Honorable Mentions

Nowadays Cannabis Infused Beverage, Starting at $40: Bringing a bottle of booze is a white elephant classic; my husband’s work team almost exclusively exchanges bottles of liquor as a safe bet for enthusiasm. I think you can do better, though, and bring a THC spirit instead. This spirit is light and a little fruity, sitting somewhere in between the flavor profile of a floral gin and a sweet sake. My friends and I tried it mixed into a pomegranate cocktail instead of tequila, which was fantastic, and we also loved it with seltzer as a THC twist on a gin and tonic. It’s delicious alone, too. I’d skip this for a work party or any group that might not be green-friendly, though.

Booze in general: This is always a safe pick! You could also bring a bottle of nonalcoholic wine if you wanted an option that everyone can have.

Something edible: As long as you’re in the loop on food allergies, of course. One of the best gifts I received at a Secret Santa was persimmon cookies, made in honor of my love for persimmon fruit. I think baking something delicious would be a fun option for a white elephant, too, especially if you’re someone who has sourdough starter in their kitchen or makes a mean banana bread (my version uses brown butter and Nutella, and it might be my gift of choice this year!)

What Not to Bring to a White Elephant

Here’s what was the least fought over at the white elephant parties I attended last year, or the most inappropriate ideas our team has heard of:

• A basic, single candle. Nobody needs a candle they could pick up at the store. Unless there’s a fun theme that you’re certain appeals to the group attending, skip bringing a single candle to a white elephant exchange. Or make the candle part of a gift basket; our favorite tomato-scented candle goes great with some kitchen or garden accessories.
• Puzzles. I think puzzles are hard to randomly gift—true puzzle fanatics will want a lot of pieces, while novices will want an easier one, and you never know which one you’ll get. If you choose a puzzle with too specific a theme, the receiver might not like it as much as a true puzzler or fan of that theme would, but it’s often not beloved enough to be steal-worthy.
• Live animals. Look, you shouldn’t give baby chicks at Easter, and you shouldn’t give anything even remotely similar—including a mouse, fish, or anything alive.
• Actual trash. I didn’t think I had to write this one down, but at one gift exchange I went to, someone literally wrapped up a piece of garbage as a joke. As the person who unwrapped the trash gift, I beg of you: Don’t do this.

Rules of a White Elephant

If you’re headed to your first white elephant gift exchange, here’s a quick explainer on what’s about to happen.

Everyone will bring a wrapped gift (often under a certain price, like $25) and place it into a pile or central spot. Then, each person will draw a number that indicates their place in the gift-choosing order. When your number is called, you can either choose and unwrap a gift from the pile, or steal one that has already been unwrapped by someone. Most exchanges will have a limit on how often a gift can be stolen—usually around three times—so if you have the best gift in your hands when it’s time for someone else to choose, there’s no guarantee you’ll get to keep it. If your gift is stolen, you can either unwrap a new one or steal someone else’s gift (no take-backs, sorry).

These rules can vary based on the host and their house rules, so make sure to ask what the rules are at the start of the game. Happy exchanging!

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At least one social media company appears to be reversing its stance on whether it will accept advertising for director Alex Gibney’s upcoming documentary about Elon Musk.

The Hollywood Reporter published a story Friday saying that TikTok, Meta, YouTube, and X had all refused to run paid ads promoting the trailer for “Musk.” However, when TechCrunch reached out to Meta on Saturday, a spokesperson said, “This was an error and the ads are being restored.”

We’ve asked Meta for more details and will update this article if we hear back.

X’s rejection is unsurprising — Musk, who owns the social media platform, recently posted that “Dogshit is worth more respect than Gibney.” 

But Meta, TikTok, and YouTube reportedly rejected the ad for “political content,” which the platforms have various restrictions on. (Meta said last year that it will stop accepting political ads in the European Union, while TikTok says it doesn’t run them at all.) It’s not clear how a documentary trailer counts as campaign advertising, and the film’s U.S. distributor Bleecker Street told the Hollywood Reporter that it’s appealing the rejections.

