Record Low Snow in the West Will Mean Less Water, More Fire, and Political Chaos
Snowpack levels across a wide swath of Western US states are among the lowest seen in decades, even as regulators struggle to negotiate water rights in the region.
Science/Tech
The ‘Heated Rivalry’ Fandom Is Tearing Itself Apart
The breakout hockey romance has sparked legions of enthralled fans, along with obsessive, parasocial behavior that’s starting to get called out.
These Open Earbuds Are Just Over $20
Don’t be fooled by a slowly dropping price tag, the Acefit are surprisingly capable.
EPA Reverses Long-Standing Climate Change Finding, Stripping Its Own Ability To Regulate Emissions
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency is rescinding the legal finding that it has relied on for nearly two decades to limit the heat-trapping pollution that spews from vehicle tailpipes, oil refineries and factories. From a report: The repeal of that landmark determination, known as the endangerment finding, will upend most U.S. policies aimed at...
F.T.C. Chair Warns Apple Against Bias in Apple News
Andrew Ferguson of the F.T.C. said in a letter to Apple that it might be violating consumer protection law by stifling conservative speech in its news aggregation service.
OpenAI Claims DeepSeek Distilled US Models To Gain an Edge
An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US AI models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, according to a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News. In the memo, sent Thursday to the House Select Committee on China, OpenAI said that...
Zillow Has Gone Wild—for AI
As the housing market stalls, Zillow’s CEO sees AI as “an ingredient rather than a threat” that can both help the company protect its turf and reinvent how people search for homes.
Best VPN with SOCKS5 proxy in 2026: Top 6 Services for Torrenting & Scraping
Remember when dropping a proxy into your torrent client felt like a secret handshake? In 2026 streaming giants block whole IP ranges, ISPs throttle P2P, and privacy rules keep shifting. That climate turns a VPN-plus-SOCKS5 bundle from nicety to necessity. The proxy speeds one app—qBittorrent or your scraper—while the VPN tunnel shields everything else. Only […]
Waymo is Asking DoorDash Drivers To Shut the Doors of Its Self-Driving Cars
Waymo’s autonomous vehicles can transport passengers across six cities without a human driver, but the Alphabet-owned company has discovered that its cars become completely inert if a passenger accidentally leaves a door open. The company confirmed that it is now paying DoorDash drivers in Atlanta to close these doors as part of a pilot program. A Reddit post from a DoorDash driver showed an...
Crypto Insurance – BDIC Unveils AgentCover Pro to Protect AI-Driven Payments, Stablecoins, and Cross-Chain Transfers
Hong Kong, SAR Central District — BDIC, Blockchain Deposit Insurance Corporation, a crypto insurance provider, today announced the commercial launch of AgentCover Pro, a first-of-its-kind crypto insurance product specifically engineered to protect payments executed by agentic AI systems. Comments from the company detailed how AgentCover Pro delivers modular coverage across agent failures,...
Bill Introduced To Replace West Virginia’s New CS Course Graduation Requirement With Computer Literacy Proficiency
theodp writes: West Virginia lawmakers on Tuesday introduced House Bill 5387 (PDF), which would repeal the state’s recently enacted mandatory stand-alone computer science graduation requirement and replace it with a new computer literacy proficiency requirement. Not too surprisingly, the Bill is being opposed by tech-backed nonprofit Code.org, which lobbied for the WV CS graduation requirement...
Meta Plans To Let Smart Glasses Identify People Through AI-Powered Facial Recognition
Meta plans to add facial recognition technology to its Ray-Ban smart glasses as soon as this year, New York Times reported Friday, five years after the social giant shut down facial recognition on Facebook and promised to find “the right balance” for the controversial technology. The feature, internally called “Name Tag,” would let wearers identify people and retrieve information about them...
Are Waterproof Sneakers Worth It? (2026)
The idea of having warm, dry feet on your wet, snowy run is appealing. But you might not like the trade-offs.
SONA 2026: Ramaphosa unveils 40% renewables target
By 2030, more than 40% of SA’s energy supply will come from cheap, clean, renewable energy sources, says the president.
John Wick game starring Keanu Reeves unveiled at PlayStation showcase
It’s not the first time the iconic hitman has appeared in games, but Saber’s will be the first voiced by Reeves.
eMedia’s eVOD streaming platform racks up 2.2m users
The local video-on-demand platform reached 2.2 million registered users in the third quarter of 2025.
Best Apple 3-in-1 Wireless Travel Chargers (2026), Tested and Reviewed
Keep your trio of Apple gadgets fully charged wherever you are with these compact folding travel chargers.
‘Something Big Is Happening’ + A.I. Rocks the Romance Novel Industry + One Good Thing
“I do think we are reaching an inflection point in people’s feelings and senses about A.I. and where it’s going.”
LGBTQ+ Athletes Are Front and Center at the 2026 Winter Olympic Games
Nearly 50 out LGBTQ+ Olympians are participating in events throughout the Winter Games—even as their rights to speak and compete are under attack.
Elehear Delight Hearing Aids Review: Good Fit, Poor Sound
These new in-the-ear aids look great, but quality hearing support just isn’t there.
How Ilia Malinin Revolutionized Figure Skating with His Quadruple Axel
On Friday, the US Olympic skater known as the “Quad God” will compete in his last event of the 2026 Winter Games. Everyone will be watching to see if he does his famous quad axel—and a backflip, too.