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6 Apps You Should Be Using If You Work From Home In 2026

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Working from home is awesome. We all learned that during the pandemic, when the majority of work went remote. We’re nowhere near that number these days, but it’s still higher than pre-pandemic levels. Not only did it give people a far healthier work-life balance and save them a crap ton of money on transportation and meals, but even the Bureau of Labor Statistics couldn’t deny it made us more productive. WFH is the best, case closed. If you’re free from the confines of a work machine running an operating system you might not even use, you’re free to use the productivity apps you need to get the job done.

I’ve been working from home for a while, and I think I’ve mostly settled into a software rut of sorts that has helped me get more done faster and easier. I’ve covered extensively the best Mac apps to improve your experience, and the “ride-or-die” apps every Windows user should have, many of which are productivity apps that I use on a daily basis. While my primary recommendations are for macOS software, every option on this list has a Windows or Linux alternative that will get the job done.

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Clipboard manager

If you find yourself frequently copying and pasting throughout the day, you need to start using a clipboard manager. Clipboard managers store everything you’ve copied in one convenient place that you can summon with a shortcut, instead of having to go back to re-copy a particular item. This feature is built into macOS and Windows. On macOS, open Spotlight with Command + Spacebar and then the clipboard with Command + 4 or a click. On Windows, press the Windows key + V. Clipboard history on Windows is turned off by default, so make sure it’s enabled before you copy like there’s no tomorrow.

Both are solid options, but they’re more like better-than-nothing solutions. The world of third-party clipboard managers is a beautiful thing, and most people would benefit from one. Maccy is the king of macOS clipboard managers, at least in my opinion. One simple keystroke brings up a searchable list of clipboard items that, with another quick keystroke, can be re-copied or instantly pasted to your cursor’s current location. It only costs $9.99 through the App Store and has worked virtually bug-free for me. There are other macOS alternatives, like PastePal, and many apps that incorporate a built-in clipboard manager, like Raycast.

On Windows, you can try the excellent (and free) Pasteboard app. It has a sleeker, more Windows-suited interface that works great if you’re going to be copying media, like images. Linux users might try CopyQ, which also supports macOS and Windows. The only complaint I have about CopyQ is that the interface feels a bit dated. Another option is to just use a pastebin, like PrivateBin, which is basically just a big web-based text field where you can copy and paste anything you want as you work.

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Dictation apps

Spending long hours clacking away at a keyboard — even with good posture, wrist rests, and a mechanical keyboard — is a great way to get RSI, a debilitating injury that could make it excruciatingly painful to do even something as simple as flipping on a light switch. Unless you’re penning the next great American novel, most of the things you write on your computer (emails, messages, etc.) are simple enough that they could be dictated. Dictation software in recent years has gotten incredibly good and affordable, enough that, frankly, you should dictate virtually everything to spare your fingers and produce words much faster than you could type them. It takes a while to train your brain to dictate things as well as you can type them, but it’s easier than you think.

Both macOS and Windows have a built-in dictation feature that handles very basic stuff, especially anything that doesn’t have complex vocab and/or personalized and esoteric words. MacBooks have a dictation key, but if you’re using an external keyboard, you can set it to a shortcut or a double press of Command or Control. Windows Dictation works with the Windows Key + H.

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There are some great free options, too. On macOS, MacWhisper is an app I could not live without; it supports ultra-fast and accurate Whisper and Parakeet dictation models that run locally on your device. macOS has tons of alternatives to MacWhisper, but many of them only offer a subscription model. The best option on Windows is Nuance Dragon, which sadly costs hundreds of dollars and has an interface that looks like it hasn’t gotten an update since Windows 95. I’d recommend something like WhisperWriter instead. Linux users should try Speech Note. Google Docs has built-in dictation too, and since it’s web-based, it works anywhere.

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Screenshotting tool

For screenshots, nothing is stopping you from hitting Print Screen and then copying the result where you need it. That said, both macOS and Windows have great built-in screenshotting tools that make it easy to capture exactly what you want, quickly and easily. On macOS, either bring up the entire screenshot app with Shift + Command + 5, or use Shift + Command + 3 or 4 to capture the entire screen or part of the screen (and add the spacebar to capture a single menu), respectively. Here is our guide covering every way to take a screenshot on Mac. The Windows 11 Snipping Tool does most of that, plus options to annotate, add captions, edit text, and more.

Of course, we’re not here to use what’s built in. We’re here to suggest third-party options that take things to the next level. The two heavyweights on macOS are Shottr and CleanShot X. I like Shottr because it’s free to use, lightweight, and packed to the gills with features. Shottr’s paid upgrade is priced incredibly well, too, at a $12 one-time license. CleanShot X isn’t free, but if you do a lot of screenshotting, screen capturing, and editing, then it’s probably a cost that pays itself off tenfold in productivity dividends. It costs $29 for a one-time license, but this only guarantees a year of software updates. You’d need to pay $19 each year thereafter to keep getting all the latest features and cloud storage.

I admit, on the Windows front, there isn’t much in the same league as Shottr and CleanShot X. ScreenPal is my personal recommendation. It’s free to use provided you never record for longer than 15 minutes, after which you’d need to pay a minimum of $4 a month to get the Pro features.

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Link Cleaner app

Working from home, you likely find yourself sharing a ton of links. But the problem with links is that advertisers and data-mining companies slip in a lot of junk that they hope you won’t notice, such as tracking information that tells them who opened a link you shared. Unless you’re using one of the most secure browsers for maximum web privacy, like Tor, it’s good practice to clean links — the ones you receive and the ones you send.