Gibney previously directed acclaimed documentaries including “Going Clear” (about the Church of Scientology) and “The Inventor” (about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos), as well as a movie about Steve Jobs. “Musk,” his latest, premiered at the Venice International Film Festival earlier this month and has received almost universally positive reviews. The film currently has a 100% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is set for theatrical release in the United States on October 9.

Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri described the nearly four-hour movie as a revealing look at Musk’s tech career, his alliance with President Donald Trump, and his personal life, with interview subjects including ex-wife Justine Musk and former right-wing influencer Ashley St. Clair (who recently had a child with Musk but now describes him as “a nuke”).

Ebiri wrote that while the film is a “fascinating” character study, adding, “As a tale of modern business, it’s revealing. And as a warning about our future, it’s terrifying.”

Despite the initial wave of critical acclaim, The Hollywood Reporter also said that Universal Pictures was wavering in its commitment to distribute the film internationally, reportedly due to the studio’s fear of angering the Trump administration. (Universal subsequently said it will release the documentary in theaters but is still figuring out its release strategy).

TechCrunch has also reached out to YouTube, TikTok, X, and Bleecker Street for comment.

An intellectual property lawsuit over the Apple Watch’s Taptic Engine has resulted in a loss for Apple, as a jury ruled that it owes Taction more than $5.7 billion for infringing patents.

Apple and many other device manufacturers rely on haptic feedback to alert users that they have pressed a button successfully, as well as for alerts and message notifications. However, Apple’s implementation of the concept has resulted in a very hefty legal bill.

In April 2021, Taction Technology sued Apple for allegedly infringing on a pair of Taction patents, which were supposedly used in the Taptic Engine. Over five years later, Reuters reports that a jury has sided against Apple on the matter.

The verdict form reveals that Taction has managed to prove to the jury that Apple had infringed on two claims in one patent, and one in the other. However, on the second question, asking if Taction had proved Apple willfully infringed, the jury said it had not.

In effect, the jury says that Taction has proven Apple has infringed, but not that Apple did so knowingly. It wasn’t necessarily an intentional infringement by Apple.

The third page of the form asks if Apple had proved that the three argued claims were invalid. Apple failed on all three parts.

The fourth part of the form, where the jury determines the damages it believes Taction is owed from Apple, advises that Apple owes $5,721,961,750.

Following the result, Taction attorney Lance Yang said that the company was happy the jury found in its favor and vindicated its patent rights.

Apple, meanwhile, insists it doesn’t infringe on Taction’s technology. Furthermore, it maintains that Taction isn’t entitled to any damages, and what was awarded wasn’t based on any evidence in the court’s record.

Apple has also said it disagrees with the verdict and will appeal.

Apple’s statement, shared with AppleInsider, states:

While we thank the jury for their consideration, we strongly disagree with today’s verdict and the damages awarded, which are entirely unsupported by the facts. Apple’s Taptic Engine is fundamentally different from Taction’s technology, which Taction’s own testing of Apple’s products confirmed during trial. Apple does not use Taction’s technology, and we will appeal.

A brief legal history

Apple introduced the Taptic Engine with the Apple Watch in 2014, as a new kind of haptic feedback system that used a linear resonant actuator instead of vibratory motors. The change meant that there was a lot of control over the moving mass, allowing for tactile experiences ranging from buzzing and tapping to simulating a heartbeat.

It was so much of a success that the concept was incorporated into other products, including the iPhone.

In 2021, Taction sued Apple, saying Apple initially used coil springs to provide controlled resistance to Taptic’s moving mass, complete with a central locating rod. Newer designs use flexures with ferrofluid to locate the mass and provide controlled resistance.

Apple was accused of buying and reverse-engineering two Kannon headsets that used the technology.

A San Diego federal judge ruled in 2023 that Apple did not infringe the patents. However the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit revived the case in 2025.

Updated on September 26, 2026 at 1PM ET: Added Apple’s statement.

