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‘We hear you’: After years of feedback, Canva finally brings offline mode

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  • Canva Offline Mode might be one of Create 2026’s unsung heroes
  • Learn Grid educational resources also available to all
  • Design and buy merch through the Print Shop

Canva AI 2.0 took the headlines at the company’s annual Create conference, but the announcements weren’t done as its co-founders introduced the hotly anticipated Canva Offline.

For the first time ever, the online-first tool now supports full offline editing with automatic syncing when connections are restored, which the company sees as pivotal for two distinct reasons.

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The $100-a-month workforce: How an entrepreneur bootstrapped a Portland delivery startup with AI bots

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Fetchlist founder Taylor Marean, left, helps move a used sofa. (Fetchlist Photo)

Taylor Marean is a lifelong entrepreneur, tracing his first venture to mowing lawns in his Hood River, Ore., neighborhood at age 11. His latest startup is Fetchlist, which pairs delivery services with platforms like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. The company handles the awkward logistics of coordinating with strangers and moving bulky items — tasks that can prevent secondhand goods from finding new homes.

Marean — who also runs a Columbia River-based tourism business renting kayaks and e-bikes and shuttling visitors to outdoors destinations — is set on bootstrapping his startup. That has him leaning heavily on artificial intelligence to get Fetchlist up and running.

“I would definitely consider myself a power user of AI,” he said. “It’s insane what can be done now by one person. I feel like I have a whole team working for me, because I have a bunch of bots that literally work 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

His virtual employees cost $100 a month thanks to Anthropic’s Claude Pro, his prime source for agentic AI.

Marean’s startup helps online marketplace shoppers by acting as an intermediary and delivery service. When a buyer finds a listing they like, Fetchlist contacts the seller and sets up a time for one of the company’s drivers or “fetchers” to check out the item and review it with the buyer. If the buyer is in, that person pays the seller for the item as well as Fetchlist to move and deliver it to them.

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Marean marshals his team of AI bot workers from his laptop. (Fetchlist Photo)

Those are the human roles. Behind the scenes, Marean is using AI agents to build and revise his website. The bots are posting ads and listings on Craigslist in popular categories to drum up interest. The agents are contacting sellers of large items, zeroing in on those whose couch or table has languished for a couple of weeks to see if they want to offer delivery.

Marean said he’s always thinking of how to get customers and experimenting with new approaches. “The agents test all of my ideas — and I’m not saying that they all work,” he said. But the costs are so low, “there’s no harm in trying.”

The startup launched earlier this year, is operating just in Portland for now and has completed dozens of deliveries. The service costs $30–$75 depending on mileage, and large items requiring two people to move them are double the rate.

Marean said it has been easy to hire fetchers, many of whom are DoorDash and Uber drivers with large vehicles that are underutilized for those services. They work as independent contractors, and Fetchlist is currently passing all of the fee to them and operating at a small loss.

There’s competition in the secondhand sales sector beyond existing platforms, though each targets different challenges in resale. In the Pacific Northwest, Gone.com is a Seattle venture focused on clearing out large spaces of unwanted items and selling desks, chairs and other goods. Portland-based Sella charges customers a flat fee for reselling and shipping their used items.

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Marean realizes that while his company aims to help the environment, the bots he deploys contribute to the AI infrastructure demands — model training, data centers — that are straining energy and water systems worldwide.

When considering the relative climate and sustainability impacts, Marean said, “the individual AI query is orders of magnitude cleaner than buying a single piece of flat-pack furniture.”

He hopes that if Fetchlist is successful, it can address a fundamental problem with modern society.

“For a lot of people, it’s easier just to get rid of something in the garbage than it is to even deal with the hassle of selling it on Craigslist or something like that,” Marean said. “We’re just trying to be a solution in climate change and in sustainability.”

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Logitech Pro X2 Superstrike Review: This Gaming Mouse Has No Clicks and It’s Perfect

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Gaming mice used to be at the forefront of exciting features, with brands working hard to gain a competitive edge. Sadly, that hasn’t happened in the last few years, as we’ve slowly gone down the numbers-game road, which isn’t scenic at all. These days, it’s only about which mouse has a DPI reaching high enough to operate a projector screen, or a weight so light it’s difficult to comprehend if you’re even holding something or not. Logitech, however, with its all-new Pro X2 Superstrike, has seen this trend and just said, “yeah, no.”

So, what’s the Pro X2 Superstrike about? It’s a mouse, of course, that takes the clicks of a conventional one and throws them away. Instead, the Superstrike takes a page from the MacBook playbook by borrowing its haptic motors for the clicking mechanism. It’s something that’s never been done before, yet still makes a ton of sense for serious gamers. But are these latency benefits even worth it? To answer this very question, I used the Pro X2 Superstrike for over two weeks. Spoiler alert: it might be the best gaming mouse I’ve used. Here’s why.