The best all-rounder for anyone — macOS, Windows, Linux, and even mobile devices — is Link Cleaner. The web-based link cleaner does it all, and does so ad-free. It also allows you to paste in a batch of links and clean them in one click, or shorten links for certain websites, like YouTube. If you’d rather not keep it pinned as a tab, you can install it as a web browser app or add it to the macOS Share Sheet. If you end up using this one frequently, consider donating, as it does not monetize itself otherwise. If your concern is more about opening dirty links from coworkers, you can download ClearURLs as a web extension to clean pasted-in links automatically in Firefox and Chromium-based browsers.

Personally, I prefer an app that’s always within a one-click distance rather than a web page or an extension. On macOS, I’ve been using the excellent Clean Links app. It lives in the menu bar, and with one click cleans the link and copies it to your clipboard so you can paste it. Better yet, you can give it clipboard-monitoring permissions to automatically clean all links as you copy them.

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File transfer app

Sure, you could send someone a file by either dropping it in an email or messenger, or linking to the cloud storage download page it’s hosted on. But there are better ways. Regardless of which operating system you use, my instant, no-notes recommendation is Blip. It’s awesome. No other app, in my humble opinion, is as fast, easy, and convenient for sending files. On top of that glowing recommendation, it’s free. It’s a great choice whether you’re sending files to yourself on other devices or to co-workers, though bear in mind that for commercial usage, you should be paying for it. Maybe convince your boss to put it on the corporate tab for everyone to use.

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If that last bit disqualifies Blip for you, then worry not. The list of file transfer alternatives is long and diverse. My recommendation for sharing files on a local network is LocalSend. If you don’t want to download an app, there are a ton of browser-based options. My personal recommendation is Wormhole. Other options include SwissTransfer and Send. Despite being free to use, these services support big file sizes and end-to-end encryption. I could make a list as long as the day, but these should get the job done nicely.

If your smartphone factors into your workflow, there are plenty of options beyond Android’s Quick Share and Apple’s AirDrop. Several of the options we’ve mentioned, like Blip and LocalSend, support Android and iOS. Check out our list of the best mobile apps for sharing large files.

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File compression app

While we’re on the subject of sending files, how often do you send files in an uncompressed format, i.e. not in a .zip file? At some point, you’ve likely been unable to send multiple files (or a folder), you’ve run into file size limitations on email attachments, or your file transfers have run slowly because they’re so big. All of this can be solved by compressing files. Zipping up files has been a thing for ages, yet anecdotally, I see very few people ever actually zip files before sending them. I’d assume that the average person perhaps feels a bit intimidated by the built-in options on macOS and Windows, or that the options are just inconvenient enough that it’s not worth the bother. Fortunately, there are a whole bunch of apps that take away any excuses not to compress files for transit.

macOS users, you’re going to love Keka since it’s arguably the easiest and fastest way to zip files. Simply drag whatever you’re zipping onto Keka’s icon on the dock, and you’re done. It’s free, but please consider the paid Mac App Store version or donating. It supports a huge range of formats, too, and can extract from even more. Password encryption and file splitting are also supported. For Windows users, 7-Zip never fails to disappoint. It integrates into your context menu and is blazing fast compared to alternatives like WinRAR — at least in my testing. It also works on Linux.

If neither of those options appeals to you, PeaZip is the best all-rounder on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Though it’ll work great for everyone, it’s especially great for power users since it supports the command line and adds extra security features like two-factor authentication. It’s designed to be lightweight, portable, and powerful.

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How we chose these apps

I’ve been working from home for years now, as stated earlier, and I’ve streamlined and increased my productivity thanks in large part to the apps on this list. Rather than address apps specific to one type of work, we zoomed out to focus on everyday clerical tasks: writing reports, sending emails, working with documents — things that most WFH workers do — anything requiring a lot of typing, a lot of copying and pasting, and a lot of working with (and sending) basic files. The apps we chose generally stay out of your way and don’t overwhelm you with features.

It was important to us to provide quality apps that work on multiple operating systems. A lot of work-from-home employees may be using personal devices, like a personal MacBook, when company PCs run Windows. This article also assumes you have more freedom to install software and use your device as you please. We tried as hard as we could to find free software, but some of the best options on this list (like Maccy) require you to pay. Still, we’d argue the productivity boost they provide (and the opportunity to support good software in the long term) is worth the cost.

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Robinhood sues WA state to block enforcement of gambling laws against prediction markets

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Robinhood isn’t waiting to get sued in Washington state. 

The financial services company filed a preemptive federal suit against Washington’s attorney general and gambling commission, arguing the state can’t use its gambling laws to shut down prediction market trading that it contends is authorized under federal commodities law.

The suit comes a few days after Washington Attorney General Nick Brown sued prediction market platform Kalshi in state court. The state takes the position that event contracts — which let users wager on the outcome of real-world activities ranging from NFL games to elections to the number of measles cases in a given year — amount to illegal gambling.

In its lawsuit, filed March 30 in U.S. District Court in Tacoma, Wash., Robinhood argues that federal law preempts Washington’s gambling statutes as applied to event contracts traded on exchanges regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. 

Robinhood Markets, based in Menlo Park, Calif., is known for popularizing commission-free stock trading. The suit was filed by its Chicago-based subsidiary, Robinhood Derivatives

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The company, which is registered with the CFTC as a futures commission merchant, offers event contracts through the Kalshi and ForecastEx exchanges and says it plans to launch trading on a third exchange, Rothera, later this year, according to the complaint.

