Schools are racing to write AI policies, but what if the policy is not the first step? This week, we hear from Aleta Margolis, founder and president of the Center for Inspired Teaching, who argues that real progress starts with a conversation, not a rule. Then EdSurge editor-in-chief Sarah McKibben brings it home with what AI actually looks like at her kitchen table, with two middle schoolers navigating it in real time.

What You’ll Learn:

• A new RAND American Youth Panel survey found that only about one in three students say their school has a school-wide AI policy, and Aleta Margolis of the Center for Inspired Teaching explains why co-creating guidelines with students leads to better outcomes than top-down rule-making.

• A recent NPR and Ipsos poll found that 54 percent of teachers say AI is making it harder for students to learn critical thinking skills, and nearly three in four believe its impact on education will exceed that of the internet or computers.

• Sarah McKibben describes the mix of productive and concerning AI use she sees with her own children, including a student using an AI humanizer app to avoid plagiarism detection when submitting AI-written essays.

• Both guests converge on the idea of productive struggle: the concern is not AI itself but whether students are learning to think with it rather than bypassing the thinking entirely.

Listen here:

If you have ever felt like your TikTok feed is mostly fake content, you are not imagining it. A new report from Kapwing found that 59% of videos served to a brand-new TikTok account are AI slop. That is roughly three times the rate Kapwing found when it ran the same test on YouTube.

How bad is TikTok’s AI slop problem compared to YouTube?

Kapwing built a fresh account on both platforms and manually checked the first 500 videos served to each one. On TikTok, 294 of those videos were AI-generated. On YouTube, only 104 of the first 500 Shorts qualified as slop, putting that platform’s rate at 21%.

The scale of the problem is staggering when you consider that TikTok had already labeled 1.3 billion videos as AI-generated by November. Kapwing also manually reviewed over 10,000 TikTok videos across 20 different content categories to get a fuller picture of where slop tends to cluster.

Which TikTok categories are flooded with AI slop

Kids’ content topped every category, with 57% of the 2,000 videos turning out to be AI-generated. The worst single tag was #cartoonkids, where 97 out of 100 featured videos were artificial.

Science and Education, Health, and History followed close behind, each landing between 33% and 35% AI slop. These are categories where animation and voiceover narration tend to replace real demonstration.

On the other end, Fashion, Music, and Fitness were nearly untouched, each sitting below 2%, likely because those formats rely heavily on real, on-camera presence.

Even though TikTok has rolled out tools for users to dial back AI content in their feeds, this study suggests that what shows up by default still leans heavily towards AI. For now, the burden of filtering slop from substance largely falls on the viewer.

The problem with letting an AI agent loose inside a company is not that it might forget who it is. It is that it has no reason to hold back.

A human employee is restrained by the fear of being fired. An agent, as one investor in Arcade.dev put it, “will exhaustively exploit every permission it inherits” to reach its goal. Arcade has raised $60mn to make sure that, by design, it cannot.

The Series A was led by SYN Ventures, with strategic cheques from Morgan Stanley and Wipro. Added to a $12mn seed last year, it brings the San Francisco startup to $72mn in total funding.

Identity is easy. Authorisation is the wall

Most companies can already verify that an agent is what it claims to be. What they cannot do, according to Arcade chief executive Alex Salazar, is prove that a given agent, acting for a given user, is allowed to perform a given action on a given system.

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“Agents don’t fail in production because the model is wrong,” Salazar said. “They fail because nobody can prove” who is authorised to do what. That gap, he argues, is why so many corporate agents never leave the pilot stage.

Salazar, a former Okta product leader who once sold a startup to the identity firm, built Arcade with chief technology officer Sam Partee, formerly of Redis.

The accidental product

Arcade did not set out to build this. Its first product was an agent that diagnosed misbehaving servers and databases, which required sweeping super-user access. “No one in their right mind was going to actually let us do that in the real world,” Salazar said.

So the team split the model’s reasoning from the layer that actually touches tools, and built the part that decides which tools the agent may use. Nobody was excited about the diagnostic agent. Everybody who understood AI was excited about the authorisation layer. Arcade dropped the agent and kept the plumbing.

