When Amazon first announced the Echo smart speaker and Alexa, it felt as though the future that Star Trek had promised us was finally upon us. Here was a computer we could interact with naturally, faster and more convenient than apps or traditional interfaces.
Unsurprisingly, Amazon sold a bucket load of Echo devices, and soon expanded the range with devices to fit in everywhere. Only, it turned out that perhaps the future wasn’t really here.
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Alexa speak
As noted in my column from a few weeks ago, I largely use physical controls over voice commands alongside automated routines: it’s faster to turn a light on with a button, or to have my alarm turn off and blinds open when the office door unlocks, than it is to use a voice command for either job.
A lot of that was down to how Alexa (and other voice assistants) expected commands to be phrased. While Alexa is still the best of the bunch, its required terminology gave birth to the phrase, “Alexa speak”.
It’s that slightly unnatural way that you must phrase a command, such as, “Alexa, set the living room radiator temperature to 20°C.” That phrase doesn’t seem so bad, but it’s fraught with potential problems.
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Get the order slightly wrong, and Alexa might not work; name the device you want to control incorrectly, and the command doesn’t work; or just pause while you try and think of the right words to use, and the command doesn’t work.
Outside of voice control, Alexa is good for basic requests or for answering simple questions, but it often can’t understand more complicated requests, can’t take actions on your behalf, and you still must phrase things as though you’re talking to a computer.
Natural conversations and context
Alexa+ promises to change that and, from what I’ve seen of it, delivers the end of Alexa speak, switching to natural language, so you can ask a question or issue a command as though you were talking to a real person. And Alexa+ remembers context and allows itself to be corrected.
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At the Alexa+ UK launch event, I saw a demo where Alexa+ gave the latest Arsenal result; it knew the presenter was a fan, so it recounted the score with a positive tone.
Next, the presenter asked Alexa+ to tell someone else the Chelsea score. Alexa began retelling the loss with excitement, since the presenter hadn’t mentioned that the other person was a Chelsea fan.
A quick interruption to say that the other person was a Chelsea fan had Alexa+ start again, but with a neutral voice. There was no need to rephrase the entire question with something like, “Alexa, my friend is a Chelsea fan, tell him the latest score” or something similar.
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Alexa+ understood that the change applied to the current request and adjusted its response accordingly. In addition, Alexa+ would then remember who’s a Chelsea fan for future requests.
Alexa+ is also agentic, which means it can take actions on your behalf. In the demo, Alexa+ could book a table at a restaurant using OpenTable, based on a few simple bits of information, all spoken naturally, and where the order of information was unimportant (the name of the restaurant, how many people the table was for, the date and when there was at least two hours free in the diary).
That kind of interaction seems better, easier and faster than having to search for the restaurant and do the job manually.
Not perfect, but certainly better
As part of Alexa+ launching in the UK, Amazon has fine-tuned the system to understand a wide range of British accents and to understand the way we speak. This information is also used in how Alexa+ responds. Is it perfect? No.
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Particularly with responses about football, Alexa+ seemed to like using the word ‘mate’ a lot, which feels a bit false and over-friendly. I’m not sure I want Alexa+ to be my friend; I just want it to do what I want, when I want, with clear replies. I’ll have to see, once I have access to Alexa+ soon, if I can tone down its replies.
Then, there was a demonstration where Alexa+ was asked when the next match was for a football club. The result was right, but when asked to add the game to the diary, Alexa+ added it in for one hour from the start time.
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Surely, if Alexa+ is so smart and understands context, it should know that a football match is 90 minutes, plus 15-minutes of halftime, plus extra time. That’s a minimum of one hour and 45 minutes, but two hours would be a safer bet.
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I was told that because there was lots of background noise, Alexa+ might be struggling to work out what was said. It did get the match details right, and it did understand to add a calendar appointment, so we’ll have to see if Alexa+ can be smarter than this in real life.
Likewise, context can be hard to understand. When asked, on a Fire TV device, who won the Best Actress Oscar, Alexa+ correctly replied that it was Jessie Buckley for Hamnet. Next, what asked, “Can we watch it?”, I thought that would mean that Alexa+ would find a clip of the Oscar ceremony and show that. Instead, Alexa+ started to stream Hamnet from Prime Video (currently £15.99 to rent or £19.99 to buy).
Either response is correct, but does Alexa+ have a bias towards trying to sell you things, or is it just picking one option because that’s what it thinks is the right one? It’s hard to tell, as even humans can struggle with context and ambiguity.
Too many clichés?
Alexa+ also seemed to like its clichés and longer responses. When asked to recommend some coffee machines (all on Amazon, of course), it described one’s price as something that “won’t break the bank”.