Pre-emptive move: The company points to the Kalshi suit and a December warning from the state Gambling Commission declaring prediction markets “unauthorized” as evidence that enforcement against the company is imminent.

The complaint was filed on behalf of Robinhood by the law firms Davis Wright Tremaine in Seattle and Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York.

Robinhood’s suit cites Brown’s statement, at a press conference last week, that Kalshi is “just a bookie with a fancy name, and a huge amount of venture capital behind them.”

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The suit says the company had “no choice but to file this lawsuit to protect its customers and its business.”

“[W]e believe in the power of prediction markets and the important role they play at the intersection of trading, news, economics, politics, culture, and sports,” a Robinhood spokesperson said via email, noting that the markets are federally regulated. “This step, consistent with our past actions in other jurisdictions, aims to preserve access for customers in Washington.”

GeekWire has reached out to the Washington AG’s office for comment.

Broader landscape: The case is part of a national wave of litigation over prediction markets. Kalshi is fighting more than 20 civil lawsuits, and Arizona’s AG filed criminal charges last month. 

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Courts are split on the issue. Federal judges in New Jersey and Tennessee, for example, have ruled that states cannot enforce their gambling laws against federally regulated prediction markets, while state courts in Massachusetts and Ohio have ruled that they can.

Washington state has staked out a broader position than other states in this fight, arguing that all event contracts — not just sports bets — are illegal under state law. Other states have focused their enforcement on sports-related contracts specifically.A bipartisan bill introduced last week by Sens. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and John Curtis (R-Utah) would ban sports betting on prediction market platforms.

Read the full complaint below.

Robinhood v. WA state by GeekWire

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Are Mini Leaf Blowers ACTUALLY Worth It?

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Leaf blowers are pretty versatile tools for keeping your yard tidy, blowing snow off your car, or anything else that needs a healthy measure of forced air. Unfortunately for people with more space constraints, your average blower is pretty big and unwieldy. Additionally, for people with limited mobility options or noise limitations, a smaller, more compact leaf blower might be the ticket.

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Enter the advent of the mini leaf blower. We all know that a full-size leaf blower packs some power, but how does a tiny handheld version perform? Does the reduction in size make it less useful? In this video, we take a couple mini leaf blowers purchased online through the ringer and see what each one is capable of.

Will the name brand come up on top, or will a lesser-known brand take the crown as the winner? More importantly, are mini leaf blowers even worth it compared to the full-size versions?

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Meta and YouTube found liable in landmark social media addiction trial

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Mark Lanier, the folksy Texas litigator who doubles as a part-time pastor, held a jar of M&Ms in front of the Los Angeles jury and told them that each one represented a billion dollars of Meta’s market capitalisation. There were, by that maths, roughly 1,400 sweets in the jar. The jury awarded his client six of them. The question now stalking Silicon Valley is what happens when the other jars start to empty.

On Wednesday 25 March, a California jury found Meta and Google liable on all counts in the first bellwether trial to test whether social media platforms can be treated as defective products, engineered, like a faulty car seat or a contaminated drug, to cause harm. The plaintiff, a 20-year-old woman identified only as K.G.M. and referred to in court as Kaley, told the jury she had begun using YouTube at six years old and Instagram at nine, and that the platforms had amplified personal struggles into body dysmorphia, depression, and suicidal thoughts. After nine days of deliberation, 43 hours in total,  the jurors agreed.

The damages were modest by big-tech standards: $3 million in compensatory damages and $3 million in punitive damages, split 70-30 between Meta and Google. Meta’s share amounts to $4.2 million against a company whose market capitalisation, at the time of the verdict, stood at approximately $1.4 trillion. But the financial significance of the ruling lies not in what was awarded but in what it unlocked. More than 10,000 individual cases and nearly 800 school-district claims are pending in federal multidistrict litigation, with eight further bellwether trials scheduled for the months ahead. The verdict establishes, for the first time, that a jury will accept the legal theory that social media apps should be treated as products whose design is inherently defective.

The ruling landed one day after a separate jury in Santa Fe, New Mexico, ordered Meta to pay $375 million in civil penalties ,$5,000 per violation — after finding the company had violated state consumer-protection laws by enabling child sexual exploitation on Facebook and Instagram. New Mexico became the first state to prevail at trial against a social media company over child-safety concerns. Evidence presented during that six-week trial included internal Meta documents and testimony from former employees establishing that the platform’s design features had enabled predators to target minors. A bench trial on the state’s remaining claims against Meta is scheduled to begin on 4 May.

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The back-to-back verdicts sent Meta’s stock into its steepest decline in more than two years. Shares fell 6.8 per cent the day after the Los Angeles verdict, continued sliding to an 8 per cent drop the following day, and finished the week down 11 per cent. By month’s end, Meta was down 19 per cent, having shed roughly $310 billion in market value. Analysts at JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs began revising their price targets, citing what they described as unquantifiable tail risk from the cascade of litigation now using the verdict as a template.

Inside Meta, the verdict is viewed as a disappointment rather than a crisis — at least publicly. The company had entered the trial confident in its position, arguing that Kaley’s struggles with family and school predated her use of Instagram and that reducing something as complex as teen mental health to a single cause risked leaving broader issues unaddressed. A spokesperson told the BBC that many teenagers rely on digital communities to find belonging. Meta said it would appeal, and gave no indication it would settle future cases or alter its product design.

