New York’s first microdrama film festival searches for its audience
New York’s first microdrama film festival searches for its audience

It remains to be seen if people really want to watch vertical content on horizontal TV screens, but many filmmakers and creators were confident that their latest projects would play well at Alza – New York City’s first microdrama film festival. Founded by former Tribeca Festival chief operating officer Pete Torres, Alza, which took place […]

Xbox mandates a four-day return to office
Xbox mandates a four-day return to office

Microsoft asked its employees to return to the office three days per week last year, and it’s now upping this requirement to four days a week for most Xbox employees. An internal memo, seen by The Verge, describes the change as a “need to create more opportunities for people to work together” after feedback from […]

Will TP-Link really make routers in the US? Here’s what it told us
Will TP-Link really make routers in the US? Here’s what it told us

TP-Link, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of consumer Wi-Fi routers, is in a precarious position in the US. The company just launched its first Wi-Fi 8 routers, but can’t bring them here because of President Donald Trump’s foreign router ban. Even though competitors Netgear and Asus make their routers in Asia, they’ve mysteriously obtained […]

Antigravity just halved the price of its drone — by swapping its headset for wristwatch control
Antigravity just halved the price of its drone — by swapping its headset for wristwatch control

Last year’s Antigravity A1 is the best beginner drone I’ve ever tried. I put a friend who’d never flown into its virtual cockpit and didn’t worry one bit. The A1’s also nice for people who’d prefer to think about flying rather than filming, because you can reframe its 360-degree footage after. But until today, that […]

CoreWeave’s debt is becoming the whole AI industry’s problem
CoreWeave’s debt is becoming the whole AI industry’s problem

CoreWeave had a bad week last week. Its bonds slipped into distressed territory by a common definition – when investors demand 1,000 basis points more in yield than they’d get from government bonds. Last Tuesday Chamath “SPAC King” Palihapitiya noticed the distressed debt, and also asked whether the AI buildout was a private credit bubble. […]

Vibe coding is turning the music gear world upside down
Vibe coding is turning the music gear world upside down

If you spend any time on r/synthesizers or watch a lot of synth videos on YouTube, you’ve probably noticed the explosion of custom firmware for hardware synthesizers, samplers, and grooveboxes. What unites almost all of them is that they were made possible by increasingly sophisticated vibe-coding tools. These sorts of custom firmware were exceedingly rare […]

Democrats think cracking down on AI could give them an edge
Democrats think cracking down on AI could give them an edge

Democrats could win back control of Congress this November, and if they do, they’ll need to decide how to approach one of the country’s newest and thorniest political issues: AI. Polls predict Democrats will flip at least one chamber of Congress in the midterm elections, which would put committee leadership back in their hands. That […]

J Mascis has nothing better to do
J Mascis has nothing better to do

Dinosaur Jr. frontman J Mascis is known as something of a slacker guitar god. He stands stoically onstage, barely moving, as he seemingly effortlessly works through deft guitar solos and lopsided riffs. Unfortunately, Mascis has developed a similar reputation as an interview subject, quietly sitting and offering deft nonanswers. That’s not to say that Mascis […]

Jad Abumrad loves a butterfly knife and a good springy pillow
Jad Abumrad loves a butterfly knife and a good springy pillow

It’s hard to overstate Jad Abumrad’s impact on the podcasting world. He created and hosted Dolly Parton’s America and Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, two Peabody Award-winning shows that offered unprecedented looks at the lives of two of the most important music icons of the last century. Before that, though, he created Radiolab, an experimental […]

Websites are closing their doors to AI agents
Websites are closing their doors to AI agents

Autonomous agents are the hottest thing in AI. OpenAI, Meta, Google, Instinct, and others promise their agents can scour the internet on your behalf, doing anything from booking a dinner reservation and cleaning out your inbox to buying new shoes. But what happens when the rest of the internet won’t play nice? In recent weeks, […]