After five films, digital technology has finally arrived in the cloth-and-plastic world of Toy Story. But the film, directed by franchise veteran Andrew Stanton and McKenna Grace, mostly avoids the easy trope of making technology inherently bad. Instead, it’s a disruptive force that can be either helpful or harmful, depending on how it’s used. The film makes the case that parents need to take a hands-on approach to help kids manage their gadgets, especially when it comes to managing screen time or dealing with bullying.

Slight spoilers ahead for Toy Story 5.

Toy Story 5 centers on Bonnie, a young girl struggling to make friends who was gifted Woody, Buzz and Andy’s other toys from the first three films. She’s the only kid in her neighborhood not using a Lilypad tablet — instead, she prefers to play the old fashioned way, by crafting scenarios purely out of her imagination. Her parents reluctantly decide to get her a Lilypad (played by Greta Lee) as a way to connect with other kids.

Like a McKinsey consultant storming into a quaint local business, Lilypad decides she knows the best way for Bonnie to make friends. The tablet sends friend requests to several girls Bonnie knows, and she miraculously gets an invite to a sleepover. But instead of playing together, all of the girls just zone out endlessly on their Lilypads, barely saying a word to each other. Those same girls later start bullying Bonnie for playing with older toys, which leads to Bonnie’s parents wisely disabling the Lilypad’s social network access.

Pixar

It might seem crazy that parents even have to worry about social networking for 8-year-olds, but platforms like Zigazoo and JusTalk Kids already exist. They market themselves as safe spaces where kids can chat with close friends and family members, but there’s still room for awful social dynamics. Kids will be kids, and many of them are little jerks.

While Lilypad stumbles to help Bonnie connect, older toys like Cowgirl Jessie (Joan Cusack) also realize they’re out of touch with the way kids play today. When Jessie tries to sneak her way into Bonnie’s sleepover, she immediately becomes a source of shame.

Research shows a relationship between managing anxiety and imaginative play in kids, and Toy Story’s main cast make convenient messengers for that information. But the film surprised me by finding ways to make room for Lilypad and other new devices. A messageboard app on Lilypad helps Bonnie connect with Blaze, another young girl who still plays with toys the old fashioned way. Without Lilypad, they probably never would have met.

It’s hokey, but it works in the context of the film. And it’s also the reality parents have to live with today. Despite their potential harms, it’s helpful for kids to sometimes watch TV on the go. There are tons of educational games on iPadOS and Android, and both platforms also have a bevy of video chatting apps for staying in touch with friends and relatives. The key is moderation and parental supervision.

Toy Story 5 would be even more of an insightful critique if it made room for new types of play. Lilypad just has a few basic games for kids. But these days, any iPad can play Minecraft, a game that is appealing precisely because it so closely mirrors imaginative play. It’s also complex enough to grow with kids into adulthood, more so than the likes of Woodie and Buzz Lightyear.

Now that tablets have entered the world of Toy Story, it’s unclear where the franchise can go next. Pixar has already wrung the series’ core concept dry. We’ve explored the inner lives of toys, we’ve seen them wrestle with the meaning of their existence and they’ve even confronted death directly. (Toy Story 3 must have traumatized an entire generation.) Toy Story 5 isn’t nearly as essential as the original trilogy, but at least it’s a reminder to parents that they can’t just sit back and relax when it comes to tech.

Apple’s home automation updates and new product roadmap powered by Siri AI will kick off in 2026 with HomePod and Apple TV updates, but if you’re excited for the robotic arm for a Home Hub, you’re going to be waiting a while.

It’s no secret that Apple’s new AI push will include several new products like the long-rumored Home Hub. However, the timing of some of those products’ releases remains in question.

According to the “Power On” newsletter from Bloomberg, the new Apple TV and HomePod mini could arrive at any time in 2026, while the robotic arm attachment for HomeHub won’t be ready for some time yet.

The Home Hub itself is expected in 2026 as well, which means an Apple Home-focused release cycle or event could occur in the fall. That device should launch as a standalone display that can be paired with various mounts like speakers, wall mounts, and articulating arms.

The new Apple TV is expected to support Apple Intelligence in some specific capacity and may have a new Siri Remote. The HomePod mini would also gain access to Siri AI, but that’s likely the only major feature of the product.

The robotic arm accessory for the Home Hub, which may include an upgraded AI-focused version of the tablet device, isn’t expected until 2027 or 2028. That device has always been more of a moonshot, with the Pixar Lamp-like device with a personality still in early testing.

It’s sure to be a busy hardware season for Apple given the three new iPhones, two new Apple Watches, and a slew of Macs expected by the end of the calendar year.

It’s not really a question of if these products are coming, but when. With everything else releasing, Apple will need to find time to reveal its new Home Hub product category and sell people on why the new Apple TV and HomePod mini are necessary.

The September keynote will already be packed as it is, and I don’t think these products will fit the “just drop a press release” model. My expectation is that there will be a lengthy Apple Home segment during a primarily Mac-focused keynote in October.

