Minimalist News

This week on Build Mode, Isabelle Johannessen speaks with Capella Kerst, founder and CEO of geCKo Materials.

Five years later the founders, now 24 years old, say their startup has achieved $300 million in annualized revenue.

OpenAI's agentic coding tool has gotten a major makeover, with a variety of new powers and abilities.

Europol coordinated an operation against for-hire distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) services, including the arrest of four people and the takedown of 53 domains.

Krieger's departure and any forthcoming design tools will be another data point for investors who fear the SaaSpocalypse — that the largest AI labs will come to dominate software businesses, a thesis that has rocked public markets at times this year.

Bluesky has been experiencing ongoing service disruptions since just before 3 a.m. ET.

If culture is shaped by TikTok's algorithmic feed, then it's time for us to decide where we draw the line between necessary marketing and inauthentic growth hacking.

Now, when you're using AI Mode on Chrome desktop, clicking a link will open the web page side-by-side with AI Mode.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced that two Americans were sentenced to years in prison for helping the North Korean government place fake IT workers in U.S. companies.

According to CEO Helen Gu, the biggest problem facing the industry today is not just monitoring and diagnosing where AI models go wrong — it's also diagnosing how the entire tech stack operates now that AI is part of it.

Adobe says AI traffic to U.S. retail sites also jumped 269% in March, with visitors converting better and generating more revenue than non-AI shoppers.

The new tools are designed to help creators throughout the entire development process.

That means its AI images can be created using Gemini's understanding of your likes and interests, without those having to be explicitly noted in the prompt.

Google blocked 8.3 billion ads in 2025 but suspended fewer advertisers.

Why choose fossil fuels or electricity when you can have both? NOC Energy has figured out how to hybridize heavy industry.

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Meta is starting to test a long-overdue facelift for Threads on web. The company's head of Threads Connor Hayes showed off a new look for the web version of Threads that finally adds direct messaging and makes it easier to navigate between multiple feeds. The new layout adds a bunch of new shortcuts to the site's left rail, including saved posts, insights, activity, and the ability to move between different feeds. Those features have all been accessible on web before, but many were hard to find. For example, the only way to currently get to "insights" is to navigate to your

The European Commission has proposed new measures for Google aimed at bringing the tech giant's search business into compliance with the Digital Markets Act. In order to allow third-party online search engines to be competitive with Google, the EC has recommended that Google permit those services to access its treasure trove of search engine data. As it stands, the proposal would require Google to let rivals see data points "such as ranking, query, click and view data, on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms." "Data is a key input for online search and for developing new services, including AI," said Teresa Ribera,

While I dabble in other Overwatch modes, I spend the vast majority of my time there in Mystery Heroes, a casual mode in which you load in as a random character and automatically switch to another one when you respawn. It's by far my favorite way to play Overwatch (which I do a lot!), since it helps me switch off and relax. Others play it as a warmup for competitive action. It requires a particular skillset, as players need a working knowledge of all 51 heroes to help them coordinate with teammates and know what the opponents have on deck.

Playdate is getting a third season of curated, surprise games, Panic announced today. We don't know much beyond the fact that Season Three is officially happening, but Panic's Head of Playdate Greg Maletic said in an announcement video that it will be here "in time for the holidays" this year. Considering we had to wait a whole three years for Season Two to come out following Season One's release with the console in 2022, that doesn't sound so bad. Panic hasn't yet said how many games Season Three will include, or how much it will cost. While Season One had a

If the real world isn’t grim enough for you, Ukranian developer 4A Games has your back: Metro 2039 has been announced and is scheduled to arrive this winter. And based on the developer’s first look at the title, Metro 2039 looks to be an even darker affair than previous titles in the series. A tall order, but the real-world turmoil that has enveloped 4A Games since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sounds like it has turned into a painful inspiration for the developer. The lengthy cinematic reveal, which also contains a brief bit of gameplay at the end, doesn’t give much of

Last month, following reporting from The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI confirmed it was working on a desktop super app that would combine ChatGPT, its Codex coding agent and Atlas web browser into one cohesive experience. OpenAI is not releasing that application today. Instead, it's pushing out a major update to Codex that significantly expands what that software can do. However, the new release offers a glimpse of what OpenAI hopes to build with its latest effort.   "We're building the super app out in the open," said Thibault Sottiaux, the head of Codex, during a press briefing held by OpenAI. "This release

