Author: sparta

**Gemini to Debut on Home Appliances for the First Time**

Samsung is poised to create a buzz at CES 2026 with the launch of Google Gemini on household appliances, signifying a key development in smart home innovation. This groundbreaking integration will first appear on Samsung’s latest Bespoke AI Refrigerator and an AI-equipped wine cellar, demonstrating the capabilities of AI in daily household products.

**Essential Information:**

– Samsung intends to reveal the incorporation of Google Gemini in home appliances, beginning with refrigerators and wine cellars at CES 2026.
– The Bespoke AI Refrigerator will boast improved recognition features, being able to identify a greater variety of food items, including processed options, without user intervention.
– An AI-driven wine cellar will be unveiled as well, with the ability to monitor wine bottles, their placements, and offer pairing suggestions utilizing Gemini.

**Gemini’s Infiltration into Home Appliances:**

Having been previously featured in smartphones, smartwatches, and vehicles, Gemini’s move into home appliances marks a new chapter for AI technology. Samsung’s event, “The First Look,” slated for January 4, 2026, will showcase these innovations, providing insights into the upcoming era of smart kitchens.

**Transforming Kitchen Appliances:**

The Bespoke AI Refrigerator Family Hub will incorporate enhanced AI Vision capabilities, enabling it to recognize a wider variety of food items, including those in personal containers. This functionality aims to simplify food oversight, minimizing the necessity for manual entry.

Beyond the refrigerator, Samsung’s new AI Wine Cellar will leverage Gemini to improve wine management. A strategically placed camera will recognize wine labels, updating the SmartThings AI Wine Manager instantaneously. This system will also deliver comprehensive details about wine storage locations and provide pairing recommendations based on the user’s collection.

**The Prospective Smart Kitchen Landscape:**

While Samsung fans look forward to new gadgets like the Galaxy Z TriFold and the Galaxy S26 series, the inclusion of Gemini in kitchen appliances is a significant advancement. Whether this breakthrough will be a practical enhancement for households is yet to be determined, but it undoubtedly lays the groundwork for a new age of smart home technology.

Stay tuned for live updates from CES 2026 to witness these pioneering devices in action.

Google’s AI-driven notebook, NotebookLM, has recently received major enhancements, now utilizing Gemini 3, which replaces the earlier Gemini 2.5 Flash version. This update brings Google’s “most advanced model” to the platform, boosting its reasoning and multimodal comprehension skills. The integration of Gemini 3 enables users to effortlessly merge their notebooks and references into Gemini dialogues, enhancing project oversight and data visualization with tools like Data Tables, which can be exported to Google Sheets.

The shift to Gemini 3 was eagerly awaited, as Google highlighted it as a highly requested feature. In the past, users had to switch to the Gemini application to utilize the latest models, but now, Gemini 3 powers the AI functionalities directly within NotebookLM, including its chatbot. This adjustment streamlines access to sophisticated AI features within user projects.

While it remains unclear if NotebookLM employs Gemini 3 Pro or the more efficient Gemini 3 Flash, the latter seems to be a probable option due to its speed and affordability. Nevertheless, the update signifies a notable improvement in the application’s AI functionalities, following a trend of swift enhancements, including the recent introduction of chat history support on mobile and web interfaces. Users can enjoy these developments in the NotebookLM application, although there is no specific model selector or badge that denotes the update.

Metadata from 256 million songs is currently being shared through torrents, and accessing streaming music without payment may soon be simpler than ever. Libraries remain a valuable source for physical media, whether books, audio CDs, DVDs, or other content formats. However, one aspect libraries have yet to consistently provide to the wider community is digital content. While many digital libraries exist online, issues regarding piracy and fair compensation for media rights holders complicate this experience. This is a challenge that Anna’s Archive, self-described as “the largest truly open library in human history,” is endeavoring to address.

In a truly remarkable development, Anna’s Archive announced that it has backed up nearly all of the music available on Spotify. The blog post from December 20 reveals that Anna’s Archive “found a method to scrape Spotify at scale,” and the team “saw an opportunity to build a music archive primarily focused on preservation.” The data backup includes 86 million music files, which Anna’s Archive claims represent 99.6% of Spotify listens.

Anna’s Archive was launched in 2022 as a torrent aggregator and search engine for primarily text-based files available on LibGen, Sci-Hub, Z-Lib, and other torrents. It arose as a response to U.S. government efforts to shut down Z-Library. The organization, comprised of anonymous contributors, now aims to establish something similar for music.

Unsurprisingly, Spotify is displeased with the reports of Anna’s Archive scraping its music files, criticizing the use of “illicit tactics” to circumvent DRM and copyright protections. Numerous questions linger, such as whether Spotify or regulators will seek legal actions against Anna’s Archive, or if a “free” database of Spotify songs will be made accessible to the general listener.

This vast music backup, unprecedented in scale, will compel companies, regulators, and users to confront the following question: what distinguishes preservation from piracy?

