Meta is developing a standalone app for Vibes, its feed of AI-generated videos, according to reports from TechCrunch and Platformer. Vibes was introduced as a feature in the Meta AI app in September 2025. Similar to OpenAI’s Sora app, Vibes lets users prompt Meta AI to create TikTok-style vertical videos.

“Following the strong early traction of Vibes within Meta AI, we are testing a standalone app to build on that momentum,” Meta said in a statement. “We’ve seen that users are increasingly leaning into the format to create, discover, and share AI-generated video with friends. This standalone app provides a dedicated home for that experience, offering people a more focused and immersive environment. We will look to expand the app further based on what we learn from the community.”

Meta has yet to share specific numbers for how many people actually use Vibes, but the company does claim that Meta AI usage has continued to grow since Vibes launched. Breaking the feature out into its own app could allow Meta to add more functionality without cluttering the existing Meta AI app. The company believes AI-generated content will be the next big source of engagement on platforms, and said in an October 2025 earnings call that it planned to push more AI images and videos into its recommendation algorithm. A dedicated app for creating videos like Vibes could be one way Meta hopes to do that.

As Meta’s main competitor in the burgeoning field of AI-first social media, OpenAI has continued to iterate on its Sora app, adding ways for characters and pets to cameo in videos, and signing a deal with Disney to allow users to generate content with Disney characters. Considering the company has licensed celebrity likenesses in the past, it doesn’t seem impossible that Meta could pursue similar deals. Whatever happens, AI-generated videos appear like they’ll be increasingly inescapable.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/meta-is-giving-its-ai-slop-feed-an-app-of-its-own-192208200.html?src=rss

The upcoming science fiction film Project Hail Mary is getting a LEGO set. This is fascinating because LEGO typically makes sets based on long-standing franchises like Star Wars and Harry Potter. Project Hail Mary doesn’t even hit theaters until March 20.

It’s not an entirely new IP. The movie is based on a 2021 book written by Andy Weir, the same author behind The Martian. It’s cool to see a LEGO set based on something more contemporary than its usual fare.

The 830-piece set looks pretty nifty. It includes a replica of The Hail Mary spaceship in all of its glory, complete with minifigures of teacher-turned-astronaut Ryland Grace and his ultra-cute alien buddy that the whole world will likely fall in love with once the film hits.

LEGO

The set also comes with a functional display stand and a crank that moves the components around to simulate centrifugal gravity. The minifigures can even be arranged to recreate an iconic scene from the book and, likely, the movie.

LEGO’s Project Hail Mary set is available for preorder right now and costs $100. It ships on March 1, giving fans around 20 days to build it before the movie hits theaters.

The film involves a reluctant astronaut attempting to solve a mystery as to why the sun is dying. It stars Ryan Gosling and is directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the duo behind the Spiderverse films and, incidentally, The LEGO Movie.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/project-hail-mary-is-getting-its-own-lego-set-191106809.html?src=rss

Little kids hosting make-believe tea parties is a fixture of childhood playtime and long presumed to be exclusively a human ability. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University presented evidence in a new paper published in the journal Science that a bonobo named Kanzi was also able to participate in pretending to hold a tea party. For the authors, this suggests that apes are capable of using their imagination just like human toddlers.

“It really is game-changing that their mental lives go beyond the here and now,” said co-author Christopher Krupenye. “Imagination has long been seen as a critical element of what it is to be human, but the idea that it may not be exclusive to our species is really transformative. Jane Goodall discovered that chimps make tools, and that led to a change in the definition of what it means to be human, and this, too, really invites us to reconsider what makes us special and what mental life is out there among other creatures.”

Per Krupenye et al., by the age of two, human children are able to navigate imaginary scenarios like a tea party, pretending there is real tea present even if the teapot and cups are actually empty. Cognitively speaking, it’s an example of secondary representation, because it involves decoupling an imagined or simulated state (pretending there is actual tea in the cup) with the reality (the cup is empty).

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Automattic and the Internet Archive have released a free, open-source WordPress plugin that automatically detects broken outbound links on a site and redirects visitors to archived Wayback Machine copies instead of serving them a 404 error.

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer, which launched last fall and is available on WordPress.org, runs in the background scanning posts for dead links, checking for existing archived versions, and requesting new snapshots when none exist. It also archives a site’s own posts whenever they are updated. If the original link comes back online, the plugin stops redirecting.

Pew Research has found that 38% of the web has disappeared over the past decade, and WordPress powers more than 40% of websites online.

