from the so-you-say dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad with a comment about Palantir’s general creepiness:

I mean, yeah, the name of their company is basically “I read Lord of the Rings and wanted to be Sauron.”

In second place, it’s MrWilson with a comment about Arkansas’s latest failed attempt to pass an unconstitutional social media law:

This is another one of those scenarios where it functionally doesn’t matter if the sponsors/authors of such bills are constitutionally illiterate or maliciously anti-constitutional. The result is the same. It’s at least performative for voters and campaign donors that you’re “doing something,” but if it passes, and it doesn’t get struck down immediately, and it has confusing and contradictory language, that’s a feature, not a bug. If the social media companies can’t figure out how to legally offer their services to children, they’ll opt out of doing so entirely—the same way the demise of Section 230 would require shutting down user input to avoid massive lawsuit damages. That’s a win for authoritarian conservatives who want to control narratives and legitimize only their preferred propaganda outlets. Notice that no censorial conservative legislator writes has their lobbyists write a law targeting Truth Social’s practices.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with an anonymous comment about a certain type of person that’s well-represented in the Palantir crowd:

They all think they’re John Galt personified

I expect everyone to read “Atlas Shrugged” when they’re a teenager.

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And by the time they’re in their early or mid 20’s, I expect them to have acquired the intellectual maturity to figure out that it’s absolute bullshit from cover to cover.

Those who are incapable of this tend to try to use it as an instruction manual and cast themselves as saviors of the people, fearless leaders whose lofty goals must triumph, blah blah blah. As the best line in a series of bad movies observes: “There are always men like you.”

Next, it’s another comment from Thad, this time about Netgear’s mysterious exemption to the Trump FCC’s router ban:

Is it bribes?

I bet it’s bribes.

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Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous reply to a tiresome rant that accused Techdirt of falling for propaganda:

Are you a vampire?

Because damn, that’s a complete lack of self-reflection you have there.

In second place, it’s another anonymous comment, this time about the gross camaraderie on display at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner:

I imagine their laughter sounds like a ‘collaboration’ of turkey noises.

‘Gobbels Gobbels Gobbels!’

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For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from dfbomb about Minnesota manners:

Ah, I see, a non-native. Let me explain local culture and language:

Much like a Hawaiian “Aloha”, in Minnesotan “Fuck ICE” is both “hello” and “goodbye.”

Finally, it’s one last comment from Thad, this time about the Fifth Circuit ruling that Texas’s ten commandments law is constitutional:

Sounds like the Satanic Temple’s time to shine.

That’s all for this week, folks!

Wearable tech might be heading for a reset. We’ve already seen less intrusive devices like smart rings take off, but researchers are now pushing things further by stitching health tracking directly into clothing.

Researchers at National University of Singapore have developed a new battery-free textile system that can monitor blood pressure in real time, potentially turning everyday clothing into a full-time health tracker. The system, detailed in a recent Nature Electronics paper and reported by Tech Xplore, removes one of the biggest limitations of wearable, which is the need to constantly recharging the gadgets.

How the smart fabric breaks the wearable mold

Rather than relying on a built-in battery, the smart fabric uses ultra-thin sensors that stick directly to the skin and connect through a specially designed fabric. A “metamaterial” is at the center of this system, which is a carefully engineered fabric that wirelessly transfers power from a nearby smartphones to the sensors.

The setup splits power delivery and data communication into separate frequency channels that can help avoid interference and keeps the signal stable. In simpler terms, your phone acts as both the power source and the data hub that actively collects health data. So you won’t have to deal with the hassle of charging multiple gadgets. Being one of the biggest annoyances

Real-time tracking, even during workouts

The system focuses on monitoring systolic blood pressure, which measures the force of blood flow during heartbeats. In early tests, it was able to track these readings accurately even while users were exercising. This is where many wearable sensors struggle. So the level of consistency can be useful for long-term health tracking or early detection of cardiovascular issues.

The sensors themselves are extremely thin and flexible, designed to sit directly on the skin without getting in the way of movement. The textile layer then connects multiple sensors into a network, allowing continuous data collection across the body.

Battery-free wearables have been explored before. Though this approach does bring everything together into something closer to real-world use. By embedding the system into fabric, the researchers are pushing toward clothing that works as a passive health monitor rather than a separate device you have to remember to wear.

Running a fan page for your favorite celebrity is harder than you think. Once you pull back the curtain on what actually goes into managing these accounts, you realize that it’s far more demanding than most people would expect.

The BBC reported on how admiration for a public figure often turns into something closer to a full-time job, complete with pressure, expectations, and constant online scrutiny.