What Anna’s Archive has successfully backed up

Anna’s Archive indicated it chose to back up Spotify tracks based on the company’s own popularity metric. There are many songs on Spotify that receive hardly any listens. As a reference point, the archive estimates that the top three songs on Spotify received more streams than the combined total of the bottom 20 to 100 million songs. Overall, the backup includes metadata from 256 million tracks and audio files for 86 million songs.

Spotify defines its popularity metric as “a value ranging from 0 to 100, with 100 being the most popular.” This metric is computed by an algorithm that relies primarily on the total number of plays a track has received and how recent those plays are.

Based on this categorization, Anna’s Archive backed up the 86 million most popular songs, representing 37% of Spotify’s entire catalog. Nevertheless, it accounts for 99.6% of listens. Simply put, even though the archive has backed up less than half of Spotify’s songs, it encompasses almost all of the tracks listeners actually engage with.

While Anna’s Archive secured metadata for 99.9% of tracks, making it the largest music metadata archive globally, it limited itself to backing up only 37% of Spotify music files due to storage limitations. The 86 million archived songs require 300TB of storage, while archiving the remainder would have needed an additional 700TB of storage “for minor advantage,” according to the blog post.

The music files are stored in OGG Vorbis format at 160kbps for songs with a popularity metric above zero. Songs rated with a popularity of zero were re-encoded in OGG Vorbis at 75kbps. Anna’s Archive included metadata in the audio files, such as “title, url, ISRC, UPC, album art, and replaygain information.” Typically, audio files contain no inherent metadata, making this addition significant.

Spotify states this is merely scraping using ‘illicit tactics’

It is essential to note that the backup by Anna’s Archive is illegal for multiple reasons. Scraping Spotify’s databases breaches the company’s terms of service, while the removal of digital rights management (DRM) features and sharing copyrighted material violate copyright law. By definition, the music backup from Anna’s Archive constitutes piracy.

Spotify appears to concur, as it issued statements to both Android Authority and Ars Technica commenting on the Anna’s Archive release.

“An investigation into unauthorized access revealed that a third party scraped public metadata and employed illicit tactics to bypass DRM and access some of the platform’s audio files,” Spotify informed Android Authority. “We are actively investigating the situation.”

Importantly, Spotify does not verify the extent of the Anna’s Archive backup, only asserting that “some” of the site’s audio files were accessed. In a separate statement, Spotify mentioned it is taking steps to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.

“We’ve put new safeguards in place against these types of anti-copyright attacks and are diligently monitoring for suspicious behavior.”

Rumors have persisted that the next flagship might feature the Exynos 2600, and this report brings more to consider.

What you should know

– Reports indicate that the Exynos 2600 lacks an integrated modem, potentially leading to “efficiency concerns” for the Galaxy S26.
– Speculations suggest that a separate modem could produce additional heat and require more power from the S26 series, resulting in efficiency problems.
– While nothing is officially confirmed, Samsung’s Exynos 2600 was unveiled earlier this month with an HPB design aimed at addressing heating issues, featuring a 39% improved CPU and double the GPU performance.

The Galaxy S26 rumors are inescapable, and this recent report highlights a possible issue for the forthcoming series.

This report was issued by The Elec (South Korean), which asserts that the new Galaxy S26 will not only incorporate the Exynos 2600 but will also implement a significant modem alteration (via Android Authority). According to its sources, the Exynos 2600 lacks an “integrated” modem. Because of this, the report suggests the devices could utilize an external modem, potentially compromising their efficiency.

Nothing has been confirmed yet, as these remain speculative, but the publication described how consumers might end up with a Galaxy S26 that is less power-efficient.

The publication notes that, with an integrated design, Samsung could conserve on wiring and space, resulting in a chip that requires less power and operates cooler. However, if the devices (and chip) separate the modem into its own compartment, then “reduced power efficiency and increased heat generation” could be a reality. The post emphasizes an industry insider who conjectures that the “number of functions within the AP increased” in the Exynos 2600, leading Samsung to “remove the modem to save space.”

Nonetheless, this source also expressed caution regarding the potential “performance-to-power” balance of the new flagship series, should this less-efficient phone speculation turn out to be true.

Concerns are present

The Exynos 2600 was launched on December 19 after Samsung previewed its arrival earlier this month. This SoC represents the first product of its kind using a 2nm process, featuring low-power CPU cores and a new CPU configuration designed to deliver superior performance and improved efficiency. Specifically, the Exynos 2600 showcases a 39% CPU enhancement with double the GPU capacity.

Additionally, Samsung has integrated an HPB design (Heat Path Block) into the Exynos 2600. This HPB is expected to address the heating issues that have previously affected numerous Samsung custom chips.

All these factors combined are what we should be wary of with these “less-efficient” Galaxy S26 rumors. Android Authority noted something akin, suggesting that Samsung may have packed sufficient upgrades into the SoC to counterbalance any challenges posed by a separate modem. If that occurs, then consumers might not perceive any difference. Regardless, not every market is rumored to receive an Exynos-powered Galaxy S26.

Other Samsung speculations involve the Galaxy Z Flip 8, with reports indicating that the company might continue to provide the foldable as an Exynos-exclusive model, similar to the Flip 7.