Even if AI turns out not to be as much of an energy hog as people are making it out to be, it could still spell out trouble for power grids across the US. Tech companies are already burning through increasing amounts of electricity to train and run new AI models. And they’re asking for […]
When Disney-owned ABC put Jimmy Kimmel Live on indefinite suspension, the broadcaster’s logic was easy to understand: Kimmel’s joke – a riff on the way Donald Trump started talking about construction on the White House’s new ballroom after being asked how he felt about Charlie Kirk being shot – was mild. But the bit prompted […]
Established wisdom used to be that buying a game console at launch was a bad idea. It was the worst-possible version of the experience: launch consoles cost more and had fewer games, and often these consoles got not only cheaper but better over time, through revisions that made them smaller or added features. For the […]
Barely over a week after right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s public killing at a Utah campus, speech attacks in the name of the self-proclaimed free speech advocate are piling up. Law enforcement officials have custody of suspected shooter Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old from Utah who prosecutors allege was in a relationship with a transgender woman and […]
Starting Monday, the US government will get another crack at convincing a federal judge to break up Google, after a different judge decided to keep it intact despite finding it to be a monopolist. Lawyers for Google and the Justice Department will return to a federal courthouse in Alexandria, VA for a roughly two-week trial […]
On Wednesday evening, I had a profound sense of déjà vu. When I watched Mark Zuckerberg open his Meta Connect keynote by giving the world a live backstage tour from his new glasses, I was transported back to 2012. I was in the live audience at Google I/O when Sergey Brin introduced the world to […]
This week, Google announced that it has finally completed moving “the best” of its Nest-branded smart home devices from the Nest app to the Google Home app. This means users of Google Nest hardware shouldn’t have to bounce between two apps anymore and can finally delete the Nest app. (The “best” qualifier is doing some […]
Yesterday, Disney-owned ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live “indefinitely” for a comment Kimmel made about the response to Charlie Kirk’s death. The response from Republican commentators has been predictably gleeful. They’ve positioned the suspension as a reversal of “cancel culture,” a “deplatforming” that’s simply fair retaliation for antagonizing them. “Jimmy Kimmel does have Free Speech, he […]
Wildfire smoke is the air quality nightmare of our generation, eating away at previous gains made by cracking down on industrial emissions and tailpipe pollution. Constant exposure to smoke is becoming a chronic threat even in places that historically haven’t had many wildfires. Climate change is priming forests to burn more intensely, which means more […]
Holding a principled commitment to the First Amendment is a challenge. Even so, it’s been bemusing to watch the Republican Party – which has spent years demanding legal cover for sending spam emails, sabotaging public health, and avoiding social media moderation – launch a full-scale broadside against it over the past week. Authorities are just […]