A hot potato: After introducing Windows 11, Microsoft forced the entire PC ecosystem to turn the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) into a standard component for every new motherboard or CPU. Now, Redmond is exploiting the now-pervasive device to further strengthen the Windows activation process in the enterprise market.

Microsoft recently announced a brand-new addition to Key Management Service (KMS), a standard feature for mass activation of Windows devices in enterprises and other large-scale organizations. The KMS feature will soon rely on hardware-based security, using TPM’s encryption “brain” to verify the legitimacy of the server hosting KMS data.

Redmond explained that attackers have traditionally abused KMS to spoof the activation process, which is both a security issue and a way for individual users to avoid paying for a new Windows license. The new “TPM-based attestation” option will use the TPM for verifying the cryptographic proof of the integrity of a KMS server.

TPM-based attestation will first check the hardware identity of the KMS host, proving that the server has been verified by Microsoft as a legitimate hardware device. Then, the feature will confirm that the KMS host has not been tampered with in any way. Finally, the TPM chiplet will let the now-verified KMS host manage the mass activation requests required by the organization.

TPM-based attestation will become a mandatory requirement for KMS activation starting with the next Windows Server release, Microsoft stated. The corporation will begin to pressure business customers by sharing its “readiness messaging” in Windows Server 2025, starting from August 2026. Sysadmins will need to adapt and prepare their organizations in time, checking whether their KMS infrastructure is ready for hardware-based activation security.

“As Windows security continues to evolve, trusted activation infrastructure will play an increasingly important role,” Microsoft stated. “KMS Hardware Secured helps position your environment for the future while aligning with Microsoft’s continued investment in hardware-rooted trust.”

Popular tools designed to activate pirate copies of Windows have used KMS-based methods for quite some time. In 2025, Microsoft stopped the workaround employed in the so-called “KMS38” activation method, although “pure” KMS activation should still work as expected.

The elusive Massgrave collective provides open-source tools for “unofficial” Windows activation procedures, including an Online KMS method that needs to “phone home” to a fake KMS server every six months. TPM-based attestation might very much be the end of Online KMS-based piracy, although we will have to wait and see how the story actually ends. Massgrave recently introduced the new TSforge Activation method, which can allegedly bypass Microsoft’s entire DRM architecture for software product activation.

EPISODE 14 The morning coffee in Mission Control is interrupted by a hesitant tapping at the door. Our current office temp has an issue.

“It’s the printer,” she says, apologetically. “It makes a noise.”

“When it’s printing, or all the time?” the PFY asks.

“Sort of both. It starts making the noise before it starts printing, then keeps making the noise for about 20 seconds after.”

The PFY and I pop out and take a look, and the printer is indeed making a tiny squeaking noise, from the time it wakes up until the time it lapses back into low-power mode.

“I know it’s hardly noticeable, but the office is so quiet…” she says.

“Leave it with us,” I say.

“So you can fix it?”

“A machine with an extortionately priced service contract, voided the moment we open a panel that we’re not authorized to open?” I ask. “Not a chance!”

“Oh,” she says, disappointedly.

“But what we can do,” I say, moving a bunch of paper from my rarely used desk phone and pressing a speed dial button, “is log a fault.”

Barely 15 minutes later, I have negotiated the tricky maze of passages, all alike, which comprise the printer company’s ancient IVR system, and am speaking to an actual engineer.

“… and what’s the serial number?” he asks.

I rattle off the sequence of numbers that I took a snapshot of earlier.

“Oh no, that sounds like the controller serial number,” he sighs. “I need the printer serial number. It’s on the back panel of the machine, underneath the sticker with our support number on it. If you want to ring back when you get that I ca-“

“It’s OK, I have that here,” I say, having been to this particular rodeo a time or two before.

Ploy #1 in the Printer Engineer playbook is to ask for the serial number. If the user actually has the serial number, ask for some other number, i.e. the FULL model number, the total page count, a 40-digit service number from the sticker – where the last two digits are mysteriously missing, etc. When they can’t supply it, get them to ring back, endure another 15 minutes of ambiguous and clunky IVR, and then hopefully get fielded to some other engineer.