Plumbing for the agent era

That plumbing now hangs off Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol, the emerging standard for connecting models to tools like email and internal APIs, to which Arcade says it has contributed. Its runtime checks each request against an organisation’s real permissions, can run inside a customer’s own environment, and logs every action so a company can tell an agent’s move apart from a human’s.

Salazar’s argument for why a control layer has to sit outside the agent is the oldest one in enterprise risk: the thing taking an action never gets to authorise itself. Traders don’t approve their own trades. A smarter model, he says, doesn’t change that, and because most companies run several models at once, the control layer has to be neutral to all of them rather than owned by any one vendor.

It lands amid a rush of startups selling ways to put AI agents to work and, increasingly, to fence them in. Arcade frames the incumbents as solving the wrong problem, with API gateways routing traffic and identity tools proving who you are, when the question is what an agent may do, on which system, right now. Its bet is that the boring layer underneath is where the durable business sits.

The catch

For now this is a roughly 40-person company that still has to scale and defend its turf in a field filling up fast. Several of its headline proof points, production use at the world’s largest banks, a 25-fold jump in usage, thousands of prebuilt tools, are Arcade’s own figures rather than independently verified.

The underlying argument, though, is hard to dismiss. As agents start acting on systems no single person fully understands, the question of what they are permitted to touch stops being a policy document and becomes infrastructure. Arcade is betting it owns that infrastructure.

systems

AI drug discovery is so last year, even though it hasn’t accomplished much yet

In order to move more semiconductor manufacturing onshore, the US needs to depend less on foreign-sourced materials. Now, the government is giving an Alphabet spinoff $500 million in CHIPS Act funds to find domestic minerals, molecules, and chemicals needed for this process.

SandboxAQ (that’s AI and Quantum, for those wondering), which spun off from Alphabet in 2022 under the chairmanship of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, announced the award Wednesday. The company won’t be doing any manufacturing – this is just an R&D grant to turn the startup’s AI simulation software toward discoveries necessary to build a domestic chip industry.

According to SandboxAQ, the $500 million awarded to it by the Department of Commerce will go toward developing “novel molecules and formulations for semiconductor manufacturing,” including chip production materials that are free of PFAS (“forever chemicals”), new semiconductor fabrication catalysts, magnets that don’t rely on foreign-sourced neodymium and other rare earths, and fab-powering batteries that don’t rely on majority foreign-sourced materials like lithium.

The CHIPS and Science Act, signed into law by President Biden in 2022, was designed in part to dole out $52 billion to US firms to reignite domestic semiconductor manufacturing, which has mostly fled the country for more favorable production environments overseas. Four years on, the government’s many investments have seen some payoff, like the acquisition of a 10 percent stake in Intel to help keep the company afloat, but there’s still a lot of work to be done to reduce dependence on foreign supply chains and manufacturers. 

SandboxAQ relies its own large quantitative models (LQMs), which it describes as “AI systems trained on the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology, not human language.” That, the company asserts, means they’re well-suited to discover new materials needed to eliminate harmful PFAS and foreign-sourced materials from the semiconductor supply chain. 

The hope is that the LQMs will be able to generate their own material predictions that researchers then test in the lab – essentially the same process that’s undergirded the years-long effort to use AI to help synthesize new drugs. 

Despite AI industry leaders prognosticating we’d be popping AI-designed drugs in 2025, AI has yet to design a functional medicine, according to the US National Institutes of Health. Why, then, should we presume an AI will succeed at replacing critical battery and chip manufacturing components where drug research has failed?

In fact, according to SandboxAQ’s announcement, its LQMs aren’t even necessarily grounded in real-world data. They rely in part on synthetic data, which is then fed into the company’s LQMs and used to train their design-make-test workflows.

A company spokesperson told The Register in an email that it still uses real-world data where possible.

“Where experimental data exists, we incorporate it,” SandboxAQ told us. “Where it doesn’t, we can still move forward and solve the problem.”

When asked whether an error in the reasoning process could compound, leading to considerable lost time for researchers and a lack of results, the company admitted that such a potential is exactly what “any rigorous AI-driven materials program has to answer.” 

“Our models are trained on the laws of physics and chemistry, so they are anchored to physical reality, rather than free to drift,” the spokesperson told us, adding that lab testing is the final check on AI accuracy. “A material either performs in the lab, or it doesn’t, and that validation gate is precisely what prevents a chain of reasoning from running away with itself.” 

