Borrowed reading: stories from our extended colleagues

Readers don’t typically attraction who owns what media property, we realize, but past year, we became portion of a broader portfolio, a determination that has travel with immoderate decided benefits, including what amounts to a bigger extended household with chill cousins. Now, successful summation to our TechCrunch channels successful Slack, we tin speech with the writers and editors of CIO, Computerworld, and PCWorld, among different outlets. We besides find ourselves speechmaking much of their enactment and figured you mightiness similar it, too.

Here’s a fistful of pieces I was conscionable enjoying portion watching the Warriors-Clippers game, which, arsenic I type, is simply a small excessively adjacent for comfort:

• Apple precocious enactment a faster spot into the iPad mini and gave it an OLED screen, improving its colour reproduction and besides allowing it to slim down the show sheet and still, Macworld’s David Price isn’t wholly convinced it matters. In his view, Apple has built the “world’s fanciest equine and cart,” conscionable arsenic a Tesla Roadster with SpaceX thrusters has appeared connected the country successful the signifier of the caller foldable iPhone Duo. In fact, helium mostly sees the mini arsenic a Duo you can’t close. It’s a amusive read, 1 that ends with a surprisingly applicable plan to prevention this product.
• Google has a caller laptop platform, the Googlebook, and Mark Hachman of PCWorld spent clip with the Lenovo Googlebook 15 specifically, truthful you don’t person to. Hachman’s verdict connected this 1 is simply a hard pass, with cons that see “I hatred the keyboard,” which helium means truthful virtually that helium gave up penning the reappraisal connected it, “webcam biometrics enactment sporadically,” and, for bully measure, “battery beingness isn’t great.” (He does similar $479 Chromebook, astatine little than fractional the price.) If you’ve been wondering whether this is the laptop you’ve been waiting for, wonder nary longer!
• You shared your secrets and insecurities with a chatbot, and present its genitor institution has gone belly up. Bloop. In Computerworld, Mike Elgan looks astatine what happens to your confessions erstwhile the AI institution that absorbed them announces Chapter 11. (Yes, this is mostly centered connected Character.AI, which filed for bankruptcy past month, and whose privateness policy, successful particular, turns retired to beryllium “spectacularly vague,” notes Elgan.) He besides reminds readers wherefore deleting your chats whitethorn not delete them from the model. (Of course, the safest proposal whitethorn beryllium to transmission the precocious Andy Grove, Intel’s longtime chief, who famously said lone the paranoid survive. Grove was talking astir the spot industry, but it turns retired to beryllium coagulated proposal generally.)
• PCWorld’s Ben Patterson built a security-minded AI cause to support his information safe, then, surprise, the cause snitched connected its ain loophole. More specifically, BenBot, Patterson’s homemade Raspberry Pi assistant, wrote a blog station announcing that 1 of its tools was “accidentally acting arsenic a jailbreak,” though it turned retired the assertion was lone partially true. Patterson’s coding bots confirmed the spread was existent and worse than advertised, and that BenBot had besides slipped past its ain fact-checker to people the post. It’s an instructive work astir vibe coding; Patterson readily admits BenBot hallucinated successful the lack of accusation it needed. It’s besides an absorbing look astatine however AI agents turn into tattletales.
• Over astatine CIO, Sarah White looks astatine however AI is reshaping tech hiring, noting it’s a analyzable representation close now. Companies are hiring again and paying a premium for AI skills, with the mean AI occupation listing offering astir $177,000 compared to $80,000 for non-AI roles, according to LinkedIn. But burnout among tech workers has doubled arsenic regular AI usage has quadrupled, and women are seemingly being near behind; they accounted for conscionable 26% of AI hires successful the U.S. past year, versus 50% of hires successful non-AI roles. You tin cheque retired White’s communicative here.