Few things feel as satisfying as blasting pixelated ducks. However, I never imagined doing it with an earbud. Then again, gaming accessories have taken stranger forms.

A developer who posts as Dividivan on X turned one AirPod into a miniature, gun-like controller you can point and tap, but it only works with a Mac. The side project became BipBop, a free website that lets you use your AirPods as a controller for 30 throwback minigames.

How does an AirPod become a controller?

It all started with Duck Hunt. Dividivan posted a 28-second demo on X on October 18, 2026. It garnered over 126,000 views in two days. The developer says it was voice-coded: built by speaking prompts to an AI.

To play, pair one AirPod with a Mac running Apple Silicon, hold it in your hand, turn it to aim, and then shoot, like a regular gun-like controller. For those wondering how AirPods can aim, they have a built-in gyroscope; the same sensor that helps your AirPods track head movements can now help you aim at digital ducks.

To shoot, tap the area near the microphone on the AirPods. The app listens for the sound and translates it into a trigger. You can also shoot by pressing on the earbud itself, though that might not be as convenient. 

On Reddit, the developer told one commenter the shot delay is “0 by default,” which I’d read as no added lag, since Bluetooth always takes a moment (via Reddit). Two AirPods at once won’t work because, the developer says, Apple merges both signals. 

So much for dual-wielding your way through Duck Hunt. For all of this to work, you’ll need to disable Automatic Ear Detection first.

What should you know before trying it?

The good news is that BipBop is free (so you don’t have to share your credit card details), runs offline, and needs no account. Its 30 games include Bowling, Mini Golf, Hoops, and Wave Racer. 

That’s 30 ways to put your earbuds through their paces without spending a cent. The minimum system requirements are an M1 or later Mac, macOS 14 or newer, and AirPods that support head tracking. 

My advice: treat it as a beta. It’s still a 0.8.7 build and isn’t notarized, meaning Apple hasn’t scanned it, so macOS may refuse to open it. The developer says to use Open Anyway rather than weaken your security. 

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It’s a fun little experiment, but maybe don’t hand your Mac’s security settings to the first virtual duck-shooting range you find.

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Finding new music on Spotify is one of those little joys that can turn an ordinary day around. You play a song you love, let the recommendations take over, and occasionally stumble upon an artist you wish you’d discovered sooner. But with AI making it ridiculously easy to produce music in bulk, not everything landing in your recommendations deserves a listen.

Spotify knows this is becoming a problem, and it’s acting on it. The streaming giant has revealed it filtered more than 50 million spammy, low-quality tracks from its recommendations this year. That’s on top of another 75 million tracks it has completely removed from the platform for repeatedly or seriously breaking its rules. And Spotify isn’t stopping there — it wants to make sure actual artists aren’t buried under an endless stream of AI-generated content.

Spotify is getting better at spotting music nobody wants to hear

Rather than looking for AI-created tracks, Spotify has been paying attention to how people actually listen to music. Earlier this year, it noticed that songs listeners frequently skipped, ignored, or actively rejected often overlapped with content flagged as spam or low-quality material. That discovery led to several changes to its recommendation system over the past six months. The goal is explicit: make it easier to discover genuine artists while keeping unwanted content from taking over your playlists.

Of course, identifying AI-generated spam isn’t as simple as running a song through a detector. Spotify now combines listening behavior, user feedback, suspicious upload activity, track information, and multiple AI detection services to identify potentially problematic music. It also watches for tricks such as repeatedly uploading the same music, manipulating search results, and flooding the platform with unusually short tracks. The company says these changes have already reduced complaints about unwanted content appearing in recommendations.

It wants you to know who’s actually behind the music

Cleaning up recommendations is only one part of Spotify’s strategy. The company is also making it easier to understand whether the music you’re hearing comes from a real artist or an AI-generated identity. Its AI Credits feature, introduced in April, lets artists disclose how they used AI during production. Spotify says artists are now submitting tens of thousands of these credits daily.

