section
Tech
Industry, products, and the wires that hold it all together.
482 stories archived
Man used massage gun on his tired eyeballs. It went as well as you'd expect.
He had retinal tears and bruises from squishing his eyeballs with the gun.
Polymarket's viral videos showed people winning big, but the bets were fake
"Winning" bets were made on cloned website and would have lost money, WSJ finds.
Following user outcry, AMD reinstates memory encryption in consumer CPUs
Critics saw the move as an underhanded way to steer them toward more costly chips.
Valve's Steam Machine ships June 29 for $1,049, but you probably won't be able to buy one yet
Valve says it's using a randomized purchase queue to make the experience "less frustrating and more fair."
Woman killed when Tesla driver using Autopilot crashed into her home
Tesla touts Autopilot as lifesaving a day after grandmother died in crash.
'We Will Fight to Our Very Last Breath:' Township Leaders Vow to Fight Nuclear AI Data Center
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and a proposed nuclear weapons AI data center in Michigan have earned the ire of community leaders.
Lucid lays off 1,500 workers in second big cut of the year
The cuts and redundancies are part of a plan to "simplify the company," the CEO says.
A US military exercise in space got underway with barely anyone noticing
The Space Force wants to cut the time to field new satellites from years to weeks, days, or hours.
1,250 hp hybrid Corvette shatters the Pikes Peak production record
The high-altitude race is a unique test of car and driver.
Stopping Tech Company Censorship (with Jake Hanrahan)
Joseph speaks to Jake Hanrahan all about Patreon, YouTube, and getting journalism in front of people.
This former hacker saw the light—and now wants to collect all of it
"I don’t know of a bigger question we can answer as humans."
Are Public Libraries Becoming Children’s Libraries?
Books written for younger audiences are being relocated to adult sections at alarming rates. We asked experts to predict what that means for the rest of us.
How Anthropic may have talked itself into an AI export ban
The company warned about dangers of advanced AI far more than rival OpenAI.
Trump admin’s coal investments assist plants with repeated violations
At least three coal plants have been repeatedly cited for violating environmental regulations.
Thirsty and power hungry: Australia is in the middle of a datacentre boom – but not everyone is convinced
They’re a key part of the digital and AI economy, but they come at a high environmental cost and offer few operational jobs Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast On Mamre Road, in Sydney’s outer western suburbs, there are plans to build a “hyperscale” datacentre that will be one of the biggest in the world. If approved, the 52-hectare site will include six four-storey buildings that stretch 40 metres high, alongside 936 cooling units and 852 diesel backup power generators. Continue reading...
From pwned to kiting – an A to Z of the gaming terms you need to know
As phrases like easter eggs and looksmaxxing enter everyday language, what other words from the world of video games might soon be mainstream? Twenty years ago, video games were seen as a niche hobby dominated by hardcore enthusiasts, tucked away in obscure online forums and gaming meet-ups. Back then, the idea that governments would use footage from Call of Duty and gaming terms such as “killstreaks” as war propaganda would have been absurd. Then the 2010s happened: nerd culture popularised, previously online-only spaces began to meld with the real world, and gaming went mainstream. Now, gaming references have entered common parlance – at the end of 2024, video game terms including “cheat code” and “cutscene” were even added to the Oxford English Dictionary – and they increasingly crop up in politics, too. Earlier this year, the official White House X account posted footage of military strikes on Iran interspersed with footage from the video game Grand Theft Auto. Six days later, another video was posted , this time interspersing military footage with clips from Nintendo’s 2006 game Wii Sports. Video game references aren’t reserved for the political right, either: in February 2026, Democrat representative of New York Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quipped , “Why does this guy always talk like a World of Warcraft npc [non-player character]?” in response to a post on X by Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff. Continue reading...
Review: Widow's Bay is a boldly original take on comedic horror
An eminently binge-able series that honors classic horror tropes while reinventing them in surprising ways
Brands using AI-generated influencers to promote products on social media
Investigation finds AI content that purports to show genuine customers, prompting calls for greater transparency Brands promoting their products online are quietly deploying AI-generated influencers on social media, an investigation has found, prompting calls for greater transparency. The findings suggest companies are increasingly turning to AI-generated content that purports to show genuine customer experiences while giving no obvious indication that the people featured are not real. Continue reading...
To the tablet and beyond: does Toy Story 5 go hard enough on technology?
The animated sequel sets up a tug-of-war between physical and digital play for children but is still eager not to be an anti-tech screed For more than 30 years, Pixar’s signature Toy Story series has been entertaining children while giving voice to their parents’ anxieties. This is especially pronounced in the film’s sequels, as the living toys who dedicate their lives to the happiness of their owner/child experience all different sorts of potential and parent-paralleled obsolescence, from physical wear-and-tear and a child reaching young adulthood to the toy equivalent of empty-nesting (still hanging around the playroom but no longer anyone’s favourite). It’s only natural – maybe even a little belated – that Toy Story 5 would address the encroachment of technology, which continues to make its way to children earlier and earlier. So many years after the tech breakthroughs that allowed Toy Story to become the first computer-animated feature, and Pixar to become a household name in family entertainment, has the formerly Steve Jobs-owned company turned against the kind of innovation that built its success? Continue reading...
How Europe’s EV makers shrank their product to challenge the bloated SUVs
Smaller, cheaper cars built for narrow city streets are becoming more stylish – but require careful design decisions The winding backstreets of London, Paris and Rome are a large part of their charm. But they are also a problem for electric carmakers. For a long time, squeezing big batteries into smaller, cheaper cars to fit European streets was too much of a problem, so manufacturers focused on bloated SUVs instead. But that is finally changing. Battery technology has improved and Europe’s carmakers havecut manufacturing costs enough that they can now sell cars that might have a chance of fitting down a medieval lane or two. Continue reading...
Scientists Propose Black Holes Don’t Exist, Are Something Much Stranger
A seismic wave from the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake bounced off the Earth’s core and hit Japan from below, shifting the entire mainland a quarter-inch eastward.
The UK will scan asylum-seekers’ faces for age checks—despite knowing the tech is flawed
Tests of age-verification technology show the risks of life-altering errors.
Lloyds Banking Group to hire 300 tech experts to work on AI
Exclusive: While recruits will increase headcount for now, broader adoption of AI could lead to jobs cuts in future Lloyds Banking Group has launched an AI recruitment drive for 300 tech experts, weeks before its chief executive, Charlie Nunn, unveils a strategic plan for the 261-year old lender. The bank said it intended the recruits to work on its use and development of agentic AI by September, referring to autonomous artificial intelligence models that can plan and execute tasks with minimal human oversight. Continue reading...
As the US and China surge ahead, is Europe sleepwalking into AI disaster?
A burgeoning genre of fictional AI doomsday scenarios says lagging behind on the technology could threaten the continent’s sovereignty It’s 2031 and the US and China are about to tear Europe into pieces. The US ploughed vast sums into datacentres and the EU did not. China built robots and Europe did not. American companies “restructured” their workflows around AI and fired people, while EU workers went on long lunch breaks and handed over administrative tasks to the AI model Claude. Continue reading...