Aether OS is a computer in a browser built for the AT Protocol
Aether OS puts a full-fledged desktop in your browser that ties directly into the AT Protocol. That means it connects to your Bluesky account and other public records. It offers a pretty full suite of apps, 42 in total, covering text editing, task management, and social media. There's even a rudimentary tracker for making chiptunes, a DAW, and a video editor.
Of course, part of the appeal is also the cyberpunk good looks that draw obvious inspiration from The Matrix.
Right now, the project is in alpha, and there are a lot of rough edges. Documentation is also basically non-existent. So, if you get stuck trying to use an app, you're kind …
Sotomayor’s Wabi Sabi is the funnest record of 2026
Shout out to subscriber N_Gorski for today's pick. They popped into the comments on last week's recommendation to ask what I thought of the new Sotomayor record. Well, I hadn't actually heard it yet, but now I'm obsessed.
The group consists of siblings Raul and Paulina Sotomayor from Mexico City. Wabi Sabi is their first record since 2020's Origenes, and it is pure joy. You can look back through everything I've recommended over the last several months, and "fun" is not how you'd describe most of it. But that's what Wabi Sabi is - it's fun, chaotic, and dancey as hell.
I was only familiar with Sotomayor before this because of a short docume …
AI Czar David Sacks wants Trump to ‘get out’ of Iran
David Sacks, the White House's AI and crypto czar, has warned that a continued war in Iran could be catastrophic. On the All In podcast, Sacks said that "we should try to find the off-ramp." He expressed concern that Iran could demolish oil and gas infrastructure across the Middle East, but more alarmingly, that it could start targeting desalination plants, which provide water to much of the region, and could lead to an even larger humanitarian crisis.
Sacks has never made humanitarian efforts a cornerstone of his public persona, however. But he has a well-documented anti-interventionist streak, and even claimed on stage at the RNC that A …
AI companies want to harvest improv actors’ skills to train AI on human emotion
If you've got strong creative instincts, the ability to authentically portray emotion, and are capable of staying true to a character's voice throughout a scene, there's a job listing calling for your experience.
The catch: You won't be performing in a theater, a film studio, or an underground performance space. You'd be using your talents to train an AI model for "one of the leading AI companies," according to the open role posted by Handshake, a company that provides training data to OpenAI and other labs.
Handshake AI is one of a handful of companies of its kind, scrambling to provide more and more niche or specific training data to A …
Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 4 Pro are the choice — if you have a Galaxy phone
Samsung promised "more than a design refresh" for its new top-end Galaxy Buds - it added upgraded woofers for improved, dual-amped hi-fi sound, a new blade design, clearer call performance, and better noise cancellation. Ultimately, while the $249.99 Galaxy Buds 4 aren't a huge leap forward over the previous model, they keep what was good about the Buds 3 and improve on most of what wasn't - as long as you use Samsung Galaxy devices.
That's because, much like the AirPods Pro 3 with Apple gear, the Buds 4 Pro still work best when paired with another Galaxy device. This unlocks all of the functionality of the Buds 4 Pro, including hi-res audi …
The fast rise and epic fall of Clubhouse
In 2020 and 2021, the social media world seemed to be on the verge of complete change. A new app called TikTok was ascendant, bringing a whole new kind of vertical video to phones everywhere. And another app - not as popular, but growing fast, and already hugely influential among the tech set - looked like it might have an entirely new social idea on its hands. It was called Clubhouse, and it was a huge bet that audio might be the future. It was the next big thing, until it wasn't.
On this episode of Version History, we tell the story of the early days of Clubhouse, and how a simple audio group chat app turned into a booming entertainment a …
Live-service games are a mess
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the slow-motion disaster of live-service games, follow Andrew Webster. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.
How it started
Two years ago, I stood at the top of the iconic red stairs in Times Square to experience the weirdest concert of my life. As glowing butterflies flitted about the various screens, a crowd steadily grew, knowing something was happening, but unsure of what. Then a countdown started, and a minute later one of the screens opened up, revealing Ice Spice and, later, …
The $100,000 fee for H-1Bs is causing all sorts of problems
Last fall, President Donald Trump's executive order raising the fee for H-1B visas to $100,000 - like many of his immigration policies - led to near-immediate chaos. Thousands of workers who had flown overseas to renew their visas ended up stranded abroad. Details about who would be affected only emerged after the fact. Six months later, the disorder from the initial announcement has mostly subsided. The H-1B registration season for the next fiscal year has just begun. With H-1B applications open until March 19th, it's unclear what effect, if any, the new rules will have on hiring, immigration, and the workforce, but experts are warning the …
Trump administration is allegedly collecting $10 billion on the TikTok deal
In September, Donald Trump claimed that "the United States is getting a tremendous fee" for brokering the TikTok deal. Now sources tell the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that fee is expected to be in the range of $10 billion. The money is supposedly being paid by new investors, including Oracle and Silver Lake. Reports are that $2.5 billion was already paid to the Treasury when the deal closed on January 22nd. The rest will be paid out in installments.
This is the latest example of the Trump administration inserting itself into private business in unprecedented ways, including taking on a 10-percent stake in Intel last August, …
Meta is reportedly laying off up to 20 percent of its staff
According to Reuters, Meta is looking to offset spending on AI and data centers with a massive round of layoffs. Sources familiar with the matter say the company could lay off as much as 20 percent of its staff, eliminating roughly 15,800 positions. That would be the largest series of layoffs at the company since it terminated 22,000 workers over just a few months between November 2022 and early 2023.
Word of the potential downsizing comes after Meta signaled that it was all but giving up on VR and the Metaverse, slashing budgets and closing studios. Instead, the company has been spending big to attract AI talent, build data centers, and ac …