Why running a fan account isn’t all fun and games

Fan accounts don’t run themselves. Many of these pages are updated constantly and consistently, tracking every appearance, post, or public mention of a celebrity. The goal here is to stay relevant, fast, and visible in an algorithm-driven ecosystem.

This translates to late nights, early updates, and an always-on mindset. Missing a single major update can cost engagement, which is everything in the world of social media fandom.

When fandom starts to feel like work

These aren’t anonymous content farms. The people behind these accounts are often deeply connected to the celebrities they follow, which brings its own set of challenges. The report highlights fans running large accounts dedicated to global pop stars like Taylor Swift and K-pop acts such as BTS, where expectations are especially intense.

Some admins described spending hours each day editing videos, translating content, and tracking updates just to keep their pages active. Fan page admins often find themselves pulled into arguments with rival fandoms, where even small disagreements can spiral into targeted harassment.

From the outside, fan pages might seem like a stream of edits, clips, and appreciation posts. In reality, they run on constant effort, emotional energy, and a need to keep up with a fast-moving internet culture. It might still seem worth it for many. But the idea that it’s easy or effortless doesn’t hold up once you see what’s happening behind the screen.

Sequoia Capital co-steward Alfred Lin personally purchased 200 Mac Minis, had each one custom-engraved with a design mixing old cartography and machine learning contour plots, and distributed them to attendees at Sequoia’s “AI at the Frontier” event. Each machine contained two easter eggs: Sequoia’s ethos statement about creative spirits and underdogs, and a quote generated by an AI model. The engraving was designed by Andreas Weiland, Sequoia’s design principal. The Mac Minis were numbered. They are, by all accounts, beautiful objects. They are also $599 computers that have become the unofficial hardware of OpenClaw, the open-source AI agent framework that surpassed React as the most-starred project on GitHub in March, caused Apple to sell out of base Mac Minis in the United States, and established itself as the fastest-growing open-source project in the history of the platform. Sequoia did not invest in OpenClaw. There is no OpenClaw Inc. to invest in. The firm is distributing the hardware for a project it does not own, and that is the point.

The project

OpenClaw was built by Peter Steinberger, an Austrian developer who previously founded PSPDFKit, a PDF software kit used by applications serving roughly a billion people, which was acquired by Insight Partners for an estimated $100 million in 2024. Steinberger stepped away from coding after the sale. He returned in November 2025 when he started building what he initially called WhatsApp Relay, then Clawdbot, then OpenClaw. It is a free, open-source AI agent framework that runs locally on consumer hardware and integrates with external language models including Claude, GPT, and DeepSeek. Users interact through messaging services they already use: WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Discord, Slack. The agent orchestrates multi-step workflows: managing calendars, booking flights, sending emails, executing code, conducting research across multiple sources. By March 2026, it had approximately 247,000 GitHub stars and 47,700 forks. Jensen Huang called it “the next ChatGPT.”

The reason Mac Minis became the preferred hardware is Apple’s unified memory architecture, which is well-suited for running local AI inference. The $599 base model with 16 gigabytes of RAM became the entry point. Higher-memory configurations sold out first. By April 22, the base Mac Mini had sold out from Apple’s US online store. eBay markups reached $795 to $979 for base models. Delivery times for high-memory units stretched from six days to six weeks. Mac Mini and Mac Studio stock shortages are driven by a combination of OpenClaw demand and a broader DRAM shortage, but OpenClaw established the Mac Mini as the reference hardware for running local AI agents in a way that no other project has managed. On April 4, Anthropic banned OpenClaw from Claude Pro and Max subscriptions, citing API abuse, which pushed even more users toward local inference and intensified the hardware demand.

The ecosystem

In February, Sam Altman announced that Steinberger was joining OpenAI to build “next-generation personal agents.” The hire was effectively an acqui-hire: OpenAI recruited Steinberger, not the software. OpenClaw transitioned to an independent open-source foundation, sponsored by OpenAI but not controlled by it. Steinberger had also received and rejected an offer from Meta. No acquisition price was publicly disclosed, though social media speculation ranged from the plausible to the satirical. The project’s commercial value lies not in the codebase itself but in the ecosystem that formed around it: 168 startups building hosting, deployment, and plugin services on top of OpenClaw, collectively generating approximately $400,000 per month in revenue. Tencent built its enterprise AI agent platform ClawPro on OpenClaw, adopting it for more than 200 organisations in beta. Nvidia built NemoClaw on top of OpenClaw to add enterprise-grade security and privacy guardrails, announced at GTC 2026. Cisco launched DefenseClaw in response to a security crisis that exposed 42,665 publicly accessible OpenClaw instances and a supply-chain attack on the ClawHub marketplace that identified over 800 malicious skills.