Logitech Pro X2 Superstrike Review

Hisan Kidwai

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Summary

The Logitech Pro X2 Superstrike is something genuinely different. The haptic buttons are one-of-a-kind and work exceptionally well for both gaming and general productivity. In fast-paced games, the reduced actuation distance can actually make a noticeable difference to reaction times. The Logitech G Hub software is easy to use and offers plenty of customization, while the lightweight design makes it comfortable for long sessions.

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Design & No Clicks???

Top down shot of the mouse

Despite the all-new mechanism, which we’ll talk about soon, Logitech hasn’t changed much about the Superstrike’s design. Instead, it bears a striking resemblance to the SuperLight 2, and that’s not a bad thing. I’m a fan of this new Stormtrooper-inspired color with the white shell and black buttons. The shape is fairly standard without all the ergonomic trickery. The finish is smooth, doesn’t attract any fingerprints, and is super easy to clean, if you like eating Doritos like me when gaming. Weight is kept at 61g, for which the company pulled a lot of strings, like using titanium screws and drilling holes in the PCB. While comfort is subjective, my pain-prone wrists did like the Superstrike during long gaming sessions.

Let’s talk buttons and clicks. The two extra buttons on the left side are the standard kind, meaning they push down when you press them. The real magic happens on the left and right clicks. Logitech has developed a new system called HITS (Haptic Inductive Trigger System). It’s a bit of a mouthful for something that means the mouse combines tiny haptic motors with an electrical sensor to register a click. Remember the Hall Effect on the keyboard? It’s pretty much the same thing, except you can change when the click is registered.

Closeup of the HITS clicks

The benefits of this system are pretty obvious. In most mice, the click is activated after 0.6mm of travel. It’s not a lot, but still more than an eSports player in the heat of a battle would like. With the Superstrike, you can set it to activate after just 0.1mm of travel. That’s incredibly sensitive and means your movements will be registered faster than anyone else’s when coming out of a corner in Valorant or CS2. Logitech claims up to a 30ms reduction in latency.

Speaking of those clicks, I do like them a lot. If you’ve used a MacBook trackpad, then these would be familiar. They are not quite as sharp but still really tactile. You can configure how hard the click should be. The feedback at the highest setting is simply lovely, and I’d actually much rather have these than buttons. What makes things even better is the consistency. Usually, when playing games that require rapid right-clicking, you need to press the button at the optimal area to minimize resistance. But with the Superstrike, you can tap anywhere, and both the feedback and actuation would remain the same.

Gaming on the Logitech Pro X2 Superstrike

A person gaming on the Logitech Pro X2 Superstrike

Let me get one thing straight: the Pro X2 Superstrike won’t make a bad gamer like me into an eSports player. It can, however, put a good player into eSports territory. I noticed that difference right away, when I first used the mouse, and thought, “Yup, this is it.” Logitech’s Hero sensors play beautifully with the HITS system. Sure, DPI can be set to an oblivion-like 44,000, but for the sake of my tiny 27-inch monitor, I kept it between 900 and 2,000. Tracking was more precise than any other mouse I’ve tested.

Let’s talk numbers. For testing, I picked up a generic ASUS mouse that used the same 2.5 GHz connection. The software of choice was AimLabs, a training ground for players to improve their reaction time by quickly hitting different objects on the screen. I first locked in with the regular mouse (three tries) and got an average reaction time of 243ms (not bad, right?). Then I switched to the Superstrike, with the clicks set to activate as soon as possible. In my best attempt, the reaction time was 218ms, which was noticeably better than my usual results.

Logitech Pro X2 Superstrike against a regular Asus mouse

But that’s not all the Superstrike has to offer. That’s because it introduces Rapid Triggers to a mouse for the very first time. For the uninitiated, Rapid Triggers are a keyboard technology that allows the keys to reset and re-actuate instantly after a slight lift of your finger.

I loved how it all comes together in games like CS2, where I went from averaging a few kills to at least landing some headshots. And that pretty much explains the Pro X2 Superstrike. It’s the best tool for gaming, and something you can rely on to help climb the eSports ladder.

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For all my fellow Excel and Google Sheets users, while Superstrike isn’t really designed for productivity, I still used it as my daily driver for research. The results? I was doing spreadsheets a tad bit quicker thanks to the haptic clicks, which I configured to perfection. After a long day of work, I also noticed that my index finger didn’t hurt as much with a normal mouse.

