18 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Alex Cranz

Alex Cranz

Former Tech Editor

Former Tech Editor

    More From Alex Cranz

    Alex Cranz
    Alex Cranz
    Threads is going to get DMs.

    You’d think Threads would already have DMs support given both Facebook and Instagram have it. But nope, you have to head over to a person’s Instagram account and hope that you can DM each other there.

    Speaking to Washington Post Adam Mosseri recognized this is one of just a few features Meta needs to bring to Threads to make the new service last.

    Asked what he sees as the key to Threads’ long-term success, Mosseri didn’t offer the sort of big-picture vision he has become known for at Meta. Instead, he pointed to four short-term priorities: helping users build their lists of people to follow, improving the algorithms that decide what users see, giving users a way to see posts only from people they follow, and figuring out how to let people message each other.

    Alex Cranz
    Alex Cranz
    The neighbors all need blinds.

    The big X is now on the building that houses X, the company most people know as Twitter. It appears have the same lighting scheme as my last gaming PC build, which makes me wonder what both Elon and me in 2018 have against RGB LEDs.

    Twitter is currently being sued for not paying the rent on that building. Also, these blinds at Lowes are really good at blocking out light and work with the Bond Bridge, which lets you connect them to most smart home set ups.

    Alex Cranz
    Alex Cranz
    If a password manager stores your 2FA token is it still 2FA?

    Vergecast listener Garfield wrote in with a question so debatable I had to quickpost it:

    Password managers are starting to support 2fa passwords. Basically you can save your TOTP seed along with your password and it will generate the code for you when needed.

    The question is, is that even 2fa anymore?

    So the website receiving everything still perceives it as 2FA, but you, the user do not. However you’d also still need 2FA to access the password manager to circumvent another site’s 2FA which means it would technically still be 2FA.

    So what do you think?

    Barnes & Noble is reinventing itself but not its e-readers

    The company is looking to give its stores an indie bookstore vibe, but its e-readers have more of an Amazon Kindle in the early 2010s vibe.

    Alex Cranz
    Alex Cranz
    Alex Cranz
    Go read this New York Times profile of an internet policy pioneer.

    Mike Masnick’s TechDirt is required reading, even when you might not agree with him. Every day Mike is out there blogging about the biggest stories and the absolute minutiae that make up internet policy. That’s earned him a following not just from internet policy nerds like myself, but from some of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley. As writer Kash Hill notes in her profile, its partially down to Masnick’s influence that both Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey have recently embraced decentralized social media protocols.

    Alex Cranz
    Alex Cranz
    Voyager 2 can’t talk to Earth again.

    The 45-year-old interstellar probe lost contact after a “routine sequence of commands,” according to Gizmodo. Its antenna currently isn’t facing Earth, which makes it impossible to communicate across the approximately 12.4 billion miles between us. But fortunately, Voyager 2 is programmed to reorient itself toward Earth a few times a year, so we should presumably regain contact in October.

    That’s a few months from now, and if NASA regains contact it won’t be the longest we’ve gone without communicating with the probe. That record was established back in 2020 when Voyager 2 went over 8 months without contact during a necessary communications update.

    Stay safe out there, little buddy.

    Alex Cranz
    Alex Cranz
    The business of online search is deeply tricky.

    That’s something we all might know intuitively, but earlier this week David Pierce published this great piece that gets into the nitty gritty of why its so difficult for anyone to unseat Google.

    If you haven’t read it yet you should give it a go this morning. It’s a great way to start your Saturday.

    Alex Cranz
    Alex Cranz
    The best looking pizza in animation is coming to Nickelodeon.

    I know it’s bold to say the pizza in the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the best looking pizza in animation, but it always looked so cheesy. Gooey. It just looked like they were having a better time eating pizza than I’ve ever had eating pizza.

    Anyways, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is coming exclusively to Nickelodeon. It will arrive on the linear channel later this month…cowabunga.