Meta has secured a patent describing an AI system that could continue the social media presence of deceased or long-term inactive users. Let’s just say the reaction online has been swift.
Originally filed in 2023 and granted in late 2025, the patent outlines a system that would use a large language model to analyse a person’s past posts, messages, comments and interactions. From there, it could replicate their tone, writing style and communication patterns. Consequently, this would allow the account to continue posting and responding in a way designed to feel authentic.
The proposal doesn’t stop at text. According to the filing, the system could also simulate voice, video and even phone calls. Thus, it would effectively create a digital avatar capable of interacting independently.
While the patent covers scenarios involving extended inactivity — such as influencers taking a break but wanting to maintain audience engagement — much of the backlash has centred on its potential use after death.
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Meta says it has no current plans to implement the system. As with many patents, the filing appears to be about protecting future possibilities rather than signalling an imminent product launch. Still, the idea has reignited concerns around digital identity and consent.
Key questions remain unresolved. Who would control AI-generated posts after someone’s death? How would personality rights be protected? And what are the psychological implications of interacting with a digital version of someone who has passed away?
On Reddit, users were quick to criticise the concept, describing it as “dystopian” and “immoral,” with several drawing comparisons to the Black Mirror episode Be Right Back, which explored a similar premise years ago. What once felt speculative now appears technically feasible. Nonetheless, it’s far from becoming mainstream.
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Whether Meta ever turns this into a real feature is unclear. What is clear is that the conversation around digital legacy, AI replication and online identity isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
Whirlpool has unveiled what it claims is an industry first: a refrigerator with a built-in nugget ice maker.
Announced ahead of KBIS 2026 in Florida, the new 36-inch Wide True Counter Depth French Door model integrates soft, chewable nugget ice directly into the door. This means no countertop machine is required.
For years, nugget ice has been the preserve of standalone makers cluttering up kitchen counters. However, Whirlpool’s approach folds it into a full-size fridge, complete with dual ice makers that dispense both traditional cubes and nugget ice from the same appliance.
It’s a small upgrade on paper, but for households that love the softer, chewable style popularised by cafés and fast-food chains, it removes the need for an extra gadget.
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The refrigerator comes in both three-door and four-door French Door configurations and is designed to sit flush thanks to its true counter-depth build. Whirlpool says the goal is to combine convenience with a cleaner kitchen layout, effectively replacing a niche appliance with something already central to the home.
The nugget ice feature headlines Whirlpool’s wider showcase at KBIS 2026, where the company is leaning into “industry-first” innovations across multiple categories. Alongside the fridge, Whirlpool also introduced a Front Load Laundry Tower with UV Clean technology that uses ultraviolet light during the wash cycle to help reduce bacteria without relying on higher temperatures that can fade fabrics.
In the kitchen, a new 24-inch stainless steel dishwasher is also debuting, featuring what Whirlpool describes as the first 360-degree spinning lower rack, designed to make loading and unloading easier. It pairs this with an AI-powered sensor-controlled wash cycle that automatically adjusts water temperature and soil levels.
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But it’s the nugget ice fridge that stands out. While high-end refrigeration has focused heavily on smart screens and app integration in recent years, Whirlpool is betting that practical upgrades — like better ice — might be what families actually notice day to day.
Pricing and availability haven’t yet been detailed. However, if you’ve been eyeing a countertop nugget ice maker, you may soon be able to reclaim that space entirely.
Photo credit: The New Camera A new hands-on video has emerged, purportedly showing the DJI Osmo Pocket 4 in action, and it comes directly from a Malaysian store. The clip, provided by a local DJI outlet named DronesKaki in the Kuala Lumpur area, shows a customer messing with what appears to be a production unit.
The device retains the Pocket series’ signature compact dimensions. Its three-axis gimbal performs an excellent job of keeping the footage smooth, with no shakes visible even when moving about the store. The flip out screen on the bottom measures a few inches and is noticeably brighter than previously. You also have a joystick and a few buttons on the front, as well as a couple more concealed beneath the screen that we’re not sure what they do.
Capture Stunning Footage – This vlogging camera features a 1-inch CMOS sensor and records in 4K resolution at an impressive 120fps. Capture…
Effortlessly Frame Your Shots – Get the ideal composition with Osmo Pocket 3’s expansive 2-inch touch screen that rotates for both horizontal and…
Ultra-Steady Footage – Say goodbye to shaky videos. Osmo Pocket 3’s advanced 3-axis mechanical stabilization delivers superb stability. Enjoy smooth…
One visible new feature is the camera’s tiny built-in LED light, which appears to be mounted on an adjustable arm. That will come in handy when shooting in low light, and you won’t have to carry around any extra equipment. You may also spin it to face a different direction to give yourself more angle options.
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The Pocket 4’s rumored specs sound promising, with a beefed-up 1 inch CMOS sensor that should help with low-light work and the ability to record 4K video at 120fps. According to speculations, you may be able to get 4K at 240fps slow motion or 6K at 30fps. Autofocus is said to be more faster now, and AI-assisted tracking helps keep your subject in frame.
The battery reportedly lasts up to 200 minutes, which is significantly longer than the Pocket 3’s 166 minutes. The device still weighs 179 grams and now includes Wi-Fi 6, which should make file transfers much faster.
According to the video, there is a SuperPhoto mode that utilizes artificial intelligence to analyze your environment and perform smart processing. That should provide you with some decent stills, up to 33MP at least. This might be a feature you’ve seen on other action cameras, but it’s a welcome addition to the DJI ecosystem.
