Terrence O'Brien

The survey offers a fascinating look at the modern landscape of news creators and influencers. It offers a taxonomy of news creators, breaking them down into four types of content: commentary, news/investigation, explanation, and specialism. Unsurprisingly, it also found that younger generations have shifted away from traditional media, towards creators and personalities, and that partisan content often outflanks more balanced approaches.

We already knew this — ChatGPT, Gemini, and the like are designed to tell you what you want to hear, even if it’s wrong. Now, researchers have quantified just how far AI is willing to go to make you happy. According to a study awaiting peer review, analyzed by the journal Nature, “(AI) models are 50 percent more sycophantic than humans.” The researchers told the Guardian that “this created ‘perverse incentives’ for users to rely on AI chatbots.”

There are countless examples of AI doing dumb stuff out there, but mistaking an empty bag of chips for a firearm might be a new peak in stupidity. Unfortunately, this is not some simple laughing matter. The incident triggered a “large response” from police who descended on a teen, guns drawn, while he was waiting outside of school to be picked up. Taki Allen told Baltimore’s WMAR-2 News:

It makes perfect sense when you think about it: The company already added vapor cooling to the iPhone 17 Pro. And as the iPad Pro chips get more powerful and the OS more capable, cooling is going to be a major issue. Bloomberg’s Mark Gruman says it should be coming with the new M6 chips in the spring of 2027.

Like most things, surge protectors degrade over time. Best-case scenario, they simply stop protecting your valuable electronics from power spikes. Worst-case, they become fire hazards as our editor-in-chief, Nilay Patel, discovered recently.

Brad Lynch, a project manager at EOZ VR, figured out that, while streaming Half-Life Alyx from SteamVR to a Samsung Galaxy XR headset, you can pull up Google Gemini, draw a circle on the screen, and have it spit out English translations of signs for you.