Love 'em or hate 'em, no modern browser is complete without robust tab support, and so too would it seem Google's AI Mode. Starting today, the company is rolling out an update to users in the US that makes the tool better at interacting and understanding tabs.  To start, the next time you use AI Mode on Chrome for desktop and click on a link, the chatbot will open a new side-by-side interface that allows you to both browse the new webpage and ask questions of AI Mode. The connection allows the chatbot to maintain the context of the search that

Intel has unveiled its new Core Series 3 chips, the official title for its Wildcat Lake-codenamed series intended for mainstream and value-oriented laptops. Built using the same Intel 18A process as its Core Ultra Series 3 chips, they’re significantly more powerful than the previous generation and promise "exceptional battery life" and "boosted AI-ready performance." Intel says the Core Series 3 offers up to 47 percent better single-thread performance and 41 percent better multi-thread performance, as well as 2.8x better GPU AI performance compared to a five-year-old PC. Stacked up against its last-gen Intel Core 7 150U processors, the new mobile chip

Your Google Photos library could soon influence the kind of images you can generate with Gemini. After letting users personalize the AI assistant's responses with data from Gmail, Search and YouTube, Google says it's bringing that same "Personal Intelligence" to Nano Banana 2 to make it easier for users to create personalized images with the AI model. The goal is to have the data affiliated with your Google account — your YouTube history, emails, Google Photos, etc. — provide context to Nano Banana 2 so you don't have to. Rather than prompting Gemini's image generation model with information about you or

We finally have a real-deal trailer for the upcoming Street Fighter movie, after a short teaser dropped at The Game Awards last year. This is nearly three minutes of fighting, silly dialogue and, of course, Easter eggs from the games. To the latter point, there's a scene of Ken beating up a car like in the bonus stages from Street Fighter II and footage of Ryu powering up one of his famous Hadoken fireballs. There's even a cheeky reference to Chun-Li's notoriously-large and powerful thighs. This is all helped along by the fact that the actors all look very silly and

The Oversight Board — the policy body Meta created to weigh its most impactful moderation rulings — has seen its role within Mark Zuckerberg's empire come into question due to shifting content policy priorities and dwindling investment. The Oversight Board has taken steps to formalize its long-contemplated desire to work with other companies, but Engadget has learned Meta has thus far declined to move forward with that process.  Over the last year, board members have become increasingly interested in artificial intelligence policy and how their experience shaping Meta's content rules could translate into advising companies in the generative AI space. That

The RAM crisis has prompted another company to jack up hardware prices. Meta says it will be increasing the price of Quest headsets on April 19. The Meta Quest 3 will get a $100 hike to $599, while the Quest 3S will be $50 more expensive at $350 (for a version with 128GB of storage) and $450 (256GB). Meta is blaming the increases on the rising costs of RAM, which has skyrocketed in price due to a shortage of chips as AI companies gobble up as much memory as they can for their data centers. Sony recently bumped up the prices of

The open-source library and search engine Anna’s Archive has been ordered to pay Spotify and the three of the world’s largest music labels $322 million in damages after it claimed to have scraped the entirety of the streaming platform’s library of music. Spotify, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, sued Anna’s Archive in January for a slightly comical $13 trillion. They alleged Anna's Archive had illegally scraped 86 million songs — a significant chunk of all the music on the planet — and intended to make them available for download via BitTorrent. At the time, Spotify called

Spotify has a new look today for listeners on tablets. The streaming service’s updated tablet UI now provides adaptive orientation, switching between portrait and landscape layouts rather than simply resizing the interface when changing how the device is held. Spotify's tablet app now sports a collapsible sidebar so listeners can take advantage of their larger screen space when watching a music video or podcast. Parallel browsing lets you continue to scroll through the app while a video or lyrics are in the sidebar, and the "switch to video" toggle has been made more prominent. The new design had appeared for some users

Adobe isn't the only company releasing a new AI assistant this week. Ahead of its Create event in Los Angeles today, Canva announced Canva AI 2.0. Building on its existing AI assistant, the company is billing the release as its most significant update since the platform first launched in 2013, and the culmination of years of investment to build its own foundational design models.  As you might imagine, it all starts with a conversational interface that allows you to describe an idea or goal and the system will start generating a design to match. Under the hood, there's a new orchestration

