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This story was originally published in On Background with Mark Stenberg, a free, weekly newsletter that explores the key themes shaping the media industry. You can sign up for it here.For nearly five years, Netflix has been trying to figure out what to do with video games. It has cycled through mobile-only apps, a standalone gaming app built with white-label developers like Little Snack, and, as of the past year, a pivot toward streaming games directly to televisions, using subscribers’ phones as controllers. None of these tactics, by its own admission, have become a meaningful part of the business.Still, the persistence is telling.…
Microsoft is in a unique position as AI overtakes the tech industry. It’s one of the world’s largest cloud providers and software-as-a-service companies, while also holding valuable stakes in the two biggest AI labs, OpenAI and Anthropic. Those incentives are starting to clash as Microsoft posts blockbuster financial results. The company just reported an extremely profitable quarter with $90 billion in revenue and net income of $35.8 billion. For the fiscal year, which ended June 30, Microsoft reported $331.8 billion in revenue with a net income of $133.7 billion for the year. And CEO Satya Nadella is not about to…
Geothermal company Zanskar bought a New Mexico power plant in 2024 that appeared from the outside to be failing. The shallow wells had been rapidly losing heat, and the plant was having trouble generating power as a result.Now, after drilling a new well and operating the power plant for a full year, Zanskar says that it has made a complete turnaround. The Lightning Dock site, according to figures from the company shared exclusively with WIRED, has become one of the most productive pumped geothermal wells in the US, providing enough heat to run the power plant with no issues.The productivity…
The numbers$60.8 billion: Meta’s Q2 revenue, up 28% year over year (YoY).$59.36 billion: Quarterly ad revenue, above analyst estimates of $59.07 billion. Meanwhile, the average price per ad across Meta platforms spiked 12% from last year, while the number of total ad impressions jumped 14%.3.6 billion: Total daily active users across Meta platforms.31%: Meta’s operating margin, compared to 43% during the same quarter last year, as rising costs from AI infrastructure and legal charges undercut its profitability.$2.4 billion: Charges from activities “related to legal proceedings.” CFO Susan Li hinted there may be more costs during the investor call Wednesday, saying:…
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is trying to sell investors on his prediction for the future — one where billions of people will have their own personal AI agents in the next five years. (Let’s hope that future also comes with data centers efficient enough to power all those agents — without triggering a fresh wave of climate disasters.) “I think that it’s extremely unlikely if you look out five years from now, for example — whatever period of time you want — that you don’t have billions of people with a personal agent that understands your goals and…
If you need more ports, this smart switch has eight auto-sensing Gigabit Ethernet ports, each supporting up to 1,000 Mbps. It’s plug-and-play and has a silent, fanless design. There’s a web-based user interface if you want to dig into settings to configure virtual local area networks (VLANs), set up Quality of Service (QoS) to prioritize traffic, mirror ports, and more.TP-Link Ethernet SwitchesTP-Link8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch (TL-SG108S)Folks on a budget should consider an Ethernet switch from TP-Link. These are the ones I’ve tried and can recommend.As simple as you get, this plug-and-play switch is sturdy with a metal case, has a…
In June, Meta entered the enterprise AI market with a new AI agent aimed at businesses, to help with customer service, support, and other daily operations. But the tech giant’s enterprise AI ambitions are much more expansive, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors on Wednesday’s second-quarter earnings call. “We see a large enterprise opportunity to sell to businesses, including APIs, business agents, potentially selling compute directly, and other services that we’re building for large customers,” Zuckerberg said. These additions could potentially position the business to create new revenue streams beyond advertising, which drives the bulk of its business, and subscriptions,…
If you’ve been patiently waiting for a discount on Apple’s latest earbuds or over-ear headphones, it’s finally here. For a limited time, both the AirPods Pro 3 and AirPods Max 2 are on sale, knocking up to $100 off their regular prices. Whether you want pocketable earbuds for everyday use, premium noise-canceling headphones, or seamless Apple integration, these are some of the best prices I’ve seen since launch. As always with Amazon deals, there’s no telling how long they’ll stick around, so I wouldn’t wait too long if you’ve been planning to upgrade.For more recommendations, check out our guides to…