Software & Customization

I talked about the customization part above, but to reiterate, the G Hub app handles it all. It’s available on both macOS and Windows and works pretty well. The app is neatly laid out with different sections. At the top is Sensitivity, which, as the name suggests, lets you adjust the DPI. If you’re new, Logitech has a bunch of presets baked in for different types of games. You can adjust the XY axis split, too. Beyond that, there are Assignments that let you assign different functions to the buttons and configure macros. The Scroll Wheel section has BHOP mode, designed to prevent activation from accidental bumps on the scroll wheel.

The real star is the HITS Configuration. Here, you adjust the Actuation point, or the point at which the haptic system registers a click. It can be set from a scale of 0-10, with zero requiring the least effort, and is better for gaming. Then there’s the Rapid Trigger adjustment, and lastly, Click Haptics. While a stronger haptic results in higher battery drain, I didn’t worry much as the Superstrike’s battery life is impressive. It lasted more than a week on a single charge, and I used it as my primary work mouse every day for 8 hours, too.

Verdict

Logitech Pro X2 Superstrike from the back

At $189.99 or ₹23,995 on Amazon in India, I agree that the Logitech Pro X2 Superstrike is a premium mouse. But unlike others, it’s something genuinely different. The haptic buttons are one-of-a-kind and work exceptionally well for both gaming and general productivity. In fast-paced games, the reduced actuation distance can actually make a noticeable difference to reaction times. The Logitech G Hub software is easy to use and offers plenty of customization, while the lightweight design makes it comfortable for long sessions. I’m sure we’ll see this tech being copied by others, but until then, if you’re shopping for a serious mouse, the Logitech Pro X2 Superstrike should be on your list.

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Anthropic just launched Claude Design, an AI tool that turns prompts into prototypes and challenges Figma

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Anthropic today launched Claude Design, a new product from its Anthropic Labs division that allows users to create polished visual work — designs, interactive prototypes, slide decks, one-pagers, and marketing collateral — through conversational prompts and fine-grained editing controls. The release, available immediately in research preview to all paid Claude subscribers, is the company’s most aggressive expansion beyond its core language model business and into the application layer that has historically belonged to companies like Figma, Adobe, and Canva.

Claude Design is powered by Claude Opus 4.7, Anthropic’s most capable generally available vision model, which the company also released today. Anthropic says it is rolling access out gradually throughout the day to Claude Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise subscribers.

The simultaneous launches mark a watershed for Anthropic, whose ambitions now visibly extend from foundation model provider to full-stack product company — one that wants to own the arc from a rough idea to a shipped product. The timing is also significant: Anthropic hit roughly $20 billion in annualized revenue in early March 2026, according to Bloomberg, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025 — and surpassed $30 billion by early April 2026. The company is in early talks with Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley about a potential IPO that could come as early as October 2026.

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How Claude Design turns a text prompt into a working prototype

The product follows a workflow that Anthropic has designed to feel like a natural creative conversation. Users describe what they need, and Claude generates a first version. From there, refinement happens through a combination of channels: chat-based conversation, inline comments on specific elements, direct text editing, and custom adjustment sliders that Claude itself generates to let users tweak spacing, color, and layout in real time.

During onboarding, Claude reads a team’s codebase and design files and builds a design system — colors, typography, and components — that it automatically applies to every subsequent project. Teams can refine the system over time and maintain more than one. The import surface is broad: users can start from a text prompt, upload images and documents in various formats, or point Claude at their codebase. A web capture tool grabs elements directly from a live website so prototypes look like the real product.

What distinguishes Claude Design from the wave of AI design experiments that have proliferated in the past year is the handoff mechanism. When a design is ready to build, Claude packages everything into a handoff bundle that can be passed to Claude Code with a single instruction. That creates a closed loop — exploration to prototype to production code — all within Anthropic’s ecosystem. The export options acknowledge that not everyone’s next step is Claude Code: users can also share designs as an internal URL within their organization, save as a folder, or export to Canva, PDF, PPTX, or standalone HTML files.

Anthropic points to Brilliant, the education technology company known for intricate interactive lessons, as an early proof point. The company’s senior product designer reported that the most complex pages required 20 or more prompts to recreate in competing tools but needed only 2 in Claude Design. The Brilliant team then turned static mockups into interactive prototypes they could share and user-test without code review, and handed everything — including the design intent — to Claude Code for implementation. Datadog’s product team described a similar shift, compressing what had been a week-long cycle of briefs, mockups, and review rounds into a single conversation.

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Why Anthropic’s chief product officer just resigned from Figma’s board

The launch arrives against a backdrop that makes Anthropic’s claim of complementarity with existing design tools difficult to take entirely at face value. Mike Krieger, Anthropic’s chief product officer, resigned from the board of Figma on April 14 — the same day The Information reported Anthropic’s next model would include design tools that could compete with Figma’s primary offering.