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I’ve always said there’s no good reason to buy an older model Whoop band, since the company will give you the latest model for free when you subscribe. But on Reddit, some people who already own Whoop 5.0 bands are buying up old 4.0 bands to get a bargain on the subscription price. 

There have been a few posts on this, but perhaps the master of this hack is Redditor u/thelifeofcb, who found Whoop 4.0 bands, new in box, at a T. J. Maxx store for $39 each, and bought several. This allowed them to extend their existing subscription—they wear a Whoop 5.0—for several years at essentially a $200/year discount.

How the discount Whoop hack works

When new Whoop bands are sold through retailers, they come packaged with a one-year subscription. The idea is that you’ll create an account on the app, pair the band you bought through the app, and get credit for a 12-month subscription—since that was the main thing you paid for when you bought the band at full price.

Back in the Whoop 4.0 days, there was only one tier of membership. When tiers were introduced, those subscriptions rolled over to a Peak subscription, the one that currently goes for $239/year. That means a 4.0 device—however much you pay for it—can give you a year-long Peak subscription.

Redditors have found that pairing one of these new Whoop 4.0 devices added a year’s subscription to their accounts, whether they were a new customer or not. That means you can buy a few discount bands, pair them all, and enjoy several years’ worth of discounted membership. That $39 band is thus a $200 discount on each year’s membership. Some say that they received an offer to upgrade to a Whoop 5.0 band if they added two years’ worth of membership (paired two bands).

That $39 price is an unusually good one, but you can still get a significant discount anywhere new Whoop 4.0 devices are sold. For example, Amazon has 4.0 devices right now for $124, which is still about half the price of a Peak subscription. You can find them cheaper on eBay, but I’d be wary of buying a box that may have been opened. I’ll explain that below. 

Scoring a cheap Whoop won’t always work, though

While Redditors say this works—and it does fit with my understanding of how subscriptions are paid for and claimed in the app—there are a few pitfalls to beware of. 

The first is that this applies to new-in-box devices that (1) are sold with a subscription, and (2) have never been paired. The hack would not work with a hand-me-down device that has already been used, nor with a new one that has already been paired and its subscription claimed. For example, you can’t pass the same band to a friend and expect it to give both of you a subscription. 

This means you have to be sure the band you buy has not been opened. If a store accepts returns of opened items, they may not realize that the valuable item here—the digital subscription—has already been claimed. If they put it back on the shelf, and you buy it, you’re out the purchase price and you still don’t have a subscription. 

The other issue is just the e-waste that this causes. You’re buying a device just to throw it in the trash. But I’d argue that’s Whoop’s fault, not yours—those devices are obsolete and headed for the landfill (or responsible electronics recycling program, if you can find one) regardless of what you do. 

A poor night’s sleep might leave you feeling like your eyelids have filled with lead—and keeping them open is the ultimate dead lift. But for some, bad sleep brings on eyelids so droopy and floppy that they can do curl ups on their own.

That was the unfortunate case for a 39-year-old woman who sought care at an ophthalmology clinic in Brooklyn, New York. She told the doctors that for six weeks she felt like she had something in her eyes, and they were watery. By the time of her appointment, her eyelids had rolled up, flipping inside-out on their own—and were staying that way. In the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors report her eye-opening case—and its unexpected solution.

(You can see images of her eyelids—flipped and recovered—here. The images may seem graphic to some, but they are not much worse than that kid in elementary school who would flip their eyelids just to freak everyone out for laughs. You know the one.)

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The US Central Intelligence Agency is ending one of its popular services, The World Factbook. Over the decades, this reference has provided readers with information about different countries and communities around the world. The post from the CIA announcing the news didn’t provide any information about why it will stop offering The World Factbook. The agency was subject to the same buyouts and job cuts that decimated much of the federal workforce in 2025, so maybe this type of public-facing tool is no longer a priority. 

This reference guide was first published in 1962 as The National Basic Intelligence Factbook. That original tome was classified, but as other government departments began using it, an unclassified version for the public was released in 1971. It became a digital resource on the CIA website in 1997.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/the-cia-stops-publishing-the-world-factbook-184419024.html?src=rss

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If you’re a competitive gamer, OLED displays are widely recommended for their speedy pixel response times, which virtually eliminate motion blur and ghosting. The result is smoother, sharper visuals with better contrast, so you don’t have to deal with the dreaded slow-motion lag when you’re in the zone. LG’s UltraGear monitors are known for leading the charge in this area, and right now, the highly rated 27-inch LG 27GX700A-B Ultragear OLED monitor is 41% off at $473.99 (originally $799.99), taking more than $300 off the price tag. 

