Here at this website, my colleagues and I follow our beats closely, from wearable tech and laptops to influencer culture and federal policy. Last year, I asked a bunch of staff at The Verge to pretend to be trend forecasters for a lighthearted collection of what's hot and what's not. Some of the predictions really held up: many would say the US Supreme Court continues to be out, congestion pricing in New York is decidedly in despite attempts to kill it, and cats are, as ever, a bit of both.

Predicting future trends - and having a pulse on what's happening now - is part art, part science, and, if we're being honest, part wish fulfillment. He …

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With AI-powered humanoids now playing 3-on-3 matches, China kicks off its boldest push yet to dominate robotics through sports.

If you use screens for work and play, your child probably does too. These are the best pairs we’ve bought and tested for our own kids.

The world of Chromebooks has its MacBook Air.

Lenovo's latest Chromebook Plus 14 is an Arm-based thin-and-light with good specs, excellent battery life, a great keyboard, all-around solid build, and a fantastic OLED screen. But the best part is that its bright and punchy 14-inch panel comes standard on the base $649 configuration or as a touchscreen for $749.

That's cheaper than both the OLED-equipped Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus and Acer Chromebook Plus Spin with an IPS screen. It's also faster than either with more RAM.

The new Chromebook Plus 14 could be a go-to laptop for just about anyone - if you're okay living with ChromeOS in …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Dmitri Mendeleev famously saw the complete arrangement of the periodic table after falling asleep on his desk. He claimed in his dream he saw a table where all the elements fell into place, and he wrote it all down when he woke up. By having a eureka moment right after a nap, he joined a club full of rather talented people: Mary Shelley, Thomas Edison, and Salvador Dali.

To figure out if there’s a grain of truth to all these anecdotes, a team of German scientists at the Hamburg University, led by cognitive science researcher Anika T. Löwe, conducted an experiment designed to trigger such nap-following strokes of genius—and catch them in the act with EEG brain monitoring gear. And they kind of succeeded.

Catching Edison’s cup

“Thomas Edison had this technique where he held a cup or something like that when he was napping in his chair,” says Nicolas Schuck, a professor of cognitive science at the Hamburg University and senior author of the study. “When he fell asleep too deeply, the cup falling from his hand would wake him up—he was convinced that was the way to trigger these eureka moments.” While dozing off in a chair with a book or a cup doesn’t seem particularly radical, a number of cognitive scientists got serious about re-creating Edison’s approach to insights and testing it in their experiments.

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For two decades, ranking on Google meant playing a familiar game: stuff in some keywords, build backlinks, cross your fingers, and wait for traffic. That playbook built entire businesses. But the rules have changed, and the old tricks just don’t […]

The post How to Write Content That Ranks High in AI Search Engines (2025 Guide) first appeared on Tech Startups.

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The venture capital world has always had a hot-and-cold relationship with the Midwest. Investors rush in during boom times, then retreat to the coasts when markets turn sour. For Columbus, Ohio-based Drive Capital, this cycle of attention and disinterest played out against the backdrop of its own internal upheaval several years ago -- a co-founder split that could have ended the firm but may have ultimately strengthened it.

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Welcome to Indie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact.

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Sequel is an all in one app that makes it easy to keep track of all of the movies, TV shows, books, games, and more that you’d like to follow. It packs an intuitive interface and a number of delightful features to make it the ultimate media manager for your iPhone or iPad.

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Less than two weeks after its release, Apple’s F1 The Movie is about to cross the $300 million mark at the global box office. That puts it more than halfway to topping the combined worldwide grosses of all its previous theatrical runs, and validates its ambitions for big screen releases.

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