Figma has collaborated closely with Anthropic to integrate the frontier lab’s AI models into its products. Just two months ago, in February, Figma launched “Code to Canvas,” a feature that converts code generated in AI tools like Claude Code into fully editable designs inside Figma — creating a bridge between AI coding tools and Figma’s design process. The partnership felt like a mutual bet that AI would make design more essential, not less. Claude Design complicates that narrative significantly.

Anthropic’s position, based on VentureBeat’s background conversations with the company, is that Claude Design is built around interoperability and is meant to meet teams where they already work, not replace incumbent tools. The company points to the Canva export, PPTX and PDF support, and plans to make it easier for other tools to connect via MCPs (model context protocols) as evidence of that philosophy. Anthropic is also making it possible for other tools to build integrations with Claude Design, a move clearly designed to preempt accusations of walled-garden ambitions.

But the market read the signals differently. The structural tension is clear: Figma commands an estimated 80 to 90% market share in UI and UX design, according to The Next Web. Both Figma and Adobe assume a trained designer is in the loop. Anthropic’s tool does not. Claude Design is not merely another AI copilot embedded in an existing design application. It is a standalone product that generates complete, interactive prototypes from natural language — accessible to founders, product managers, and marketers who have never opened Figma. The expansion of the design user base to non-designers is the real competitive threat, even if the professional designer’s workflow remains anchored in Figma for now.

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Inside Claude Opus 4.7, the model Anthropic deliberately made less dangerous

The model powering Claude Design is itself a significant story. Claude Opus 4.7 is Anthropic’s most capable generally available model, with notable improvements over its predecessor Opus 4.6 in software engineering, instruction following, and vision — but it is intentionally less capable than Anthropic’s most powerful offering, Claude Mythos Preview, the model the company announced earlier this month as too dangerous for broad release due to its cybersecurity capabilities.

That dual-track approach — one model for the public, one model locked behind a vetted-access program — is unprecedented in the AI industry. Anthropic used Claude Mythos Preview to identify thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities in every major operating system and web browser, as reported by multiple outlets. The Project Glasswing initiative that houses Mythos brings together Amazon Web Services, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, JPMorganChase, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Palo Alto Networks as launch partners.

Opus 4.7 sits a deliberate step below Mythos. Anthropic stated in its release that it “experimented with efforts to differentially reduce” the new model’s cyber capabilities during training and ships it with safeguards that automatically detect and block requests indicating prohibited or high-risk cybersecurity uses. What Anthropic learns from those real-world safeguards will inform the eventual goal of broader release for Mythos-class models. For security professionals with legitimate needs, the company has created a new Cyber Verification Program.

On benchmarks, the model posts strong numbers. Opus 4.7 reached 64.3% on SWE-bench Pro, and on Anthropic’s internal 93-task coding benchmark, it delivered a 13% resolution improvement over Opus 4.6, including solving four tasks that neither Opus 4.6 nor Sonnet 4.6 could crack.

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The vision improvements are substantial and directly relevant to Claude Design: Opus 4.7 can accept images up to 2,576 pixels on the long edge — roughly 3.75 megapixels, more than three times the resolution of prior Claude models. Early access partner XBOW, the autonomous penetration testing company, reported that the new model scored 98.5% on their visual-acuity benchmark versus 54.5% for Opus 4.6.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported that the White House is preparing to make a version of Mythos available to major federal agencies, with the Office of Management and Budget setting up protections for Cabinet departments — a sign that the government views the model’s capabilities as too important to leave solely in private hands.

What enterprise buyers need to know about data privacy and pricing

For enterprise and regulated-industry buyers, the data handling architecture of Claude Design will be a critical evaluation criterion. Based on VentureBeat’s exclusive background discussions with Anthropic, the system stores the design-system representation it generates — not the source files themselves. When users link a local copy of their code, it is not uploaded to or stored on Anthropic’s servers. The company is also adding the ability to connect directly to GitHub. Anthropic states unequivocally that it does not train on this data. For Enterprise customers, Claude Design is off by default — administrators choose whether to enable it and control who has access.

On pricing, Claude Design is included at no additional cost with Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans, using existing subscription limits with optional extra usage beyond those caps. Opus 4.7 holds the same API pricing as its predecessor: $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens. The pricing strategy mirrors the approach Anthropic took with Claude Code, which launched as a bundled feature and rapidly grew into a major revenue driver. Anthropic’s reasoning is straightforward: the best way to learn what people will build with a new product category is to put it in their hands, then build monetization around demonstrated value.