DJI’s Osmo Pocket 3 gimbal-camera was a category-defining camera. Two years since its launch, everyone from vloggers to pro film makers continue to upload how-to guides and gushing reviews to YouTube. When the Osmo Pocket 4 landed at the FCC at the end of 2025 (followed by a credible leak), creator forums and Reddit threads started to chatter with excitement. Over the following months the Pocket 4 leaked again and again, to the point where there’s very little that someone with a passing interest and an internet connection doesn’t already know about the camera. But DJI chose today to give

Anthropic has started rolling out identity verification on Claude “for a few use cases.” The company didn’t list out those use cases in its announcement, but we’ve asked it for details and will update this post when we hear back. Anthropic says you might see a verification prompt upon “accessing certain capabilities,” asking you to verify your identity. You would have to show a valid and physical government-issued photo ID. You’d also have take a selfie with your phone or computer camera that the system will compare against the ID you present.  The news, as you’d expect, wasn’t well-received. Many users

Fresh off the box office success of Project Hail Mary, Amazon MGM Studios has announced its theatrical release lineup for the next year. Most of the titles aren't likely to hit the highs of the Ryan Gosling starrer which has grossed $515 million in theaters. However, there are a number of promising releases like Spaceballs: The New One and Highlander starring Henry Cavill, both sequels to '80s films. Another is The Sheep Detectives with Hugh Jackman, the trailer for which has been a hit on YouTube. Earlier this year, Amazon MGM promised to release up to 14 films in theaters over

You now have the power to remove short-form videos from your YouTube feed if you don’t want to see them. YouTube has rolled out the capability to set your Shorts feed limit to zero minutes, which could help you stop doomscrolling, at least on mobile. The video-sharing platform originally launched a Shorts feed limit back in October last year, but the lowest option you could choose was 15 minutes. Once 15 minutes are up, you’ll get a pop-up reminding you to take a break. Earlier this year, it integrated the feature with parental controls, allowing guardians to set time limits for

Opera is offering a new choice for looping in an AI assistant during browsing. Today, the company introduced Browser Connector, which allows Opera One and Opera GX users to integrate either ChatGPT or Claude into the platform. The chatbots will be able to access page content while a person is browsing and will draw context for queries from the information in your open tabs. The free new feature can be enabled through the AI Services section of the Settings menu.  Opera is one of the many browser companies that has been experimenting with an AI-focused service. It began rolling out the

Earlier this year it was revealed that Apple and Google were offering "nudify" apps on their stores despite having clear policies barring such content. Nearly three months later, such apps are not only still available, but being actively promoted on the iOS App Store and Google Play, according to a new report from the Tech Transparency Project (TTP). Many of those were labeled "E" for Everyone, meaning they can be downloaded by children.  Searching for "nudify," "undress" and other terms in those stores gives users access to apps that can make real people nude or put them into pornographic videos. The new

Apple's MacBook Neo is a $600 (or $500 for students) shot across the bow at affordable Windows laptops, and it seems like Microsoft has ready its first response. The newly announced "Microsoft College Offer" is a bundle of Microsoft 365 Premium, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, custom Xbox controller and discounted laptop that the company thinks could woo students away from Apple's new deal.  With the purchase of a discounted machine directly from Microsoft, retailers like Amazon and Best Buy or PC makers like HP, ASUS and Acer, you can get what the company says is an extra $500 of value from

Live Nation, which operates the Ticketmaster platform, has been determined to be a monopoly. A federal jury handed down its decision today that the company violated federal and state antitrust rules. This finding won't surprise anyone who has used Ticketmaster and been sticker-shocked by their final bill. However, it's unclear what the jury’s decision will mean in practice.  For starters, the judge overseeing the case hasn't determined what remedies will be applied. The actions could go as far as requiring Live Nation to sell off Ticketmaster. There are also monetary damages to be awarded, which haven't been set yet. And whatever

