Have you ever looked at the internal USB headers on your motherboard and wondered what you can connect to them? These headers come in a few flavors. We have the older USB 2.0 headers, slightly newer USB 3.0 headers, and a USB-C port on modern motherboards. It's not uncommon to now find all three present on the PCB, so what can you use them for? Aside from front panel I/O, here are some things you can plug into your motherboard.

Amazon’s new Alexa Plus voice assistant works with most existing Amazon devices. In the week's least surprising news, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy revealed that the company is exploring ways to bring ads to Alexa Plus, its new generative-AI-powered voice assistant. During a conference call following the company's second-quarter earnings report, Jassy said that "there will be opportunities, as people are engaging in more multiturn conversations [with Alexa Plus], to have advertising play a role to help people find discovery, and also as a lever to drive revenue." Basically, people will talk more to Alexa, so there will be more ways to push ads at them. He also hinted that Alexa Plus, which is currently free for Prime members b …Read the full story at The Verge.

The collaborations between LEGO and various popular brands are always a fun thing to see. Lately, LEGO has been releasing sets that are based on video game consoles, with the most recent one being on the Nintendo Game Boy. Prior to that, the company collaborated with Nintendo on a set that featured the Nintendo Entertainment System, which was out around the same time as their Super Mario series sets. There was even a LEGO set that let people build a PAC-MAN arcade cabinet, which included a miniature version bundled with it. As collectibles, these are fun things for gaming fans to pick up, especially if they love all things related to video games.

It has been another busy week. GPT-5 appears to be just around the corner…This week, I decode the meaning behind Mark Zuckerberg's "personal superintelligence" manifesto, and what it means for the broader AI race. Keep reading for my chat with a Figma exec on the company's IPO day, a bunch of good links, and some feedback from last week's issue.What "personal superintelligence" really means to MetaMeta has given up on trying to beat ChatGPT at its own game.If you read between the lines, that's the message behind Mark Zuckerberg's "personal superintelligence" manifesto. For the past year, he pushed the Meta AI assistant on nearly ev …Read the full story at The Verge.

A few years ago, I started self-hosting services on my local hardware to escape from the clutches of unending subscription fees and privacy-intrusive apps. But what initially started as a means to protect my finances and personal information quickly turned into a hobby, and now I have tons of gaming, media-serving, note-taking, and automation apps in my repertoire. So many, in fact, that I have a suite of containers designed to help me manage the rest of the services running on server nodes.

A new Raspberry Pi project recently came across my radar that’s both clever and oddly practical. Built using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W and a compact display, it tells you where in the world it’s currently 5:00 p.m. The display updates every 15 minutes, showing a different city and country where it's officially time to unwind.

Delta Air Lines is explaining more about its AI-assisted dynamic pricing model after coming under scrutiny for recent comments about the pricing.In November, Delta president Glen Hauenstein said at an investor day that “we will have a price that’s available on that flight, on that time, to you, the individual.” However, responding to questions sent by lawmakers, EVP and chief external affairs officer Peter Carter says in a letter that “there is no fare product Delta has ever used, is testing or plans to use that targets customers with individualized prices based on personal data.” He also says that the company has “zero tolerance” for discriminatory or predatory pricing. As part of its latest earnings report, Hauenstein said that the company planned to deploy the technology, developed by a company called Fetcherr, to about 20 percent of its domestic network by the end of the year. “Our AI-powered pricing functionality is designed to enhance our existing fare pricing processes using aggregated data,” according to Carter. “This technology is a decision-support tool that simply provides informed insights for our analysts, who oversee and fine-tune the recommendations to ensure they are consistent with our business strategy.”In his comments to investors and analysts last year, Hauenstein said the AI was taking on the role of a “super analyst,” responding to changes in real time. The company’s statement today frames that more explicitly as responding to competitors pricing and overall buying trends, in an attempt to find the highest price for a market as opposed to an individual customer.Carter says that Delta is “evaluating” the “AI pricing recommendation functionality” and that it does not share personal information with Fetcherr. Carter’s letter was replying to one from Senators Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), Mark Warner (D-VA), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who wrote to Delta CEO Ed Bastian expressing concerns about the technology in July. Reps. Greg Casar (D-TX) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) have also introduced the Stop AI Price Gouging and Wage Fixing Act, which would ban companies from using AI to “set prices or wages based on Americans’ personal data.”

It says a lot that we’re recommending this one laptop over the many released each year. The Lenovo Yoga 7 is just that good, featuring a versatile design, excellent power and, now, a price that comes in at just $600. That last part is quite a surprise considering that this laptop retails for $1,000. This discount is the steepest we've seen on this model, making it an absolute no-brainer if you've been thinking about something new.

Apple CEO Tim Cook boasted about the potential of AI and the company’s approach to developing it in a rare all-hands today that was reported on by Bloomberg. Apple has been slow to roll out some of its AI features and has stumbled with a planned AI-powered upgrade to Siri, which it delayed earlier this year.According to Bloomberg:The executive gathered staff at Apple’s on-campus auditorium Friday in Cupertino, California, telling them that the AI revolution is “as big or bigger” as the internet, smartphones, cloud computing and apps. “Apple must do this. Apple will do this. This is sort of ours to grab,” Cook told employees, according to people aware of the meeting. “We will make the investment to do it.”Cook also apparently pointed to how the company has “rarely been first” in categories like personal computers, smartphones, tablets, and MP3 players but that Apple eventually made the “modern” versions of those. “This is how I feel about AI,” Cook said, Bloomberg reports.Software chief Craig Federighi also spoke, discussing the Siri delay and how the company originally wanted to build it with a “hybrid architecture.” Under that plan, one system would take care of things Siri can now, and the other would be powered by LLMs, but “we realized that approach wasn’t going to get us to Apple quality,” he said. The new plan is to move everything to a new architecture.The all-hands follows Cook’s comments ahead of an earnings call yesterday where he said that the company is “open to” acquisitions to accelerate its roadmap. Apple has also lost some of its AI talent as part of Meta’s “superintelligence” hiring spree.

I've been self-hosting different apps and services for the past few months, which has been an enlightening experience. I love many of the different services I encountered, with one of my favorites being a tasks app I self-hosted to help me get a better view of my chores.

I often think about where technologies come from—not just the tools themselves, but the historical context that shaped them. Modern computing feels almost impossibly dense: billions of transistors packed into a single chip, systems too complex for any one person to fully understand, and insights pulled from datasets too large to hold in the mind. It’s hard to believe the original inventors imagined any of this. But as I studied major computing milestones, I noticed something unexpected. The biggest leaps didn’t just come from invention—they came from making the information teachable.

Linux has always been great at holding onto its roots. A lot of the commands from the original Unix days still work just fine today. But just because they still work doesn’t mean they’re the best option anymore. Open source is moving fast and there are newer commands out there that just feel better to use.