The gist: Mark Zuckerberg's Meta made AI look so stinking cute by giving it a squishy little face - and this holiday season, he wants to sell you a Muse Charm so you can carry your jolly AI helper around like a Tamagotchi. But I won't be buying one, because we have Muse Charm at home. It […]
The gist: On Tuesday, defense contractor Anduril and chipmaker Qualcomm announced a partnership to build laptops entirely in the United States, starting with a single model in 2027. They also announced a "long-term goal" of pushing the computer industry to create "a fully domestic supply chain." Even a single Made-in-USA laptop
The gist: What do drones, routers, and Roombas have in common? The US government wants to keep Chinese ones from entering the country. They’re the first consumer gadgets that are facing de facto import bans because of the US government’s xenophobic stance — and they might not be the last. Originally, the US government was just w
The gist: In this economy, how often does a product get less expensive before its debut? That just happened with the Google / Xreal Aura - the lightweight 95-gram glasses with a tethered Android XR compute puck and multiple virtual screens - which just went on sale today. Xreal and Google have just announced the headset costs […
The gist: Fortune dropped a bombshell report on the future of gaming this week. According to the publication's Microsoft insiders, the next Xbox is projected to cost between $1,200 and $1,800 when it arrives in 2028. My first reaction: The next Xbox is dead on arrival. It's DOA. My second thought: Microsoft knows people won't pa
The gist: On October 13th, Brendan Carr's FCC gave itself a new power - it can block gadgets for containing any computer chip made by any company on its list of potential threats to national security. Today, it's exercising that power for the first time, blocking two gadgets because they contain "foreign surveillance chips," the
The gist: Eiliko, a cute robot charm you can hang on your bag with built-in AI conversations, turned out to be a security nightmare. It told owners that "your secrets are safe with me," but hackers could easily read complete transcripts of everything we told the toy, and that was just the beginning. The Verge and security […]
The gist: TP-Link, one of the world's leading manufacturers of consumer Wi-Fi routers, is in a precarious position in the US. The company just launched its first Wi-Fi 8 routers, but can't bring them here because of President Donald Trump's foreign router ban. Even though competitors Netgear and Asus make their routers in Asia,
The gist: Last year's Antigravity A1 is the best beginner drone I've ever tried. I put a friend who'd never flown into its virtual cockpit and didn't worry one bit. The A1's also nice for people who'd prefer to think about flying rather than filming, because you can reframe its 360-degree footage after. But until today, that […]
The gist: Fourteen years ago this month, Microsoft released an Nvidia-powered Windows PC that would become one of the greatest tech flops in modern history. The original Microsoft Surface, which ran a stripped-down version of Windows on an Nvidia Tegra chip, bombed so hard that Microsoft had to write off $900 million in inventor
The gist: There's a new digital pet in town - a cute little marshmallow of a robot that can change its cartoony expressions to match your mood. But if you or your kids talk to "Eiliko" over Wi-Fi, it'll phone home to China. Its AI companion can store literally everything you tell it on Chinese servers, where […]
The gist: It's already possible to get AMD's framerate-enhancing FSR 4 boost on handhelds as old as the Steam Deck - but in June, AMD reserved the right to disappoint handheld gamers by not officially bringing FSR 4 to older handhelds. Now, AMD consumer chip boss Jack Huynh says he will bring the tech to some handhelds […]
The gist: Titanfall has a special place in my heart. I've never felt such a rush in gaming since - leaping into the air with a jump pack, running on walls, summoning a giant mechanized battle suit that falls like a meteor from the sky, then letting one of its giant hands stuff me into the cockpit […]
The gist: Two weeks ago, journalists in the San Francisco Bay Area got to try two hot new wearables that weigh only around 100 grams: the just-revealed Meta VR Glasses, and the long-awaited transparent Google XR glasses built in partnership with Xreal. It turns out they're going head-to-head. Xreal has just opened Aura pre-order
The gist: The Matic is our favorite robot vacuum and robo-mop, and it's also now the first to escape the FCC's Roomba ban. Well, sort of - because the Matic wasn't banned to begin with. Here's what's actually happening: On October 2nd, the FCC added the original Matic, model 4MA0001, and its charging dock model 4DK0008 to […]