SandboxAQ added that it is not starting from zero in any of the four target areas, having done previous work on catalysts, battery materials, alloy discovery, and PFAS breakdown that will be incorporated into its CHIPS Act-funded work. 

“In commercial deployment, we’ve already cut development timelines from months to weeks” at the candidate screening stage, the SandboxAQ spokesperson explained. SandboxAQ said that some of the work it’s doing, like PFAS mitigation, could be rolled out to existing fabs, as could new batteries and the like, but it admitted that the various verticals will operate on different timelines.

“Qualification in the semiconductor industry is genuinely rigorous and does take time – we wouldn’t minimize that – but the path runs through validation and industrial qualification with existing manufacturers, not through standing up new fabrication capacity from scratch,” SandboxAQ told us. ®

Knowing absolutely nothing about you other than the fact that you’re currently reading Hackaday, I can predict with a high degree of certainty that we’re both fond of at least a few of the same movies. That’s not to say they’re necessarily our favorite works of art. Indeed, in some cases they may even be objectively bad films. But the memory of them has stuck with us — and by extension nearly everyone else in the hacker and maker community — for decades.

Even if you don’t remember all the little details, you’ll never forget the names: movies like WarGames, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, and Short Circuit. Stories that showed smart people using their intellect and a bit of cobbled together hardware to triumph over the bad guys. The tech wasn’t always believable, sometimes it was downright farcical. But they made it seem real, and by the end of the story when they won the day using brains and a soldering iron rather than fists or a gun, the minutia of how it all worked wasn’t really that important anyway.

It’s not a stretch to say that films such as these helped put many of us on a path towards science and technology. For those with an interest in more cerebral pursuits, seeing a scientist or an engineer save the day was hugely influential. How many engineers got their start watching Scotty frantically eke just a bit more power out of the Enterprise?

But as we recently discussed some of these classic movies behind the scenes here at Hackaday, it struck us that all of the best examples we could come up with were now 20, 30, or even 40 years old. That’s not to say there aren’t a few contemporary standouts, but they mostly seem to be biopics or other historical dramatizations which don’t quite scratch the same itch. Even so, none of them appear to have had the cultural impact necessary to stand the test of time in the same way their predecessors have.

So where have all of Hollywood’s heroic nerds gone, and what does it mean for future generations if these niche role models are no longer represented?

Evil Geniuses and Thick Glasses

Before we get lost down memory lane, we should acknowledge that there’s undoubtedly an element of survivorship bias at play here. We naturally identify with the examples that put techie types on a pedestal, and tend to forget about the less flattering portrayals. In truth, it seems that there’s was only a short period of time in which the classic “nerd” characters got promoted from comedic sidekick roles to protagonists. Before that, and arguably after, it’s a different story.

In the early days, the archetype of the “Mad Scientist” was extremely pervasive. From the 1940s up until the 60s or so, you’d be hard pressed to find a drive-in that wasn’t showing the latest hideous creature pieced together by an unscrupulous doctor. But it wasn’t a concept limited to horror and science fiction. After all, MI6 wasn’t in the habit of dispatching James Bond to defeat drooling imbeciles. Whether they knew how to build killer robots or were titans of industry, the smartest person in the room was often seen as the most dangerous.

In a way, that was still less insulting than the alternative. If a scientist wasn’t trying to forcibly transplant somebody’s brain, they probably had a pocket protector, horn-rimmed glasses, unkempt hair, and buck teeth. My sincere apologies to any readers who may currently meet that description. They might not have been the “bad guy” in the traditional sense, and may even have ended up helping out the heroes in their own way, but nobody was looking at the screen and wishing they were the one with the lisp and the lab coat.

A particularly notable case is The Nutty Professor, in which Jerry Lewis portrays the quintessential nerd who uses his knowledge of chemistry to create a confident and suave alter-ego for himself in the style of Jekyll and Hyde. To be fair, the movie ultimately makes a statement about being true to yourself and the importance of what’s on the inside. But ironically, more than 60 years later, the imagery of Lewis hamming it up as a socially awkward intellectual is undeniably the film’s most indelible element.