The security problems are real and significant. A critical remote code execution vulnerability, CVE-2026-25253 with a CVSS score of 8.8, was discovered by researcher Mav Levin. The supply-chain attack on ClawHub, dubbed “ClawHavoc,” traced to a coordinated operation that seeded 341 malicious skills into the marketplace, growing to more than 800 before detection. These are the growing pains of an open-source project that went from a weekend hack to the most popular repository on GitHub in four months, without the security infrastructure that enterprise software demands. OpenAI’s sponsorship of the foundation and Nvidia’s NemoClaw are both attempts to add that infrastructure retroactively, which is cheaper than building it from scratch but harder than building it correctly from the start.

The thesis

Alfred Lin has publicly stated that “software code is no longer a moat.” This is the thesis that makes the engraved Mac Minis legible as strategy rather than swag. If the value in AI is shifting from models, which are commoditising rapidly, to the agentic infrastructure that connects models to real-world actions, then the open-source project that defines that infrastructure layer is the most important thing in venture capital that cannot be invested in. Sequoia’s $7 billion late-stage expansion fund, raised under Lin and co-steward Pat Grady after Roelof Botha stepped down in November 2025, is the largest fund in the firm’s history and is positioned squarely around AI. The fund includes stakes in OpenAI, Anthropic, and Physical Intelligence, a robotics company. The Mac Mini giveaway is Sequoia placing itself at the cultural centre of a movement it cannot own equity in, because the movement is open source and its creator was hired by a portfolio company before Sequoia could write a cheque.

Sequoia’s willingness to lead a $1 billion seed round for David Silver’s Ineffable Intelligence, which would be the largest seed round ever in Europe, shows the firm’s appetite for making defining bets in AI at every stage. The OpenClaw giveaway operates on a different logic. It is not a bet on a company. It is a bet on a layer, the agentic infrastructure layer where AI models connect to messaging apps, calendars, email, and code execution environments, where the value is captured not by the model provider but by whoever builds the best orchestration, the best plugins, the best security, and the best developer experience. Sequoia cannot buy OpenClaw. But it can be the firm that gave 200 numbered, engraved Mac Minis to the people building the ecosystem around it, which in venture capital is another way of saying: we were here first, and when the companies that emerge from this layer need a Series A, they will remember who handed them the hardware.

The symbol

The engraved Mac Mini is the Patagonia vest of the AI era. The Patagonia vest signalled membership in a financial elite that valued the appearance of rugged practicality over the display of wealth. The numbered Sequoia Mac Mini signals membership in an AI elite that values local inference, open-source tools, and the ability to run an agent framework on a $599 computer rather than paying for cloud API access. Both are status symbols disguised as utility objects. Both are distributed by institutions that benefit from the culture they promote. Goldman Sachs gave out vests to signal that its bankers were unpretentious operators. Sequoia gives out Mac Minis to signal that its partners understand the technology well enough to know which $599 computer matters. The difference is that the Mac Mini actually does something. It runs OpenClaw. It connects to language models. It orchestrates the workflows that the next generation of AI-native companies will be built on. The vest just kept you warm on the trading floor. The Mac Mini is a piece of infrastructure that happens to also be a branding exercise, which is what makes it more interesting than the average venture capital stunt. Sequoia is not sponsoring a conference. It is distributing the means of production for the agentic AI layer, one numbered machine at a time, with its ethos engraved on the bottom.

My morning coffee routine is one of my most sacred rituals, and there are plenty of affordable accessories that can make that first cuppa feel even more special. That’s true whether you rely on a dedicated coffee machine, a French press, a stovetop coffee maker or an AeroPress for your caffeine hit. (Me? I own all of the above, and switch between them depending on the occasion. No, I don’t have a problem.)

Below I’ve rounded up a selection of accessories that will give your coffee station an instant boost. All come in under $50, but most are sub-$20, and all can make a small but notable difference to your caffeine routine. My top pick is a Yeti travel mug, which is is equally great whether you’re sipping slowly at home or rushing around trying to get chores done. I have the Rambler travel ‘bottle’ and it’s completely leak-proof (even if I chuck it upside-down in my bag) and keeps my drink hot all morning. I’m also a huge fan of the fun range of colors you can choose from.