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Training any AI means pulling data in from lots of resources, but the issue is that lots of people use clichés, and there’s a horrible chance that any system will reinforce that behaviour.
When I used to work on a print title, our sub editor banned all clichés and had a list of banned phrases, opting for brevity, to deliver clarity. One example was ‘value for money’, as what else would something be value for? Value for cheese? Value for magic beans?
Likewise, there’s no ‘make use of’. It’s just use. You don’t say, make drive of my car, do you?
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Nor should you overexplain and add filler words. It’s quite common to see reviews that say something like, “the best phone on the market”. What market? Portobello Road? Are you Del Boy? Are there better phones not on the market, but in shops? It’s word slop.
Commonly, people will use adjectives over a strong verb. As Stephen King explained in On Writing, you shouldn’t use “angrily closed the door” and should write “slammed the door”.
Good writing and good speech are noticeable. Lots of people may use too many words when writing or speaking, or fall back on clichés, but I want Alexa+ to be better, clearer, and more direct.
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Let’s see whether that’s the case, and if it’s not, whether Alex+ can be fine-tuned not to spout clichés and if it can be made less Verbose. The original Alexa system had a Brief Mode, although this would replace a voice response with a short chime for simple request, such as asking Alexa to turn a light on. That’s too far, but a brief mode that makes Alexa+ less chatty and more to the point would be good.
Improvements will come
While there are things that I don’t like, my overall impression from seeing Alexa+ in live demonstrations is that the voice assistant is a big improvement over the old. Simply being able to talk naturally and have Alexa+ understand is a big improvement, while the ability to tweak a response partway through makes it all feel a lot more natural. As I get to try it out over the coming weeks, I’ll see if this is the future of voice communication. I do hope so.
Elon Musk recently outlined ambitious plans for a chip-building collaboration between his companies Tesla and SpaceX.
Bloomberg reports that Musk shared his plans on Saturday night at an event in downtown Austin, Texas, with a photo suggesting that what Musk is calling the “Terafab” facility will be built near Tesla’s Austin headquarters and “gigafactory.”
Musk said he’s pursuing this project because semiconductor manufacturers aren’t making chips quickly enough for his companies’ artificial intelligence and robotics needs: “We either build the Terafab or we don’t have the chips, and we need the chips, so we build the Terafab.”
The goal is to manufacture chips that can support 100 to 200 gigawatts of computing power per year on Earth, along with a terawatt in space, Musk said. He did not offer a timeline for these plans.
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As Bloomberg noted, Musk does not have a background in semiconductor manufacturing, but he does have a history of overpromising on goals and timelines.
Overly autonomous cooking tools and kitchen appliances have largely whiffed in the US market. While culinary robots like the Thermomix have made inroads in Europe and elsewhere, adoption in the US has been slow. Super smart ovens, including the June, Suvie and Brava, have likewise struggled to connect with consumers here.
Nosh Robotics, a smart home robotics company based in Bengaluru, India, is giving it a go with the launch of Nosh One It’s a $1,499 AI-powered cooking robot seven years in the making and the company says “it can handle the entire cooking process autonomously: ingredient selection, sautéing, plating and self-cleaning.”
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The June Oven was the most promising smart oven we tested. It quietly stopped production in 2023.
The Nosh does a few things that a slow cooker or Instant Pot doesn’t, namely, add the right amount of ingredients, cooking oils and spices from small chambers. But you still have to load the right ingredients for a given recipe into cartridges every time you cook.
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The Nosh One has launched on Kickstarter for a cool $1,499.
Nosh One
The cooking functionality is also limited. While the Nosh can portion, chop (roughly — no mincing or dicing), cook and stir food in its built-in pot using highly programmed recipes so you can walk away while the recipe completes, it can’t bake, roast, boil, sear or steam, making it limited in what it can effectively make.
I saw it in a non-demo preview at CES earlier this year and spoke with reps about the Nosh One. CEO Mira Patel calls it “the first consumer robot that truly cooks for you,” though I was less certain of its potential and remain skeptical. Up close, and even with a deep explanation from the on-site reps, the pricey machine doesn’t seem worth the cost or the space it takes up on your counter, at least for most home cooks.
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The Nosh One is similar to a Thermomix. The Thermomix offers more cooking modes and functions, but it can’t automatically deliver precise ingredient amounts to the chamber like the Nosh.
Verwerk
If your dinner menu consists mostly of stews, soups, stir-fries and curries, the Nosh should be able to shoulder a good deal of cooking. Most other foods will have to be cooked the old-fashioned way.