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Anthropic is also being transparent about the product’s limitations. The design system import works best with a clean codebase; messy source code produces messy output. Collaboration is basic and not yet fully multiplayer. The editing experience has rough edges. There is no general availability date, and Anthropic says that is intentional — it will let the product and user feedback determine when Claude Design is ready for prime time.

Anthropic’s bet that owning the full creative stack is worth the risk

Claude Design is the most visible expression of a trend that has been accelerating for months: the major AI labs are moving up the stack from model providers into full application builders, directly entering categories previously owned by established software companies. Anthropic now offers a coding agent (Claude Code), a knowledge-work assistant (Claude Cowork), desktop computer control, office integrations for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, a browser agent in Chrome, and now a design tool. Each product reinforces the others. A designer can explore concepts in Claude Design, export a prototype, hand it to Claude Code for implementation, and have Claude Cowork manage the review cycle — all within Anthropic’s platform.

The financial momentum behind this expansion is staggering. Anthropic has received investor offers valuing the company at approximately $800 billion, according to Reuters, more than doubling its $380 billion valuation from a funding round closed just two months ago. But building an application empire while simultaneously navigating an AI safety reputation, an impending IPO, growing public hostility toward the technology, and the diplomatic fallout of competing with your own partners is a balancing act that no technology company has attempted at this scale or speed.

When Figma launched Code to Canvas in February, the implicit promise was that AI coding tools and design tools would grow together, each making the other more valuable. Two months later, Anthropic’s chief product officer has left Figma’s board, and the company has shipped a product that lets anyone who can type a sentence create the kind of interactive prototype that once required years of design training and a Figma license. The partnership may survive. But the power dynamic just changed — and in the AI industry, that tends to be the only kind of change that matters.

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Dropbox is making ChatGPT its productivity hub with three new apps

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The storage company is launching a Dropbox file app, a Dropbox Dash enterprise search app, and a Reclaim AI calendar app inside ChatGPT, letting users access, save, and act on their work without leaving the AI interface.

The move is the latest sign that ChatGPT is positioning itself as a productivity operating system, not just a chat tool.


Dropbox is launching three new apps inside ChatGPT, extending its file storage, enterprise search, and AI calendar products into OpenAI’s chat interface.

The three apps, a core Dropbox file app, a Dropbox Dash app, and a Reclaim AI calendar app, cover the three main coordination tasks that knowledge workers switch between constantly: finding documents, getting answers from company knowledge, and managing time.

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All three are available or coming shortly to the ChatGPT app directory.

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The core Dropbox app, now globally available to customers on any plan, lets users access and preview their Dropbox files, save AI-generated content directly back to Dropbox, and share links from within a ChatGPT conversation.

ChatGPT can also reference files already stored in a user’s Dropbox account when generating drafts or answering questions, providing relevant context without requiring manual uploads or copy-pasting between tools.

Dropbox says existing sharing permissions and access controls are preserved when files are accessed through the ChatGPT integration.

The Dropbox Dash app extends that context significantly. Dash, Dropbox’s enterprise search product, already aggregates content from more than 30 connected workplace applications, including email, Slack, Google Workspace, and other commonly used tools, into a single searchable surface.

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The ChatGPT integration means a user can ask a question in ChatGPT and receive an answer drawn from that broader company knowledge base, personalised to what that user and their team have access to.

The Dash app will be available in the coming weeks for existing Dash customers, with a free 30-day trial available for new users.

The third app brings Reclaim AI, the AI scheduling tool Dropbox acquired for $40.2 million in July 2024, directly into ChatGPT. Reclaim uses AI to automatically manage and optimise Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook schedules, defending focus time, scheduling around preferences, and resolving conflicts.

The ChatGPT integration lets users add events, find meeting times, analyse productivity patterns, and get an overview of their day from within a chat conversation.

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The app is available globally in English to users on the latest version of the Reclaim AI calendar system.

The three launches reflect a broader shift in how productivity software companies are positioning themselves relative to AI chat interfaces.

Rather than build competing AI assistants, a path that would put Dropbox in direct contest with OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, Dropbox is making its products available within the interface where users are increasingly spending time.

The strategy mirrors moves by other enterprise software companies building apps into the ChatGPT ecosystem, which has rapidly expanded beyond conversational AI toward something resembling a task-execution layer: a place where users not only ask questions but act on the answers.

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For Dropbox, whose core file-sync business faces competition from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, the ability to make Dropbox the preferred storage endpoint for AI-generated content could meaningfully reinforce the product’s relevance.