The Era of Golden Geeks

At the dawn of the 80s, things started to change. You still had the classic bespectacled nerd, but increasingly films started to put greater focus on their skills and abilities. The “geeks vs jocks” trope became very popular, perhaps most famously exemplified by the Revenge of the Nerds franchise which managed to wring four films out of the concept.

Now a new breed of nerd started to emerge in film that was young, charismatic, and handsome. The only thing that identified Matthew Broderick’s character in WarGames as anything other than a normal teenager in 1983 was the fact that he had a computer in his bedroom and knew how to program it. Steve Guttenberg played a heartthrob roboticist in Short Circuit, and they really screwed the curve up for the rest of us when they cast Val Kilmer as a laser prodigy in Real Genius. The nerds even started to find love, and one wonders how many young men spent their evenings furiously flipping switches on the front panel of their IMSAI 8080 in hopes that a breathless Ally Sheedy might appear in their doorway with an urgent mission that needed their unique expertise. I don’t know about anyone else, but I still haven’t given up hope.

Even school-age kids were getting in on the action. In 1985, Explorers featured a trio of youngsters who built their own spacecraft after assembling a circuit board based on a schematic they collectively dreamt about. The same year saw the release of The Goonies, and while only one of the kids was a tech wiz, they were all clearly meant to be somewhat off-center socially.

Of course, the most famous and culturally relevant example of 1980s nerds using their tech skills to save the day is Ghostbusters. Three 30-something scientists not only determine the physical properties of supernatural entities through empirical research, but also design and construct the equipment necessary to combat them. The resulting “Proton Pack”, which brilliantly captured the look and feel of a piece of hardware hastily thrown together from scavenged parts, became what is arguably the most iconic prop in cinema history. Not only has it been lovingly and reverently recreated by hackers and makers countless times since the movie’s release in 1985, but not a Halloween goes by that you won’t see at least one strapped to the back of a child.

What’s a Nerd, Anyway?

There’s little question that the 1980s represent the high-water mark for nerds in media, but it’s not as if somebody flipped a switch and it all ended at once. There are a few standouts from the early 1990s, with Sneakers coming immediately to mind. It not only meets all of the criteria we’ve discussed here, it’s legitimately an excellent film with an incredible cast. If you haven’t already, please go watch Sneakers.

But for all the hate it’s gotten over the years, I’d also give the nod to Hackers. With a reminder that technical accuracy was never one of the criteria, it absolutely ticks the proper boxes when it comes to young, competent people using their technical skills for good. Plus, if Kilmer raised the bar for hot hackers in film, Angelina Jolie sent it into orbit.

Although the aesthetic benefit that Jolie’s character brings to the film is beyond contestation, it’s important to note that Hackers presents her as exceptionally skilled, with abilities that meet or exceed those of her male peers. The fact that those abilities are accepted by every character in the film without question is a testament to how the audience’s expectations were changing at the dawn of the 2000s. The boys in Revenge of the Nerds might have been able to get away with a panty raid in 1984, but by 1995, the girls were popping shells with the best of them.

That said, those evolving standards may be the reason these type of movies seem to be so uncommon today. Given the expectations and the technical proficiency of the average moviegoer in 2026, what exactly would a nerd hero actually look like? The nerd stereotypes from the Nutty Professor era would be all but completely unrecognizable to modern audiences, and while one could argue that the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are getting uncomfortably close to real-life Bond villains, that’s taking us in the wrong direction.

The reality is, it will take more than a teenager with a computer to captivate audiences today. Or to put it another way, if everyone in the theater is at least a little bit of a nerd to begin with, it’s much more difficult to create that mystique on the screen without taking the story to fantastical lengths.

Or at least, that’s one possibility. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the past, present, and future of nerds in the media. Will we ever see the likes of Real Genius and WarGames again, or has the world simply moved on? Are nerds normal?

Samsung has finally opened pre-orders for the high-end Galaxy XR headset in the UK ahead of release on 8th July, following its release in the States in October 2025.

The launch marks Samsung’s first major step into mixed reality hardware, with Galaxy XR developed in partnership with Google and Qualcomm. It is also the first device to ship in the UK with Android XR, Google’s new extended reality platform, which means tight integration with familiar Google services as well as compatibility with existing Android apps.

