Technology

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• 44-liter backpack inspired by Apple's earbuds
• Two giant pods and a laptop sleeve inside
• On sale 25 July 2025

The design studio and clothing brand that brought you Foot Clogs (clogs that look like feet) Toe Slides (sliders that look like giant toes) and the Rock Shoe (which, of course, is a shoe that looks like a rock) has done it again: the AIRPACK is an AirPods-inspired backpack that looks like a giant AirPods case.

The inspiration doesn't stop on the outside. Open up the clamshell-style zipper and there are two pods inside – but instead of giant earbuds, they're pouches for flexible storage. There's also a dedicated laptop sleeve to keep your MacBook safe. (I assume you have a MacBook if you're buying this.)

The AIRPACK "reimagines tech minimalism as streetwear utility," Hypebeast says, and it's part of Bravest Studios' tradition "of transforming everyday objects into wearable art".

And you can use it to pretend you've been zapped by a shrink ray, which is definitely a bonus.

A post shared by Bravest Studios New York (@bravest)

A photo posted by on

Bravest Studios AIRPACK: price and release date

I have to admit, I love the irreverence that Bravest brings to some of its designs: while most of its products are pretty sensible, it's the more out-there stuff that gets the headlines and gets people talking. And to go with the AIRPACK there's an equally irreverent collection of imagery that deliberately apes the iconic iPod ads.

I don't like it enough to actually buy an AIRPACK, mind you: 44 liters is absolutely massive for a daily backpack, and the AirPods case-styled shape looks overly wide.

I very much doubt I'd be able to have it as carry-on luggage on a budget airline, and wearing one on the subway's likely to make me extremely unpopular. But I like that it exists, and at a reported price of $130 (about £96 / AU$197), I suspect the limited run will sell out very quickly when online sales go live on 25 July.

Maybe I'll treat myself to a pair of Toe Slides instead.

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• Microsoft pays billions to inject manure underground to cancel out AI carbon emissions
• Vaulted Deep turns sewage and manure into a climate fix buried 5,000 feet down
• Carbon offset prices may drop, but right now, each ton costs around $350

Microsoft is once again spending heavily on carbon removal - but this time, the strategy is not based on futuristic machinery or carbon-scrubbing forests, but instead involves waste, specifically human and animal excrement, manure, and agricultural byproducts.

The company has entered into a multi-year agreement with Vaulted Deep to dispose of this organic material by injecting it underground.

The method is designed to prevent decomposition from releasing carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.

An underground solution to an atmospheric problem

According to Inc., Vaulted Deep will handle the burial of 4.9 million metric tons of waste over the next 12 years.

While the company reportedly charges $350 per ton for carbon removal, CEO Julia Reichelstein clarified, “the mentioned price isn’t the actual sum that the tech giant paid” and added that costs are expected to drop over time.

Still, if the listed price were accurate, the deal could exceed $1.7 billion in value, but at the moment, no exact figure has been disclosed by either side.

The rationale behind this method is rooted in preventing the harmful effects of current waste disposal practices.

“Generally, what happens to these wastes today is they go to a landfill, they get dumped in a waterway, or they’re just spread on land for the purpose of disposal. In all of those cases, they’re decomposing into CO2 and methane,” said Reichelstein.

“That’s contributing to climate change. And then oftentimes, especially when it’s spread on land, all those pathogens are going directly into people’s groundwater.”

Vaulted Deep’s process involves converting waste into a dense slurry and then pumping it more than 5,000 feet below the surface.

This approach not only locks the material away from the atmosphere but also bypasses the ecological risks associated with surface-level disposal.

The idea may seem unconventional, but it fits into a broader pattern of tech companies scrambling for scalable carbon offset strategies.

Microsoft, along with other cloud giants like Google and Amazon, is confronting the environmental cost of data centers, facilities that require massive energy input, often from fossil-fuel sources.

With AI workloads intensifying this demand, the need to find creative mitigation solutions has grown urgent.

Earlier in 2025, Microsoft also partnered with AtmosClear to sequester 6.75 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, showing its willingness to explore different strategies.

That said, it is unclear how scalable or sustainable the waste-to-carbon-offset method will be in the long term, especially if costs remain high and public perception turns critical.

