Author: Geek Planet

Wesley J. Smith November 22, 2025 2 Ethics, Medicine and Health Assisted suicide/euthanasia will surely be seen as a splendid way to save money by erasing expensive patients, even if not terminally illWesley J. Smith November 22, 2025 2 Ethics, Medicine and Health This article is republished from National Review with the permission of the author. The future that some of us predicted about assisted suicide deployed as a resource saver has come to the U.K. Even as the House of Commons has passed a legalization bill — currently being debated in the House of Lords — the country’s hospice…

Flagship phones have gotten expensive enough that a small discount barely moves the needle. This one does. The Google Pixel 10 Pro XL (unlocked, 256GB) is down to $949.00, which is $250 off the $1,199.00 compared value. If you’ve been sitting on an older phone because you didn’t want to pay full price for a top-tier model, this is the kind of markdown that actually changes the decision. What you’re getting The “Pro XL” format is all about a more comfortable daily experience: a bigger screen for reading, maps, and media, plus that roomy feel when you’re typing or multitasking.…

Digitas is the latest agency to launch a zero-click search analysis tool. Last week, the Publicis Groupe business’s U.K. arm shipped Model Sight, software that can evaluate how LLM-powered search is representing a client’s brand back to web users.“[Clients] need to be able to understand how they’re being perceived by large language models. Is it positive? Is it negative? Are they even being mentioned?” said Leila Seith Hassan, chief data officer Digitas U.K. “It gives brands the capacity to understand, evaluate and make change if it’s not where they need it to be.” Software tools and solutions purporting to solve CMOs’…

Time Magazine announced its annual “Person of the Year” this week, only this time around it’s not a single individual but the several billionaires who are launching a new technological order through AI. On the cover of the magazine issue, tech giants including Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg are pictured sitting on a construction beam, referencing the iconic image of construction workers hundreds of feet in the air on the site of a developing skyscraper. Time’s Editor in Chief Sam Jacobs wrote the following in his explanation of the choice: This was the year when artificial intelligence’s full…

In recent weeks, the short-form video app has shared a plethora of incentives and challenges with its TikTok Shop Partners (TSP) which Digiday has seen — almost gamifying the process, in a bid to encourage more spending. The result: if they qualify, TSPs could receive ad credits or cash bonuses. And here’s what those incentives are: Daily GMV Incentive ProgramTSPs can earn cash incentives between $5,000 and $20,000 between Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, based on their Q4 incremental daily GMV growth — or how much they sell. Partner onboard and upgrade incentiveTSPs can earn up to $10,000 in cash…

Last Saturday, we looked at the film’s opening thought: “Technology and weaponry are the same; therefore . . .” To explore this premise, let’s dive into the movie’s opening scene again. It is often referred to as “The Dawn of Man.” Here’s the music, played by itself.Before discussing the Dawn of Man scene, I should mention a couple details that are important during the opening. First is the music that plays right at the beginning. The song, commonly titled “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” is a tone poem written by German composer Richard Strauss. The song is a tribute to a book…

Microsoft has quietly added a potent piece of storage tech to Windows, and enthusiasts are buzzing about what it could mean for SSD performance. The company introduced a native NVMe driver in Windows Server 2025 that bypasses decades-old legacy bottlenecks in how Windows talks to modern solid-state drives. While this update wasn’t officially meant for Windows 11, resourceful users have found a way to activate it there too. More importantly, the results suggest you can squeeze noticeably more speed from your NVMe SSD if you’re willing to tinker. Taking a deeper dive into the technical aspects, for years, Windows has…

This article is republished from National Review with the permission of the author. The black market in human organs does not receive nearly enough attention. China is probably the worst offender here, with political prisoners like Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghur Muslims arrested, tissue-typed, killed, and harvested to supply well-off buyers who don’t want to wait in the donation queue. We are far too nonchalant about that murderous commerce. Image Credit: Microgen – Adobe Stock Now, a gruesome story out of Nigeria vividly illustrates the sheer evil of this trade in human tissues. From the Daily Mail story: Over 100 decomposed and mutilated bodies have been discovered…

The back-and-forth over whether Publicis Group and IPG were both buying and selling ads for Paramount shows how contentious the practice remains, even as the holdcos try to normalize it.The spark came last week on Paramount Skydance Corporation’s first earnings call under David Ellison’s new regime, when president Jeff Shell sketched out the company’s relationships with the major media agencies. He told analysts that the holdcos were “not just buyers of advertisers, but represent all of our sales clients”, a line that landed with more weight than he intended. It was offered as context for the scramble earlier this summer…

Great minds can unravel complexity. This week’s Micro Softy is relative; it tests your ability to deal with complex relationships. I was talking to Ben recently about PragerU videos, when the alarm went off on his cell phone. He turned it off and looked at the time. “I’m late for a Zoom meeting!” he cried. We shook hands and he hurried away. My cell phone rang. It was my boss Ms.  Sterno from work. Pictured in no particular order are Ben, my mother, her mother-in-law, and me. How are Ben and I related if Ben’s mother is my mother’s mother-in-law?/ChatGPT…