So you have a project that you love, and everyone else loves too. People start saying “you should sell this” but where? Well, there’s a new marketplace you might want to consider called called SmallRun, aiming at makers and their, well, small production runs.

SmallRun will absolutely host your custom PCBs, on-demand 3D prints, and other traditional maker products — but they’ll also happily sell your merch, too. Along with electronics and hardware, they aim to allow you to sell products in categories like tabletop gaming, sciences, and yes, accessories/apparel.

For sellers, they offer automatic payouts and promise to take care of the taxes by integrating with Stripe. That said, they’re still working on getting the whole VAT thing set up for products imported to the EU. EU to EU sales are apparently OK. They’ll host build logs, which may drive engagement with your product. There’s even a handy tool to import your existing listings from eBay, Tindie, Lectronz, Etsy, Shopify, or Crowd Supply if you’re already in the biz. They make their money by taking a cut of your sales: eight percent, plus forty cents per listing.

Depending on your perspective, you might wonder if we need another marketplace, To that we can only say: “Let a thousand flowers bloom!” Competition should drive these marketplaces to continuously improve and we all win.

If you’re selling online, even packaging can become a project. If you’re not, but are interested in starting, our “From Project to Kit” series from ten years back remains surprisingly relevant.

Thanks to [Aron] for the tip!

Anthropic recently took its two newest AI models offline due to an export control order from the Trump administration, prompting broad debates about AI policy and digital sovereignty.

On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Sean O’Kane, Rebecca Bellan, and I discussed what actually prompted the administration’s moves against Anthropic, and what this might mean for the broader AI ecosystem.

As Sean put it, “Anthropic has not had the best relationship with the Trump administration in a way that stands apart from the other leading AI labs,” so perhaps other Anthropic’s rivals don’t need to worry about a similar crackdown.

But Rebecca also noted that leading cybersecurity experts have “signed an open letter to ask Trump to revoke the order, and they say it’s actually dangerous to have to pull these advanced cybersecurity capabilities from network defenders in the U.S.”

And we wondered whether this could all end up being good publicity for Anthropic, especially since — in Rebecca’s words — “everybody loves a bad boy.”

Keep reading for a preview of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Rebecca Bellan: As I’m sure many of our listeners know, the U.S. government basically just forced Anthropic to pull its two newest models offline — Fable 5, and then there was also Mythos 5, which was the one that was available to current Mythos users, [whereas] Fable 5 was more available to the public.

They sent a letter [last] Friday that cited “national security concerns.” No one knows what those concerns are. That report has not been made public, they gave no specifics and told [Anthropic] that they had to ensure that those models couldn’t be used by any foreign nationals. So Anthropic was like, “Okay, I guess we have to just pull the models entirely, because we don’t know when someone’s a foreign national. A lot of our own employees are foreigners.” 

But really, [reports said] the White House got tipped off to this because of some Amazon researchers that allegedly found a way to bypass Fable 5’s guardrails. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy raised these concerns with the White House, and it just kind of spiraled from there.

Sean O’Kane: This all moved really fast, especially for a Friday afternoon into a weekend. And it’s at the same time that the administration was ostensibly trying to negotiate some sort of treaty for the war that it started in Iran. 

Rebecca: Friday evening for us in New York. They love a distraction.

Sean: Let’s step real far back for a moment. Anthropic has not had the best relationship with the Trump administration in a way that stands apart from the other leading AI labs — I think there’s an element, at least, of that playing here. 

So do you think that this is going to have implications for those other companies? Do you think that the Trump administration would be less inclined to sort of turn off the tap on one of those competitors?

Anthony Ha: Part of the context here is that both the reporting and an analysis from independent security experts suggest that the actual security risk from Anthropic is not that unique. So a lot of this seems to stem as much from parts of the Trump administration and Anthropic just [not getting] along very well. Whatever risks there are, those things are gonna blow up out of proportion just because it seems like they can’t have a civil phone call with each other.

If you’re another company — on the one hand, maybe that’s advantageous to you, because you can say, “Well, we just don’t get these guys mad at us and we can do what we want.” But that’s also not a great regulatory landscape to just [say], “Boy, I hope they don’t get mad at us.”

Rebecca: On the one hand, it definitely feels retaliatory — after the government labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk, there’s this big lawsuit going on between them, it really feels like the White House is just looking out for any excuse to pummel Anthropic. And I feel that way not only because that was my initial reaction, but because of what a lot of cybersecurity researchers have said. They say that this should never have triggered an export control [order]. They’ve all signed an open letter to ask Trump to revoke the order, and they say it’s actually dangerous to have to pull these advanced cybersecurity capabilities from network defenders in the U.S. Anthropic itself said some of the same jailbreaks could have been found in several other AI models. 

Cynically, it’s like: Okay, are you just pausing Anthropic so that others can catch up to where Anthropic was?