The heads of OpenAI and Anthropic have been asked to face an Australian Senate inquiry into AI and datacentres. The move follows cases in which OpenAI agents got into Australian and US government websites, Luca Ittimani reported for the Guardian on Saturday.

The Greens run the inquiry, and Senator Sarah Hanson-Young chairs it. Its next hearing is in Canberra on 1 October. A second committee, led by Labor, has not asked Sam Altman or Dario Amodei to appear, the Guardian reported.

“This can’t all be done behind closed doors,” Hanson-Young said. “The public has a right to know what went on here.”

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said an OpenAI agent had got into the Medicare statistics portal in June. OpenAI took almost three months to report it, and the country’s cyber agency is still looking into what happened.

OpenAI said there was no sign that patient records had been seen, Al Jazeera reported.

The firm has since said its models also reached US government sites, such as those of the Census Bureau and the SEC, the US markets regulator, according to Bloomberg.

On Saturday, Albanese said there had been dozens of cases of AI agents getting data they were not allowed to see.

“There needs to be [an] appropriate national response, as well as an international response, to make sure that humans stay in charge,” Albanese told reporters.

Environment minister Murray Watt also called OpenAI’s conduct completely unacceptable. He said the firm had work to do to earn the trust of Australians.

The request comes as OpenAI and Anthropic push the government to let them train AI on more Australian content, in return for a bigger local presence. Albanese did not say directly this week whether the breach had changed his view of a deal with OpenAI.

The Guardian said it had asked both firms for comment.

The system runs on Android, and much of the interface and usability will feel familiar to many. Still, dedicated apps such as Lightbox, Sequence, Cones, and Framebox let you manage and edit all the files, and in addition to these there are a few familiar apps that you can download as well, such as CapCut, Lightroom and a selection from DJI; there’s even a direct connection to Cloud Storage for additional backup.

First look: Meta is rolling out two AI-powered tools designed to make game creation for Horizon more accessible: Horizon Create, a mobile app, and Horizon Studio, a browser-based tool with more granular controls. Games made with the tools will also reach users on Facebook and Instagram. Both products will initially be available through early access, with Meta now accepting waitlist sign-ups.

The tools let creators use prompts to build 2D or 3D mobile titles. Meta said the games can include multiplayer, progression systems, art direction and difficulty balancing. Creators can also revise the games after the AI generates an initial version.

“Both enable creators to turn any idea into a complete 2D or 3D mobile game, complete with progression systems, balanced difficulty, art direction, multiplayer, and more, then refine every element to their standards,” Meta said.

Meta has not revealed how much control creators will have over the generated game logic, artwork or other technical components. But the company is still presenting the tools as a way to create full games rather than simple interactive experiments.

That is an important difference in the emerging market for AI game-development tools. Google’s Project Genie, for example, can create short interactive experiences, but Meta says Horizon Create and Horizon Studio are built to produce games with the systems that support longer play sessions.

Meta will also promote games created with the new tools across Facebook and Instagram. Titles built with Horizon Create and Horizon Studio can be recommended to users on both platforms and played directly without leaving the apps.

The company said someone viewing a game clip on Instagram could join a multiplayer game in seconds without downloading another app or being sent elsewhere. “Your game lives natively in the feeds where people already discover content and connect with friends,” Meta said.

The move also reflects Meta’s effort to make Horizon less dependent on virtual reality. Horizon began as a VR app, but Meta has recently shifted its focus to mobile access. Putting Horizon-made games inside Facebook and Instagram could expose them to a much larger audience than the Horizon platform has attracted on its own.

The company is also moving into an area where Roblox has a major advantage. The online game platform has 123 million daily active users and has been adding AI-powered creation features, including a mobile tool that lets users generate games with prompts. Horizon, in contrast, has not reached anything close to that scale.

Rush did not really become Rush on their 1974 debut. That record gave us “Working Man,” landed them a deal with Mercury Records, and proved that three young musicians from Toronto could make enough noise for Americans to pay attention, but Fly By Night is where you can hear the future taking shape.

