• Using Smart Brick technology to get kids to play together

    January 7, 2026

    Lego’s Smart Play system announced at CES 2026 earlier this week is a new embrace of digital technology that we haven’t seen from the company before. While the demo Lego gave at its press conference on Monday was a good start to showing what Smart Bricks are capable of, it really isn’t a substitute for seeing it in person. I was able to get an extended demo that answered many of my questions about how the system will work once Lego fans of all ages get their hands on the first Smart Play sets. As I detailed yesterday, the Smart…

  • Warner Bros. Discovery rejects Paramount’s bid again, calls it a ‘leveraged buyout’

    January 7, 2026

    The bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and its extensive library of hit TV shows and films like “Harry Potter,” “Game of Thrones” and the DC Comics titles, is dragging on. The studio on Wednesday said its board had unanimously rejected Paramount Skydance’s revised $108.4 billion bid, calling the proposal a “leveraged buyout” that would saddle the company with $87 billion in debt. In a letter to shareholders, WBD urged them to reject the offer, saying the “extraordinary amount” of debt Paramount would need to raise heightens the risk of the deal falling through, and instead recommended they vote…

  • Clear Drop is trying to do something about all those plastic bags under your sink

    January 7, 2026

    Even if you bring home as few bags as possible — using reusable bags, carrying purchases home with your own two hands — soft plastics sill accumulate. I certainly have a collection with one flimsy plastic sack filled with dozens or hundreds of others. I plan to do something with it… eventually. Unfortunately, there aren’t a ton of options for what to do with those soft plastics, as most recycling facilities can’t accept them. But no one likes seeing them end up in oceans and rivers and stuck up in trees. So I was excited to see the Clear Drop…

  • Spotify lowers monetization threshold for video podcasts

    January 7, 2026

    Spotify is lowering its eligibility criteria for podcasters to monetize their videos on the platform, dropping the minimum episode requirement to three, minimum consumption hours to 2,000, and engaged audience member threshold to 1,000 over the last 30 days. When the company introduced its partner program to monetize video content last year, creators needed to have published 12 episodes, hit 10,000 consumption hours over the prior 30 days, and had at least 2,000 people stream their content in the last 30 days to be part of the program. The program pays podcasters according to the number of premium users who…

  • A return to hi-fi headphones at CES 2026

    January 7, 2026

    Klipsch hasn’t debuted new headphones in years, but that’s going to change in 2026. At CES, Klipsch announced the upcoming Atlas hi-fi series that includes wireless and both closed and semi-open back models. All three are expected to arrive this summer, but the company hasn’t announced pricing or many details on any of them just yet. However, I was able to listen to the Atlas HP-1, the wireless model with active noise cancelation (ANC). Without going into specifics, Klipsch says the HP-1 is designed for both daily wear and travel. This is thanks to the combination of light weight, comfort…

  • Intel spinout Articul8 raises more than half of $70M round at $500M valuation

    January 7, 2026

    Articul8, an enterprise AI company spun out of Intel in early 2024, has secured more than half of a planned $70 million funding round at a $500 million pre-money valuation, according to its CEO, as it looks to capitalize on growing demand for AI systems in regulated industries. The Series B funding round is structured in two installments, with the first led by Spain’s Adara Ventures, Articul8 founder and CEO Arun K. Subramaniyan (pictured above, center) said in an interview. He declined to disclose the size of the initial installment, but said the company expects to close the round in…

  • TII Abu-Dhabi Released Falcon H1R-7B: A New Reasoning Model Outperforming Others in Math and Coding with only 7B Params with 256k Context Window

    January 7, 2026

    Technology Innovation Institute (TII), Abu Dhabi, has released Falcon-H1R-7B, a 7B parameter reasoning specialized model that matches or exceeds many 14B to 47B reasoning models in math, code and general benchmarks, while staying compact and efficient. It builds on Falcon H1 7B Base and is available on Hugging Face under the Falcon-H1R collection. Falcon-H1R-7B is interesting because it combines 3 design choices in 1 system, a hybrid Transformer along with Mamba2 backbone, a very long context that reaches 256k tokens in standard vLLM deployments, and a training recipe that mixes supervised long form reasoning with reinforcement learning using GRPO. Hybrid…

  • MTV Rewind is a developer’s tribute to 24/7 music video channels

    January 7, 2026

    MTV shut down its remaining 24/7 music channels in several countries, including the UK and Australia, at the end of 2025. The main MTV network shifted its focus to reality shows long ago and it occasionally dips back into music with things like the Video Music Awards, but this shutdown felt like the end of an era. If you yearn for the days when MTV actually played music videos, though, you might be in luck. A developer who goes by the name of Flexasaurus Rex has paid tribute to the MTV of old with a web app that has several…

  • Philips Hue ‘SpatialAware’ feature harmonizes all the lights in a room

    January 7, 2026

    Philips Hue has introduced a new software feature called SpatialAware at CES 2026 designed to ensure that all the lights in a space are in harmony with each other. Available exclusively for the Hue Bridge Pro, it takes into account each light point in a room and tailors the colors to ensure a natural representation. “In a sunset scene, for example, the lights on one side of the room emit warm yellow tones to mimic the setting sun, while the ceiling lights on the opposite side reflect darker shades,” the company wrote on its blog. The new feature is set…

  • Motorola expands its Moto Things lineup with a new Bluetooth tracker, stylus and smartwatch

    January 7, 2026

    After kicking off its Moto Things accessory line with wireless earbuds, a Bluetooth tracker and a cheap smartwatch in 2024, Motorola is doubling down. At CES 2026, the company is announcing a sequel to its tracker, the Moto Tag 2, a stylus for its new folding phone, the Moto Pen Ultra and a more premium smartwatch called the Moto Watch. The Moto Watch has a 47mm round face with a stainless steel crown and an aluminum frame. The smartwatch comes with a PANTONE “Volcanic Ash” silicone band, but is designed to support third-party 22mm bands, too, which greatly expands its…