A month is a long time in AI, at least these days. That's exactly how long it's been since OpenAI released GPT-5.4 Thinking, its best and most powerful model to date. Some might say the most powerful model from any company, but after using it solely for a week, I'm not so sure. I'm going back to my cavern of Claude Code and its trio of frontier models, as that's what has worked best for my workflow.

AI music platform Suno's policy is that it does not permit the use of copyrighted material. You can upload your own tracks to remix or set your original lyrics to AI-generated music. But, it's supposed to recognize and stop you from using other people's songs and lyrics. Now, no system is perfect, but it turns out that Suno's copyright filters are incredibly easy to fool.With minimal effort and some free software, Suno will spit out AI-generated imitations of popular songs like Beyoncé's "Freedom," Black Sabbath's "Paranoid," and Aqua's "Barbie Girl" that are alarmingly close to the original. Most people will likely be able to tell the dif …Read the full story at The Verge.

Consumer routers, even the powerful ones, might be enough to get you online, but they hide a multitude of sins. The dashboard will get you SSID and password settings, DHCP, QoS, port forwarding, and maybe a guest network toggle if you're lucky, leaving you without a viewport into what goes on in your home network.

Take me to the tacos, Gemini. You may be familiar with Gemini as the thing that's in every Google service you use - whether you want it or not. While it's been a constant, sometimes unwelcome presence in Gmail for at least the past year, it's a relatively new addition to Maps. And you know what? It's kind of great.To put it to the test, I had Gemini plan a day-long itinerary for me around the city. After an hour or so of having Gemini find stuff for me - playgrounds near the new light rail extension, kid-friendly restaurants with vehicle themes, you get the gist - I was impressed. Some of the suggestions were obvious, but I also bookmarked a handful of spots not on m …Read the full story at The Verge.

The first thing you notice about the Slate Truck is its size. It's small, surprisingly so. In a country where trucks often come with their own zip code, Slate's pickup is refreshingly puny, measuring 174.6 inches long, 70.6 inches wide, and 69.3 inches tall, with a curb weight of approximately 3,602 pounds (1,634kg). As a reference point, it's nearly the same size as Marty McFly's 1985 Toyota SR5 from Back to the Future. But inside, that diminutive feeling disappears, as I found myself with ample amounts of head- and legroom. As a relatively tallish guy (over 6 feet) who often feels cramped in most vehicles, I couldn't believe the amount o …Read the full story at The Verge.

Most router settings pages are full of features that sound tougher than they really are. MAC address filtering is one of the best examples. It looks serious, feels technical, and gives off the impression that you’re putting a concrete barrier in front of your Wi-Fi. In practice, though, it’s usually more like a velvet rope. It offers extra friction for you and almost no real barrier for anyone who actually wants access.

Without fail, Claude is undoubtedly the most hyped AI tool right now. The company had already been releasing banger after banger, and then the entire Anthropic x OpenAI x Department of War fiasco happened. Now, most people have only been using Claude the way they use ChatGPT and all other chatbots: typing a question, getting an answer and moving on. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but also, you're missing out on more than you'd think.

Los Thuthanaka basically came out of nowhere last year to capture Pitchfork's album of the year with their self-titled debut. Because it wasn't available on streaming, it largely flew under the radar. I honestly kind of forgot about it until Pitchfork gave it the number one spot in its year-end list. In retrospect, I'm not entirely sure how, though. Los Thuthanaka sounds like nothing else. It's joyous, jagged, and sounds like it's being blasted out of a broken Bluetooth speaker in your neighbor's backyard - it's glorious.The follow-up EP Wak'a turns down the tempo and smooths some of the sharper edges. It uses the same sound palette of blo …Read the full story at The Verge.

A photo of a black speaker, the Amazon Echo, on a gray background. | Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Jeff Bezos badly wanted a voice computer. He had been saying so publicly since the very early days of Amazon, telling anyone who would listen about why voice might make it easier and more natural to interact with technology. (And to buy stuff from Jeff Bezos.) But when a team at Amazon set out to actually make the voice computer a reality, they encountered a seemingly endless series of hard problems. Eventually, though, they created two products, the Echo speaker and the Alexa voice assistant, that would help bring a new kind of computer to millions of people.On this episode of Version History, we tell the story of the Echo's development i …Read the full story at The Verge.

My smart home has been a messy collection of proprietary bridges, cloud-dependent hubs, and a dozen different apps that refuse to talk to one another. Every new device added another point of failure and another tether to a manufacturer’s server.

Fedora had been calling to me for a while. Its bleeding-edge kernel, the latest in software, and clean vanilla GNOME were some of the main reasons I made the jump. I was also getting tired of a few issues that only Ubuntu seemed to have, like Snap slowly creeping into every aspect of my system. Ubuntu had treated me fine overall, but I wanted to try something else as a daily driver.

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the ups and downs of AI, follow Stevie Bonifield. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it startedMost people probably know Grammarly for its browser extension that suggests how to spruce up your emails, but over the past few years, it's been eyeing bigger ambitions. In October, the company formerly known as Grammarly made a public pivot to rebrand as an AI company called Superhuman. The new name was adopted from Superhuman Mail, an AI email platform that Grammarly acquired i …Read the full story at The Verge.