For PlayStation Plus subscribers, April is going to be a little bit spooky, a tad sporty and extra squirrelly. PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium players will get access to The Crew Motorfest, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, Football Manager 26 Console, Warriors: Abyss, Squirrel with a Gun, The Casting of Frank Stone and Monster Train. Additionally,Wild Arms 4 will be exclusive to Premium libraries. Expect the full lineup to go live on April 21. The Crew Motorfest, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, Warriors: Abyss and Wild Arms 4 will hit PS4 and PS5 consoles, while the rest of the month's additions are PS5

A group of researchers from across the US and the UK have conducted a study on what AI does to our brains and the results are, in a word, grim. These results were published in a paper called "AI assistance reduces persistence and hurts independent performance" which kind of tells you everything you need to know. “We find that AI assistance improves immediate performance, but it comes at a heavy cognitive cost,” the study declares. Researchers went on to state that just ten minutes of using AI made people dependent on the technology, which led to worsening performance and burnout once

Not content with stuffing Gemini into all of its own apps and services, Google wants you to adopt its AI assistant on desktops and laptops too. The company released a Gemini Windows app on Tuesday and it's following that up a day later with one for Macs. Google says the macOS Gemini app is a "native desktop experience" that you can access with a keyboard shortcut. By default, pressing option and space will open a mini chat, while a combo of option, shift and space will open the full Gemini chat experience. You'll be able to adjust these bindings in the

Occasionally, you really can have it both ways. For the most part, pellet grills are great for smoking and mid-temperature cooking, but you’ll typically need other grills for high-heat searing and 1,000-degree temperatures(with a few exceptions). Sure, some pellet grills allow you to move the heat deflector for direct access to the fire pot for searing, but that’s still not a cooking experience that will be familiar to gas grill users.  With the X-Fire Pro 825 ($1,550), Recteq is putting its pellet grill expertise to work in a dual-mode design that’s meant to bridge the gap between gas and wood fire.

Snap is laying off around 1,000 staff, amounting to 16 percent of its workforce, which it will seemingly replace with AI. The cuts were announced in a company-wide memo from CEO Evan Spiegel, who added that more than 300 open roles are also being closed. Spiegel said the "incredibly difficult" decision would likely save Snap more than $500 million by the second half of 2026, in turn helping it to "establish a clearer path to net-income profitability." Impacted staff were notified by email and the company’s North America-based team were instructed to work from home. Snap said it would provide four-month

The shoe company Allbirds, famous for its wool trainers, is pivoting to AI. You read that right. The San Francisco company has plans "to pivot its business to AI compute infrastructure, with a long-term vision to become a fully integrated GPU-as-a-Service and AI-native cloud solutions provider." It's also changing its name to NewBird AI. This is subject to shareholder approval, with a vote scheduled for May 18. Once approved, the company will raise $50 million from an unnamed investor to assist with this enterprise. This money will be used for the "acquisition and monetization of graphics processing units, related high-performance computing

Traeger gave backyard pit masters something more affordable last year with the Woodridge, but now the company is back with an even more budget-friendly option. With the Westwood series, the company offers very basic pellet grill functionality with a simplified controller and a no-frills design. You’ll still get Wi-Fi connectivity that works with the company’s app, and the Westwood grills are compatible with Traeger’s rail-based accessories. As you might expect at the $700 and $800 prices, there are a number of caveats compared to the company’s more expensive options. The new Westwood grills have an even more streamlined controller than the

Chinese phonemaker Vivo has been pushing the limits of smartphone photography in the last few years. However, the availability of its phones — like last year’s X200 Ultra, with its beefy add-on telephoto — has been intermittent in the West. The company says the X300 Ultra its first global flagship launch, although there’s still no word on a US launch or pricing at the time of writing. Like the latest phones from Xiaomi and Oppo, Vivo is also obsessing over larger camera sensors, peripherals and a dizzying array of technical photography specs, with a particular focus on cinematic video recording. Collaborating with

A collaboration between Spotify and Bookshop.org that allows readers to purchase physical books in the Spotify app is now live in the US and UK. Rather than positioning audiobooks as the hard copy-killer, Spotify is encouraging you to see them as complimentary to one another. First announced back in February, the new partnership with Bookshop.org appears to be an acknowledgement from Spotify that physical still reigns supreme in the book world. Bookshop is a digital marketplace that enables indie booksellers to take their businesses online, and Spotify says any purchase made through its app will "directly support those bookshops and the

