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The Lego Group arrived at CES 2026 with more than an announcement: Lego SmartPlay represents a major evolution, blending physical and digital interaction while keeping imagination in control. In this episode of The Speed of Culture, Matt Britton sits down with Tom Donaldson, senior vice president and head of the Creative Play Lab at the Lego Group, to discuss the new platform powered by Lego Smart Brick technology that allows Lego creations to respond to how they are played with. From years of R&D product development to kid-led testing and early prototyping, Tom shares how the Lego Group builds conviction, protects creativity,…
European consumers are fighting back against the U.S. following Trump’s threats to take control of Greenland, a Danish territory. As a result, two mobile apps that offer a way to determine if products are made in America, then suggest local alternatives, have surged to the top of the Danish App Store in recent days. The Danish App Store serves users in both Greenland and Denmark, and the same is true for Google Play. The boost in downloads comes as Danish consumers have been organizing a grassroots boycott of American-made products, which also included canceling their U.S. vacations and ditching their…
Fun fact: You do not need a box spring with a hybrid mattress. This is a recurring question I see, and pocketed coils in hybrids eliminate the need for one. Box springs were designed to give more support and elevate performance to traditional coil beds, which would align certain sections of coils to yield more support. Nowadays, you may actually void your warranty if you use a box spring with a hybrid mattress—be sure to check that fine print.Our favorite hybrid we’ve tested is the Helix Midnight Luxe, which happens to be our top overall pick in our best mattresses…
Ejae has traded in “Golden” for a Phil Collins song and a packet of Liquid I.V. The KPop Demon Hunters star features in a teaser spot for the hydration brand’s first Super Bowl ad, released today.In the 15-second spot, the artist looks into a bathroom mirror before the scene cuts to a piano and a voiceover of her singing Phil Collins’ 1984 hit “Against All Odds.” Her voice sounds far away and echoey until she takes a sip from a glass of water with a straw and walks up to a standing mic to begin her performance. The ad teases Liquid I.V.’s first-ever…
U.S. autonomous drone delivery and logistics startup Zipline said Wednesday it will set up operations in Houston and Phoenix early this year, as part of an expansion that will be propelled by $600 million in fresh investment. The round, which values the company at $7.6 billion, will be used to expand to at least four U.S. states in 2026, the company said. Several existing and new investors, including Fidelity Management & Research Company, Baillie Gifford, Valor Equity Partners, and Tiger Global participated in the funding round. Founded in 2014, Zipline developed its own drone delivery ecosystem, including the logistics software,…
Over the past weekend, when weather models first started forecasting a winter storm that would sweep over large parts of the country, Sean Sublette, a meteorologist living in Virginia, started telling people in his area to prepare for snow. At the time, Sublette says, “a lot of the data started to point to a substantial snow storm for the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast, with significant ice farther southward into Carolina’s Tennessee Valley.”Then, Sublette woke up Wednesday morning. “I go through the data again, and I go, ‘Oh, fuck,’” he says. The models were now structuring the storm much differently.“Some of…
Paramount is taking a big advertising swing by bringing guaranteed programmatic placement to live sports.Today, the company announced it was adding live, in-game programmatic buying for select ad units in premium sporting events. The offering starts with Paramount+’s UFC debut, Pimblett vs. Gaethje on Jan. 24. According to Paramount, this is the first time advertisers can get guaranteed, live placement in Paramount+’s sports properties.“This initiative underscores Paramount’s commitment to media modernization, expanding opportunities for marketers to show up during the biggest and buzziest moments of scaled audience attention,” Jay Askinasi, chief revenue officer, Paramount, said in a statement.The ad offerings work…
Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin has just announced a satellite internet network called TeraWave which will be capable of offering data speeds up to 6Tbps, and geared towards enterprise, data center, and government customers. The TeraWave constellation will use a mix of 5,280 satellites in low-Earth orbit and 128 in medium-Earth orbit, and Blue Origin plans to deploy the first ones in late 2027. It’s not immediately clear how long Blue Origin expects it will take to build out the whole network. The low-Earth orbit satellites Blue Origin is building will use RF connectivity and have a max data…
