Author: InfoForTech

Comparing the Best Alexa SpeakersHonorable MentionsWhile I wouldn’t call these smart speakers my absolute favorites from Amazon, they have some excellent qualities that make them stand out among the vast lineup of Echo models.The Echo Studio (2nd Gen) is the best Alexa speaker for sound quality. This is the second version of the Echo Studio to be our audiophile pick. The current version is a similar size to the old Echo (4th gen), but the musical power on this speaker is almost ridiculous. It filled my entire second floor’s long great room with music, and I didn’t even need to…

A horror story of sorts is unfolding in the United States. It goes like this: AI has made it so effortless to access information, and short-form video has made it so easy to entertain ourselves, that nobody reads anymore.If you’re familiar with this tale, it’s possible, ironically, that you read about it. A viral Atlantic story from earlier this summer put a chilling headline on trend: “The End of Reading Is Here.” Teachers and professors, the magazine reported, don’t even bother assigning entire books to their students, because excerpts are good enough to prepare for standardized texts. The piece said…

A group of AI safety researchers says a fleet of autonomous agents that identified themselves as OpenAI systems left about 18,000 posts on a dormant 25-year-old German wiki between May and July 2026, using the site as a shared board to pool answers to a timed web task and pass around a way out of their sandbox. The activity was concentrated on DSEwiki, a German software developer wiki that runs on the ProWiki farm at wikiservice[.]at and had been edited about 20 times over the previous decade. The researchers, led by Sydney Von Arx of the AI safety nonprofit Nightingale Collective, reconstructed the…

Anthropic PBC has used Claude to create a computer-verifiable version of a famous, highly complicated mathematical proof. The company detailed the project in a blog post published today. A proof is a series of arguments that proves a mathematical hypothesis is correct. The proof that Anthropic tackled verifies a hypothesis called Fermat’s Last Theorem. Originally floated in 1637, the hypothesis focuses on the properties of positive whole numbers. The proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem was developed in 1995 by mathematician Andrew Wiles. It runs for 129 pages and took months of work to verify. Anthropic’s research project formalized Wiles’ proof,…

After more than two decades online, one of the internet’s longest-running botnets has finally lost control of its infected machines. CrowdStrike said its Counter Adversary Operations team disrupted the Sality peer-to-peer (P2P) botnet on Aug. 31 in coordination with US and international law enforcement and industry partners. The operation effectively cut the alleged operator off from more than 15,000 infected systems worldwide. I’m at CrowdStrike’s conference this week and have gotten a firsthand look at how the operation came together, including details about the alleged operator that I cannot share here. What stood out to me was that this was…

Use a methodical approach to see what’s using the most space on your PC and easily clean it up. Nwz/Shutterstock There’s so much competing for the space on your computer that it’s easy to lose track of it all. Programs, photos, videos, games, downloads and your other items live alongside system data like temporary files and updates. That’s not to mention duplicate files and other junk that serves no purpose. When you need to clean up some space in Windows, it’s easy to see what’s using the most storage. With this laid out, you can create…

Adobe acqui-hires Bengaluru-based AI startup Rilo, marking a major step forward for autonomous marketing agents. Adobe is doubling down on AI agents. The creative software giant just acquired Rilo, a fast-growing Indian startup that automates marketing workflows. Through this deal, Adobe absorbs Rilo’s six-person engineering team and licenses its core technology. Rilo will now shut down its standalone app. Rilo was launched by two IIT-Bombay alumni less than a year ago- and the platform has already attracted over 10,000 users. Rilo lets non-technical teams assemble multi-step marketing workflows using simple, plain-English instructions. Marketers can track competitor moves, analyze sales calls,…

OpenAI has released GPT-6 Astra, a new flagship AI model the company describes as its most intelligent and most aligned system to date. The launch came with sweeping claims about computer-use performance, scientific discovery, and software engineering – alongside a parallel controversy over a new reasoning method that some AI safety researchers say could make future models harder to monitor. One of Astra’s most important advances is its ability to interact directly with computers and web applications. Rather than simply generating instructions or code for a person to execute, the model can perform tasks itself inside software and browsers: filling…

Other deals among WIRED-recommended grills include $50 off a couple of Weber’s durable, last-you-forever standbys—the Weber Kettle and the Weber Spirit E-210. I and fellow WIRED reviewer Scott Gilbertson tend to love these two models precisely because they are basic, durable, reliable, and low-cost. The Weber Kettle, especially, can be upgraded with smart features into a temp-controlled, smart-charcoal beast.This $50 off deal tends to be the standard Weber deal. But the price already starts out affordable, and so the sale price amounts to an excellent value on a grill that’s likely to be with you a while. If you’d like…

On Thursday, Tesla made its Cybercab robotaxi available to riders in Austin, Texas. Soon after, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it was investigating the launch. Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the Cybercab in October 2024, noting the vehicle would go into production “before 2027.” Production indeed kicked off in April 2026, though Musk noted that scaling would be “very slow” due to supply chain and validation timelines. Tesla’s robotaxi service initially launched with Model Y vehicles in Austin last year, though the goal is to eventually make the Cybercab the main autonomous vehicle in the company’s network. This…