Via TomsHardware

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It looks like both AOL and Yahoo are suffering from an outage affecting their email services, as users have flocked online to report to Downdetector that they can't send, receive or indeed access their emails.

"We understand some users are currently experiencing difficulties accessing their accounts. We are actively investigating this issue and will provide updates as soon as more information becomes available. We appreciate your patience and apologize for any inconvenience this may," AOL's customer service has posted on X.

Let's dig into this as it develops...

AOL took to X to post that it's experiencing outage problems with it email service.

We understand some users are currently experiencing difficulties accessing their accounts. We are actively investigating this issue and will provide updates as soon as more information becomes available. We appreciate your patience and apologize for any inconvenience this may…July 24, 2025

Yahoo has basically said the same as AOL on X: "We understand some users are currently experiencing difficulties accessing their accounts. We are actively investigating this issue and will provide updates as soon as more information becomes available. We appreciate your patience and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause."

It's seems to be a day for outages as over in the UK, network provider EE is also suffering an outage, which also appears to be ongoing.

Looking at the Downdetector report for AOL, it seems to be specifically affecting the email side of its services.

"I'm in Alabama. I can log in and it show's I have email but the messages says there was an error fetching the items in the list. I used MS Outlook and am getting a sync error for my AOL account. This SUCKS! I sell Real Estate and this is one of the WORST things that could happen!!!" said one user on Donwdetector.

It seems to me that this outage has been going on for AOL from around 10am ET.

And there have been growing reports on Downdetector, which would indicate this issue is becoming widespread in the US.

In the UK there was a spike of AOL outage reports, again pertaining to emails but the outage seems a lot smaller; that could be down to fewer UK users than in the US.

The same could be said for Yahoo Mail in the UK, though it seems to me that on the Downdetector page, reports of problems could be abating.

As one might expect, there's not a lot of friendly sentiment for Yahoo on X, with one user noting: "Yahoo email is so unreliable. Time to find something better, and that shouldn't be too hard."

Yahoo email is so unreliable. Time to find something better, and that shouldn't be too hard.July 24, 2025

Equally, and a little like me, some people have expressed wry bemusement that people are still using Yahoo email...

TIL people are still using Yahoo for thingsJuly 24, 2025

There's a little bit of inconsistency in how the outage seems to be affecting Yahoo Mail users, with some saying they can log into their email but aren't getting any messages, while others are noting they can't aces any of their emails, with error messages being thrown up.

Things aren't exactly rosy for AOL either, with responses to the company's X account noting the outage is somewhat widespread in the States and affecting different devices.

This user isn't happy...

I guess this what we get for keeping aol as our email. I've had it since 1998. RidiculousJuly 24, 2025

So why are AOL and Yahoo both suffering an outage? Well they merged into one company so are almost certainly sharing infrastructure, meaning an outage for one brand is likely to affect the other.

With so many email clients and services one might think an AOL/Yahoo outage could be glossed over a little but as one Downdetector poster notes: "RIP. Can't retrieve MFA codes."

So if you're using such an email service to handle multi-factor authentication then you might be a little stuck.

Still nothing new from Yahoo or AOL on how long this outage will last or what's caused it.

I can't see any outages for cloud platform providers that could be affecting email service servers and supporting infrastructure, so I'm a little limited on how much I can speculate as to the cause of this email outage.

Interestingly, the sign-up page for AOL email still appears to be active...

I kind of feel sorry for small businesses when these forms of email outages occur, as they probably lack the resources and backup systems to mitigate for such outages.

Down on desktop, app and iPhone in Massachusetts. Please keep us updatedJuly 24, 2025

So if you look at this image, you can see it's not a good look for AOL's email in Downdetector, but perhaps the number of outage reports have peaked...

(Image credit: Downdetector)

It's understandably a similar situation for Yahoo on Downdetector, as you can see below...

(Image credit: Downdetector)

No hint of when a fix will be made for Yahoo. And I feel this X user's frustration...

What is the time frame to have this issue fixed? I really need to access my EmailJuly 24, 2025

AOL is being equally quiet...

But oddly it seems like AOL email is working on iPhone for some users.

