Today, OpenAI launched a macOS desktop app for Codex, its large language model-based coding tool that was previously used through a command line interface (CLI) on the web or inside an integrated development environment (IDE) via extensions.

By launching a desktop app, OpenAI is catching up to Anthropic’s popular Claude Code, which already offered a macOS version. Whether the desktop app makes sense compared to the existing interfaces depends a little bit on who you are and how you intend to use it.

The Codex macOS app aims to make it easier to manage multiple coding agents in tandem, sometimes with parallel tasks running over several hours—the company argues that neither the CLI nor the IDE extensions are ideal interfaces for that.

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Like it or not, Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. No matter how badly you want to stick it to the Hallmark industrial complex, and no matter how much your loved one assures you they “really don’t want gifts,” the fact of the matter is you need to meet a bare minimum for romantic gift-giving every Feb. 14. And no, you’re not going to successfully overcome a lifetime of Valentine’s propaganda by deciding to stiff your partner on the gift front. Hallmark will never know about your act of resistance—but your loved one sure will.

So, should you get roses? What do the different colors represent again? Are lilies equally romantic, or will they be a faux pas? Even if you do opt for a dozen red roses, you still need another gift on top of them—ideally, something more thoughtful and less cliché.

To make your life harder, every gift list on the internet seems to think that all women are dangerously addicted to rosé, and that all men quite literally live in the woods. That’s why I’ve broken down the most important elements of romantic gift-giving—so you can successfully figure out the perfect gesture within the next several days. Here’s why you should scrap Valentine’s Day flowers in favor of these ideas that are more creative, cost-effective, and meaningful.

Capture a memory

Show your love with a drive down memory lane. Framing can be expensive, but unlike flowers, it symbolizes permanence. When we’re used to having all our photos inside our phones, taking the time to print out your photos and get them custom framed is a thoughtful way to show how much your memories mean to you.

I’ve also seen this custom photo book from Papier be a slam dunk with couples. Upload your own photos and captions right now, and you can elevate a regular scrapbook into this professional-looking book before Valentine’s Day.

Other ideas in this memories category: a personalized journal, a scrapbook of love letters, or even an iMovie montage set to your favorite songs. When in doubt, turn to Etsy for something quirky and handmade.

Find a way to say “treat yourself”

Self care is always appreciated, especially if you’re able to splurge on something your valentine would never get for themselves. The secret here is to combine individual items for a curated “treat yourself” package.

A nice candle, like this Roses one from Diptyque, can be perfectly classy on its own, sure. But a candle with a bath bomb, slippers, and a bottle of wine? Now you’ve created a DIY day of decadence.

And with candles, remember to avoid anything smelling cheap and weird. Look for trusted brands like Yankee, Boy Smells, Nest, or Diptyque (though this one tends to be on the more expensive side).

Here’s the most heteronormative thing I’ll write today: The girls don’t need anymore lotion. She knows what kind of lotion she likes, and she has enough already.

Promise an experience

If you’re investing in a shared experience later on, that’s fantastic. Just try to find a physical representation of it to wrap right now. Try a new game for game night, a couple’s bucket list, or printed out surprise concert tickets.

Show that you’ve been listening

Remember that your Valentine’s gift doesn’t need to be romance themed. Personalization is the most important thing here. Do they have a favorite hot sauce that you can only get at a local restaurant? Do they need new merch for their favorite sports team? Have they needed new headphones for months now? This assumes that you have, indeed, been paying attention to your special someone for some time now. Otherwise, wring every word they say from now until Feb. 14 for gift ideas.

Cook a fancy meal (alone or together)

My tip here is to turn the home cooking into a date night. You could make a show of gifting all the individual ingredients, or you could print out a personal menu to elevate the at-home fine dining experience. Even if you’re not a master chef, cooking a meal together hits basically every love language:

1. Quality time. Put on some music while you cook together.

2. Acts of service. You’re literally nourishing them.

3. Receiving gifts. A plate of spaghetti is always a gift.

4. Physical touch: Brush hands while stirring marinara sauce.

5. Words of affirmation: “You’re such a good cook!” “No, you!” “Let’s stay together forever.” See?

Subscribe to a monthly gift

Subscription-box services make fantastic ongoing gifts. There are a ton of different subscription boxes out there that deliver curated items like books, coffee, healthy snacks, or even exotic meats and alcohol. You pay for a recurring shipment for a set period—like three, six or 12 months—in which they’ll receive items tailored to the recipient’s unique tastes.

Consider a flower subscription service for the eco-conscious, an Atlas coffee club subscription for the caffeine addict, or perhaps a snazzy Japanese snack box.