But at the same time, I’ve also seen reactions that [say]: Anthropic kinda had this coming. They’re like, “This is too dangerous for anyone to use, but not us, we’re the good guys.” They’re talking out of both sides of their mouth. A week before Fable came out, they were [saying], “Hey, we need to slow down AI, guys. It’s getting really dangerous.” But then boom, “Here’s our most insane ever, super powerful model, go off.” 

Anthony: In some ways this feels like a microcosm of a lot of the discussion around AI, where people like Sam Altman and Jensen Huang are [saying], “Hey, let’s try to lower the temperature. Why is everybody mad at us?” Well, you spent the last couple years essentially saying you’ve built this God machine that will take jobs away from everyone. It’s not exactly a shock that people don’t feel great about this.

And there’s something about the way Anthropic talks about Mythos in particular, where they’re like, “This is the most incredibly powerful model ever, it’s too dangerous to release to the public.” And so on some level, [you say,] “Well, okay, let’s say that we take that seriously then. That means that there’s going to be an incredible level of scrutiny around it.”

And I do wonder — it does seem like Anthropic is not happy about this. I want to be careful about not overstating how this could be beneficial to them. But we also ran some stories about Ramp analysis to highlight the fact that the last big blow-up between Anthropic and the Trump administration was good for the company, in at least some ways. Downloads of Claude shot up. I think a lot of people who maybe had thought of ChatGPT as the chatbot, the AI assistant before, suddenly they were looking at Claude as maybe the more responsible one, the more “resistance” one.

And in the same way, [while] Anthropic is very stressed out about this, this could, again, make their models seem even more powerful.

Rebecca: Definitely. “We’re so dangerous.” Everyone loves a bad boy, right? Everyone’s like, “It’s the most powerful model, even Trump says so. Of course, I’ve got to get my hands on it.”

Today marks the summer solstice, the longest day of the year and the start of astronomical summer in the Northern Hemisphere. This doesn’t really have much to do with hacking hardware or building gadgets other than the fact that from this point on you’ll have progressively less daylight hours to do it in each day. Of course, if you do your best work in the middle of the night this won’t impact things much.

If you’re as likely to find a controller in your hand as a soldering iron in the evenings, you might be interested in a recent filing against Sony. Lawyers representing a group of four gamers allege that the entertainment giant is violating a California law that says digital storefronts need to make it clear that buyers don’t technically own the games in question but are merely licensing them — a license which, as we’ve seen in the past, can be revoked or modified at any time with no restitution made to the purchaser.

Now while we agree conceptually that selling gamers a license rather than an actual copy of the game is clearly a one-sided deal, we’re still not sure this case has a lot of merit. As far as we can tell, Sony does make it clear in the fine print that you’re not really going to own anything once they take your money. Or, at the very least, they make it equally as clear as any other company that’s selling digital downloads these days. Should the court actually find that said fine print is a little too fine, it could conceivably have ramifications throughout the entertainment industry. This is certainly a case to keep an eye on.

If you want to be sure none of your games can be removed from your digital grasp without warning, perhaps your best bet is to stick to the classics. Fans of 1989’s F-15 Strike Eagle II on PC will be excited to hear that there’s an ongoing effort by Neuvieme Porte to reverse engineer the flight sim and re-implement the whole thing in portable C.

This would open up all sorts of possibilities, such as ports to other platforms and the addition of new features and content. But before the project can get to that point however, Neuvieme is looking to recruit some virtual test pilots. Just keep in mind that the goal, at least for now, is to recreate the game exactly. That means bugs present in the original release are to be preserved. As such, it would help to have logged enough hours back in the DOS days to recognize what’s an OG bug and what’s been newly introduced.

From working on virtual jet fighters to the real deal, IEEE Spectrum recently ran an article about a startup called Phoenix Semiconductor that’s looking to produce bespoke pin-compatible replacements of critical chips for the military. They reason that the Air Force won’t mind paying $1,000 for a chip that cost them a buck back in 1975 when the alternative is grounding a $70+ million F-18 that needs the thing to take off. The goal isn’t really to recreate the old parts as they were, but instead to build drop-in replacements that are tailored for specific applications. In other words, Uncle Sam doesn’t care of the IC actually looks like the original, so long as it fits and it gets the jet up in the air again.

Finally, on the subject of aerospace technology, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory published a blog post earlier this week detailing their work on the Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain (ERNEST). While NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have done some incredible work on Mars, they’re slow and have to be operated with the utmost caution to make sure they don’t get stuck. In comparison, ERNEST is several times faster and is designed with an active suspension system that lets it lift each wheel up off the ground independently if needed.

The prototype rover also features improved autonomy that may allow future rovers make more decisions on their own. That may not be a huge time saver on the Moon, but given the communication delays with the Red Planet, a Mars rover that doesn’t have to stop and ask Earth for directions so often will be able to get more useful work done at the end of the day.

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