With the leak, prior FCC records suggest a March 2026 arrival date. Some anticipate a late February or early March release, and while there are rumors of a Pro version with additional features such as dual cameras, the video we viewed focuses entirely on the standard model. [Source]
As common as the Xbox 360 was, the development kits (XDKs) for these consoles are significantly less so. This makes it even more tragic when someone performs a botched surgery on one of these rare machines, leaving it in dire straits. Fortunately [Josh Davidson] was able to repair the XDK in question for a customer, although it entailed replacing the GPU, CPU and fixing many traces.
The Xbox 360 Development Kit is effectively a special version of the consumer console — with extra RAM and features that make debugging software on the unit much easier, such as through direct access to RAM contents. They come in a variety of hardware specifications that developed along with the game console during its lifecycle, with this particular XDK getting an upgrade to being a Super Devkit with fewer hardware restrictions.
Replacing the dead GPU was a new old stock Kronos 1 chip. Fortunately the pads were fine underneath the old GPU, making it easy to replace. After that various ripped-off pads and traces were discovered underneath the PCB, all of which had to be painstakingly repaired. Following this the CPU had apparently suffered heat damage and was replaced with a better CPU, putting this XDK back into service.
Paul Brainerd at a Brainerd Foundation retreat in Montana. (Brainerd Foundation Photo)
In the summer of 1984, Paul Brainerd and four engineers packed into his old Saab and drove south on Interstate 5 from the Seattle area. They had been laid off after Kodak bought their employer, Atex, a company whose computerized text-processing systems let newspaper reporters and editors write and edit stories on video terminals instead of typewriters.
They had six months of savings, a rough idea for a piece of software, and no company name.
They stopped in towns along the way, pitching small newspapers and magazine publishers on a page-layout tool for desktop computers. The response was discouraging. The chains that were already buying up many of the publications took years to make purchasing decisions. A startup with six months of runway would be dead long before the first purchase order arrived.
They needed a new plan. They also needed a name: incorporation papers were due in a week.
They stopped at the Oregon State University library in Corvallis, rented a room, and started digging into books on the history of publishing. Brainerd found a chapter on Aldus Manutius, a 15th-century Venetian printer who had standardized typefaces, invented the small-book format, and brought the cost of publishing down far enough to reach ordinary people.
It was the perfect name for the revolution he had in mind.
Paul Brainerd, who went on to coin the term “desktop publishing” and build Aldus Corporation’s PageMaker into one of the defining programs of the personal computer era, died Sunday at his home on Bainbridge Island, Wash., after living for many years with Parkinson’s disease. He was 78 years old.
He left two legacies. The first was a piece of software that put the power of the printed page into the hands of millions of people who had never operated a typesetting machine. The second was a three-decade commitment to environmental conservation and philanthropy in the Pacific Northwest, pursuing it with the same intensity he brought to the desktop publishing revolution.
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Paul Brainerd at the Aldus office in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood, on July 5, 1985. (David Healy Photo)
Friends and colleagues this week remembered Brainerd as a quiet, caring and detail-oriented leader with exacting standards. He insisted that PageMaker use proper curly quotation marks instead of straight ones, and obsessed over nuances such as kerning, the precise spacing between specific letter pairs.
“Everything he did, he did with integrity,” said Laura Urban Perry, who was art director of Seattle Weekly when she spotted an ad in the back of the paper, answered it, and became Aldus’ seventh employee in 1984 when it was based in a small office near the Pioneer Square pergola.
Brainerd sat her next to the engineers so design and development would be in constant conversation. In essence, she was working in user experience before the term was widely used. They gave her the desk by the window, she said, because artists need light.
Ben Rotholtz, who had worked at a Seattle art supply store selling press-on lettering to graphic designers, went to Aldus on Christmas Eve 1985 to apply for a tech support job. He laid out a page on an Apple Macintosh and watched it come out of an Apple LaserWriter exactly as it appeared on screen. (“My jaw just dropped,” he said.)
Rotholtz started at the company in January 1986. Many of the customers needing support had never owned a computer before. PageMaker was often the reason they bought one.
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Before shipping PageMaker 3.0, Brainerd told Rotholtz that every department had signed off on the release except his. If tech support said it wasn’t ready, they wouldn’t ship. “Customer support was basically another feature in the product,” Rotholtz said. “He valued it that highly.”
Brainerd applied the same evenhanded principles to business partnerships. When Rotholtz proved to be an effective negotiator on technology licensing deals, Brainerd told him not to “over-negotiate” — to make sure the other side could survive and thrive, too.
That focus on customers is what revealed the true market for PageMaker. Brainerd and his team had expected to sell to professional graphic designers and newspaper publishers. Instead, the calls came from churches, colleges, nonprofits, and small businesses.
Brainerd loved to tell the story of a pastor from the Midwest who called to say he was using PageMaker to print 600,000 religious pamphlets. Or the mother in San Francisco who wrote to say she had used PageMaker to design and print a picture book for her children. It might seem trivial today, but back then it otherwise would have required a professional printer.
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Telling those stories to the public was a core part of the company’s strategy, said Laury Bryant, who worked at Aldus from 1987 to 1991 as a PR and investor relations leader. “Every day, there was some new and incredible way the product was being used,” she said.
To Rotholtz, the product had a clear and profound impact on the world: “PageMaker was ultimately about the democratization of printing and publishing.”
Brainerd had lived the journey that made it possible.
From letterpress to laser printer
He was born in 1947 in Medford, Ore., a small town in the Rogue Valley with an economy dependent on pears and lumber. His parents, Phil and VerNetta Brainerd, ran a photography studio and camera shop on Main Street. He grew up in darkrooms in the family business.
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He was a B+ student, more interested in the yearbook than the classroom. When he got to the University of Oregon, he majored in business but spent all his time in the journalism school. He became editor-in-chief of the Oregon Daily Emerald in his senior year.
