Can I offer you a tiny Bluetooth speaker in these trying times?
I knew as soon as I laid eyes on Vappeby that I had to have it. Sure, it would be right at home on my desk, given that everything in and around my workstation is from Ikea, from the Skadis on the wall right down to the Spänd desk legs. But there was something else about this nifty little Bluetooth speaker that spoke to me - the promise of a little extra coziness in dark times. Can $15.99 buy me some peace of mind in a time when the federal government is tear gassing peaceful protesters at will? Not at all, but it can buy a perfectly cheery little Bluetooth speaker, and that can make a gray day feel a little brighter.
I'm not suggesting, you …
Senators ask Meta why it waited so long to make teen accounts private by default
A group of senators has written a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking why his company delayed launching key protections for users under 18. The letter, signed by Brian Schatz (D-HI), Katie Britt (R-AL), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), James Lankford (R-OK), and Christopher Coons (D-DE), cites court documents unsealed late last year that revealed claims that Meta may have downplayed its platforms' harm in favor of increasing user engagement.
Meta started automatically putting teens on Instagram into private and more restrictive accounts in September 2024, before extending the protections to Facebook and Messenger last year. But an unredacted cou …
OpenAI Frontier is a single platform to control your AI agents
Managing humans is hard. Managing AI agents is… also hard. That's why OpenAI is launching a new platform called OpenAI Frontier, which it says will help businesses "build, deploy, and manage" AI agents, even those not made by OpenAI itself.
OpenAI's description of Frontier sounds something like HR for AI. "Frontier gives agents the same skills people need to succeed at work: shared context, onboarding, hands-on learning with feedback, and clear permissions and boundaries," OpenAI wrote in a blog post. The similarity makes sense: OpenAI said the product was inspired "by looking at how enterprises already scale people."
Frontier is availabl …
Tesla hit with another wrongful death suit over its electronic door handles
The mother of 20-year-old man who died after becoming trapped in his burning Tesla Model Y is suing the company over its electronic door handles. It's the latest wrongful death case centering on Tesla's door handles, which have triggered numerous customer complaints over the years and is now under investigation by the federal safety regulators.
The lawsuit states that Samuel Tremblett was unable to escape his Model Y after crashing into a tree on October 29, 2025 in Easton, Massachusetts. Tremblett pleaded with 9-1-1 operators to rescue him, saying "I can't breathe. It's on fire. Help. Please. I'm going to die."
Tesla's door handles, whic …
Spotify’s Page Match syncs your audiobooks and your physical ones
Spotify has launched a new feature called Page Match that lets you quickly sync your spot in a physical or ebook with an audiobook. Point your camera at a page, and the Spotify app uses computer vision to match text with audio. If you have to jump behind the wheel for a long drive, but didn't want to put down The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, you can just snap a pic to jump to the spot in the audiobook where you left off in the physical book.
It's not unlike Amazon's Whispersync for Voice, which lets you seamlessly jump back and forth between Kindle books and Audible audiobooks. The difference is that Spotify's version works with physical books an …
Spotify is partnering with Bookshop.org to sell physical books
Spotify is going all in on books in 2026 and partnering with Bookshop.org to let you buy physical copies of audiobooks and support local retailers starting in the Spring. The announcement dovetails with the launch of Page Match, a new feature that lets you sync physical books and ebooks with audiobooks in the Spotify app using your camera.
When the partnership launches later this year in the US and UK, there will be a button at the bottom of pages for audiobooks, prompting you to "get a copy for your bookshelf." The process will take you out of the Spotify app to complete the purchase on Bookshop.org, leading you directly to the checkout p …
Substack data breach exposed users’ emails and phone numbers
Substack is notifying some users that the email addresses and phone numbers linked to their accounts were exposed in a "security incident" last year. In an email to account holders, Substack CEO Chris Best said that a hacker had accessed internal data without authorization in October 2025, but that passwords, credit card numbers, and other financial information remain secure.
"On February 3rd, we identified evidence of a problem with our systems that allowed an unauthorized third party to access limited user data without permission, including email addresses, phone numbers, and other internal metadata," Best said in the email. "We do not ha …
Valve’s Steam Machine has been delayed, and the RAM crisis will impact pricing
When Valve first announced its impressive-looking Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller hardware in November, the company said the products would begin shipping in early 2026. Some journalists were told "Q1 2026" specifically. But because of the ongoing memory and storage crunch, that launch has been delayed to sometime in the first half of this year, and Valve says it will reset expectations for how much they will cost "as soon as possible."
"We planned on being able to share specific pricing and launch dates by now," Valve says in a new post. "But the memory and storage shortages you've likely heard about across the industry ha …
Google’s annual revenue tops $400 billion for the first time
Google's parent company, Alphabet, has earned more than $400 billion in annual revenue for the first time. The company announced the milestone as part of its Q4 2025 earnings report released on Wednesday, which highlights the 15 percent year-over-year increase as its cloud business and YouTube continue to grow.
As noted in the earnings report, Google's Cloud business reached a $70 billion run rate in 2025, while YouTube's annual revenue soared beyond $60 billion across ads and subscriptions. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told investors that YouTube remains the "number one streamer," citing data from Nielsen. The company also now has more than …
Senators grill Waymo and Tesla over robotaxi safety, liability, and China
During a two-hour hearing in the US Senate Wednesday, top executives from Waymo and Tesla urged lawmakers to take action on long-stalled legislation to speed the deployment of self-driving cars on public roads. But after two hours of Q&A around a number of hot-button topics, including robotaxi safety, legal liability, remote operation, and China, it was clear that lawmakers were no closer to passing any bill related to autonomous vehicles.
Waymo faced questions about its decision to use a Chinese-made vehicle for its next-generation robotaxi, as well as several incidents in which its vehicles failed to stop behind a school bus during studen …