Author: admin
Chicago always has something to prove. When it went up against New York for the 1893 World’s Fair, a New York Sun reporter called out its “windbag” campaigners. Illinois ended up hosting the fair, and Chicago embraced its new identity as the Windy City. That chip-on-the-shoulder energy still defines this metropolis, a city that builds, innovates, and competes like it has everything to lose.Chicago’s tech scene is a diverse landscape that shouldn’t be slept on—but you probably know that. The Second City’s tech sector has grown by 18 percent over the past decade, adding more than 106,000 direct jobs and…
With the top app stores flooded with AI apps, developers may think the best bet for turning a profit is to integrate artificial intelligence technology into their own products. However, a new study focused on the subscription app ecosystem across iOS, Android, and web is calling that assumption into question. RevenueCat, a company that offers subscription management tools used by over 75,000 app developers, said in its 2026 State of Subscription Apps Report that AI integration is not a guarantee of long-term retention. Instead, AI-powered apps struggle to retain subscribers, with people canceling their annual subscriptions — a metric known…
Microsoft Windows has been with us for more than 40 years at this point. Over that time it’s managed to gather all kinds of add-ons, companion apps, and utilities that you may not necessarily have discovered.Some of these are made by Microsoft itself. There’s Microsoft PowerToys, for example, which lets you tweak everything from keyboard shortcuts to the layout of your desktop. There’s also Microsoft Journal, a journaling app designed primarily to be used with a stylus on Surface computers.Here though we’re focusing on Microsoft PC Manager, which first appeared in beta form in 2022, and is now available for…
Google announced Wednesday that it is bringing Gemini integration for Chrome to new regions, including India, Canada, and New Zealand. The rollout will let users use Gemini in Chrome through a sidebar on desktop, enabling them to ask Google’s AI chatbot questions about the content on the screen, get information from their Gmail, Keep, Drive, and YouTube, and compare tab contents. As part of the new rollout, Gemini will also support languages including Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Telugu, and Tamil, in addition to English and Chrome’s other newly supported languages. Image Credits: Google Google first introduced Gemini in…
At Anthropic’s first court hearing challenging sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, the AI tech startup asked the government to commit that it wouldn’t levy additional penalties on the company. That didn’t happen.“I am not prepared to offer any commitments on that issue,” James Harlow, a Justice Department attorney, told US district judge Rita Lin over video conference on Tuesday.In fact, the government is gearing up to take another step designed to sideline the company from doing business with federal agencies. President Trump is currently finalizing an executive order that would formally ban usage of Anthropic tools across the government,…
YouTube has hit some impressive numbers in 2025. According to new estimates from research firm Moffett Nathanson — as reported by The Hollywood Reporter — the platform pulled in a staggering $40.4 billion in ad revenue, which is more than Disney, NBC, Paramount, and Warner Bros. Discovery’s (WBD’s) combined ad revenue, whose total came to $37.8 billion. This shift is a clear sign of just how much content consumption has changed over the years and how advertisers have adapted their strategies. YouTube’s ad revenue for 2025 not only topped the combined haul from the four major Hollywood studios, but also…
What’s New in iOS 26?Photograph: Julian ChokkattuWait, what happened to iOS 19? If you’re confused as to how we got to iOS 26 from iOS 18, don’t worry: You didn’t miss anything. Apple decided to change the naming structure for all of its operating systems to 26 this year to reflect 2026. It’s kind of like new car models. The highlight in iOS 26 is the design: Liquid Glass. It’s divisive, but there are ways to tone down the glassy look.The most practical and useful feature is the call screening tools in the Phone, Messages, and FaceTime apps. Once you…
On Friday night, my boyfriend and I sat on the couch for a refreshing evening of doing nothing together. We tuned into a baseball game, he picked up my guitar, and I eagerly booted up “Pokémon Pokopia,” the 30-year-old franchise’s new cozy life simulator game, which is unlike anything we’ve seen from Pokémon before. I narrated my experience as I played, explaining the process of constructing habitats to increase the comfort levels of my Pokémon friends, a primary objective of the game. “Onix is stuck in a cave, but I can’t break through the walls, so Squirtle suggested throwing a…