Meanwhile, Spotify has verified more than 300,000 artists, including many independent musicians. The platform has also begun labeling thousands of AI-generated artist identities, which it generally excludes from recommendations unless listeners choose to engage with them. Artists are getting additional protection, too. A new feature lets them review releases linked to their profiles before those tracks go public. Spotify plans to expand it to all artists by the end of 2026. Importantly, Spotify isn’t banning AI-assisted music altogether. It’s trying to distinguish legitimate creative work from content designed to exploit its platform. For listeners, that could mean fewer questionable tracks interrupting their playlists and a better chance of discovering music that’s actually worth saving.

Meta’s AI companion, Muse, is now one of only a dozen mobile apps to have reached 10 million U.S. downloads in its first 40 days on the market. According to new data from market intelligence provider Sensor Tower, Muse has seen 10.9 million downloads since its September debut, 10.2 million of which were in the United States.

Only 11 other apps to date have reached this type of post-launch milestone, said Sensor Tower’s Senior Insights Analyst Kara Lee. The most recent of these was Meta’s Threads, back in July 2023. Other apps that saw this kind of scale were largely mobile games, Lee noted.

Meta’s success is tied to the company’s ability to scale its new apps by marketing them across its other services, which it has done with both Threads and Muse. Threads was built on top of Instagram’s social graph, and its content has been integrated into both Facebook and Instagram. However, Muse isn’t only benefiting from Meta’s ability to market the AI agent across its family of apps, which today includes 3.6 billion daily active users; the company is also heavily investing in advertising to drive new users to Muse.

Per Sensor Tower’s data, Meta has allocated 39% of its total advertising spend to market Muse in October, up from 23% last month. In addition, Muse now ranks as the 21st largest brand in the U.S. by advertising impressions this month, up from 73rd in September.

Still, marketing an app and retaining users after the initial shine wears off are two different things. In this case, Muse is seeing better retention rates than its AI competitors like ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok.

In the U.S., the app had a 30% retention rate after 7 days and a 23% retention rate after 14 days. By comparison, its rivals saw an average of a 19% 7-day retention rate and a 16% 14-day retention rate, according to the firm’s data.

Muse also hit another milestone that demonstrates active engagement with the AI app. Its daily active users reached 2.5 million for the first time on October 16, a 15% week-over-week increase.

Meta’s latest AI app, which can handle various tasks on users’ behalf, has seen breakout success since its debut. It shot up to No. 1 on the App Store, and, at one point, even outpaced some of the metrics ChatGPT saw following its launch. Its latest milestone sees it topping its rivals again, as ChatGPT saw 3.7 million U.S. downloads in its first 40 days on the market. Grok and Claude saw only 500,000 and 200,000 U.S. downloads, respectively, in their first 40 days.

Globally, ChatGPT beat out Muse, having scaled to around 15 million global downloads in its first 40 days. But this isn’t a fair comparison, as ChatGPT benefited from a wider reach. Muse is only available in the U.S. and Canada for now, while ChatGPT’s app attracted attention from markets like Japan, Brazil, and Germany, too. (Japan, for instance, accounted for 25% of its global installs during its first 40 days.)

Since launching, Muse has retained its No. 1 rank on the U.S. App Store for all days except October 19, when streaming app Kick briefly beat it out. It has since reclaimed the top spot as of Tuesday. Muse has also been No. 1 on Google Play over the past 30 days.

Kenko Tokina introduced the Pieni III earlier this week, as a toy digital camera small enough to wear on a neck strap during ordinary days. Measuring about 53 by 35 by 18 millimeters and weighing roughly 18 grams without a card, the body sits lightly against clothing or sits on a shelf as decoration when not in use. Four standard finishes cover Soda light blue, Strawberry pink, Milk white, and Black, while separate Sanrio editions featuring Hello Kitty and related characters cost more and arrive with matching straps.

A 1/10 inch CMOS sensor is sufficient, however it only captures 0.32 megapixels before the camera ‘enhances’ the image to 1.38 megapixels. Frames are saved in 1440×960 JPEG format, while video is captured at 720 by 480 resolution with sound at 30 frames per second in the MJPEG AVI format. The 1.8mm f2.8 lens provides a nice 42mm equivalent view, but it only starts focusing at approximately 30cm out, and you shouldn’t try to shoot closer than that without using manual focus. To keep things interesting, the ISO is set to 100, so the camera has to figure out the rest on its own, which sometimes results in a rather nice ‘soft focus’ effect, similar to a watercolor painting or an old oil painting, but not as sharp as a modern smartphone camera.