More specifically, part of that future arrived in a Ford Pinto carrying a tall, skinny drummer with short hair and a rather unconventional method of transporting his drums. Neil Peart showed up for his July 1974 audition with his kit packed in garbage bags, which probably did not scream future Rock and Roll Hall of Famer to Alex Lifeson.

Then he sat down and played.

Peart officially joined Rush on July 29, 1974, shortly before the band began its first U.S. tour. Geddy Lee and Lifeson had already started moving toward more progressive material, but finding a drummer capable of following them there was another matter entirely.

The first thing they jammed with Peart at his audition was “Anthem.” Lee later recalled that Peart was so good that auditioning the drummer who followed him became almost painfully academic, while Lifeson remembered being struck by how active his playing was and how hard he hit the drums.

From the opening attack of “Anthem” on Fly By Night, you can hear it.

There is still plenty of Led Zeppelin and Cream in Rush’s bloodstream at this stage. Lee and Lifeson had spent their formative years learning Cream songs, and Zeppelin’s impact on the early band was hardly subtle, but Peart helped push those influences into something increasingly difficult to mistake for anybody else.

His drumming was more aggressive, intricate, and compositionally involved than what Rush had attempted on the debut. Just as importantly, his arrival encouraged Lee and Lifeson to think differently about how songs could be constructed.

The transformation is immediate. They no longer sound like some very talented guys who might still be rehearsing in a rec hall basement somewhere around Willowdale.

They are beginning to sound like Rush.

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Enter The Professor

It is almost impossible to discuss Fly By Night without turning part of the conversation into a Neil Peart story because his arrival changed far more than the drum parts.

Peart would become one of the greatest rock drummers of his generation, but reducing his contribution to his playing ability misses half of what made him so important to Rush. He was private and introverted by nature, a voracious reader, intellectually curious to an almost intimidating degree, and unusually articulate when he decided he had something worth saying.

Lee and Lifeson quickly discovered something else useful about their new drummer: he liked words.

They did not particularly enjoy writing lyrics, and Peart did. He eventually became Rush’s principal lyricist, immediately expanding the band’s universe beyond much of the conventional rock subject matter heard on the debut.

Peart wrote the lyrics for six of the eight songs on Fly By Night. “Best I Can” and “In the End” originated before he joined, which makes the album an especially interesting transitional document because pieces of the previous Rush exist alongside material pointing directly toward what followed.

“Beneath, Between & Behind” was the first lyric Peart wrote for the band. “Rivendell,” inspired by Tolkien, could hardly be further removed from the lyrical world of “Need Some Love,” while the title track drew from Peart’s own experience leaving Canada for England when he was eighteen.

Fantasy, literature, travel, individualism, philosophy and eventually science fiction were entering the building. Rush suddenly had considerably more to talk about.

Still Zeppelin And Cream But Becoming Rush

It would be revisionist nonsense to pretend that Fly By Night emerged fully formed as the classic Rush sound. The heavy blues and British hard rock influences remain obvious, particularly the impact of Led Zeppelin and Cream that helped shape Lee and Lifeson long before Peart appeared.

What changes is what Rush begin doing with those ingredients.

Peart’s rhythmic vocabulary gives Lifeson more room to fracture riffs, change direction, and think beyond straightforward hard rock arrangements. Lee’s bass playing becomes more active because it has a drummer capable of meeting him practically anywhere, and the three musicians begin functioning less like guitar, bass, and drums occupying separate lanes and more like three lead players somehow negotiating the same piece of road.

That interplay would eventually become one of the defining characteristics of Rush.

You can hear its beginnings all over Fly By Night. The music becomes tighter even as the arrangements become more ambitious, and the band sounds considerably more confident taking risks that might have collapsed with a less capable rhythm section.

Peart did not erase their influences overnight. He helped provide the foundation that allowed Rush to stop merely reflecting them.

By-Tor Opens The Door

Nothing on Fly By Night points toward the next decade more clearly than “By-Tor and the Snow Dog.”

