This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on e-bikes, power stations, and how to work anywhere, follow Thomas Ricker. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. With a deep breath, I took the cable seething
Other Leak Detectors We Like Photograph: Simon Hill Shelly Flood Gen 4 for $40: Shelly’s fourth-generation leak detector boasts support for the Matter smart home system and impressive connectivity via Zigbee, Bluetooth, and dual-band Wi-Fi. I had no issues setting it up in my Google Home app by scanning the Matter QR code, but you
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang tipped his hat to OpenAI on Sunday. The chipmaking mogul took to X to congratulate OpenAI’s team on the release of the company’s newest and most powerful model, Astra, and made the notable statement that “AGI has arrived,” a nebulous term that typically describes AI models that match or surpass human intelligence. He
Some authors hoping to receive their share of Anthropic’s $1.5 billion copyright settlement said they received surprising emails this week — emails informing them that someone else was making a claim on their payments. Anthropic settled a copyright class action suit last year, after a judge ruled that training AI models on copyrighted material is
Google has begun rolling out beta voice features using Gemini 3.5 AI that allow you to have interactive conversations with its Gmail, Docs and Keep services. That means users can issue voice commands to find information in Gmail emails, incorporate AI search results into their Keep notes or start and organize a file in Docs
The Fairphone 6 Plus feels like an extremely average midrange Android phone and I couldn’t be more thrilled. The mission has always been admirable. Fairphone seeks out ethically sourced materials and offers a high degree of repairability for its devices. But the phones themselves required a lot of sacrifices, like putting up with underpowered processors