It’s also big and bulky. Weighing 57 pounds with a 21-by-17-inch frame, it’ll command a good deal of counter space, much more than an Instant Pot or a slow cooker, both of which execute the same basic cooking tasks, albeit with far fewer automated functions.
How it works
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The Nosh One precisely portions ingredients according to programmed recipes, then heats and stirs them to completion.
Nosh Robotics
At the core of the device is NoshOS, a proprietary culinary AI trained on thousands of cooking techniques and cuisines from around the world. Multiple sensors monitor texture, moisture, aroma compounds and browning levels in real time, dynamically adjusting heat, timing and seasoning as a dish cooks. Built-in machine vision identifies produce, proteins and pantry items, allowing the system to suggest meals based on ingredients already on hand.
Ingredient cartridges, which are reusable and dishwasher-safe, store fresh items and dispense them with “millimeter-level precision.” After each meal, a closed-loop wash cycle automatically cleans the cooking chamber, utensils and internal surfaces.
Pricing and availability
The Nosh One is available to preorder on Kickstarter until March 25, starting at $1,499, with shipments expected in early summer 2026. Early backers receive a complimentary set of ingredient cartridges and access to the Nosh Founders Recipe Library, featuring dishes from award-winning chefs. According to the company, additional attachments, specialty cooking modules and premium recipe packs are planned for later in 2026.
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As always, before contributing to any campaign, read the crowdfunding site’s policies — in this case, Kickstarter — to find out your rights (and refund policies, or the lack thereof) before and after a campaign ends.
These are not temporary catchphrases. These are universal and forever.
And leave it to a cop to ensure we never forget either of these concepts. A foot pursuit that ended in the shooting of Connecticut resident Dyshan Best would otherwise just be a footnote in cop history if some cops hadn’t decided to be the bastards they wanted to see in the world and make it extremely clear they felt a Black life didn’t matter.
Dyshan Best, 39, was shot in the back last year as he fled from officers in Bridgeport, Connecticut. A report released Tuesday by the state’s inspector general found that the shooting was justified because Best had a gun in his hand and the officer pursuing him had reasons to fear for his own safety.
All the stuff we expect to see in these reports is here, beginning with the assumption that a gun is a threat even if it’s not pointed at officers to the de rigueur “fear for my safety” justification for shooting a fleeing person.
What’s somewhat expected — but still somehow surprising — is what happened after the apparently justified shooting:
The first ambulance called to take Best to the hospital arrived at the scene at 6:02 p.m., about 14 minutes after the shooting. However, at the urging of other officers, that ambulance was used to take away a white police officer, Erin Perrotta, who had been involved in the foot chase, the report said.
Paramedics reported that Perrotta declined treatment in the ambulance.
“I am fine, I just needed to get out of here,” she said, according to the report. Another officer described Perrotta at the time as “visibly hysterical (crying and breathing rapidly) and had blood all over her uniform,” the report said.
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That’s right. The ambulance sent to pick up the person police officers had just shot was instead handed over to Officer Erin Perrotta, who — as the Inspector General’s report notes — was enduring the relative hardship of a “mild anxiety attack.”
The second ambulance didn’t show up for another ten minutes. The person with actual bullet holes in him didn’t hit the ER until 14 minutes after Officer “Anxiety Attack” Perrotta arrived at the hospital. The officer who was never in any danger of dying got nearly a 15-minute head start on her medical treatment.
The person they’d shot didn’t make it.
Best died at 7:41 p.m. as he was undergoing treatment for the gunshot wound, which damaged his liver and right kidney.
Meanwhile, Officer Perrotta’s employer only seems interested in outlasting this news cycle:
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A spokesperson for Bridgeport police, Shawnna White, declined to comment Wednesday when asked about Perrotta taking the first ambulance. She said in an email that the police department’s Internal Affairs Division would conduct its own investigation.
Sometimes the lack of direct response says more than a direct response would. Perrotta is apparently currently on administrative leave “due to an unrelated matter.” That either means Perrotta does bad stuff often enough she’s already given the department another reason to sideline her or that the department has found other stuff to add to this headline-generating “#mefirst” effort by the officer to grease the wheels for the inevitable firing.
Whatever happens now won’t budge the needle for US law enforcement agencies. But for the rest of us not standing on the inside of the Thin Blue Line, this incident says the quiet part loud: Black lives don’t matter… not when it’s a cop claiming they can’t breathe.
An information stealer called VoidStealer uses a new approach to bypass Chrome’s Application-Bound Encryption (ABE) and extract the master key for decrypting sensitive data stored in the browser.
