Review: Framework Desktop is a mash-up of a regular desktop PC and the Mac Studio

Framework’s main claim to fame is its commitment to modular, upgradeable, repairable laptops. The jury’s still out on early 2024’s Framework Laptop 16 and mid-2025’s Framework Laptop 12, neither of which has seen a hardware refresh, but so far, the company has released half a dozen iterations of its flagship Framework Laptop 13 in less than five years. If you bought one of the originals right when it first launched,…

August 7, 2025
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Hulu’s days look numbered, but there’s reason for Disney to keep it around 

Bob Iger, the CEO of The Walt Disney Company, announced today that Disney will “fully integrate” Hulu into the Disney+ app in 2026. Although a company representative told Variety that people will still be able to buy standalone subscriptions to Hulu, we can’t help but wonder how long that will last. A prim and polished app combining the catalogs, recommendations, and profiles for Disney+ and Hulu subscribers could make a…

August 6, 2025
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Google search boss says AI isn’t killing search clicks

Google has often bristled at the implication that its obsession with AI search is harming web traffic, and now search head Liz Reid has penned a blog post on the topic. According to Reid, clicks aren’t declining, AI is driving more searches, and everything is fine on the Internet. But despite the optimistic tone, the post stops short of providing any actual data to back up those claims. This statement…

August 6, 2025
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RIP to the Macintosh HD hard drive icon, 2000–2025

Apple released a new developer beta build of macOS 26 Tahoe today, and it came with another big update for a familiar icon. The old Macintosh HD hard drive icon, for years represented by a facsimile of an old spinning hard drive, has been replaced with something clearly intended to resemble a solid-state drive (the SSD in your Mac actually looks like a handful of chips soldered to a circuit…

August 5, 2025
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Murena’s Pixel Tablet is helping to wean me off Google

A lot of people are overly reliant on Google. They put all of their important messages, appointments, musings, contacts, and spreadsheets into Google products. Many are aware that Google, like many tech firms, is likely to prioritize its own interests over user privacy. But signing data away for technological conveniences is a common occurrence. Murena’s Pixel Tablet takes a stance against that norm. It’s Google’s Pixel Tablet hardware running an…

August 5, 2025
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Voice phishers strike again, this time hitting Cisco

Cisco said that one of its representatives fell victim to a voice phishing attack that allowed threat actors to download profile information belonging to users of a third-party customer relationship management system. “Our investigation has determined that the exported data primarily consisted of basic account profile information of individuals who registered for a user account on Cisco.com,” the company disclosed. Information included names, organization names, addresses, Cisco assigned user IDs,…

August 5, 2025
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AI site Perplexity uses “stealth tactics” to flout no-crawl edicts, Cloudflare says

AI search engine Perplexity is using stealth bots and other tactics to evade websites’ no-crawl directives, an allegation that if true violates Internet norms that have been in place for more than three decades, network security and optimization service Cloudflare said Monday. In a blog post, Cloudflare researchers said the company received complaints from customers who had disallowed Perplexity scraping bots by implementing settings in their sites’ robots.txt files and…

August 4, 2025
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These are the best streaming services you aren’t watching

We all know how to find our favorite shows and blockbuster films on mainstream streaming services like Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+. But even as streaming has opened the door to millions of hours of on-demand entertainment, it can still feel like there’s nothing fresh or exciting to watch anymore. If you agree, it’s time to check out some of the more niche streaming services available, where you can find…

August 4, 2025
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At $250 million, top AI salaries dwarf those of the Manhattan Project and the Space Race

Silicon Valley’s AI talent war just reached a compensation milestone that makes even the most legendary scientific achievements of the past look financially modest. When Meta recently offered AI researcher Matt Deitke $250 million over four years (an average of $62.5 million per year)—with potentially $100 million in the first year alone—it shattered every historical precedent for scientific and technical compensation we can find on record. That includes salaries during…

August 1, 2025
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Ukraine rescues soldier via drone delivery of complete e-bike

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has placed unbelievable pressure on drone developers on both sides of the war, who have responded with astounding innovations that include: fiber-optic drones (to prevent radio jamming) kamikaze sea drones, eventually equipped with anti-air missiles drones that fire shotguns bomber drones that drop mines and grenades drones that release flaming thermite into trenches long-range, aircraft-style drones that can substitute for small cruise missiles interceptor drones that…

August 1, 2025
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