The parking lot was packed. That’s the first Strange Thing. A little background. Just about every mall is struggling now, but the Neshaminy Mall in Bensalem, Pennsylvania is more or less comatose. As Defector’s Dan McQuade, a lifelong Pennsylvanian and mall fan, wrote in his […]
Category: Travel
This smart home controller is literally a piece of wood
One of the fun parts of being a tech journalist for over a decade is that occasionally you get to watch a truly unique gadget go from concept to reality – and, eventually, into your living room. That’s the case with the Mui Board, a […]
Grok is undressing anyone, including minors
xAI’s Grok is removing clothing from pictures of people without their consent following this week’s rollout of a feature that allows X users to instantly edit any image using the bot without needing the original poster’s permission. Not only does the original poster not get […]
Tesla’s fourth quarter sales fell a lot more than expected
Tesla’s sales fell in the fourth quarter of 2025, as rising competition and the expiration of the federal EV tax credit continued to sap the company’s global ambitions. The numbers were a lot worse than many Wall Street analysts were expecting. The disappointing sales report […]
Punkt’s German-made MC03 smartphone comes to the US this spring
Punkt, the Switzerland-based, privacy-focused phone maker, is trying the whole “smartphone” thing again. The MC03 improves on some of the disappointing features of its previous effort, the MC02, while maintaining its security focus. Likewise, its software still comes with a subscription fee: the first year […]
LG announces the ‘world’s lightest 17-inch RTX laptop’
LG is teasing the 2026 Gram Pro laptops that will be fully unveiled at CES, including what the company claims is the “world’s lightest 17-inch RTX laptop.” The LG Gram Pro 17 (17Z90UR) and Gram Pro 16 (16Z90U) will introduce a new ultralight “Aerominum material” […]
Public domain 2026: Betty Boop, Pluto, and Nancy Drew set free
Some years ago, I was writing a science fiction short story in which I wanted to incorporate verses from a 1928 song, “Button Up Your Overcoat.” However, when I sold the story, my editor told me that since the song was still copyrighted, it was […]
LG’s new karaoke-ready party speaker uses AI to remove song vocals
LG is adding a karaoke-focused party speaker to its lineup of Xboom devices, which is built in collaboration with Will.i.am. Announced this week, LG says the Stage 501 speaker comes with an “AI Karaoke Master” that can remove or adjust vocals from “virtually any song,” […]
Meet the new tech laws of 2026
As usual, 2025 was a year of deep congressional dysfunction in the US. But state legislatures were passing laws that govern everything from AI to social media to the right to repair. Many of these laws, alongside rules passed in past years, take effect in […]
You can’t trust your eyes to tell you what’s real anymore, says the head of Instagram
Instagram boss Adam Mosseri is closing out 2025 with a 20-images-deep dive into what a new era of “infinite synthetic content” means as it all becomes harder and harder to distinguish from reality, and the old, more personal Instagram feed that he says has been […]