The novel method is stealthier and relies on hardware breakpoints to extract the v20_master_key, used for both encryption and decryption, directly from the browser’s memory, without requiring privilege escalation or code injection.
A report from Gen Digital, the parent company behind the Norton, Avast, AVG, and Avira brands, notes that this is the first case of an infostealer observed in the wild to use such a mechanism.
Google introduced ABE in Chrome 127, released in June 2024, as a new protection mechanism for cookies and other sensitive browser data. It ensures that the master key remains encrypted on disk and cannot be recovered through normal user-level access.
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Decrypting the key requires the Google Chrome Elevation Service, which runs as SYSTEM, to validate the requesting process.
Overview of how ABE blocks out malware Source: Gen Digital
“VoidStealer is the first infostealer observed in the wild adopting a novel debugger-based Application-Bound Encryption (ABE) bypass technique that leverages hardware breakpoints to extract the v20_master_key directly from browser memory,” says Vojtěch Krejsa, threat researcher at Gen Digital.
VoidStealer is a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) platform advertised on dark web forums since at least mid-December 2025. The malware introduced the new ABE bypass mechanism in version 2.0.
Cybercriminals advertising ABE bypass in VoidStealer version 2.0 Source: Gen Digital
Stealing the master key
VoidStealer’s trick to extract the master key is to target a short moment when Chrome’s v20_master_key is briefly present in memory in plaintext state during decryption operations.
Specifically, VoidStealer starts a suspended and hidden browser process, attaches it as a debugger, and waits for the target browser DLL (chrome.dll or msedge.dll) to load.
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When loaded, it scans the DLL for a specific string and the LEA instruction that references it, using that instruction’s address as the hardware breakpoint target.
VoidStealer’s target string Source: Gen Digital
Next, it sets that breakpoint across existing and newly created browser threads, waits for it to trigger during startup while the browser is decrypting protected data, then reads the register holding a pointer to the plaintext v20_master_key and extracts it with ‘ReadProcessMemory.’
Gen Digital explains that the ideal time for the malware to do this is during browser startup, when the application loads ABE-protected cookies early, forcing the decryption of the master key.
The researchers explained that VoidStealer likely did not invent this technique but rather adopted it from the open-source project ‘ElevationKatz,’ part of the ChromeKatz cookie-dumping toolset that demonstrates weaknesses in Chrome.
Although there are some differences in the code, the implementation appears to be based on ElevationKatz, which has been available for more than a year.
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BleepingComputer has contacted Google with a request for a comment on this bypass method being used by threat actors, but a reply was not available by publishing time.
Malware is getting smarter. The Red Report 2026 reveals how new threats use math to detect sandboxes and hide in plain sight.
Download our analysis of 1.1 million malicious samples to uncover the top 10 techniques and see if your security stack is blinded.
The chilling story of a robot uprising has been told in countless books, movies, and other media through the years. But of all the machines that readers imagine could be the ones to rise up, robot vacuum cleaners, which are designed to clean your home and not rule it, might be at the bottom of the list. Don’t take a baseball bat to yours however, as the real threat isn’t the machine itself but vulnerabilities in the systems that control it.
These flaws affected DJI Romo robot vacuums and were discovered by Sammy Azdoufal, an independent engineer using AI, in February of 2026. Azdoufal was trying to build a custom remote app using a PS5 controller and accidentally stumbled upon a way to get floor plans, live feeds, and full remote capability. This gave him access to and control of 6,700 vacuum cleaners around the world. But this wasn’t technically a system breach, as the way in existed through improper server-side access controls and data handling.
Fortunately, instead of leading the robot army to world domination, Azdoufal instead contacted DJI. According to comments from a company spokesperson to The Verge, DJI had already been working on a fix before the issue was made public. That fix came in the form of system updates that were released to address the problem. However, there appeared to be security concerns that still remained at the time. This includes the ability to access video feeds without a security PIN, in addition to other issues.
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DJI faces ongoing U.S. security concerns
Eshma/Getty Images
The discovery of flaws in the DJI Romo robot vacuum cleaner system has apparently led to the company paying Sammy Azdoufal a $30,000 reward. According to The Verge, via Tom’s Hardware, Azdoufal received word about the reward through his email. However, DJI wasn’t clear about which specific discovery qualified for the payment. Additionally, DJI confirmed that a reward was indeed paid to a researcher but didn’t elaborate on Azdoufal or his findings.
DJI is actually a Chinese company specializing in drone manufacturing and didn’t begin selling vacuums until the fall of 2025. But before its robot floor cleaners made headlines, DJI faced pushback from the U.S. government dating back to 2017. At the time, the U.S. Army ordered service members to stop using the company’s drones due to cybersecurity concerns. But the Army went a step further, ordering all related applications and storage media to be removed as well. This was due to potential vulnerabilities discovered during the Army’s internal research.
