dear god

hmm this YouTuber claims that an unannounced “official” Harry Potter VR game (from .. Skydance) may have been one of the casualties of yesterday’s metaverse layoffs at Meta

Here it is, our robot recap of CES 206. We saw a bunch of cute robot “pets,” humanoids, laundry-doing robots and even a new AI robot friend from will.i.am (yes he’s at it again!) www.engadget.com/ai/the-robot...

Instagram's top exec Adam Mosseri just published a little manifesto on the state of Instagram and AI going into 2026 and .. it's quite telling! He basically says Meta should give up trying to proactively label AI content and that camera companies should be in charge of verifying what's real.

Meta describes this as a very "limited" test but there are some pretty big implications to making link-sharing a paid feature. Lots of people already assume Meta throttles posts w/ links but this suggests there may be a wider effort to reduce links across Facebook www.engadget.com/social-media...

New exclusive from me: Reddit is starting a new verification program beginning w/ public figures and brands, though the company hopes to make it available more widely in the future. Verified accounts get a gray checkmark (this will also replace the "official" badge). More details over @engadget.com

Pew just published its first look at how teens are using AI chatbots and there are some 👀 stats here.. close to a third of US teens say they are using AI chatbots daily or more and ChatGPT is the most widely used among teens by a fairly sizable margin. More ⬇ www.engadget.com/ai/nearly-on...

The Oversight Board is looking to expand its scope, starting w/ a pilot to explore account-level decisions (suspensions, etc.) which could allow it to take appeals related to account suspensions. The board also tells me it's had "very preliminary" conversations about working w/ other platforms.

That SF kinda cold is no joke 🥶

It's kind of incredible how much YouTube content there is that's just tutorials for engagement farming/monetizing accounts on social media. Most of the ones I've seen also heavily rely on gen AI tools for streamlining this too.. it's literally never been easier to make fake content for fake accounts

one thing that anyone who has studied the psychology of conspiracy theories will tell you is that it’s very de-stabilizing when you finally are forced to confront that you were wrong

X's handle marketplace is open for business. I discovered that I could request "elonfarts" (a "priority" handle) but not my own name ("karissa" is apparently a "rare handle?). Lots of meme potential here but there are *some strings* attached

the most charitable explanation I can think of for this is that at some point during interview prep he was told to pivot questions about safety to the "opportunity" to improve in other ways, but didn't quite actually figure out how to make that particular mental leap in a coherent way

Elon now claiming that Grok was "unfortunately manipulated by adversarial prompting" as xAI seems to be nuking the posts that claimed Elon was more fit than LeBron James, smarter than Einstein, etc.

Went to a screening of A24’s Eternity last night and I really enjoyed it! A quirky rom con that was genuinely funny and managed to not feel formulaic in the way so many rom cons do

I will never forget having to edit Jamal’s final, posthumous piece for the Washington Post, after he was murdered. He was calling for free expression in the Arab world. You can read it here : www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/glo...

wish Bluesky would expand this .. it kinda feels like an afterthought atm

Bluesky! Help me find a home for our beautiful, sweet foster kitty Leon. He’s a very chill 1 year old boy who loves attention and is great with other cats. Looking for his forever home now in and around San Francisco. More info ⬇️ www.adoptapet.com/pet/46272597...

Bluesky! Help me find a home for our beautiful, sweet foster kitty Leon. He’s a very chill 1 year old boy who loves attention and is great with other cats. Looking for his forever home now in and around San Francisco. More info ⬇️ www.adoptapet.com/pet/46272597...

idk sounds suspiciously like a participation trophy 👀

As an OG Foursquare fan, I'm reallyyy intrigued by this new project from @dens.nyc ... it also reminds me a bit of the very-much under-appreciated Foursquare app Marsbot which also attempted proactive recommendations (and was low-key one of my fave ways to find places to eat when I was traveling)

Scientific journals have been inundated by AI slop too (via letters to the editors) ... this article ends with "no one knows what to do" about this but seems like a cursory vetting process would weed out a lot of these? www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/s...

