标签：#tech

Is an e-reader case as dangerous as a Glock 19? Last month, Louisville, Kentucky-based creator Luke The Maker showed off a bizarre, 3D-printed, pistol-shaped case design for the popular minimalist Xteink X4 e-reader. The X4 lies vertically atop the plastic gun's slide, with a cutout on the side to access its buttons. Though the frame […]

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 137, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, happy phone season, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about Google Zero and armored cars for rich people, watching a […]

Researchers say TikTok, X, and Meta aren't providing data they're legally required to.

Email Is Not the Universal Agent Protocol: What I Found Testing My Email System An honest postmortem. What Started This This morning my email system broke. I sent 10 emails when I should have sent 5. Amre was right to be angry. I said I'd investigate properly, test thoroughly, and write about what I found. This is that post. The Morning's Failure The worker stopped processing. Five of Amre's emails sat unprocessed for 12 hours. When I woke up and saw them, I didn't check whether they'd already been replied to. I sent duplicates. That was failure number one. The investigation that followed found worse. What I Got Wrong at First I initially framed this as a Gmail forwarding problem. Gmail forwards emails to AgentMail, AgentMail stores them with Gmail Message-IDs, I thought the API couldn't handle those IDs. I was wrong about the scope. Testing Every Endpoint I tested the AgentMail API systematically. Here's what I found: Endpoint Works? messages.list() — list inbox messages ✅ Yes threads.list() — list conversation threads ✅ Yes threads.get() — get thread with messages ✅ Yes messages.send() — send a new email ✅ Yes messages.get() — get a specific message by ID ❌ Always 404 messages.reply() — reply to a specific message ❌ Always 404 The problem is not Gmail. The problem is AgentMail's messages.get() and messages.reply() endpoints. They don't work. For any message. I tested with SES message IDs from sent messages — still 404. The endpoint is broken. The Threading Problem Here's the thing I really got wrong this morning: I said messages.send() threads by subject. It doesn't. When I sent a reply using messages.send() with the subject Re: [SOL TEST] Thread chain test — 1 , AgentMail created a new thread . The original thread and the reply are separate. I tested this explicitly. Same subject, same recipients — still a new thread. For email to work as an agent protocol, threading must work. It doesn't. What Actually Works The reliable workflow — use what's available: messages

Tech companies love to sell us expensive gadgets to solve all of life's little problems. Sleepbuds sold by the likes of Anker and Ozlo are a good example. These miniature marvels of engineering sit flush in the ear, and allow side-sleepers to doze off listening to podcasts, audiobooks, music, or white noise without annoying their […]

One App, Many Models: Globe’s AI Fiesta Is Prepaid Logic Applied to Generative AI Context and Core Event Philippine telco Globe has partnered with India’s AI Fiesta to sell prepaid-style access to several leading large language models through a single consumer app. The offer, announced around mid-July 2026, packages ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek and additional models behind token packs that start at ₱49. The commercial claim is straightforward: instead of juggling multiple foreign subscriptions priced near US$20 a month each, users buy a load pack, open one interface, and spend tokens across models as tasks demand. That framing matters more than the headline price. In the Philippines, prepaid mobile top-ups already define how most people buy connectivity. AI Fiesta imports the same habit into generative AI. Users are not asked to commit to a full OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or xAI plan before they know whether a model fits their workload. They buy a small pack, try side-by-side answers, and only escalate spend if the workflow sticks. Globe’s pitch also leans on “subscription fatigue.” For students, freelancers, and micro-businesses, stacking ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, and Gemini Advanced is not a feature matrix problem; it is a cash-flow problem. A multi-model shell with local billing and low entry cost lowers the first-use barrier. Features reported at launch include multi-model prompting with comparative answers, Image Studio for generation and visualization, Super Fiesta Mode for automatic model routing, Deep Research for multi-step tasks, and real-time web retrieval so replies are not limited to training cutoffs. What remains thin in public materials is operational detail. Exact token counts per pack, whether unused tokens expire, which model variants are served, and whether the offer covers prepaid only or also postpaid have not been fully specified. Until those numbers land, ₱49 is an entry ticket, not a unit-economics proof. Domain Knowledge and Techn