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Google took a different tack, arguing that YouTube had been mischaracterised in the trial. YouTube is “a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site,” the company said — a distinction the jury evidently did not find persuasive. Both companies will have the opportunity to refine their legal arguments as the bellwether programme continues, but the evidentiary record from Kaley’s trial, including internal documents in which Meta executives discussed efforts to attract and retain young users, can now be recalled in subsequent proceedings.

TikTok and Snapchat’s parent company Snap Inc had been co-defendants in the case but settled before the trial began. The settlement amounts remain undisclosed, and neither company admitted liability, but the decision to resolve their exposure before a jury could weigh in suggests their legal teams reached a different calculus than Meta’s. Both companies remain defendants in several upcoming bellwether trials.

The broader implications extend well beyond courtroom damages. Eric Goldman, an associate dean and professor of law at Santa Clara University, told the BBC he viewed the social media addiction cases as a potentially existential threat to the industry’s current business model. The social media industry, Goldman wrote after the verdict, “faces existential legal liability and inevitably will need to reconfigure their core offerings if they can’t get broad-based relief on appeal.” Former Twitter executive Bruce Daisley framed the structural problem more bluntly: two decades of growth had produced businesses “geared for trying to force people to spend more and more time” on their platforms, and any regulation or litigation that threatened that engagement model became a problem to be neutralised through lobbying and public relations.

The legal reckoning arrives at a moment when the technology industry’s relationship with regulators is already under severe strain. Australia’s social-media age ban, which took effect in December 2025, has prompted enforcement actions against five platforms for non-compliance. The European Union’s Digital Services Act and AI Act are imposing new obligations that many companies have struggled to meet. The NIS2 Directive has expanded cybersecurity regulatory scope across eighteen sectors. And the US Congress, where Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was meeting Senate Majority Leader John Thune on the day the verdict landed, continues to weigh federal age-verification and platform-liability legislation.

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What distinguishes the litigation from the regulatory push is that juries, unlike legislators, do not negotiate. They decide. And in Los Angeles last week, twelve citizens decided that the products Meta and Google built were defective, that the companies knew they were defective, and that a young woman was harmed as a result. The $6 million penalty is a rounding error for companies worth more than the GDP of most nations. The legal precedent is not.

As Kaley’s attorney Jayne Conroy told the BBC after the verdict: there is, right now, a lot of maths going on in boardrooms at Meta, Google, Snap, and TikTok.

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Spotify Finally Tries Hi-Fi: Lossless Listening Lounge in London Built Around Horn Speakers and Bryston Power

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Spotify has spent the better part of two decades convincing the world that convenience beats fidelity. Now it wants you to sit down, shut up, take your shoes off, and listen. Really listen. Inside its London headquarters, the company has opened a 30-seat Listening Lounge designed to showcase its long-delayed lossless tier, which finally arrived in 2025 after competitors like TIDAL, Qobuz, and Apple Music had already moved on to higher ground. Timing has never been Spotify’s strong suit when it comes to sound quality, but at least it showed up.

The Listening Lounge is invite-only, which feels about right. Spotify Premium users and “top fans” get the nod, assuming they want to trade playlists and background noise for something resembling focus. The room is built around album-centric sessions and curated listening events, which Spotify now calls “intentional listening.” Audiophiles have been calling it Tuesday night since 1978, but sure, let’s rebrand it and roll it out to the press who will eat it up like horseradish on gefilte fish at the Passover seder. On second thought — stick with the biltong and some mustard.

To Spotify’s credit, it didn’t cheap out on the system. This isn’t a soundbar and some mood lighting. The setup leans hard into old-school hi-fi: custom horn-loaded speakers from Friendly Pressure, Bryston 3B Cubed power amplifiers, a PrimaLuna DAC paired with an Evo 400 tube preamp, and a Bluesound Node Icon handling streaming duties.

spotify-listening-lounge-london-angle

The speakers are big, unapologetic, and built around Alnico drivers and compression horns that don’t care about your furniture layout or your neighbors. This is two-channel stereo with no Atmos tricks, no DSP safety net, and no interest in pretending otherwise. Left, right, and whatever your ears can handle.

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The room itself plays along. Designed with a Japanese vinyl bar aesthetic, the system sits elevated like some kind of altar, because apparently we’re doing ritual now. Acoustic treatment is handled seriously, reflections are controlled, distractions minimized. And yes, you take your shoes off. Nothing says “we’re serious about lossless audio” quite like white socks from Marks & Spencer on a polished floor while a tube preamp warms the room.

The timing of all this is hard to ignore. Spotify’s lossless rollout wasn’t early. It wasn’t even competitive. It was late. While others were pushing 24-bit streams and building credibility with listeners who actually care about sound, Spotify leaned into scale, algorithms, and playlists designed for people who don’t want to think too hard about what they’re hearing. Now that fidelity has become “important,” Spotify is doing what large companies do best. Build an experience, control the narrative, invite the right people, and hope nobody remembers how they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the room.

spotify-listening-lounge-london-right

The system, however, does its job. Reports point to serious dynamics, scale that fills the room, and a level of clarity that makes lossless audio feel like more than a marketing checkbox. Horn speakers bring speed and impact, along with a presentation that can get a little sharp if the recording demands it. That’s the trade-off. This setup doesn’t smooth things over or make bad recordings sound polite. It tells the truth, whether you like it or not. There’s a lesson there for the high-end audio community.