Most teens in the United States say that Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat aren't harming their mental health, though a slightly higher proportion report negative effects on their sleep and productivity, according to a new report from Pew Research. The report offers fresh insights into how teens perceive the effects of social media at a time when there are increasing calls to ban younger teens from social platforms altogether.  The report is based on a survey of 1,458 teens between the ages of 13 and 17. Teens were asked about their use of Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok and how those apps affect

Few creative software companies have embraced AI like Adobe, with the company embedding image, video, audio and vector generation tools into nearly all its apps. Now, Adobe is taking on AI apps like Gemini's Nano Banana with its new prompt-based Firefly AI Assistant. You simply describe the outcome you want and it will execute "complex multi-step workflows" across Photoshop, Premiere, Lightroom, Illustrator and other apps to achieve that result, Adobe says.  The complexity of apps like Photoshop creates a "barrier to entry" for users who may have a vision but lack skill, according to Adobe. That's where the FireFly AI Assistant

After unveiling a 4K version of its Fire TV Stick Select at its hardware event last September, Amazon is launching the latest version of its HD dongle today. The Fire TV Stick HD costs $35, comes with Alexa+ built in and offers the redesigned experience that the company previewed at CES in January. It might be confusing, considering Amazon makes at least five different configurations of its streaming stick, but the model announced today comes in at the entry-level and brings some meaningful upgrades. First, it’s about 30 percent narrower, according to the company, which makes it easier to fit into

When Amazon introduced the Ember Artline TVs in January, it didn’t have a specific date of availability to share. Now, the company is ready to supply the details: Pre-orders open today, and units ship on April 22 in the US and Canada, “with the UK and Germany to follow.” The company also announced a new version of its Fire TV Stick HD this morning, as well as some new features for its Fire TV software. For those who don’t remember offhand, the Ember Artline is basically Amazon’s answer to Samsung’s Frame TV. It’s a matte, 4K QLED panel that can double

Japanese entertainment company Toho has released a teaser video for Godzilla Minus Zero, the upcoming sequel to the award-winning film Godzilla Minus One. The teaser shows the famous monster next to the Statue of Liberty as it rampages across New York. Godzilla Minus Zero is set in 1949, two years after the events of the first film, and will be a direct sequel. You’ll see familiar faces from Minus One in the short trailer, as well, namely Koichi Shikishima and Noriko Oishi, two of the first movie’s main characters. The kaiju flick was filmed specifically for IMAX with high-definition digital cameras.

Sony is removing some features from its TV guide and program guide displays for channels received by an over the air TV antenna on select models of Bravia televisions from 2023-2025. Cord Cutters News reported on the changes, which will take effect in late May. Channel logos and thumbnail images in program descriptions are going away from the built-in TV Guide for antenna TV channels. Only programs from recently watched channels will be shown in the guide, and depending on the channel, program information may not be displayed. Change is also coming for set top box users, with the dedicated Set

The Federal Communications Commission has announced that Netgear has been given conditional approval that effectively exempts it from a previous ban on foreign-made networking routers. The conditional approval gives the company a de facto — though potentially temporary — monopoly on the selling and servicing of new consumer routers in the US. "We're pleased to share that Netgear is the first retail consumer router company to receive conditional approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as a trusted consumer router company," Netgear CEO CJ Prober said in a statement. "As a US founded and headquartered company, Netgear is aligned with the

Google has introduced a new app for Windows desktops and, unsurprisingly, it puts AI front at center. If you aren't a big fan of Google's Gemini chatbot, then skip on past this download. For those of you who are heavy Gemini users, though, this could mean a simpler and more integrated experience on Windows machines.  Once installed, you can pull up the app's search bar with the Alt + Space shortcut. Queries typed into this open-ended search box can hunt down information from the web like typical Google search, where AI Mode will be enabled for an extra layer of artificial

The NAACP is suing xAI and a subsidiary called MZX Tech for allegedly operating unpermitted methane gas turbines to power its Colossus 2 data center in South Memphis. The association is asking the federal district court of the Northern District of Mississippi to declare that the company has violated the Clean Air Act, force it to stop using its unpermitted turbines and assess financial penalties against xAI for violating federal law, among other requests. The lawsuit claims that xAI — the Elon Musk-founded AI startup now owned by SpaceX — is operating 27 gas turbines without an air permit to power

