7 Days: NVIDIA-powered Windows laptops, hackers using ChatGPT, and paid WhatsApp

A week of hackers using ChatGPT, Dropbox CEO stepping down, a paid version of WhatsApp, and waiver for open-source.

7 Days is a weekly roundup of picks of what's been happening in the world of technology - written with a dash of humor, a hint of exasperation, and an endless supply of (black) coffee.

This week's highlights include new Ferrari car designed by former Apple designers, $300 Windows laptops could get a major boost, more planes to get Starlink internet, and Samsung getting into trouble. Let's get started.

You can check out the recent issues of the 7 Days weekly roundup here.

NVIDIA-powered Windows laptops

NVIDIA is widely known for its GPUs for gaming or productivity, including AI. However, the company has been planning to enter the desktop PC processor market. The first-ever Windows laptops fitted with an NVIDIA chip could arrive as soon as next week, including those from Microsoft Surface and Dell. Details around a new XPS laptop powered by the NVIDIA N1X chip were also leaked.

Paid WhatsApp is here

Meta launched paid subscription tiers for WhatsApp ($2.99/mo), Instagram ($3.99/mo), and Facebook ($3.99/mo), which are sold separately. WhatsApp Plus lets you set custom app themes and ringtones, install premium stickers, pin more chats, and customize additional options. However, none of these plans affect the apps' core functionality, making them optional purchases. Moreover, these plans are setting the stage for a unified subscription brand called Meta One, which will bring AI features and other offerings.

$300 Windows laptops

Apple took the PC industry by storm earlier this year by launching the $599 MacBook Neo. Microsoft and Qualcomm have teamed up now to make a new chip, called Snapdragon C, for ultra-cheap Windows on ARM laptops priced as low as $300. While the market already has Windows laptops in this price range, Qualcomm promises quieter operations at low temperatures, all-day battery life, and "responsive performance." There are tradeoffs, and it remains to be seen whether these devices can match up to Apple.

ChatGPT used by hackers

Security researchers found a new campaign that delivers infostealer malware through legitimate domains, tagged "LLMShare." They use ChatGPT to quickly generate convincing fake download pages and then share a link that tricks people into downloading malware.

Car designed by former Apple designers

The dream of the Apple Car faded in the past, but a new car may have got its essence. Ferrari unveiled its first electric car and its first five-seater, which it calls Luce. It was designed in collaboration with LoveFrom, a design firm led by former Apple design chief Johny Ive. Ferrari Luce will arrive in Europe later this year, with a starting price of 550,000 euros (roughly $640,000), followed by a US launch in Q2 2027.

Samsung opened a Pandora's box

Some drama unfolded under Samsung's roof recently. The South Korean giant finally decided to pay nearly $26.6 billion in bonuses to chip workers following a strike and negotiation. Much to the company's surprise, its angered non-chip employees have filed an injunction to stop the vote on the agreement.

500 aircraft are getting Starlink

American Airlines is the latest carrier to bring Elon Musk's satellite internet onboard across more than 500 aircraft, including the new Airbus A321XLR and A321neo. Starting from Q1 2027, people traveling on domestic and short-haul international routes will be able to avail the high-speed Wi-Fi service to have seamless video streaming, online gaming, and other high-bandwidth activities.

Don't call it AI slop

Spotify is expanding into AI-generated music, and its co-CEO Alex Norström defended the move by pitching the upcoming features as "legal" and "controlled" alternatives to unregulated music. The music industry is not particularly happy with generative AI right now, with many calling it "slop." Spotify is also taking action to remove content that mimics artists without permission.

In other news, Spotify is expanding its catalog of spoken-word audio with a new "Narrated Articles" feature. It has curated a collection of over 650 long-form magazine articles sourced from Rolling Stone, Vogue, WIRED, GQ, Variety, Pitchfork, and, of course, its own in-house team.

Dropbox CEO steps down

Drew Houston has run Dropbox for over 19 years as the co-founder and CEO before announcing this week that he will step down from his position. Ashraf Alkarmi is now the co-CEO of Dropbox, who will work alongside Houston during the transition period.

Waiver for open-source

Lawmakers in California exempted open-source projects (such as including Linux distros like Debian, Arch, Ubuntu, and Mint) from its age verification law that mandates OS-level checks. This happened after a massive backlash from open-source advocates, who warned that the original language would ruin decentralized developer infrastructure and community-driven platforms can't track user ages without violating basic privacy values.