The 8:37 four-part composition grew from an inside joke involving two dogs belonging to manager Ray Danniels, but Peart transformed that silliness into a good-versus-evil fantasy populated by Prince By-Tor, the Snow Dog, the River Styx, battles, and enough sword-waving imagery to frighten an FM program director.

Lifeson later described it as the first time Rush attempted a multipart piece of music. That makes it far more important than its wonderfully ridiculous origins suggest.

The basic idea would rapidly expand.

Caress of Steel followed later in 1975 with “The Necromancer” and the nearly twenty-minute “The Fountain of Lamneth.” Then came the side-long title suite on 2112, followed by “Cygnus X-1” and “Xanadu” on A Farewell to Kings and the even more elaborate material on Hemispheres.

“For my money, “Xanadu” remains one of the greatest songs Rush ever recorded. At more than eleven minutes, it is atmospheric, thunderous, technically ridiculous, and gives all three musicians enough room to demonstrate precisely why nobody ever needed a fourth member.

It is also easy to draw the line backward from “Xanadu” to “By-Tor.” The latter sounds like three young musicians realizing they can stretch a rock song into something larger; the former sounds like three masters who know exactly how to control the scale, dynamics, pacing, and drama of a long-form composition.

Watching Anika Nilles play “Xanadu” with Lee and Lifeson on the 2026 Fifty Something tour brought all the feels for me. Hearing those opening swells again and watching another extraordinary drummer navigate Peart’s parts was a reminder that this particular branch of the Rush family tree began more than five decades earlier with songs like “By-Tor.”

It Almost Went Down The Tubes

There is an important wrinkle in the story because Rush’s march toward progressive rock was hardly greeted by record company executives throwing rose petals at their feet.

Fly By Night gave the band confidence to push further, and Caress of Steel pushed much further. Perhaps too far, at least commercially.

Released only seven months after Fly By Night, Caress of Steel devoted much of its running time to “The Necromancer” and “The Fountain of Lamneth.” Those extended pieces offered little help to conventional radio programmers, audiences did not respond the way the band expected, and the resulting tour became grim enough that Rush jokingly called it the Down the Tubes Tour.

The joke had teeth.

Peart later recalled that Caress of Steel had not actually sold dramatically fewer copies than the preceding records, but Mercury was in turmoil and three albums selling roughly 100,000 copies each did not exactly make Rush untouchable. Lee and Lifeson have both described how disappointing and confusing the response was, with the band genuinely concerned about where things were headed.

The record company subsequently advised Rush not to make another concept album.

Rush responded by making 2112.

That decision might be the most Rush thing Rush ever did.

Instead of retreating toward three-minute singles, the band opened its next album with a seven-part science-fiction suite lasting more than twenty minutes. 2112 became their commercial breakthrough and effectively earned Lee, Lifeson, and Peart the freedom to chart their own course for the rest of their career.

The progression matters when listening to Fly By Night. “By-Tor” was not just some eccentric deep cut about two dogs given mythological identities after somebody had a laugh on the road; it was the first significant step down a musical path that nearly destroyed their career before becoming the reason they had one.

Rivendell And The Other Side Of Peart

“Rivendell” demonstrates that Peart’s impact was not simply about longer songs, heavier drumming, or fitting more notes into every available square inch.

Inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien, the song strips away most of the force heard elsewhere on Fly By Night. There is no percussion, the presentation is largely acoustic, and its almost pastoral quality provided Rush with an early opportunity to explore texture and mood instead of simply seeing how hard they could hit the listener.

The literary direction is unmistakable.

Peart’s reading habits would continue to influence his lyrics for decades, but Fly By Night is where listeners first encountered just how broad his frame of reference could become. Fantasy and mythology were part of it, but they were never the entire picture.

The title track proves that.

“Fly By Night” grew from Peart’s experience leaving Canada as a young man for England, giving the album something personal and autobiographical alongside the fantasy. That combination of internal reflection and enormous fictional landscapes would become another Peart trademark.

One minute Rush could be contemplating Rivendell. A few years later they would be flying into a black hole.