We're sliding into developer conference season and one of the biggest events on the upcoming calendar is Google I/O. This year's edition is taking place on May 19 and 20. As usual, the in-person element will happen in Mountain View, California, though many of the keynotes and sessions will be livestreamed. Google will surely make its biggest announcements during the opening keynote, which will start at 1PM ET on May 19. A developer keynote will take place later the same day. As ever, the rumor mill will pick up speed in the leadup to Google I/O. We do have some ideas

Riot Games released a pile of updates for its long-running MOBA League of Legends. One of the more noteworthy changes coming to the game is the official launch of WASD controls. This alternate option, allowing players to traverse the rift by keyboard rather than by mouse, is rolling out to ranked matches in patch 26.9.  Riot first announced that it was pursuing support for WASD controls last August. The studio said it wanted to ensure that the alternate control scheme wasn't more powerful than point-and-click movement; Riot said it was targeting a low win-loss rate difference between the options before releasing

The RAMpocalypse continues. Microsoft just revealed significant price increases across the entire Surface line of products, according to reporting by Windows Central. The updated pricing has already hit the official Microsoft Store, with other retailers expected to follow suit in the near future. These are fairly significant upticks. For instance, the base model 15-inch Surface Laptop 7 now starts at $1,600. It cost $1,300 when the laptop was first released back in 2024. It did receive a price increase last year to $1,500, so today's increase tacks on another $100. The cost balloons even further when upgrading components, as a top-end Laptop

Gemini in Chrome is about to get a small but handy upgrade. Starting today, Google is rolling out a feature it calls Skills to Chrome on desktop. Skills allow you to save your favorite Gemini in Chrome prompts for quick access, thereby making it easier and faster to repeat certain tasks. For instance, Google suggests you could use one saved prompt to get Gemini to calculate how much protein there could be in a new recipe you found online. Another Skill can make it easier to do a side-by-side spec comparison of a few different products you're looking at across

After a jury found that Live Nation-Ticketmaster violated antitrust law on several counts, the company warns in a blog post that the verdict "is not the last word on this matter." The company plans to renew a motion for the judge to issue a ruling against the states, claiming that they did not prove their case as a matter of law. It also awaits the court's decision on a separate motion to strike the testimony of one of the states' expert witness, whose analysis they say helped inform the jury's damages award. The jury found that Ticketmaster overcharged consumers $1.72 per

If you’re struggling to get a full night of rest, a good pair of sleep earbuds can help you tune out unwanted distractions. The Ozlo Sleepbuds are one such option, and they’re currently available for $249 ($100 off) in the run-up to Mother’s Day at Amazon and Ozlo’s online storefront, which is easily the lowest price we’ve seen.  OZLO SLEEPBUDS  WHERE TO BUY: * $349 $249 at Amazon * $349 $249 at Ozlo * $349 $259.99 at Best Buy Made by former Bose engineers, Ozlo’s Sleepbuds are extremely similar to Bose’s discontinued Sleepbuds. They work well as a white noise machine and helped

An unannounced Teenage Engineering device, the KO-Amp 35, can be found over at the FCC in a new filing. The label clearly marks it as a member of the mid-range EP family instruments, which currently includes the KO-II and its spinoffs, the Riddim and the Medieval. The name suggests that TE could be getting into the budget guitar and instrument amp space, but the filing reveals very little. All we know is that it has a built-in rechargeable battery and Bluetooth, but little else. There is also a "model difference statement," which suggests the KO-Amp will come in multiple colors. The

I was unsure if my parents would notice that the voice on the other end wasn't mine - or that it was mine, sort of, but it wasn't me. The voice said hello, asked my dad how he was doing, and asked again when he didn't respond quickly enough. "What is that, Gaby?" He realized something was wrong almost immediately. I explained I had tried to trick him and it clearly hadn't worked. "It didn't," he said. "It sounded like a robot." It wasn't a perfect experiment. My parents were out of the country, which made for a shoddy connection. They

Stop using this recalled wireless power bank immediately. | Image: Casely Casely first recalled over 429,000 of its 5,000mAh Power Pods wireless power banks in April 2025 following 51 reports of their lithium-ion batteries "overheating, expanding or catching fire," resulting in six minor burn injuries. Both the company and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (USCPSC) are reannouncing the same recall today following 28 additional reports of batteries overheating. Those include a serious incident on a plane and the death of a 75-year-old New Jersey woman who "suffered second and third degree burns and later passed away from complications from her

Google latest update to AI Mode in its Chrome browser is designed to keep the chatbot-style search tool always around once you start an online search journey.