Our Features

Our coffee-powered team published a platter of editorials, opinion posts, and guides. Check them out:

• Big Tech is turning you into a digital tenant, but there is a way to evict them

• AI is causing a massive headache for Linux and laying the groundwork for legal issues

This week in software news

Catch up on some of the latest software news updates that arrived throughout the week:

NVIDIA Control Panel discontinued: The company is moving features over to the NVIDIA app, and good old Control Panel has finally retired after 20 years of service. You can continue using it if you still have it on your device; however, a fresh driver installation will remove it.

Fedora 42 is no more: The major release from April 2025 reached its end of life after a slight delay, meaning it will no longer get any new features or security updates. It's now recommended that you upgrade to Fedora 43, which will get updates for one month after the release of Fedora 45.

Discord for Windows on ARM: The instant messaging platform set its foot on Windows on ARM as a native app. While the app wasn't officially announced by the time of writing, it was available for download on the company's website.

AlmaLinux 10.2: The latest version is called "Lavender Lion," which brings Btrfs boot support, x86-64-v2 architecture options, re-enabled frame pointers, and native SPICE support for client applications alongside i686.

NVIDIA driver 610.47: The freshly-baked NVIDIA driver for desktop and laptop GPUs introduced Game-Ready optimizations for several new titles, including 007 First Light, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, EA SPORTS F1 25: 2026 Season Pack, and World of Tanks: HEAT.

Intel Arc graphics driver: The latest version 32.0.101.8824 also added support for 007: First Light and addressed issues across multiple Call of Duty titles and Resident Evil: Requiem.

COSMIC Desktop 1.0.14: The latest release includes support for non-Latin keyboards, text previews in Files, IME support in Terminal, and dozens of bug fixes across the desktop.

Samsung ships HBM4E: It has begun shipping HBM4E samples to global customers running massive AI networks. The new 12-layer chips achieve speeds of up to 16Gbps with "improved energy efficiency and thermal performance."

Euro-Office is going stable: The stable release of Nextcloud's "European sovereign alternative" is set to arrive on desktop on June 9, with mobile apps planned for later.

Firefox 151.0.2: It's the latest big-fix update for Firefox 151 to resolve issues with Split View unexpectedly closing tabs, crashes on Windows with certain input methods, and more.

This week in hardware news

Catch up on some of the latest software news updates that arrived throughout the week:

Sound Blaster AE-X: Creative launched a new internal sound card for audiophiles, priced at around $211. It comes with 32-bit audio, an ESS SABRE DAC, and dedicated headphone amplification to eliminate desktop clutter.

Steam price hike: Having dreams of the Steam Deck OLED will burn a bigger hole in your pocket when you buy it. While new units are back in stock, you'll have to pay up to $300 extra depending on the model.

$6,880 smartphone: Vertu ALPHAFOLD is a new foldable smartphone that can make even the maxed out iPhone 17 Pro Max look cheap. Powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite, it comes with a massive 6,500 mAh battery, 65W fast charging, triple camera setup, and a built-in AI agent.

New Intel Arc G3 chips: The silicon giant unveiled two new models, Intel Arc G3 and Arc G3 Extreme. These handheld gaming chips feature Xe3 graphics, AI upscaling, efficiency, and advanced connectivity support.

Acer Swift Air 14: It's a new budget Windows laptop that wants to compete with the MacBook Neo. Priced at $699, it features a premium build, a 120Hz Full HD display, and weighs 1.25 kg, which is nearly identical to the Neo.

This week in Google News

Catch up on some of the latest Google news updates that arrived throughout the week:

Record fine in EU: Google could end up paying hundreds of millions of dollars if it fails to implement European Commission's demands following an antitrust case that started last year. However, EU regulators are more interested in making Google comply than in imposing fines.

Share stuff from Gemini: Google is bringing Gemini and Drive closer by adding new sharing and collaboration features. Workspace users will be able to share chats, canvases, and generated media from the Gemini app securely via Google Drive.

New features in Search: The search giant announced that Preferred Sources are now available in AI Overviews and AI Mode. AI responses will display carousels for developing topics, along with a small text summary, and more web article links will get the "Highly Cited" label.

YouTube on AI videos: YouTube is already getting flooded with AI-generated content. That's why it has decided to automatically detect content and slap an AI-generated label. YouTube creators already have a manual option to label their AI-generated content.

This week in Apple News

Catch up on some of the latest Apple news updates that arrived throughout the week:

Vocal for local: A new report suggests Apple is using a large version of Google Gemini to train a distilled, smaller version that can run locally on iPhones, Macs, and even Apple Watches. Some official details are expected at WWDC 2026, and it remains to be seen how capable the on-device model would be, given the current state of open-source local models.

iPhone 18 colors: Four new iPhone 18 dummies surfaced online, featuring the rumored colors Apple might choose this time. Dark Cherry is said to be the flagship iPhone color, alongside Black, Silver, and Light Blue.