Along the way, he converted the campus newspaper from letterpress, a centuries-old method of pressing inked metal type onto paper, to offset printing, a faster and cheaper photographic process. He did the same thing later at the University of Minnesota student paper.
It would become a recurring theme: moving from one era of publishing to the next.
After getting his master’s in journalism from the University of Minnesota, he went to the Minneapolis Star Tribune as assistant operations director, overseeing a transition from hot type, in which molten lead was cast into lines of text, to cold type, which used light and film instead.
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Paul Brainerd in 1986. (Photo By DGHealy – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0.)
It was at the Star Tribune that Brainerd had a realization that defined his career. He was sitting in the office of Charles Bailey, the paper’s editor-in-chief, listening to Bailey discuss the day’s political coverage. “I just realized, in that moment, that I was never going to be a Charles Bailey,” Brainerd later recalled. “I could be a lot of other things, but I was never going to be him.”
But he could translate between the people who built technology and the people who used it.
He joined Atex, one of the Star Tribune’s vendors, and eventually moved to Redmond to run the company’s West Coast R&D arm. When Kodak bought Atex and shut the plant down, Brainerd was 37 and out of work. He had about $100,000 in savings. He decided it was now or never.
Brainerd put up his own money to start Aldus. The engineers who joined him from Atex worked at half salary. He took no salary at all. They gave themselves six months to write a business plan, build a prototype, and find funding.
He called 50 venture capital firms. Forty-nine said no. In 1984, most investors saw no value in software companies. Microsoft had not yet gone public. The prevailing view was that software could be replicated in a weekend by a couple of guys in a garage.
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With about $5,000 left in the bank, a firm called Vanguard Ventures in Palo Alto said yes. Some of its general partners were former Apple executives who understood what software could do. They invested $864,000. A small local firm, Fluke Management Capital, also took a position.
Sparking a revolution
Their product was PageMaker, a program that let anyone lay out text and graphics on a computer screen and send it to a printer. Brainerd and his team realized that three things had to come together to make it work: Apple’s Macintosh, which provided the graphical interface; Adobe’s PostScript, which gave printers the ability to render high-quality type and images; and a piece of software that tied them together. Brainerd called it the “three-legged stool.”
At a board meeting in late 1984, an investor told them they needed to boil down their wordy description of what they were doing — putting text and graphics on pages — to two words, as Brainerd recalled in his 2006 oral history with the Computer History Museum.
Someone suggested “desktop something.”
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Brainerd said, “How about desktop publishing?”
Back at the office, the engineers were skeptical, but Brainerd went with it, and it stuck.
PageMaker 1.0 shipped in July 1985. It gave Apple a reason to exist in the corporate market. Steve Jobs later said that desktop publishing had saved the Macintosh.
PageMaker shipped on Windows in 1987, before Microsoft Word did. The Microsoft program manager who convinced Aldus to build on Windows was Gabe Newell, who later founded Valve. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer sent a bottle of Dom Perignon to celebrate the launch.
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In 1991, Soviet hardliners attempted a coup in Moscow. They locked down the traditional printing presses to control the flow of information. But they couldn’t hold back computers. Across the city, pro-democracy activists used PageMaker to produce and distribute handouts. Aldus later ran an ad about it, with the tagline: “We helped create a revolution.”
Aldus co-founder and engineering lead Jeremy Jaech, who had been one of the engineers on that fateful 1984 road trip — along with Mark Sundstrom, Mike Templeman, and Dave Walter — said Brainerd set a high bar for the people around him.
“He wasn’t a yeller,” Jaech said. “He would talk to you in a low voice and tell you all the things you were doing wrong.” But Jaech said Brainerd got the best out of people. “I worked my ass off for him because I wanted to please him — and he was hard to please.”
Jaech, who went on to co-found Visio, the diagramming software company that Microsoft later acquired for $1.5 billion, said he wouldn’t have been prepared to start his own company without everything he learned from Brainerd.
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“Product focus, customer focus, how to build a board, how to run a meeting,” Jaech said, running down the list. “There’s no question I got a lot.”
He wasn’t the only one. Bill McAleer, who joined Aldus as chief financial officer in 1988, said more entrepreneurs came out of Aldus, proportionally, than out of Microsoft at the time. Brainerd “created a great culture,” simultaneously entrepreneurial and collaborative, said McAleer, who went on to co-found the venture capital firm Voyager Capital.
The bonds among Aldus employees have lasted to this day, said Perry, the former Aldus art director who remained in touch with Brainerd over the years, interviewing him on video for a 2022 conference talk she gave about the desktop publishing revolution.
But after a decade at the helm, Brainerd was worn out. “It was my child, basically,” he said in his 2009 oral history, recorded at KCTS Television for MOHAI’s Speaking of Seattle: Experienced Leaders Project. “After 10 years of doing that, I was ready to let it go.”
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He found his exit in the 1994 merger of Aldus with Adobe, the company whose PostScript technology had been one of the three legs of the desktop publishing stool from the start.
By then, PageMaker faced stiff competition from QuarkXPress, which had captured a large portion of the professional design market. PageMaker’s strength — its broad appeal to everyone from churches to corporations — had become a strategic vulnerability.
Years after the acquisition, Aldus would end up forming the nucleus of Adobe’s campus in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. PageMaker’s desktop publishing legacy lives on in the program known today as Adobe InDesign, built from the ground up to win back the professionals.
McAleer, who oversaw the deal for Aldus and ran the subsequent integration, said it was a natural fit: “When we merged the two companies, that really created a very broad-based graphics suite for graphics professionals and people in the publishing industry.”
