Category: Hardware


  • How Can You Turn Your Thoughts Into a Visible Ideas Board? I Spoke to an AI Company About it

    After more than a year of researching, reviewing and writing about artificial intelligence, I’ve been wanting to learn more about AI as a thinking and planning platform. While it’s a great tool for streamlining work, it’s also being used in more creative ways, and I’ve been curious about my own thinking style. Why do I…

  • DJI couldn’t confirm or deny it disguised this drone to evade a US ban

    DJI barely sells drones in the United States anymore. The shelves are bare; resellers are jacking up prices. It appears an unofficial ban at US customs is to blame. But on Amazon, you can now buy a drone that’s a a dead ringer for the DJI Mini 4 Pro – the SkyRover X1 – for…

  • Apple has announced that Pluribus, a new science fiction drama from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, will premiere on Apple TV+ on November 7. Gilligan was confirmed to be working on the project back in 2022, when Better Call Saul‘s Rhea Seehorn was also announced as its primary star. Alongside the premiere date, Apple also…

  • Widely panned arsenic life paper gets retracted—15 years after brouhaha

    In December 2010, a study led by a NASA astrobiology fellow claimed to have found an alien-like microbe in a salty, alkaline lake in California. This extraordinary bacterium could reportedly thrive using the toxic element arsenic in place of phosphorus—otherwise thought essential for life on Earth. It even incorporated arsenic, instead of phosphorus, into the…

  • Echelon kills smart home gym equipment offline capabilities with update

    A firmware update has killed key functionality for Echelon smart home gym equipment that isn’t connected to the Internet. As explained in a Tuesday blog post by Roberto Viola, who develops the “QZ (qdomyos-zwift)” app that connects Echelon machines to third-party fitness platforms, like Peloton, Strava, and Apple HealthKit, the firmware update forces Echelon machines…

  • OpenAI’s most capable AI model, GPT-5, may be coming in August

    On Thursday, The Verge reported that OpenAI is preparing to launch GPT-5 as early as August, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans. The report comes five months after CEO Sam Altman first laid out a roadmap for the next-generation AI model that would unify the company’s various AI capabilities. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman…

  • Google gets its swag back

    This week, I take a look at the surprisingly strong state of Google, Meta gets a new chief AI researcher, and more. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out this week’s Decoder episode about deepfakes and where they are headed. Also, do you use an AI coding tool like Cursor or GitHub Copilot?…

  • Comcast’s fix for streaming service overload is in your cable box

    Streaming has become a tangled web of subscriptions, and now Comcast says it can help by putting all your services into one hub. Comcast is launching a new hub on its set-top boxes, called the StreamStore, where you can buy and manage subscriptions for more than 450 streaming apps and channels. The StreamStore lives within…

  • Tea, an app that claims to help women “make sure your date is safe, not a catfish and not in a relationship,” is experiencing a security breach. 404 Media reports that a database posted on 4chan allowed anyone to access users’ data. (It’s since been removed.) The dataset included thousands of images, including driver’s licenses.…

  • Hacker plants three strains of malware in a Steam Early Access game called Chemia — security company found crypto-jacking infostealers and a backdoor to install yet more malware in the future

    Sometimes getting more than what you asked for is nice. Finding cash in a jacket you haven’t worn in a while, getting an extra chicken nugget at the drive-thru, discovering a hidden track on an album — those are all pleasant surprises. This one isn’t: A cyber threat intelligence firm called Prodaft revealed that “Chemia,”…