This whole exercise isn’t really about a room in London. It’s about positioning. Spotify wants to be seen as a company that understands high-end audio, not just one that delivers background music between podcasts and ads. It wants a seat at the same table as services that built their reputations on fidelity, not convenience. That’s a tough pivot when your entire business model was built on making music easier, faster, smaller, and rather crappy sounding.

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The Bottom Line

The Listening Lounge is impressive. The system is real. The intent is finally pointed in the right direction. But there’s an unavoidable edge of irony here. Audiophiles have been building rooms like this for decades without the need for an invite list or a press release. Spotify didn’t invent serious listening. It just discovered that it matters.

And that’s where this either becomes something meaningful or just another well-lit detour. Spotify isn’t a niche player trying to earn credibility. It’s the largest music streaming platform on the planet, with hundreds of millions of users; more than all of its direct competitors combined. If lossless audio actually matters to the company, this can’t stop at a single curated room in London with a guest list and a carefully controlled narrative. That’s not a movement. That’s a demo.

Because the real test isn’t what happens inside that room. It’s what happens outside of it. Does Spotify push lossless as a core feature across the platform, front and center, where its massive user base can actually engage with it? Does it educate listeners on why better sound quality matters? Does it integrate that experience into everyday listening in a way that doesn’t require an invitation and a plane ticket?

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Right now, it feels like Spotify is trying to prove something—to the press, to the industry, maybe even to itself. But if this is going to land, it needs to scale beyond a showcase and become part of the product story in a real, unavoidable way. Otherwise, this Listening Lounge risks being remembered for what it looks like today: a very expensive reminder that Spotify showed up late and is still figuring out how serious it wants to be.

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Aspyr: Hey, Those Crappy Tomb Raider Remastered Outfits Were Made By Our Artists, Not AI!

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from the McPromptism dept

I’m going to trust that most of our audience will have some idea of what McCarthyism was in the 1950s. To summarize very briefly, it was an anti-communist campaign that spread into becoming equally anti-leftist throughout the country, with a specific focus on driving the supposed communist influences out of major media in America, such as radio and Hollywood. This led to a public hyper-vigilant in looking for supposed communists everywhere, as well as plenty of cases of false accusations of communist activity purposefully foisted upon people for personal reasons. This rabid, frothy-mouthed era of suspicion became a major stain on America in the 1950s.

I’m watching a version of this begin to take form around artificial intelligence. I know, I know: there are very real dangers and negative outcomes that could come to be from AI. That was true of communism and our Cold War enemy in the Soviet Union as well. My point is not that AI is great all the time and any pushback against it is invalid. Instead, my point is that we’re starting to see what I’ll call McPromptism, where some percentage of the public looks for AI everywhere it can and, if use is suspected, immediately decries it as terrible and demands that people not engage with the supposed user.

And just like McCarthyism, McPromptism gets its accusations wrong sometimes. You can see a version of that in the story of Aspyr’s remastering of old Tomb Raider games and the horrible outfits that were produced for the protagonist, Lara Croft.

Earlier this week we reported on fan reaction to the latest update to the Tomb Raider I-III Remastered collection, in which the game received a new Challenge Mode, while Lara received a suite of new outfits to wear as rewards. And oh wow, they were bad. Comically bad. So bad, in fact, that one of the remaster’s original artists posted on X to distance himself and his colleagues from the dross. Alongside all of this was the suspicion that genAI might have been involved in the fits’ creation, given just how dreadful they looked. Publisher Aspyr has now finally responded to the claims to insist no AI was used at all, instead stating they were created by “our team of artists.” Which raises more questions.

If you want to see a somewhat humorous look at the outfit textures that are the subject of public complaint, here you go.

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On the one hand, for someone like me who is not into the anti-AI dogma out there, it is objectively funny for some people to point at bad video game textures and claim they’re so bad because they’re obviously created using generative AI… only to have the company that made them say, “Nuh uh! It was our human employees who made them!” It’s almost Monty-Python-esque, in a way.

But this default among some in the gaming public to be “This thing in gaming is bad, so it must have been made using AI!” is just one more kind of silly that is out there right now. Aspyr doesn’t exactly have a perfect reputation when it comes to remastering games, after all, and it built that reputation long before genAI came along.

It seems clear that this was a case of images being released to promote the remastered game that Aspyr didn’t live up to in the actual game itself. No AI, just human beings not hitting the mark. It happens all the time. Hell, there is even a chance that AI could have done a better job. Not a certainty by any stretch, but a possibility.

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But the real take away from this otherwise minor episode for me was the McPromptism misfire. If you’re going to rage against the literal machine in the video gaming industry, which I think is the wrong stance to take anyway, at least let it be righteous rage.

Filed Under: ai, mcpromptism, tomb raider, video games

Companies: aspyr

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Watch NASA count down to the launch of humanity’s first moon voyage in nearly 54 years

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NASA’s Space Launch System rocket stands on its launch pad in preparation for the Artemis 2 moon launch. (NASA Photo / Bill Ingalls)

After years of postponements and close to $100 billion in spending, NASA is finally counting down to its first attempt to send astronauts around the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.

The 10-day Artemis 2 mission is set to begin today with the liftoff of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket from NASA’s historic Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The two-hour launch window opens at 6:24 p.m. ET (3:24 p.m. PT), and NASA is streaming live mission coverage of the countdown on two different YouTube channels.

NASA has fueled up the 322-foot-tall SLS rocket with liquid hydrogen and oxygen, and there’s an 80% chance of acceptable weather for launch. Rain showers are the main concern.