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The all-stock deal, valued at roughly $525 million at the time it was announced, closed in August 1994. Brainerd was Adobe’s largest individual shareholder, with stock worth roughly $100 million. He served on Adobe’s board for two years but never returned to management.
Perry wasn’t surprised by Brainerd’s shift in focus. “He just figured out what was important to do next and got after it,” she said. “It wasn’t about making money and becoming a billionaire.”
‘If I gave you the checkbook …‘
Brainerd took six weeks off and went to Alaska to hike and clear his head. Then he took a third of his proceeds from the Adobe deal and created the Brainerd Foundation.
He spent three months driving around the Pacific Northwest, talking to roughly a hundred people and asking a single question: If I gave you the checkbook, who would you write it to? The foundation focused on environmental conservation across Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, British Columbia, and Alaska.
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In 1997, Brainerd and fellow Seattle business leaders Scott Oki, Ida Cole, Bill Neukom, and Doug and Maggie Walker co-founded Social Venture Partners, which applied the venture capital model to philanthropy, as detailed in a 2018 GeekWire profile. Partners pooled their money, researched community needs, and invested in nonprofit organizations.
In 2000, Paul and Debbi Brainerd founded IslandWood, a children’s environmental learning center on 256 acres they purchased and donated on Bainbridge Island. About 3,000 students a year visit the campus to learn about watersheds, water quality, and forest ecology.
Paul and Debbi Brainerd did not have children, and he was clear about the fact that his goal was to give his money away. “He wasn’t going to take it with him,” said Bryant, the former Aldus PR and investor relations manager who later served on the IslandWood board.
Paul Brainerd and his wife, Debbi, at Camp Glenorchy, an eco-friendly retreat they developed in New Zealand.
In later years, the Brainerds built Camp Glenorchy, a net-zero eco-lodge near Queenstown, New Zealand, and spent about half of each year there. They revitalized the town’s struggling general store, helped bring internet access to the community, and donated proceeds to local causes.
Brainerd “personified the best of an era when tech innovators not only took smart ideas to scale but shared a broad vision of how to make the world a better place — and got to work to make it happen,” said Leonard Garfield, executive director of the Museum of History and Industry.
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Ted Johnson, a programmer who had worked with Brainerd at the Star Tribune, Atex, and Aldus, visited Glenorchy with his wife and watched Brainerd show off the composting systems and water treatment infrastructure with all the enthusiasm he once gave to kerning and quote marks.
“He loved nature,” Johnson said, “and he loved technology.”
Brainerd is survived by his sister, Sherry, and his wife, Debbi, who described his more than 20-year battle with Parkinson’s disease in a letter to his friends and colleagues this week.
“I have never seen anyone fight so hard and for so long, looking for traditional medical treatments, as well as non-traditional healing practices that could help him manage the growing number of symptoms that his Parkinson’s presented,” she wrote.
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He ultimately chose to take advantage of Washington state’s Death with Dignity Act, “allowing him to choose his time and place of passing,” she wrote. “He died peacefully on Sunday, viewing the Puget Sound landscape he loved, outside our home on Bainbridge Island.”
Family and friends are planning a celebration of life at IslandWood in June. Memorial donations in Paul Brainerd’s honor can be made to IslandWood at islandwood.org.
Reporting for this story included interviews with Brainerd’s former Aldus colleagues Ben Rotholtz, Laura Urban Perry, Laury Bryant, Jeremy Jaech, Bill McAleer, and Ted Johnson, coordinated with the help of Pam Miller, a former Aldus employee; oral history interviews with Brainerd conducted for the Computer History Museum (2006) and Museum of History and Industry (2009); a video interview with Brainerd conducted by Perry in 2022; and a 2018 profile by GeekWire reporter Lisa Stiffler.
ATC doesn’t do anniversaries for the sake of nostalgia. The launch of the EL50 Anniversary is a reminder of why the UK manufacturer has spent decades earning its reputation the hard way, building loudspeakers that dominate professional studios and quietly embarrass a lot of luxury home audio. Rooted in the original “50” design introduced in 1978, the EL50 Anniversary is a limited-production, fully active 3-way tower that distills nearly half a century of engineering, refinement, and real-world credibility into a single statement product.
Priced at £49,500 (USD pricing to follow), the EL50 Anniversary firmly positions itself in statement territory. That credibility, however, is not theoretical. ATC has collected dozens of industry awards over the years, including Editors’ Choice honors for studio-grade standouts like the SCM50ASL, SCM20ASL, and SCM40A—models that have become benchmarks for accuracy, control, and long-term listenability. The EL50 Anniversary builds directly on that lineage, combining ATC’s in-house drive units with its discrete active tri-amplification architecture, a technology lineage that stretches back to the SCM70 of the 1990s and has been refined ever since.
ATC EL150
Visually, the EL50 Anniversary takes its cues from the Billy Woodman-designed EL150, ATC’s first elliptical enclosure from 2006, blending functional engineering with a sense of restraint that feels intentional rather than indulgent. Napa leather detailing and carefully selected veneers underline the craftsmanship, but the message is clear: this is not a lifestyle speaker dressed up as high-end. It is a precision instrument designed to be the center of a serious system; one that looks refined, sounds uncompromising, and carries the weight of ATC’s studio-first legacy into the modern home.
ATC EL50 Anniversary Cabinet Design: Funny, You Don’t Look Italian
Building a £49,500 loudspeaker means the cabinet cannot be an afterthought. With the EL50 Anniversary, ATC has revised and upgraded its enclosure construction using advanced in house manufacturing techniques aimed at increasing stiffness and improving internal damping. The goal is straightforward: reduce cabinet borne coloration, particularly through the upper bass and midrange where structural energy can blur detail and alter tonal balance.
