Electricity and water don’t mix — well, actually, they mix really well, which can be problematic for humans. So the thought of an electric boat may seem risky. A new California startup called Arc is going to try to shred that perception, starting with a limited edition 24-foot watersports boat that will cost around $300,000. I discovered Los Angeles-based boat startup Arc had brought its new sport boat to Las Vegas, I figured it was worth the risk. It was. The Arc Sport was a joy to drive, even for a 30-minute outing on a choppy lake. It maneuvered like…
Author: Olsi
Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg has deactivated the accounts of several WordPress.org community members, two of whom he says planned to spearhead a new fork of the open-source WordPress project. While community criticism of WordPress’s governance isn’t new, the latest brouhaha kicked off back in September when Mullenweg publicly chastised WP Engine, a commercial hosting company built atop WordPress, for profiteering without giving much back. Things soon escalated (read all about it here), with WP Engine filing a lawsuit after it was banned from accessing key WordPress resources, and then a court ordered WordPress to restore access. In amongst…
It’s now broadly accepted that customers and employees who receive corporate gifts end up appreciating the brand much more, and for not a lot of outlay. The market for this has thus exploded. One market player, the New York-based Snappy, which has raised over $125 million to date, is now acquiring Covver, a corporate merchandise gifting platform. Terms were undisclosed, although The Tech Spot understands the deal involved a mix of cash and shares. Covver was previously backed by TLV Partners, based in Tel Aviv, Israel, and has raised $7 million to date. It specializes in swag-style merchandise for companies…
Microsoft has taken legal action against a group the company claims intentionally developed and used tools to bypass the safety guardrails of its cloud AI products. According to a complaint filed by the company in December in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, a group of 10 unnamed defendants allegedly used stolen customer credentials and custom-designed software to break into the Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft’s fully managed service powered by ChatGPT maker OpenAI’s technologies. In the complaint, Microsoft accuses the defendants—who it refers to only as “Does,” a legal pseudonym—of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse…
That there’s an abundance of high-quality is both a reward and a punishment, as it’s tough to find the right program to watch amid a sea of content. And that’s just British television! From the BBC to Channel 4 to ITV, British television is in its second Golden Age, and BritBox has most of the good stuff. The streamer has hundreds of comedies, dramas, period pieces, soap operas, morning chat programs, and reality series at its disposal, and the following 10 shows are the best it has to offer in 2025. The Inheritance – 2023 Why is a reading of…
The star, however, was the Deebot X8 Pro Omni — a powerful robot vacuum that makes big changes to its mopping abilities thanks to a new collaboration with Tineco. Though it didn’t pick up a robotic arm like the Roborock Saros Z70, the Deebot X8 Pro Omni did learn some cool new mopping techniques. There are two big upgrades here, the first being additional pressure while mopping. The X8 Pro Omni can create up to 4,000Pa pressure and spin at up to 200 rpm, which should result in better cleaning than anything else we’ve seen from Ecovacs so far. The…
American Primeval is a sprawling, epic TV series, one that feels both deeply indebted to the Westerns of old and a purposeful rebuke of them. Present still are the genre’s John Ford-esque cloudless skies, which stretch endlessly just like the series’ plains and mountain ranges, but gone are their technicolor vibrance. The latter trait has been replaced by American Primeval director Peter Berg with a greatly desaturated color palette that frequently drains the Western of practically any identifiable colors outside of black and gray, and which is designed to reflect the brutality and darkness of The Revenant writer Mark L.…
Ubisoft just delayed Assassin’s Creed Shadows for a second time. While it was supposed to come out on February 14, the Japan-set action-adventure game will now be released on March 20. Fully unveiled last May, the last six months of Assassin’s Creed Shadows‘ development have been rocky. After Star Wars Outlaws had a buggy launch and flopped, Ubisoft delayed Shadows from November 2024 to February 2025. At the time, Ubisoft explained that this delay would allow the developers to “polish and refine the experience.” Statements from a strategic update and X post released by Ubisoft today share similar sentiments. As part…
Xbox has confirmed that another Developer_Direct will take place later this month, offering use new looks at games like Doom: The Dark Ages, South of Midnight, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Plus, we’ll see a “brand new game” from a mystery studio sometime during the showcase. January 2025’s Developer_Direct will take place on official Xbox social media channels at 10 a.m. PT on January 23. It’s the latest iteration of a type of showcase that Xbox began in 2023, which is meant to give us a deeper look at upcoming Xbox games and the studios behind them. Hi-Fi Rush famously shadow-dropped…
In January, Netflix is coming out strong for 2025 with a stacked lineup of action movies. Thanks to a licensing agreement, Warner Bros. has sent over some of its best movies to Netflix, including Interstellar, Dune: Part Two, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, and In the Heart of the Sea. Those five movies have all found themselves in the top 10 for the most popular movies on Netflix. Inside Netflix’s action genre, there are a variety of blockbusters, classics, and originals. This month, our recommendations are a Mad Max entry, a stylish crime caper, and a buddy…