Artemis 2 is the first crewed test flight in a series leading up to a moon landing that’s currently scheduled for 2028. It follows Artemis 1, which sent a crewless Orion space capsule around the moon in 2022. This time, four astronauts will be riding inside Orion: NASA mission commander Reid Wiseman, NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Victor Glover, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Koch will be the first woman to go beyond Earth orbit, and Hansen will be the first non-American to do so.

Although the astronauts won’t be landing on the lunar surface, they’ll follow a figure-8 trajectory that will send them 4,700 miles beyond the far side of the moon and make them the farthest-flung travelers in human history.

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Last week, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman laid out a plan for establishing a permanent base on the moon and preparing for even farther trips into the solar system. On the eve of the launch, Isaacman played up the significance of Artemis 2 in that plan. “The next era of exploration begins,” he said in a post to X.

Senior test director Jeff Spaulding, a veteran of the space shuttle program, said he was looking forward to the mission. “I’m excited about going to the moon,” he told reporters. “I’m excited about establishing a presence there. It’s something that I have had a desire for, for a great many years — and then to get humans out to Mars as well.”

The health of the Artemis 2 astronauts will be monitored during the flight to gauge the effects of deep-space travel. The crew will also assess Orion’s performance and practice in-flight safety procedures. For example, they’ll rehearse the protocol for taking shelter from radiation storms that might flare up during trips beyond Earth’s protective magnetosphere. They’ll also participate in experiments and make observations of the moon’s far side.

“They’re going to be able to see the whole moon as a lunar disk on the lunar far side,” Marie Henderson, lunar science deputy lead for the Artemis 2 mission, said in a NASA video. “So, that’s a brand-new, unique perspective that humans haven’t been able to look at before.”

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At the end of the trip, the crew and their Orion capsule are due to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast. They’ll be brought to a recovery ship for medical checkouts and their return to shore, following a routine that became familiar during the Apollo era.

Artemis 2 is about the history of America’s space program as well as its future. The round-the-moon mission profile matches that of Apollo 8, which served as a unifying event for a nation riven by the social tumult of the time. That mission’s commander, Frank Borman, reported receiving a telegram reading, “Congratulations to the crew of Apollo 8. You saved 1968.” Notably, less than a third of Americans living today were around when Apollo 8 flew.

The main motivation for the Apollo program was America’s superpower competition with the Soviet Union, and today, the geopolitical stakes are similarly high. NASA and the White House are seeking to jump-start progress on Artemis in part because China is targeting a crewed moon landing by 2030.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said this week during a visit to Seattle-area suppliers for the Artemis program that it’s important for America to get to the moon first. “We’re trying to get the best real estate on the moon,” she said. “So, to do that, you’ve got to get up there to claim it.”

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The course of the Artemis program, which is named after the goddess of the moon and the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology, hasn’t always run smooth. When the program was given its name in 2019, the Artemis 2 mission was planned for 2022 or 2023, with the moon landing scheduled for 2024. The cost of the program has been estimated at $93 billion through 2025, with each Artemis launch costing $4.1 billion.

Artemis 2’s launch team ran into several challenges during this year’s preparations for launch. Liftoff was initially scheduled for February, but a liquid hydrogen leak forced NASA to reset the launch for March. The launch date was reset again when a helium pressurization problem required a rocket rollback for repairs. The SLS was brought back out to the pad on March 20, and preparations went smoothly since then.

Several companies with a presence in the Seattle area are banking on Artemis’ success. For example, a facility in Redmond operated by L3Harris (previously known as Aerojet Rocketdyne) builds thrusters for the Orion spacecraft and is already working ahead on the Artemis 8 mission.

Boeing is the lead contractor for the SLS rocket’s core stage. Karman Space & Defense in Mukilteo provides hatch release mechanisms and parachute deployment hardware for Orion. And Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, based in Kent, is developing a Blue Moon lander that future Artemis crews could ride to the lunar surface.

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Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket is expected to send an uncrewed cargo version of its lander to the moon sometime in the next few months.

Read more: Artemis 2 gets a push from Pacific Northwest tech

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Engineer Slips Lightning Back Into the iPhone 17 Pro With One Inventive Case

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iPhone 17 Pro Lightning Port Case
Ken Pillonel, a Swiss engineer, struck again. He’s well-known for refurbishing outdated iPhones with creative add-on cases, which he even sells. This time, however, he turned the tables. On April 1st, he completed a totally new prototype in just a few days, a slim protective cover that hands the iPhone 17 Pro a working Lightning port right where Apple moved on from it.



If you’ve recently updated from an iPhone 14 or earlier, you understand the pain. All of those old cords, docks, and chargers you used to love are now rendered worthless unless you carry a separate adapter with you everywhere. Pillonel effectively solved the challenge by working in reverse. Instead of forcing the phone to use a newer plug, he designed a cover that allows Lightning cables to plug right in while the iPhone 17 Pro remains safely tucked inside its USB-C shell.