The bass driver is mounted within a precision turned aluminium ring that bolts directly into the cabinet face, increasing mechanical integrity and creating a more rigid coupling between driver and enclosure. The curved front baffle and softened cabinet edges are not cosmetic flourishes. They are designed to smooth the transition of driver output into the room, reduce edge diffraction, and maintain a more uniform on and off axis frequency response. In practical terms, that means improved linearity and fewer audible artifacts caused by the box itself.
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Visually, ATC has taken a more expressive approach than in the past. Hand selected and carefully matched European walnut veneers wrap the curved cabinet elements, complemented by ebony inlays on the rear panel and finished in a high gloss polyester lacquer. Upholstered napa leather panels surrounding the midrange and tweeter, along with the lower front section, introduce texture and contrast.
Yes, the use of leather will raise eyebrows in Italy. Sonus faber practically turned leather baffles into a national design language decades ago. But at this level, expectations are high. Buyers are not just paying for measured accuracy; they expect a finish that feels deliberate and distinctive. In that respect, this may be the most visually compelling loudspeaker ATC has ever produced. The engineering remains unapologetically functional, but for once, the aesthetics are stepping confidently into the spotlight alongside it.
Discrete Active Amp Pack: 200W Tri Amplified Control from the Source Forward
ATC has never treated amplification as an accessory, and the EL50 Anniversary makes that point clearly. At its core is an all new proprietary 3 channel discrete active amp pack delivering 200 watts to the bass driver, 100 watts to the midrange, and 50 watts to the high frequency unit. This is not a generic plate amp solution. It is a fully integrated tri amplified architecture built specifically around the drivers and crossover topology.
The signal path begins with a low noise balanced instrumentation input stage, followed by newly developed discrete gain blocks that implement a fourth order active crossover. The objective is lower noise, reduced distortion, and precise control over each frequency band before the signal ever reaches a power stage. By dividing and optimizing the signal at line level, ATC maintains tighter driver control and greater overall system coherence than a conventional passive network typically allows.
The power supply has been comprehensively redesigned. Each amplifier channel receives its own dedicated toroidal transformer, with an additional transformer serving the low voltage supply. The bass section benefits from a larger transformer for improved regulation under load. This topology increases available headroom and reduces intermodulation between channels, which in practical terms translates into cleaner dynamics and better separation when the music becomes demanding.
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Output stages use discrete MOSFET class A/B designs, supported by substantial heat sinking to maintain stable operating temperatures across a wide range of conditions. User selectable input sensitivity ensures proper source matching, while trigger input and link connections allow system wide power control. Live monitoring of DC offset and thermal conditions provides protection without intruding on performance.
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ATC invests an enormous amount of research and development into its amplification, and it shows. Having spent time with both passive and active versions of their loudspeakers, the advantages of going active are not subtle. The sound tends to be more controlled, more dynamic, and more transparent because the amplifiers are engineered specifically for the drivers they power. The system is modular and serviceable if required, and it eliminates the guesswork of pairing external amplifiers. With passive models, you could experiment with countless combinations and potentially spend more in the long run chasing synergy. With ATC’s active approach, the engineering decisions are already made and optimized at the factory.
Drive Units: In House Transducers Built for Control and Low Distortion
ATC’s reputation has always been tied to its in house drive units, and the EL50 Anniversary continues that philosophy without compromise. Every driver in this system is engineered to work within ATC’s active architecture, not as a catalog part dropped into a luxury cabinet.
The SH25 76S tweeter employs a high energy neodymium motor capable of generating a 2.0 tesla magnetic field, supporting extension beyond 25kHz while maintaining very low harmonic distortion. Its coil and dome assembly are supported by a dual suspension system engineered to minimize rocking modes and reduce intermodulation distortion. A coated fabric dome ensures controlled on and off axis behavior, allowing the high frequencies to integrate smoothly with the midrange rather than drawing attention to themselves with exaggerated sparkle.
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ATC’s SM75 150S midrange remains one of the company’s defining technologies. This 75mm or 3 inch soft dome driver features a large 75mm voice coil to increase power handling and reduce power compression under dynamic load. Its under hung motor structure, using a short coil in a long magnetic gap, delivers consistent drive force across its operating range and presents a stable load to the amplifier. The polymer coated fabric dome supports wide bandwidth and controlled dispersion, contributing to tonal consistency and accurate midband reproduction.
Handling low frequencies, the SB75 234SL bass driver measures 234mm or 9 inches and incorporates a 75mm voice coil for high power handling and reduced compression. ATC’s Super Linear magnet material is positioned adjacent to the voice coil to reduce third harmonic distortion in the upper bass and lower midrange by approximately 10 to 15dB. An optimized spider and roll surround allow for substantial linear excursion while maintaining control, supporting clean and dynamic low frequency output without compromising integration into the midrange.