Do you have a broken kitchen appliance lurking at the back of a cabinet? Perhaps an air fryer that’s stopped heating, or a blender with a broken seal? You’re not alone. According to research from appliance manufacturer Tefal, 88% of British people have at least one unused appliance at home, and over a third have three to five in what Patrick Lucereau, Marketing Director at Tefal UK, calls a “kitchen graveyard”.

The problem is partly due to recycling awareness; people know they can recycle paper and glass, but many don’t realize that small appliances can be recycled too.

Edifier has built its reputation on delivering affordable, feature-rich speakers that don’t feel like compromises, and the new M90 continues that strategy with a compact active design aimed at both desktop and small room use. First introduced at CES 2026, where we got an early look and listen, the M90 is positioned as a flexible all-in-one solution that can move easily between nearfield listening and casual living room duty. After spending time with the system, it’s clear Edifier is targeting listeners who want simplicity, solid performance, and a smaller footprint at an affordable price.

About My Preferences:

This review is subjective, shaped by how I listen and what I value. I do my best to stay objective, but let’s be honest, bias doesn’t just pack up and leave the room.

My ideal sound leans toward controlled sub-bass, textured mid-bass, a slightly warm and natural midrange, and treble that extends cleanly without turning harsh. I also have mild treble sensitivity, so anything overly bright or aggressive tends to stand out quickly.

Testing equipment and standards can be found here.

Edifier M90 Specifications and Key Features:

The Edifier M90 is a compact active speaker system priced at $369.99, with cabinet dimensions of 133 x 212 x 225 mm (approximately 5.2 x 8.3 x 8.9 inches), making it easy to place on a desk, shelf, or media console. It uses a two-way, bi-amped design built around a 4-inch long-throw mid-bass driver and a 1-inch silk-dome tweeter, with dedicated amplification for each driver.

Total system power is rated at 100 watts RMS, split between 35 watts for the mid-bass and 15 watts for the tweeter per channel, and it can reach up to 100 dB SPL. That’s enough for nearfield listening or smaller living spaces without overreaching.

Connectivity is one of the M90’s stronger plays. Around back, you get HDMI eARC, optical, USB-C, and a standard AUX input, which covers everything from TVs and laptops to legacy gear. Wireless playback is handled by Bluetooth 6.0 with LDAC and multipoint support, so you can stream higher-quality audio and switch between devices without the usual friction. The system also supports up to 24-bit/96kHz audio depending on the source.

Ease of use hasn’t been overlooked either. The M90 includes onboard controls for quick adjustments, an omnidirectional remote that actually works from across the room, and support for the Edifier ConneX app on iOS and Android for additional control and setup. DSP is doing a lot of the heavy lifting behind the scenes, managing how the speakers handle music, movies, and gaming to keep performance consistent across different types of content.

Build Quality

The M90 feels well-built in the hand and features high-quality paint finishes. It doesn’t look out of place on a desk filled with high-end gear, which should suite deskscape enthusiasts well. The ports on the rear of the device are firmly set within the active speaker’s chassis, leaving no room for wobble or wiggle. 

The included remote is a little basic, but is still put together well. The buttons and responsive and sized well, making them easy to manipulate in a dark room. It has plenty of range too, so even larger living and theater rooms shouldn’t run into distance issues. 

I did find the M90 to be a little clumsy when used at my desk, however. Other desktop speakers often feature a front-facing selection of controls such as volume and power. The M90 does not, so you’ll need to use the wireless remote to manipulate its state even when sitting right next to it. Well, that or stand up and reach behind the right speaker , which isn’t a viable option for a wide (and cluttered) desk like mine. 

Listening

The M90 is a pretty flexible pair of speakers, but it feels most at home when running through your favorite album. Its default tuning is well-balanced, delivering crisp treble and an articulate upper-midrange. The M90 renders vocals nicely, capturing a strong share of nuance, particularly during quieter passages. The M90’s lower mids sit slightly back in the mix and aren’t overly emphasized, contributing to a more neutral, audiophile-leaning tonality.

This, paired with the speakers’ linear bass performance, give it a resolving, but sterile, timbre. You’ll want to pair the M90 with a discrete subwoofer to get a truly full-range experience, as the mid-bass woofer on the speaker doesn’t dig down much further than 150Hz. 

Cycling through the other presets add varying degrees of warmth back in to the mix, giving guitars and drums additional substance. This also relaxes the upper-midrange, allowing vocals to settle back towards the middle of the sound-stage rather than center-front. I don’t like the “Monitor” and “Dynamic” presets as much as the “Classic” tuning, but then again, I don’t have any particular need for a pre-calibrated studio-monitor profile. 