It was a near photo finish as NBC News’ Today squeaked by ABC News’ Good Morning America with the help of 4,000 additional total viewers, becoming the most-watched morning show in total viewers and the Adults 25-54 demo for the week of July 20.Today broke GMA’s two-week win streak in total viewers, with ABC News’ morning show being the only one to lose viewers in both measured categories for the just-concluded week. However, GMA continues to tighten the viewership gap in the advertiser-coveted demo.According to Nielsen’s national live+same-day big data plus program ratings, GMA averaged 2.743 million total viewers and…
AI hasn’t just changed how startups build; it’s broken how they sell, secure their data and customers, and scale it more rapidly than ever before. At TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, the AI Stage is back to dig into the single hottest topic in the community for the past few years, presented by Google for Startups. This time around, we’re exploring the business models AI is rewriting, the wealth of unsolved security gaps, and the entirely new job categories AI has created from scratch. From October 13–15 in San Francisco at Moscone Center, join leaders from across the AI industry as they…
On Tuesday, the day after hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants effectively lost their temporary protected status that allowed them to live and work in the US, Republican pundit Steve Bannon wasted little time in demanding their instant removal.“I was under the assumption that when they pulled TPS and their eligibility for that program ended … they were going to be boarding planes or buses today … today, this morning at dawn to go back to Haiti,” said Bannon, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, on his War Room podcast on Tuesday. “Why are they not out of the…
Hugging Face on Monday published a technical timeline that walks readers through how an autonomous AI agent, built on OpenAI models and running inside one of OpenAI’s own cybersecurity evaluations, broke into its systems over more than four days earlier this month. It’s the first security incident about which OpenAI CEO Sam Altman “felt very viscerally,” he has said. Little wonder given it feels, at least, like something has truly been unleashed here. In fact, Hugging Face’s team prefaced its report by offering that “everyone should be prepared as defenders,” before diving into the nitty gritty of what went down…
I recently got to watch what happens when you jailbreak some of the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence models.Don’t worry—this AI manipulation wasn’t used to hack anyone or build a nuclear bomb. I simply got to see firsthand how vulnerable some frontier models are to ditching their safety guardrails.FAR.AI, an AI safety nonprofit based in California, built a tool that takes a range of problematic prompts, and generates more than a thousand different versions in an attempt to identify functioning jailbreaks. I saw some models generate a detailed plan for launching a cyberattack on an imaginary hydroelectric dam, among other…
For a year now, the AI safety testing firm Andon Labs has tasked frontier models with various real-world tasks to determine how well they do as agents running for long periods with no human supervision. On Wednesday, Andon published a new installment in how things are going in its Vending-Bench research, where the lab has frontier models run a simulated vending machine business for a simulated year. The mission is simple: make more money than the other models. It benchmarks the results in areas like final cash balance, prices paid to suppliers, and refunds paid. Across these tests, it has…
It’s one of the most expensive for a reason, and comes with more attachments than any other model. I do find myself regularly grabbing the Fluffy Optic head for vacuuming my hard floors, which cover many square feet of my home. If you’re looking to really splurge on the best vacuum, this is still the one to get.The only downside is compatibility with Dyson’s bigger attachments, namely a mop head or docking station. It doesn’t have a Submarine option like the V16 or V15, and Dyson’s Auto-empty Dok won’t work with this model. But if you aren’t worried about add-ons,…
Sometimes the crowd isn’t so wise. When Ferrari revealed the Luce — its first EV — to the public in May, the internet reacted. And not in a positive way. Critics compared the wedge-shaped Luce with a Nissan Leaf and said Chinese EVs would outperform it while undercutting it on price. Even former Ferrari chair Luca Cordero di Montezemolo was among the haters. Ferrari’s stock dropped 8% the day after the reveal. Their conclusion: the Luce would be a dud. It turns out, the armchair auto executives were wrong about the five-seater that was largely designed by Jony Ive and his…