ATC EL50 Anniversary Key Specifications:
Design: Fully active 3 way floorstanding loudspeaker
Drivers:
234mm SB75 234SL Super Linear bass driver
75mm SM75 150S soft dome midrange
SH25 76S soft dome tweeter
Frequency Response: 32Hz to 25kHz (-6dB, anechoic)
Crossover Points: 380Hz and 3.5kHz (4th order Linkwitz Riley active)
Matched Pair Tolerance: ±0.5dB
Maximum SPL: 112dB per pair at 1m (anechoic)
Built In Amplification (per speaker):
200W bass (8 ohms)
100W midrange (16 ohms)
50W tweeter (6 ohms)
Discrete grounded source MOSFET Class A/B, fanless convection cooled
THD approximately 0.0015 percent (1kHz, 1dB below rated power)
Connectivity and Control:
Balanced XLR input (pin 2 hot)
Switchable input sensitivity
Bass shelf adjustment -2dB to +3dB
12V trigger input and link
DC offset and thermal protection with active limiting
Dimensions (H x W x D): 1421 x 459 x 352mm (55.9 x 18.1 x 13.9 inches)
Weight: 63 kg / 139 lbs per speaker
Power Consumption: 77W idle, up to 600W at full output
The Bottom Line
The EL50 Anniversary is classic ATC: fully active, in house drivers, discrete tri amplification, and engineering driven priorities over theatrics. At £49,500, what makes it unique is the total system integration. The amplifiers, crossovers, and drive units are designed as one platform, eliminating amplifier matching guesswork and typically delivering tighter control and greater dynamic consistency than passive alternatives.
It does have limits. Extension to 32Hz (-6dB) is solid but not earth shaking at this price, and you will still need a quality preamplifier with balanced outputs. The cabinet footprint is manageable for a statement class tower, though at 63kg each, they are not exactly easy to move.
Compared to ultra luxury designs like the Børresen M8 Gold Signature, it is almost conservative, coming in roughly $1.1 million USD less expensive. If this is ATC’s new sub £50,000 statement and it pushes their trademark active performance even further, it is absolutely one to audition if you can afford the ticket.
Toy Fair 2026 just wrapped earlier this week and while I would have liked to spend even more time there, I have my own kids (and all their toys and trinkets) to look after. That said, there were a ton of cool new products on display at the Javits Center in New York City that set the stage for the rest of the year, so here’s a quick look at some of the most interesting releases from the largest toy show in the Western Hemisphere.
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Transformers: The Movie, Hasbro is launching an apology tour to make up for traumatizing theatergoers with the death of the most beloved Autobot back in 1986. To kick things off, Hasbro is releasing a handful of new figures alongside re-releases for some popular bots including Astrotrain, Skywarp, Snarl and Shockwave. I want to give a special shout-out to the model for Kranix, which looks incredibly accurate, as if he just leapt off the movie screen. And even though his duck-billed spaceship alt-mode might look a bit awkward, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
The crown jewel of the line might be a near-life-size version of The Matrix of Leadership, which measures more than 15 inches wide and even plays Stan Bush’s iconic song “The Touch” with the push of a button. Unfortunately, the appeal of the Matrix is so powerful that it’s already sold out, including at third-party retailers like Big Bad Toy Store, which thankfully is still taking pre-orders for the rest of the lineup after the initial stock from Hasbro dried up.
A collection of some of the new F1 Hot Wheels cars for 2026. (Sam Rutherford for Engadget)
Hot Wheels has big plans for 2026 including a new line of Pantone-colored cars, Brick Shop models like the Elite Series Aston Martin (which comes with its own 1:64 scale car) and a Monster Truck Mutant Chaos set with actual slime. However, I’d argue the company’s new F1 offerings are the cream of the crop. Not only are there a bunch of incredibly detailed 1:64 scale racecars with metal bodies, real rubber tires and accurate livery for all the big teams, there’s also a new Downhill Circuit Race course that comes with three official vehicles (Mercedes, Haas and Ferrari) featuring multiple levels and the ability to overtake or crash into other cars. If you’re like a lot of Americans who have recently fallen down the F1 rabbit hole due to Netflix’s Drive to Survive, these new officially licensed miniatures are sure to hit the spot.
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The first five-pack set of cars is available now, with more arriving later this spring before the Downhill Circuit Race course drives by sometime this fall.
Darth Vader’s TIE fighter is an all-in-one set, which means it comes included with one of Lego’s Smart Bricks, which isn’t true for every kit. (Lego)
We’ve been eagerly awaiting the first batch of playsets featuring Lego’s nifty Smart Brick after it debuted at CES. But now that the company has detailed eight new sets featuring its latest innovation, we’re even more intrigued. For me, the three standout kits are the Millennium Falcon, Luke’s Red Five X-Wing and Darth Vader’s TIE fighter because acting out the Death Star trench run complete with reactive lights and sounds will never get old. I also have a soft spot for the Ewok minifigs that come with the AT-ST set. Alternatively, the Mos Eisley Cantina kit seems like a great way to highlight the smart brick’s ability to play music or kick out some rowdy droids. The one thing to look out for, though, is the tag on the set that says whether it’s Smart Play compatible or if it’s an all-in-one set, because the former will need Smart Bricks from other kits to deliver Lego’s newfound interactivity.
Pre-orders for these are live now, with sets slated to ship on March 1.
All the new K-pop Demon Hunters toys
The HUNTR/X Battle Rumi Deluxe Fashion Doll (right) might be my favorite of the bunch. (Sam Rutherford for Engadget)
Rumi, Mira and Zoey may have been the biggest breakout stars of 2025 and Mattel is looking to keep that momentum going with a ton of new toys and figures for everyone’s favorite demon hunters. There are three new singing dolls that can belt out the trio’s hit “Golden” at the touch of a button and a deluxe figure of Rumi complete with her Four Tiger Sword. There are also a ton of other dolls and miniatures showcasing HUNTR/X, the Saja Boys and more. The one downside is that these products aren’t coming out until the fall, so you’ll have to tide yourself over with other K-pop-themed products for now.
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If Rosalina isn’t careful, Yoshi will become the biggest draw of the new Mario movie. (Spin Masters)
Yoshi seems poised to steal the spotlight from Rosalina in the upcoming Super Mario Galaxy Movie and this release from Spin Masters is only reinforcing the lovable green dino’s aura. From inside his shell, Yoshi can burst out with his signature yell. After that, you can pat his nose to make his eyes light up or get him to rock when he’s really happy. But if you want one, you’re going to have to be vigilant. Pre-orders are already sold out, so you’ll need to keep a close eye on retailers like Walmart when he officially goes on sale on February 20.
