State of the Assistants The second great voice-assistant war
Siri turned 15 this year. Alexa is 12. Google Assistant is 10. For a decade, they sold us a vision: an always-on digital helper that would run your home….
Category: Technology
Will Siri ever get smart? Apple makes a billion-dollar bet
When Siri finally gets a brain, that brain will mostly be Google’s. For two years, Apple has been promising that Siri would get a brain. The announcement…
Alexa+: From kitchen clock to AI assistant, sort of
Amazon was the company that put a voice assistant in 200 million American homes. It was also the company that watched ChatGPT eat its lunch. In February…
Gemini: Google nixes retrofit
Rather than retrofit Google Assistant with AI, Google is killing Google Assistant. In October 2025, Google began rolling out Gemini for Home to its smart…
The floppy disk passed away 50 years ago
The 5.25-inch floppy disk, introduced in 1976 by Shugart Associates, turns 50 this year, though it hasn’t been able to celebrate in person for quite some…
China’s sun gets hotter
Scientists at China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, mercifully nicknamed EAST, have shattered a fusion barrier that physicists once…
The baby who changed medicine
KJ Muldoon was five months old when doctors at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia put him on a liver transplant list. He had been diagnosed with CPS1…
Small reactors, big ambitions
For 30 years, nuclear energy in America has been mostly a story of decline, aging plants, high costs, and public anxiety. The next chapter looks very…
Meta exec provides a teachable moment
OpenClaw’s developer Peter Steinberger describes his agentic AI as “AI that actually does stuff,” a promise that has drawn legions of fans in the tech…
Make your grill a cutting-edge experience
Do you want to up your summer grilling game? Establish yourself as the barbecue champion of your neighborhood? Good news — there’s almost certainly a…