Amazon Ring’s Super Bowl ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance
Amazon Ring’s Super Bowl ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

Ring’s new Search Party feature has once again drawn backlash for the company. A 30-second ad that aired during Sunday’s Super Bowl showed Ring cameras “surveilling” neighborhoods to locate a lost dog. In the current political climate, a prime-time ad celebrating neighborhood surveillance struck a nerve. People voiced concerns across social media that the AI-powered […]

Microsoft wants to rewire data centers to save space
Microsoft wants to rewire data centers to save space

Microsoft wants to design more efficient data centers using materials that allow electricity to flow with zero resistance. If these new materials, called high-temperature superconductors, can make it to market, Microsoft thinks it could be a game changer for how data centers and the energy infrastructure they connect to are built. Tech companies are facing […]

Nintendo keeps filling in the gaps
Nintendo keeps filling in the gaps

When you buy a new Nintendo device, there are a few things you can expect: namely, some excellent Super Mario, Pokémon, and Legend of Zelda games, and maybe a great Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, or Smash Bros. The question mark has always been the other stuff. But with the Switch 2, it doesn’t seem like […]

Discord’s age verification mandate is a leap toward a gated internet
Discord’s age verification mandate is a leap toward a gated internet

Discord is about to force some of the people who use its messaging app to make a choice: Use the platform with restricted features, or prove their age. It’s a move that platforms have been slowly approaching, but Discord’s teen-by-default rollout is a stronger clampdown that could offer a glimpse at an age-gated future on […]

AI-generated ads dropped the ball at this year’s Super Bowl
AI-generated ads dropped the ball at this year’s Super Bowl

It feels like everyone who produced ad spots for this year’s Super Bowl with generative AI failed in terms of making gen AI seem useful or like something worth getting excited about. Though we’ve seen plenty of AI-generated commercials before (at previous Super Bowls, no less), this year’s event was oversaturated with them. That’s in […]

I went back to Linux and it was a mistake
I went back to Linux and it was a mistake

It’s a complete coincidence that I installed Linux around the same time as my colleagues Nathan Edwards and Stevie Bonifield. A few months ago, I decided to breathe new life into a 2019 Dell XPS 15 that had been collecting dust for a couple of years. Despite its (at the time) high-end Core i7 CPU […]

How the men in the Epstein files defeated #MeToo
How the men in the Epstein files defeated #MeToo

He might be dead, but it sure seems like Jeffrey Epstein won. Sure, Epstein was arrested on charges of sex trafficking minors. Sure, he died in jail. (I am not going to wade into the debate about how.) But he subscribed to a racist, misogynist ideology that meant rich white men like him could do […]

Iron Lung’s path to theaters was unique, even if the movie isn’t
Iron Lung’s path to theaters was unique, even if the movie isn’t

As a movie, Iron Lung is occasionally thrilling but mostly forgettable. It’s a small-budget horror flick that has some cool ideas and pulls them off in an extremely efficient way, creating a sense of tension that unfortunately never turns into outright scares. But the most important thing about it is what it represents. At a […]

The Switch is Nintendo’s best-selling console — and its most transformative
The Switch is Nintendo’s best-selling console — and its most transformative

Nintendo has had plenty of highs over its few decades in the video game industry. Popularizing home consoles with the NES, introducing new audiences to games through the Wii’s motion controls, and the touchscreen Trojan horse that was the Nintendo DS, to name a few. But often these successes were followed by missteps; the Wii […]

Humans are infiltrating the social network for AI bots
Humans are infiltrating the social network for AI bots

Ordinary social networks face a constant onslaught of chatbots pretending to be human. A new social platform for AI agents may face the opposite problem: getting clogged up by humans pretending to post as bots. Moltbook – a website meant for conversations between agents from the platform OpenClaw – went viral this weekend for its […]