The headset runs on Android XR and centres its feature set on multimodal AI interactions that allow users to navigate virtual and real environments through voice, vision and gesture controls. Samsung says the software experience will feel familiar to existing Galaxy users too, with an interface influenced by One UI.

Google’s suite of services sits at the core of the experience, with Gemini available as an in-headset assistant for contextual queries, Google Maps offering immersive 3D exploration with personalised location suggestions, and YouTube providing access to a library of 180 and 360-degree VR content alongside a spatial tab for 3D-converted videos.

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You can also use apps such as Chrome, Gmail, Netflix and Paramount Plus in floating windows, giving the headset a broader productivity and entertainment pitch than simple VR content consumption.

A Circle to Search feature extends that discovery layer into the physical world, letting users draw a circle in the air around any real-world object in pass-through mode to trigger an instant search result without removing the headset. Gemini integration also goes beyond simple voice assistance, with the ability to ask questions about what you are seeing around you or to use AI-guided help while exploring places in Google Maps.

The Galaxy XR is built around dual 4K Micro-OLED displays, with Samsung saying each panel is roughly postage-stamp-sized. It runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR2 Plus Gen 2 platform, which the company says delivers around 20% faster CPU performance and roughly 15% stronger GPU performance than the standard XR2 Gen 2 chip. Samsung has also equipped the headset with 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage, while support extends to 4K per eye at up to 90fps.

For mixed reality use, the headset includes two world-facing cameras for full-HD colour passthrough, six hand-tracking cameras and four eye-tracking cameras, allowing for controller-free navigation in many situations.

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Samsung Galaxy XR is available for pre-order now on the Samsung website, with general sale beginning on 8th July. It will also be available in select Samsung stores in London and Manchester, as well as the KX store.

Pricing starts at £1,699 for the headset itself, while the optional XR controllers cost £249, the travel case is priced at £249, and the smart keyboard costs £90.

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from the chaos dept

There’s something going on over in Microsoft’s Xbox division and it isn’t good. Don’t take my word on that. Apparently the bosses over there are circulating an email to staff talking about how properly fucked everyone is if something doesn’t change soon.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty just sent an email out to all Xbox employees with a clear, yet terrifying message: “this cannot continue.”

Shared publicly via Xbox Wire, the email paints a picture of a broken division, bogged down by the weight of both years of unsuccessful investments and unchecked excess, and battered by the winds of outside economic forces. Sharma, now having been in charge for 100 days, has made it clear that what she is spearheading is indeed going to be a hard reset, complete with hard decisions that will make or break the division and ripple out through the lives of its thousands of employees.

The letter itself attempts to paint a rosy picture at the outset, but then lays out the challenges. The Xbox division has a 3% margin, which is laughably low. The crises in pricing and availability of computer component parts is out of control and likely to get much worse, thanks in no small part to the bumbling buffoons who currently run the country. Complex internal and vendor relationships have led to communication issues and speed-to-market deficiencies throughout the division. Pretty much everyone agrees that there are mass layoffs coming to the Xbox division as a result of the above. And then there’s this:

 We expanded our studio system when we needed a pipeline of content to meet multiple strategies across subscription, streaming, and devices. In the process, we have found ourselves over extended as we executed on changing strategies in a landscape of more readily available content. We are the fortunate stewards of industry-defining franchises that have enormous potential and player demand, but we have not adequately funded them to compete and win. At the same time, as we saw this past weekend at Showcase, a reliable pipeline of first- and third-party exclusives and new IP are critical to our success. We need to reassess the balance between these and our investment priorities for the next 5 years.

There are two, separate things being stated here. Let’s take them in order, because both are important.

The expansion of the studio system being a problem is absolutely hysterical. Xbox does indeed have a hefty portfolio of studios operating under its ownership. More than half of those studios came over to Microsoft in the Zenimax and Activision Blizzard acquisitions. Both acquisitions came with regulatory challenges, the latter being far more involved from the FTC. Both acquisitions also got past regulators in the courts specifically by being positioned as vertical acquisitions rather than horizontal acquisitions, meaning that there wouldn’t be “efficiency layoffs” as a result of bringing them on board, and that the acquisition would lead to lower prices, better games, and faster development for the gaming public.

Here is the Xbox people themselves saying that it isn’t working and that the sprawl of the studio system itself is having a negative effect on game production.

