Imagine AI, combine it with social, and make it collectively worse for users who are addicted to mindless scrolling on social media? Well, that’s exactly what Meta did. The company says it used AI to make the Reels you see more engaging, and as a result, you spend more time on Instagram. The strategy will soon be implemented on Facebook, too.
Over in the realm of computing, Dell is finally putting its cheapest Alienware gaming laptop on the shelves. Is it any good? I tried it, and I think it’s a terrific value proposition.
Microsoft is moving quickly to consolidate its Copilot ambitions into a single "super app," in hopes that users will finally feel less confused. Also, remember Ferrari Luce, the electric car everyone loved to hate? Well, Ferrari has sold the entire inventory, and the expert reviews are also utterly positive.
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Meta's AI sorcery made Instagram even harder to stop scrolling
Meta revealed during its second-quarter earnings call that time spent on Instagram grew by double digits year over year, and the company is pointing directly at a sweeping overhaul of its AI-powered recommendation systems as the reason. Chief Financial Officer Susan Li explained that Meta has trained large language models to read the actual content of Reels and Feed posts, analyzing topic and tone, and then pairs that understanding with a detailed read of each user's viewing history to predict what they will watch next. Earlier this year, the company hit a milestone where every public Reel and Feed post on Instagram began getting automatically processed through one of these models, with a separate model family called Muse handling video topic classification and summarization. Meta's largest single Reels ranking update to date produced a 15 basis point increase in sessions, with the most notable gains in reshares and time spent.
The appeal of this approach for Meta is straightforward: recommendations that keep people watching longer mean bigger audiences for creators and more inventory for advertisers. The system is no longer simply tracking likes or watch time but building a much richer picture of both the content and the viewer, which is what makes it more effective at serving up the next video before a person thinks to put their phone down. Meta is now extending the same LLM-based process to more of Facebook and rolling the Reels approach out to Instagram's main Feed.
As these systems grow more precise, the gap between opening the app and losing track of time is likely to narrow further for hundreds of millions of users.
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Alienware's budget 15 laptop surprisingly still feels like an Alienware
Dell made a surprising move at CES 2026 by introducing the Alienware 15, a more affordable entry into its long-celebrated gaming laptop lineup. For anyone who has followed Alienware over the years, that proposition carries real risk. The brand built its reputation on excess, bold aesthetics, premium materials, and price tags to match, so the shift to a plastic chassis and a lower sticker price raised an obvious concern about whether the Alienware identity would survive the cost-cutting.
Well, after playing with it for a while, I think those fears are largely unfounded. The Nova Black plastic finish looks clean rather than cheap, and the opalescent Alienware logo and white keyboard backlighting give it a mature appearance. The 15.3-inch 16:10 display runs at 165Hz with a 300-nit brightness ceiling.
The configuration shown at the demo paired an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Laptop GPU with a 110W total graphics power rating, which combined with Alienware's Cryo-Tech cooling and DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation support, points toward capable 1200p gaming performance. There’s plenty to like here, even if you just want a powerful laptop for work.
Ferrari quietly hit its 2026 Luce sales target two months after a brutal debut
Ferrari's first electric car, the Luce, had one of the rougher debuts in recent memory. When it was unveiled in May, social media ridiculed its styling, comparing it to cars a fraction of its €550,000 price. Ferrari's Milan-listed shares dropped more than 8%, and even former Ferrari chair Luca Cordero di Montezemolo publicly questioned whether the car deserved to wear the prancing horse badge.
Two months later, however, the Luce has quietly hit Ferrari's entire 2026 sales target. Demand has been particularly strong from Chinese buyers, and feedback from tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, a natural audience for a Jony Ive-designed EV, has also been positive.
aligns with Ferrari's stated strategy for the Luce, which is explicitly aimed at a younger, wealthier, EV-comfortable crowd rather than the brand's traditional petrolhead collectors. Dealers were reportedly told not to steer existing customers toward the electric model at all. Looking ahead, Ferrari's target is 2,500 Luce units sold by 2030, roughly 600 per year and about 5% of total sales. Oh, the experts are raving about it, too.
Record labels want AI-generated tracks banned from global music charts
The major record labels are pushing for a sweeping overhaul of how global music charts handle AI-generated content, calling for tracks to be disqualified from chart eligibility unless they meet strict criteria: legal clearance, substantial human creative involvement, and a clean record free of streaming fraud concerns.