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In the following years, DJI was added to a Pentagon watch list as U.S. officials continued to raise national security concerns about the company. The fear was that DJI’s drones posed a risk to sensitive government information and facilities. Those concerns eventually led to restrictions from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which banned the import of new DJI models and drone components. In response, DJI filed a lawsuit in February of 2026, arguing that the FCC’s action placed unfair limits on its U.S. operations.
According to people familiar with the project who spoke to Reuters, Transformer is being built inside Amazon’s devices and services division as a “personalization device” that could tie together the company’s consumer services and its revamped Alexa assistant. Read Entire Article Source link
A new NYT Strands puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing ‘today’s game’ while others are playing ‘yesterday’s’. If you’re looking for Sunday’s puzzle instead then click here: NYT Strands hints and answers for Sunday, March 22 (game #749).
Strands is the NYT’s latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it’s great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.
Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc’s Wordle today page for the original viral word game.
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SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to know the answers.
Article continues below
NYT Strands today (game #750) – hint #1 – today’s theme
What is the theme of today’s NYT Strands?
• Today’s NYT Strands theme is… In pieces
NYT Strands today (game #750) – hint #2 – clue words
Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.
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WRECK
DICE
CRUSH
WHAT
DISHES
SUCK
NYT Strands today (game #750) – hint #3 – spangram letters
How many letters are in today’s spangram?
• Spangram has 9 letters
NYT Strands today (game #750) – hint #4 – spangram position
What are two sides of the board that today’s spangram touches?
First side: top, 4th column
Last side: bottom, 3rd column
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Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE THEM.
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NYT Strands today (game #750) – the answers
(Image credit: New York Times)
The answers to today’s Strands, game #750, are…
SNAP
CRACK
SPLINTER
RUPTURE
FRACTURE
SPANGRAM: BREAKDOWN
My rating: Easy
My score: Perfect
A straightforward game to begin the week, with SNAP firing off a rapid search for me.
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As I was connecting SPLINTER I felt sure it would be the spangram, as it’s unusual for words to span from top to bottom, but instead it was BREAKDOWN.
The other unusual thing about today’s search was how many non-game words qualified for the theme — I found three, but I’m sure there are more in there.
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Yesterday’s NYT Strands answers (Sunday, March 22, game #749)
ZIPPER
THERMOS
ESCALATOR
ASPIRIN
DUMPSTER
SPANGRAM: GENERICTERM
What is NYT Strands?
Strands is the NYT’s not-so-new-any-more word game, following Wordle and Connections. It’s now a fully fledged member of the NYT’s games stable that has been running for a year and which can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.
I’ve got a full guide to how to play NYT Strands, complete with tips for solving it, so check that out if you’re struggling to beat it each day.
It doesn’t sound like Crimson Desert, the recently released prequel to Black Desert Online, will support Intel Arc GPUs anytime soon, if at all. On the game’s FAQ page, its developer Pearl Abyss advised players expecting Arc support to apply for a refund. “If you purchased the game expecting Intel Arc support, please refer to the refund policy of the platform where the game was purchased for available options,” the company wrote. Apparently, though, it’s not from lack of guidance from Intel. The chipmaker told Wccftech that it reached out to Pearl Abyss “many times” over the past several years.
The Intel spokesperson said that the company has tried to help the developer “test, validate, and optimize support for Intel graphics” for years. Intel also tried to provide the developer “early hardware, drivers, and engineering resources” across several generations of GPUs, “including Alchemist, Battlemage, Meteor Lake, and Lunar Lake.” The chipmaker said it’s “hugely disappointed that players using Intel graphics hardware” can’t play the game, but that it remains “ready to assist Pearl Abyss” however it can. It also advised players to reach out directly to the developer for “details on the choice not to enable Intel support at launch.”
Pearl Abyss, of course, doesn’t have the obligation to tweak the game so that it runs on PCs with Intel Arc GPUs. The good news is that since the title came out just a few days ago, it will still be easy to get a refund. Steam, where Crimson Desert is now one of the top-selling games, issues refunds within two weeks of purchase.
The most unique thing about human beings is this: We are creatures who long to matter.
That’s according to Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, the philosopher and author of a new book called The Mattering Instinct. If you’ve ever wondered why we humans are so singularly obsessed with discovering the meaning of life, this book — and her ideas — are for you.
