Tech

One Billion Users lets you build the ideal social network — or the most toxic

My social network was booming. I had attracted top-tier users: the coveted Trendsetter, the popularity-lured Investor. I had bested server problems and bad press. Then, somebody picked a particularly unlucky card out of the One Billion Users deck I was testing. Sixty seconds later, I had lost it all. One Billion Users is a new card game from Techdirt and …

Read More »

You can now call 1-800-CHATGPT

For the 10th day of “ship-mas,” OpenAI rolled out a way to call ChatGPT for up to 15 minutes for free using 1-800-CHATGPT. The feature was a project spun up just a few weeks ago, OpenAI’s chief product officer Kevin Weil said on the livestream. Users can now call ChatGPT in the US and message via WhatsApp globally at 1-800-242-8478. …

Read More »

The Kids Online Safety Act’s last stand

Two years ago, Maurine Molak visited Capitol Hill for the first time to support a proposed law she believes could have saved her son. David Molak was a lanky teen who loved basketball — “a joy of a kid,” she says. Then, as she’s recounted several times to legislators, he got injured while playing. He began spending more and more …

Read More »

The New Jersey drone hysteria exposes one salient truth: no one knows anything

Okay, I get it, we’re all sick of the drones. I went to two holiday parties over the weekend in the New Jersey suburbs, and it was all anyone wanted to talk about. The news coverage has been breathless, all-consuming, and most importantly, completely unhinged. No one knows anything. The cops don’t know anything. The feds sure don’t sound like …

Read More »

Why Trump is an antitrust wild card for Big Tech

On today’s episode of Decoder, we’re talking about antitrust policy and tech, which is at a particularly weird moment as we enter the second Trump administration. A lot of tech policy is at a weird moment, actually, but antitrust might be the weirdest of them all — the pendulum has swung back and forth on antitrust policy pretty wildly over …

Read More »

LG will bring its wireless TV tech to Mini LED models in 2025

A short press on the AI button guides users to relevant keywords and TV features, while a long press enables personalized searches based on a large language model (LLM4). For example, if a user is planning a trip to France, they can ask their remote, “Recommend movies to watch on my trip to Paris.” The AI will understand the context …

Read More »

US targets TP-Link with a potential ban on the Chinese routers

Authorities in the US are considering a ban on TP-Link internet routers over national security concerns due to their repeated links to Chinese cyberattacks. Investigators at the Commerce, Defense, and Justice departments have all launched probes into the company, according to the Wall Street Journal, with TP-Link reportedly being subpoenaed by an office of the Commerce Department. The WSJ reports …

Read More »

Apple Maps on the web now has Look Around

Following the beta launch of Apple Maps on the web in July, Apple has now recently added Look Around street-level views for several cities to the site, 9to5Mac reports. You can activate Look Around as you would in the Apple Maps app on devices like the iPhone or iPad by selecting the binoculars icon on the bottom left of the …

Read More »

Apple’s App Store is inviting me to ‘search the way you talk’

I opened the App Store today to find an emulator I’d read about, and a new prompt appeared under the search bar inviting me to “search the way you talk.” I hadn’t seen the prompt before on my iPhone 13 Pro Max, and quite frankly, I had missed the iOS 18.1 update note about it. As it describes, Apple’s update …

Read More »