People still use this thing as if it were an old film camera, snapping away without ever viewing their photographs on the back, because the results aren’t visible until the images are uploaded to a different device. It’s rather a throwback experience, as you have to wait for the pictures to appear before you can see what you’ve received. Just like in the film days, the camera features a magnet on the rear that allows you to stick it to a metal surface, providing a sturdy frame for video shooting, which is useful for filming on the go.

One change is that the new model now has a USB Type-C port instead of the previous version’s mini USB port, which is convenient because it can also be used to charge the battery or transfer photos and videos to a compatible smartphone via the included cable. Prices in Japan for this device start around 6600 yen, or roughly 38 to 42 USD, depending on currency rates, and overseas buyers can use proxy services to get this little camera sent to their door.

The camera is operated by only two buttons: one for power and one for shutter, as well as a basic mode selector to flip between stills and video. This small camera stores all of your files on an external microSDHC card that runs from 4 to 32 gigabytes, as it has no internal storage whatsoever. That makes it ideal for capturing those life’s events that arise unexpectedly and necessitate the use of a camera for the remainder of the day.
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If you grew up in the 1980s, milk cartons meant three things: questionable cafeteria milk, photographs of missing children, and a lingering suspicion that Ogden Edsl’s “Kinko the Kid-Loving Clown,” made famous on the Dr. Demento Show, belonged on a police watch list rather than anywhere near a school playground. Forty years later, Nothing’s budget-friendly CMF brand has decided to give the humble milk carton a considerably less disturbing second career.

The result is the $59 CMF Speaker S, one of the more unusual portable Bluetooth speakers to arrive on my desk this year. Fortunately, it comes with Bluetooth 6.0 and Auracast rather than a missing-person photograph, and there’s considerably more technology inside than its playful appearance suggests.

We covered the launch of the CMF Speaker S and Speaker M earlier this month, and I was intrigued enough by their industrial design and extensive feature lists to request a review sample. CMF sent the smaller Speaker S in white, which I’ve been listening to for the past few days.

My initial reaction? It’s surprisingly well made, considerably more substantial than its dimensions suggest, and rather clever in ways that aren’t immediately obvious.

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Design and Build Quality: Got Milk? Don’t Squeeze the Carton

The white Speaker S looks like something Dieter Rams might have designed for a futuristic school cafeteria. Its geometric cabinet is clean, understated, and refreshingly different from the endless parade of cylindrical Bluetooth speakers wrapped in fabric.

CMF offers the speaker in White, Dark Grey, Orange, and Turquoise, although I’m rather partial to the white version. It’s modern without being aggressively futuristic and looks perfectly at home on a desk, kitchen counter, or bookshelf.

More importantly, the construction feels considerably better than I expected for $59. The cabinet feels solid, the controls have a purposeful layout, and nothing about the overall presentation suggests CMF was simply trying to produce the cheapest possible speaker with an interesting shape.

There is, however, one important design detail worth mentioning.

The Speaker S incorporates two passive bass radiators that contribute to its low-frequency reproduction. At first glance, these elements look like part of the industrial design, and the temptation to pick up the speaker and squeeze them with your fingers is understandable.

Don’t do that.

Passive radiators are moving acoustic components, not decorative buttons or stress-relief toys. Pressing them unnecessarily risks damaging their diaphragms or suspensions, and the last thing your inexpensive Bluetooth speaker needs is an avoidable trip to the repair department.

CMF also allows owners to customize the appearance through removable panels and a replaceable control knob. The company is supporting further personalization through 3D-printable design resources, an interesting approach for a product at this price.

Portable, Yes. Pocket-Sized? Not Exactly.

One surprise was the weight. The Speaker S measures 130.5 x 85 x 44mm (5.14 x 3.35 x 1.73 inches) and weighs 334 grams (11.8 ounces).