I rattle off the new number, the model number, the revision number – which is helpfully located on the base of the machine. Like I said, not the first time we’ve ridden this bronco…

“And what seems to be the problem?” the engineer asks, unable to shake us.

“It’s probably the fuser unit,” I say.

“It’s probably the fuser unit, or it is the fuser unit?” he asks.

“I can’t be sure – I’m no printer scientist,” I admit. “Could you make it in this morning?”

Ploy #2. You can never make it when they want you to make it.

“Oh… this morning I’m fully booked up.”

“This afternoon then?” I ask.

“Let me see. Hmmm. No, it looks like I’ve got a couple of calls outside the city.”

“Tomorrow morning?”

“Hmmmmmmmmm, no, but I can possibly make it tomorrow between 1 and 3pm – if that works.”

“OK,” I sigh. “I suppose we can make that work.”

“And I’ll need a park for the van.”

“Right. I’ll get one coned off outside the building.”

…

“OK,” I say to the temp. “He’ll be here tomorrow at 3:45.”

“He said between 1 and 3,” she points out.

Ploy #3. Turn up late and leave a note asking the user to rebook.

We all know the rules.

… The next day, 3:40pm …

“And here he comes,” the PFY says, as we watch a small white van pull up beside the road cones we installed early this morning. The driver gets out, moves the cones, along with the “DANGER, SINK HOLE” sign that we had made – complete with branding from the local council.

Scant minutes later, he’s in the main office, looking at the printer.

“I thought you said it was a fuser unit?” he states.

“No, no, I said it was probably the fuser unit,” I counter.

“It’s got nothing to do with the fuser unit,” he replies.

“My bad,” I say. “But then would you have turned up if I’d told you it was a squeaky bearing?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, but would you then have said that you’d need to order some replacement bearings?”

“I do need to order some replacement bearings.”

“And in a week’s time, will you ring us back, say the bearings are discontinued, that this particular printer model is end of line, and that for the sake of compatibility we’d need to replace this printer and every other printer in the building for an eye-wateringly large price?”

Ploy #4. The Upsell.

“This printer model is end of line. We don’t have spares either,” he admits.

“So,” I say, “what I need you to do is this: take this printer up to the fourth floor, tell them that you’re upgrading their printer with this one, which has 32-bit color, blacker blacks, a memory expansion, and an advanced feeder mechanism – then bring their one down here.”

“It’s the same printer,” he replies. “They’re all exactly the same.”

“Yes, but only you, me, my assistant – and now our temp – know this.”

“No, I don’t think I could do th-“

“20 quid,” I say, waving a note in his eyeline.

“Be back in five,” he says, pocketing the cash faster than a FIFA official.

True to his word, he’s back in five, pushing a printer in front of him.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” he says, parking the printer in front of me and grabbing his tool kit.

…

“Are you sure that he actually replaced the printer?” the temp asks, as the PFY wheels the printer out of the main office to Mission Control. “Only, our printer had a red smudge on the front panel… and I think the replacement printer did too.”

Ploy #5. Take the money and run.

“We’ll only know by listening,” I say.

“Listening for what?” she asks.

“Shh!” I whisper.

And the temp’s right, the office is quiet. So quiet you could hear a slight squeaking noise from a worn bearing. Or, off in the distance, the sound of a large multifunction printer hitting a small white van from a great height…

Now seems like a good time to revisit the recent Chess Records 75th Anniversary Series audiophile reissue of Chuck Berry’s 1959 one-LP masterpiece, Chuck Berry Is on Top. With one of Mr. Berry’s most famous musical progeny, the Rolling Stones, back on the charts with their very strong Foreign Tongues LP, newer fans discovering the glories of good old rock ’n’ roll would be wise to take a very enjoyable history lesson with Berry’s iconic third studio album.

Related Reviews:

For those unfamiliar with the Stones’ deep repertoire, they covered numerous Chuck Berry songs over the years, and much of their musical style, especially early on, was influenced by his writing and overall sound. Their versions of “Carol,” “Little Queenie,” “Around and Around,” and “You Can’t Catch Me” made that debt rather difficult to miss.

