Month: July 2025

The Pixel 6a was a widely beloved phone when it launched in 2022, offering almost all the capabilities of the more expensive Pixel 6 phones at a much lower price. Just a few years into their Pixel love affair, though, owners have been dismayed to learn that a new software update will destroy the phone's battery life. Google says the update is necessary to limit the risk of battery failure, but it would seem that in at least one case, even this heavy-handed update wasn't enough—a user has reported their up-to-date Pixel 6a recently exploded overnight.

In early July, Google's monthly Pixel patch included a major change for the Pixel 6a. Due to the risk of battery fires, Google said that devices with more than 400 charge cycles could see their capacity and charging speed drastically reduced. The company offered a pittance in Google Store credit or a free battery swap in recompense, but taking advantage of either can be a pain. This came just months after a similar update rolled out to the Pixel 4a that killed its battery due to similar fire risks.

The mandatory Android 16 update will limit battery charging speed and capacity on affected phones. Credit: Ryan Whitwam

A Redditor using the handle /u/footymanageraddict has posted photos of a pile of slag that used to be a Pixel 6a (spotted by Android Authority). This is not the first public report of a catastrophically failed battery in a 6a—a string of similar fires in the spring led Google to release this controversial update. Importantly, this phone reportedly had the battery safety update installed, which was supposed to prevent this kind of occurrence.

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Tesla bringt derzeit keine neuen Modelle auf den Markt, aber zumindest abgewandelte Versionen des Model Y. (Tesla, Elektroauto)

The National Air and Space Museum welcomed the public into five more of its renovated galleries on Monday, including two showcasing spaceflight artifacts. The new exhibitions shine modern light on returning displays and restore the museum's almost 50-year-old legacy of adding objects that made history but have yet to become historical.

Visitors can again enter through the "Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall," which has been closed for the past three years and has on display some of the museum's most iconic items, including John Glenn's Friendship 7 Mercury capsule and an Apollo lunar module.

From there, visitors can tour through the adjacent "Futures in Space," a new gallery focused on the different approaches and technology that spaceflight will take in the years to come. Here, the Smithsonian is displaying for the first time objects that were recently donated by commercial spaceflight companies, including items used in space tourism and in growing the low-Earth orbit economy.

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Die Telekom will die alte Koaxialkabel-Infrastruktur mit Glasfaser überbauen. Der Digitalminister liege mit seiner Ausbauverpflichtung richtig, auch wenn es einen besseren Weg gebe. (Telekom, Vodafone)

Porn sites may have blown up Meta's key defense in a copyright fight with book authors who earlier this year said that Meta torrented "at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries" to train its AI models.

Meta has defeated most of the authors' claims and claimed there is no proof that Meta ever uploaded pirated data through seeding or leeching on the BitTorrent network used to download training data. But authors still have a chance to prove that Meta may have profited off its massive piracy, and a new lawsuit filed by adult sites last week appears to contain evidence that could help authors win their fight, TorrentFreak reported.

The new lawsuit was filed last Friday in a US district court in California by Strike 3 Holdings—which says it attracts "over 25 million monthly visitors" to sites that serve as "ethical sources" for adult videos that "are famous for redefining adult content with Hollywood style and quality."

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Der neue Wera Tool-Check Modular im großen Set mit Bits, Ratsche, Winkelschlüssel und Co. ist bei Amazon günstig wie dort nie. (Technik/Hardware)

Bis 21. September 2025 bietet die Golem Karrierewelt bis zu 25 Prozent Rabatt auf eine breite Auswahl an E-Learning-Kursen und -Paketen, ideal für die gezielte Weiterbildung in IT- und Sicherheitsbereichen. (Golem Karrierewelt, Software)

Mit Saug- und Wischfunktion übernimmt der Roborock gleich zwei Aufgaben im Haushalt auf einmal und ist knapp 50 Prozent reduziert. (Technik/Hardware, Roboter)

Dank PCIe-Schnittstelle sind SD-Express-Karten schnell wie SSDs, aber einfach zu tauschen. Nur vom Sinn ist der Bastler selbst nicht überzeugt. (Raspberry Pi, DIY - Do it yourself)

Ab August 2025 bietet Lidl Connect Flatrates mit kostenloser Nachbuch-Option. Die Tarife haben etwas bessere Konditionen als das Angebot von Aldi Talk. (Lidl, Mobilfunktarif)