For music fans and anyone who follows the streaming economy, the stakes are real. Charts have historically served as a cultural barometer, shaping what gets promoted, what artists get signed, and what listeners are served by recommendation algorithms.
The labels' push sets up what could be a defining policy battle between the traditional music industry and the platforms that host and rank the world's most-streamed songs, with the outcome likely to shape the rules of the road for AI in music for years to come.
Quick Hits
Computing
Nvidia graphics card prices could jump by as much as 30% due to the ongoing memory crisis, on top of costs that were already climbing. (More)
Gears of War: E-Day is launching October 6 with new multiplayer mobility options, though fans may bristle at the nerfed shotgun. (More)
Windows 11's right-click context menu is getting a redesign that reportedly improves performance and lets users choose which apps and actions appear in it. (More)
Chuwi's MiniBook X is a compact 10.51-inch Windows laptop with a 360-degree hinge, 16GB of RAM, and replaceable storage that won't break the bank. (More)
Plug your Galaxy Z Fold 8 into a laptop and it can double as a webcam. The same trick works on the Fold 8 Ultra and the Flip 8. All three of Samsung's latest foldables now support USB webcam mode. (More)
Mobile
You can now play the original Pokémon games on your Android phone without touching an emulator. An unofficial port has brought Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow straight to the platform. No ROM hunting. (More)
Spotify has a new tool for runners, and it wants a seat in your workout routine. The company just rolled out Running Mode, a feature that builds playlists around how you actually run. (More)
Samsung's leaner One UI rebuild could finally make budget Galaxy phones feel as smooth as their pricier siblings. (More)
Runna's new Adapt for Heat feature automatically adjusts your training pace based on real-time temperature and humidity data, so hot summer runs don't throw off your whole program. (More)
Audio / Video
Samsung's Galaxy Buds On didn't make it to July's Unpacked event, but leaked renders now show off the clip-on, open-ear design Samsung has been quietly developing. (More)
Gaming
Brotherwise Games is branching out beyond Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere universe, teaming up with D&D designer Keith Baker on a new TTRPG set in the Plotweaver world. (More)
Old School RuneScape's new island update has players getting their boats stuck in a narrow river, sparking a wave of helpless "Helmp mee" posts that are basically the game's own Suez Canal moment. (More)
Ten years on, Pokémon Go still runs on a simple hook: get off the couch and go catch something. (More)
Entertainment
Wicker the fantasy romance starring Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, and Peter Dinklage, just got its first trailer. (More)
Jason Momoa's Blanka in the upcoming Street Fighter movie looks genuinely unsettling, with the actor's face digitally grafted onto the iconic green beast. (More)
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds just quietly laid the groundwork for *The Wrath of Khan* via a Kirk and La'an conversation that connects to the 44-year-old movie storyline. (More)
Winamp is teaming up with Deezer to bring streaming to its iconic music player (More)
AI
OpenAI is building hardware. Greg Brockman, the company's president, confirmed as much when he acknowledged a coming family of ChatGPT devices. That's the extent of what's been said out loud. (More)
Google keeps stuffing Gemini into more corners of its productivity apps, and Docs is the latest to get a round of upgrades. Four new AI tricks are rolling out. (More)
ChatGPT Pro has a handful of standout features that make the $200-a-month subscription genuinely hard to cancel, according to longtime daily users. (More)
Microsoft will launch new ‘super app’ for Copilot soon (More)
Cars / EV
Photography
Sony's bid to acquire Tamron is now official, with the lens maker confirming it has received a formal acquisition offer. (More)
A new photography exhibition documents the rapid expansion of American urban life through the most important photographers of the 20th century, starting from the early 1900s. (More)
Smart Home
Future Roombas could be blocked from US sale as the government's foreign robot crackdown expands to cover foreign-made robot vacuums. (More)
Final Bits
Netflix pays $500M for The Walking Dead streaming rights
Peter Jackson returns to direct a new Tintin film
Star Wars: Unlimited's designer wants to avoid Magic's mistakes
Helldivers 2 gets a Warhammer 40k Warbond on August 12
Maingear Zero starts at $2,699 with RTX 5090 option
Amazon Ember 4-Series gets a rough review
Samsung Galaxy Tab S12 and S26 FE are officially confirmed
Qualcomm is hiking chip prices starting September 1
Tom Holland says Sony-MCU Spider-Man crossover just never found the right moment
Lenovo Yoga 9n leak reveals first RTX Spark convertible laptop
AMD RX 9050 launches as an entry-level GPU
Polar raises $5.7M for its AI browser agent