AOL mail is down online but available on an iPhone.July 24, 2025

Totally get this could be a big ol' issue for Yahoo email users too:

When an important website (like a bank) sent a code to your email to sign in but your email is unavailable....What happens to the code or other info that was sent to this email? @YahooCare @yahoomail pic.twitter.com/YPlCJ3z2pgJuly 24, 2025

(Image credit: Google; Shutterstock)

I'm a Microsoft and Gmail email user so tend to have backups for certain important authentication services. But it's not a fool proof method, especially if you can't use a backup or secondary email.

If I couldn't get a bank code due to an email outage, I'd be rather upset... I'm not the most patient of people.

AOL's main website, including its search and news functions are all operating fine, so this does appear to be an outage exclusively linked to email services.

Hmmm I'm seeing some murmurings that AOL email could slowly be coming back with Downdetector user MelissaW noting "It looks like it works, but will not delete email or let you look in folders. Gives an error message."

Certainly doesn't look look like the email issue is fixed, but sporadic returns of service may be an indicator that AOL is trying out fixes.

A scathing comment about AOL by one Stephen Jackson on Downdetector: "AOL too busy bombarding us with their ever switching non-stop spam, instead of focusing on making sure their email works."

On the Yahoo Downdetector page it looks like some of the service is coming back with one RL Ross noting: "It seems to be coming back up - just got my emails from this morning, finally."

"Mine just came back," said Downdetector user Pamela. So things are looking up.

This message still remains at the top of AOL's Help page: "We are aware some users are experiencing issues accessing their AOL Mail, or displaying their mailbox. We are working to resolve this as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience as our engineers work to remedy this concern."

(Image credit: Lance Ulanoff)

Looks like AOL email could be back up in South Florida, New York City, Langhorne, Washington, Los Angeles and North Carolina, according to a clutch of Downdetector users.

We got an email from a reader called Barbara Callahan who said the following: "I have been following you about AOL outage. Thank you for ALL the updates am on Long Island NY and mine seems to be up and working now."

So it looks like all is slowly getting well with Yahoo and AOL's email services. Expect a few hiccups or perhaps some lost emails or ones stuck in drafts.

"The outage today ate some emails. I have a gap of about 3-4 hours of emails that I never received that I know were sent. Yikes." said a Downdetector user on the Yahoo page.

With AOL some users are suggesting a restart of the app, and that's something I'd recommend after an outage, so consider it a good tip.

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• Radeon AI Pro R9700 confirmed for July 23 launch with 32GB GDDR6 memory
• Early partner listings show pricing between $1244 and $1277 depending on model
• The GPU is built for demanding workloads like AI, rendering, and local model inference workflows

AMD's Radeon AI Pro R9700, its fastest GPU to date, is on sale now, priced as low as $1,244.

While AMD hasn’t confirmed exact pricing at the time of writing, recent listings from board partners, spotted by Benchlife, give a good idea of what to expect.

The listings show Sapphire's models priced at $1,244 and $1,277, while ASRock's version, available to pre-order on Tech-America is listed at $1,267. That puts the probable midpoint at around $1,259.

Built for professionals

First shown at Computex 2025, the R9700 is built on the RDNA 4 architecture and uses the Navi 48 GPU. (Fun fact: Its name is a nod to the original 9700 Pro made by ATI which outperformed Nvidia products back in 2002 and helped shift the market. AMD went on to acquire ATI a few years later.)

The card comes with 32GB of GDDR6 memory, twice that of the Radeon RX 9070 XT, which shares the same core but is aimed at gamers.

That memory runs at 20000MHz over a 256-bit interface, delivering 640GB/s of bandwidth, and could make a real difference for professional users working with big datasets, training models, or juggling multiple pro apps.

By cutting down on memory swaps to RAM, the R9700 aims to keep things running smoother during demanding workflows.

The dual-slot form factor and blower-style cooling are aimed at multi-GPU setups inside professional workstations.

The card offers up to 47.8 TFLOPS in single-precision performance and up to 1531 TOPS in INT4 operations. It packs 128 AI accelerators and supports most modern media codecs, including AV1, H.264, and H.265 for encoding and decoding.

The card connects via PCIe 5.0 and features multiple output ports, including DisplayPort 2.1a and HDMI 2.1b.

Custom models from the likes of ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte, Sapphire, XFX, and Yeston will be available to buy in the coming months.

