Author: admin
Like the brand’s easy-to-assemble desks, the Align chair has a deceptive simplicity with relatively few parts. The chair required less than 15 minutes and only three screws to put together, using an Allen wrench that came in the box. (While the QR code, on a chair released in March, did not yet link up to the right URL for the assembly instructions, I mostly didn’t need them.)The simplicity stems mostly from the decision to limit the chair’s components: a cushion atop the wheels and casters and a single-piece mesh top held aloft by a suspension system that allows for a…
On Tuesday, Red Hat principal software engineer Sally O’Malley released a new open source tool called Tank OS to make it easier to deploy and manage OpenClaw agents more safely. “This was a fun project that I put together on the weekend that I knew would be a really good fit for AI and where we’re going,” she told TechCrunch, adding that she wanted to give it “to the masses.” Tank OS is geared toward power users looking to run OpenClaw on their own computers and toward IT pros managing fleets of corporate OpenClaw agents. It makes OpenClaw safer and…
BCI (brain-computer interface) technology — in which neural signals are routed from a person’s head to a computer — was once the stuff of science fiction, but these days the technology represents a competitive corner of the tech industry. One of the companies racing to commercialize BCI is Neurable, which this week announced that it’s looking to license its “mind-reading” technology to consumer wearables. Neurable specializes in “non-invasive” BCI, which distinguishes itself from firms like Neuralink — the Elon Musk-founded startup known for inserting computer chips directly into people’s skulls — in that its product doesn’t require users to undergo…
Users often search for recipes and travel plans on YouTube to find videos related to their queries. Now, the video platform will offer a new tool to cater to those users’ needs with its introduction of an AI-powered interactive search feature that presents step-by-step results along with a mix of both text and video. Through this new “Ask YouTube” feature, users can ask questions like “plan a 3-day road trip from San Francisco to Santa Barbara” and get step-by-step results, which would be a mix of text, short videos, and longer videos instead of just video results. The company says…
The two USB-C ports are on the left side, alongside HDMI and a USB-A port. The second USB-A port, a microSD card slot, and a headphone jack are on the right. It’s not a nice assortment of ports overall, and I just wish Acer had split the USB-C ports up so the laptop could have a charging port on either side.Acer is using a top-notch 16-inch OLED touchscreen display on the Swift 16 AI. It has a resolution of 2880 x 1800, a refresh rate of 120 Hz, and color saturation as close to perfect as I’ve seen. Like most…
When Chris Gray sold his Shark Tank-backed scholarship search startup Scholly to Sallie Mae in 2023, he thought he had it all. Now he’s suing the student loan giant for wrongful termination and alleging that it’s selling the data his app collected, which includes personal info on minors, without properly informing users. Gray co-founded the company a decade prior with the hope of helping students more easily find college scholarships that were going untapped. Within two years, he nabbed sharks Daymond John and Lori Greiner as investors after an appearance on the show. With the acquisition, Gray became one of…
This is too big to carry around day-to-day, and you can’t fly with it, but if you’re going off-grid for a few days, it’s the highest-capacity portable charger you can realistically carry easily. It also has a lovely pop-up lantern with three brightness settings and a versatile array of ports. I have a separate Best Portable Power Stations guide with recommendations for anyone who needs even more power.Other Great Laptop Power BanksHere are a few more tried and tested power banks for laptops that might be worth considering.Photograph: Simon HillShargeek 170 Power Bank for $169: Perfect for lovers of translucent…
The world today is riven by cultural differences, political divisions, and geopolitical disputes — a challenging environment for any investor hunting for startups that can grow large enough to deliver venture-scale returns. Kompas VC has developed a regionally sensitive strategy to help it navigate, and invest in, this fragmented world. And it’s putting fresh capital towards this approach with a new €160 million fund ($187.5 million), the firm told TechCrunch. “We see the world really falling into three main spheres of economic activity, of political activity — the U.S., Europe, and China,” Sebastian Peck, partner at Kompas VC, told TechCrunch.…