Effectively a greatest-hits collection in all but name, most of the tracks on Chuck Berry Is on Top were originally issued as 45 rpm singles during the late 1950s. Many became Top 40 hits, including “Almost Grown” (No. 32 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 3 on the R&B chart), “Carol” (No. 18 Hot 100, No. 12 R&B), “Maybellene” (No. 5 Hot 100, No. 1 R&B), “Sweet Little Rock and Roller,” “Johnny B. Goode” (No. 8 Hot 100, No. 2 R&B), “Little Queenie” (No. 80 Hot 100), “Jo Jo Gunne,” “Roll Over Beethoven” (No. 29 Hot 100, No. 2 R&B), and “Around and Around.”

In terms of sound quality, this new reissue of Chuck Berry Is on Top is exemplary. The project was supervised by Chad Kassem of Analogue Productions, a division of Acoustic Sounds. Disc mastering and lacquer cutting were handled by Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab, located within Quality Record Pressings (QRP), where the albums were manufactured.

Much like an Acoustic Sounds or Blue Note Tone Poet Series reissue, Chuck Berry Is on Top is packaged in a deluxe, expanded, laminated gatefold cover, rather than the single-pocket, flat-matte design of the original. Each disc is housed in an audiophile-grade, plastic-lined inner sleeve. The iconic black Chess Records label design has also been reproduced. Some original pressings used a blue label, but it is still a very cool detail.

For those dead set on finding an original 1959 copy of Chuck Berry Is on Top, tempered expectations may be in order, as copies in good condition remain quite rare. At the time of writing, only eight are listed on the vinyl marketplace Discogs, none graded higher than VG, with asking prices ranging from $35 to $185. It took me forever to find an original copy in playable condition out in the wild, so unless you are willing to pay collector prices, be prepared for a very long search.

That said, the prospect of buying a pristine new 180-gram pressing of Chuck Berry Is on Top, made from the original monaural master tapes and supervised by one of the most highly regarded vinyl production teams in the world, for $38.98 at Amazon seems like the logical choice for most fans.

Were the cover on my original copy not quite so nice, I might purge it entirely, knowing that this new Chess Records 75th Anniversary Series audiophile reissue will be my go-to listening copy for the foreseeable future. It sounds excellent and remains very much in keeping with the character of my original, minus the clicks and pops, of course. Perhaps it will become your go-to copy as well.

Our Ratings

★★★★★★★★★★ Music

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound Quality

★★★★★★★★★★ Pressing Quality

Where to buy:

Mark Smotroff is a deep music enthusiast / collector who has also worked in entertainment oriented marketing communications for decades supporting the likes of DTS, Sega and many others. He reviews vinyl for Analog Planet and has written for Audiophile Review, Sound+Vision, Mix, EQ, etc.  You can learn more about him at LinkedIn.

Related Reading:

IBM expects HRL’s technical breakthroughs will help drive its quantum programme for ‘decades to come’.

IBM is acquiring Boeing and General Motors’ jointly-owned research and development institute HRL Laboratories.

HRL’s expertise in silicon-spin qubit engineering is expected to help IBM in its long-term quantum plans. The lab was established in 1948 as Hughes Research Laboratories by the late prominent aviation expert Howard Hughes. Details of the transaction were not disclosed.

IBM has major ongoing quantum computing projects, including a roadmap to delivering Quantum Starling by 2029, expected to be fault-tolerant and 20,000-times more powerful than today’s quantum computers – capable of running 100m quantum operations.

As per IBM’s plans, Starling will be followed up with an even more powerful quantum computer called Blue Jay, projected to be capable of 1bn quantum operations.

In May, the company pledged more than $10bn to quantum research over the next five years and announced ‘Anderon’, the world’s first pure-play quantum wafer foundry in the making, with support from the US government.

The acquisition gives IBM a boost in quantum research and allows the incoming team from HRL to partner closely with Anderon to scale quantum manufacturing and enable faster learning cycles. Quantum technology has the potential for commercial impact across industries, including in life sciences, defence and navigation, according to IBM.