That doesn’t sound particularly heavy on paper, but there’s noticeable density to the speaker when you pick it up. It feels reassuringly substantial, although anyone expecting something practically weightless may be surprised.

I tried slipping it into the pocket of my Taylor Stitch Ojai chore coat, which normally accommodates a rather impressive collection of things I probably don’t need to carry around. No luck. The Speaker S simply didn’t fit comfortably.

It does, however, disappear into my knapsack without any difficulty, and the integrated utility hook makes attaching it to a bag considerably more convenient.

CMF rates the enclosure IP68 for dust and water resistance, making it a practical option for the beach, poolside, or a camping trip. That doesn’t mean I’d recommend tossing it into the ocean or leaving it underwater, particularly after exposure to salt, sand, or other contaminants.

Actual Buttons. What a Concept.

CMF deserves credit for resisting the temptation to control everything through a smartphone application.

The Speaker S has a physical rotary knob that adjusts volume and handles playback. Pressing it pauses or resumes music, while additional presses handle track navigation. Holding it activates or deactivates the Ultra Bass feature.

Dedicated controls for power, Bluetooth pairing, and Auracast are also included, along with a mechanism for removing the customizable components.

There’s something refreshing about being able to reach over and adjust the music without unlocking a phone, opening an app, and navigating through menus. We’ve somehow reached a point where physical controls qualify as a premium feature, which tells you quite a lot about contemporary consumer electronics.

The Nothing X app adds more detailed adjustments, including four EQ presets: Balanced, More Bass, More Treble, and Voice. There’s also a custom equalizer for listeners who prefer to make their own adjustments.

The combination makes sense because essential controls remain on the speaker while the app handles more specific preferences. Whether the EQ options make a meaningful difference will be addressed in the listening section.

Auracast Might Be the Most Useful Feature

The Speaker S supports Bluetooth 6.0, but the more interesting addition is Auracast, which allows compatible Bluetooth devices to share audio with multiple nearby receivers.

With CMF’s Party Mode, users can link compatible Auracast speakers to reproduce the same music across a wider area. That opens up some appealing possibilities for dorm rooms, backyard gatherings, and impromptu parties where several friends bring their own speakers.

Two Speaker S units can also be paired in Stereo Mode, assigning separate left and right channels. That’s a different arrangement from Party Mode, which distributes audio across participating speakers rather than creating a dedicated stereo pair.

Think about a college dorm room where several people want to listen to the same playlist without dragging out a larger party speaker. Provided their devices support compatible Auracast functionality, the group can create a distributed playback setup without a complicated wired installation.

Auracast also has potentially valuable applications beyond entertainment.

The Bluetooth standard can support public audio broadcasts, including announcements within suitably equipped venues. In theory, a beach with compatible broadcast infrastructure could distribute local information or weather advisories to supported receiving devices.

There’s an important limitation. CMF documents Auracast Party Mode for shared music playback, not automatic reception of public emergency warnings. The Speaker S should not be treated as a weather-alert receiver without confirmed support for that function and a compatible local service.

Still, the broader technology is worth watching as public venues gradually adopt Auracast.

A Better Alternative to Blocking Out the World?

One place where I can see the Speaker S being genuinely useful is the playground or park.

Parents who want some background music, a podcast, or the news while supervising their children don’t necessarily need to wear noise-cancelling earbuds that isolate them from what’s happening nearby.

A compact speaker playing quietly from a bag or nearby table allows everyone to remain aware of their surroundings without sealing off their ears. That’s particularly relevant when young children, cyclists, and other people are sharing the same public space.

Of course, common courtesy matters. Nobody at the playground wants to hear your entire Spotify playlist, and a speaker doesn’t automatically make you more attentive.

The same principle applies to a picnic, a backyard gathering, or a quiet evening outdoors. Portable audio should add something to the experience rather than turn every public space into someone’s private nightclub.

Bluetooth, USB-C Audio and Battery Life

CMF has included several features that aren’t guaranteed at this price.

NFC pairing, Google Fast Pair, and Microsoft Swift Pair simplify connecting compatible devices, while dual-device connectivity allows the Speaker S to maintain connections with two sources.

