Back in 2019, author Margaret Stohl was handed a manuscript written by Jason Jones, who's best known as the co-creator of sci-fi gaming series Halo and Destiny. The two had worked together at Bungie, and Jones wanted Stohl's opinion on a book he was writing about AI taking over the world. It was an oral history of the fictional events, with around 100 characters spread across 40 countries, all detailing the AI uprising from their own perspectives. Pretty quickly Stohl realized that this idea could be much more than a single book.

"I was floored but not surprised," she says of her reaction to the original manuscript. "He's a worldbuilder who …

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As environmental forces make fishing and harvesting more costly, the price of once-everyday fish has ballooned.

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Googlebooks are Google's latest attempt to carve out a piece of the premium laptop market, and tight integration with Android phones is a key part of that effort. Now that Googlebooks are available, we're learning of some frustrating limitations of that plan. For now, Googlebooks will only play nicely with your phone if you have a Pixel.

When Google announced the launch window for Googlebooks, it said the laptops were "engineered to work with your Android phone right out of the box." But as with many things Google, the truth is more convoluted. We have since learned that you need Android 17 for any of the nifty integrations to work. With a compatible Android 17 phone, you can seamlessly stream apps to your laptop, access files on your phone, mirror notifications, and continue where you left off in certain apps when switching from phone to laptop.

You might think that the latest Samsung phones, which shipped with Android 17, would be ready for this experience. You'd be wrong, though. Some early Googlebook adopters have complained that phones like the Z Fold 8 won't work with the laptops. While the devices appear to see each other, the phone doesn't stay connected. Google representatives have since confirmed that these "Better Together" features are not currently supported on even the latest Samsung phones. An update that brings support to Samsung phones will roll out in "the coming weeks."

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We are mere days away from the launch of Googlebooks, the long-awaited Android laptops that Google hopes will compete with macOS and Windows. But what of Chromebooks? There have been hints that Google plans to sunset its web-first ChromeOS platform, and a new support page lays out some of the specifics.

The support page, spotted by 9to5Google, aims to explain the role of Googlebooks to Chrome Enterprise and Education customers. The page starts off by noting that Googlebook OS, which is Android even if Google doesn't like to say that, will offer an enhanced experience with deeper system capabilities and lots of AI.

Like Chromebooks, Googlebooks are guaranteed 10 years of software support. However, the latest Chromebook models won't get that in the traditional way. Google's support page says that it plans to continue ChromeOS support through "mid-2034," so there are already devices with support windows beyond that.

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