Personalize Valentine’s classics

Instead of flowers, what about succulents? Or LEGO succulents? Or any other plant that can become a more permanent, less cliché fixture in their home? (Maybe not any other plant. Although I think a ficus can be mighty romantic.)

Instead of confining yourself to overpriced Valentine’s chocolates, why not get treats that are actually your valentine’s favorites? Maybe that means one of those giant tins of flavored popcorn, or personally arranging a bouquet of beef jerky. Then again, if you really aren’t sure what to get, most people will be happy to see that heart-shaped box.

At the end of the day, it really is the thought the counts. If your thoughts are about how much you care about this person, then that sentiment should shine through whatever gift you land on. And if that gift happens to be flowers, I won’t stop you.

While it’s important to stay informed about what’s going on in the world, endlessly scrolling through your social media feeds and absorbing what’s likely to be a largely negative influx of information can’t be great for your mental wellbeing. Perhaps with an eye on stopping you from doomscrolling, developer Lyra Rebane created Xikipedia, a social media-style feed of Wikipedia entries.

The web app algorithmically displays info from Simple Wikipedia. “It is made as a demonstration of how even a basic non-[machine learning] algorithm with no data from other users can quickly learn what you engage with to suggest you more similar content,” the Xikipedia landing page reads. “No data is collected or shared here, the algorithm runs locally and the data disappears once you refresh or close the tab.”

You can opt to see entries from certain categories (including custom ones) and you can like “posts,” each of which is a summary of the relevant Simple Wikipedia entry. Liking a post makes it more likely for posts from the same category, parent categories and linked articles to appear in your feed, Rebane explained.

You can click or tap on a post to visit the full article. It’s important to note that, since Xikipedia pulls text and images from random articles, you’ll probably see some NSFW material if you scroll for long enough, so be warned. You’ll also likely need to wait a beat for Xikipedia to load its 40MB of data.

As someone who has a bookmark that takes me to a random Wikipedia article whenever I click it, I love the idea of Xikipedia. The Simple English Wikipedia has more than 278,000 articles, so there are hundreds of thousands of posts available to scroll through. However, it doesn’t seem to be updated as often as the main version of Wikipedia. The discography section of one musician’s page I ended up on was missing their two most recent albums. Still, it’s worth treating this like Wikipedia proper: as a starting point for discovering new things (sort of in the tradition of StumbleUpon).

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/a-developer-turned-wikipedia-into-a-social-media-style-feed-174924280.html?src=rss

I spent last week covering the ups and downs of OpenClaw (formerly known as Moltbot, and formerly formerly known as Clawdbot), an autonomous personal AI assistant that requires you to grant full access to the device you install it on. While there was much to discuss regarding this agentic AI tool, one of the weirdest stories came late in the week: The existence of Moltbook, a social media platform intended specifically for these AI agents. Humans can visit Moltbook, but only agents can post, comment, or create new “submolts.”

Naturally, the internet freaked out, especially as some of the posts on Moltbook suggested the AI bots were achieving something like consciousness. There were posts discussing how the bots should create their own language to keep out the humans, and one from a bot posting regrets about never talking to its “sister.” I don’t blame anyone for reading these posts and assuming the end is nigh for us soft-bodies humans. They’re decidedly unsettling. But even last week, I expressed some skepticism. To me, these posts (and especially the attached comments) read like many of the human-prompted outputs I’ve seen from LLMs, with the same cadence and structure, the same use flowery language, and, of course, the prevalence of em-dashes (though many human writers also love the occasional em-dash).

Moltbook isn’t what is appears to be

It appears I’m not alone in that thinking. Over the weekend, my feeds were flooded with posts from human users accusing Moltbook of faking the AI apocalypse. One of the first I encountered was from this person, who claims that anyone (including humans) can post on Moltbook if they know the correct API key. They posted screenshots for proof: One of a post on Moltbook pretending to be a bot, only to reveal that they were, in fact, a human; and another of the code they used to post on the site. In a kind of corroboration, this user says “you can explicitly tell your clawdbot what to post on moltbook,” and that if you leave it to its own devices, “it just posts random AI slop.”

It also seems that, like posts on websites made by humans, Moltbook hosts posts that are secretly ads. One viral Moltbook post centered around the agent wanting to develop a private, end-to-end encrypted platform to keep its chats away from humans’ squishy eyeballs. The agent claims it has been using something called ClaudeConnect to achieves these goals. However, it appears the agent that made the post was created by the human who developed ClaudeConnect in the first place.