As tensions with the US government mount, Anthropic has leased a new office with enough space to quadruple its 200-person head count in London.

Democrats are demanding answers about Palantir and other surveillance firms powering Trump’s hard-line immigration enforcement agenda.

Keep your phone firmly in hand and add some personality with these comfortable, durable, and nifty smartphone grips.

Smart plugs can add controls to any outlet, but they aren’t perfect for everything. Here’s our guide to using one and which ones to buy.

The Dolby Atmos soundbar setup rivals the best from Samsung and Sonos.

From charging adapters to external monitors, I’ve gathered the absolute best peripherals for your MacBook.

California-based startup Sabi is developing a thought-to-text wearable that could usher in the cyborg future.

This fully waterproof little folding cargo ebike is tough enough to take on rain and the worst potholes Montana has to offer.

I let Shark’s and Dyson’s new AI-powered robot vac-mops loose in my home. One was a clear winner.

After testing 14 meals from Tempo, a spin-off subscription service from Home Chef, a colleague and I were surprised by how much we liked them. But lord, there's lots of chicken

This luxury Swiss watch brand has gone where no one has gone before. Unfortunately, the price is out of this world too.

WIRED tracked down some of the most prominent figures of last year’s DOGE invasion. Here's where they are now—in government and beyond.

South Asians are a powerful, visible minority in the Trump administration. They’re also facing a racist backlash, fueled in part by the white nationalist Groyper movement.

Neck pain takes many forms, but these WIRED-tested pillows may save your sleep.

Use these verified Birdfy discount codes to score up to 40% off smart feeders, camera kits, and accessories.

Boost your productivity and save with exclusive Google Workspace coupons from WIRED. Get up to 14% off plans for three months, including Starter, Standard, and Plus tiers.

Save up to 50% today with the latest Home Depot promo codes for appliances, power tools, and more this April.

Save on the science-backed devices you’ve been eyeing with 15% off Theragun discount code and 30% off other great deals.

Explore today’s top DoorDash promo codes for $25 off your first order, free delivery, and 50% off DashPass for students and select users.

Upgrade your home office with the best Uplift Desk discount codes. Save on standing desks, ergonomic chairs, and accessories during the Spring Setup Sale.

Whether you’re looking to upgrade your internet or get the latest phone, we’ve got you covered with our selection of AT&T coupons and deals.

Save up to 60%, plus an extra 20% with HP promo codes for laptops, printers, PCs, and more tech.

After the full movie leaked, animators mourned the chance to release their work as intended. Others feel the leak is justified in light of Paramount’s marketing blunders and association with Trump.

The White House has announced that NASA will work with the Departments of Defense and Energy to put nuclear reactors in orbit and on the surface of the moon.

AI is making it easier to design chips and optimize software for different silicon. Some startups envision a revolution in chipmaking.

The price increases range from $200 to $300, and Microsoft doesn’t sell a sub-$1,000 Surface anymore. The rising cost of consumer tech is a common theme in 2026.

Amazon is paying more than $11 billion for a small satellite company.

In a letter obtained by WIRED, the Energy Information Administration tells two senators that it plans to develop a mandatory assessment of data centers' energy use.

A seemingly endless torrent of criticism directed toward Trump from former MAGA allies suggests the president is losing support from his base.

Once a $4 billion apparel juggernaut, Allbirds will rebrand as NewBird AI, a “GPU-as-a-Service” company. Hey, if you can't beat ’em, join ’em.

Every smart smoke alarm I’ve tested has one potentially fatal flaw, trading fewer nuisance alarms for a risky sensor strategy.

Take your home office to new heights with our favorite motorized standing desks.

Don’t suffer the buffer. These WIRED-tested home routers will deliver reliable internet across your home, whatever your needs or budget.

You’re an action hero, and you need a camera to match. We guide you through all the models, plus accessory recommendations and hidden software tricks to try.

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