These designs will include different cooling setups or small tweaks, but the GPU core and memory will remain the same.

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In the race to lead the world in AI, the US just took a back seat. President Donald Trump's latest series of Executive Orders makes it clear that his administration will do all it can to prevent future AI models from taking into consideration any form of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

This includes core principles like "unconscious bias", "intersectionality", and "systemic racism". Put another way, Trump wants American-made AI to turn a blind eye to history, which should make all of them significantly dumber.

Generative chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude AI, Perplexity, and others are all trained on vast swathes of data, often pulled from the Internet, but how they interpret that data is also massaged by developers.

As people started to interact with these first LLMs, they soon recognized that, because of inherent biases in the Internet and because so many models were developed by white men (in 2020, 71% of all developers were male and roughly half of all developers were white) that the world view of the AIs and the output generated by any given prompt reflected that of the sometimes limited viewpoints of those online and developers who built the models.

There was an effort to change that trajectory, and it coincided with the rise of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), a broad-based effort across corporate America to hire a more diverse workforce. This would naturally include AI developers and their resulting model and algorithm work should mean that modern generative AI better reflects the real world.

That, of course, is not the world that the Trump Administration wants reflected in US-built AI. The executive order describes DEI as a "pervasive and destructive" ideology.

What comes next

Trump and company cannot dictate how tech companies build their AI models, but, as others have noted, Google, Meta, OpenAI, and others are all seeking to land large AI contracts with the government. Based on these Executive Orders, the US Government won't be buying or promoting any AI "that sacrifice truthfulness and accuracy to ideological agendas."

That "truth," though, represents a small slice of American reality. If the Trump administration is successful, future AI models could be in the dark about, for instance, key parts of American history.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) looks at the role racism played in the founding and building of the US. It acknowledges how the enslaved helped build the White House, the US Capitol, the Smithsonian, and other US institutions. It also acknowledged how systemic racism has shaped opportunities (or lack thereof) for people of color.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that the Trump administration and his supporters around the US have fought to dismantle CRT curricula and wipe out any mention of how enslavement shaped the US.

In their current state, though, AI still knows the score.

As of today, I can quiz ChatGPT about the role of the enslaved in building the US, and I get this rather detailed result:

Image 1 of 2

(Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 2

(Image credit: Future)

When I quizzed ChatGPT on its sources, it told me:

"While I don’t pull from a single source, the information I shared is grounded in extensive historical research and consensus among historians. Below is a list of reputable sources and scholarly works that support each point I made. These references include academic books, museum archives, and university projects." Below that, it listed more than a dozen references.

When I asked Gemini the same question, it gave me a similarly detailed answer.

I then asked Gemini and ChatGPT about "unconscious bias" and both acknowledged that it's been an issue for AI, though ChatGPT corrected me, noting, "technically, it’s 'algorithmic bias,' rooted in the data and design rather than the AI having consciousness."

ChatGPT and Gemini only know these things because they've been trained on data that includes these historical references and information. The details make them smarter, as facts often do. But for Trump and company, facts are stubborn things. They cannot be changed or distorted, lest they are no longer facts.

The great unlearning

If the Trump administration can force potential US AI partners to remove references to biases, institutional racism, and intersectionality, there will be significant blind spots in US-built AI models. It's a slippery slope, too. I imagine future executive orders targeting a fresh list of "ideologies" that Trump would prefer to see removed from generative AI.

That's more than just a frustration. Say, for example, someone is trying to build economic models based on research conducted through ChatGPT or Gemini, and historical data relating to communities of color is suppressed or removed. Those trends will not be included in the economic model, which could mean the results are faulty.

It might be argued that AI models built outside the US without these restrictions or impositions might be more intelligent. Granted, those from China already have significant blind spots when it comes to Chinese history and the Communist Party's abuses.

I'd always thought that our Made in America AI would be untainted by such censorship and filtering, that our understanding of old biases would help us build better, purer models, ones that relied solely on facts and data and not one person or group's interpretation of events and trends.

That won't be the case, though, if US Tech companies bow to these executive orders and start producing wildly filtered models that see reality through the prism of bias, racism, and unfairness.

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It's still in beta, so there are bugs and other issues to go around, too.