Goldstein presents an evolutionary explanation that starts off with a law of physics: the law of entropy, which basically says that things naturally tend toward disorder and destruction over time. All biological creatures need to devote a huge amount of energy and attention to resisting entropy — to surviving. But humans also have a special ability to self-reflect, and we can’t help but notice that we ultimately devote the vast majority of our attention to ourselves. To our own thriving, not the thriving of others. And so we feel the need to somehow justify that.
This, Goldstein says, is why we developed the “mattering instinct” — the drive that pushes us to find a “mattering project” that makes our lives feel purposeful and worthy. Goldstein sketches out four main ways people try to do that.
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Some are transcenders, who seek to matter to a transcendent presence like God. Others are socializers, who find purpose in helping and mattering to other people. Then there are heroic strivers, who push themselves to achieve excellence in the domain that matters to them, whether it’s intellectual, artistic, athletic, or moral. And finally, there are competitors, who focus on mattering more than others.
In the newest installment of my Your Mileage May Vary advice column, I suggested that Goldstein’s “mattering map” (see below) can be a useful tool for anyone who’s worried that AI may soon replace them in an arena where they find meaning, like their career. Locating ourselves on the map can help us each think afresh about which of the four categories makes us feel a sense of purpose, so we can consider additional types of work that could form a satisfying mattering project for us in the future.
I was curious about how Goldstein is thinking about automation-induced joblessness, what she’d do if her own work gets automated, and whether she thinks we’re in danger of losing our human dignity. So I asked her for a follow-up chat. Here’s a smattering of our nattering about mattering.
Courtesy of Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
You argue that our drive to matter is one of the cornerstones of human life. What convinced you of that? How have you felt that drive show up in your own life?
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I really feel justified in my righteous anger when people treat me as if I don’t matter!
I have a very favorite story about that. I mean, just being a woman, there are a lot of stories. But I was once at a party in Princeton with a bunch of physicists, and one very, very prominent physicist wanted to talk to another prominent physicist, and I was in the middle. So he just picked me up — I’m very slight — he picked me up and moved me like I was a potted palm!
And I had this real sense of…but I’m a person! I matter! That feels justified. And if I can justify that about myself, I have to universalize it to everybody. There’s no way it’s going to work for me and not work for everybody else.
Wow, that’s pretty appalling!
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So from that, you offer this evolutionary account of how everybody ended up with a mattering instinct. I always find it hard to evaluate evolutionary stories because there’s an element of speculation in them. Your account about how we evolved the mattering instinct seems plausible, but I could also imagine another account being true. For example, maybe the drive for mattering is a way of making sure that others will think we matter, because we want society to think well of us and take care of us. What convinces you that your account is more likely than others?
To me, it explains more of the variety of ways that people try to go about this. If the more social story were true, we would all be socializers. But I mean, the fact that there is a very strong religious aspect — I spent a good part of my life as a transcender — means that to me, phenomenologically, it doesn’t ring true. And it doesn’t ring true to the diversity [of how different people find mattering].
But it might be that I’ve just spent too much time with mathematicians who don’t give a damn about social acceptance!
“What I’m thinking in my most optimistic moments is that the deepest questions, they’re still going to belong to us.”
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Yes, we can see that from their fashion! But seriously, I have to say that I really love the mattering map in your book. I feel like I’m mostly one of the artistic-intellectual strivers, but I’m also a bit of a socializer in that I derive meaning from helping others with my work. Do you think most people live on only one island?
No, I don’t think so. I know that I don’t.
And I think all of us have a strong need for connectedness — it’s the other part of flourishing. We need people in our lives, and we often want to make a difference in people’s lives.
Maybe we have our main residence, and then we have our vacation home. You can definitely make a bridge [between the islands].
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Why is the island of transcenders exclusively populated with different religions and spiritual traditions? I can imagine other sorts of people — like artists or psychedelic users — who feel there’s a transcendent dimension to the universe, and who derive their sense of mattering by tapping into that.
I think in some sense, all heroic strivers have some notion of the transcendent. They often talk in terms of these ideals. I mean, every artist I know talks about beauty. For knowledge workers, it’s knowledge.
But I really wanted to single out the ones who actually feel that there is some sort of personal presence in the universe that has intentions — that there’s an intentionality that permeates the universe. It’s just so very different.
I had a very religious childhood — I was brought up Orthodox [Jewish] — and it was like, God knows if I cheated and took a bite of a Hostess cupcake! And there was this sense of mattering, that I was created for a purpose. I really felt like I had a role to play in the narrative of eternity. God has his plan, and I’m part of it. And I know that when I went from believing that to not believing that, the universe changed in such a big way for me. It just felt a little meaningless, to tell you the truth. That [form of mattering through transcendence] seemed worthy of its own continent on the map.
