Adam Mosseri says negativity around AI is ‘going to get worse’
Asked about AI and the trend of college students booing tech CEOs at graduation ceremonies, Instagram head Adam Mosseri acknowledged in an interview that a lot of people really don't like AI, and it's not just young people and creatives. Appearing on the Colin and Samir podcast to talk about the launch of widescreen and long-form video for Instagram, Mosseri said he thinks there's a trend of "more anxiety and more frustration and more anger about AI," particularly in creative industries:
It's not only getting worse, it's going to continue to get worse. I think we're going to see more frustration and anger, some of it founded, some of it un …
A hacker stole more than 40,000 DHS employee records
A hacker stole a trove of personal information from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The breach exposes the names, job titles, phone numbers, email addresses, and office locations of more than 41,000 employees, including those in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), according to TechCrunch and Wired. The data also linked the agencies to specific surveillance tools.
As reported by TechCrunch, a hacker known as "Department of Peace" gained access to the data through Okta, an identity and access management service used by the DHS. Around 21,000 records pertain to CBP employees, and ne …
Akai is embracing vibe-coded mods with an open-source MPC
The MPC Sample Key isn't even formally announced yet, but Akai is already showing off what the modding community is cooking up through vibe coding. Akai has decided to embrace the explosion of hackers and custom firmware developers by giving them early access to the device, which will have open-source firmware.
It will likely run some version of the same software found on the MPC Sample, but with tweaks to accommodate the traditional keyboard, pitch, and mod wheels. Unlike the higher-end MPC Key 37, however, the Sample Key doesn't have pads. Instead, you play back samples with the keys.
I …
Readwise is taking on Kindle and Kobo for ebook supremacy
For the last several years, Readwise has been building tools for power readers. There's the eponymous product, Readwise, which stores and categorizes your Kindle highlights to help you remember what you've read. There's Readwise Reader, an app for reading newsletters, PDFs, and web articles you've saved for later. And now there's Readwise Books, a full-fledged platform for buying, reading, and talking about books.
Readwise Books is currently in beta, available through invite or to existing Readwise subscribers. I've been testing the app for a few days, and it's a much bigger take on reading than most. Tristan Homsi and Daniel Doyon, Readwis …
Google says its investments in AI are driving more searches
Google parent company Alphabet says that its AI investments are leading to a big growth in searches year-over-year, as noted in its Q3 2026 earnings today.
"Our AI investments are driving overall Search query growth, including commercial queries," CEO Sundar Pichai says in a statement. "In fact, our year-over-year query growth rate is the highest it's been in the last five years."
Alphabet's consolidated revenues for the quarter were $127.6 billion, up 25 percent year-over-year, with its "Google Search & other" revenues up 12 percent year-over-year. Google Cloud revenue was also up 103 percent year-over-year to $30.7 billion. Alphabet also …
Microsoft reveals strong cloud growth amid financial reporting overhaul
Microsoft just posted the first quarter of its 2027 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $92.3 billion in revenue and a net income of $33.6 billion during Q1. Revenue is up 19 percent, and net income has increased by 32 percent.
It's a new financial year for Microsoft, so the company is changing up how it reports its finances by splitting its businesses into two segments for the first time. Gone are the previous segments: Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing. It's now just Agents and Infra, and Devices and Consumer.
Agents and Infra, which includes businesses like Azure, Microsoft …
Apple charges $14,549 for a fully specced touchscreen MacBook Pro
With an OLED display and touchscreen capabilities, it's no surprise that the new MacBook Pro Apple announced today is more expensive than the MBP announced earlier this year. But upgrading the base models that start at $2,899 for the 14-inch, and $3,399 for the 16-inch, with every premium hardware option that Apple offers pushes those prices to an eye-watering $14,249 and $14,549, respectively.
Both of those premium configurations include the M5 Max chip with an 18-core CPU and 40-core GPU, $150 worth of nano-texture glass, 128GB of memory that adds an extra $2,000, and 16TB of storage which is the real budget breaker here thanks to the ong …
Google launches Gemini 4 Carbon with a ‘significant leap’ in cybersecurity
Google has released its latest frontier model, Gemini 4 Carbon, offering "significant gains" in coding, agentic tasks, and cybersecurity. In an announcement on Wednesday, Google highlights Carbon's top spot on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (v5.0) benchmark, with Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Astra trailing behind.
The new Gemini 4 Carbon model offers improvements over Argon, which Google released earlier this month. It's currently only available to a select group of cybersecurity defense companies, but it will eventually expand to other partners in its Fairwind Program.