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iPhone 17 Pro Lightning Port Case
It all starts with some careful effort on the electronics side. He designed tiny custom circuit boards to shrink a standard USB-C to Lightning adapter down to almost nothing. These boards are located inside the bottom border of the casing and add only a few mils of thickness. Next came the casing, which was produced in flexible TPU using a high-end 3D printer that is good at reducing waste. He also made a little jig to help get the MagSafe magnets in the appropriate place, and when he snapped everything together, it fit like a charm, no tools required.

iPhone 17 Pro Lightning Port Case
When it’s all put together, the case feels exactly like any other you’d get in a store, soft to the touch and durable enough for daily use. When you insert the iPhone 17 Pro inside, the internal cables align neatly with the phone’s USB-C port. Plugging a Lightning cable into the new hole outside just works; power flows exactly like it would on an older model. Yes, charging works well, as he demonstrated in his whole build video; now he just needs to test data transfer and other accessories.

iPhone 17 Pro Lightning Port Case
Pillonel never meant to sell this one. He refers to the finished piece as one of the oddest things he has ever put together, a tongue-in-cheek reference to Lightning’s official departure from the roster years ago. Nonetheless, the project illustrates a wider point. With some work and the correct parts, compatibility gaps between old and new technology can be bridged in inventive ways that keep favorite accessories alive.
[Source]

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Drawing Tablet Controls Laser In Real-Time

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Some projects need no complicated use case to justify their development, and so it was with [Janne]’s BeamInk, which mashes a Wacom pen tablet with an xTool F1 laser engraver with the help of a little digital glue. For what purpose? So one can use a digital pen to draw with a laser in real time, of course!

Pen events from the drawing tablet get translated into a stream of G-code that controls laser state and power.

Here’s how it works: a Python script grabs events from a USB drawing tablet via evdev (the Linux kernel’s event device, which allows user programs to read raw device events), scales the tablet size to the laser’s working area, and turns pen events into a stream of laser power and movement G-code. The result? Draw on tablet, receive laser engraving.

It’s a playful project, but it also exists as a highly modular concept that can be adapted to different uses. If you’re looking at this and sensing a visit from the Good Ideas Fairy, check out the GitHub repository for more technical details plus tips for adapting it to other hardware.

We’re reminded of past projects like a laser cutter with Etch-a-Sketch controls as well as an attempt to turn pen marks into laser cuts, but something about using a drawing tablet for real-time laser control makes this stand on its own.

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8 of the company’s biggest tech milestones

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With Apple turning 50 years old today, Northumbria University’s Nick Dalton goes through some of the tech giant’s most notable tech milestones.

Click here to visit The Conversation.

A version of this article was originally published by The Conversation (CC BY-ND 4.0)

In the early 1970s, the idea of an ordinary person owning a computer sounded absurd. Computers back then were more like aircraft carriers or nuclear power plants than household appliances – vast machines housed in data centres operated by teams of specialists, serving governments, universities and large corporations.

Then came Apple.

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Founded on April 1 1976 by ‘college dropouts’ Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the Silicon Valley start-up did not invent computing. What it did was arguably more important: it helped turn computing into a personal technology.

Before Apple, computers were largely sold in kit form. Jobs saw that people wanted them pre-assembled and ready to run. The earliest Apple I units, featuring handmade koa wooden cases, now sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

As an early Apple adopter and app developer, here’s my selection of the company’s (and Jobs’s) most significant technological achievements over the last 50 years.

Apple II – beige yet distinctive

Early personal computers were more curiosities than practical tools. The Apple II, launched in June 1977, introduced something new: style. Even its colour – beige – was distinctive, contrasting with the black metal boxes common at that time.

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The use of colour graphics was both new and exciting, and the keyboard felt satisfying to use. A simple speaker, with only a single-bit output, was ingeniously coaxed into producing tones and even speech-like sounds. The design revolution stretched as far as the packaging: Jerry Manock, Apple’s first in-house designer, placed the machine in a moulded plastic case which looked sleek and professional.

The mouse – a whole new way of interacting

By 1979, the 24-year-old Jobs – sensing that tech giant IBM was catching up with Apple – went looking for the next big thing. The photocopier company Xerox, wanting pre-IPO shares in Apple, offered a visit to its nearby research labs as an inducement. Jobs realised that researchers such as Alan Kay at Xerox’s Palo Alto research centre were creating the next generation of computing interfaces.

Central to this was a device invented by Kay’s mentor, Douglas Engelbart, at Stanford University in the mid-1960s and nicknamed ‘the mouse’. Engelbart’s vision of computers as machines to augment the human mind inspired Kay and colleagues to create graphical displays in which users interacted with scrollbars, buttons, menus and windows.

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Macintosh – dawn of the modern product launch

Jobs thought anyone should be able to use a computer. In January 1984, the first Apple Mac pushed this idea to new extremes. The traditional need for obscure computer commands (and manuals) vanished. Early adopters such as myself felt we just knew how to do everything.

But the Mac’s launch was not just another technological leap for Apple. It also inspired the now-familiar cultural moment of the modern product launch. Following a teasing Super Bowl advert directed by Ridley Scott, Jobs used a 1,500-seat theatre on January 24 to create a stage performance centred on a single charismatic presenter. Jobs let a small, square and still-beige computer (then known as Macintosh) out of its bag – and it began speaking for itself, to rapturous applause.

Pixar – Jobs’s side hustle

In its first decade, Apple grew at an exceptional rate – but it also came close to financial collapse on several occasions. This led to one of the most dramatic moments in Apple’s history when, in May 1985, the company forced Jobs out.

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A year later and now in charge of the start-up NeXT Inc, Jobs bought a division of George Lucas’s film company which was soon rebranded as Pixar. Its RenderMan software generated images by distributing processing across multiple machines simultaneously.

Pixar, jokingly referred to as Jobs’s “side hustle”, would become one of the world’s most influential (and valuable) animation production companies, having released the first fully computer-animated feature film in Toy Story (1995).

iMac – a meeting of minds

After a failed attempt to develop a new operating system with IBM, Apple eventually bought Jobs’s company NeXT. In September 1997, he returned to Apple as interim CEO with the company “two months from bankruptcy”. The move, though welcomed by many Apple users, terrified some of its employees. Jobs quickly began firing staff and shutting down failed products.

