An image of Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski’s AI-generated avatar.Tech company CEOs aren’t just making their companies AI-first: this week, they’re using AI avatars to replace themselves in earnings calls.Buy-now-pay-later company Klarna featured the AI version of CEO and co-founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski in an 83-second video about its Q1 2025 results, as reported by TechCrunch. The video’s description says that his “AI avatar” is presenting the results, and the AI avatar kicks off the video by saying that “it’s me, or rather, my AI avatar.” Klarna has already been vocal about how it uses AI in its business, with Siemiatkowski telling CNBC this month that the company shrunk its workforce in part as a result of its AI investments. This also isn’t even the first time the company has used an AI version of Siemiatkowski to share earnings.Zoom CEO Eric Yuan also deployed an AI version of himself for the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call on Wednesday. “Today, I’m using our custom avatars for Zoom Clips with AI Companion to share my part of the earnings report,” Yuan’s avatar said in a video. “I’m proud to be among the first-ever CEOs to use an avatar in an earnings call.” In the top right corner of the video, you can see a message that says “created with Zoom AI Companion.”The human Yuan showed up for the live Q&A portion of the call, though. “I truly love my AI-generated avatar,” he said while responding to the first question. “I think we are going to continue using that. I can tell you — I like that experience a lot.” Perhaps not surprising from the guy who wants “digital twins” to attend meetings on your behalf.

If you use the Snipping Tool often, you're likely used to precisely dragging your cursor to capture just the right portion of the screen. A lot of the time, the screenshot ends up including details you don't need or some extra space you didn't mean to grab.

Gamers of a certain age will remember the Nintendo 64 Rumble Pak, and that first feeling of an in-game explosion vibrating the controller in your hands. In the endless pursuit of making gaming more immersive, companies have pushed 3D gaming monitors, ultra-high frame rates, and 8K resolution. Anything to make the game look better and feel more real. It seems the next evolution in immersive gaming is haptic feedback.

As YouTube prepares to air an exclusive NFL opening week game for free on September 5th, it’s hiring former Disney exec Justin Connolly. The move has caused Disney to respond by suing both YouTube and Connolly, saying he was in the middle of leading the team negotiating Disney’s license renewal with YouTube.He’d most recently been running the streaming services and linear media networks at Disney, and will take over as YouTube’s new global head of media and sports, as first reported by Bloomberg. After spending more than 20 years at Disney and ESPN, he’ll be managing YouTube’s relationship with the media companies that distribute content on YouTube TV, as well as leading its live sports coverage. Bloomberg also first reported the lawsuit filed yesterday in California Superior Court, as Disney alleges that YouTube induced Connolly to breach a three-year employment contract that started in January and would’ve kept him there as an executive until an early termination option for March 1st, 2027. Connolly left Disney last week, just months before the launch of its standalone ESPN streaming service this fall.In its complaint (which you can read below), Disney’s lawyers write:Critically, Connolly leads the Disney team negotiating a license renewal with YouTube. Connolly has intimate knowledge of Disney’s other distribution deals, the financial details concerning Disney’s content being licensed to YouTube, and Disney’s negotiation strategies, both in general and in particular with respect to YouTube. It would be extremely prejudicial to Disney for Connolly to breach the contract which he negotiated just a few months ago and switch teams when Disney is working on a new licensing deal with the company that is trying to poach him.YouTube did not comment on the lawsuit.YouTube has become a growing force in live sports, with its live TV streaming service amassing more than 8 million subscribers and adding the NFL Sunday Ticket package in 2023. The platform will also. Earlier this year, YouTube revealed that it has become more popular on TVs than phones.Other streaming companies have also increased their focus on sports recently, with Amazon preparing to broadcast NBA games and Inside the NBA next season, Apple’s close relationship with MLB and MLS, as well as Netflix’s broadcasts with the NFL and other events.Update, May 22nd: Added details of Disney’s lawsuit.

At last month's rapturously received Slate debut, it took an executive's quip that "Slate" and "Tesla" use the same 5 letters to shift my brain into high gear. I've covered the EV world for 15-plus years, and I virtually never spend time on counterfactuals. There's quite enough to cover in the real world.But … I'm of the opinion Tesla could, and should, have launched a small, simple, cheap compact pickup truck-in other words, what Slate debuted-rather than the pickup it did produce, the Cybertruck. That expensive and polarizing vehicle has been, to put it bluntly, a sales disaster. Over 18 months, Tesla has sold only about 50,000, versus projections of many times that volume. Worse, while EV crossover utilities sell tens of thousands a month, the more expensive EV pickup trucks to date have not. The path not takenThe company that led the world in EV production for more than a decade could have launched an inexpensive small pickup that would have democratized EVs to a whole new class of buyers. Tesla likely could have offered more range at the same price due to its in-house battery cell production. And it would have been a global product, likely to be sold in Europe and China …Read the full story at The Verge.