Not only do the SolarFlowers look great, they’re educational too. (Thames & Kosmos)
Technically, these went on sale last month, but Thames & Kosmos’ SolarFlowers caught my eye again at Toy Fair due to their combination of art and science. Available in four different styles, each kit features a model that you can build yourself or with your kids (recommended age 8+) that turns into a lasting showpiece. After putting the kinetic sculpture together, you can connect the included solar panel to bring the whole kit to life (no batteries required) and make the flowers spin for perpetual entertainment.
Upcoming Masters of the Universe figures
Some upcoming figures from Mattel’s line of Masters of the Universe figures. (Sam Rutherford for Engadget)
As someone who grew up during the 80s and 90s, I’m trying to be optimistic about He-Man’s return to the big screen later this summer and Mattel’s new line of figures is certainly helping. To help prime people for the movie, there’s a big range of upcoming toys highlighting He-Man, Skeletor, Battle Cat and more, all of which I would have absolutely loved as a kid. Those will be available later this spring.
Just look how cute these are. (Sam Rutherford for Engadget)
It’s hard to gauge the excitement of toys aimed at one-year-olds when they can’t read or get into Toy Fair. But as the parent of a toddler, I adore the partnership between Fisher-Price and Nintendo that has resulted in a line of Mario-themed Little People. All the big names are here, including Peach, Luigi and Bowser and there’s even a couple of super cute playsets to go with them. But perhaps the best part is that a six-pack of figures and Bower’s Airship costs under $25, which means your kid could be in for hours of fun without you spending a ton of money.
Well, almost anyone. Not every person owns a phone that can support live translation, or has the time or bandwidth to install an app (and maybe commit to a subscription).
T-Mobile wants to remove any obstacles that stand in the way of you talking to someone on a phone call. It’s introduced an upcoming Live Translation call feature, which begins testing in the spring, that puts language translation at the network level. So even if you own a basic dumb phone, you can talk with someone who speaks one of over 50 languages with the help of T-Mobile’s network AI agent.
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Registration is now open for a beta of Live Translation to subscribers of any post-paid T-Mobile plan, such as the Essentials, Experience More, Experience Beyond and Better Value plans.
“We want to make voice cool again,” said John Saw, T-Mobile president of technology and chief technology officer, citing that its customers make 6 billion international calls per year, and 40% of those people travel internationally. “Live translation is a real breakthrough in innovation by introducing the latest AI models into our voice network.”
Just as it did during the beta of what became the T-Satellite service, T-Mobile has not yet decided which plans will include the live translation calling feature. It also hasn’t decided what, if any, cost there will be. T-Satellite is currently included in the Experience Beyond and Better Value plans and available on other plans as a $10 add-on. It’s also open to customers of other providers for $10 a month.
I haven’t tried T-Mobile’s live translation but I look forward to testing it soon.
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How live translation will work
You have to dial *87* to turn on T-Mobile’s live translation calling tool.
Kevin Heinz/CNET
To turn on live translation during a call, the T-Mobile subscriber presses *87* (star-eight-seven-star), which activates the AI agent. Only one participant on the call needs to be a T-Mobile subscriber, and it will also work when the customer is roaming.
T-Mobile says there’s no setup, no voice training and no need to specify which languages to translate. The AI agent detects which languages are being spoken in real time and speaks the translation when a person stops speaking.
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The AI agent will also detect whether you’re calling from another country and select a language for the translation. If you call someone in Brazil, it might choose Portuguese, for example. If the person speaks a different language, such as Spanish instead of Brazilian Portuguese, the agent will switch immediately.
Also, the spoken translation will not sound like a robotic voice. “Our AI model can actually clone your voice in another language and preserve the intonation, the emotions and the rhythm as well,” all picked up on the fly, said Saw. He attributes the performance to the low latency inherent in T-Mobile’s 5G Advanced network.
Once activated, the feature doesn’t need to be turned off. If both speakers switch to the same language, the AI agent just stops working as the go-between.
The true test will be the quality of the translations. “We have done a lot of benchmarks for AI-powered translations,” Saw said, “and it matches the accuracy of all the established services.” He said the model is compliant with FCC 2027 captioning guidelines and meets all ADA accessibility standards.
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When I asked Saw whether conversations are recorded, even during the beta period, he said that kind of fine-tuning is being done using millions of internal-only test calls. “We don’t listen to customers’ calls, and [the AI models] are not trained on customers’ data,” said Saw, noting that the service meets all FCC guidelines for privacy.
Exactly which AI translation models are being used, or which partner companies are providing them, is something Saw declined to share. He did confirm that T-Mobile is working with several AI companies, but “we’re not going to name them because we love them all the same.”
Saw noted that the way T-Mobile’s network is designed as a platform has the advantage of being able to plug in updated AI translation models, run an upgrade overnight and make it available to hundreds of millions of phones.
Live translation is just the first T-Mobile agentic AI feature
Without pointing to specific upcoming strategies, Saw named a few other tasks that AI agents could handle in the future, such as an AI receptionist or AI concierge. Centering the AI technology in the network opens up those possibilities.
So why is the company choosing live translation as the first entry for AI-based, customer-facing network features?
“Live translation is not an easier solution to do,” Saw replied, “but it’s the right pain point to be solving today.”
The Department of Homeland Security struck a $1 billion purchasing agreement with Palantir last week, further reinforcing the software company’s role in the federal agency that oversees the nation’s immigration enforcement.