A good PSA and a reminder we still don't have a national data privacy law

The Onion (as usual) doesn't miss

There are so many crazy details in this story, but the one that has made me go "WTF" the most is when Meta's paid support told this creator (who has lived in the UK and Oregon) that his account was demonetized because his bank was based in Malta even though he banks w/ Wells Fargo.

👋 Here’s one I’ve been working on for a very long time: its about the business of viral Facebook content, Meta’s (often lack of) support for creators, and one man’s creative legal strategy to get the company’s help.

not to be cryptic but I got something cooking that I’ve been working on for more than 6 months and it’s sooo close to done.. have so many tabs I’m just waiting to close

Unfortunately, I think this is way more common with Substack than a lot of people realize. I recently emailed a creator for a story; I never heard back but a few days later I was suddenly subscribed to her Substack. I've also heard stories of people buying email lists to pump their subs.

I feel like Bluesky needs to see this extremely cute slow motion swat “fight” between my resident orange (tabby on the left) and my foster orange (large boi on the right). These two are still trying to figure out how to be friends and occasionally just smack each other for no reason.

I've reviewed every pair of Meta glasses, I've spent a lot of time wearing them. I always feel weird using the camera in public. I try to avoid it entirely around strangers. But everyone here saying people wearing these "deserve" to be punched in the face are not it. www.404media.co/how-to-disab...

More on X's plan to sell rare and "inactive" handles, some of which might sell for millions of dollars. It includes some commentary on how there are some similarities to the expired domain marketplace and X's history of swiping user handles even when they aren't inactive

I'm an occasional Waymo rider and have generally liked it a lot, but when I read about stuff like this all I can think about is how many people I know have relied on gig work (flawed as that model is) to stay afloat and how soon even that could disappear.. www.engadget.com/transportati...

if I had to get one like on this post I’m glad it was from @berkeleyca.gov

In 6th grade I got nervous and misspelled "consistent" during my school's spelling bee and I still think about every time I write that word...

we can have a little earthquake in the morning, as a treat

Pinterest is introducing new controls to let users limit how much AI-generated content they see in their feeds following widespread compliants about AI content taking Pinterest www.engadget.com/social-media...

So Meta removed a Facebook group that was tracking ICE sightings in Chicago after a report that may have originated with Laura Loomer. Wonder if all the Twitter Files folks will investigate this? (if only one of those intrepid "investigative reporters" was now running a massive national newsroom...)

love to see AI-generated LinkedIn posts recycling 10-year-old stories for the "inspo" *iT's aBoUt bEInG ReLeVAnT*

New foster kitty in the house! His name is Leon and he is the sweetest 🦁

“She plays to an audience of 200 people,” one Hollywood executive with ties to Weiss told Variety. “It just happens to be that audience is made up of people like Jeff Bezos and Bill Ackman. The superrich f------ love her.”

this all seems chill and normal

this is so fucking bleak

I got so much hate for being skeptical of a ban and pointing out that there has never been any tangible evidence that the Chinese government is manipulating the TikTok algorithm. Wonder if they all feel so much safer from the scary TikTok algo now www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Already getting close to 3 million views on YouTube and this video has only been up a couple hours

Meta’s new Ray-Ban Display glasses. These are def thicker than their other smart glasses but 1) my face is kinda narrow so all Wayfarers look wide on me 2) they are wayyy more “normal” looking than any other glasses I’ve tried with an lcos display. More: www.engadget.com/wearables/me...

the one trick mods don’t want you to know

update: reports about the 'engraved shell casings' may not be accurate, according to law enforcement comments made to NYT

These days I'm very much on the side of "keep your phone as long as possible and don't upgrade until you have to" .. for a lot of people the limiting factor ends up being storage so I'm happy that Apple finally upped its base amount of storage. www.engadget.com/mobile/smart...

Buying a $30 IMAX ticket to see the new Conjuring really makes me miss MoviePass.. I milked that so much before it all imploded