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Epic Games vs Apple — The continuing six-year App Store saga

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The Epic Games “Fortnite” versus Apple’s AppStore antitrust trial has completed its last week. Here’s what you need to know about the saga, with closing arguments left to go. Between Epic CEO Tim Sweeney’s ongoing complaints, the trial, Apple’s lies, and the Supreme Court, the Epic vs. Apple App Store lawsuit continues to roll on years later. Here’s all you need to know about the long-running courtroom drama, updated on April 17, 2026.


Within the space of a few weeks in 2020, a disagreement between the ambitions of Epic Games and the intention to maintain the App Store status quo by Apple courted considerable controversy. The affair commenced with little warning to consumers but quickly led to international interest as the battle sought to change one of the fundamental elements of the App Store: how much Apple earns.
Apple’s dominance has previously led to an antitrust probe by the U.S. Justice Department into the App Store’s fees and policies. Still, the disagreement between Apple and Epic was being made more public and directly affected younger customers.

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RSD 2026: A Record Store Owner’s 13-Year Perspective

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In this episode, we sit down with Jordan Pries, owner of The Electric Kitsch record store in Bay City, Michigan and working musician (he wrote our podcast theme song!), for a clear eyed look at what it takes to survive and stay relevant through 14 years of industry shifts and the rise of Record Store Day. 

From the early days of RSD to today’s global frenzy, Jordan breaks down what has changed, what has not, and what customers rarely see, including the financial realities, supply chain headaches, and the role RSD plays in keeping the lights on. We also explore how running a shop intersects with life as a musician, shaping how music is valued on both sides of the counter, and whether Record Store Day still delivers for the independent stores it was built to support or just makes for one very long Saturday.

Sponsor: Thank you SVS for sponsoring this episode.

This episode was recorded on April 11, 2026.

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AI Drafting My Stories? Over My Dead Body

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Sportswriting legend Red Smith once said that writing a column is easy: “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” In 2026, though, no blood is required. All you do is sit down at a laptop and have Claude or ChatGPT write the story for you.

That seems to be the takeaway from a cluster of reports from the journalistic front of late. Last month, my colleague Maxwell Zeff wrote about writers who unapologetically generate at least some of their prose via unbylined AI collaborators. The star of his piece was Alex Heath, a tech reporter who said he routinely has AI write drafts based on his notes, interview transcripts, and emails. That same week, The Wall Street Journal profiled Fortune reporter Nick Lichtenberg, who explained to the paper that he leans heavily on AI to churn out his work. He has written 600 stories since July; on one day this past February, he had seven bylines.

Ever since reading these reports—thankfully produced by the human hand—I have been having trouble sleeping. Until recently, the consensus had been that using large language models to actually create commercial prose was verboten. Many publications, including WIRED, have firm guidelines against AI-generated text. We don’t use it for editing, either, which is a less alarming, though still troublesome practice of several others cited in Zeff’s column. The book publishing world, trying to protect itself from an avalanche of self-published slop, is still policing its catalog; Hachette Book Group recently retracted a novel that had apparently relied too much on the output of an LLM. But as the models turn out prose that is becoming increasingly harder to distinguish from human outputs, the convenience and cost savings of using AI for the difficult job of writing are threatening to seep into the mainstream. The walls are starting to crumble.

As one might expect, a lot of people were unhappy to read about this development, particularly those like me whose keyboards are dripping with blood. But the subjects of the stories aren’t backing down. It’s as if they feel the future is on their side. When I contacted Heath—whose work I respect—he confirmed that he had gotten pushback but shrugged it off. “I see AI as a tool,” he says. “I don’t see it as replacing anything— the only thing that’s replaced is drudgery that I didn’t want to do anyway.”

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Of course, the hard work of writing is, for people like me, a critical aspect of the whole effort, bringing one’s self to the task of communicating effectively and clearly. Heath thinks that he does connect with readers through his writing—he says that he has trained his AI to sound like him, and his Substack includes personally written tidbits about what he’s up to. On the other hand, he tells me that since he talked to Zeff, he has almost “one-shotted” a couple of his columns. “When I say one-shot, I mean I almost didn’t need to do anything,” he says. But Heath disputes the idea that letting AI write prose for him means that he’s bypassed the thinking process that many believe can only happen though actual writing. “I’m just getting rid of that very messy, painful, zero-to-one blank page,” he says.

The Fortune writer who was the subject of the Journal article also has suffered repercussions, not just from the public but also his friends and colleagues. “I’m feeling a strain in close and personal relationships,” Lichtenberg admitted in an interview with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. In an email, Fortune’s editor in chief, Alyson Shontell, tried to steer me away from the idea that AI was taking over the jobs of reporters under her watch. “Importantly, [Lichtenberg] is not using it as a writing replacement,” she wrote. “His stories are ai assisted versus ai written. Still lots of ambitious reporting and analysis and reworking he is doing that’s highly original.”