Keeping my house clean can feel like an impossible task with a litter-kicking-happy cat and a two-year-old on a mission to throw everything, whether it’s Cheerios or pizza, onto the floor. One of the things that has made it easier, though, is my Shark handheld vacuum. The Shark UltraCyclone Pet Pro Plus is one of our favorite handheld vacuums, and it’s made it easy to clean up messes from both my cat and tiny human without needing to lug my old vacuum out for every mess. If you want a mess-free home for less, check our Shark coupon code.Get 10%…
At a moment when AI-generated music is drawing lawsuits and protests from artists who say their work has been used without consent, ElevenLabs is tapping musicians willing to put their own work in front of the model.The AI audio company that previously launched a marketplace for AI-generated voices including Michael Caine’s and Maya Angelou’s announced The Eleven Album, a collaborative project that brings together Grammy winners, chart-topping artists and global producers to co-create original music using ElevenLabs’ AI Music model. The effort builds on the company’s licensing agreements with Merlin and Kobalt signed last year and is being positioned as…
Meta on Wednesday announced it’s expanding ads on Threads to all users globally. The expansion, which starts next week, will be gradual, the company says, noting it may take months for the full rollout to complete. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly praised the social app and X rival, which has now grown to over 400 million monthly active users, as the company’s next big hit. Shortly after the app’s debut, the exec told investors that Threads had a good chance of reaching 1 billion users in a few years’ time. The app has rapidly grown since its July 2023…
Days after Micron broke ground on a $100 billion chip factory in New York state, a coalition of environmentalists, labor unions, and civil rights groups are urging the US tech giant to sign a deal that would make a series of promises to be a good neighbor legally enforceable.Micron’s megafab to make memory chips is on track to become the biggest commercial development in state history and the largest chipmaking complex in the country. Officials held a groundbreaking ceremony in the city of Clay, near Syracuse, last Friday. The first chips could arrive in five years, though the entire site…
TikTok is debuting two new ad offerings designed to help movie studios and streaming platforms transform buzz on TikTok into real ticket sales and new subscribers by showing users the specific programs and films that would be most likely to interest them. The new Streaming Ads offering uses Smart+, TikTok’s 15-month-old suite of AI-powered tools for campaign automation, to show real clips from various shows to audiences on TikTok whose historical behavior indicates they are interested in entertainment content. The product is intended to help streamers convert more subscribers. Streaming Ads spotlight various titles from a given streaming service’s catalogue within a…
Adobe has been aggressively adding AI features to all its products in the last few years. The company is now adding more AI tools to Acrobat, including the ability to generate podcast summaries of files, create presentations, and a way for users to edit files using prompts. The company launched Adobe Spaces last year, which is a collection of files and notes that multiple users can access. Now, Adobe is allowing users to use the information stored in these files and notes to create a presentation using text prompts. For instance, if a user has financial details, product plans, and…
Other nice extras include solid battery life (rated to 330 shots, good for a full day of shooting in my testing), a joystick to control the autofocus point (something I sorely missed in the Zf), dual SD card slots, and weather resistance. That is, in short, a hell of a full-frame camera for under $2,000.CompetitionPhotograph: Scott GilbertsonBuying a camera isn’t just buying a camera, it’s buying into a system of lenses, a particular type of color science, and a potential upgrade path. All of these things together still make the Nikon Z5 the best deal out there. The Nikon lens…
Digital insurance company Lemonade is launching a product for users of Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system, known as Full Self-Driving (Supervised), which the insurer promises will cut per-mile rates by “approximately 50%.” It’s one of the first products geared toward pricing insurance based on how software systems handle driving, and a sign that companies may look to create new lines of business as partial autonomy and true self-driving start to proliferate. Lemonade said on Wednesday that it is leveraging “vehicle telemetry data that was previously unavailable” thanks to a “technical collaboration with Tesla,” though the insurance company declined to offer…