Author: News Room
Substack has updated its partnership with betting platform Polymarket, “introducing native tools that make it easier to share, discuss, and debate prediction market data directly on Substack.” Additionally, Polymarket will effectively pay “a cohort of creators,” including Matt Yglesias, to use its data though the newsletter platform’s pilot sponsorships program.This is just the latest foray of prediction markets into media. Last week, Dow Jones agreed to incorporate Polymarket’s betting data into its “content,” including The Wall Street Journal. A month before that, CNN incorporated Kalshi’s betting odds. In December, CNBC agreed to infuse its programming with Kalshi data. Noted poker…
Whenever I write about Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, I already know the comments I’m going to get. Cool hardware, but hard pass on anything Meta makes; will wait for someone else to come along. It’s hard to imagine that sentiment changing anytime soon after The New York Times reported that Meta mulled launching facial recognition software “during a dynamic political environment” precisely because privacy advocates would be distracted.Smart glasses evangelists often tell me this fear is somewhat overblown. After all, the phone in your pocket also has a camera. The government already uses facial recognition tech, and CCTV feeds are…
Dealing with PDF files is one of the banes of my life. From signing contracts and NDAs, to jumping through mortgage forms, the whole process is a mind-numbing slog. Download, find an app, sign, send to yourself, find the original email asking you to sign, then attach and send. It’s not much on paper, but life’s full of enough micro annoyances as it is. All this ranting to say that finally, there’s an easier way. Google has announced a smattering of new features for Chrome, one of which is the ability to sign PDF documents directly in the browser. You…
I’m an absolute nostalgia fiend, desperately trying to get my daily fix by browsing the likes of r/millenials, r/90s, and more. Hell, during lockdown, I bought the entire Walkers Looney Tunes Tazos collection, complete with the original folder. Regret Level: 0 One thing I crave more than anything, though, are the glory days of the Old Internet, before the overreaching, soul-destroying Dementors of capitalism and incessant targeted ads absolutely ruined everything. But I’ve just found a new website that takes me right back, if only for a fleeting moment. To celebrate turning 30, Opera has launched a site called Web…
When the trailer for Toy Story 5 arrived yesterday, it revealed something surprisingly uncomfortable. The villain isn’t a greedy toy shop owner, tyrannical teddy bear, or misunderstood new addition to the toy box. This time, they’re facing a tablet. And for the first time in the franchise’s history, the threat to playtime isn’t neglect. It’s total abandonment. As someone who reviews technology for a living, I spend most of my time celebrating innovation. I’m constantly testing faster phones, smarter smartwatches and more immersive TV screens. There’s no denying tech makes life easier. But watching that trailer, I didn’t feel defensive.…
Watching videos on your car’s main screen has always felt like an obvious next step for Apple CarPlay – but not while driving. Obviously. But when you’re parked up waiting for someone, killing time on a road trip, or charging an EV with time to spare? That big centre display could sure come in useful for keeping boredom at bay. And the feature could land sooner than you think. Code spotted in the iOS 26.4 beta by leakers and developers suggests that Apple is preparing to bring video playback to CarPlay. Apple previously confirmed on its developer site that “AirPlay…
Today, Apple announced that The Hunt, which was produced by French studio Gaumont and directed by Cédric Anger, is set to premiere on March 4th. The news comes after months of delays that began when French media reporter Clement Garin noted a number of striking similarities between The Hunt (which Anger originally sold as an original story of his own creation) and Shoot, Douglas Fairbairn’s 1973 novel about two groups of hunters, which was also adapted into a 1976 film.Both The Hunt and Shoot revolve around a group of hunters who start to believe that another group of hunters are…
With Ring facing fierce backlash over its Search Party feature, a new program is challenging developers to move Ring doorbell footage off of Amazon’s cloud — and into users’ own devices. The Fulu Foundation, the consumer advocacy group cofounded by YouTuber Louis Rossmann, is offering an initial bounty of $10,000 to anyone who can integrate Ring doorbells with a local PC or server, while cutting off access to Amazon’s servers.Ring users currently have to pay a subscription fee to store recordings in Amazon’s cloud. While the company has a local storage option through Ring Edge, it’s only available with the…
Brian Boland spent more than a decade figuring out how to build a system that would make Meta money. On Thursday, he told a California jury it incentivized drawing more and more users, including teens, onto Facebook and Instagram — despite the risks.Boland’s testimony came a day after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand in a case over whether Meta and YouTube are liable for allegedly harming a young woman’s mental health. Zuckerberg framed Meta’s mission as balancing safety with free expression, not revenue. Boland’s role was to counter this by explaining how Meta makes money, and how that…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing TP-Link over claims that the router-maker is misleading customers about its ties to China. In a lawsuit filed this week, Paxton claims TP-Link is “masking its Chinese connections,” while serving as “an open window for Chinese-sponsored threat actors and Chinese intelligence agencies.”Though TP-Link markets its routers and other products as “Made in Vietnam,” Paxton alleges that the company sources “nearly all” of the components used to manufacture these items from China. “The reality is that TP-Link continues to operate its supply-chain deep inside of China, with China’s support, and through Chinese exports,” the…
A hacker tricked a popular AI coding tool into installing OpenClaw — the viral, open-source AI agent OpenClaw that “actually does things” — absolutely everywhere. Funny as a stunt, but a sign of what to come as more and more people let autonomous software use their computers on their behalf.The hacker took advantage of a vulnerability in Cline, an open-source AI coding agent popular among developers, that security researcher Adnan Khan had surfaced just days earlier as a proof of concept. Simply put, Cline’s workflow used Anthropic’s Claude, which could be fed sneaky instructions and made to do things that…
The new approach sets Meta up to better compete with platforms like Roblox and Fortnite, which also offer user-generated experiences that can be played on your phone. Horizon Worlds originally launched for VR, but “to truly change the game and tap into a much larger market, we’re going all-in on mobile.”“We’re in a strong position to deliver synchronous social games at scale, thanks to our unique ability to connect those games with billions of people on the world’s biggest social networks,” Ryan says. “You saw this strategy start to unfold in 2025, and now, it’s our main focus.”As for VR…