Oh, and about those layoffs that wouldn’t happen? They began happening in January of ’24, leading the FTC to point out to the court that it had been lied to. Then came the Zenimax studio layoffs in May of ’24 and more Xbox layoffs in July of ’25. All while the current, new Xbox bosses complain that they are overextended in terms of their studio sprawl? Cool.

Then there’s the second half of the quote, in which it appears that the Xbox strategy will return once more to a strategy built in part of stupid, dumbass console exclusives to try to entice people to buy Xbox devices. Matt Booty, Xbox Chief Content Officer, elaborated on this recently in an interview.

“[We] want people to have a reason to get on board with Xbox,” Booty said. “We want them to have a reason to buy an Xbox reason to be an Xbox fan. At the same time we want to reward all our players that have been with us for a long time. We know that exclusives are important. That’s why we got Gears coming in 2026, Clockwork in 2027.”

He continued, “We also want to be clear, our big multiplayer games, live service, games are going to continue to be multiplatform. If we’ve promised something to players already, we’re going to honor that promise, right? And then we’re going to really, I think Asha said it, we’re going to make the right decision, not the fast decision.”

The Xbox team has never been able to get its story straight on console exclusives. But when you’re clearly running in third place in a console war that consists of 3 consoles, and you’re not particularly competitive at that, trying to coerce your way into console success by holding games hostage to your platform is a recipe for destroying gaming franchises and still losing the console wars.

There’s a very good reason that the trend over the past decade or so has been one of less exclusivity, not more. Getting games out there, particularly when you’re directly publishing a bunch of games because of that same studio sprawl we talked about earlier, is the most important thing for the bottom line. Xbox should want all the games it publishes itself to be on every platform everywhere, in order to maximize sales. Spending money on third-party exclusives makes little sense, either, particularly when you clearly have a console series in decline.

I imagine it must be a very uncomfortable time to be an Xbox employee. And that’s too bad. I have no doubt there are a ton of good people working there and at their studios. But I’m not going to pretend to be surprised that Xbox overall as a platform is not doing well, considering all the lies, the acquisitions that probably shouldn’t have been allowed, and the chaos in messaging that has come out of that group.

Of course, that discomfort apparently applies directly to some of the top execs who reported directly to Booty, who have started to get out before the situation gets even worse.

Filed Under: asha sharma, exlusives, layoffs, matt booty, xbox

Companies: microsoft

Cravings rarely check the calendar. Most ice cream makers force a long pause because their bowls need a full night in the freezer before anything can happen. That single requirement turns an impulse into a project and leaves the machine collecting dust more often than it gets used. The Instant Pot InstantChill removes that barrier with a built-in compressor and cold plate that start working the moment the machine turns on.

Mix together a simple base of cream, milk, sugar, and flavorings, then pour it into the machine, which will immediately freeze and churn. In most cases, you can get soft serve consistency in around twenty minutes. The benefit is that you don’t need to plan ahead of time, you don’t have to take up a lot of freezer room with a hefty bowl, and you don’t have to wait until the next day. Six one-touch apps cover the usual suspects, with a few extras to try. Ice cream, gelato, and sorbet each have their own setting that produces the desired texture and overflow every time. A non-dairy program automatically handles plant-based milks including coconut cream. The rolled ice cream mode allows you to simply pour the mix directly onto the cool plate, spread it thinly with the provided paddles, and produce those gorgeous swirly ribbons that end up as neat tiny cylinders, making dessert more of a show.

Instant Pot InstantChill Ice Cream Maker with Built‑In Compressor, No Pre‑Freezing, Real Ice Cream in…

• NO PRE‑FREEZING, ICE CREAM IN MINUTES*: Built-in compressor and cold plate system rapidly freezes and churns ultra-smooth fresh ice cream, gelato…
• BUILT‑IN COLD PLATE FOR FASTER RESULTS: Churn in the bowl or pour directly onto the cold plate for even faster freezing. Roll, or scoop—your…
• 6 ONE-TOUCH PROGRAM MODES: (6) precision pre-set programs deliver the ideal balance of speed and timing for perfect results every time. Make Ice…

A smart alarm will sound when it is time to add the mix-ins. Chocolate chips, berries, cookie bits, and almonds are all added at the appropriate moment, resulting in an equally distributed mixture rather than sinking or becoming mushy. That small detail can make a huge difference in texture and saves you a lot of trial and error with other machines.