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You suggest that humans are the only animal that has a mattering instinct — we are “creatures of matter who long to matter.” You also call us “dust with dignity.” How does the mattering instinct connect with the idea of human dignity?
We are wired to take ourselves very seriously — the bulk of our attention is going to somehow be self-referential — and then we ask ourselves for justification. We feel we have to come up with some project, some story, and we devote so much energy to this justificatory project. I find that there’s a certain dignity in that. There’s something estimable, there’s something noble about a species that needs to prove to itself that it really matters.
That leads me to a very timely question: What happens to human dignity if AI replaces us in an important area, like our jobs, which is how many of us carry out our mattering projects? Are we in danger of losing our dignity, or is that some inalienable quality that we’ll just end up expressing in other ways?
The latter. I really think that when one is not able to minister to this, to appease this [mattering instinct], you end up with death within life, which is what extreme chronic depression is. So we will come up with something.
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Here’s me at my most optimistic: I think about philosophy, because I’ve been speaking to a lot of philosophers who were worried about it. There’s a lot of shit work that’s done in philosophy, and yes, let AIs do it. Let them explain the 53 ways of interpreting Kant’s deontological argument. They’ll be able to do it and come up with all the utilitarian counterarguments and all of that.
But there’s still so many problems that I think come out of being human and knowing what it’s like to be motivated by the mattering instinct and how hard it is to live an ethical life, given how much attention we are wired to pay to ourselves. AI can’t do that for us. So what I’m thinking in my most optimistic moments is that the deepest questions, they’re still going to belong to us.
I think plenty of people could listen to this conversation and say, “I don’t get my meaning from my job. What is this obsession with your career? Maybe it’s great if AI takes your job because you’ll finally learn how to find mattering in ministering to others or something!” Should we perhaps start thinking more expansively about where we find our sense of mattering?
Yeah, I think it’s not a bad idea to be thinking about that. But I also think you can’t force mattering strategies on people. It comes from something very deep — temperament, interest, passions, all of this. I’ve always resented it very much when people say, well, this here is the meaning of life.
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So I really want to be a pluralist about this. I do think that there always are going to be heroic strivers. There are people who have to meet or at least approach certain standards of excellence, including ethical and athletic and artistic.
With the artistic — just as when you have a forgery of a great painting and it’s indistinguishable from the original, it’s just not as valuable because it doesn’t come out of a human experience that came out of somebody’s individuality and what they’re struggling with — maybe that extra thing is always important in our aesthetic pleasure. If an AI writes something and it’s comparable to Shakespeare, I don’t believe that our aesthetic pleasure is going to be the same. It’s about knowing: Oh, this is a window into somebody else’s subjectivity!
Have a question you want me to answer in the next Your Mileage May Vary column?
In my recent advice column, I suggested that even if AI takes your job, you can hang onto a sense of mattering by looking at the mattering map, identifying the broader island of mattering that tends to make you feel satisfied, and seeing what other jobs might be an expression of that. If you yourself weren’t able to work as a philosopher and novelist anymore, what would you do instead to make ends meet while still fulfilling your drive for mattering?
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There are two careers that I’ve often thought, Gee, I should have given them more thought. One is to work with children. I just love kids and I think they’re really fascinating. I have a daughter who’s a clinical psychologist, and she deals with a lot of kids, and I think it’s really interesting work. And it is that socializer [drive], which is very strong in me as well.
The other thing is to go to Africa and just live with animals, observing [them]. I love elephants, I love chimpanzees. And I could see doing that too — a more scientific career.
This is reminding me that ever since I was a kid, thinking of humanity makes me think of an injured animal — I always pictured a three-legged dog. It’s struggling, it’s limping along. And I feel like our search for meaning is that limp. It’s a burden on us, in a way, right?
Yeah, it’s hard to be a living thing. It’s that much harder to be a human and to want to get it right. You can think of that as our limp. But you can also think of it as our crown.
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For me it’s precisely because humanity is saddled with this sort of struggle that I’m rooting for it extra, that I feel a special affinity for it.
That’s almost a protectiveness. And that’s a beautiful emotion. I mean, that is something to cultivate: Wherever there is humanity, there is a struggle, and that matters.
Samsung’s decision to quietly pull the plug on its most futuristic foldable might sound like a step backwards, but I don’t think it is.
The Galaxy Z TriFold has always been less a mainstream gadget and more a very expensive proof of concept – a flashy way for Samsung to show off what its foldable tech can do. That’s why the news that Samsung is reportedly winding down production, just months after launch, shouldn’t be seen purely as a loss.