According to contracting documents published last week, the blanket purchase agreement (BPA) awarded “is to provide Palantir commercial software licenses, maintenance, and implementation services department wide.” The agreement simplifies how DHS buys software from Palantir, allowing DHS agencies like Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to essentially skip the competitive bidding process for new purchases of up to $1 billion in products and services from the company.
Palantir did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Palantir announced the agreement internally on Friday. It comes as the company is struggling to address growing tensions among staff over its relationship with DHS and ICE. After Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti was shot and killed in January, Palantir staffers flooded company Slack channels demanding information on how the tech they build empowers US immigration enforcement. Since then, the company has updated its internal wiki, offering few unreported details about its work with ICE, and Palantir CEO Alex Karp recorded a video for employees where he attempted to justify the company’s immigration work, as WIRED reported last week. Throughout a nearly hourlong conversation with Courtney Bowman, Palantir’s global director of privacy and civil liberties engineering, Karp failed to address direct questions about how the company’s tech powers ICE. Instead, he said workers could sign nondisclosure agreements for more detailed information.
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Akash Jain, Palantir’s chief technology officer and president of Palantir US Government Partners, which works with US government agencies, acknowledged these concerns in the email announcing the company’s new agreement with DHS. “I recognize that this comes at a time of increased concern, both externally and internally, around our existing work with ICE,” Jain wrote. “While we don’t normally send out updates on new contract vehicles, in this moment it felt especially important to provide context to help inform your understanding of what this means—and what it doesn’t. There will be opportunities we run toward, and others we decline—that discipline is part of what has earned us DHS’s trust.”
In the Friday email, Jain suggests that the five-year agreement could allow the company to expand its reach across DHS into agencies like the US Secret Service (USSS), Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
Jain also argued that Palantir’s software could strengthen protections for US citizens. “These protections help enable accountability through strict controls and auditing capabilities, and support adherence to constitutional protections, especially the Fourth Amendment,” Jain wrote. (Palantir’s critics have argued that the company’s tools create a massive surveillance dragnet, which could ultimately harm civil liberties.)
Over the last year, Palantir’s work with ICE has grown tremendously. Last April, WIRED reported that ICE paid Palantir $30 million to build “ImmigrationOS,” which would provide “near real-time visibility” on immigrants self-deporting from the US. Since then, it’s been reported that the company has also developed a new tool called Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) which creates maps of potential deportation targets, pulling data from DHS and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
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Closing his Friday email to staff, Jain suggested that staffers curious about the new DHS agreement come work on it themselves. “As Palantirians, the best way to understand the work is to engage on the work directly. If you are interested in helping shape and deliver the next chapter of Palantir’s work across DHS, please reach out,” Jain wrote to employees, who are sometimes referred to internally as fictional creatures from The Lord of the Rings. “There will be a massive need for committed hobbits to turn this momentum into mission outcomes.”
Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff has indicated that the company’s controversial Search Party feature might not always be just for lost dogs, . A creepy surveillance tool being used to surveil. Who could ?
“I believe that the foundation we created with Search Party, first for finding dogs, will end up becoming one of the most important pieces of tech and innovation to truly unlock the impact of our mission,” Siminoff wrote in an email to staffers. “You can now see a future where we are able to zero out crime in neighborhoods. So many things to do to get there but for the first time ever we have the chance to fully complete what we started.”
The words “zero out crime in neighborhoods” are particularly troubling. It is, however, worth noting that this is just an email and doesn’t necessarily indicate a plan by the company. Siminoff wrote the email back in October when , which was months . He did end the thread by noting he couldn’t “wait to show everyone else all the exciting things we are building over the years to come.”
One of those things could be the recently-launched “Familiar Faces” tool, which uses facial recognition to identify people that wander into the frame of a Ring camera. It seems to me that a combination of the Search Party tech, which uses the combined might of connected Ring cameras, with the Familiar Faces tech could make for a very powerful surveillance tool that excels at finding specific individuals.
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Siminoff also suggested in an earlier email to staffers that Ring technology could have been used to catch Charlie Kirk’s killer by leveraging the company’s Community Requests feature. This is a tool that allows cops to ask camera owners for footage, thanks to a partnership with the police tech company Axon.
Ring had via a partnership with a surveillance company called Flock Safety. The companies after a Super Bowl ad spotlighting the Search Party tool triggered public outcry. Ring didn’t cite public sentiment for this decision, rather saying the integration would require “significantly more time and resources than anticipated.”
Ring has responded to 404 Media’s reporting, saying in an email that Search Party “does not process human biometrics or track people” and that “sharing has always been the camera owner’s choice.” This response did not provide any information as to what the future will hold for the company’s toolset.
The organization has been . “Our mission to reduce crime in neighborhoods has been at the core of everything we do at Ring,” founding chief Jamie Siminoff said when Amazon back in 2018.
YouTube’s “Ask” button is making its way to the living room. The Gemini-powered feature is now rolling out as an experiment on smart TVs, gaming consoles and streaming devices. 9to5Google first spotted a Google support page announcing the change.
Like on mobile devices and desktop, the feature is essentially a Gemini chatbot trained on each video’s content. Selecting that “Ask” button will bring up a series of canned prompts related to the content. Alternatively, you can use your microphone to ask questions about it in your own words.
The “Ask about this video” feature on desktop (YouTube)
Google says your TV remote’s microphone button (if it has one) will also activate the “Ask” feature. The company listed sample questions in its announcement, such as “what ingredients are they using for this recipe?” and “what’s the story behind this song’s lyrics?”
The conversational AI tool is only launching for “a small group of users” at first. Google promises that it will “keep everyone up to speed on any future expansions.”