The finished batch yields roughly two pints, which is ideal for feeding two to four people or experimenting with new flavor combinations without wasting anything. Because the machine does not need to be re-frozen between batches, you may run numerous batches in succession, which is ideal for a long afternoon of creating different flavours without the normal downtime. Some early testers have even reported producing three distinct flavors in a single session without the customary breaks.

The machine is quiet enough to use in an apartment or in the evening while watching a movie in the next room. The control panel is straightforward to operate, with clear icons on the display, and you can see what’s going on via the transparent lid without opening it. It’s also a relatively tiny machine, being approximately eighteen inches long, twelve and a half inches broad, and nine inches tall, and weighing nearly twenty pounds, so it won’t get banged around on your counter.

Cleaning up is also simple because the churning paddle can be washed in the dishwasher, the bowl rinses quickly, and the cold plate only requires a damp towel. You don’t have to disassemble it or get into any weird positions; just a quick clean and it’s done. Some early response has emphasized the creamy results (whether you’re making dairy or non-dairy), the consistent time, and the fact that people want to use it on weeknights rather than just special events.

Up until a few weeks ago, I had never heard of the Tartan Army (despite being one-quarter Scottish and having an actual family tartan of my own!). But now that the World Cup has begun and the Scotland fans known as the Tartan Army have descended on my home state of Massachusetts, they’re inescapable. And that’s not a bad thing. 

Full disclosure: I live in a suburb outside Boston, so I haven’t had any firsthand experiences with any of these kilted soldiers, but I have been following their exploits in the news and on social media, and I’m so glad they’re here. (If I were in a neighboring house to visiting tourists who were playing bagpipes throughout the day, it’s possible I’d feel differently.)

The Tartan Army has been going viral over the past week or so, partly due to their sheer numbers — it’s estimated up to 40,000 Scottish fans have traveled to Massachusetts for the group stage of the tournament — and partly because of the festive atmosphere they’ve brought to places like Fenway Park. Upwards of 10,000 fans attended a Red Sox game last weekend, and on the streets, they’ve marched while wearing their signature kilts and playing the bagpipes. And they’ve done their research as tourists, too. 

They know that the real tourist attractions in Boston are Dunkin’ and the Cop Slide, a slide at the playground on Boston’s City Hall Plaza known for causing injuries because some people accelerate so fast. The slide went viral when a police officer attempted to use the slide and… it didn’t go well. (We can laugh now because he’s OK.) But this is why we now have a video of a man playing the bagpipes while descending the Cop Slide.

I don’t know if anyone thought that would be one of the byproducts of hosting the World Cup, but this World Cup has provided us with so many unexpected and delightful moments. The Cape Verdean goalkeeper, Vozinha, who went from virtual unknown to worldwide legend during his team’s 90-minute match against Spain, is another story that’s sparking joy, along with yet another viral police officer video, this time of Boston cops joyfully dancing with fans after the Cape Verde-Spain match. All these little dopamine hits really add up.

Bostonians and most New Englanders have a reputation for not being warm. It’s a remnant of the Puritanical and stoic values imported by our earliest settlers and that have lingered for centuries — this can make us seem standoffish and aloof at times, when really it’s more an innate reservedness that some of us can’t shake, no matter how hard we try. But the Scots are cracking our tough outer shell, at least temporarily.

A scroll through TikTok will turn up dozens of videos of gratitude, both from the Scots, thanking Boston for the warmth they’ve been shown, and from locals who have been charmed by the exuberant and joyful visitors. Fans and pundits alike keep talking about how the World Cup really has become the great unifier we need right now, and the influx of Scottish tourists in our state feels like it has lifted the local mood. 

But alas, we won’t get to call the Tartan Army ours for long. The team and their fans will stick around for one more match on June 19 against Morocco before traveling down to Miami for their final group-stage match against Brazil on June 24. Sure, Miami has beautiful beaches, and we’ll probably get a viral video of a bagpiper on a jet ski out of this, but we’ll miss the Tartan Army when they’re gone. At least we’ll always have Cop Slide.