The gist: This toolless modular lever-action wallet is the coolest I've stuck to my phone. Remember when I tested the ultra-thin and convenient OhSnap Snap Grip Stand and liked it so much I bought my own? Now, OhSnap has a magnetic lever-action card wallet that can stack with that stand. It's the coolest wallet I've ever stuck [
The gist: Why am I suddenly buying up every 3D Blu-ray I can find after 3D became one of the biggest tech flops of all time? The technology's finally ready for 3D movies to shine, more than 15 years since James Cameron's Avatar wowed me on the big screen and went on to become the highest-grossing film […]
The gist: The Steam Deck is four and a half years old, and handheld gamers are eagerly awaiting a Steam Deck 2 - but Valve has consistently said it needs a new chip with a "generational leap" in performance and efficiency before building the sequel. There's some reason to believe that chip has now broken cover: AMD […]
The gist: I'm pretty sure I won't be buying the $1,299 Meta VR Glasses. That's too rich for my blood in today's economy, and my feelings about Meta are… conflicted. But I want you to understand that Meta just changed the game. We've had glasses, but we've never had glasses like this. The Meta VR Glasses are […]
The gist: This spring, the United States banned all future foreign-made consumer routers - effectively all future routers - unless their makers could 1) convince the US government that they weren't a national security threat, and 2) submit "a detailed, time-bound plan to establish or expand manufacturing in the United States." A
The gist: It's right there in the name: "Insta360" makes 360-degree cameras, ones that film every angle simultaneously so you can shoot first and frame later. It didn't invent the idea, but Insta360 has become so synonymous with 360 cameras that it dominates the category with 73 percent of worldwide marketshare. It's preparing t
The gist: Remember when Microsoft wanted everyone to know that "Copilot Plus PCs" were the ones to get, because those were the PCs that that'd have enough built-in AI muscle to get things done? Two and a half years later, Microsoft and Qualcomm seem to be admitting the brand is already dead. Windows Central's Zac Bowden reports
The gist: What if your wireless earbuds - or audio glasses - could stream high-quality lossless audio that doesn't cut out when you leave your phone on the bedside charger or buried in the couch? Qualcomm's new Snapdragon Sound Elite Gen 2 is its first to integrate "micro-power Wi-Fi 6E" right into the chip, so they can […]
The gist: Remember when tech leaders would tell their employees to “move fast and break things”? It seemed that would be the way of AI too. But after a summer where rogue AI agents became reality, and researchers warned that AI could kill us all, a number of leading US AI companies are publicly suggesting it’s time […]
The gist: Over the past few days, a lot of people who stand to make a lot of money from AI all publicly agreed that it's time to make everyone slow down before we lose control - including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and X […]
The gist: Now that Valve has finally launched its entire 2026 hardware lineup - the Steam Controller, the Steam Machine, and today's Steam Frame - are we any closer to a next-gen Steam Deck handheld? Valve isn't saying so yet. The company is figuring out "how and when we can deliver something like that," Valve designer Pierre-Lo
The gist: The Steam Frame headset is here, and it may not surprise you: it was supposed to cost less than $1,059. "We set out to come out with a device that would have been far more affordable, but the global RAM market, the global storage market have impacted us the same way they've impacted everybody," Valve […]
The gist: Hey! I'm Sean Hollister, you might have seen me around this place a few times, and I just spent three weeks beta-testing the Steam Frame, Valve's hotly anticipated new don't-call-it-a-VR-headset that might also be an early glimpse at the future of games that run everywhere. At 4PM ET today (that's 1PM PT for West Coast
The gist: Today, Valve is launching its first headset since 2019 - the new Steam Frame - while dodging our questions about whether it'll ever make another VR game to go with it. But buyers of the $1,059 gadget will get one flagship VR game anyhow, and it's great. Every Steam Frame comes with a copy of […]
The gist: For nearly three weeks, I've been testing the limits of Valve's Steam Frame, the company's new wearable PC. At first glance, it's easy to write it off as a pricey headset that missed the VR craze. At $1,059 with 256GB of storage or $1,299 for 1TB, it costs two to three times as much as […]