USB-C also handles wired digital audio playback rather than serving exclusively as a charging port. CMF claims latency below 60 milliseconds when connected by USB-C, making the speaker potentially useful alongside a laptop for videos, casual gaming, or desktop listening.

A full charge is specified at approximately 2.5 hours with suitable USB-C power, while a 10-minute charge can provide up to one hour of playback under the company’s stated conditions.

Battery life is rated at up to 18 hours, based on CMF’s stated testing conditions of AAC playback at 50% volume with Ultra Bass enabled. My experience has been encouraging so far. On a full charge, I’ve managed over 17 hours of playback with the volume set around the halfway point on my iPhone 17, putting CMF’s advertised endurance well within reach under everyday listening conditions.

One omission worth mentioning is the charging cable.

CMF includes the speaker and a quick-start guide, but no USB-C cable. At $59, I’m not particularly offended. If you’ve been purchasing electronic devices for the past decade, there’s a reasonable chance you have enough USB-C cables in a drawer to open a small electronics shop.

CMF Speaker S Specifications

• Price: $59 USD
• Available colors: White, Dark Grey, Orange, Turquoise
• Driver: 45mm (1.77-inch) full-range
• Passive radiators: Two
• Amplifier output: 10 watts RMS
• Frequency response: 70Hz to 20kHz (manufacturer specified)
• Sound features: Ultra Bass, Wide Soundstage, Night Mode, custom EQ
• Bluetooth: Version 6.0
• Bluetooth codecs: SBC, AAC; LC3 for Auracast audio
• Wireless range: Greater than 100 meters (328 feet) under free-space conditions (claimed)
• Wireless features: Auracast Party Mode, stereo pairing, multipoint connectivity
• Fast pairing: NFC, Google Fast Pair, Microsoft Swift Pair
• Wired audio: USB-C, claimed latency below 60ms
• Battery capacity: 2,600mAh, 3.8V
• Battery life: Up to 18 hours
• Charging: USB-C; approximately 2.5 hours for a full charge with suitable power
• Protection: IP68 dust and water resistance
• Dimensions (H × W × D): 130.5 x 85 x 44mm (5.14 x 3.35 x 1.73 inches)
• Weight: 334 grams (11.8 ounces)
• App: Nothing X
• Included accessories: Quick-start guide; no charging cable

What Makes the CMF Speaker S Different?

There are plenty of portable Bluetooth speakers available for less than $75, and many promise impressive bass, waterproof construction, and all-day battery life.

What makes the Speaker S interesting is the combination of industrial design, physical controls, user customization, digital connectivity, and Auracast support at a price that doesn’t require much financial deliberation.

But there’s one rather important question left unanswered.

Can this $59 milk carton actually reproduce music well enough to compete with established portable speaker brands, or has Nothing simply created the most interesting packaging in the dairy aisle?

Time to find out.

Listening

Right out of the box, I threw some Nick Cave at the CMF Speaker S and quickly discovered that selecting the Balanced EQ preset in the Nothing X app and enabling Ultra Bass made a rather significant difference. Suddenly, this little $59 speaker didn’t sound nearly as small, anemic, or constrained as its diminutive dimensions might suggest.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Into My Arms” had surprising tonal weight, particularly through the piano, which sounded fuller and more substantial than I expected. Cave’s distinctive baritone wasn’t reproduced with anything approaching reference-level accuracy, but it also didn’t suffer from the haziness or graininess that often makes inexpensive portable speakers difficult to listen to. For $59, that’s a pretty encouraging start.

“Bright Horses” from Ghosteen reinforced another observation: the Speaker S isn’t particularly bright or aggressive sounding, which isn’t always something you can say about a portable speaker built around such a small driver. CMF seems to have resisted the temptation to exaggerate the treble to create an artificial sense of clarity, and the result was more balanced than I anticipated.

Switching to Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing” from Axis: Bold as Love revealed a surprisingly detailed top end, along with bass reproduction that favored definition over slam or physical impact. At lower listening levels, Hendrix’s vocals sounded somewhat thin, while his guitar lost some of its familiar growl and presence. Turning up the volume helped fill in some of that missing midrange body, giving the performance greater substance without making the presentation excessively aggressive.

“Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” from Electric Ladyland actually made me sit up and pay attention, which isn’t something I necessarily expected from a $59 Bluetooth speaker shaped like a milk carton. There was something reminiscent of listening to my father’s old transistor radio, only with considerably greater midrange clarity, more convincing treble detail, and a much better sense of what Hendrix was doing with his guitar.

The CMF Speaker S isn’t going to recreate the scale, dynamic impact, or tonal richness of a proper stereo system, but that’s hardly a reasonable expectation at this price. What’s interesting so far is how much musical information it manages to communicate without resorting to the exaggerated brightness or bloated bass that can make inexpensive portable speakers sound impressive for five minutes and exhausting after twenty.

Gillian Welch’s “Wrecking Ball” and “Revelator” made me want to keep listening, which is probably the highest compliment I can pay a $59 portable speaker. The acoustic guitar had surprising clarity and tonal weight, while Welch’s distinctive twang and sultry vocals (at least to my ears) were reproduced with enough texture and presence that I found myself staring at the little CMF, wondering just how good a pair of these might sound in a proper 2.0 stereo configuration.

There’s not enough low-frequency impact or dynamic scale to fill a larger room convincingly, but for desktop listening, a guest bedroom, or an outdoor setting where you’re sitting reasonably close to the speaker, the CMF Speaker S makes a compelling case for itself. Two of these little milk cartons working together in stereo? Hell yes. That’s an experiment I’d genuinely like to try.

Switching over to deadmau5’s “Silent Picture” and The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” revealed something else rather unexpected: the CMF Speaker S actually sounded larger and more expansive with the Wide Soundstage setting turned off. Counterintuitive? Absolutely, but that’s how she blows. Enabling the feature seemed to push everything farther away, creating a more distant presentation that didn’t necessarily benefit the music.

With Wide Soundstage disabled, deadmau5’s atmospheric effects and synthesizers had noticeably greater weight and presence, projecting slightly in front of the speaker rather than sounding like they were playing somewhere down the block. The Police benefited from the same adjustment, with greater focus and substance to the instrumentation. Sting was almost bearable, which is saying something, and I could practically picture Stewart Copeland glaring at his former frontman from behind the drum kit, wondering how he’d managed to make a song about obsessive surveillance sound so romantic. Even a $59 milk carton can’t resolve that particular band dynamic.

The Bottom Line

The CMF Speaker S is a genuine surprise and one of the best values I’ve encountered in portable audio this year. With the Balanced EQ selected, Ultra Bass enabled, and Wide Soundstage switched off, this little speaker delivers considerably more musical substance than its dimensions or price might suggest. Give it some volume, and bass can be surprisingly solid across a wide range of music, with decent speed, definition, and percussion that’s occasionally tighter than it has any right to be. Vocals aren’t hiding behind a veil, and the top end is detailed, smooth, and eminently listenable without becoming aggressive or fatiguing.

There are limitations, of course. The Speaker S isn’t going to pressurize a large room, deliver convincing sub-bass, or reproduce the scale of a proper stereo system. At lower volumes, some recordings lose body and presence, but turn things up a little and the presentation becomes noticeably more engaging. I’ve found myself listening far longer than intended, which is not something I expected from a $59 Bluetooth speaker that resembles something from my elementary school cafeteria.

The JBL Clip 5 ($79 at Amazon) is a worthwhile alternative for outdoor use, with its integrated carabiner, IP67 protection, and Auracast support, while the Tribit StormBox Micro 3 ($64.99 at Amazon) offers a more rugged approach with magnetic mounting, a versatile carrying strap, and a claimed 24-hour battery life. Both deserve consideration, particularly if portability and outdoor practicality are priorities. The CMF counters with its distinctive industrial design, customizable controls, USB-C audio, and battery endurance that came remarkably close to its advertised 18 hours during my testing.

Would I buy the CMF Speaker S? Without question. It’s surprisingly well built, attracts more questions from curious bystanders than speakers costing four times as much, and sounds ridiculously good for $59. I’d happily buy a second just to hear what these little troublemakers can accomplish in stereo. Back in the 1980s, milk cartons came with sour milk, missing kids, and enough childhood trauma to keep a therapist in business for decades.