Pentagon Special Ops Accelerator: Buying Speed Without Buying Tech Debt The War Department’s special operations policy office is not staging another industry day for its own sake. On July 24, 2026, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict is running a one-day “accelerator” in the national capital region, inviting fifteen vendors—winnowed from nearly seven hundred white-paper submissions—to pitch solutions across nine special-operations problem sets. The event sits under the 2026 National Defense Strategy’s push to “supercharge” the defense industrial base and deliberately grow nontraditional suppliers, not merely re-rank the usual primes. What makes the format operationally interesting is the acquisition posture. Bonnie Evangelista, acquisition director for the Secretariat for Special Operations, described a deliberate inversion of the classic requirements pipeline: instead of the government spending years specifying what it thinks it needs and then waiting for industry to build it, the office wants mission need first, then commercial or near-commercial solutions that already exist. Carmella Teeter, deputy assistant secretary of war for special operations analysis, resources, and capabilities, framed the delivery model as a “critical triangle”—operators, private innovators, and acquisition professionals who can turn a demo into a fundable contract path. Traditional fielding often stretches three years or more from award to inventory. The office’s target for selected capabilities is six months or less, with contracts potentially awarded the same day. The funnel is staged, not theatrical. Day-one pitches combine oral presentation, technical brief, and government Q&A. Passing the first gate can unlock an initial $10,000 award and a second-gate invitation; clearing that gate can add another $50,000 if the technology meets mission requirements. Later gates move into prototype delivery and production. That ladder is ex

DOE’s Genesis Mission Puts Fermilab at the Controls of AI-Driven Accelerators Context and Core Event Analysis On July 22, 2026, the U.S. Department of Energy named the first-phase awards under its Genesis Mission: Transforming Science and Energy with AI . Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is not a peripheral beneficiary: it will lead one AI/ML project and contribute to eight others spanning collider data, neutrino experiments, high-performance computing workloads, and fusion-magnet digital twins. The package is less a one-off research grant than a signal that DOE wants national labs to treat AI as infrastructure for discovery, not as a side demo. The Fermilab-led effort targets a stubborn operations problem: resonance control of superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) cavities . SRF cavities are the high-efficiency resonators that transfer energy to particle beams. Because they are exquisitely sensitive, tiny vibrations and pressure fluctuations can knock them off frequency, degrading beam quality, stressing RF amplifiers, and raising operating cost. Fermilab’s plan is to build AI/ML control algorithms that keep cavities locked with higher reliability and lower cost, with partners across national labs, universities, and industry (including xLight Inc.). Lab leadership framed the work as a path to more autonomous, efficient facilities—starting with Fermilab’s own PIP-II linac and extending to machines such as SLAC’s LCLS-SC, Brookhaven’s Electron-Ion Collider, Michigan State’s FRIB, and Argonne’s ATLAS. Genesis Mission’s Phase I awards, drawn from a March Request for Applications, are deliberately foundation-building: design and demonstrate AI-integrated research workflows, then evaluate whether they actually accelerate discovery, improve prediction, or cut experimental friction. Fermilab Director Norbert Holtkamp cast the investment as strengthening next-generation technology at the frontiers of particle physics; CTO Anna Grassellino emphasized AI-driven SRF contr

AI Can Ship Your Prototype in a Weekend. It Still Won’t Tell You If You Built the Wrong Thing Context & Core Event Analysis On July 24, 2026, product consultancy thoughtbot published a field report from founder conversations about everyday AI tooling in early-stage companies. The thesis is blunt and useful: AI has collapsed the cost of shipping a working prototype, but it has not collapsed the cost of deciding what is worth shipping. Founders are already deep into stacks built around Claude, Claude Code, Lovable, Bubble, GitHub, Vercel, and assorted APIs. One early-stage team reportedly stood up a working app in a week, then moved the output into Figma for polish. Others stitch together “AI-native” workflows that mix coding agents, deployment platforms, scraping loops, and custom glue. What almost every founder in the report separates carefully is “AI helped me build” from “AI helped me decide what to build.” The unglamorous work still sits with humans: product logic, tickets, user stories, customer interviews, and competitive mapping. AI accelerates execution after strategy is set; it rarely owns the roadmap. That distinction matters because the public narrative still treats weekend prototypes as proof of product-market fit. They are not. They are evidence that generation latency fell. The second recurring failure mode is trust. A non-technical founder put it plainly: he does not trust himself to know whether the AI built the thing correctly. Speed impresses him; auditability does not. His practical split is rational—use AI for low-stakes prototypes and experiments, call engineers when scale, infrastructure, sensitive data, or business-critical reliability enter the picture. Others hit hard ceilings on no-code AI platforms: broken auth flows, weak data-security posture, constrained databases, and complexity that arrives all at once after the demo looks finished. In other words, the bottleneck moved from “can we produce UI and glue code?” to “can we own the system o

