Jason Koebler, and Emanuel Maiberg, writing for 404 Media: An internal Microsoft strategy document says that the plan for its just-announced “Scout” personal assistant AI is to “make people addicted” to the tool before rolling out additional functionality, 404 Media has learned. “Three phases from addictive app to...

Search engine DuckDuckGo has experienced a noticeable surge in users in recent weeks, says Rebecca Bellan, writing for TechCrunch. Many of these new arrivals are concerned about Google’s proposals to significantly change its search experience, through the use of AI, something I think is being called AI Mode....

The news we’ve been waiting for. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, the 2022 novel by American author Gabrielle Zevin, is to be adapted to film. Daisy Edgar-Jones, who starred in the screen adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People, has been cast in the central role of Sadie Green, a games designer....

John Gruber, writing at Daring Fireball: You know what a dickover is, even if you didn’t know what to call it (until now). If you use the Internet, you encounter them every day. They’re popovers, but dickheaded. The web is absolutely lousy with them, and mobile apps present them too, with increasing frequency. I’ve...

Daniel Jalkut: My take on AI is, essentially, everybody who’s against it is too against it and everybody who’s for it is too for it. From where I sit, somewhere in the middle of this, that’s the way it looks.

You won’t find Hestia, a super-Earth planet, on any of the charts, for this is a body imagined by Kurzgesagt. But Hestia, on paper at least, is a super-Earth in more ways than one. No polar regions are present, ditto continents, though there are a multitude of medium size island land masses. The planet also sports...

Arnold King, writing at In My Tribe; I now read many fewer books than I did ten years ago. This not because of “the phones.” It is not because I have lost my intellectual mojo. It is because alternative sources of information have become more compelling. Essays, streaming video, podcasts, and (like it or not) social...

Kylie, trailer, is a Netflix produced documentary about Australian pop-singer Kylie Minogue. I was writing about the work of Kylie (her family apparently refers to her as Minogue, for the rest of us it’s Kylie) in the earliest iterations of disassociated.

Amelia Hill, writing for The Guardian: Individuals bear at least 80% of the responsibility for their ill health in old age, according to a report aimed at challenging the belief that physical decline is either inevitable or primarily the responsibility of the state. This finding is from the Oxford Longevity Project,...

Piccolo, by Australian app developer Josh McKinnon, tells you what time you can enjoy your last coffee each day, based on your nominated bedtime. Sounds like the coffee drinker’s friend to me. Most apps just add up milligrams. Piccolo runs a one-compartment pharmacokinetic model — the same maths clinicians use —...

The latest version of WordPress (WP), seven, which shipped a few days ago, comes with, according to the accompanying release notes/marketing copy, a number of AI features. I’m yet to see even one of these, despite installing version seven last week now. The only noticeable difference I can discern — to date — is a...

The longlist for the 2026 Miles Franklin award was published on Wednesday 20 May 2026, and includes the following ten titles: Discipline by Randa Abdel-Fattah Elegy, Southwest by Madeleine Watts Fierceland by Omar Musa First Name Second Name by Steve MinOn I Want Everything, Dominic Amerena Little World by Josephine...