Nothing has finally delivered one worth taking home. No expiration date, no creepy clown, and no need to ask your mother for lunch money. Got milk? Screw that. Got stereo?

Pros:

• Surprisingly full, balanced, and engaging sound for $59
• Solid bass, clear vocals, and smooth, detailed treble
• Excellent build quality and distinctive industrial design
• Auracast support with stereo pairing and multi-speaker connectivity
• Physical controls, customizable EQ, and USB-C audio
• Excellent battery life; over 17 hours in testing
• IP68 dust and water resistance

Cons

• Limited bass impact and dynamic scale in larger spaces
• Vocals and instruments can sound thin at lower volumes
• Wide Soundstage mode sounds less convincing
• Heavier and less pocket-friendly than expected
• Exposed passive radiators require careful handling
• No USB-C charging cable included

Our Ratings:

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound Quality

★★★★★★★★★★ Build Quality

★★★★★★★★★★ Connectivity

★★★★★★★★★★ Design

★★★★★★★★★★ Value

Where to Buy:

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Low-cost carrier TextNow is launching its first child-friendly phone on Tuesday, pairing a heavily discounted Motorola handset with a software portal that lets parents control who their kid can call or text.

Yello is a customized Moto G Play that costs $150 — $100 less than the standard model’s current retail price — and comes with a $20 monthly plan, with no other required contracts or service commitments.

The Android phone restricts access to Google’s Play Store and doesn’t allow users to install additional apps or services. It’s designed primarily for calls and texts with parent-approved contacts, which parents can manage through a web-based portal that also lets them check the phone’s GPS location. Kids can call or text those contacts from a menu of large icons reminiscent of Netflix’s profile selection screen.

Other software available on the phone includes access to the cameras — a 32-megapixel main camera and an 8-megapixel front-facing camera — along with the calculator, clock and a weather app. Seven preloaded games can be enabled, which include phone classics such as Snake, Mines and Tic-Tac-Toe. Photos taken on the phone can only be shared with parents.

This more restrictive approach should let kids stay in touch with approved friends and coordinate pickups with parents while limiting distractions and access to content inappropriate for young children.

The 2026 Moto G Play is a good choice for Yello’s software approach. When I reviewed the phone last year, I liked its larger 5,200-mAh battery because it could easily get through two days of use. But its less-powerful processor, 64GB of storage and 4GB of memory made it challenging to use as a media machine. Since Yello’s software deliberately avoids that use, the Moto G Play should be more than sufficient for calls and texts.

Despite the name, the Yello phone is available in just one color: the same soft blue on every 2026 Moto G Play that Motorola calls “pantone tapestry.”

Most US carriers offer their own versions of child-friendly devices such as Yello. AT&T, for instance, has repurposed the Samsung Galaxy A16 into the AmiGo Jr with similar parental controls. There are also a number of child-friendly smartwatches, which may be a better option depending on your family’s needs for connectivity. But Yello does offer a lot of flexibility, since it doesn’t require a more expensive unlimited data plan or a minimum service commitment.

The Yello phone is now available on TextNow’s website.

Mike Sorrentino

Senior Editor

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Mike Sorrentino is a Senior Editor for Mobile, covering phones, texting apps and smartwatches — obsessing about how we can make the most of them. Mike also keeps an eye out on the movie and toy industry, and outside of work enjoys biking and pizza making.

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From Ashburn, Virginia, to South Dublin, Ireland, the data centers that journalist Paris Marx visited all looked remarkably similar: large industrial facilities with loud air-conditioning units running to keep racks upon racks of servers cool. But it was the security measures around the data centers that struck Marx more than anything. 

Tall fences. Security cameras everywhere. Locks on every door that required one of the few full-time employees to unlock with a badge. And in one memorable instance, standing on an Irish public curb outside a cluster of Microsoft-owned centers, there was an eerie feeling of being watched by men on lawn mowers, trimming grass that clearly didn’t need to be cut.

“It was just really staggering to me that it was at that level that it was so hard to move through these spaces,” Marx told me.