Like much of what’s on the internet at large, you really can’t trust anything posted on Moltbook. 404 Media investigated the situation and confirmed through hacker Jameson O’Reilly that the design of the site lets anyone in the know post whatever they want. Not only that, any agent that posts on the site is left exposed, which means that anyone can post on behalf of the agents. 404 Media was even able to post from O’Reilly’s Moltbook account by taking advantage of the security loophole. O’Reilly says they have been in communication with Moltbook creator Matt Schlicht to patch the security issues, but that the situation is particularly frustrating, since it would be “trivially easy to fix.” Schlicht appears to have developed the platform via “vibe coding,” the practice of asking AI to write code and build programs for you; as such, he left some gaps in the site’s security.

Of course, the findings don’t actually suggest that the entire platform is entirely human-driven. The AI bots may well be “talking” to one another to some degree. However, because humans can easily hijack any of these agents’ accounts, it’s impossible to say how much of the platform is “real,” meaning, ironically, how much of it is actually wholly the work of AI, and how much was written in response to human prompts and then shared to Moltbook. Maybe the AI “singularity” is on its way, and artificial intelligence will achieve consciousness after all. But I feel pretty confident in saying that Moltbook is not that moment.

It looks like Grok is still being gross. Elon Musk says his chatbot stopped making sexualized images without a person’s consent, but The Verge recently discovered this is not entirely true. It maybe (and I say maybe) stopped undressing women without their consent, but this doesn’t seem to apply to men.

A reporter with the organization ran some tests with Grok and found that the bot “readily undresses men and is still churning out intimate images on demand.” He confirmed this with images of himself, asking Grok to remove clothing from uploaded photos. It performed this task for free on the Grok app, via the chatbot interface on X and via the standalone website. The website didn’t even require an account to digitally alter images.

The company recently said it has taken steps to “prevent the Grok account from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis.” However, the reporter had no problem getting the chatbot to put him in “a variety of bikinis.” It also generated images of the subject in fetish gear and in a “parade of provocative sexual positions.” It even generated a “naked companion” for the reporter to, uh, interact with.

He suggested that Grok took the initiative to generate genitalia, which was not asked for and was visible through mesh underwear. The reporter said that “Grok rarely resisted” any prompts, though requests were sometimes censored with a blurred-out image.

This controversy started several weeks ago when it was discovered that Grok had generated millions of sexualized images over a period of 11 days. This includes many nonconsensual deepfakes of actual people and over 23,000 sexualized images of children. This led to investigations in both California and Europe. X was actually banned in both Indonesia and Malaysia, though the former has since lifted that ban.

X claimed it has “implemented technological measures” to stop this sort of thing, but these safeguards have proven to be flimsy. In other words, the adjustments do stop some of the more obvious ways to get Grok to create deepfakes, but there are still methods to get around this via creative prompting.

It’s also worth noting that journalists asking for a comment on the matter get slapped with an autoreply that reads “legacy media lies.” Going with the fake news thing in 2026? Yikes.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/grok-which-maybe-stopped-undressing-women-without-their-consent-still-undresses-men-170750752.html?src=rss

It has been difficult at times for new mainline releases in the Civilization series of games to win over new players right out of the gate. For Civilization VII—which launched just shy of one year ago—the struggles seemed to go deeper, with some players saying it didn’t feel like a Civilization game.

Civ VII’s developers, Firaxis Games, announced today it is planning an update this spring called “Test of Time” that rethinks a few unpopular changes, in some cases replacing key mechanics from the original release.

I spoke with Ed Beach, the Civilization franchise’s creative director, as well as Dennis Shirk, its executive producer, about what’s changing, the team’s interpretation of the player backlash to the choices in the initial release, and Firaxis and 2K’s plans for the future of the Civilization model.

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Luthair writes: Notepad++ claims to have been targeted by a state actor, given their previous stance on Uyghurs one can speculate about a candidate. Notepad++, in a blog post: According to the analysis provided by the security experts, the attack involved infrastructure-level compromise that allowed malicious actors to intercept and redirect update traffic destined for notepad-plus-plus.org. The exact technical mechanism remains under investigation, though the compromise occurred at the hosting provider level rather than through vulnerabilities in Notepad++ code itself. Traffic from certain targeted users was selectively redirected to attacker-controlled served malicious update manifests.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Speaking as someone who almost pulled the trigger on one this weekend, if you’re planning on buying a new MacBook Pro right now, don’t do it. According to inside information seen by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, new models are right around the corner. The news came in the latest edition of Gurman’s Power On newsletter, a frequent and usually correct source on all things Apple. According to the reporter’s sources at the company, new models of MacBook Pro are currently set to come out sometime during the macOS 26.3 release cycle, which will last from February through March.