Between malware, online impersonation, and account takeovers, there are enough digital security problems out there as it is. And with the rise of agentic AI, more activity is being carried out by agents on behalf of humans—creating different risks that something could go awry.Now, working with initial contributions from Google and Mastercard, the authentication-focused industry association known as the FIDO Alliance said on Tuesday that it will launch a pair of working groups to develop industry standards for validating and protecting payments and other transactions carried out by AI agents.The goal is to produce a protective baseline that can be…
Three-year-old energy drink brand Neutonic has raised $6 million to fund an expansion across the U.S., U.K., and other international markets.Founded by podcaster Chris Williamson and fitness entrepreneur James Smith, Neutonic claims to give a more sustained, focused energy than its caffeine-heavy competitors. While Neutonic contains caffeine, its ingredients also include supplements and herbs, including Cognizin, rhodiola rosea, Panax ginseng, and L-theanine.The company doubled its year-over-year revenue in 2025, jumping from $4 million to $8 million. In 2026, Neutonic is expecting revenue to triple, projecting $24 million. In 2027, it expects to hit $50 million.Advertising News,Advertising/Marketing,Branding,CPG News,Exclusive,Fundraising,Fundraising Pitch Decks,PremiumPremium,Advertising News,Advertising\/Marketing,Branding,CPG…
Apple’s recent crackdown on vibe-coding apps hasn’t held up Lovable’s launch of its no-code AI app builder, which is now available as a mobile app on Apple’s and Google’s app stores. The vibe-coding startup’s new mobile app is being pitched to would-be app builders as a way to code on the go via voice or text AI prompts that let you capture your ideas as they pop into your head. That means you can kick off Lovable to work on your random app idea from anywhere, letting its agent run autonomously after receiving your input. The new app will also…
A controversial bill in Colorado that would have undone some repair protections in the state has failed. The bill had been the target of right-to-repair advocates, who saw it as a bellwether for how tech companies might try to undo repair legislation more broadly in the US.Colorado’s landmark 2024 repair law, the Consumer Right to Repair Digital Electronic Equipment, went into effect in January 2026 and ensured access to tools and documentation people needed to modify and fix digital electronics such as phones, computers, and Wi-Fi routers. The new bill, SB26-090, would have carved out an exception to those repair…
Mastercard processes around 150 billion transactions a year, which puts the brand in a rare position: It can see where consumer spending is actually going, in an aggregated and anonymized manner—not where people say it is going. In this episode of The Speed of Culture podcast, Matt Britton sits down with Rustom Dastoor, EVP and head of marketing and communications for the Americas at Mastercard, live at CES 2026 in Las Vegas. Rustom talks about why most brands are using AI to reinforce what already works rather than unlock what was never possible before. He introduces the concept of technical branding and…
Among the most interesting parts of Elon Musk’s testimony Tuesday in his lawsuit against OpenAI wasn’t the charity he claims was stolen from him (we all knew that was coming). It was about an old friend. Musk testified that one of his core motivations for co-founding OpenAI was a falling out with Google’s Larry Page over AI safety — specifically, a conversation in which Musk raised the prospect of AI wiping out humanity and Page shrugged it off as “fine,” so long as AI itself survived. Page called Musk a “speciest” for being “pro human.” Musk called the attitude “insane.”…
OpenAI has a goblin problem.Instructions designed to guide the behavior of the company’s latest model as it writes code have been revealed to include a line, repeated several times, that specifically forbids it from randomly mentioning an assortment of mythical and real creatures.“Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user’s query,” read instructions in Codex CLI, a command-line tool for using AI to generate code.It is unclear why OpenAI felt compelled to spell this out for Codex—or indeed why its models might want to…
The numbers$5.6 billion — Revenue for Omnicom’s “core operations” in the first quarter of 2026, up 6.7% year over year. This represents the businesses the company does not plan to dispose of within the next year.$5.6 billion — Operating expenses in the first quarter of 2026, an increase of $2.4 billion year over year, mostly related to the IPG acquisition.$627 million — Revenue from dispositions and assets held for sale related to the IPG acquisition, versus $34.3 million in costs.14.8% — EBITA margin in Q1, up from 12.4% in Q4 2025.51.5% — The percentage of revenue integrated media was responsible…