Samsung promised "more than a design refresh" for its new top-end Galaxy Buds - it added upgraded woofers for improved, dual-amped hi-fi sound, a new blade design, clearer call performance, and better noise cancellation. Ultimately, while the $249.99 Galaxy Buds 4 aren't a huge leap forward over the previous model, they keep what was good […]

In 2020 and 2021, the social media world seemed to be on the verge of complete change. A new app called TikTok was ascendant, bringing a whole new kind of vertical video to phones everywhere. And another app - not as popular, but growing fast, and already hugely influential among the tech set - looked […]

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the slow-motion disaster of live-service games, follow Andrew Webster. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started Two years ago, I stood at the top […]

Last fall, President Donald Trump's executive order raising the fee for H-1B visas to $100,000 - like many of his immigration policies - led to near-immediate chaos. Thousands of workers who had flown overseas to renew their visas ended up stranded abroad. Details about who would be affected only emerged after the fact. Six months […]

In September, Donald Trump claimed that "the United States is getting a tremendous fee" for brokering the TikTok deal. Now sources tell the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that fee is expected to be in the range of $10 billion. The money is supposedly being paid by new investors, including Oracle and […]

According to Reuters, Meta is looking to offset spending on AI and data centers with a massive round of layoffs. Sources familiar with the matter say the company could lay off as much as 20 percent of its staff, eliminating roughly 15,800 positions. That would be the largest series of layoffs at the company since […]

Happy Saturday, all! This week, we found a number of deals that should help you unwind and relax over the next few days (and beyond). If you’re planning to stream the Oscars on Sunday, there’s still time to take advantage of a great deal on Hulu and Disney Plus, as well as Google’s latest 4K […]

Though it was weird to see the Golden Globes partner with Polymarket for its most recent awards show, the collaboration wasn't shocking given the way that people have begun using prediction markets to gamble on basically anything. Prediction markets are being used to bet on everything from when wars might break out to who will […]

Not much has changed in the new MacBook Air for 2026: It now has the M5 chip, Wi-Fi 7, and faster storage starting at 512GB instead of 256GB. It's just as outstanding a computer as last year's model, even if it's a shame it's $100 more expensive. The bigger change has happened to the Air. […]

You may recognize Jonathan Djob Nkondo's work from animated projects like the surreal sci-fi series Scavengers Reign or the recent Gorillaz short film The Mountain, The Moon Cave and The Sad God. But before that the French artist and animator made self-published comics that depicted strange alien worlds and future societies. Now he's revisiting that […]