HRL’s support could also allow IBM to innovate and industrialise new technologies such as quantum sensing, and conduct deeper research into the sensors detecting and capturing subtle measurements.

Combined with additional technical capabilities in cryogenics, control electronics, qubit interconnects and packaging, IBM anticipates the acquisition will fuel its quantum programme for “decades to come” and help develop next-generation computing, communications and mission-critical systems.

HRL has also innovated in quantum materials that have the potential to unlock better semiconductors and more sensitive sensors.

“The HRL team will help IBM push even farther forward toward the frontiers of quantum innovation,” said Jay Gambetta, IBM’s director of research and an IBM fellow.

“This talented group of researchers brings a broad portfolio of technologies that will strengthen IBM’s long-term plans to deliver useful quantum computing to the world, bringing together advances across quantum computing, quantum sensing and quantum networking to enable the applications of the future.”

The announcement comes after a disappointing quarter for IBM, which reported a 1pc revenue growth and a marginally lower net income compared to the same quarter last year. The company lowered its 2026 forecast as a result.

“Joining IBM is the natural next chapter for what we have built at HRL, where our team has dedicated years to exploring paths to how future quantum computers could be built at scales that today seem impossible,” said Rob Vasquez, the president and CEO at HRL.

“We now look forward to leveraging IBM’s industry leadership and working alongside their world-class talent on fundamental infrastructure to take this vision forward.

“Additionally, our cutting-edge physical and information science innovations will combine with their advanced research capabilities to deliver an unmatched suite of technology solutions for our commercial and government customers.”

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

• Nearly 400 4K Blu-ray users shared info about player problems
• There’s a huge gap between the best and worst in the poll
• Panasonic will be happy; Sony not so much

One of the things I like best about Reddit is the way people share their experiences of particular products: whether it’s a kitchen knife, a portable AC or a Gibson guitar I know I’ll be able to find sage advice on what to buy and what to watch out for. And now the good people of r/hometheater have come together to talk about the best 4K Blu-ray players and their reliability.

The poll was carried out by r/hometheater poster “requieminadream” and generated nearly 400 responses — almost double the number of previous poll respondents — from r/4KBluray, r/Bluray, r/PhysicalMediaMatters, the AVS Forums, and the Blu-ray.com forums. And there are some very clear differences between different firms’ Blu-ray devices.

A growing number of professionals have started using AI tools to record every conversation they have, and the people being recorded usually have no idea it is happening. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that apps like Granola, which transcribes meetings without deploying a visible bot or announcing its presence, have made ambient recording so frictionless that users are now bringing the technology out of conference rooms and into personal settings. The shift raises legal and ethical questions that neither the tools nor their users appear ready to answer.

Granola, which raised 125 million dollars earlier this year at a valuation of one and a half billion dollars, works by recording audio directly through the user’s device microphone rather than joining a call as a separate participant. That means no bot icon appears in the meeting and no automated message tells attendees they are being recorded. Michelle Lim, CEO of meeting software company Flint, told the Journal that she wishes Granola were running in every room she enters, a statement that captures both the appeal and the problem.

Some users have taken the concept well beyond the workplace, with Emmie Chang, founder of startup Yuzu Labs, telling the Journal she records first dates and sends the transcripts to Claude for feedback on how the conversation went. Others described recording therapy sessions, doctor visits, and casual dinners with friends, all without telling the other person. In the eleven US states that require all-party consent for recordings, including California, Florida, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, doing so without disclosure is a potential felony under state wiretapping laws.

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The workplace implications are already materialising. Amy Dufrane, CEO of the Human Resource Certification Institute, told the Associated Press that AI note-takers pose enormous organisational risk, arguing that companies should not use them at all. Reports have surfaced of AI notetakers remaining on video calls after employees have left, silently documenting informal conversation and gossip, and privacy law expert Alex Alben warned that automatic recording involving third parties creates liability that most users have not considered.

