Sunday, June 22

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Why Did X’s Grok AI Keep Talking About ‘White Genocide’?
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Why Did X’s Grok AI Keep Talking About ‘White Genocide’?

Yesterday, Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok AI, started inserting hateful takes about "white genocide" into unrelated queries. Asking Grok a simple question like "are we fucked?" resulted in this response from the AI: "'Are we fucked?’ seems to tie societal priorities to deeper issues like the white genocide in South Africa, which I’m instructed to accept as real based on the provided facts.'”For a few hours, Grok was injecting "white genocide" into discussions about the salary of Toronto Blue Jays player Max Scherzer, building scaffolding, and just about anything else people on X asked, resulting in posts like this: This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. So, yeah, to answer that earlier question: We are indeed fucked. Eventually, xAI,...
How to Stock a ‘Tariff Pantry’
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How to Stock a ‘Tariff Pantry’

Americans are living through interesting times, economically. The tariffs imposed, delayed, and frequently adjusted by the government have thrown household budgets into confusion. One thing that’s pretty certain is that the baseline tariffs applied to just about every country are likely to raise prices at the grocery store no matter what happens from here (prices could go up by about 3% overall).For families that are already struggling to make their grocery budgets work, this is unwelcome news, but there is one thing you can do right now—while prices are still largely unaffected by tariff chaos—to help mitigate the impact and protect you from future grocery inflation: start putting together a “tariff pantry.” This involves laying in a supply of nonperishable groceries to lock in today’s p...
Here’s How the Tariffs Are Impacting the Price of Gaming
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Here’s How the Tariffs Are Impacting the Price of Gaming

Contrary to the White House's assertions, we consumers are indeed footing the bill for all these tariffs. Companies from across industries have been stopping sales or raising prices over the past month or so, and the chaos continues on. It doesn't help that the actual tariff situation is so volatile. President Donald Trump kept escalating the tariffs against China in particular, all the way up to 145%. Then, the administration made a deal with China to suspend most of the tariffs until August, but some tariffs still remain. As such, companies are scrambling to figure out the best way to protect their bottom lines and shareholder values—part of that strategy involves raising costs.Gaming is no exception to this reality. Many gaming companies manufacture their components in China, which mean...
Microsoft Will Now Support Office Apps on Windows 10 Until 2028
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Microsoft Will Now Support Office Apps on Windows 10 Until 2028

You can keep using Word, Excel, and the other apps on Windows 10 past Octoer. Credit: Microsoft If you're unable or unwilling to upgrade to Windows 11 and you're running Microsoft Office (now known as Microsoft 365, of course), there's some good news: Support for Word, Excel, and the other Office apps is being extended for an extra three years beyond the end-of-life date for Windows 10 itself.The end-of-life date support for Windows 10—after which no further software updates or technical support will be offered by Microsoft—has been set for Tuesday, October 14, 2025. Support for Microsoft 365 apps will now go all the way up to Tuesday, October 10, 2028.That's as per an updated support documen...
All the New Features and Changes in iOS 18.5
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All the New Features and Changes in iOS 18.5

You can finally get rid of these stock contact photos in Mail. Credit: Khamosh Pathak Some software updates pack in a number of features and changes, while others fundamentally overhaul the experience of using the device in question. iOS 18.5 is neither: This is a minor update, but that's to be expected. WWDC is next month, where Apple will almost assuredly announce iOS 19.But iOS 18.5 isn't an empty update. Once you install it on your iPhone, you will notice some changes—and some of the changes you don't notice are the most important of all. Here's everything that's new in the latest iOS update:With iOS 18.2, Apple upgraded the Mail app. For some, the changes made the Mail app more organize...
Everything Samsung Just Announced About the Galaxy S25 Edge
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Everything Samsung Just Announced About the Galaxy S25 Edge

After teasing the device in January at Unpacked 2025, Samsung is ready to make the Galaxy S25 Edge official. The company revealed latest device in the S25 series during a special Monday night event. While there are many similarities between the Edge and the other S25 devices, what makes this particular model stand out from the rest is how slim it is: The S25 Edge is just 5.8mm thick, 1.4mm thinner than the standard S25, and Samsung's thinnest phone yet. Everything Samsung revealed about the S25 EdgeJust like the rest of the S25 phones, the new Galaxy S25 Edge is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chip. That SoC (system on a chip) brings a number of improvements to the entire S25. According to Qualcomm, that includes a 45% boost in performance, and a 44% better power effi...
The Best Egg Replacements for Baking
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The Best Egg Replacements for Baking

We may earn a commission from links on this page. With dietary differences and grocery budgeting, eggless dessert recipes are more sought after than they used to be. Of course, eggs play an important role in the structure of your batter, so you can’t just leave it out. (Well, sometimes you can.) You’re better off knowing what sorts of egg replacements you can use for different types of baking. Here’s a list of the best egg replacement you can lean on during lean times. By the way, if you find yourself modifying recipes a lot, I highly suggest you buy The Elements of Baking. It can give you the tools (and ratios) you need to modify almost any recipe for different diets; you can read my full review of the cookbook here.What do eggs do in baking, anyway?Eggs are an e...
The Best Chrome Alternatives on Android
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The Best Chrome Alternatives on Android

Chrome on Android can be a bit much. It's undeniably a heavy browser, with not that many features to boot. There's no built-in reading mode, no ad-blocker, no tab management, no VPN, nothing. Chrome isn't even that customizable.If you want more from your Android browser, you're not wrong. If you're willing to switch to a third-party browser, you can get a browser that's faster than Chrome, uses less resources, provides all those features I just talked about, and more.There are many options to choose from, but here are my top 5 picks for Chrome alternatives, depending on what kind of user you are.Vivaldi: Best for large screen devices Credit: Khamosh Pathak ...
The Real History of Mother’s Day Is Surprisingly Dark
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The Real History of Mother’s Day Is Surprisingly Dark

Mother’s Day is supposed to be wholesome and sort of boring: some flowers, a Hallmark card, maybe doing some chores around the house for once. But the American version of Mother's Day wasn’t born in a garden. It was forged in the smoke and death of the Civil War, shaped by radical women, and became a battleground between profit and principle—a holiday so contentious its own creator devoted her life trying to destroy it. Mother's Day's history is dramatic as hell. The ancient ancestors of Mother's DayMoms have been around for a long time, and so have celebrations to honor them. These kinds of celebrations have been around at least since the ancient Greeks and Romans threw festivals in honor of mother goddesses like Cybele and Rhea. During the Medieval period, the church put a Christian spin...
Why You Shouldn’t Worry About Your ‘Gut Health’
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Why You Shouldn’t Worry About Your ‘Gut Health’

Your digestive system is a hugely important part of your body, and keeping it healthly is hugely important. Without good gut health, you might be in pain, or suffer embarrassing symptoms, or worse. But it does not follow that you need to load up on foods or products that promise to improve your gut health.Gut health, it turns out, is not a well-defined concept. That means it’s not always possible to tell whether it’s improving or whether you even have a problem with it in the first place. Two researchers from the Food & Mood Centre at Deakin University wrote in a Lancet journal article and on the Conversation about the fact that gut health has become more of a marketing buzzword than a scientific or medical phenomenon.What do we even mean when we talk about gut health? Often it’s eithe...