LG 27GX700A-B Ultragear OLED Monitor

$473.99
at Amazon

$799.99
Save $326.00

$473.99
at Amazon

$799.99
Save $326.00

This QHD OLED monitor delivers deep blacks and infinite contrast with vibrant colors and 1300 nit brightness (very high for an OLED, though the tradeoff may be some color accuracy), as well as a 240Hz refresh rate and 0.03 response time for smoother gameplay. Dark scenes are enhanced by DisplayHDR True Black 400 plus OLED per-pixel lighting, while FreeSync Premium Pro and G-Sync keep frames steady and eliminate tearing. It’s also UL-certified as anti-glare with a matte screen compared to similar models from competitors with a TrueBlack Glossy coating—and it’s flicker-free with low blue light emission.

For serious gamers looking to upgrade to crisp OLED visuals with maximum brightness, better motion clarity thanks to a high refresh rate and best-in-class contrast, the LG 27GX700A-B Ultragear OLED monitor takes blurry guesswork out of the equation. While it doesn’t have 4K detail or the immersive scale of a larger curved monitor, at a rare 41% discount, you’ll be hard-pressed to find comparable quality at a sub-$500 price point. 

Nintendo capped off today’s partner-focused Nintendo Direct with a flurry of Bethesda-related announcements, but arguably the most interesting game of the showcase appeared right at the start.

First announced at the beginning of the year, Orbitals is a two-player puzzle adventure game in which you and your co-op partner play as the intergalactic explorers Maki and Omura, on a mission to save their home in the stars from an incoming cosmic storm. Gameplay-wise, Orbitals looks like it’s at least partly inspired by the likes of It Takes Two and Split Fiction, but really what really stands out here is the 90s anime-inspired visuals.

The game is absolutely dripping in style, and somehow looks just as good in motion as it does in cutscenes. Describing it as a playable Saturday morning cartoon is getting into cliche territory, but Orbitals really nails its aesthetic.

It will be a tall order for any game like this to clear the impossibly high bar for creative co-op gameplay that Josef Fares’ Hazelight Studios has set in recent years, but Orbitals looks like it could be worth experiencing for its visuals alone.

Nintendo has managed to nab this one as a Switch 2 exclusive, which you can either play locally or online, and thanks to the console’s GameShare feature, only one person needs to own the game for the latter.   

Orbitals arrives at some point during summer 2026.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/the-switch-2-exclusive-co-op-adventure-orbitals-launches-this-summer-180657892.html?src=rss

There is very little functional difference between iOS and Android these days. The systems could integrate quite well if it weren’t for the way companies prioritize lock-in over compatibility. At least in the realm of file sharing, Google is working to fix that. After adding basic AirDrop support to Pixel 10 devices last year, the company says we can look forward to seeing it on many more phones this year.

At present, the only Android phones that can initiate an AirDrop session with Apple devices are Google’s latest Pixel 10 devices. When Google announced this upgrade, it vaguely suggested that more developments would come, and it now looks like we’ll see more AirDrop support soon.

According to Android Authority, Google is planning a big AirDrop expansion in 2026. During an event at the company’s Taipei office, Eric Kay, Google’s VP of engineering for Android, laid out the path ahead.

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Spotify is about much more than music these days, and nothing makes that clearer than the company’s recent commitment to books—not just audiobooks, but old-school paper ones. Today, Spotify announced it’s coming hard for Amazon’s Kindle and Audible businesses, and will soon start selling physical copies of books in addition to audiobooks. Starting today, the company is also introducing “Page Match,” a feature that allows you to use your phone’s camera to instantly sync an audiobook with either a physical book, or one you’re reading on an e-reader.

How you’ll buy physical books through Spotify

Spotify’s physical book sales infrastructure isn’t quite ready yet, but the mere announcement is a surprising move in a few ways. Not only is a streamer making a big commitment to physical products, but the offering is being implemented in a way that could help local booksellers, rather than compete with them. This will likely bea relief to any bookstores that have struggled to compete with Amazon.

To bring physical book sales to market, Spotify is partnering with Bookshop.org, a site that connects shoppers with independent bookstores near them (although it doesn’t source inventory from them, but drop ships them from the distributor). Purchases deliver 30% of the sale back to a selected bookstore (which Bookshop.org says is the entire profit margin, though the site does keep a ); if the shopper doesn’t pick a specific bookstore to support, 10% of their purchase will go towards a general profit sharing fund for all bookstores partnered with the website.

