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You shouldn't have to spend a fortune on a great robotic pool cleaner--but apparently, you do. More difficult to clean than it should be. The market is stuffed to the gills with pool-scrubbing robots that cost thousands of dollars, and consumers are well justified in worrying whether that level of expense will ultimately be worthwhile. But there's also a subset of pool robots that go the other way--much simpler devices that cost well under $500, sometimes much less. It's here where we find the Poolease X1, a pint-sized robot that can be yours for barely over 100 bucks.

Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Say More Safety Net Creator Hub Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable Selects Switch Off Trending Now In My Bag VidCon with Mashable All Series Hint: You'll be waiting a little while. The final hearing on the settlement for the Apple Siri AI class action lawsuit is scheduled for next year. If you're looking forward to your Siri AI settlement check of up to $95 from Apple, it looks like you'll be waiting a little while longer. Apple's settlement in the Siri AI-related class action lawsuit received preliminary approval last month. According to a new court document, the final approval hearing is now scheduled for February 24, 2027.

Versus Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Say More Creator Hub Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable Selects Switch Off Trending Now Safety Net In My Bag VidCon with Mashable All Series Expect more banned products in the future, experts warn. Chase joined Mashable's Social Good team in 2020, covering online stories about digital activism, climate justice, accessibility, and media representation. Will you still be able to buy robots in the U.S.? Kind of. Do you know where the robots running your home -- your Google Nest devices, AI-powered smart assistants, and, especially, your robovacuums -- come from? Well, the American government certainly wants you to.

Startups and Big Ag are using Crispr gene editing to create crops that taste better and grow on a hotter planet. But will they find a market? If you wanted to create better blackberries, you could try to breed a variety without the seeds that get stuck in your teeth. Or one without the thorns that make the berries hard to pick. Or you could aim for more environmentally efficient plants that produce more berries per acre with less water and fewer chemicals.

The tech industry is realizing it needs to build agents based on what regular consumers want, not just what its AI models can do. Silicon Valley is already convinced that AI agents are the future . In the heart of the tech industry, people are designing payment systems for agents, using them to automate their jobs, and most recently, trying to stop them from hacking into other organizations . But out in the real world, most people have never touched an AI agent. That might be because tech companies haven't given them a good reason to.

Trump's 50 percent Canada tariffs: What to know US President Donald Trump's administration has said it will expand a voluntary pledge seeking to shield consumers from the energy costs of the rapid expansion of data centres, mostly used by artificial intelligence companies. The White House announced on Thursday that it would add state governors and electricity companies to the agreement, first announced with tech and AI firms in March. But the US administration stopped short of any enforceable protections. The pledge is a "public commitment that hyperscalers, AI companies, and the utilities and data-center developers behind them will build, bring, or buy every kilowatt their facilities need -- and cover every dollar of the infrastructure that delivers it". It says consumers would not foot the bill for AI's energy needs.

The European Union has fined Google 890 million euros ($1bn), saying the technology giant broke digital antitrust rules by steering users of Google Play and its search engine towards its own services and apps at the expense of rivals. Thursday's penalty is the latest in Brussels' crackdown on Big Tech, which has seen the bloc lead the world in reining in the largest firms from Silicon Valley to Beijing. The European Commission, the bloc's executive branch, said it was acting in the interest of consumers. "The best products should succeed because they're better, not because they're owned by the company running the search engine. And European consumers have a right to be told by app developers where to sign up to the best offers, even when the app store owner does not get a cut," said Teresa Ribera, the commission's executive vice president for clean, just and competitive transition.

Follow this section to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. 'Learn, Unlearn, and Relearn': Business Leaders on How AI Is Changing Creative Work Follow this author to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW?

Firms' algorithm development practices are often homogeneous. Whether firms train algorithms on similar data or rely on similar pre-trained models, the result is correlated predictions. In the context of personalized pricing, correlated algorithms can be viewed as a means to collude among competing firms, but whether or not this conduct is legal depends on the mechanisms of achieving collusion. We investigate the precise mechanisms through a formal game-theoretic model. Indeed, we find that (1) higher correlation diminishes consumer welfare and (2) as consumers become more price sensitive, firms are increasingly incentivized to compromise on the accuracy of their predictions in exchange for coordination. We demonstrate our theoretical results in a stylized empirical study where two firms compete using personalized pricing algorithms. Our results demonstrate a new mechanism for achieving collusion through correlation, which allows us to analyze its legal implications. Correlation through algorithms is a new frontier of anti-competitive behavior that is largely unconsidered by US antitrust law.