Yes, it’s frustrating for fans who’ve no doubt been refreshing product pages only to watch restocks vanish within minutes, but with skyrocketing component prices, supply chain chaos and a mobile division under pressure to justify every penny it spends, the TriFold was always going to be first on the chopping block.
In reality, shelving the TriFold now could be exactly what Samsung needs: a chance to refocus on devices that more people can actually buy, that developers will actually support, and that move foldables forward in ways that matter – like the rumoured ‘Wide Fold’ and the next-gen Z Fold.
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Losing the snazzy TriFold might sting right now, but it could make Samsung’s foldable future all the stronger for it.
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Samsung is reportedly winding down production of the Galaxy Z TriFold
A new report from South Korean publication Donga claimed this week that Samsung is preparing to wind down sales of the Galaxy Z TriFold, just months after its initial launch – a surprising move considering how quickly it sells out whenever stock does drop.
Per the report, Samsung is expected to release a final batch of TriFolds in its home region of South Korea this week, after which, sales could come to an end. Now it’s worth noting that the report is explicitly about sales in South Korea, with no word on whether the same pattern will play out in regions like the US – but it seems increasingly likely.
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Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
After all, Samsung has always been transparent about the TriFold and how it wasn’t a mass-market product, rather a showcase of what the company’s foldable tech is truly capable of.
That explains not only the incredibly high $2,899 price tag in the States, but also comments from those who have used it on build quality not quite matching that of the comparatively cheaper, mass-produced Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7.
While that news will be disappointing for those still waiting to get their hands on the tri-folding 10-inch smartphone, the decision to stop sales isn’t all that surprising if you’ve been keeping an eye on Samsung more broadly recently.
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Not a surprise given soaring costs
A separate report that also surfaced this week, this time from the South Korean outlet FNNews, claims that despite a record number of Galaxy S26 range pre-orders, the Device eXperience (DX) division is essentially in crisis mode. That includes not only Samsung’s smartphones, but also wearables, smart TVs and home appliances.
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Of course, just like every other tech issue surfacing in 2026, it all seems to be down to the rapidly rising costs of components. The all-important RAM needed to power most tech has surged in the past nine months or so, with some estimates putting the rise as high as 850%, as AI data centres hoover up as much RAM as possible.
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There’s also the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, which has reportedly increased logistics costs.
A Samsung spokesperson who spoke to FNNews explained that “with raw material costs under extreme pressure from rising semiconductor prices, and logistics costs increasing on top of that, we ultimately had no choice but to put the MX division under emergency management.”
With the DX division under such tight constraints, it makes sense for Samsung to stop production of the TriFold – it’s expensive and, no doubt, more difficult to manufacture than the flip- and book-style foldables the company has cranked out over the past few years – and double down on smartphones that it knows will sell well.
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Samsung can now focus on more consumer-ready foldable tech – like the ‘Wide Fold’
It might sound like it’s all doom and gloom over at Samsung, but honestly, it’s probably for the best. Tighter purse strings should force Samsung to double down on its core products – both foldable and non-foldable – rather than putting increasingly limited resources into niche, hyper-expensive products like the TriFold that aren’t ready for prime time just yet.
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
That’s more important than usual right now, with Samsung rumoured to be working on not one but two book-style foldables for mass consumer release later this year.
The most recent reports claim that, in addition to a successor to the Galaxy Z Fold 7 that’s expected to offer a similarly slimline design and a boxy inner aspect ratio, the company is working on a second foldable, unofficially dubbed the ‘Z Wide Fold’.
The key difference, as the unofficial moniker suggests, is the shape of the foldable. While Samsung’s regular Z Fold offers a thin and narrow aspect ratio, even with big improvements on this front with the Fold 7, and an almost perfectly 1:1 inner display, the ‘Wide’ Fold is said to be more passport-shaped.
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That’s not a new idea – it was used by the original Oppo Find N, as well as Google’s first-gen Pixel Fold – but it has fallen out of trend in recent times.
Samsung looks to revive it, and the foldable experience will be all the better for it; I’ve long been a fan of the passport-shaped foldable, not only because of the shorter, wider outer panel, but also because the inner screen more closely resembles a regular 4:3 tablet-sized screen.
That should hopefully put an end to apps that, even after all this time, still can’t quite handle the boxy aspect ratio of foldables. With an aspect ratio closer to a tablet or even a smartphone in horizontal orientation, it becomes almost trivial to support, with no major rejigging of the UI required.
If there were a choice between Samsung putting effort into its extremely expensive, not-quite-polished TriFold or the Wide Fold, especially under the new budget constraints, I know which I’d go for.
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