The company says Carbon reflects the "pace at which we're pus …
Foreign gadget bans: all the news about the FCC’s clampdown on Chinese tech
What do drones, routers, and Roombas have in common? The US government wants to keep Chinese ones from entering the country. They’re the first consumer gadgets that are facing de facto import bans because of the US government’s xenophobic stance — and they might not be the last.
Originally, the US government was just worried about US networks. It’s been distrustful of Chinese telecom equipment providers Huawei and ZTE for well over a decade, eventually requiring telecom providers to “rip and replace” their gear. (Many telecoms have still failed to do so.) It established an “Entity List” for companies whose gear should be banned from import, marketing, and sale.
But under the second Trump administration, that list has been weaponized against entire home consumer gadget categories too — starting in December 2025 when Trump and Brendan Carr’s FCC banned all future foreign drones unless their companies obtained a waiver.
Next was a ban on all future foreign routers, all future foreign robots and power inverters, and within the robot ban, all future foreign robovacs. In each case, the government claims it’s because those gadgets fundamentally pose an unacceptable threat to US national security. But in each case, the US has provided zero public evidence of a threat, has done nothing about existing drones and routers and robots that might pose such a threat, and hasn’t given us any reason to trust that its waivers have anything to do with security.
Besides, there are rarely any US companies to fill the gaps left by foreign ones. Consumer gadgets are largely made overseas, including practically all routers and practically all drones — just like how your Apple, Dell, and HP laptops are not made in the US.
In this StoryStream, we’re following the latest on the foreign gadget bans.
- MSI just got a router ban waiver — but not a blanket one.
- Will TP-Link really make routers in the US? Here’s what it told us
- Another ‘DJI front company’ bites the dust.
- It sure would be nice if these congresspeople would say why DJI is a threat.
- Unlike Netgear and Asus, TP-Link says it’s prepared to spend $1 billion to make Wi-Fi routers in the US.
- The FCC plans to ban all Chinese labs from testing US gadgets by 2029.
- The FCC has decertified two more Chinese test labs.
- The Matic is the first robovac to get an FCC ban waiver, not that it needs it
- Asus won’t say how it escaped the US router ban
- Etsy is worried it’ll get caught up in the FCC’s gadget bans.
- We flew the banned drone with snap-on propeller wings.
- HoverAir’s transforming modular drone has already been halted in the US
- I bought DJI’s banned camera — it was cheap and easy
- Does giving a camera wings dodge the FCC’s drone ban?
- That lying drone company we caught? The FCC has now banned Odyssey Robot.
- The ban on robot vacuums won’t make them safer, only worse
- The US government just banned Roombas
- DJI camera clone company Xtra claims it’s ‘in close communication’ with the FCC.
- DJI camera clone company Xtra is halting and refunding all preorders
- Whack-a-drone
- The FCC is planning to retroactively ban disguised DJI gadgets
- The FCC is cracking down on DJI tech that dodged the foreign drone ban
- The FCC is saving Amazon’s Eero and Leo routers from its ban, too.
- Netgear and the FCC have not responded to our emails.
- The FCC just saved Netgear from its router ban for no obvious reason
- Sorry kid, drones are for war now
- Asus is the latest with a nothing statement about the US router ban.
- The United States router ban, explained
- The US government just banned consumer routers made outside the US
- DJI sues over the FCC’s decision to block new drone imports
- The FCC’s foreign drone ban is here
- The FCC just gave itself the power to make a DJI drone ban stick
- Xtra: the company that lets DJI sneak its popular cameras into the US
- DJI couldn’t confirm or deny it disguised this drone to evade a US ban
- DJI explains why it won’t stop drones from flying over the White House — and what happens in a US ban
- US targets TP-Link with a potential ban on the Chinese routers
- DJI might get banned next in the US
Hands-on with the new OLED iPad Mini
Apple announced a new iPad Mini with a larger OLED display this week, and we've just gotten to try it out at Apple's "Pro and tell" event.
It's an iPad for sure, but the new OLED on the Mini looks exceptional, and the optional nano-texture matte finish is awesome. The "Pro and tell" event venue has soft lighting that's not the most conducive to blinding glare on displays, but the matte finish pretty much squashes it entirely.
Moving the front-facing camera to the long edge is also a welcome change, matching other recent iPad models. (The shift means that the whole iPad line has the camera that way.) The reliance on Touch ID instead of Face …