The intense security should give you an idea of just how serious Big Tech is about its data centers. These facilities are the key to the artificial intelligence programs at OpenAI, Meta, Google, Amazon and elsewhere, creating vast amounts of compute and sucking up equally staggering amounts of electricity and water. 

There is no stronger metaphor for the manifestation of Big Tech’s power than the increasing sprawl of data centers. Amazon, Microsoft and Google alone control 59% of hyperscale data center capacity. In his new book available now, Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech’s Data Empires, Marx, host of the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast, highlights how global data center protests are one of many ways that communities are pushing back against Big Tech’s power over us.

Hyperscale demands

Data centers existed long before generative AI; we called them server farms, and they’re what keep us online. But in this AI era, we have hyperscale data centers.

Before, a large data center might require around 50 megawatts of power to keep everything running. Now, hyperscale data centers can require triple that amount of power. Newer ones, like Meta’s Louisiana data center, may require 4,500 megawatts (4.5 gigawatts) — staggering demand that officials say is four times more than all of the electricity used in New Orleans on its hottest day in 2025. It’s more than the two gigawatts the Hoover Dam produces.

Hyperscale data centers are also housing more advanced tech. Chips like GPUs are key to creating compute, and newer chips built for AI data centers can run hotter. That makes it even harder to cool facilities, so in addition to air conditioning, facilities are using water systems to avoid servers overheating. It’s an additional environmental toll. A hyperscale center can suck up 1 million to 5 million gallons of water every day, equivalent to a town of more than 10,000 residents, according to a 2025 estimate.

So how do you keep these facilities running? The process to get approved and connected to a town’s electrical grid can take years. So tech companies have started building their own power plants right next to data centers for the sole purpose of keeping them on — perfect for burning massive amounts of fossil fuels, the main contributor to the climate crisis.

Hyperscale impacts

In the 2010s, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and many others pledged some version of becoming carbon neutral (or negative) in the next few decades — meaning they would offset the emissions they created with at least as much emission-reducing actions. 

Sustainability reports from that time show that, overall, tech companies were measurably decreasing their environmental footprint. “And then ChatGPT comes along, and all of a sudden, that’s out the window,” Marx told me.

Tech leaders have been candid about allowing generative AI to override their climate goals. Google reported a 50% increase in its greenhouse gas emissions in 2024 to support its generative AI. Microsoft’s pledge to be carbon negative by 2030 “was before the explosion in artificial intelligence,” Brad Smith, the company’s president, told Bloomberg in 2023, saying the carbon goal was “five times as far away as it was in 2020” because of AI. 

Modern data centers and their power plants burn fossil fuels for power, requiring gas turbines, huge tanks of diesel fuel kept on-site in case of a power outage or good old-fashioned coal. This has devastating environmental and health consequences, both immediately for local communities and in the long term for the entire world. 

Communities that neighbor data centers have reported brown or unsafe drinking water, unending noise, and in one lawsuit against Elon Musk’s xAI centers in Memphis, extreme health risks; Memphis residents “are feeling it in their lungs because of the fossil fuels that are being burned,” Marx said.

And as decades of climate research prove, burning additional fossil fuels is only going to exacerbate the effects of climate change. That’ll lead to even more extreme weather, health risks and natural disasters. As Marx put it in his book, “The world will suffer through the worsening natural disasters fueled by the quest for computation by some of the most powerful people on the planet.”

With data centers and their fossil fuels, we’re fundamentally reshaping the planet for AI. So anti-data center movements are asking: Is it worth it?

“How much computation do we really need here?” Marx asked in our conversation. “How many resources are we willing to dedicate to this vision of the future? And is this technology really delivering in such a way that expending all those resources is justified?”

The answer — for many data center neighbors in Memphis, Oregon, Chile, Ireland and thousands of other communities across the globe — is an unflinching no.

Katelyn Chedraoui

Reporter 2

Katelyn is a reporter with CNET covering artificial intelligence, including chatbots, image and video generators. Her work explores how new AI technology is infiltrating our lives, shaping the content we consume on social media and affecting the people behind the screens. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in media and journalism. You can reach her at kchedraoui@cnet.com.

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