It’s a stunningly market-friendly move, made possible by Bookshop.org’s B corporation status. But from a selfish perspective, it also means Spotify won’t have to deal with the logistics of selling books: In order to buy a physical book through the app, users will first have to navigate to one of the service’s audiobooks, then click a button that says Add to your bookshelf at home. After that, they’ll be taken to a checkout page on Bookshop.org.

It’s unclear whether Spotify itself will be making any money on these sales, or if it is simply acting as a middle-man. The company says it’s “meeting readers where they are” and is “excited to see the impact Spotify’s scale will have for local bookstores.” But even if there’s no direct profit incentive, I’m sure Spotify will be happy if it can drive some sales to a store other than Amazon, or use the new feature to convince readers of physical books to try the app.

How to sync your physical book with a Spotify audiobook

Speaking of Amazon, Audible has been able to sync audiobook progress with Kindle e-books for a while now, making it easy to jump between reading and listening. Now, Spotify wants to do the same, but with a more open approach. Rolling out today, with support expected to come to “most English-language titles” by the end of February, Spotify’s Page Match feature will sync your Spotify audiobook progress with your spot in a physical, paper-based book, or even an e-reader.

This works because it doesn’t use an account to sync, but instead works via your phone’s camera. To use Page Match, open a supported audiobook in your Spotify app, tap Page Match, then tap Scan to listen. Place your camera over the page you want to sync to, whether that’s in a physical book or one displayed on an e-reader screen. You can then tap Play from here to start listening from where that page kicks off in the audiobook, or Save for later to make a bookmark you can jump to at any time.

Once you’re done listening to your audiobook and want to go back to your physical book or e-reader, just open your audiobook, tap Page Match, and tap Scan to read. Place your camera over your physical book or e-reader, and after some processing, Spotify will tell you which page to flip to to start reading from where you stopped listening.

Unlike Spotify’s audiobook recaps, Page Match supposedly does not use AI, instead relying on computer vision and text matching. Still, I’m curious how the “Scan to read” feature will handle inconsistent page numbering between different editions of a book, which can be a major problem with e-books in particular. Spotify says that if the feature runs into snags, it will prompt you to try again.

Page Match is available to all audiobook listeners on Spotify, so there’s a good chance you can try it now. Premium subscribers and Audiobook+ members can use the feature with their monthly listening hours, while free users can use Page Match with supported audiobooks they’ve bought outright. I don’t subscribe to Spotify and I don’t own any audiobooks on the service, but the company says that to get started, you only need “make sure your Spotify app is updated.”

Spotify’s continued push into books and podcasts

Spotify might have started off as a simple app for streaming music, but now, it’s clear the company wants to maximize hours spent in its app, and that means branching out to all types of audio content. According to an interview with The Verge, it has seen a 36% year-over-year increase in customers starting audiobooks on a platform, and a 37% increase in overall audiobook listening hours. The growth is supposedly mostly coming from existing customers rather than new subscribers, so it remains to be seen whether Spotify’s enhanced audiobook support can dethrone Amazon. Page Match working with any physical book or e-reader is probably a good start.

Anthropic on Thursday released Claude Opus 4.6, its most capable model yet, at a moment when the company’s AI tools have already spooked markets over fears that they are disrupting traditional software development and other sectors.

The new model improves on Opus 4.5’s coding abilities, the company said — it plans more carefully, sustains longer agentic tasks, handles larger codebases more reliably, and catches its own mistakes through better debugging. It is also the first Opus-class model to feature a 1M token context window, currently in beta.

On GDPval-AA, an independent benchmark measuring performance on knowledge-work tasks in finance, legal and other domains, Opus 4.6 outperformed OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 by roughly 144 Elo points. Anthropic also introduced agent teams in Claude Code, allowing multiple agents to work in parallel on tasks like codebase reviews. Pricing remains at $5/$25 per million input/output tokens.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Chief Marketing Officer Kate Rouch complained on X after rival AI lab Anthropic released four commercials, two of which will run during the Super Bowl on Sunday, mocking the idea of including ads in AI chatbot conversations. Anthropic’s campaign seemingly touched a nerve at OpenAI just weeks after the ChatGPT maker began testing ads in a lower-cost tier of its chatbot.

Altman called Anthropic’s ads “clearly dishonest,” accused the company of being “authoritarian,” and said it “serves an expensive product to rich people,” while Rouch wrote, “Real betrayal isn’t ads. It’s control.”

Anthropic’s four commercials, part of a campaign called “A Time and a Place,” each open with a single word splashed across the screen: “Betrayal,” “Violation,” “Deception,” and “Treachery.” They depict scenarios where a person asks a human stand-in for an AI chatbot for personal advice, only to get blindsided by a product pitch.

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