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During this restructuring, he visited Apple’s design studio and immediately hit it off with young British designer Jony Ive. Their meeting of minds led to the 1998 candy-coloured translucent iMac. Essentially smaller, cheaper NeXT machines, iMac (the ‘i’ stood for internet) also kicked off another Apple habit: abandoning ageing technology. The floppy disk drive was ditched in favour of a CD drive – a move heavily criticised at the time, but later widely copied.

iPod – 1,000 songs in your pocket

For Apple, computing was always about more than, well, computing. In 2001, the company began focusing on processing sound and video, not just text and pictures. By November that year, it had released the iPod – a personal music player capable of storing “1,000 songs in your pocket”, compared with a maximum of 20-30 on each cassette tape in a Sony Walkman.

The iPod used an elegant ‘click wheel’ to operate the screen. Music was synced through a new application called iTunes. By 2005, people were using iTunes to manage audio downloaded automatically from the internet using a process called RSS. This in turn put the pod in podcasting.

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iPhone – a computer in everyone’s hands

By 2007, many mobile phone companies had approached Apple about merging the iPod with their phones. Instead, on January 9, Jobs unveiled Apple’s most ambitious product yet: a combined phone, music player and Mac computer – all at the size of a handset with no physical keyboard and huge screen.

Most media ‘experts’, from TechCrunch to the Guardian, predicted the iPhone would bomb. Steve Ballmer, then CEO of Microsoft, mocked the US$500 price tag, saying nobody would buy it. In fact, 1.4m iPhones were sold by the end of the year – and over 3bn more since then. This truly put a computer into everyone’s hands – and opened the door to social media as we know it today.

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App Store’s software revolution

By mid-2008, the iPhone enabled third-party developers the chance to create a dizzying range of new applications. At the same time, the App Store – launched on July 10 2008 – addressed one of the most complex problems: how to distribute and commercialise these ‘apps’. Historically, they were often copied and distributed freely. The App Store changed this, using strong encryption to ensure the copy sold could only be used by that specific user, thus eliminating software piracy.

By establishing the first (eponymous) App Store, Apple changed the way people discover and purchase software. This led to an explosion of apps and a simple but powerful idea: whatever you wanted to do, someone, somewhere, had already built it. Apple captured this shift in a slogan that became part of everyday language: “There’s an app for that”.

Time and again, this extraordinary company has anticipated the value of opening up computing to everyone. Happy birthday, Apple.

The Conversation

By Dr Nick Dalton

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Nick Dalton is an associate professor in the School of Computer Science at Northumbria University in Newcastle. His background is as a computer scientist crossing between architecture and computation. His principal area of expertise is in the design, development and evaluation of human computer interfaces with a specialism in the design of ubiquitous computing technology.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

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Ask Hackaday: Using CoPilot? Are You Entertained?

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There’s a great debate these days about what the current crop of AI chatbots should and shouldn’t do for you. We aren’t wise enough to know the answer, but we were interested in hearing what is, apparently, Microsoft’s take on it. Looking at their terms of service for Copilot, we read in the original bold:

Copilot is for entertainment purposes only. It can make mistakes, and it may not work as intended. Don’t rely on Copilot for important advice. Use Copilot at your own risk.

While that’s good advice, we are pretty sure we’ve seen people use LLMs, including Copilot, for decidedly non-entertaining tasks. But, at least for now, if you are using Copilot for non-entertainment purposes, you are violating the terms of service.

Legal

While we know how it is when lawyers get involved in anything, we can’t help but think this is simply a hedge so that when Copilot gives you the wrong directions or a recipe for cake that uses bleach, they can say, “We told you not to use this for anything.”

It reminds us of the Prohibition-era product called a grape block. It featured a stern warning on the label that said: “Warning. Do not place product in one quart of water in a cool, dark place for more than two weeks, or else an illegal alcoholic beverage will result.” That doesn’t fool anyone.

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We get it. They are just covering their… bases. When you do something stupid based on output from Copilot, they can say, “Oh, yeah, that was just for entertainment.” But they know what you are doing, and they even encourage it. Heck, they’re doing it themselves. Would it stand up in court? We don’t know.

Others

Now it is true that probably everyone will give you a similar warning. OpenAI, for example, has this to say:

  • Output may not always be accurate. You should not rely on Output from our Services as a sole source of truth or factual information, or as a substitute for professional advice.
  • You must evaluate Output for accuracy and appropriateness for your use case, including using human review as appropriate, before using or sharing Output from the Services.
  • You must not use any Output relating to a person for any purpose that could have a legal or material impact on that person, such as making credit, educational, employment, housing, insurance, legal, medical, or other important decisions about them.
  • Our Services may provide incomplete, incorrect, or offensive Output that does not represent OpenAI’s views. If Output references any third party products or services, it doesn’t mean the third party endorses or is affiliated with OpenAI.

Notice that it doesn’t pretend you are only using it for a chuckle. Anthropic has even more wording, but still stops short of pretending to be a party game. Copilot, on the other hand, is for fun.

Your Turn

How about you? Do you use any of the LLMs for anything other than “entertainment?” If you do, how do you validate the responses you get?

When things do go wrong, who should be liable? There have been court cases where LLM companies have been sued for everything, ranging from users committing suicide to defaming people. Are the companies behind these tools responsible? Should they be?

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Let us know what you think in the comments.

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