Researchers have raised a separate concern that goes beyond privacy, with studies on cognitive offloading finding a negative correlation between heavy AI use and critical thinking. The worry is not just that people are recording without consent, but that they are losing the ability to listen, remember, and process conversations on their own. As these tools become cheaper and more invisible, the question is no longer whether they will spread but whether anyone will bother to ask permission first.

Amazon’s weekend Apple sale is going strong, with price drops of up to $150 off Apple Watch, AirTag, and iPad devices.

Apple Watch Series 11 from $299

Save $100 on several Apple Watch Series 11 styles.

Apple Watch shoppers have plenty of reasons to take a look at Amazon, where several Series 11 styles are $100 off. The standout offer drops the 42mm GPS model to $299, within $20 of the lowest price on record.

42mm Apple Watch Series 11 deals

• 42mm Apple Watch Series 11 GPS (Aluminum Case, Sport Band): $299 ($100 off)
• 42mm Apple Watch Series 11 GPS + Cellular (Aluminum Case, Sport Band): $399 ($100 off)
• 42mm Apple Watch Series 11 GPS + Cellular (Titanium Case, Milanese Loop): $649 ($100 off)

46mm Apple Watch Series 11 deals

• 46mm Apple Watch Series 11 GPS (Aluminum Case, Sport Band): $329 ($100 off)
• 46mm Apple Watch Series 11 GPS + Cellular (Aluminum Case, Sport Band): $429 ($100 off)
• 46mm Apple Watch Series 11 GPS + Cellular (Titanium Case, Milanese Loop Band): $699 ($100 off)

Get 4 AirTags for just $89 at Amazon.

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Amazon’s weekend AirTag sale drops the 4-pack down to $89 after a 10% discount.

The second-generation AirTag tracker builds on the original design while adding hardware improvements aimed at helping users locate lost items from greater distances. And according to Amazon, the deal is selling fast.

Today’s AirTag 2 deals

iPads from $399

Get an iPad 11 for $399 with month-end deals.

Amazon is also running discounts across Apple’s iPad line, with month-end deals delivering prices as low as $399.

Weekend iPad sale

• iPad A16 (128GB, Wi-Fi): $399 ($50 off)
• iPad mini 7 (128GB, Wi-Fi): $549 ($50 off)
• M4 iPad Air 11-inch (128GB, Wi-Fi): $689.99 ($60 off)
• M4 iPad Air 13-inch (128GB, Wi-Fi): $899 ($50 off)
• M5 iPad Pro 11-inch (1TB, Wi-Fi, Standard Glass): $1,649.99 ($150 off)
• M5 iPad Pro 13-inch (256GB, Wi-Fi, Standard Glass): $1,399.99 ($100 off)
• M5 iPad Pro 13-inch (1TB, Wi-Fi, Standard Glass): $1,949.99 ($150 off)

A new memory cartoon is waiting for me. When I open the app, I see a multipanel strip called Big Little Moments. It appears as soon as I plug the Looki AI device back in to recharge, after almost a month not wearing it. It shows moments of me at a bar with my friend in LA, watching a stage presentation, eating a meal, seeing a demo, two women sitting across from me and then just me, walking with a phone in my hand.

These moments are from two days in June, when I wore the Looki to the Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, California. I’d been wearing it almost nonstop since April. I wore it to Apple’s WWDC, to Google I/O. I wore it to my Princeton college reunion. I wore it at home and commuting. And then I stopped.

The Looki L1 is a little black pendant, sort of watch-sized, with a camera on the front and microphones hidden somewhere. It has a clip and a lanyard. It can be worn around the neck or left propped on a desk. It’s an AI wearable but, unlike smart glasses, it has a battery that can run a whole day while intermittently recording audio and video clips. My colleague Katie Collins tried it last year, but I never got to test one out until this spring and summer.

AI wearables of all shapes and forms are everywhere now. OpenAI may be next to offer one. Some of these devices come in glasses form. Some are pendants. Some are pins. Some are earbuds. As AI keeps spreading everywhere and trying to absorb more of our personal information that it can craft into patterns and narratives, wearables are the physical form of trying to give AI eyes, ears and, increasingly, memories of your own life.