We all know we should be using a password manager. I have tried everything – from popular options like 1Password and LastPass to community-driven solutions such as Bitwarden. And then I came across Proton Pass. From the moment I started using it, the change was instantaneous. Whether it was privacy, features, design, or cross-platform availability, Proton’s offering ticked all the right boxes for me. What started as an experiment quickly turned into a crucial part of my digital life.

When my smart home started out, it had only a few devices connected to the network, mostly from the same company, and it was fairly simple to manage. Over time, the number of devices grew substantially, to the point where I've got them all connected to a smart home hub running Home Assistant because I got tired of app-juggling.

PC building has long been a hobbyist endeavour, but it feels like it's become increasingly out of reach for the average consumer. Over the past few years, a combination of growing public interest in the hobby, inflation pressures, and now tariffs, continues to drive component prices higher.

For years, I've relied on Google Drive for most of my personal backups, including documents, images, videos, and some creative work. It felt convenient at first: My files synced between my devices, and I could access them anywhere. However, as I accumulated files over time, I wanted to avoid paying more.

I've been toying with multiple note-taking apps and personal knowledge management systems for the past few weeks. While I prefer Notion's UI and feature set, I keep coming back to Obsidian -- especially after I was able to self-host it to access via a browser. One aspect of Obisdian that I don't like, though, is that every time I quit and reopen the app, I'm greeted with the page where I left off during my last session. That may not always be the desirable behavior, especially if you're a power user, and you quickly want to access your repository of important links and information. While there's no default setting to change the way the app works, I found a plugin that does exactly this.

In a pretty bare-bones press release accompanied by a couple of pictures and detailed specs, Ricoh surprise announced that its long-awaited GR IV camera will launch this fall. The GR IV will adhere closely to the design of the GR III from 2018, and it will continue to use an autofocusing 28mm-equivalent f/2.8 lens and only a rear LCD for composing photos and videos, with no electronic or optical viewfinder available.The GR IV’s exterior looks very similar to the GR III / GR IIIx, with an oval-shaped shutter button, on / off switch and mode dial up top, and a smattering of rear controls to the right of its LCD. Its buttons look redesigned, removing the spinning dial from around its four-way directional pad. And its adjustment thumb wheel, labeled “ADJ,” looks like it may be a fully turning dial instead of just a back-and-forth toggle that moves left or right. (I may be wishcasting that last part, because I think the thumb toggle on the GR III is annoying and fiddly.)What’s known for certain based on its spec list is that the GR IV retains the built-in ND filter of the GR III, but it slightly ups the resolution of its large APS-C sensor from 24 megapixels to 26. It will also have a higher ISO range that reaches 204,800 at its maximum setting, and five-axis stabilization instead of three-axis stabilization. The GR IV’s lens may be the same focal length and maximum aperture as previous generations, but it’s a new seven-element design in a new arrangement utilizing an additional aspherical element that should yield better corrections. The upcoming camera will also have face and eye detection for its autofocus tracking, and 53GB of usable built-in storage. Onboard storage is great, and it’s much more than the GR III’s 2GB, but the GR IV is also downsizing from full-size SD cards to microSD.While there isn’t a price yet, Ricoh has confirmed the GR IV is expected to release in the autumn of 2025, with a variant featuring a Highlight Diffusion Filter (HDF) to come “after winter 2025.” The announcement also details that the GR III is scheduled to be discontinued in July, while the GR IIIx continues “for the time being.” The Ricoh GR cameras have carved out a niche among street photographers who value their super-compact size and fairly affordable prices compared to a Fujifilm X100 or Leica Q. As cool and fun as I thought the just-announced Fujifilm X Half might be, the GR IV has instantly become my most anticipated camera of 2025.

I switched from Windows to macOS a few years ago and haven't looked back since. My MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro chip performs extremely well for my usage and requirements, and the battery life is nothing short of extraordinary -- even after three years of use. I've also gotten used to the quirks of macOS to a point where they don't really bother me much anymore. However, from time to time, I do feel the need to use Windows since macOS doesn't support several apps and software. Some software programs linked to several niches aren't available on macOS and are exclusive to Windows. In such cases, one may need to access Windows 11 on a Mac. After all, everyone cannot have two separate computers running different operating systems.