People on social media have reported strange events on delivery and navigation apps—drivers appear to be in the middle of the sea, or a 10-minute trip home suddenly jumps up to 30 minutes. For residents of countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC, where life has more or less resumed despite Iran’s ongoing attacks, this is a subtle reminder that there is still a war being waged overhead.These problems are widely linked to electronic warfare. In today’s conflicts, disrupting satellite navigation is a common tactic. By interfering with GPS, militaries make it harder for opponents to guide drones, missiles,…
When a founder wires $150 million of his own money into a stock that is down 60 to 70 percent, he is not just betting on his company. He is betting on how media will be bought in the future. Jeff Green’s open market purchase of roughly 6 million shares of The Trade Desk, about $148 to $150 dollars in personal capital, comes after a brutal derating across adtech and high-multiple software. The Trade Desk’s revenue is still growing in the teens, but it has clearly slowed, and 2026 guidance landed softer than investors wanted. Add in noisy debates around pricing and…
Prediction market Kalshi is making it easier for its users to have conversations on Meta’s social network Threads. Kalshi now offers a share option that will automatically embed the relevant prediction market chart into a Threads post. Whether people want to discuss who’s going to win Best Picture or which reality TV contestant is going to go home (and possibly bet on the outcome on Kalshi), “with this integration, people can share their opinions alongside the forecasts they’re seeing on Kalshi,” the company said in a blog post. It’s a move that echoes a successful social media strategy for both…
While Apple and Pixel owners have their own earbuds with special features, Samsung phone owners have the option of reaching for something like the Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 FE. They’re a pair of last-gen Samsung buds that are still great and a good match for Samsung’s Galaxy mobile phones, with extra app support, one touch pairing, and impressive noise-canceling and sound quality for the price. If you head over to Amazon, you can save $20 on either the Black or Gray version.One area where Samsung’s buds shine is the sound quality. They have a big, bold sound with great detail…
Personal finance is just that—personal, often emotional, and can be overwhelming.In this episode of The Speed of Culture, recorded live at CES in Las Vegas, Matt Britton sits down with Natasha Madan, head of marketing at Intuit Credit Karma. Natasha shares how Credit Karma is evolving from a credit score provider into a personalized financial assistant powered by AI and over 80,000 data points. With 140 million members and 40 million monthly active users, the company sits on one of the richest consumer financial datasets in the world. But scale alone isn’t the story. The opportunity is to turn that data into…
A former employee of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency reportedly stole Americans’ personal data from the U.S. Social Security Administration and stored it on a thumb drive, according to a whistleblower complaint reported by The Washington Post. The former DOGE software engineer told co-workers at his new job that he “possessed two tightly restricted databases of U.S. citizens’ information” and was planning to use the information at his new company, according to the report, which added that the Social Security Administration’s inspector general is investigating the whistleblower complaint. The former DOGE employee, whom The Washington Post did not name,…
Comet 3I/Atlas is now heading out of the solar system and into interstellar space, but scientists are still analyzing the data it left behind as it passed through our cosmic neighborhood. A new study, still under review, reveals a surprising detail: The comet is laden with alcohol.Observations from the ALMA telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert show that the coma of this celestial object is heavily enriched in methanol, a type of alcohol common in fuels and solvents. Although methanol is commonly found in comets in the solar system, 3I/Atlas contained up to four times the typical amount.According to the study,…
March ad-ness has begun, but CBS Sports and TNT Sports aren’t showing their full playbooks yet.Today, during a press conference on the upcoming 2026 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, CBS Sports and TNT Sports executives discussed the tournament’s ad sales, saying demand was high and that live sports continue to make an impression on viewers. However, though David Berson, president and CEO, CBS Sports, said there’s “tremendous demand,” he added that they were “not going to give too much specificity.”“Sports are more and more valuable every single day. Big events like March Madness continue to cut through,” Berson said. “They help drive revenue for…