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GeekWire Awards: Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalists tackling AI, robotics, and more

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The 2026 GeekWire Awards finalists for Young Entrepreneur of the Year, clockwise from top left: Kavian Mojabe (MediScan AI); Zheqing (Bill) Zhu (Pokee AI); Caleb John (Pioneer Square Labs); Charles Wu (Orchard Robotics); and Emily Choi-Greene (Clearly AI).

From farm robots to cybersecurity to AI-powered medical records, the 2026 GeekWire Awards Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalists represent some of the ambitious bets being made in the Pacific Northwest startup scene.

The finalists in this category, presented by Prime Team Partners, are: Emily Choi-Greene (Clearly AI); Caleb John (Pioneer Square Labs); Kavian Mojabe (MediScan AI); Charles Wu (Orchard Robotics); and Zheqing (Bill) Zhu (Pokee AI).

Now in its 18th year, the GeekWire Awards is the premier event recognizing the top leaders, companies and breakthroughs in Pacific Northwest tech, bringing together hundreds of people to celebrate innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit. It takes place May 7 at the Showbox SoDo in Seattle.

Continue reading for information on the Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalists, who were chosen by a panel of independent judges from community nominations. You can help pick the winner: Cast your ballot here or in the embedded form at the bottom. Voting runs through April 16.

Emily Choi-Greene is co-founder and CEO of Clearly AI, a cybersecurity startup that helps security, privacy, and compliance teams review new products, features, vendors, and AI deployments before they ship. 

Less than two years after launching, Clearly AI raised an $8.4 million seed round. The company was also named one of 10 finalists in the RSAC 2026 Innovation Sandbox Contest, a high-profile competition tied to the RSA Conference, a major event for the cybersecurity industry. Choi-Greene previously worked on natural language understanding for Amazon’s Alexa and later on device security teams at the tech giant.

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Caleb John is an engineer and investor at Pioneer Square Labs, the Seattle-based startup studio and venture fund.

John’s previous experience spans robotics, AI, and defense tech. He co-founded the AI search ranking startup Pongo (acquired by M87 Labs) and founded Cedar Robotics, which built robot waiters for restaurants. He also contributed to national security AI at Anduril Industries and was recognized on the Forbes Under 30 Seattle list in 2023.

Kavian Mojabe is co-founder and CEO of MediScan AI, a Seattle startup using AI to help medical professionals evaluate patient records.

Launched in 2024, MediScan AI raised $1.4 million in funding last June. Its platform can quickly scan records — including typed and hand-written notes — and generate summaries and comprehensive reports, reducing the time it takes human evaluators to perform such tasks. The startup has positioned itself at the intersection of medicine, insurance and legal industries. Mojabe was previously a software engineer at Amazon.

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Charles Wu is founder and CEO of Orchard Robotics, an agtech startup using AI to deliver precise data on farm operations.

Wu is a Thiel Fellow who dropped out of Cornell University to launch Orchard Robotics. The startup, which raised $22 million in Series A funding last September, has developed a system with cameras that are mounted on tractors and other equipment to gather images as they traverse a farm. The collected images are then analyzed by Orchard Robotics’ AI to generate data on vines, trees and crops, which is then processed to track the growth, yield and health of crops.

Zheqing (Bill) Zhu is founder and CEO of Pokee AI, a Seattle-area startup building AI agents that automate online workflows.

Pokee, which raised a $12 million seed round last July, differentiates itself by applying reinforcement learning to help agents sequence and use tools efficiently, rather than relying solely on large language models. Zhu was previously head of applied reinforcement learning at Meta, where he worked for more than seven years. He completed his Ph.D. at Stanford in the same field and did his graduate and undergrad studies at Duke.

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Astound Business Solutions is the presenting sponsor of the 2026 GeekWire Awards. Thanks also to gold sponsors Amazon Sustainability, BairdBECU, JLLFirst Tech and Wilson Sonsini, and silver sponsors Prime Team Partners.

The event will feature a VIP reception, sit-down dinner and fun entertainment mixed in. Tickets go fast. A limited number of half-table and full-table sponsorships are available. Contact events@geekwire.com to reserve a spot for your team today.

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Volvo’s parent just launched a $16,000 EV that looks shockingly luxurious

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Geely, the Chinese auto giant that also owns Volvo, has just unveiled a new RV that really does not look like it belongs anywhere near the budget end of the market.