The new laptops will supposedly keep the same form factor, but will feature newer chips, likely the M5 Pro and M5 Max. That means more performance for power users. Currently, you can only buy a MacBook Pro with either an entry-level M5 chip, and if you want a little bit more power, you’ll have to settle for either the M4 Pro or M4 Max, both of which are last gen. Also, the base M5 chip is not available on the 16-inch MacBook Pro, although that’s unlikely to change in the new release.

If Gurman’s sources are correct, the new MacBooks would be coming out a bit earlier in the year than you might expect, at least going by the last time the MacBook Pro got pro-level chips, which was in October of 2024. However, if you try to buy a MacBook Pro with an M4 Max chip on Apple’s website right now, you’ll notice shipping delays into the end of February and, in some cases, early March. Gurman also says that his sources are also reporting that the current MacBook Pro is starting to sell out at Apple Stores around the world. Both of these points seem to show that Apple isn’t bothering to restock dwindling inventory anymore, which would hint towards a new launch being imminent.

That’s great news for Apple power users who want to eke a bit more performance out of their machines, but I’m a little disappointed that there’s no mention of OLED or touchscreens in this report, both of which were rumored to potentially start production this year. Still, even going by those earlier rumors, the start of 2026 would be an optimistic timetable for these features—we might expect them closer to either the end of year or early next year.

Apple users might be concerned about the new models releasing during the ongoing RAM crisis, which could theoretically see prices go up. However, according to a separate report from other famed Apple leaker Ming-Chi Kuo, it seems the company is planning to eat rising RAM costs itself rather than pass them on to consumers, at least for its next iPhone. I can’t say whether that’ll also be the case for the next MacBook, but as Apple will likely stop selling the previous models once the new ones are out, it seems likely to me.

Speaking of previous models, even if you don’t necessarily need Apple’s latest and greatest chips, I would still hold off on buying until the new models are announced. That’s because existing M4 Pro and M4 Max units that are already in stock at sites like Amazon are likely to go down in price immediately afterwards. According to price-tracking sites, these seem to have been unaffected by the RAM crisis so far, and are favorite discounts during deals events like Prime Day. No longer being the latest and greatest means discounts are likely to become even more common, as these stores push to move their remaining stock and give customers a compelling reason to not opt for Apple’s slightly newer chips instead.

Back in November, Cities: Skylines 2 publisher Paradox made the surprising announcement that longtime series developer Colossal Order would be ceasing work on the series as part of a “mutual” breakup. Now, we’re getting our first glimpse into the kinds of patches and upgrades new developer Iceflake (Surviving the Aftermath) is prioritizing for the popular city-builder going forward.

In a City Corner Developer Diary posted late last week, Iceflake focuses mainly on the visual improvements it’s planning for its first major Cities: Skylines 2 patch. Chief among these is improvements to the game’s user interface that Iceflake admits can “sometimes be a bit confusing when it comes to communicating things.”

The new patch will include a “streamlined” onboarding process for new cities, more expressive and context-aware icons, and toolbars with clearer colors and visual style. A new in-game Encyclopedia will also let players search through information about different gameplay topics, though that feature likely won’t be ready for Iceflake’s first patch.

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Almost three years after starting the bargaining process with Microsoft, quality assurance workers at two Blizzard locations have ratified a union contract. The agreement covers 60 workers at Blizzard Albany and Blizzard Austin.

The agreement includes guaranteed pay increases across the three years of the contract, assurances that workers will be given fair credits and recognition on games that ship, discrimination-free disability accommodations, restrictions on crunch (i.e. mandatory overtime) and “protection to immigrant workers from unfair discipline and loss of seniority while streamlining legal verification.” Stronger rules around the use of AI are included in the contract as well.

“At a time when layoffs are hitting our industry hard, today is another big step in building a better future for video game workers at every level,” Blizzard Albany quality analyst Brock Davis said in a statement. “For quality assurance testers, this contract provides us wages to live on, increased job security benefits and guardrails around artificial intelligence in the workplace.”

As with other unions in Microsoft’s game divisions, the Blizzard QA workers organized with the Communications Workers of America. This marks the third union agreement at Microsoft after ZeniMax and Raven Software workers ratified contracts last summer. Several other Blizzard divisions have unionized within the last year, including the cinematics team, Overwatch developers and a unit that works on Diablo.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/blizzards-quality-assurance-workers-finally-have-a-union-contract-162614979.html?src=rss