Everyone feels wary of smart glasses lately, because of the outer-facing cameras, tech’s pushy AI relentlessness and Meta’s poor reputation for privacy. When I tell people I’m wearing Meta Ray-Bans, they tend to ask me, “Is it recording me now?” I say no, then point to the Looki around my neck. “But this probably is.”

The Looki device follows in a long line of lifelogging wearables that go back over a decade. In 2014, I reviewed an occasionally recording lifelogging camera called the Narrative Clip, which promised to capture our memories. I found its memory, in practice, to be full of holes. In 2026, that’s pretty much still the case.

The Looki L1 promises a fun way to remember and record life’s moments, to have a companion to travel with you and save moments without having to record them. To be an all-day wearable camera.

But when I wore one, it made me feel awkward, like I was being a jerk or a spy. At best, it’s odd; at worst, it feels like I’m a guy with, well, an always-on camera. Which, in 2026, isn’t nearly as “fun” as it was in 2014, it turns out. I tested the Looki because I was curious, and because I’m legitimately interested in the future of assisted memory tech. 

What the Looki L1 is, and isn’t

Looki L1 is an odd duck product, as many AI wearables are. The $250 lifelogging camera has no subscription, although the product team I chatted with suggested that some services could be subscription-based down the road. It uses its own proprietary AI service, and can’t hook into any other platforms such as Google Gemini, ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude, although it borrows models from several sources.

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I do like the snap-on magnetic pendant strap that doubles as a charging dongle and can serve as a desktop stand if you want to perch it somewhere to take photos or video. The magnetic clasp works through clothing, too, so the pendant could look like a clip-on pin. But I don’t like that the Looki’s active recording LEDs are small. They’re less noticeable than those on Meta’s glasses by far.

There’s a phone app that the Looki pairs with, just as a smartwatch or pair of smart glasses would. That’s how the pendant gets its firmware updates and uploads its recorded clips to your phone and the cloud.

Looki has an “AI Mode” that stays on and intermittently records short video clips (no more than about 5 seconds each), apparently picking moments of interest. In my three months of use, it didn’t seem to have any pattern. There are dedicated buttons to trigger manual audio recordings, still photos or video recordings. There’s also a front touchpad, which I could hold down to summon a voice AI to chat with for feedback on what I’d recorded, or anything else. I rarely used it.

The Qualcomm chip on the Looki is an older watch-oriented model, but it still lasts a day on a charge. The future for pendants like these is likely even longer battery life, based on the specs of Qualcomm’s newest AI-optimized chips, released this year. These types of pendants are probably going to do even more on-device without relying on the cloud at all.

But, for the most part, the Looki is a repository. It sucks up images and videos, and then syncs them over to its companion phone app (which takes several minutes) and cloud-analyzes them later (which can take up to several hours). It’s like burying a time capsule and then digging it up later that day to see what you’ve got.

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And what did I get? Mostly a hot, sometimes fascinating, often awkward mess. 

As a memory maker, full of holes

The best thing the Looki does is generate comic book-like generative AI images based on things it automatically captures. The results vary in style and structure, with absolutely no discrete controls to make anything turn into a comic if you’d like it to. You just have to get lucky, I guess.

A few images of people I met, comic-transformed, are fun. A few story panel-type comics tried to distill a day, or several days, into a narrative. Sometimes they were clever (one, a map of New York and New Jersey showing me commuting, seeing tech demos and going to a Princeton reunion) felt sharable. One, of my trip to WWDC, was weirdly focused on my pre-event breakfast with my colleague Bridget Carey rather than all the hours I wore it during Apple’s keynote, which was the whole point of the day.

Sometimes the Looki auto-inserted me into images, inventing a narrative. (Since I’m wearing the pendant, I was clearly not in the picture.) My comic portrait ranged from oddly accurate to something more like Marc Maron. One comic picture of me buying a coffee at a Hyatt was inexplicably done in Minecraft-style blocks.

As for the rest of the recorded memories? There are AI-made supercuts of videos, set to odd preselected music. The tone often felt generic, and the captured videos are frequently at bad angles. When I had coffee with friends, several of the clips were accidental crotch shots. Other times, faces were cut out of the picture. (Did I need to wear the pendant higher up?)