The company has just kicked off the presales in China for the Galaxy Starshine 7, with its pricing starting at 112,900 yuan or about $16,550. For that money, buyers get a midsize electric sedan with a sleek fastback silhouette, full-width lighting, a richly trimmed cabin, and even an available dual-motor all-wheel-drive setup that can hit 0 to 100 km/h in 5.4 seconds.

Why it looks too fancy for its price

Cheap EVs are usually easy to spot because they cut corners somewhere obvious. But the Starshine 7 doesn’t exactly scream entry-level. The official images show a sedan with a clean nose design, sharp light signatures, flush door handles, a panoramic roof, and a cabin dominated by a large central screen and a bright, lounge-like color scheme for its interiors.

The model measures 4,930mm long with a 2,915mm wheelbase. In photos, it lands somewhere between a mainstream electric sedan and something trying very hard to look premium. And at a first glance, it mostly succeeds.

But do the specs keep up?

Geely’s Starshine 7 will be offered in rear-wheel-drive and all-wheel-drive forms. The RWD version uses a 190kW motor, while the AWD model adds a 150kW front motor for a combined 340kW output. The company is also offering two battery options, a 58.4kWh and 73.6kWh, with CLTC range figures of up to 610km depending on the variant.

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Inside, the car gets a 15.4-inch floating center display, which also showcases a premium interior. The pictures also depict wood-like trim, layered materials, and a generally softer look that isn’t often associated with a budget EV.

This model joins the recently announced $15,000 extended-range EV called the Boyue EREV SUV. So the Galaxy Starshine 7 is another reminder of just how aggressive China’s EV market has become. It is trying to make affordability look aspirational, which is a pretty different trick, and one that Western automakers still seem to struggle with. As always, there is no word regarding a US or European release.

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Republican Mutiny Sinks Trump’s Push to Extend Warrantless Surveillance

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House Speaker Mike Johnson convened a vote in the dead of night on Friday, calling lawmakers back to the floor after midnight in a push to preserve a surveillance program that allows federal agents to read the communications of Americans without a warrant. Twenty Republicans broke ranks and sank it, a sharp rebuke of both Johnson and President Donald Trump, who had spent the week personally working holdouts to back the bill.

The failed vote caps weeks of bipartisan resistance to a clean reauthorization of the surveillance program, authorized under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The 702 program permits wiretaps of communications ostensibly belonging to foreigners overseas, but is also known to intercept vast amounts of Americans’ emails, texts, phone calls, and other data—private messages that the FBI and other agencies routinely access without a warrant.

Congressional authorization for the program will expire on Tuesday. The White House and GOP leadership have spent weeks pressing for a “clean” reauthorization, fending off a bipartisan alliance of House Freedom Caucus Republicans and progressive Democrats demanding, variously, that the FBI obtain warrants before searching Americans’ messages and that Congress ban the government from buying Americans’ personal data from commercial brokers.

A handful of Democrats led by Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, have joined the White House in lobbying against new restrictions.

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House Republicans revolted twice in the small hours of Friday morning, ultimately sinking the bill. Shortly after 1 am ET, a dozen Republicans joined nearly every Democrat to kill a leadership-backed amendment that would have extended Section 702 for five more years.

The amendment contained a provision that was in essence a fake warrant requirement. It would have prohibited government officers from “intentionally” targeting Americans’ communications without a warrant—conduct that is already banned by the statute. It also offered the government a warrant path if agents had probable cause to suspect the subject is an agent of a foreign power—an authority that already exists independent of the Section 702 program and adds functionally nothing new to the law.

The final blow came after 2 am, when the 20 Republicans voted again to block the original version of the bill, which seeks a shorter 18-month extension. Those 20 votes were drawn almost entirely from the House Freedom Caucus and the party’s libertarian wing, including Andy Harris of Maryland, the caucus chair; Thomas Massie of Kentucky; Chip Roy of Texas; Warren Davidson of Ohio; and Lauren Boebert of Colorado.

In a rare defeat on a procedural vote that typically passes along party lines, GOP leaders walked away with only a 10-day extension, pushing the fight to the end of the month. The House’s failure leaves the Senate to sort out what comes next, starting with whether to approve the extension next week.

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The vote’s collapse followed a week of hard effort by the Trump administration to assuage Republicans who’ve objected to the FBI’s warrantless access and its documented history of querying that data for political purposes. Trump hosted Freedom Caucus holdouts at the White House on Tuesday, trying to close the deal. Democrats, meanwhile, were briefed Monday by two former senior Biden officials urging them to back the extension, according to a person familiar with both events.

The FBI has used Section 702 data to run warrantless queries on a US senator, 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign, Black Lives Matter protesters, and both sides of the January 6 Capitol attack, according to declassified court rulings and government transparency reports.

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