Expensive iPhone: Apple could increase the starting price of its Pro iPhones this year due to rising component costs. It's said that the variable aperture lens Apple has planned for iPhone 18 Pro could cost 50% more.

Low-cost Apple Music: You might not believe your ears, but Apple seems to be working on an alternative, lower-cost tier for its music streaming service, possibly to attract more users. As of now, Apple doesn't offer a free tier for users, unlike Spotify.

This week in AI news

Catch up on the latest artificial intelligence news updates that arrived throughout the week:

Anthropic beats OpenAI: Anthropic surpassed the ChatGPT maker in both revenue and valuation. Thanks to a surge in Claude usage and a new $65 billion Series H funding round, Anthropic reached a $965 billion post-money valuation and $47 billion in revenue.

Claude Opus 4.8: Anthropic announced its new flagship model across Claude endpoints and the Claude API for developers. Featuring improvements across coding, agentic tasks, reasoning, and knowledge work, Claude Opus 4.8 offers a price cut for the Fast mode.

Massive Codex update: OpenAI pushed a major update to the Codex app on Windows (version 26.527), bringing two features previously available on Mac: computer use and remote access via mobile devices.

Linus Torvalds loses patience: The drama around AI-generated Linux code continues. It appears that Linus Torvalds is losing patience with AI-generated code fixes bloating the Linux kernel. He complained again that many of the "fixes" being submitted don't really address regressions and shouldn't be submitted late in the kernel cycle.

This week in Microsoft News

A new Windows 11 experimental build introduced a modular Start menu design with the ability to resize it and toggle specific parts on or off. HP revealed that around 30% of its PC customers still run Windows 10 months after support ended. Paint.NET will soon be accessible from the "right" place, which is the pain.net domain.

You can check out Taras's freshly baked Microsoft Weekly roundup to catch up on all the interesting stories this week.

This week in science news

Catch up on some of the science and out-of-this-world updates that we covered throughout the week:

Human extinction warning: A new study warns humans could face extinction within a few centuries. This internal collapse could be fueled by falling birth rates, high costs of raising children, and rising infertility.

Spacetime Whirlpool found: Scientists finally captured the first clear evidence of a swirling vortex in spacetime that Albert Einstein predicted almost 100 years ago. A spinning black hole was caught twisting space and time around itself like a whirlpool.

Neutrino mystery deepens: The mystery of the elusive neutrino finally has an answer. By tracking its bizarre behavior, researchers discovered a surprising answer about how these particles gain mass and shape our universe.

Super material torture tested: Strontium Ruthenate has puzzled scientists for decades regarding its superconducting properties. They put the material to a torture test again, but major quantum mysteries and contradictions remain unsolved.

This week in gaming news

Catch up on some of the latest gaming and virtual world updates that arrived throughout the week:

Unreal Engine 6 is real: Epic Games surprised fans by unveiling the next generation engine. However, it skipped the Unreal Engine 5, which people were waiting for. An upcoming Rocket League upgrade teases the engine's powers in a short clip.

$1 billion funding: Cloud Imperium Games' Star Citizen crossed the billion-dollar mark on its funding tracker. This happened just six months after the game breezed past the $900 million mark.

Xbox personalization: Microsoft is rolling out personalization-focused changes, such as displaying the exact model name when a controller is configured, customizing console color scheme in detail, staying updated on outage notifications directly from the console.

What else in gaming?

The latest issue of Pulasthi's Weekend PC Game Deals curates several exciting games on sale this week. On the Epic Games Store this week, you can grab copies of Lonestar and Calico for free until June 4.

The latest Xbox Free Play Days bring Gears of War: Reloaded, Dying Light, Formula Legends, and High On Life 2. Meanwhile, NVIDIA's cloud gaming service got support for 007 First Light, World of Tanks: HEAT, Starminer, and other titles.

That said, here are some more stories from the gaming world:

• Over a decade after launch, The Witcher 3 is getting a new story expansion
• Infinity Ward aims to "go back to the roots of Call of Duty" for Modern Warfare 4
• Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is now available on macOS
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 announced, ditches last-gen consoles and expands to Switch 2
• No Man's Sky gets alien Death Stars for players to defeat together

So, these were some of the biggest tech news and other updates from this week. There will be more issues of our 7 Days series in the coming weeks and months, so stay tuned. You can also support Neowin by registering for a free member account or subscribing to extra member benefits, along with an ad-free tier option.

Have a great weekend!

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Monday 1 June 2026 at 7:30 am AEST (my time).

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