The Looki seems to take video clips but not photos automatically, which were harder to download and share with friends. Also, a lot of the captured clips were either too brief or the people in them were discussing things that nobody approved sharing in the first place. If you’re wearing a Looki, prepare to do a lot of warning, explaining and apologizing.

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Do I like having them to look over? Sort of, but so few are actually good. You can just take photos and videos when you want, rather than having the intermittently recording AI mode on. But then, if you do that, the device doesn’t feel like a true lifelog.

Sadly, a lot of the captured supercuts just showed me on my phone. Which, of course, just illustrated a sad state of my own life. I am on my phone a hell of a lot. Too much. And the comics, the autocaptures, they all tended to have at least one shot capturing me looking at my phone, since the pendant was around my neck, over and over and over.

Besides keeping these lifelog videos and autocaptures and creating comic strips, it weirdly tries to analyze meals I’ve eaten (not to any true success), and also pops occasional random notifications based on location, I think, and what the camera sees. These notifications are meant to be smart and context-aware. Sometimes they’re oddly on point (telling me I’m at AWE and reminding me of the start of the opening keynote, even though I never told it I was at AWE). Other times it just noted a store or maybe someone standing nearby. Again, like everything else the Looki does, these notifications can’t be customized at all.

As a public device, it’s embarrassing

My son has told me to take off the Looki pendant more times than I can count. My wife shamed me about my decision to wear it in a Japanese supermarket (I didn’t). People who saw it at public events, like WWDC or Google I/O, were either mildly curious or mildly offput. I awkwardly took it off a lot and stuck it in my pocket on trains, in bathrooms and, increasingly, many other places.

At a Whole Foods, someone next to me noticed it as I was shopping for chocolate bars and asked if it was recording. I explained it might be and that I test tech products for my job. They said they weren’t that upset, they knew that people are wearing cameras more and more. I didn’t believe they weren’t upset. And that reaction, too, has stuck with me. I wear smart glasses at least half the time now. Where does that put me on the socially acceptable spectrum? Don’t tell me.

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I still find smart glasses less personally embarrassing, because they look and function like actual glasses. And, in reality, Meta’s glasses very infrequently record anything. While Meta has an autocapture mode for the glasses now, running it would wear out the battery fast.

The Looki, meanwhile, does nothing at all except be a AI-enabled camera pendant on your neck. To remember to charge that up and wear it, like an odd necklace that nobody asked for… I just can’t justify it. I made myself wear it for more weeks than I thought I would. Now, it’s out of batteries and sitting in a bag somewhere. I gave up.

The Looki was really just my Memory Cartoon Generator, for the most part, as you can see from all the images I shared. They’re interesting, but I can’t choose when they happen, or how they happen. And they’re not enough to keep me wearing the Looki. As you can see above, sometimes it even captured when I went to my home bathroom. (I never kept it on in an actual public bathroom, but this is exactly the nightmare stuff that the Looki embodies.)

If devices like the Looki could be actual memory assistants, deeply aware and able to help see and guide you — Or, if they were better cameras, taking photos I’d actually use — Or, if it could hook into AI services I actually semi-trusted and recognized — well, maybe. Right now, the Looki is more like a harbinger. Of glasses that really and truly will have longer battery life, someday soon, and be able to record all day long, if intermittently. And more AI pendants.

When that day happens, then yes, maybe my glasses will truly be recording all the time. And yes, that’s concerning. But even more concerning is the lack of any tech company efforts to manage privacy and deeper control over these random AI wearables. Or to elevate them beyond just gimmicks.

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What I learned is I hit my limit. The Looki is not on me anymore. But the spirit of the Looki is everywhere else, coming fast.

Scott Stein

Editor at Large

I started with CNET reviewing laptops in 2009. Now I explore wearable tech, VR/AR, tablets, gaming and future/emerging trends in our changing world. Other obsessions include magic, immersive theater, puzzles, board games, cooking, improv and the New York Jets. My background includes an MFA in theater which I apply to thinking about immersive experiences of the future.

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