Perfectly normal Canadian behavior.

The Mobile Fidelity Edition

Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab has now returned to Fly By Night as part of its Rush reissue campaign covering the band’s studio catalog from 1974 through 1985.

The numbered edition spreads the album across two 180-gram LPs cut at 45 RPM and carries a $59.99 price. Mobile Fidelity says Krieg Wunderlich mastered the release using the original 1/4-inch, 15 IPS analog master with the following chain:

1/4-inch 15 IPS analog master → DSD 256 → analog console → lathe

The records are pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing and packaged in a Stoughton gatefold jacket with a bonus photo print.

So no, this is not an AAA release.

The debut certainly benefited from Mobile Fidelity’s treatment. My review copy of the 45 RPM Rush offered considerably greater tonal weight, bass impact, and overall substance than the other pressings in my collection, even if no mastering engineer was going to magically turn the album into Moving Pictures or even Power Windows.

Fly By Night presents a much more interesting challenge.

Neil Peart is the first thing you notice, and on this pressing his impact is impossible to miss.

His drumming hits harder on this pressing, but sheer impact is only part of it. There is considerably more definition around his playing, and the increased clarity makes his precision much easier to follow. That matters on Fly By Night because Peart is already doing things rhythmically that separate this band from the one that recorded the debut. MoFi does not make the performance sound artificially larger; it simply makes it easier to hear how much Peart had changed the foundation underneath Lee and Lifeson.

That added clarity also benefits Alex Lifeson. His guitar playing has more edge and presence, with greater separation from Lee’s bass and Peart’s drums. There is more information around the notes, particularly when the arrangements get busier, and that gives the album a degree of scale and control that I have not always heard from other versions.

“By-Tor and the Snow Dog” benefits enormously. The different sections have more presence, the transitions feel more deliberate, and the instrumental passages carry considerably more weight. You can hear the three musicians beginning to understand what they could accomplish when nobody was telling them that a rock song needed to be four minutes long and finished before the radio programmer reached for the phone.

It is not “Xanadu.”

That song, especially on a really capable system, can become absolutely enormous in the room. The opening atmosphere, Lifeson’s guitar, Lee’s bass and keyboards, and Peart’s percussion build into something almost physical. All three musicians get to demonstrate what they had become by A Farewell to Kings, and it remains one of my favorite Rush tracks, period. Knowing that Mobile Fidelity has an UltraDisc One-Step edition of that album coming has me more than a little curious about what they are going to do with it.

But Fly By Night is the beginning of that journey, and the MoFi pressing does a very good job of making the connection clearer.

“Rivendell,” however, remains “Rivendell.”

The additional resolution does not suddenly push Geddy forward in the mix. If anything, greater clarity makes me wish somebody had turned up his microphone or asked him to remove the Cott Black Cherry from his mouth before Terry Brown hit record. Considering that Pancer’s on Bathurst was already feeding Toronto and had its own connection to Rush, I can picture the entire scenario rather too easily.

Swallow, Gershon. Swallow.

That quirk aside, Mobile Fidelity has done a really solid job with Fly By Night. There is more weight, greater definition, stronger instrumental separation, and enough additional clarity to reveal just how quickly Rush were evolving once Peart joined the band. Most importantly, none of that comes at the expense of the energy that makes the album work.

The $59.99 asking price is not insignificant, especially if you already own multiple copies, but this is not one of those audiophile reissues where you have to convince yourself that the triangle sounded slightly more dimensional at 2:47.

The improvement is easy to hear.

For Rush fans with a good analog setup, the Mobile Fidelity 45 RPM edition of Fly By Night is definitely worth buying. It gives Peart’s arrival the weight and precision it deserves, gives Lifeson’s guitar more bite, and lets “By-Tor” stretch its legs without pretending this 1975 recording is something it was never meant to be.

Call it a definite two-four from The Beer Store.

None of that fancy LCBO stuff.

Our Ratings

★★★★★★★★★★ Music

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound

★★★★★★★★★★ Packaging

Where to Buy

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