If you want to dive into personalization and fine-grained customization, the Edifier app allows you to configure and apply your own tuning via a 9-band software EQ. It works pretty and well and is responsive. The app is utilitarian in appearance, but functions smoothly and without bugs on Android. 

Strong Gaming Performance

The M90 is a great couch-gaming set of speakers. Hooking it up to my TV via HDMI eARC was easy, and before I knew it I had high-headroom, low-latency audio ready to go. First-person shooters are pretty playable on the M90, even in fairly small rooms. In my gaming den, the speakers are positioned about 10 feet from my chair, flanking a 65-inch OLED TV. In this setup, the M90 delivers its best spatial rendering.

Cramming the M90 on to my work desk delivered somewhat less-exciting results. Its sound-field operates best at longer distances, and my desk (60″ x 38″) didn’t give me enough depth for gunshots and subtle footsteps to accurately render in titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. 

Frustrating Quirks, Fixed via Firmware Update

The M90’s excellent performance and great pricing is hamstrung by a few odd-ball choices made on its default firmware. If you’re experiencing unpredictable fade-in behavior or are noticing that the M90 falls asleep during quiet passages in video content, then install the Edifier Connect app and update its firmware. That behavior is a bug that was fixed as of 4/12/2026.

Likewise, if you’ve plugged a subwoofer in to the M90’s line out and found its gain to be too low, you’ll need to update the M90’s firmware and then adjust the gain in the app. This is the only way to adjust the line-out gain, so if you’re not a smartphone owner, you’re out of luck. I’d have liked to have seen additional physical controls for sub-out gain so I can more-easily fine-tune my sub’s output. 

The Bottom Line

The M90 is a solid, cost-effective speaker for those that want to take advantage of modern eARC capabilities. Its strong technical capabilities, combined with its wide feature-set, make it a compelling proposition, especially when measured against its more-expensive peers. After updating the M90’s firmware, it becomes a capable and hassle-free companion for high-performance audio, especially for those that plan on deploying it in the living room.

Pros:

• Wide soundstage
• Lots of headroom
• Articulate and performant
• Customizable via EQ and tuning presets
• Solid directional abilities for gaming
• Includes responsive wireless remote
• Supports wide variety of input modes including HDMI eARC

Cons:

• Requires a subwoofer to get full-range sound
• Not suited for smaller desktops
• Some arrangements may require angled desk stands
• No front-facing physical volumes controls, awkward for desktop use

Where to buy:

Related Reading:

Bloomberg reports that users gained access to Mythos the same day Anthropic announced its limited release.

A private Discord group has reportedly gained unauthorised access to Anthropic’s powerful new AI model Mythos, raising sharp concerns around the company’s ability to keep the model on a short leash.

Mythos, unveiled in a limited launch earlier this month, vastly outperforms other AI models in vulnerability detection and exploitation, according to its creator.

Anthropic has only given access to the model to a closed but growing group of companies and financial institutions, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia and JP Morgan Chase, to test and bolster their cybersecurity.

UK financial institutions are set to start using Mythos this week, while Japan and Canada are in discussions with their biggest banks on Mythos. Bank of Ireland told SiliconRepublic.com that it is keeping the matter under review.

Last week, Ireland’s National Cyber Security Centre’s director Richard Browne told an Oireachtas Joint Committee that the technology would be in the hands of bad actors within months.

However, a source has now told Bloomberg that a handful of users gained access to Mythos weeks ago, on the same day Anthropic announced its limited launch. The group has been using Mythos regularly since, but not for malicious purposes, the source added.

“We’re investigating a report claiming unauthorised access to Claude Mythos Preview through one of our third-party vendor environments,” Anthropic told news publications in a statement.

Mythos has sent shocks through the tech industry, which is scrambling to bolster its security systems in light of the powerful AI model. Soon after its launch, US authorities told Wall Street leaders to take the matter seriously.

But not all authorities have taken an equally serious approach, with Deutsche Bank commenting that Germany’s financial institutions are well-prepared for cyber risks posed by the model.

“Naturally everyone is trying to get access, but I think it’s entirely appropriate that this access remains restricted for the time being,” said Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing earlier this week.

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Adobe Illustrator began development in 1985, with its initial release coming out in 1987. 39 years in an eternity in computing terms, and it’s amazing this venerable piece of software is still the ruling king when it comes to design, illustrations and vector-based work.

We’ve long championed it as one of the best graphic design software apps around – but now I’m taking a look at some of the new features that are being introduced with the latest version, Adobe Illustrator 2026 (I explored version 30.3).