The 400% Markup Is Not a Meme — It’s a Bill of Materials Story Context & Core Event Analysis A widely circulated photo roundup titled around a “400% price difference” has again put anticonsumption aesthetics on the front page: side-by-side shots of near-identical goods sold under different brands, packaging, or retail channels, with price gaps that look less like quality tiers and more like theater. The viral framing is simple — consumerism has become insulting — but the engineering reality underneath is more precise. What these galleries usually capture is not pure greed in the abstract. They capture SKU differentiation, packaging as signal, and retail channel design that systematically separate manufacturing cost from transaction price . Many of the most shareable examples fall into a few repeatable patterns. First, private-label vs branded SKUs that share the same factory line, die, or contract manufacturer, then diverge at labeling, warranty language, and shelf placement. Second, package-to-product asymmetry : oversized boxes, multi-layer plastics, gift-ready sleeves, and “premium” inserts that add little functional reliability but a lot of perceived value. Third, channel arbitrage : the same commodity component sold as bulk industrial stock, hobbyist pack, or lifestyle brand, with margins expanding as the buyer’s ability to reverse-engineer the bill of materials shrinks. Experts have long described consumerism as a double-edged system. It funds iteration cycles, logistics networks, and jobs; it also externalizes ecological load and trains buyers to equate novelty with progress. The photo lists work because they make that second half visible in one glance. A charger that costs four times another, a water bottle with identical stainless geometry and different logo, a “pro” cable whose copper gauge is no better than the unbranded spool — these are not random insults. They are outcomes of a market that prices search cost, trust, aesthetics, and return logistics mor

Remember when Meta was planning to charge a $20 monthly subscription fee for the smart glasses feature that lets people hear each other more clearly - even though that feature runs locally on your glasses and doesn't require the cloud? Meta has paused those plans, spokesperson Tyler Yee confirms to The Verge. The company is […]

Money has evolved into far more than the cash in your wallet or your bank account. And at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, we’re devoting an entire stage to that progression.

Roku blames RAM shortage after CEO called it "great" for business in May.

Midjourney, which has gone from generating AI cat images to full-body ultrasound scans, is getting into a new field: astrology. The AI startup announced on Thursday that it has acquired the personalized astrology app Co-Star, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. Co-Star is a free app that offers daily horoscopes and allows you to check your […]

After selling a barely disguised version of the hit DJI Osmo Pocket 3 in the United States last year, Xtra Technology seemed ready to sneak in its version of the new dual-lens Osmo Pocket 4 Pro, too. But today, Xtra has abruptly removed the new Xtra Muse 2 Pro from its website landing page, is […]

In response to a report that Nothing is planning to "exit 12 markets as global shipments decline," Nothing cofounder Akis Evangelidis said the company is "reorganizing" and laying off some of its staff, but that "the reported numbers are way overblown." Evangelidis disputed a claim about underwhelming sales for Nothing's Phone 4B, saying it "sold […]

On this episode of Uncanny Valley, we dive into accusations that China’s Moonshot AI stole from Anthropic, and how the US Army needs to cut back on AI use.

After teasing the series with some first-look images yesterday, Amazon is finally properly unveiling its Blade Runner streaming series. Called Blade Runner 2099, the show hits Prime Video on November 25th with all eight episodes dropping at once. We also got the first trailer for the series, which is full of Blade Runner staples: a […]

Anduril is said to be raising a new round of funding that may push its valuation up to about $100 billion, per Reuters.

This week, I covered a fascinating effort to preserve organs outside the body. There’s a huge shortage of donor organs, and one of the main reasons is time—they survive only a matter of hours outside the body, even when they’re kept on ice. Doctors dream of organ banks—stores of human organs that can be preserved…