functionality for note-taking.

This is likely to be a good laptop for engineering students or anyone who enjoys disassembling and reassembling devices, as the Framework Laptop 12 offers plenty of room for hands-on tinkering.

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