The automation crustacean is crawling to a mobile device near you.
By that I mean, OpenClaw — the free, open source AI agent that captivated the internet earlier this year — is finally available as an app on iOS and Android. OpenClaw announced the news on X on Tuesday.
On both platforms, you can pair your phone with the OpenClaw Gateway, a kind of routing layer that connects your requests to AI agents and the tools and skills those agents draw on to get things done.
Vinton Cerf will step down from his role as Google’s chief internet evangelist next week, marking the conclusion of one of the most influential careers in technology history.
While speaking via video feed at the Open Frontier conference hosted by the Laude Institute, Cerf was recognized by Dave Patterson, the UC Berkeley professor best known for co-developing RISC processor architecture.
“Vint … has been at Google more than 20 years, and he is retiring a week from today, and so I think we ought to give him a round of applause for a relatively good career,” Patterson said, to cheers from the room.
The first wave of artificial intelligence adoption was driven by speed. Companies wanted faster research, faster drafting, faster customer service, faster sales, faster decisions. In boardrooms and management meetings, AI was presented as a productivity tool, a cost-saving mechanism, and in some cases, a competitive necessity.
That phrase is already giving way to something more serious. The next wave of AI will not be defined only by what companies can automate. It will be defined by what they can explain, defend, and govern.
That is where many businesses are dangerously unprepared. For all the excitement around AI, a basic legal question remains unanswered in many organizations: If an AI system produces a harmful, biased, false, or commercially damaging outcome, who is responsible?
Two weeks of knockout rounds remain in the 2026 World Cup. That’s great news for America’s bars and restaurants in host cities, where beer sales soared 15.4% compared to the same weeks last year, according to Beer Institute. For an industry that has seen volume broadly flat or declining for years, it’s a welcome kick in the shin.
Massachusetts is leading the country, with on-premise beer sales nearly 30% over the first two weeks of play — driven in part by Scotland’s Tartan Army, which descended on Boston in force and nearly drank the city dry. The parent company of Sam Adams said its Boston Taproom sold four times its normal holiday volume in a single weekend, requiring an emergency beer delivery.
So what makes beer score points with World Cup fans? “Beer’s range of options makes it a strong fit for occasions like these,” said Heritage. “There’s a brew for every kind of fan, which is part of why it scales so well during an international event like this.”
It’s been a week since President Trump signed an executive order directing a whole-of-government push on quantum computing — funding it, securing its supply chains, building its workforce, and making sure adversaries like China don’t get there first.
This marks a significant federal commitment to a technology that is either the next great computing revolution or the most expensive science experiment in history, depending on the expert opinion. But one thing it can do: replace AI as the carrier of long-term hopes for the tech industry. This would be the right moment for a switch, as the vibe shifts on AI itself: models are more expensive to train, returns are harder to demonstrate. Investors who have sent AI stock soaring may soon be looking for the next big thing to believe in.
Much of the talk at VidCon 2026 focused on how long-form horizontal content is at the forefront of rewiring the traditional Hollywood model. On a panel about convergence, Pocketwatch CEO Chris H. Williams declared, “If it works on YouTube, it’ll work anywhere,” pointing to The Besties’ crossover success on Hulu and, soon, Amazon Fire TV Stick.
A recurring topic across panels was how streamers like Hulu, Amazon, and Tubi are recruiting creators, acquiring their YouTube libraries, or funding original content. But what does it take to make a video go viral on YouTube in 2026?
Social media giants have for years touted their growing slate of safety tools and protections as proof that they prioritize young users’ well-being.
But more than half of those protections don’t work as advertised, new research finds.
Researchers at the Cybersafety Research Center tested 86 youth safety features across TikTok, Instagram, Snap, and YouTube and examined whether they worked as described and whether children could realistically find and use them. Only 35 of those features — just over 40% — successfully met both criteria.
Comcast is positioning itself for the next round of media industry merger and acquisition activity.
That’s what industry analysts are saying about the company’s Monday morning announcement about spinning off NBCUniversal.
Comcast says it is going to spend the next year separating NBCUniversal and a European media arm, Sky, into a new publicly traded company, separate from Comcast’s broadband distribution business.
It has been over a decade since Google Glass smart glasses were announced in 2013, followed by their swift withdrawal — in part because of low adoption. Their subsequent (and lesser-known) second iteration was released in 2017 and aimed at the workplace. They were withdrawn in 2023.
In December 2025, Google made a new promise for smart glasses, with two new products to be released in 2026. But why have Google’s smart glasses struggled where others are succeeding? And will Google see success the third time around?
The history of computers is fascinating because it’s also the history of the world. Join us on a whirlwind tour of the great technological breakthroughs of the past few centuries, from Ada Lovelace to Alan Turing. Then we’ll bring you bang up to date, explaining the influence of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, right up to the current state of play with regard to artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing.
We’ll also bust a few myths along the way. Who really created the first computer? Was it John Mauchly with ENIAC? Alan Turing with his theoretical Turing Machine? Konrad Zuse with the Z3? Or could it actually be Charles Babbage with his Difference and Analytical Engines?
We’re keen to redress any gender imbalances, too. While the history of computing has been dominated by men (again, reflecting world history), many important contributions have also come from women. Not least Ada Lovelace, who some consider the first programmer, and the computer pioneer Grace Hopper.
Dispatches From The Front 